Work Text:
It should have been a simple job, in and out, fifteen minutes maximum. He knew the location well, and had been
His milk and bananas trip was derailed when one Dick Grayson spotted him across the produce section and B-lined towards him, pushing one of those miniature shopping carts for children and single people, grinning ear to ear. A casual conversation somehow devolved into an invitation to Dick’s apartment, “Just for lunch”, and Jason found himself following Dick home, watching as he managed to gesture excitedly while both arms were full of groceries.
As promised, the apartment was a few blocks away. Their path snaked through an alley, and past a snow-covered park where a pair of youth in their early twenties whispered conspiratorially, in the midst of some sort of deal, likely for a new strain of street-drug Jason would investigate in a week or two. Dick had seen them too, inclining his head away as a sign to leave them alone. Jason wasn’t going to fuck with them either, but made sure to exude don’t fuck with me energy as he could muster with a bunch of bananas under one arm and a carton of milk in the other.
From the way they took one look at him and ran, Jason was pretty sure it worked.
“Do you always have to do that?” Dick had turned around to face him and was walking backwards through half-melted slush.
“Do what?”
“You know, that.” Dick waved up and down at Jason. “Being all menacing. It’s kind of freaky, and what if someone puts two and two together?”
Jason took a moment to digest what he’d heard, waiting out his limbic system with deep breaths. “I know you’re talking Dick, but those are B’s words coming out. Was all this a set-up so you could lecture me for him?”
“What? No. I’m not his dog.” They both heard the silent anymore as Dick combed through his hair, dislodging the snowflakes that had accumulated during their conversation. “But yeah, I think you play a little loose with security. It’s dangerous, for all of us.”
“Please. People see what they want, and no one really wants to see all this.” Jason hooked his fingers by his head like ears on a cowl. “See, no one gives a fuck about me.”
They continued in silence, Dick sneaking guilt-ridden glances at Jason whenever he pretended to be distracted by a passing pedestrian or shop window. Jason let him stew as they buzzed into Dick’s apartment building and were confronted with an out-of-order sign plastered to the elevator, printed in comic sans that took the situation from bad to actively hostile.
“Race you.” Jason pushed Dick off balance and took off towards the stairs he’d spotted on the way in, ignoring the indignant shouting behind him, taking the stairs two at a time.
“You don’t even know where I live!”
“Don’t I?”
At the third-floor landing, Jason felt movement to his left followed by Dick’s entire body levering on the railing and somersaulting past him. He landed with the grace of a performer, arms spread wide like a show-off, groceries miraculously contained in rainbow-print burlap bags.
“Hypocrite.”
“That sounds like loser talk to me.” Dick sprung up the stairs to the fourth floor to his apartment, waiting at the end of a short corridor.
Jason knew where all the Bats lived, and Dick was no exception, though his public persona made the search easier than it had been for others. He still hadn’t pinned down which of Drake’s half-dozen addresses were real, and which were figments made to seem real. The kid’s paranoia had paranoia. Rounding onto the fourth floor, Jason was met with a sight that caused his heart to pound against his ribs as if to escape them. Dick stood at the end of the hall with a smug grin, his hand resting on a key already halfway in its lock.
“Like I said. Loser talk.”
He twisted the key.
Jason raced towards him.
“Crap, no. Stop!”
Dick’s foot waved in front of the door as a dark shape darted past him, then froze as it spotted Jason running towards it. Yellow slit-pupil eyes watched him warily as the cat arched its tricolour back, tail puffed. He slid to a halt, shoes squeaking on tile.
This didn’t surprise Jason. Between his resurrection and the pit, animals took offense to his presence either by running, with tooth and claw. What did surprise him was how Dick scooped the cat up in a practiced motion and held it on his hip like a baby.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing past the door with his chin, “Before she gets any more ideas.”
Jason could do little else but follow him.
Dicks apartment was much like he was. The entrance led to a small kitchen painted a cheery yellow, with a few cupboards and enough counter space to be functional. Jason untied his shoes as Dick put his cat down, who scampered to the beat-to-hell looking couch, then placed the groceries on the counter.
“Mind if I make something?”
Dick made a go-ahead motion with his hand then wandered down the hall and out of sight. The cat observed, as if assessing his abilities, while Jason unpacked the groceries and stored them according to Alfred’s rules. If Dick wanted to complain then he could take it up with him, not Jason.
It took a few minutes of digging through cupboards to find a stainless steel pan, even if the burn marks told him Dick didn't wait for it to heat up properly.
