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Officer Dick Grayson was no stranger to the strange incidents that plagued the night shift in Blüdhaven, but no matter how hard he tried to remember, his training manual clearly had not included a chapter on extraterrestrial biological entities trying to eat stray cats.
Rain fell in a constant, miserable drizzle that blurred the downtown neon signs into smudges of pink and blue. Dick was patrolling the alleys behind the docks—a frequent hotspot for petty thieves and smugglers—when he heard a sound that didn’t fit the city’s usual noise. It wasn’t the typical commotion of a mugging or the crash of a garbage can tipping over. It was a low, metallic, resonant vibration, followed very closely by a deeply scandalized screech.
Dick drew his flashlight and switched it on as he turned into the narrow space between a brick warehouse and a closed fish market.
“Police! Stay where you are and show your—!”
He froze completely.
The beam swept through the alley and stopped on a huge man leaning against the brick wall, as though even injured he still took up too much space for the world around him. He was tall in an intimidating way, broad-built like he had been carved for war: powerful shoulders, thick arms outlined beneath the torn remnants of a skin-tight technological suit, and a wide chest rising and falling at an erratic pace, heavy with the tremendous effort of staying conscious.
The blackened fabric of the suit was scorched in several places, cruelly fused to his skin like burned metal. Dick wrinkled his nose at the faint smell of ozone, copper, and flesh seared by high-voltage current. Under the flickering flashlight, strange lines could be seen running across part of his neck and collarbone; they looked like subdermal circuits flickering with a dying blue light, vanishing beneath the destroyed armor plating of the uniform. From the cracks in the armor oozed a thick, dark fluid, far too viscous to be human blood, mixing with the rainwater.
His hair was a deep jet black, thick and messy, falling over his forehead in soaked rebellious strands. But what really stood out was the sharp white streak cutting through the front of his hair, starting right above his forehead like a luminous scar embedded in the darkness. The contrast was brutal; the pale lock stood out against the absolute black of his hair, impossible to ignore even in the dimness.
When he barely lifted his face, the light revealed features that were too sharp and unsettling: a hard jaw, high cheekbones, and intensely pale eyes that glowed from the shadows with something fierce and exhausted at the same time. But what he was doing was what completely shattered Dick’s professional training.
The man was firmly holding a chubby, utterly terrified calico cat in his massive hands. The man’s jaw was unhinged at an angle that defied human anatomy, exposing rows of teeth just slightly too sharp, and he was trying to shove the cat’s head into his mouth like someone trying to eat a giant burrito at two in the morning.
The cat, entirely opposed to this, was aggressively clawing at his nose and anywhere it could sink its claws nearby, though the damaged metal suit blocked most of the attacks.
The huge stranger barely reacted to the physical pain of the scratches; he only frowned with growing irritation while holding the animal at face level, as though evaluating a particularly hostile piece of defective technology.
“Hey! Hey, let go of the cat!” Dick shouted, striding forward.
He grabbed the man by the forearm, alarmed by the temperature radiating from him; the stranger’s skin burned through the wet fabric, vibrating with an internal energy that seemed to be collapsing.
“Let it go! Don’t eat it!”
The man went completely still.
His eyes—a disturbing bright cyan blue—locked onto Dick with absolute intensity. Up close, Dick could better appreciate the ridiculous size of him; he was enormous, muscles tensing beneath the charred remains of the black suit stuck to his body. But what hit him hardest was the severe laceration on the side of his torso, where the suit had melted away completely, exposing an abrasive burn glowing with an alarming hue. Any human would have been screaming in agony, but this guy didn’t even blink.
The stranger didn’t seem to have understood a single word.
His brows furrowed slowly into an expression of visible annoyance. Then, with a low guttural sound Dick definitely did not recognize as human, the man let out something that sounded like a complaint.
Then he gave an exasperated growl.
With obvious reluctance, he carelessly dropped the cat and rummaged through the ruined remains of a belt hanging from his hip, nearly destroyed. He pulled out some kind of metallic bracelet made of dark segmented pieces and pulsating blue lines, far too advanced to exist on Earth.
