Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The bar is a real dive, and even though Roy knows better –  knows coming here would have made it hard to resist, would have left him ordering something even though he should have left as soon as he entered – he sits down and gets himself comfortable anyways. 

He’s only four drinks in before his vision starts to swim around the edges, his tolerance for alcohol about the same as a sixteen year old after years of being clean from the stuff. He’s trying to wave over the girl who’s been taking his orders most of the night when he realises she’s preoccupied: there’s a guy, maybe the same age as Roy, half leaned over the bar top into her space. Roy leans his head on his hand as he watches them, happy to wait for her to make her way over to him, when suddenly the other man is reaching over and grabbing at her arm, gesturing in Roy’s direction.

Had he not been drinking, Roy probably would have understood the situation better. Had he been more aware of his surroundings, he would have responded to the impending threat better. 

As he stands he feels the bar stool fall behind him, but is too busy stumbling over to the other side to see if they need any help. There's a single moment of clarity as he approaches when the other man turns to him, a mean grin on his face, and Roy gets the feeling something really awful is going on. 

He doesn't get the chance to intervene, though. Or maybe he does – just not by his own means. 

The windows along the front of the bar entrance blow in, the force of the explosion from outside sending Roy flying back, groaning as his body hits the floor and the air in his lungs is pushed out of him. 

His ears are ringing. There's black spots across his eyes. Roy thinks he might vomit, but everything feels like he's pushing through water. 

A face grins over him, but this is a smile he recognises. 

"You know, Harper, it's usually you setting off the explosives. It's kinda fun being on the other side of it for once."

The words rattle around in his head some before they finally settle. Roy finds enough energy to pull up his middle finger, but it must be a sorry sight, because all his companion does is laugh. 

"Alright, big guy. Let's get you out of here."

His chest feels concave as he's pulled to his feet. He's not entirely sure he should be standing. The other two at the bar are passed out, also blown back some from the blast.

His vision spots again, made worse by the low angle of the sun as they make it outside. He manages a few steps, maybe a couple of feet, before he has to clench his eyes shut. Unfortunately before he can get a word of warning out he’s buckling at the waist, throwing up the alcohol churning in his stomach and coughing onto the asphalt. 

He's half aware of a hand patting him on the back, and when he squints up again, there's an amused grin on his old friend's face. 

"What the hell are you doin' here, man?" 

Jason smiles again, but it's a little more wicked than his grin from before. 

"What can I say, buddy? I'm just returning a favour or two you're owed."

— 

Roy wakes when it's dusk out. He vaguely remembers being dragged to the passenger seat of some oversized pick up truck Jason was driving, guzzling a bottle of warm water and being unable to help his friend put the seat belt on him. 

They've left the car park of the bar. Roy figures he should probably interrogate the reasons as to why Jason was there in the first place and what the hell he was thinking blowing the place up, but his head is pounding and he feels kinda clammy. 

He blinks against the glare from the windshield. Jason's parked the truck up on some reserve that looks over what Roy is pretty certain is a canola field. 

The yellow flowers are bright under the sunset, almost orange in hue, and Roy pats around the middle console before pulling out a half-empty bottle of cola and chugging it down. Jason isn't in the truck, so when Roy breathes in a few times like he was taught back at the rehab centre and is confident he isn't gonna collapse if he stands on his two feet, he exits the vehicle too. 

He's got no idea where he is. Realistically Jason could have only driven them a few hours, maybe five tops, but in places like this even driving that long may not have you crossing state borders. 

"Hey." 

Jason is sitting some feet away from the truck. He's in shorts, something of a rare sight even for Roy to be privy to, and Roy recognises the t-shirt from their days gallivanting around New York together with Kory a few years ago. 

"Hey." 

He sits himself down beside Jason in the long grass, pulling at a tuft of puffballs next to him and watching them float away in the stale air. Jason sneezes, his shoulders shaking, and Roy smiles.

It's weird. Or maybe it isn't. Or maybe the fact it should be weird but it isn't is what makes it weird. Roy shifts before deciding to lay back in the grass, looking up at where the moon has risen and some of the stars have come out even though patches of the sky are still pink, orange and blue. 

"You don't seem concussed, by the way. I think the alcohol was probably a bigger contributor to your headache as opposed to any injury." 

Roy grunts in response; he'd made the same assessment as he woke up. Jason wouldn't have ever let him sleep if he thought there was any danger. 

"What are you doing here, Jaybird?" Roy asks, far up into the sky above him and hardly directed at the man to his left. He knows Jason heard it though – he always does. 

"Told you. I'm owing you a favour."

"You know I don't keep track of that shit, right? We're friends. I save your ass because it's what we do, not because I need you to save mine back all the time."

He can hear Jason shift in the grass. His stomach is rumbling, and Roy realises he hasn't eaten all day. 

"I…" There's another sound. Jason pushes himself to stand. He's antsy about something, which has Roy furrowing his brow.

He stands with his hands on his hips, though Roy can't see all of him when he looks at him out of the corner of his eye. 

What was he doing all the way out here, again?

"Your fellow bar patrons… Shit. I don't know how to drop this on you gently." Jason scratches at his arm. "I got word from a trusted source that you and I have somewhat of a bounty on our heads. I did some digging. Couldn't call you on your usual numbers, was told you'd took off after the whole– After the Sanctuary. So anyways I'm looking into these guys and confirm the issues they have with us is legit. Which is all well and good – I don't mind taking out the trash a second time 'round. But there's some whispers of a group in the back end of North Dakota, and I'm thinking 'what the hell's in North Dakota?'. Then it hits me: any man with survivor's guilt and nothing to do would totally camp out in North Dakota."

Roy sits up then. It's kind of a loaded admission from Jason, but most of his admissions usually are. There's things there he doesn't wanna touch with a 100 foot arrow shot – the Sanctuary, for one. Survivors' guilt and his lack of contact-ability are also strong contenders for second. 

