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Jason slid the key silently out of the lock and pushed open the door to his current favorite Gotham apartment. All the lights were off, and Jason felt an unexpected wave of disappointment. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d been hoping to see Tim until he wasn’t here to welcome him home. Home. Sometimes the thought still caught Jason off guard, but after six months of cohabiting various safehouses, apartments, and the Nest with Tim, Gotham felt more like home to Jason than it ever had before. He felt warm when he thought of the city. At this point, he wondered sometimes whether Tim was more his home than Gotham was.
With a suppressed sigh—Jason refused to pine after Tim quite that pathetically, it had only been two weeks—Jason dragged his duffle bag into the apartment and tossed it into a corner to deal with later. He’d gone through another leather jacket on this trip. An entire sleeve had ripped off this time, and after Jason had lost his favorite pair of boots to some kind of awful plant pigment of Ivy’s last time she was free, Jason was practically going to have an entirely new costume. He’d never felt quite right when more than one piece of his outfit was new. It felt too much like losing, even if they were just things. Those had been a good pair of boots goddammit. The shoes always took the longest time to break in.
Jason made for the bathroom, stripping out of his shirt and jeans as he went. Leaving the clothes in a haphazard lump outside the bathroom door, Jason started the shower, not waiting for the water to heat up before he stepped in.
It had been a long two weeks. Longer than Jason wanted to admit to himself. It felt ridiculous that he could have gotten so attached to the other vigilante in only six months, but if he was honest, Tim had been important to him for much longer than that. At first, Tim was a symbol of Batman’s disregard for Jason, and for e the lives of those to whom he was the most directly responsible. Then, he was abandoned, then independent, another wayward Robin when Batman was gone, and then he was back, and suddenly Tim Drake was fascinating for new reasons. Red Robin was a beautifully efficient vigilante, even if he didn’t kill. And these days, as long as Jason didn’t take out any of Tim’s targets, Tim didn’t even lecture him anymore.
Now, Jason was startlingly close to admitting that if Tim symbolized anything, it might be a very dangerous four-letter word. Something like ‘hope’ or ‘love’ or, yeah, ‘home.’ Jason tried not to think about that too hard.
Finally clean after several days of nonstop planning-stakeouts-fighting-travelling, Jason was crashing. He managed not to shoulder check the doorframe to the bedroom, and when he finally laid eyes on his bed, he was suddenly immensely grateful that he hadn’t bothered to turn on the overhead light.
Laptop open but gone dark on his chest, curled up in one of Jason’s rust red hoodies, dark frame blue light glasses half-falling off of his face, Timothy Drake laid fast asleep. Jason hoped, without much faith, that this was a natural sleep and not a 72-hour-case-solving-bender induced sleep. In either case, this—Tim sleeping peacefully in Jason’s space, the blinking light of Jason’s battered alarm clock casting a pale red glow over the smooth planes of his face, Jason’s hoodie drooping to reveal the top of one shoulder—was the best welcome home that Jason could ask for. If Tim was sleeping, then there was no emergency-and-caffeine-induced bender. And if there was no bender, then that meant that when Tim woke up, Jason would get to have him for at least one home cooked meal before Tim started whatever his next project was.
Neither of them got a lot of quiet moments in their lives, and honestly, it had been a long time since Jason enjoyed a quiet moment. Since he’d shared a quiet moment with anyone. Not since he’d lived at the manor.
Tim shifts when Jason sits down on the bed, carefully extricating Tim’s phone and laptop from the mess of sheets and placing them on the bedside table. As he grabbed Tim’s glasses, Jason dropped a kiss on Tim’s forehead before sliding into the bed beside him.
………
When Tim woke up, it was dark, and he was warm. A bleary glance confirmed at the alarm clock assured him that it was still time to sleep. And Jason was there, asleep, in Tim’s bed. Too sleepy to be surprised by something that seemed so right, Tim tucked himself farther under Jason’s arm and fell back to sleep.
………
Jason woke up slowly, feeling safe and content with his arms wrapped around a warm bundle of Tim. Lifting his head slightly to remove Tim’s hair from the vicinity of his nose, Jason’s eyes caught on a conspicuously clean pair of shoes in the corner of his room.
“Hey, Tim?”
“Mmhmm?”
“Are those my boots?”
“What?”
Fair, Jason thought. He hadn’t given Tim a lot of context there. Clarifying, he said, “Did you clean my favorite boots that Ivy’s bastard plants ruined?”
Tim, now about as awake as he was going to get without coffee, brightened a bit, “Yeah, took fucking forever but I figured out what the binding agent was and—”
Jason figured he’d waited as long as could be reasonably expected before kissing his ridiculously competent and thoughtful boyfriend. Tim didn’t complain, just pulled Jason along as he flipped himself on top of Tim and kissed him.
“I take it you like your welcome home present,” Tim said dryly, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re ridiculous,” Jason announced, voice dripping affection.
“You’re a sap,” Tim admonished, eyes crinkling. “And you have morning breath.”
Jason let out an overly offended gasp. “How dare you!” A grin split his face. “I haven’t even finished thanking you yet.”
Tim’s eyes narrowed, but when Jason leaned back down, Tim placed a hand on Jason’s jaw and tilted into the kiss. It was a languid kiss, the kind that made Jason feel like he was turning into liquid, and he sank into the activity with alacrity.
Despite Tim’s claim that Jason had morning breath (and the fact that Tim probably did too), after two weeks without him, Jason was happy to taste any version of Tim that he could have. Tim seemed to agree, alternating between lightly sucking on Jason’s tongue and swiping his own tongue and teeth over Jason’s lips.
Jason smiled into the kiss, using his hand in Tim’s hair to pull the smaller man’s head to the side. As he slid one leg between Tim’s with a slow pressure, Jason sucked his way from Tim’s ear down his jaw and neck to nip at his boyfriend’s collarbone, exposed once again thanks to him wearing Jason’s own sweater.
“Mm, I love it when you wear my clothes,” Jason breathed into the hollow of Tim’s throat.
“I bet you’d love the view even more if you took them off of me,” Tim countered.
Jason sat up as if to consider Tim’s very astute observation, his gaze darkening. Tim swallowed, and Jason watched the movement with interest. Leaning down again, Jason said, “Nah,” and he licked a sharp line up the column of Tim’s throat.
Tim yelped, thrown by the unexpected wet sensation. “Oh c’mon Jason,” he whined.
Dragging himself off Tim and out of bed, Jason laughed. “I thought you didn’t want to bother with kissing me and my hideous morning breath.”
Tim sniffed as he sat up, protesting, “I can think of plenty of other worthwhile uses for your mouth.”
“Aw, maybe later, babybird,” Jason grinned.
“I hate you,” Tim grumbled, flopping back onto the pillows.
“Uh-huh, sure ya do,” Jason patronized. “What do you want on your crepes?”
Tim immediately brightened. “I knew there was a reason I missed you.”