Dick barely had time to say,
“Okay, that is definitely not Wayne Tech—”
When the man strapped the device around his wrist with a rough motion, pressing it directly over an open wound. The metal seemed to absorb some of the dark fluid from his arm.
The bracelet emitted a sharp hum.
Its glowing lines flared to life, racing through the metal like tiny electric currents. The stranger shut his eyes for a moment, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw cracked. Then a series of distorted sounds escaped from the device: fragments of voices, overlapping transmissions, and warped human words that seemed to be reorganizing themselves in real time.
Dick watched, stunned, as the man’s expression changed little by little; wild confusion becoming cold analytical understanding.
The man opened his eyes again. This time, when he spoke, the words came out slow and mechanical, as though he were testing each syllable on an unfamiliar tongue.
“…Language… acquired.”
Then he looked toward the shadows just in time to see the cat vanish behind a pile of garbage bins.
His expression immediately hardened.
“The resource escaped,” he said at last, clicking his tongue in visible disapproval.
His voice was incredibly deep, rough, and carried a faint strange double resonance, like two people speaking in perfect sync at the same time. He looked down at the dark fluid on his wrist, where the subdermal circuits in his skin flickered violently before shutting off, and then looked back at Dick.
“That small furry projectile possessed a high concentration of localized kinetic energy. I required its sustenance to stabilize my levels.”
Dick lowered the flashlight slightly so he wouldn’t blind him directly, though his fingers clenched the metal handle so tightly his knuckles went white. His pulse was racing. In his time as a cop in the worst neighborhoods of Blüdhaven, he had seen everything: gang members high on experimental designer drugs, low-tier metahumans, strange mutations at the docks. But this... this triggered a primitive alarm in the pit of his stomach.
The unhinged jaw snapping back into place, the faint but chilling double resonance in his voice, and that thick fluid crackling with static while pretending to be blood didn’t fit any criminal file on Earth. His rational mind resisted processing it, but his survival instincts were already screaming what his eyes didn’t want to believe: the man standing in front of him did not belong to this world.
Even so, Dick Grayson wouldn’t be Dick Grayson if he didn’t try using humor as both shield and coping mechanism. He forced a faint smile, adopting a falsely relaxed tone, as if he were dealing with an ordinary drunk at two in the morning.
“Right. Got it. Mental note: keep you away from the animal shelter.” Dick took a short step forward, breaking the safe distance with extreme caution. “Look, as you’ve already figured out the hard way, on this planet we don’t eat the projectiles. Especially the ones that meow. But seriously, man... you’re losing an alarming amount of that... dark transmission juice, or whatever you call blood. Your clothes are melted into your skin and that burn on your side looks like absolute hell. What kind of budget airline brought you here and how the hell are you still standing?”
The stranger tilted his head, and the white streak in his hair caught the faint flashlight beam, glimmering with a weak spark of static.
“My Vanguard scouting unit suffered a critical systemic failure while crossing the upper boundaries of your atmosphere,” the man explained, and though his words were precise, his voice dragged with sharp exhaustion. “The thermal friction shield collapsed at ninety thousand meters. The ejection capsule experienced an uncontrolled ballistic deceleration impact against the liquid mass of your docks.”
Even with the convoluted and completely abnormal phrasing, Dick connected the dots in a second.
“The explosion at the harbor an hour ago… it wasn’t a transformer. You crashed into the water.”
“Affirmative. The impact fractured three of my skeletal structures and the overload fused the suit directly into my skin.” The alien paused, his cerulean eyes blinking heavily, his knees trembling. “I am currently experiencing a severe caloric deficit, disorientation from local gravity, and…” his gaze blurred as he leaned harder against the brick wall, “…a strong desire to regain energy atop that pile of waste.”
“The trash? No, no, don’t even think about it—”
Before Dick could react, the man collapsed forward. Dick dropped the flashlight and lunged to catch him, but the impact took him by surprise; the alien’s body hit the ground—and Dick—with a heavy metallic crash that suggested his bone and muscle density was considerably greater than any normal human’s. The officer ended up sprawled on the wet pavement with the stranger’s heavy torso crushing his legs.
Dick lay there in the rain, aching, glancing between his patrol car at the end of the alley and the unconscious white-streaked alien whose wounds were still giving off faint wisps of smoke over his uniform. He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh.