"So these guys are from our Red Hood and Arsenal days?"

Jason turns to look at him then. There's something in his expression Roy can't quite read, and it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"Well, it could also be from when we were with Kory, but I don't think anyone's stupid enough to try target a literal princess from space, you know?"

Roy pulls his bottom lips beneath his teeth.

"Truth be told, it was from around the time when we weren't quite teammates but weren't quite… not-teammates either. You don't have to worry, though. Those two in the bar were kinda some of the last ones left to deal with and I don't think they're gonna be bothering you anymore."

It's something about Jason's choice of words that has Roy ripping a bit of skin off his lip. He can taste metal as he does it.

"Us, you mean."

Jason's brow scrunches. "Huh?"

"They won't be bothering us. You said they won't be bothering 'you', but if it's from our days together, then they'd be bothering us. Not just me." 

Jason doesn't say anything for a minute. His expression flattens and he scratches at his arm again, repetitive. Roy flicks his eyes to the sleeve, and notices there's stitching peeking out from under it.

"Sure, Speedy. They won't be bothering us." 

He gets the feeling he's being lied to, but for the life of him can't think why Jason would keep anything from him. He wants to push it further, dig a little deeper in that head that's always been a little fascinating to him, but the silence that's fallen across the two of them is interrupted by Roy's stomach making an almighty grumble. 

Jason cracks a smile. "Let's get dinner, hm? I'll even pay." 

He doesn't waste time walking back to the truck. Roy almost calls out to him for help in getting up, but it feels a bit like showing his hand. He shuffles to the passenger side and takes another last look over the canola fields. In the time they've been chatting, the sun has almost fully set.

"Hope you’ve got cash to burn then, Jaybird, because frankly I could eat a whole horse." Roy tells him, pulling himself onto the seat and trying not to grimace as he does so. Jason laughs a little as he fiddles with the keys; radio turned up, windows rolled down, sunglasses put away in the glove box now that he doesn't need them.

Roy pauses as Jason's fingers accidentally brush his knee. It's gotta be eighty degrees outside but the bastard still runs as cold as ever, and something about the touch has Roy's heart hammering against his ribcage. 

If Jason notices something off in his reaction, he doesn't comment. The truck is loud underneath them and has no issues driving back over the long grass to the road. 

Roy only hopes the drive to dinner is short, and subconsciously rubs his thumb over the spot Jason accidentally bumped up against until the illuminated Cracker Barrel sign comes into view. 

—

Jason manages to keep it together for the drive to the restaurant. Pulls into the carpark, sorts them a table in the far corner and orders himself a peach tea before excusing himself to use the bathroom. 

Roy looks a little stunned, still. Eyes unfocused and leg jumping up against Jason’s knee as he bounces it up and down under the table. He lets Jason go without any objection, bottom lip pulled beneath his teeth as he scours the dinner menu.

He looks awful, which Jason expected, but thinking about things and seeing them brings a tightness to his throat he isn’t keen on inspecting right now. Washing his hands at the basin in the overly-decorated toilet, Jason studies himself in the mirror. 

He’s not sure how to tell Roy his real reasons for being here. How can you tell someone you’ve been spying on them ever since their surprising revival to make sure they don’t slip completely off the deep end? Friends or not, Roy has always been a little guarded and skittish about his addiction problems.

He hums to himself. He’s breaching the significant ‘do not touch’ category of things filed away in his brain. He wonders if this is how Bruce felt in the weeks after Jason returned to Gotham as the Red Hood. 

He uses too many paper towels to dry his hands and even uses some of them to pat off the sweat across his neck. When he walks back into the restaurant, Roy is slowly slurping the straw of a large lemonade, fingers drawing patterns on the varnished table top.

“Hey.” Jason says, pulling his seat out and sitting again. The waitress has clocked his return, and eagerly makes her way over to take their order. He orders the pork chops, seemingly the least offensive of all the options available. Roy lists off a variety of entrees and a serving of the pork chops too, and the table falls quiet again as the waitress goes off to put in their order.

There are a few other customers. A family with some teenagers sat on one of the big tables in the centre of the room; two separate older couples sitting against the glass doors that have a view over the carpark. 

Jason dips his hand into his pocket and rolls his fingers over the tube he’d pulled from Roy’s own pocket after he’d buckled him into the truck earlier. 

“Listen, there’s no easy way to do this, so…”

He places the tube on the table in between the two of them. Roy slows at where he’s still drinking the lemonade, his straw ratting against the ice. He looks around. Notes the rest of the customers like Jason had just moments earlier. His leg under the table stops bouncing, but Jason can see something in his jaw tighten as he clenches his teeth.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Jason shrugs. “Hell of a thing to be taking without a prescription, is all. But I’m guessing from the fake name on the label that you already know that.”

Roy’s flushing. Pink all on his neck and cheeks, some of it even mottling on his shoulders under his tank top. There’s a feeling in Jason’s tummy like he wants to put his hand on it, but instead he links his fingers and leans his chin on his hands instead.

“Roy. You’re…” He’s not sure why it’s so hard to talk to him. Jason feels like it’s been years since he last saw his friend, as opposed to a couple months ago when they’d left each other to go their separate ways. There’s some guilt there, maybe: at letting Roy go to the Sanctuary alone. At letting him go in the first place. He exhales. “You’re going through some stuff. I get it. In fact, I hate to sound like I’m making this about me but there’s very little other authority you know when it comes to dying and then coming back to life again.”

“So that gives you a right to steal my things and lecture me?”

“I didn’t steal them. I saw an addict clearly going through relapse and removed him from a situation that would have made it worse. Codeine is… Well you know how bad it is.”

