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The thing about dating Jason is that it was, in a lot of ways, like dating Dick.
Slade would take it to his grave and back again; fuck truth serum, fuck magic and wizardry. He’d denied the truth to himself so methodically, so consistently, that not even a mind reader would be able to pick up on it.
Because Slade knew, the moment he breathed so much as a word of it? Jason would be gone. And he was never, ever coming back.
The fact of the matter was —
Well.
Sometimes, when he was muzzy and half-awake from a good sleep or blood loss, he caught sight of golden skin and dimples and a crooked smile, and the name on his lips didn't start with J.
Obviously, they’re different.
Jason’s got curls he keeps cropped tight to his skull.
(He’s never said it, but Slade has watched him press his fingers against his skull during quiet moments of upset. Jason likes to put his hands against the raised scars, where the bone was shattered and knit back together.
The first time Jason let Slade cup the back of his head, in a moment of quiet, breathless devotion — he felt the same as he did when Adeline first handed him Grant. There was something soft, fragile, breakable in his hands, its survival entirely dependent on him being capable of not hurting it. Him, a man designed and optimized for callousness and death.)
Dick keeps his hair longer, generally.
(When he’s not shaved it in some sort of episode, which is… a lot of the time. Slade’s no shrink, but he thinks maybe someone ought to be poking around in there. In lieu of that, though, he supposes a good fuck is the next best thing for a healthy soul.)
Jason’s built like a brick shithouse while Dick is a cool 5’6, and both of them possess intense amounts of inner turmoil about the fact that they ‘should be’ shorter.
They both like it, too. When Slade shows them how much bigger he is than them.
Mostly different in the bedroom, though, of course. Dick was all fire and hunger. He wanted it hard and fast and right then. They would lock eyes across a battlefield — often on opposite sides — and it would seem obvious, inevitable. A collision course that ended with them both at the nearest safehouse as soon as possible, teeth clacking together and peeling Dick out of that skintight fucking suit as he whimpered, little noises that Slade knew he’d never make outside of acting this character.
That’s all it was — a performance. It was fun, to play at it. For Slade to keep his toothbrush in Blüd, to keep a pair of escrimas in his hall closet. But Slade was never going to stop killing, and Dick valued what Bruce asked of him more than he valued being alive.
Their first — though not their worst — fight was this: the fourth time they slept together, Slade allowed himself a moment of pure and absolute insanity. It’s the only way to justify what he did next; he pulled Dick tight against his side, his cheekbone pressed against Slade’s collarbone, and said, “You could stay.”
Dick stiffened against him, and he knew he’d fucked up. This arrangement was meant to be easy. Simple. Unquestioned.
“This is just sex,” Dick said. He was so good at lying to himself that Slade almost believed him.
“Who are you hiding from?” Slade asked him. He’d never been one to mince words, especially when the issue was so fucking obvious. “Bruce? He doesn’t own you.”
Dick pushed himself up onto his elbows, face a blank mask. “You don’t get it. You never have. And that’s why this — whatever you think is happening here? It isn’t. It can’t. It’s just sex.”
Slade sat up, just to even the playing field. They sat in bed, the warm line of their thighs pressed together.
“Why are you so willing to kill yourself for him? He killed your — “ Slade broke off, then — brother had too many jagged edges — but Dick was already getting to his feet, tugging his shirt on.
“Fuck you, Wilson,” he said. Something in his eyes blazed, something real. That was what Slade had wanted — for something genuine to filter through the masks — but he found himself surprised at the hurt rising inside him, his feelings rawer than expected.
Dick had stormed out. Slade had taken a contract in Dubai which occupied him for the next eight months.
That was the thing about being with Dick, in the end: they both knew the very first time that it was going to end in fire, and they kept doing it anyway.
The first time Jason sees Slade again, newly alive and newly twenty-two, they’re in an underground bunker working a job for Talia.
It isn't the lust that catches Slade’s eye, though there isn’t any lack of that. It's that Slade fired off three shots in quick succession, each finding its mark perfectly, and Jason had looked at Slade with such adoration.
Half the fun of Dick was finding new and inventive ways to make him cum so hard he couldn’t think. Jason, though — he’s insatiable. Unstoppable. They get through five hours and ten rounds before Slade pulls away, makes him stop, and Jason is still mouthing against Slade’s briefs like his life depends on it.