“My captain is never going to believe this report,” he muttered.
He looked at the stranger’s face, which even unconscious still held a stubborn scowl, and sighed again. His damn innate need to help anyone in trouble won out, as always.
“Which means I guess I’m not writing it.”
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ִ🛸༄˖°.
The stranger woke to the smell of something chemical and artificial—though deeply intoxicating.
He was lying on a surprisingly soft, cushioned structure—far more comfortable than the bio-shock pods in his scouting unit. His limbs felt heavy, crushed beneath the oppressive, dense gravity of that sector. He sat up abruptly, holding back a growl when his ribs protested. His senses, still overstimulated, scanned the surroundings at high speed. It was a confined domestic dwelling, small and strangely orderly. Dim light filtered through a square opening in the wall, clumsily covered by a piece of translucent fabric.
“Whoa, easy there, cowboy. Lie back down before you crack your skull against my ceiling.”
The alien whipped his head toward the voice, neck muscles tightening.
Standing in the frame of a narrow doorway was the human from the alley. He was no longer wearing the blue officer’s uniform; now he had on a fairly worn gray hoodie that read Blüdhaven Athletics across the chest. In his hands he held a ceramic cylinder releasing thick steam and, on a plate, a pair of unidentified dark-brown objects.
“What coordinates are these?” demanded the man in the bed. His voice was still deep, but the strange double resonance from the previous night had disappeared completely. “And what is that olfactory stimulant?”
“My apartment. And that ‘stimulant’ is strong black coffee and toast with Nutella,” Dick said calmly, walking casually across the room and setting the cup down on a low table. “You were unconscious for twelve full hours. I had to drag you up three flights of stairs by myself. You weigh an absurd amount, by the way. What are you made of? Compressed lead?”
The alien looked down, confused. The remains of his destroyed and scorched flight suit were gone, replaced by plaid flannel pants that fit him ridiculously short and a white t-shirt threatening to split at the shoulder seams. His pale skin was still crossed by those subdermal lines, but now they flickered with a faint amber glow that faded as his internal energy stabilized.
When he looked up to face the officer, Dick immediately noticed that the wild electric-cyan glow from his alleyway eyes was gone; in its place, the man’s pupils had settled into a deep, stormy dark blue. They were still intense and decidedly nonhuman, but no longer looked like those of a predator about to strike.
Being watched, the alien instinctively touched the white streak hanging over his forehead and then looked at Dick suspiciously.
“I am Jason, designation Todd, third-class explorer of the Kalanorian Vanguard. My ship was destroyed.”
“And I’m Dick. Dick Grayson,” the human replied with a smile far too bright for someone who had spent the night hiding what turned out to be an illegal alien.
“My protective bio-layer... How did you remove it? It was thermofused to my dermal system.”
“Oh, that.” Dick scratched the back of his neck with a crooked smile, though a shiver seemed to run through him at the memory. “You got lucky. Once your body temperature dropped, I guess that weird armor registered you weren’t in danger anymore and peeled off on its own like a metallic scab. But what came after... man, you scared the hell out of me.”
Dick let out a breath and pointed at Jason’s torso.
“My original plan was to grab the patrol med kit and patch you up so you wouldn’t bleed out on my couch. I was already picturing myself making up some bizarre medical story at the hospital. But while I was using a towel to clean off all that dark blood, I saw your skin start moving. The lacerations on your torso and the cuts on your arm started closing and weaving themselves back together overnight. It was like watching a sci-fi movie in fast-forward. In the end, I didn’t have to put on a single bandage—just clean up the mess.”
Jason raised an eyebrow, puffing out his chest with a mix of superiority and casual confidence, as though Dick’s amazement was completely ridiculous.
“Of course they closed,” Jason declared, his tone dripping with intellectual arrogance. “The physiology of the Kalanorian Vanguard is infinitely more advanced than the fragile organisms of this planet. Those structural damages you witnessed were mere trivialities. My cellular matrix does not require your primitive stitches or chemical salves; with a brief period of localized rest and thermal stabilization, my autonomous system was more than sufficient to complete self-repair.”