Jason knows how bad it is too. Thinks of the months after returning to Gotham, when the aches and phantom pain from what he went through at the hands of the Joker and during his training at the Fortress wouldn’t abate, and chewing through codeine and tramadol he'd swiped from Leslie’s place like candy. 

It’s not a memory he’s keen on bringing up, but he doesn’t have to anyway – Roy knows more about his history in Gotham than even Bruce. 

“I’m fine, Jaybird. Seriously, just leave it.”

Jason’s ready to push it further, wants to query why he was drinking in a no-name bar and why he’s started his whole disappearing act, both of which point to the fact that he is anything but fine, but they’re interrupted by the waitress bringing their food over. 

Jason gives her a cheery thanks, and Roy mumbles out his own acknowledgement, too busy trying to rip into a chicken drumstick to apparently care for anything else. Jason figures he had been starving, and decides to hold off on the impending interrogation between the two of them until they've both eaten and, hopefully, slept a full night. 

—

Roy meanders around the gift shop as Jason settles their bill. There’s a few things placed around already for Thanksgiving and some old stuff on the shelf that hasn’t been cleared from Independence Day. He’s busy looking through the shirts on the rack when Jason approaches.

“You know I think there’s a Target around here, but if you’re that desperate for a new shirt…”

“Fuck off.” Roy keeps his voice low so the old man behind the counter won’t hear them. “I’m still mad at you, by the way.” He tells Jason, pushing out of the store and into the parking lot. It’s dark out, and there’s a chorus of crickets in the bushes that lines the property. 

“Yeah, I figured.” Jason spins his keyring around his pointer finger, looking at Roy the same way he did back at the canola fields. 

“You’re keeping somethin’ else from me. What is it?”

The keys drop from Jason’s hand and he grunts, leaning down into the gravel to pick them up. Roy can see the cap of the pills peeking out from Jason’s pocket at the angle he’s leaned over, and there’s a real urge to reach out and grab them.

He’s in no real state to face Jason head on, though. He’s exhausted, still a little confused at the events of the past day, and besides – he’s not entirely sure that Jason wouldn’t just leave him here for half the night to make a point.

“Why don’t we get you through the first few days of a detox and then we have a real heart to heart, huh? I’m tired, you’re tired – I don’t really feel like kicking your ass while Sheila and Bob from the restaurant watch on.” 

It infuriates Roy how Jason can always seem to read his mind in times like this. Used to be a good thing, back in the day when they’d need it when under fire, but now it just feels like Jason’s got a giant spotlight to shine on him whenever he wants to and immediately determine everything he’s thinking and feeling. 

Well. Maybe not everything.

“Yo, Harper. You gonna get in the truck or d’you need me to carry you again?” Jason’s already got the key in the ignition, the truck idling as Roy stands in the same spot from earlier. He pulls his middle finger up again, this time with more conviction and a little bit of actual intent behind it.

“You gonna pat me down again?” Roy accuses, walking up to the truck and pulling the passenger door open. Jason sends him a funny look then, a flash of something over his face before he schools his features flat again, and even Roy’s own tummy flips at the double innuendo. 

There’s some old pop song playing on the radio that distracts them both long enough for them to leave the parking lot at last. Roy’s starting to sweat again, clammy in the crooks of his elbows and behind the knees. He cracks the window open, appreciative for the breeze across his hairline.

“I had chills for about a week when I went off them cold turkey. It was a cold Autumn in Gotham too– I thought I was gonna die again.”

Roy is only half-listening to Jason as he talks quietly over the radio. He figures things could be worse – it could have been Ollie who found him. He dreads to even think what his reaction to the codeine and bar would have been.

“Bruce figured it out pretty quickly. Was working on something late one night because I wasn’t sleepin’. He made me go back to the Manor and I got lectured by Alfred for an hour. It was… It was actually one of the first times we were civil to one another after all the stuff with Black Mask.”

Roy does turn then. His neck pulls at the angle – his head is resting against the window, the cool glass a relief against his flushed skin. Jason’s eyes are straight ahead on the road, his left elbow resting on the window ledge as he drives one handed. Under the street lamps passing by, he looks softer around the edges, and Roy wants to remember this moment forever.

“I mean, luckily it was all mostly over within a week or two, and you’ve been through a detox before, so it should be all good– What?” Jason does a double take at him and Roy nods his head, closing his eyes and rolling his forehead across the glass.

“Nothin’ Jaybird.” He opens his eyes, squinting. “You’ve mentioned Bruce a couple times today – you two talking again?”

Roy can hear Jason click his tongue against his teeth.

“A… Little. Let’s say that for now, Jason and Bruce are happy to talk cordially when needed, but Red Hood and Batman are still on the outs.”

“He still mad at you?”

Jason laughs. “Bruce is always mad at me for something. If it isn’t what happened with the Penguin it’s what happened last year with Poison Ivy, or what happened when we were in space with Kory, or for something as mundane as me using a new safe house in a neighbourhood he doesn’t like…” Jason trails off, another song on the radio playing as they continue their drive. 

Roy figures he should probably ask where they’re going, but knowing Jason they’re probably headed to some nondescript Motel he’ll keep them locked up inside until he decides Roy can be a functioning member of society again.

He’s just hoping that the shower will at least have a good water pressure.

“He wasn’t happy about that smoke grenade on the roof, though. Called it an ‘unnecessary escalation of events’, which is kinda funny considering I was pretty much convinced he was gonna kick my ass four ways into Sunday.”

Roy was too. He’s seen Batman in many stages of distress over the years, but nothing quite as rage incensed as what he was when he was shredding Jason a new one on that rooftop in Gotham. The smoke grenade has been as much of a distraction as it was a silent prayer for things to not escalate, which he figures worked, considering Jason had left the rooftop unscathed and they’re apparently able to talk now without Jason spitting at the mention of Bruce’s name.

Roy shuffles in his seat, arms and legs heavy from the exhaustion.