“Damn Dick, learn how to use this right.” Jason brandished the pan triumphantly and set about gathering the ingredients he needed. Cheese, the proceeded American kind Dick still liked. Bread, the fancy whole grain kind from the bakery kind he’d insisted tasted better, weirdo. Dick had hidden his butter in a tri-colour butter dish that looked hand painted in bright yellow, red, and green.
“They’re not going to be Alfie’s sandwiches, but they’ll be damn good. And not like you know the difference,” he said to the cat, who blinked at him twice and started cleaning an orange patch on her leg. Jason took it as approval, or as close as he was going to get. Down the hallway, the door creaked as it was forced open.
“Are you two already getting along?”
Jason nodded. “I can see why you keep her around, she’s very non-judgmental. Cute too.”
“She’s a sweetheart. With a mean stare though, isn’t that right sweetie?’ Dick sat on the couch and began to baby-talk in earnest as he scratched the cat’s chin, which leaned into the familiar touch.
“I never thought you were a cat person. Always figured you’d get a dog someday. Like you, loyal and shit.”
Dick smiled thinly at the comment, but as the cat climbed onto his lap and settled, his face relaxed. “I really didn’t intend to get her. It’s kind of a funny story. It’s not like I believe in fate or anything, but she appeared during the worst time of my life. It was…” Dick’s voice was quiet, guilt simmering under his tongue, threatening to overflow.
“You can say it. After I ran off and got myself killed. I’ve been over it for years, what’s taking you so long?” said Jason. He was not over it, and likely wouldn’t be in his lifetime, but Dick didn’t need to know that as he was too busy looking like he’d bit a lemon.
“Fine. I found her a few months after you died, when Bruce was still driving himself nuts about you, and Tim was off in Europe doing God knows what. She was in a little box in the East End, meowing louder than anything I’ve ever heard, right in the middle of a storm. She was so small, her litter mates were already dead, and I thought she would be too. So I took her down to the clinic on 42nd, in full uniform, dripping wet.”
Jason snorted as he imagined a fully-uniformed Nightwing bursting into a clinic, holding a tiny bundle. While the pan was heating up, he layered the ingredients into sandwiches, adding extra cheese for Dick, the heathen.
“And then what, she just followed you home?”
“I um. I broke in and stole her.”
“Excuse me? You did what?”
“I waited until she was healthy!” Dick replied as if that was the shocking part. “It’s not like they were going to allow Nightwing, vigilante, to adopt a kitten from them. They didn’t even let me pay. And I was attached already, sue me!”
Giggles bubbled out of Jason, who set the spatula he’d been using down as his fingers went weak from laughing. The smell of toasting bread and the sound of laughter filled the apartment, the clouds outside parting to let a beam of sunshine through the large window past Dick.
“Jesus Christ man, I didn’t know you had it in you. At least you didn’t go around acquiring orphans like B. Wait, does he know?”
Dick sank into the couch, searching for anywhere to look but Jason and settling on the window.
“You didn’t tell him? Oh my god, did you tell anyone? That the old man’s finally a grandpa and he doesn’t even know it.” Jason gloated as Dick sunk deeper between the ocean-blue couch cushions. Jason slid another slice of butter into the pan, then flipped the sandwiches revealing a soft golden crust.
“How’s it feel to be part of the family disappointment club?”
Dick shrugged. “Please, I was letting Bruce down while you were still stealing tires. And everyone else knows, I haven’t told Bruce yet. You know he can be weird about these things.”
An understatement, but Jason got it. Better to let B brood for a few months than try and have a civil conversation with the man. Lord knows how those went. Jason rubbed the collar of his shirt against the scar underneath.
Sliding the finished sandwiches from the pan and onto the waiting board, Jason carefully sliced Dick’s into pieces designed to be precisely uneven. He saw it online, the perfectly imperfect sandwich, and had been waiting for a chance to inflict it on anyone else. It would have driven the replacement.
No, he’d been working on this. If he had a therapist, they would be proud.
The sandwich would drive Tim insane, but there was little chance of him ever treating his affections as anything but poison. Jason couldn’t bring himself to feel anything about that at all.
Their banter stopped while Jason finished cooking, then tidied what he could of Dick’s cramped kitchen. His cleaning was interrupted by a backfiring car a few streets over, the sound causing both vigilantes to tense, while the cat remained unbothered, soaking in the rare Gotham sun. Plating the food, he made his way to the living room and sat on Dick’s cheap coffee table. Particle board whined anxiously under his weight as he passed a plate over, watching as his expression shifted from distracted, to hungry, to disappointed in seconds.
“Seriously?"
“Don’t you love it?” Jason widened his eyes and pouted the way he did when he was fourteen and still adorable, then blinked a few times for emphasis.
“Screw off,” Dick said without any heat, choosing an awkward scalene slice of sandwich to bite into.