“Trivialities?” Dick arched an eyebrow, amused by the man’s pride. “Your side was split open and burned—I swear at one point I could see part of your ribs, buddy. But hey, if your body does the hard work, that saves me money on gauze.”
Jason looked away toward the table, though the white streak in his hair flickered with the faintest golden spark at the human’s comment.
“My vessel suffered critical impact damage, but my biological core remains intact. I only require energetic fuel to accelerate the remaining process.”
“Excellent. Let’s start with the basics.” Dick pushed the plate of toast toward him. “Try it. I swear it’s a thousand times better than the neighbor’s cat.”
Jason picked up a slice with only two fingers, inspecting it as if it might detonate at any moment. He sniffed it, wrinkled his nose at the sweet smell, and after a moment of analysis, shoved the whole thing into his mouth in a single bite.
His dark eyes widened instantly.
The collision of sugars, carbohydrates, and processed fats hit his starving system like an electric shock. A low, thick sound—strangely similar to a purr of satisfaction—vibrated from deep in his chest, echoing through the small apartment.
“This is acceptable,” Jason managed to say through a full mouth, devouring the second slice immediately. “The bread’s texture is highly porous, but the brown compound is addictive. My neurological system is experiencing an immediate increase in dopamine.”
“It’s called Nutella, space cowboy, and yeah, it’s basically a legal drug.” Dick laughed openly, leaning back in his chair. “But work on your manners. Clearly you’re going to have to stay here for a while. Your ship is scrap metal at the bottom of the docks, you don’t have any paperwork for this planet, and the way you talk sounds like it came straight out of an appliance manual. If you’re going out on the street with me, you need to blend in. That means: no unhinging your jaw, no hunting the local wildlife, and you’ve got to learn how to talk like a normal human.”
Jason swallowed the last piece of bread whole and wiped the remaining chocolate from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes carefully studied Dick: the relaxed but alert posture, the sharp jawline, and that ridiculous optimistic confidence that seemed to radiate off the officer.
“I still believe you possess an absurd lack of self-preservation instinct,” Jason replied, a touch of his usual sarcasm returning to his voice. “You described me as a potential danger, yet you allow me to sleep in your personal space. It is the biological equivalent of a defenseless creature inviting a predator into its den simply because the predator tripped while entering. An absolute evolutionary negligence.”
Dick let out a loud laugh, running a hand through his hair.
“Well, I’ve always had a weakness for lost causes, Jay. Besides, look at you. That white streak in your hair looks like it came straight out of an anime character design. It would’ve been a crime to hand you over to the feds.”
Jason frowned, confused.
“What is an ‘anime’? A high-ranking military command in your region?”
“Oh, God,” Dick sighed, standing up to collect the empty plate while rubbing his temples in mock agony. “We definitely have a lot of work ahead of us. Welcome to Earth, Jason.”
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ִ🛸༄˖°.
The next three weeks became a masterclass in domestic chaos, but also the beginning of a quiet shared routine.
As the days piled up, Dick discovered that Jason’s advanced biology burned through calories at an alarming rate, so he made it his personal mission to handle his nutrition. He set aside instant meals and started cooking real human food, loaded with protein and vegetables to stabilize the alien’s energy. Those moments cooking together, added to the nights when Jason stayed awake until dawn waiting for Dick to finish his police shift just to make sure he came back without “structural damage,” allowed them to get to know each other on a much deeper level.
Even so, teaching him how to live in a studio apartment was still like trying to domesticate a mountain lion that could speak English. Jason was stubborn, fiercely independent, and possessed a deeply sarcastic streak that adapted to human slang far too quickly.
“Jason, why is the microwave upside down?” Dick asked one afternoon, standing in the kitchen doorway with his hands on his hips.
Jason didn’t even look away from the television, where he was completely absorbed in a daytime soap opera. He was sprawled across the couch wearing one of Dick’s old hoodies, stretched to its absolute limit over his broad shoulders.
“The thermal radiation unit was operating at a suboptimal efficiency level,” Jason replied without turning his head. “I inverted the magnetron to accelerate the molecular agitation of the frozen pizza. It required three seconds instead of three minutes.”
“That’s a fire hazard!”