“We spoke a bit, at the Sanctuary after…  After it all. He seemed pretty stressed about it all.”

Jason flicks his eyes over Roy again at the mention of the Sanctuary, mouth twisted like he’s looking at something he can’t quite make a judgement on. 

“Yeah, well. He’s more than aware of my own thoughts on the whole thing. I can only suspect he treated the whole thing the same way he treats everything he doesn’t have much control over.” 

They pull up to a Motel. Jason parks the car, clearly has been here long enough to set up some kind of short-term lease. The car goes quiet once the engine cuts, and Jason exhales.

“I’m beat.” He admits, finally opening his door and jumping onto the asphalt outside. Roy feels like he would rather do anything but try and make his body get into motion, but he finally manages to undo his seatbelt, open the door, and slowly step down outside. His legs are starting to shake from the exertion of the day, and he grunts as he closes the door with not enough force for it to properly catch.

“Hey.”

Jason’s rounded the car. He’s got a duffel bag which Roy recognises as his own, half expecting it would have been left behind at the bar along with the mess. He stares sort of dumbly as Jason re-closes the door for him and locks the truck behind them. 

He shoulders the bag. “C’mere.”

Roy shuffles over and accepts the help. Drapes one of his arms around Jason’s shoulder and lets Jason slide his arm along his lower back. He resolutely does not think about how Jason is cool to the touch against his burning skin, or that he can taste a bit of accelerant on him still from when he set the explosion, or how despite the grime and sweat of the day that’s built up on the two of them there’s a distinct smell of something fresh wafting from Jason’s hair.

They walk to the room. Jason opens the door one handed and drops the bag next to the entrance as they enter, flicking the overhead lights on. There’s two beds, a kitchenette, and off to the side a bathroom. A balcony overlooks the highway behind them.

Roy looks at the clearly unused bed in front of them and untangles himself from Jason to perch himself on the edge of the mattress. 

“You can use whatever is in the bathroom. There’s food in the fridge too which should last a couple days. I gotta make a few phone calls so I’ll be outside, but shout if you need me.” Jason tells him, pulling his own shirt over his head and dropping it to a pile of clothes already stacking up in the corner. The stitches on his arm that Roy had noticed earlier in the day trail all the way up the back of his shoulder to just below the nape of his neck, but Roy is relieved that they look somewhat neat and professionally done instead of some hack job Jason is usually partial to.

Roy averts his eyes though when Jason turns to face him, and hopes his flush can be further blamed on the development of his sweats and shakes.

“Sure. I think I’m just gonna sleep.” He tells him, because he’s not sure he can really handle a shower in the state he’s in right now, and Jason nods before picking his phone up from his bed and making his way outside.

As Roy finally gets under the covers and feels a little of the tension bleed from his shoulders as his face hits the cool pillow, he can’t push away the thoughts that Jason had clearly put a lot more thought into finding him than he first realised. 

— 

Roy wakes at two, again at three-thirty, and by time he wakes up the third time around five he decides to kick the sheets off and sit out on the balcony.

The sun has barely cracked through the sky as he quietly closes the door behind him and sits on one of the plastic chairs. The sweats had stopped somewhere between him waking the first time and falling asleep again, but Roy feels like there’s a sheen of dirt and grime all over his skin. He doesn’t want to wake Jason yet, though. Sitting out here, with the air a little fresh and no one else awake, finally gives him a little bit of space to try and collect his thoughts.

He wonders what the plan was for the duo at the bar. If the reason he’d gotten so drunk quickly wasn’t just because of his tolerance and the codeine in his system, but because they’d added something else to his glass instead. Or if maybe they were just waiting for him to drink himself into a stupor and do something quick, like a bullet to the head or a stabbing.

The plastic creaks under his grip and he realises he’s shaking in his seat. Roy’s breathing is coming in quick, the sign of an impending panic attack, when the old ranch slider is pulled open.

“Mornin’.” Jason’s topless again, his hair wet. Roy watches a few droplets slide down behind his ear and across his right shoulder, over the front of it and down towards his armpit.

It’s maddening. But it does enough to help him pull in a breath deep enough to calm down.

“Shower’s free.” Jason tells him, scrubbing one hand over the back of his head, more water droplets flying out at the disturbance. There’s another one running down the side of his neck under his jaw, and Roy has to pull his gaze down to his feet.

“Thanks. I didn’t wanna wake you.”

Jason sends him a searching look. “You been up long?”

The sun has started to rise, bright along the horizon. Roy shrugs, hasn’t got his watch on him and hasn’t owned a phone for a few weeks now.

“Since about five?”

Jason pulls his own phone out of his pocket and looks down at the screen for a moment.

“It’s only seven or so. C’mon, go get washed. Your ratty tank top is making me feel bad. I’ll make some breakfast.”

It alarms him a little that he’s managed to stay outside for two hours and it passed so quickly. He follows Jason into the room but passes him where he pauses to pull on a shirt at the foot of his bed, making a beeline for the shower.

The water pressure is tolerable. Roy actually lets out a little groan as he stands under the spray, the warm water nice against his scalp. He uses the stuff in the shower probably left behind by Jason and then covers his ears as he stands under the spray until it starts to lukewarm, the sound of the water against his skull loud enough to mute everything else he’s been thinking about since he pretty much hightailed it out of the hospital once he’d been given the ‘all clear’.

He turns the shower off eventually. Towels himself off with the one towel on the rack that doesn’t look used, and decides to just bin the clothes he’d been wearing for the past twenty or so hours. He doesn’t really think about it when he wraps the towel around his waist and leaves the bathroom. Some of the steam follows him out as he makes his way to the front door – remembers Jason dropping his bag down there the night before. Roy isn’t paying attention to what his friend is doing in the kitchen until he hears a sort of choking sound when he turns around again.