“Jesus, kid,” he says. “It’s not going anywhere.”
“M’fine,” Jason says. It’s patently untrue. At the least he’s dehydrated.
After, once he’s gotten some protein and at least one complex carbohydrate into the kid, Slade runs his hands over Jason’s sculpted biceps with no small amount of heat in his gaze.
“I could do this forever,” Jason says, apropos of nothing, abrupt in the silence like it’s being ripped out of him. “If you’d let me. I’d do this forever.”
“Oh,” Slade says, and then he rolls over and pretends to fall asleep, utterly and all-encompassingly aware of the sensation of Jason’s alive, awake breathing at his back. It’s probably just the oxytocin talking.
It wasn’t hard to find a bounty on the Joker. The pool for his death was nearing two billion. With a B. Slade couldn’t make sense of why no one had done it sooner, which in this business generally meant many people had tried and failed.
It was a challenge, but he liked a challenge. It wasn’t his place, but he loved to overstep. Especially if it meant pissing off Bruce, he loved to overstep.
(“I killed someone once,” Dick told Slade on a Friday at eight a.m., half his head shaved and a dullness in his dark blue eyes.
Catalina Flores. Not that Dick had ever told him about it; privately, Slade suspected he would go to his grave without ever calling what happened by name.
“I know,” Slade said. It was kinder than forcing Dick to continue carving himself open. Slade wanted, more than anything, to take away the knife.
“No,” he said. Despondent, frozen. “Joker.”
“…What?” Slade said, eyebrows furrowing, tone almost a laugh. He hadn’t understood, then. “No, you didn’t. Joker’s alive.”
“Yeah,” Dick said. He laughed too, but it was an awful noise, like something curling up to die. “Yeah, he is.”)
The week after the Joker went missing, Slade walked into his home to find Jason entirely moved in, a cat purring on his lap. There was avant-garde art on the walls and a heavy oak bookshelf Slade had never seen before.
“What the fuck?” Slade said. Jason was sprawled across his couch, legs splayed wide, fingers brushing softly against the cat’s fur.
“He was skulking around outside. What should we name him?” Jason asked. From the doorway, Slade could see a second nightstand in the bedroom. If he checked, he was sure there’d be another toothbrush in the vanity. “I’m thinking Mister Pibbles.”
“You aren’t moving in,” Slade told him, eyebrows raised into his hairline. “And we sure as fuck aren’t keeping the cat.”
“It’s your turn to feed Mister Pibbles,” Slade groused into the pillow, tugging the comforter tighter around his shoulders to keep out the morning chill. The little hellbeast perched at the foot of their bed, mewing incessantly.
“Aughhh,” Jason said, but Slade felt the bed dip as he crawled unwillingly out.
Slade burrowed his face into the pillow, away from the piercing sunlight, and listened to the hum of the apartment. He could hear Jason’s heartbeat, thrumming low and steady; early morning traffic from the busy streets below; the clink of dry food into Pib’s sardine-shaped bowl.
Jason crawled back into bed, sticking his freezing toes against Slade’s bare thighs. “I love you,” he said.
The world stopped.
“Jason. This is just sex,” Slade told him, but he wasn’t nearly as good at lying as Dick Grayson.
“S’alright,” Jason said, continuing to kiss Slade’s back. “I’m always second choice. I get it.” The worst part was that he meant it, his face open and adoring. It made something in Slade’s chest twist, which was a foreign and uncomfortable feeling. Jason really didn’t care if he was a stand-in, as long as he got anything at all. Was that all he thought he deserved? Sloppy seconds and a man who called him the wrong name in bed?
Slade didn’t know what to do with that, how to fix it. Especially because it was true. So instead he reached down and twisted his hand around Jason’s dick in the way that made Jason purr, until the moment passed.
He doesn’t say it. Not when Jason almost dies, buried beneath the rubble of the Pinnacle Building during a routine patrol. Not after he memorizes which corner stores and bodegas give discounts on what days to which brands of cat food. Not even when Gotham hesitantly declares the Joker deceased.
He can’t. He thinks of the first time Jason let him touch his head. He thinks of holding Grant as a baby. He thinks of holding Grant when he died.
Jason gets kidnapped by some two-bit wannabe drug lord and Slade brings home the fucker’s head like Pib does with dead birds, unsure and waiting for approval. Jason laughs, high-pitched and reedy, until he starts sobbing. Slade holds him until the shaking stops.