“It’s an engineering triumph,” Jason shot back, his voice dripping with condescension. “Also, if the individual called ‘Stefano’ does not cease his deceptive behavior toward ‘Marlena,’ I will locate his coordinates and vaporize his residence.”
Dick groaned as he walked over to the couch and dropped down beside him. He snatched the remote out of Jason’s hand and muted the TV. Jason let out a low warning growl, a sound Dick had already learned to completely ignore.
“Hey. Look at me,” Dick ordered.
Jason turned his head, narrowing his dark blue eyes at him. The white streak in his hair—which Dick had discovered glowed faintly whenever Jason got annoyed or excited—was giving off a soft luminous shine.
“We’re going to the grocery store,” Dick announced. “A real one. Not the 24-hour convenience shop where the cashier’s too sleep-deprived to notice your hair looks like a flashlight. You need practice being human in public.”
Jason scoffed.
“Your public is inefficient. They move at a speed that suggests they are submerged in gelatin. And they observe my cranial pigmentation.”
“They stare because you’re a six-foot brick wall with a model’s face and a rebellious streak of hair, Jay,” Dick said, completely sincere. He stood up and tossed a baseball cap into Jason’s lap. “Put the cap on. Tuck the hair in. Let’s go.”
Jason lifted the cap, examining it as if it were an offensive weapon.
“This garment is a localized structural cage for the skull.”
“It’s a Blüdhaven Bloodhounds cap, Jason. Just put it on.”
The trip to the supermarket quickly turned into an exercise in intense anxiety for Dick. Jason insisted on walking exactly one step behind him, acting like a military bodyguard in a war zone, scanning every civilian with deep suspicion and speaking with robotic formality that was already drawing attention.
“Why does that human possess a small infant inside a wheeled cage?” Jason whispered, though his deep voice resonated far too loudly in the cereal aisle.
Dick felt a stab of nerves in his stomach when he noticed an elderly woman a few feet away turning to stare at them with a frown. Quickly, he stepped closer to Jason, adjusted the brim of his cap lower, and gave him a friendly shove.
“It’s a stroller, Jason. Shh, dial the intensity down a notch, please,” Dick whispered urgently, trying to keep a light smile so as not to raise suspicion. “You talk so loud and so weird people are gonna think we’re some kind of cult or that you escaped from a psych ward. Try blending in more, use normal words. Or better yet, keep your mouth shut and nod like you understand.”
“My vocabulary is optimal,” Jason replied in a slightly lower tone, though noticeably offended.
“Your vocabulary is a walking alien detector. Just... keep moving.”
Further inside the supermarket, they stopped in front of the dairy section. Dick was scanning the shelves for milk when he felt Jason tense completely beside him. Looking up, he saw Jason glaring with narrowed eyes at a middle-aged man who, thinking no one was watching, was discreetly trying to steal a grape from a bag in the fruit section.
Before Dick could stop him, Jason stepped forward. His voice dropped into a dangerously threatening register that echoed down the aisle.
“Stop, civilian. You are consuming unmonitored resources without transferring currency. This constitutes a violation of your primitive economic structure.”
The man jumped in terror and dropped the grape. Faced with an angry giant speaking to him like an execution android, the guy panicked and bolted down the aisle without looking back.
“Jason!” Dick hissed through clenched teeth. His face burned with embarrassment when he saw an employee from the next aisle craning his neck to see what was happening. He grabbed Jason firmly by the bicep and pulled him into a much more discreet corner between pyramids of tuna cans. “What did I just tell you about policing the supermarket and keeping a low profile?”
“He was a thief,” Jason muttered, looking down at Dick. His rigid expression softened slightly when he felt the officer’s fingers gripping his arm. Beneath the fabric of his shirt, the subdermal lines in his skin glowed with a faint, warm amber light. “You are an agent of the law. I am merely replicating your operational parameters to assist you in your crime-containment duties.”
Dick went still, suddenly far too aware of the physical closeness between them. The aisle was full of the buzz of people, but Jason’s massive presence seemed to absorb everything around them, leaving them in a bubble. He could smell that clean ozone scent the alien always carried, now mixed with the laundry detergent Dick used at home. The anger over the public disaster evaporated, replaced by a strange warmth in his chest.