He’s expecting some sort of crack about him walking around in the towel, but Jason’s staring straight at his chest. Ah, fuck.

Roy pulls the hand that isn’t gripping onto his bag strap up to try to cover some of his chest and the scarring. Unlike his also once-resurrected partner, he didn’t have access to a Lazarus Pit to remove all abnormalities and leave his skin baby smooth. Not that he’s entirely sure he would have wanted that, either.

“The eggs are done.” Is all Jason says, his voice clipped and void of any discernible emotion. Roy just nods before he takes his bag into the bathroom to find some clean-ish clothes.

He refuses to look at himself in the mirror as he pulls his t-shirt over his head, and towels his hair dry before stepping back into the room. Jason has left his plate on the small table next to the portable gas thing he’s been using to cook, and he can hear crockery on ceramic coming from outside. Deciding to be brave, Roy takes himself out to the balcony too.

“Thanks.” He tells Jason, sitting down next to him in his previously-occupied seat. Jason hums at him, mouth full with egg.

“How you feeling?”

“Like shit.” Roy tells him truthfully, cuts into his own egg and watches as the yolk spills onto the plate before he swipes it up onto his fork. It’s pretty good, but then again Jason’s cooking always has been, and the two of them sit in silence as they eat.

Finally, as Jason places his plate at his feet and leans back along the chair, Roy breaks the silence.

“What’s your plan here, Jaybird?”

Jason cracks an eye open, looking at him under thick lashes. Then he sighs, and brings his hands up behind his head.

“Most codeine withdrawals last about a week or two. Figure I get you through that, then we see what the next steps are for the whole alcoholism thing.”

Roy figured as much.

“And if I don’t want to take the next steps?” He asks, finger dragging through the last of the yolk on his plate. He sucks it into his mouth, tongue catching on one of the old calluses from using his bow for so many years, and Jason shrugs.

“Well, Roy, you tried the whole getting better thing by yourself and it didn’t end too well. So you’re more than welcome to try it again, but I figured you might actually appreciate the help from someone who knows a bit about what you’re going through.” He hasn’t opened his eyes, but Jason’s voice sounds thick as he talks. Roy is acutely aware of every scar under his clothes at that moment, and pulls his finger out of his mouth with a pop.

“Right.”

“Look, if you really hate this outstanding motel so much then we can leave after a week. I’ll drive ya anywhere you wanna go. But I’m not leaving you until you’re at least somewhat interested in getting better.”

Roy furrows his brow. “This goes a lot further than just owing me a favour, you know?” 

He isn’t sure how he feels about it. On the one hand, he kinda wishes Jason had never found him in the first place. On the other, he’d be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t enjoying Jason’s company again.

“We’ll do it your way for now, Jay. But I’m not making any promises.”

Jason turns his head then, eyes bright against the sunlight, and Roy feels like he’s been shot right in the heart again when Jason flashes him a toothy smile.

— 

The rest of the day passes slowly. Roy struggles most of the day to actually keep his eyes open, swapping between sitting out on the balcony and lying on his bed under the shitty aircon unit. He pulls a book out of Jason’s bag that he tries a few times to start but can’t concentrate on for long enough to really be invested. Jason makes them a pile of sandwiches for lunch and then disappears for a couple hours, returning with overflowing Walmart bags and a pop song stuck in his head that he spends all of dinner humming under his breath.

He chucks two bottles of Gatorade at Roy when he enters, and Roy guzzles half of the first bottle in seconds.

“Glad I remembered what flavour you liked.” Jason tells him, a little amused from where he stands unpacking the bags on the table, and Roy hums.

“I’d be pretty offended if you didn’t, considering I drank at least a bottle of the stuff a day when we were working together.”

Jason just nods, too busy scrutinising the receipt. Roy manages a light nap and then feels wired for the rest of the evening, body exhausted but eyes refusing to close when Jason and him finally get into their beds and Jason flicks the lights off.

He shuffles around for a few minutes, trying to get comfortable. He doesn’t think he’s being that loud until Jason is sighing and turning over from his back to face him. Roy can sort of make out the line of his silhouette but nothing else, and he stills on his own back.

“Sorry.” He says into the dark, unsure of what else to say. Jason yawns.

“‘S fine.”

“I started… The codeine helped me sleep more than anything.”

“...That makes me feel like a real asshole, you know.”

Roy laughs at that, and realises it’s the first time in weeks he’s actually had something to laugh about with someone else. He can hear Jason huffing out his own laughter on the other bed, and Roy turns onto his side to face him too.

“It’s not your fault, you know. I wanted to go to the Sanctuary. It was meant to help me get better.”

“I know. But I should’ve… You came to me in my hour of need and I didn’t for you. Not really ‘partners’ of us. I felt like shit. Made me realise you’re the only person I…” Jason clears his throat, cutting himself off. “It was shit to lose someone I trusted so much. And I felt like there was more I could have done but I didn’t.”

Roy’s silent as he contemplates that. Wonders what Jason was going to say before he changed track but is too scared to open his mouth and ask. The aircon splutters a bit in the background.

“You okay there?” Jason asks, voice hushed, and Roy nods before realising Jason probably can’t see it and answers him.

“Yeah, just… Tired.”

“G’night, Harper.” Jason stays on his side, facing Roy. Roy feels slightly winded.

“Night, Jason.”

—

Day two and three pass very much the same as day one. Jason makes them both breakfast after Roy spends most of the night tossing and turning, though admittedly night three brings him at least six hours of uninterrupted sleep instead of the three or four hours he had been accustomed to since the hospital.

He’s half-convinced that sleeping longer hours is making him feel worse. His reaction times are off when Jason is talking to him or passing things, going as far as him dropping one of the Gatorade bottles as Jason chucks it to him where he’s sat on the balcony.

