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Jason always showers when he comes home.
He keeps the same routine no matter how much his body aches or how tired he finds himself. Take off his boots by the door, walk quietly as he can down the hallway so he doesn’t wake you, strip as the steam fills the bathroom, then, and only then, fall into bed with you.
You always hear him come in, your ears fine tuned to the sound of him kicking off his boots and setting his gun down on the table in the entryway, but you’ll never tell him that he wakes you. You just wait in that hazy state between the world of dreams and reality for a dip in the mattress before he curls himself around you.
He’s used the same body wash as long as you’ve known him. Something with sandalwood and mahogany. He scrubs his skin red with it in the shower as he tries to cleanse himself of the city. He doesn’t like bringing Gotham home to you, into your bed, into your sheets, into the little safe bubble he’s created with you. So he scrubs and scrubs till he can no longer feel the dirt and grime of the rougher world clinging to him.
He dresses quietly in the dark of your shared bedroom, you watch him in the low light gleaming from your alarm clock and the moonlight filtering in through the window. If laundry’s been done, like tonight, he always smells his pajamas first, taking in the soft scent of the detergent and fabric softener you’ve gotten him used to. He’ll wince tiny bits as he tugs the clothes on, his sore and aching muscles protesting against the movement. Once he’s dressed you’ll feel it, that dip in the mattress that gives you an excuse to roll over and face him.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” he’ll murmur as he slips under the covers.
“It’s okay,” you’ll whisper back, always pretending you hadn’t been waiting for him since your ears picked up on the sound of his boots against the hardwood. “How was patrol?”
No matter what kind of night it was Jason will just grunt in response, too tired to talk about it.
On bad nights he’ll let you slump against him as he stares up at the ceiling, fidgeting for hours as he tries to get his mind to slow. You stay awake with him on these nights, both of you losing sleep over things he can’t talk about, one of his hands tangled in yours.
Tonight, however, is a good night, which means he rolls onto his stomach and throws an arm over you, curling his body around yours. His face pressed into your hair and yours pressed into his shoulder, you can always smell that body wash of his and the faint remnants of Gotham that he can never quite scrub off. He dozes off quickly on these nights, into a sleep so deep you’d think the whole city could explode and he wouldn’t wake. You always stay up a little for that, just to watch the slow rise and fall of his chest, just to see him at peace in a way that he never really is in the waking world.
“Goodnight Jason,” you mumble into his shoulder as your own eyelids grow heavy.
Even in his dreams he always mumbles back something that sounds a little like: “goodnight, baby.”