“Yeah, well...” Dick cleared his throat, slowly releasing his arm while scratching the back of his neck. “I appreciate the tactical support, big guy. Really. But on this planet, we let grape thieves slide to avoid action-movie scenes. Come on, let’s grab that ice cream you discovered last night before security kicks us out.”
Jason’s dark eyes lit up immediately.
“The frozen bovine secretion with crushed fragments of chocolate biscuits?”
“Yeah. Cookies and cream. And because of your excellent community service, we’re taking three whole tubs.”
“You know,” Jason declared, adjusting the Bloodhounds cap as he followed Dick toward the registers with a noticeably lighter step, “the human species possesses many structural flaws and an absurd legal system. But your dairy engineering is supreme.”
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ִ🛸༄˖°.
The transition from “accidental roommates” to something entirely different happened gradually… and then all at once.
It began with the inevitable physical proximity. Dick’s apartment was small, and Jason was enormous. At first, avoiding each other was purely a tactical maneuver, but as the weeks passed, those accidental brushes turned into a subtle and comfortable habit. They no longer tensed when their shoulders brushed in the kitchen while Dick cooked; on the contrary, Dick would rest a hand against Jason’s back to ask for space, and Jason would lean slightly into the touch. Sharing the tiny couch became the favorite part of the day: Dick would absentmindedly stretch his legs across the alien’s lap, and Jason, after a pretend growl of annoyance, would let one of his heavy hands fall over the officer’s ankle, holding it there with a steady, comforting warmth.
Dick started looking forward to the end of his shifts. He knew that no matter how gray or violent the night in Blüdhaven had been, once he crossed the door he’d find a warm refuge—a warrior from another galaxy deeply offended by the fate of television characters, or dismantling the toaster to make it deadlier, with that small, peculiar frown of concentration that always made Dick’s pulse speed up.
One rainy Tuesday night, Dick came into the apartment at three in the morning. His uniform shirt was torn, the storm’s cold soaked deep into his bones, and a dark bruise was already swelling over his left cheekbone after spending hours stopping a drunk man at the edge of a bridge. He was exhausted, drenched, and aching all over.
The place was dark except for the blue flicker of the TV screen.
Jason wasn’t asleep; he sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the television, waiting for him. The instant Dick shut the front door, Jason was already on his feet. In two long strides he crossed the room, and his eyes—that stormy dark blue Dick already knew by heart—immediately fixed on the injury on his face, sparking with golden alarm.
“You have suffered severe structural damage,” Jason said.
The sarcasm he usually wore like armor vanished completely; his voice dropped into a low, thick register, carrying such an intense protective resonance that Dick’s stomach flipped.
“I’m fine, Jay,” Dick sighed with a tired smile, dropping his police belt onto the kitchen counter. “Just a bad night. A guy on the bridge thought he had wings. Had to convince him otherwise in the rain.”
Jason ignored the joke completely.
He reached out with his huge hands, wrapping them around Dick’s wet shoulders firmly but without hurting him, and gently guided him to the couch. He pushed him down into the cushions with a quiet authority Dick was far too exhausted to resist.
Jason disappeared into the bathroom and returned a moment later holding a pair of white, impossibly soft towels. He knelt in the space between Dick’s legs, bringing himself level with him. Slowly, tilting his head with absolute focus and an almost painful care that seemed impossible for someone with his brute strength, he wrapped Dick’s head in the soft cloth and began drying his rain-soaked hair with short, slow, gentle movements.
Dick closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath at the warmth of the gesture.
“Your body temperature is dropping rapidly due to moisture,” Jason murmured in a rough whisper, never looking away as he kept drying the dark strands with extreme delicacy. “The organisms of this planet possess alarmingly fragile homeostasis against climate shifts. It disturbs me to see your system so exposed.”
“Humans are fragile, Jay,” Dick answered quietly, moved by the closeness. He reached out and rested his hand on Jason’s knee. “We break pretty easily.”
Jason stopped.
He lowered the towel and, with a slowness that made time itself seem to pause, lifted his free hand to cradle Dick’s uninjured cheek. His thumb, huge and rough, traced the line of his jaw with incredible softness. Jason’s skin radiated that alien warmth Dick had already come to associate entirely with peace and safety. The white streak of his hair fell over his dark eyes, glowing with a soft flickering amber light.