His irritability has been getting worse, too. Jason’s humming, usually a comfort when they’re confined together in a space for long periods of time, has him wincing and shooting glares over to Jason’s general direction.

Night four is when things sort of reach their inevitable breaking point. Jason, as usual, goes out like a light. Roy can hear him shift from a light sleep into deep slumber, staring into the ceiling as his own sleep refuses to come.

After about four hours of counting to nowhere and listening to Jason snoring – who, when confronted, will adamantly deny it – Roy sits up and slowly pulls his sheets off of him. Jason’s bag is up against the wall, and Roy tiptoes over to it, hands smoothing over the sides in hopes of identifying a cylindrical shape.

“They’re not there.”

Roy just about jumps out of his skin. Heart racing, he turns to face the bed.

Jason hasn’t moved, but his snoring has stopped. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“I flushed them after you passed out when we got home from Cracker Barrel. Had a feeling.” Jason sits up then and turns on the weak bedside lamp on his bedside table. His hair is mussed and his skin is almost golden under the light. Roy, still half-crouched, blinks against the light.

“You were asleep.”

“Light sleeper. Learnt it at the Fortress.”

Roy’s jaw muscle twitches. He knew Jason was a light sleeper, but being caught red handed like this makes him feel like a teenager all over again. Jason throws his own sheets off of him and stands, groaning as he stretches. He doesn’t say anything as he steps around Roy to pluck up some sandals, kicking his feet into them and then pulling a threadbare crewneck over himself.

“Get some shoes on. C’mon.” He says, picking up the truck keys from where they’d been left and twirling them around his finger. Roy blinks but rises to standing, and kicks his own feet into his scrubby pair of Converse.

Still feeling like he’s running too hot, he forgoes a jumper, grateful he’d decided to sleep with a shirt on. 

Jason waits for him as he exits the room so he can lock it. Then he makes his way to the truck, quietly opening the door and turning on the ignition. Roy makes his way to the passenger seat, letting out a sigh of relief as the truck’s aircon blows directly onto his arms.

“You did better than me. I tried to make a break from the Manor at about day two. Dick caught me – I have never had an ass kicking like that in my life.” Jason says, also making no move to put the truck into gear as he too leans into the stream of airflow. Roy can imagine it, a little; Jason, years younger than he is now, coming off a codeine addiction and being verbally castrated by Dick as he tries to break his imposed detox.

“This fuckin’ blows, man.” Roy tells him, and Jason hums, but doesn’t seem like he’s really listening. Finally, he pulls his seatbelt on and starts to reverse out of the parking space. Most of the roads out by the motel aren’t well lit and Roy can feel himself drifting off as they pick up speed and turn onto the highway on-ramp. 

When he wakes Jason isn’t in the truck with him, but the headlights have been left on and he recognises the canola field that they’d stopped at after they’d left the bar. He breathes in deeply though his nose before slowly undoing his belt again, exiting the truck and walking into the light beams.

“You’re gonna get eaten by mosquitos.”

Jason is sat in the grass again, back stiff but arms relaxed as they rest on his knees where they’re folded and pulled up to his chest.

“Nah. They use crazy fuckin’ pesticides around here.” 

Roy feels a chill on his arm and blames that for sitting so close to Jason as they brush up against one another. Jason doesn’t pull away, and soon the line of Jason’s arm against him is a comforting one. His head droops, sorta falling on Jason’s shoulder, and Jason hums low in his throat before he shuffles even closer, one hand hesitantly coming up to brush against Roy’s scalp.

“Was gonna drive to one of the 24/7 convenience stores but you seemed like you needed less stimulation than more of it.”

Roy just hums. Jason smells like the shower wash they’re both using and a little musky, and Roy feels his eyes flutter shut again as the side of his head fully leans against Jason’s shoulder, whose hand has moved to the back of his skull, cradling it. Roy sniffs.

“Do you ever…” His voice dies off. He remembers, with aching clarity, the last time they were together. Saying goodbye, pulling each other into a hug. Except before pulling away Roy lingered, and Jason had tensed, anticipating, as Roy had left a closed-mouth kiss on his neck before being pulled into a kiss by Jason, his tongue hot as it swiped against Roy’s lower lip before pulling away again. 

It had been one of the first things he remembered when he’d woken in the hospital, his head a mess about everything except for that, selfishly wondering if Jason would visit him before being told that no one outside of the Sanctuary had known what happened at the Sanctuary.

Ollie had come instead, promising him a room and anything else he needed back in Star City while he recovered. Roy signed himself out of the hospital three days later, leaving his phone behind and refusing to look back.

“Harper? You with me?”

He’s drifted off, eyelids heavy as he tries to open them.

“Yeah.”

“‘Kay. Just checking.”

He could do it again. Turn his head just so and plant a stubbly kiss against the soft skin under Jason’s ear. He thinks Jason wouldn’t mind, hell, would probably invite it. But something holds him back; they’ve been walking a tightrope ever since Jason pulled him out of the bar, and there’s something that’s stuck with Roy that just won’t let go.

He’s too tired to bring it up now. He’s also worried about the risk that if they move forward with this thing between them, there could be no going back. So they sit like that under the stars and in the glow of the truck headlights, Roy finally dozing off while Jason sits awake for the few hours of sleep he manages to get, only making their way back to the motel as the sun begins its slow rise above the horizon.

—

They abandon what was becoming their usual morning routine to sleep in for a few more hours. Jason faceplants onto his own bed with his outside clothes still on, not even bothering to pull off his jumper, and Roy sleepily pulls his own sheets over himself before burrowing his head into the pillow.

They wake a little after midday. Roy’s mouth is dry and he can taste the canola flowers at the back of his throat from breathing them in most of the night. He shuffles to the fridge, half watching Jason still slowly wake up against the sun filtering through the cracks in the curtain, before pulling out a bottle of water and takes a few big gulps.