“Never mind, keep making food like that and you can cut it into spirals for all I care. Seriously, how is it this good? Did you sneak one of Alfie’s good cheeses in here while I wasn’t looking?”
“Nah, you just suck.”
“Which is something I take pride in.”
Jason chewed on his sandwich and the statement for a moment, before realization dawned like the first rays of a hateful sun that brought with it knowledge he could never forget. Or something less dramatic than that, he reluctantly admitted, but still awful.
“Ew. Gross. And in front of my damn sandwich.”
Dick’s shit-eating grin earned him a fist in the shoulder. He replied with a kick to Jason’s shin, which Jason returned, twice as hard, eliciting a yelp of pain. Dick was winding up for a slap when a low growl interrupted their spat, followed by a blur that leapt from towards Jason. Thin lines of pain and blood bloomed on his forearm, the perpetrator hissing and arched-back on the table beside him. The room froze for a moment, but Dick reacted first, picking up and tucking under his arm the ball of fury in a practiced motion faster than Jason could track, damn his training, moving intentionally slow into the kitchen.
“Jay, we do not treat guests like that,” he said as he walked, the angry fluff’s green eyes staring accusations at him through the crook of Dick’s elbow, tail twitching with barely contained energy.
Was he fucking serious?
“She attacked me, asshole. Train your fucking cat better instead of giving me shit for it. I’m fucking out of here.”
Jason stood and made for the door with a fervor. He needed out of the apartment and away from Dick and the judgmental gaze that prickled up his back. The scratches had drawn forth every slight a younger him had suffered out of his misplaced desire to do good, contained only by the grounding rhythm of his breaths his half-assed therapy app had taught him.
“Jason stop.” Dick’s voice was a baby bird. “It’s not like that, I promise. Let me explain.”
It never was. Every promise broken, every unkind word ever uttered, every secret betrayed. Dick never really meant any of them, it was just a bad time, or Bruce was on his nerves. The pattern was seared into Jason like a scar, and sometimes it was even true. His app would say Jason needed to establish boundaries, leave and return when his thoughts were clear and his heart wasn’t pounding against his rib cage like the condemned in Arkham. But this family didn’t play by those rules, so Jason turned away from the door and back to Dick, feeling like Dante confronted by the Leopard.
“I kept putting this off, and I’m sorry about that. Having you here, cooking like you used to… I didn’t want you to leave.” Dick looked as close to genuinely ashamed as someone who was performing before he could walk could.
“So Jason meet Jay.”
The leopard pounced.
The cat, Jay, the thought of which stung him worse than her claws had, eyed him from her counter-top perch. Her eyes were the lazarus-green reflected in the mirror at night. Why had he only realized that now?
“Cute, I didn’t know replacing me ran in the family.”
“That’s not-” Dick’s plea fell on deaf ears. All thoughts of grounding and self-control were thrown aside with the revelation.
“Was that what I was to you? A pet? Poor little street rat Jason, too stupid to notice he was headed head-first into the wrong end of a clown, a crowbar, and an explosion. Sounds like a shitty fucking joke, but I guess my life’s just a running gag.” Jason kicked the coffee table into the wall with a crack, which would have been more intimidating if it was made of more than chewed-up wood pulp and glue. Still, it was enough to send Jay scrambling from the kitchen, disappearing down the hallway. “Or am I some kind of fucking project to you? Maybe I’ll get better and stop killing people if you promise to feed me, walk me, and take me to the vet. Is that how you sold this to Bruce? Cause I can’t imagine he’d be happy knowing you’re letting a dangerous criminal into your home.”
Dick’s lip quivered. “Is your problem with me and Jay, or is it with Bruce?”
Always a clean cut at the heart with Dick. “Fuck you. It can be both.”
“But it isn’t and we both know that. You were my little brother, Jay could never replace you. I would never replace you.” Dick's posture belied his sincerity, shoulders open and legs tight with anxiety.
“Shit. You mean it?” Jason tried to grasp his anger as it evaporated into tiny threads, slipping away. Bruce, ever stoic and made martyr by his own moral code, was easy to hate. Jason could rage at him like a summer storm, an accusation and a reminder of all his failures, blowing in and out of his life, without feeling an ounce of guilt. But with Dick it was harder to muster the feelings which normally came as easy as breathing.
“Of course I do. I named her Jay because of you, not because I needed a replacement. You can’t be replaced, you know that right?”
“Tell that to Bruce if you’re so certain.” Even Jason knew it was a petty jab.