“You do not break,” Jason said with absolute conviction, tilting his head again in wonder. “I have processed your activity record over these weeks. You protect this chaotic environment with a complete absence of selfishness. You are absurdly resilient, Dick Grayson.”
Dick felt his heart lurch.
A small, genuine smile full of affection curved his lips.
“Does that count as a compliment, Jay?”
“It is a conclusion based on factual evidence.” Jason softened the pressure of his hand against Dick’s cheek. “I remember boasting that my injuries were trivialities, but I lied, Grayson. My biological core nearly shut down that night, and I pretended healing was easy because I did not trust you. I needed to appear invulnerable. In reality, my organism was so close to collapse that my brain processed that alley cat as a legitimate emergency biomass buffet. I was in critical danger, and you, instead of allowing me to extinguish, chose to save the feline and adopt me instead.”
Dick laughed softly, closing his eyes for a moment while enjoying the touch against his face.
“You’re never going to let me forget the cat, are you?”
“Never.”
The corner of Jason’s mouth lifted into one of his rare and beautiful smiles, one that instantly erased all the hard, defensive lines from his face.
“But you did more than that. You opened your refuge to me. You cared enough to secure food suitable for my system. You tolerate my technological modifications and conceal me from your authorities at risk to your own rank. You have... stabilized my frequency, Dick. I have processed all variables of this planet and... the external universe is vast, cold, and statistically empty. But this confined space is warm. It is full of you. And I have determined that I prefer the warmth.”
Dick didn’t need to hear anything more.
A wave of affection hit him so hard his eyes stung with tears. He lifted both hands, cradling Jason’s face, sliding his fingers into his dark hair where the glowing white streak began. He tilted his head and gently pulled him forward, erasing the last inches of distance.
The kiss began with overwhelming hesitation.
Jason didn’t fully understand the delicate mechanics of human romantic contact, and his slightly sharpened teeth brushed awkwardly against Dick’s lips, but the urgency of feeling made up for any lack of practice. Dick guided the rhythm with incredible tenderness, parting his lips just enough to teach him, stroking the back of Jason’s neck with his fingers.
Jason learned with remarkable speed.
He let out a deep, low, vibrating purr that Dick felt directly in his mouth and chest. In one fluid movement, Jason wrapped his massive arms around Dick’s waist, lifting him off the couch effortlessly and settling him into his lap on the carpet, holding him tightly against his body as though he wanted to fuse them together. The kiss deepened—warm, enveloping, and full of quiet emotion; it tasted of Blüdhaven rain, salt from restrained tears, and the sweet scent of the home they had built together.
When they finally pulled apart for air, their foreheads remained pressed together. Their breathing was uneven, tangled in the dim room. The subdermal lines across Jason’s face, neck, and shoulders now glowed with a liquid golden hue, vibrant and beautiful. The white streak in his hair was practically incandescent, illuminating both their faces.
Dick kept his hands on Jason’s cheeks, stroking his warm skin with his thumbs, a huge breathless smile spread across his lips.
“Wow...” Dick whispered, staring into those dark eyes now shining with absolute devotion. “Your calibration is perfect, Jay.”
“I told you I learn quickly,” Jason panted, chest rising and falling. He looked down at his own glowing hands, then back at Dick with a mix of surprise and mild concern. “Although... it appears my emotional matrix has triggered a localized discharge of residual energy. Your entertainment unit has ceased functioning.”
Dick turned his head toward the television.
From the back panel, a lazy thin column of gray smoke was rising.
A bright, unrestrained laugh spilled from Dick’s lips, loud and full of happiness. He wrapped his arms around the alien’s neck again, burying his face in the curve of his shoulder as he laughed against his skin, feeling Jason’s strong arms tighten around him in return with infinite tenderness.
“I don’t care at all, Jay,” Dick murmured, pressing a sweet kiss to his neck. “That soap opera was terrible anyway.”
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ִ🛸༄˖°.
Six months later, Officer Dick Grayson walked into his apartment and found absolutely nothing upside down, dismantled, or smoking. It was a certified miracle.