“What’s for lunch?” He asks, which gets an answering middle finger stuck up into the air in his direction.

“Fuck you, what’s for lunch. I’m exhausted. You make it.” Jason’s head is still buried in his pillow, so it’s a wonder that Roy can even pick out what he’s saying at all, but when he does he smiles.

There’s a few things in the fridge; some sausages a few days out from their use-by date, and some vegetables that could realistically be made into a salad. Suddenly, however, Roy is overwhelmed with a craving for ramen.

“Hey, Jaybird.” He walks over to Jason’s bed and sits on the edge, hand coming down to shake Jason on the shoulder.

“Yuh.”

“Let’s go get ramen.”

That has Jason pulling his head up, face scrunched in confusion as he looks at Roy.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Do North Dakotians even know what ramen is?”

Roy shrugs. He has no idea. 

Jason slumps back into the bed, but gives Roy a thumbs up. Roy smiles, though Jason can’t see it, and takes the time to drag his hand down Jason’s arm as he pulls away from him to stand up.

— 

Jason does eventually get up. Splashes water on his face and behind his neck, changes his socks and jumper and locks the door behind him to meet Roy who’s leaning against the truck.

“You’re eager.” He mumbles, unlocking the damn thing and watching as Roy grins at him as he gets in. He stretches his neck from side to side and leans down to touch his toes. Admittedly, he’s a bit unused to the sleeping pattern he’s picked up since he brought Roy back to the Motel with him. Trying to keep himself alert enough even while trying to get to sleep is a habit he hasn’t used in years, and the early mornings are also a Roy-induced addition to his routine.

He figures it’s his own fault, though. He’d never be in this position if he hadn't purposefully sought out Roy for the sole reason of softly but forcibly pushing him headfirst into a detox. Maybe he’d missed his calling as a psychotherapist, which is a thought that makes him laugh as he turns the key into the ignition and Carly Rae Jepsen starts blaring through the speakers.

Roy must be in a really good mood because he doesn’t bitch about the radio channel or the fact that Jason’s laughing and not sharing the joke. He takes them onto Interstate 94, eyes widening when about a half hour later he sees a nondescript sign advertising a dine-in ramen restaurant.

Roy is humming when they enter the restaurant, cheerful enough to make small talk with the one waiter in the place, chattering away as they’re led to a place towards the front. He scans the menu with little interest, eyes pulling away from it as he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket.

It’s a text from Artemis, an update from her trip to the JLA watchtower courtesy of Diana. 

“Who’s that?” Roy asks, when he’s presumably decided on what he wants for lunch and closed the menu on the tabletop.

“Artemis.”

“...Who?”

Jason does look up from his phone then.

“Artemis… You’ve met her. Big Amazonian, red head. We worked together for a bit, well, me and her.”

It’s clear Roy is drawing a blank, eyebrows furrowing together. Jason pockets his phone, the alarm bells in his head immediately going off.

“Listen, maybe now isn’t the best time to talk about this but… You did see a psych, right? After the whole–” He lowers his voice, “dying thing.”

Roy scratches the back of his elbow, a notorious sign that he’s hiding something. Jason sighs.

“How bad is the memory loss, then?”

Roy squirms, but doesn’t deny it.

“It’s… Well I don’t know. Most of the missing stuff is from about a year or so before the Sanctuary. Some of it is also missing from when I first left the hospital… And there’s a few choppy bits from when I was in the Titans. I don’t… I don’t know what else is real or missing or just stuff I never remembered anyways.”

Jason purses his lips. He’s about to say something when the waiter approaches again, something along the lines of he suspected this but wasn’t sure how to bring it up with the growing list of other things he seems to be keeping from Roy. He hasn’t even really checked the menu but Roy orders two of the same things and a just of ice tea, his foot tapping again under the table.

“Don’t make a big deal of it, Jay. I can see the cogs in that brain of yours turning and it’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

Jason studies him but doesn’t answer. He unlocks his phone again; sends a few texts off the Artemis to give an update on where he is and that he’s still not sure when he’ll be done, and then another to Alfred for any tips on dealing with slight cases of amnesia.

At last, he pockets his phone, immediately aware that Roy’s cheerful mood from earlier has dropped. His foot is tapping so much the table is rattling a bit, so Jason links his two ankles around Roy’s and squeezes, forcing him to stop.

“How are you always so fuckin’ cold, man.” Roy sighs, though his leg doesn’t start bouncing again for the remainder of the time they’re in the restaurant.

Admittedly, the ramen is pretty good. Jason leaves a sizeable tip when they leave, and notes as soon as they get into the truck Roy switches the radio station to one that only plays songs from the eighties. 

“We should talk about this.” He says, when they’re about ten minutes out from the motel. Roy lifts his head from where he’d leant it against the window.

“Later, Jaybird.” 

The rest of the ride is quiet. Roy waits around for Jason to unlock the door to the room and immediately makes his way to the balcony. Jason removes his phone from his pocket and places it on the table with the keys and his wallet, then decides to take a shower.

It’s one of those things he kinda thought about but didn’t, really. He leaves the shower dressed in clean clothes and cheeks pink from the steam, and Roy is sat at the table inside, Jason’s phone just out of his reach as if he’d pushed it away from him when he heard Jason finishing up.

Alfred must have text back, then. Jason sighs. 

“You’re impossible sometimes, you know that?” 

Roy doesn't raise his voice, despite them being a few feet of distance between them, but Jason hears it well enough. He always does. 

“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly sunshine and rainbows yourself right now.”

He can hear Roy push himself up from the chair at the table and Jason turns to face him. He notes the slight clench of Roy’s jaw as he folds one arm over the other against his chest, his eyes blank as surveys Jason’s face up and down. 

It’s like watching Roy get ready to hit his target, but Jason’s found himself on the wrong side of the arrow. Nervous, he puts down the book he’d picked up and stands up straight.

