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Tim’s neurotic circadian rhythm only allows him four hours of sleep like clockwork every night, except for the occasional six hours when his lover slips a sleeping pill into his late night stale coffee. Jason is on bedrest, Red Hood injured from a gunshot wound to the leg that was thankfully healing up well. Jason still thinks it was worth permanently crippling the smuggling ring he'd been dogging before Christmas. However, simultaneously aching and being benched from patrol had left Jason irritable and grouchy, leaving Tim to run damage control.
Tim sits upright in Jason’s bed scanning case files on his laptop, the crisp scent of earth and winter and ashes and everything Jason suffusing him in a soft warmth. His ankle is slightly hooked around Jason’s knee, from when Jason had struggled to roll out of bed demanding he at least be allowed to “make some goddamn proper food, christ, ‘Placement, you are not spoonfeeding me another bowl of ramen.” Now he slept peacefully, curled into the blankets and into Tim’s side. His face pressed into the fuzzy wool of Tim’s sweater, a gift from Alfred.
Stephanie had swung by, dropping off a batch of marshmallows and cookies, bless the girl, though the heavy winks and the condom palmed to him could have been less crude. Their long empty mugs sit by the bedside as the wind blows heavy gusts saturated with dirty flakes of snow over Gotham. The current safe house they were in was one of the more lavish ones, and Jason had made a point to gather pinecones from the local park to feed into the fireplace, and the oaken scents made it hard to concentrate.
He softly clicks his tongue, gazing down fondly at the mop of black hair and white fringe burrowing into him. Hesitantly, Tim brushes back a strand of hair away from Jason’s closed eyes, examining the softened features of his lover, committing them to memory. At this distance, he can see the faded freckles of a boy that used to fly, who held Gotham’s hope and protected it in colours of red, green, and yellow.
He knows he will always love the man the boy came to be.
In the pallid glow of the laptop screen, Tim tries to count the freckles dotting Jason’s cheeks. He reaches a sparse twenty-two, but wonders if there are more he can't make out under the laptop's pallid glow. There’s a tiny spattering of them over the bridge of his nose, a minute sprinkling beneath his eyes which reminds Tim of the way Bruce dots his i's – barely legible but demanding attention. The computer screen acts as moonlight to illuminate Jason’s relaxed expression, but his freckles are like starling plumage, and the mental comparison makes Tim want to trail his fingers over them, map the contours of Jason’s rugged face. The soft scratch of Jason’s stubble makes him pause briefly, realizing that his hand is already rasping over Jason’s jawline and that he may as well indulge himself.
There’s a little hum, a tiny shift from the leg hooked by Tim’s ankles, then Jason’s eyes flutter open, sharpening into focus.
“Babybird,” Jason murmurs, nuzzling into Tim’s heat and Alfred’s gorgeous knitting. “Why’re you still up?” His breath still smells like Stephanie’s cinnamon cookies with the underlying taste of cigarette smoke he’d badgered Tim into permitting earlier that evening.
Tim cups his cheeks, tracing Cassiopeia in a tender game of connect the dots. “Just going over case files Babs sent me,” he hums. He tries to outline Jason’s star sign, fails, and Virgo misshapes itself into something more fragile, breakable: something fond that Tim will never let go of. He realizes that Jason’s eyes are crystal clear, devoid of the blissful mistiness of sleep, watching him idly create mindless little patterns and curlicues of constellations and nebulae. He flushes self-consciously, and Jason grins at him in a way that’s a little wolfish and energetic and so purely Robin.
“Find something you like?” he teases gently, and Tim feels his mouth curling into a tiny pout before it even registers.
“Maybe,” replies Tim, fighting back a tiny smile. “I didn’t realize you had freckles here; they’re really faint.” He taps out a cluster that could pass as the Pleiades, pinpointing the last sister Merope who faded away yet still shone in the darkness. “Like starlight in Gotham,” he says absentmindedly before he realizes that the words have left his tongue and it’s too late to take them back.
Jason grins. “You definitely need to sleep, Babybird, you’re sounding awfully Shakespearan tonight.” He manages to push himself up, stealing a chaste kiss that’s more of a brush of lips than anything else. Tim makes a little noise of dissent when Jason pulls back, but Jason grins. Before Tim can say anything Jason’s manhandling him, setting aside the laptop and shutting it with a click. Even wounded, Jason easily pins him beneath his roughened biceps and weight, crooning a little as Tim gives up and snuggles into Jason’s heat, sinking against his chest but still mindful of the injured leg.
“Sleep, babe,” murmurs Jason, voice raspy and vibrating deep in his chest. Tim melts into it.
“Thought you’d be more awake, honestly,” admits Tim, eyes fluttering shut as he tunes into Jason’s heartbeat. He wonders if the space of Jason’s heartbeats at his fingertips could be quantified like sand trickling through an hourglass, like starlight filtering through time and space, but he’s too distracted by Jason’s fingers threading through his hair, hand stroking the small of his back.
“I was awake the whole time,” mumbles Jason. “Wanted you to get off that stupid computer.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Y’know, your eyes are a different shade of blue when they’re looking at the screen. Lighter. Blue-grey.”
“Really?” slurs Tim, as Jason’s hand traces its own nonsensical constellation over his cheek.
“Yeah. But they’re prettier when they’re focused on me.” He feels the silent quiver of Jason’s chuckles deep in his ribcage, the loud rumbles of a man grown from the bright laughter of a boy. “But, sleep. B gave us the night off, take advantage of it, Timbo.” Tim feels a kiss pressed into his hair, warm breath tickling his scalp and the ridge of his neck.
Tim can’t remember if he manages to mumble a coherent declaration of love, but Jason’s kiss says it many times over for the two of them.