Instead, the apartment smelled like roasted garlic and spices. Jason was in the kitchen wearing an apron that said Kiss the Cook—a joke gift from Dick that Jason had taken far too seriously. He stirred a pot of chili with a wooden spoon, moving with a fluid, natural grace that showed just how much he had adapted to Earth’s gravity.
The white streak in his hair was carefully brushed back and glowed with a soft yellow light of satisfaction.
“Welcome back, Agent of the Law,” Jason said without looking up, though his ears—slightly more pointed than a human’s—twitched at the sound of the door closing.
Dick walked over and wrapped his arms around his waist, resting his chin on Jason’s shoulder.
“Hey. Smells amazing. What are you making?”
“It is a traditional human recipe called ‘chili con carne,’” Jason announced proudly. “I have modified the chemical composition by adding a localized capsicum derivative known as ghost pepper. It possesses an elevated level of thermal capsaicin.”
Dick tensed as he looked at the bubbling red sauce.
“Jay… exactly how many ghost peppers did you put in?”
“Two,” Jason replied confidently. “My digestive system requires a higher thermal threshold than your delicate anatomy, but I calibrated the spice level so it should only be moderately dangerous to your internal organs.”
“You’re trying to kill me,” Dick laughed as he kissed the side of his neck. “You’re trying to murder your boyfriend with stew.”
“If I wished to kill you, Grayson, I would use a kinetic energy weapon, not legumes,” Jason replied, though he turned his head to give him a slow, sweet kiss.
Dick smiled against his lips and then pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes.
“You know? The captain asked me today why my electric bill doubled in the last six months.”
Jason looked slightly guilty; the white streak shifted to an embarrassed shade of orange.
“The local electrical grid is highly unstable. I only required a minor amount of voltage to charge my communication array.”
Dick arched an eyebrow.
“Your communication array? Jay… are you trying to call home?”
Jason paused and set the wooden spoon down on the stove. Then he turned within Dick’s embrace, resting his hands on his hips. He looked at him with a seriousness that made Dick’s heart tighten.
“I completed the array three days ago,” Jason said softly. “I succeeded in establishing a quantum link with the remaining civilian sectors of my quadrant.”
Dick’s smile faltered. A cold knot of anxiety formed in his throat.
“Oh. Wow. That’s… that’s great, Jay. Did you tell them where you are? Are they sending an extraction ship?”
Jason stared at him for a long moment. The amber light in his hair deepened into a rich, steady gold. He raised a hand and slid his thumb over the space between Dick’s brows, smoothing away the line of worry that had appeared there.
“I informed them that my scout vessel was completely vaporized upon entry,” Jason said with complete calm. “I told them the planet is uninhabitable, hostile, and devoid of advanced technology worthy of retrieval.”
Dick blinked, stunned.
“You… lied to them?”
“I adjusted the records to the only logical scenario,” Jason corrected, though his dark blue eyes clouded with a flicker of indigo, the color Dick had learned to associate with melancholy. “To the Kalanorian Vanguard, Explorer Todd ceased functioning at impact. I transmitted a biological termination code. In their archives, my frequency no longer exists.”
Dick stayed silent, processing the weight of those words. The knot in his throat tightened—not from fear, but from the magnitude of what Jason had just done.
“Jay... you gave up your home. Everything you knew.”
“I gave up a directive, Grayson.” Jason stepped closer, cradling Dick’s face in both hands, forcing him to look at him. “The Vanguard designed me to seek worlds, record data, and advance to the next quadrant. It is an efficient existence, but one that is perpetually cold. You gave me a purpose that was not preprogrammed into my matrix. I chose the warmth of this space. I chose you. And also the consumption of your dairy engineering. Permanently.”
Dick let out a wet, happy laugh and pulled him into a kiss that tasted faintly of garlic, spices, and a future that was completely uncertain, absurdly ridiculous, and absolutely perfect.
“I love you, you crazy space cowboy,” Dick murmured against his lips.
“The feeling is entirely mutual, Agent of the Law,” Jason replied, his hair glowing so brightly it lit up the whole kitchen. “Now sit down. The danger-level chili is ready for consumption.”