“This isn’t about Bruce. It’s about you and me, me and you. We were the first and that means something. It means I won’t forget you, and I won’t pretend you don’t exist because our lines are different, and I’m not going to let you think you were never wanted, or only wanted you when it was easy.” Dick bit his lip which had started trembling. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. “I passed the legacy on to you willingly. Everything that happened to you is because of me.”
Cruelties like popcorn, hard-shelled words bursting under the sudden pressure of Dick’s guilt, filled Jason’s mind. He knew the words that would shatter him and grasping them would be as simple as opening his mouth. Hard-edged accusations waited breathlessly to be unleashed, each phrase a perfect destroyer. But he couldn’t pull the trigger. He never could when it really mattered.
“Lick your own fucking wounds. I won’t indulge this self-flagellation over my dead body.” They were the weak words of a man compromised by sentiment and both of them knew it.
“It’s not grief.” Dick shot back, tone equally free of venom. “It’s love. I failed you in almost every way I could have. I didn’t want to do the same to her. You both deserve better.”
“And her name?” Jason tilted his head at Jay, who had appeared in the doorway to Dick’s bedroom once the yelling stopped.
“You two are alike. Tough, prickly when provoked, sweethearts deep down.”
Jason narrowed his eyes.
“Deep, deep, deep down," he conceded. "Now sit on my couch and cuddle my cat, or I am going to kick you through the window and call Bruce to take you home.”
Not one to deny firm requests, not when he felt like a wrung-out towel, Jason sat dutifully on the slightly over-stuffed couch and watched the Gotham skyline as Dick coaxed Jay towards him. Puffy clouds promised imminent snowfall, but the skies were clear and the air smelled like cinnamon. Even a city like Gotham could be beautiful in the winter sun. A few minuted later a much calmer Jay sat on his lap after giving him a curious once over.
“So I just pet her? Like this?” Jason had interacted with cats plenty, but they were scrappy outcasts and fat-cheeked toms who had learned to fear human touch. In contrast, Jay waited patiently with her legs tucked under her body, unflinching as he moved to pet her in an awkward motion. “This seems wrong.”
Dick, the bastard, laughed at him. “No, it’s really that easy. And Jay’s a cool cucumber, even if you mess it up she’ll come back for more.”
Moving his hand in a slow motion, Jason felt the soft fur and warm body of a cat that was loved for the first time, and his throat tightened in response to an emotion he couldn’t name. Jay stayed and accepted his unsure hand without fuss, even as he pet quicker and with more force. His training failed him, but he didn’t care.
“I think I get it.” And he did. Neither disassembling a rifle with precision or chasing criminals and adrenaline on the rooftops of Gotham could quiet his head like Jay did. Both body and mind were still, something life had given him little chance to experience. “She takes care of you too.”
Dick teared up a little and nodded. The rest of the hour was spent in silence, ending only when Jay hopped to the floor with a polite chirp and vanished beneath the couch.
“You know, there are lots of strays in Gotham.”
“I’m not getting a damn cat.”
“You’re really good with Jay.”
“And I’m really good not getting a cat. End of story.”
“Okay, understood.” Dick raised his hands in defeat. “But if you ever get one-”
“Which I won’t.”
“Which you won’t. But if you do.”
Jason rolled his eyes, but couldn’t stop a smile from spreading.
“If you do, I would be honored to help out. I’ve learned which pet stores have the good stuff, the really good stuff, which is hard to come by information in this economy.”
“Oh yeah?”
Dick nodded with the utmost intensity. “And I have an in with a vet in Bristol, the best care an animal can receive, if you’re, you know, interested.”
“Which I’m not.” Jason grabbed his groceries from the kitchen. He’d forgotten them completely earlier, and would have kicked himself back to the Bowery if he had to stop at the store again. “Patrol tonight?”
Dick shook his head. “B has me benched for a few days, my ankles still hurt from our scrape with Ivy last week. I’m stuck on comms until it heals, or until an all-hands situation. At this point, I’d stage an Arkham breakout myself just to see some action.”
Forced inactivity explained Dick’s excessive friendliness and thin temper. “Want me to antagonize B for you? He has it coming.”
“He always has it coming, he’s B.” Dick’s reply was notably missing any denial, so it might as well have been a neon sign saying Punk That Old Man! Jason’s list of potential ways to annoy Bruce, ranging from the inconvenient to felonies, was waiting for him and now he had reason to use it.
“You’ll hear all about me later.”
“I look forward to it. And I’ll miss you.” Dick’s arms were open wide, angling for a hug, but Jason stepped under the attempt and nudged the front door open with his foot.
“No. I’ll hug your cat, but not you. Try again later.” If Dick was hurt by the rejection Jason didn’t turn to find out, he had places to be, Bats to bother, and milk that needed a fridge.