He does not say it.
It’s just — clear, right. It feels stupid not to say it, because it’s so obviously and wholly true. But all the same, he can’t, and he just hopes that Jason knows. What’s more: he knows Jason knows. So, really, why does he need to hear Slade say it?
Christmas at the Manor is a beautiful affair, which Slade assumes is in no small part due to the efforts of Pennyworth. The front drive is lined with candles in decorated bags: some with artistic swirls, some with charcoal paintings of the various cats and dogs and cows residing in the house, one or two with a Batman symbol drawn so poorly it had to have been on purpose.
"Master Jason," Pennyworth says. "Master Wilson." Slade nods at him politely.
(Once, when Slade was in Zimbabwe hunting down a diplomat, Jason's tracker went off the grid. Slade was working on hijacking a private plane — not letting himself think about why, exactly, this was so important — when a text came through from Billy's number. It's been handled. - Agent A. Slade had blinked at it. Blinked again. Dropped the gun he was pointing at a terrified pilot. Headed back into the field. Resolved to never, ever cross Alfred Pennyworth.)
Jason squeezes his waist tight, once, and then slips away to get them both cups of hot cocoa. The gang's all here, he thinks wryly. Selina's in one corner, wearing a number just shy of too revealing for a family holiday. Wayne is bravely pretending not to notice either the cleavage or Slade. A whole gaggle of people are scattered through the halls: the blonde one is in the living room talking to Cassandra, Drake is laid on top of one of the dining tables, and the littlest Wayne is discussing the weather with the cat as though it understands him. Which, fuck, maybe it does. This isn't his house.
He turns down another hall and there, in the corner — glittering, effervescent — is Dickie Grayson.
Dick is resplendent as ever. He's flushed, grinning brightly at Kori as he leans on his tiptoes to kiss her under a convenient piece of mistletoe hung from the doorframe. He's giggling, and so is she, pressing their lips together and curling one hand into his long hair, and Slade thinks: Good for him.
It catches him off guard, the thought natural as breathing. He’s glad Dick’s happy. He’s happy too. There's no pang of loss in his chest. Dick's eyes catch on him, widening the slightest fraction even as he grins wider, but Slade just nods at him and turns to go.
Jason finds him out on the balcony, two mugs of steaming cocoa in hand. Slade gladly accepts his, drinking it too quickly and too hot, as he wraps an arm around Jason.
“Jason,” Slade whispers, thumb rubbing against his back through his thick jacket.
“Mm.”
He opens his mouth to say something, anything that can adequately convey to Jason the feeling of seeing Dick and realizing that it was easy to turn his back. That what was in front of him was infinitely more dependable and exciting and comfortable.
Instead, what he says is, “I never want to get married again.”
Jason stiffens against his side. And that’s it — Slade knows he’s fucked the whole thing up. For some reason, his mouth is still moving. “I have lots of enemies. None of them are above using you to get to me, and most of them surpass you in both skill and strength.”
Jason’s sitting up fully now, looking at him wide-eyed. Slade can’t look him in the eyes. Jason's nose is red, and the tips of his ears, and his eyes are bright and his face is flushed and Slade loves him as much as he's ever loved anyone and it horrifies him.
“And?” Jason says, eyes dancing.
“I let you name the cat Mister Pibbles,” Slade says with dawning despair. "And I still love you."
It doesn’t feel how he thought it would — like a punch to the gut, like a knife in his ribs. It feels fizzy and warm against the winter chill. It feels good; it feels right.
Jason grins, huffing a laugh that fogs out into the freezing air. “I love you too, you old bastard.” Jason leans back against him, this time unzipping his jacket to more efficiently leach his body heat.
“I’m not good for that,” Slade says slowly, slotting his body against the curve of Jason's back. “For loving.”
“I know.” Jason reaches up to intertwine their fingers, matching gun calluses and all. “Historically, I’m shit at choosing.”
Slade huffs out a laugh. "You and me both, kid." He presses his lips against Jason's neck — soft, feather-light — and feels Jason shiver against him.
"S'cold out," Slade says with a wicked grin. "We should probably get back inside. Maybe into one of those empty bedrooms Wayne keeps."
"We are not fucking in my father's house. We haven't even opened presents yet!" Jason protests, and Slade laughs as he drags him back inside.