“Okay. You can stop it now.” Roy sounds resigned, but his fingers are gripping into each bicep.

“Stop what?”

“Fuckin’... I don’t know! Whatever it is you’re doing.” He snaps, the atmosphere in the mood snapping with him. Jason, unsure of how to answer, starts humming the Carly Rae Jepsen song from earlier.

It has an immediate effect. Jason has little time to react before Roy is moving, and Jason feels himself lifted as Roy fists his hands into his shirt and pulls, his humming cutting off as Roy pushes him against the small gap in the wall in between their two beds.

He smells like Jason’s shower gel, and a little like the motel’s laundry detergent, and his eyes are still blank and searching as Jason forces his heart rate to slow down as one of Roy’s hands inches close to the base of his neck.

“Easy, Harper.” Seems they’re definitely in the irritable phase of detox. Jason’s hands flex at his sides before he pulls them into fists. He tells himself it’s in case he needs to push Roy off of him, or quickly jab at him if Roy hits him first, but deep down he knows it’s because he’s itching to do something stupid like rest his palm on the other man’s waist or, God forbid, run his fingers across a freckled cheek.

Roy stills at the sound of Jason’s voice, his hand flattening against Jason’s collarbone and the other still clenched over his chest bone.

“What are we doin’ here, Jason?” Roy asks, voice quiet but steady, and Jason exhales as the tension starts to bleed from his body, feeling confident that Roy won’t seriously hurt him. 

“Well, as discussed at first, we’re staying here because you’re crashing from a relapse. Though now I know your memory is also the equivalent of a Swiss Cheese, so we’re gonna figure that out too just the two of us as well until you feel safe enough to go home and get real help.” 

The hand over his chest tightens, and Jason can hear the cotton straining under the stretch. It’ll be a real bitch to smooth out an Arsenal-sized fist from the thing, but Jason’s also wondering how much further he has to push before Roy actually does something he regrets. They’ve been dancing around the intricacies of their relationship since their final months as Red Hood and Arsenal together, and Jason’s debating whether it’s worth it to throw all reason to the wind and see if they can’t both get it out of their systems. 

“You know that isn’t what I mean.”

Jason finally meets Roy’s gaze despite every instinct of his telling him to keep looking at the piece of wall just above Roy’s right shoulder. They have flecks of gold in them, just around the pupil, the green muted in the shitty motel lighting.

Breaking eye contact is like admitting loss, though Jason still hasn't quite figured out what it is he’s losing, so instead he juts his chin out and continues their stare-off until Jason can feel Roy’s fingers start to unclench from his shirt.

“Okay, if you won’t answer that, answer me this: what were you really doing in that bar the other day?” Roy asks, fingers flexing against Jason’s breastbone.

It’s the question he’s been dreading, and he supposes still doesn’t really have an answer to. His own hands relax at his side, and Jason brings them up to flatten against Roy’s fist, one of them brushing against his fingers and the other loosely wrapping around Roy’s wrist.

“I… I guess I just needed to know you were okay.”

“Meaning?”

He twists his fingers into Roy’s so they’re somewhat intertwined, and wills his heart not to jump when Roy follows the movement with his eyes but doesn’t pull away.

Jason sighs and pulls their arms away from the vicinity of his face.

“You should probably sit, Harper. There’s a few things I’ve been meaning to tell ya.”

— 

Jason takes them out onto the balcony, both of them sitting on a chair each as he twists one of the draw strings from his shorts around his finger and then off it again.

“Those guys at the bar weren’t exactly after us. There was no big group after us in the first place. I hired ‘em.”

Roy squints at him, the sun bright against his eyes.

“No one knew where you were. Ollie had said you’d up and left the hospital without telling anyone and left your phone behind. We called Donna and a few of the others you used to hang out with but everyone was adamant they hadn’t heard from you so… I reached out to some old contacts. They told me they’d find you no issues, and the payment they wanted wasn’t that bad.”

“So why’d you try to blow them up?”

“I’m getting there, Harper, Jesus Christ.” Jason leans back in the chair again, fingers clenching. “They were pretty quiet for the first week or so. A bit of contact here and there but nothing serious. Then I got a call from the woman requesting more money. Seems they’d figured out who I was and from that put together who you were. Said they had an old client who’d pay them triple what I did if they killed you. Told me they’d found you hanging around bars in North Dakota and I had forty-eight hours to make the higher payment or the deal was off.”

Roy’s memory of that day in the bar is still hazy, but he remembers now – the woman continuously filling his drink, and the way the guy sat further down would watch him out of the corner of his eye a lot. He was a sitting duck, and none the wiser.

“Obviously I wasn’t paying them shit after that. I hightailed it out of the Midwest and drove the whole night to the North Dakota state lines, then had Oracle track ‘em for me. Saw you arrive at the bar the next morning, set up a bomb under their car and… Well. You know the rest.”

Roy breathes in deeply through his nose and exhales.

“You could have just told me that.”

Jason shrugs. 

“I guess I was just worried you wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me or whatever. It seemed better to come up with the idea of us both being in trouble as opposed to me purposefully seeking you out.”

In all honesty, Roy isn’t sure what he prefers either. Being lied to sucks, and if he weren’t feeling so cloudy he’d probably be a lot more upset with Jason than what he could currently muster. There’s something fluttering in his stomach at the thought of Jason going to such efforts to find him and making sure he was okay though, even if it did end in the usual way for both of them: betrayal, explosions, and a half-assed make up plan.

“You… Why do you care so much, man? And don't give me any of that shit about owing me a favour or us being ex-partners.”

Jason turns to look at him. His hair has started to curl over his forehead again and his eyes are bright against his tanned skin. He’s got a look on his face which makes Roy feel like he might regret asking in the first place, but he doesn’t drop his own gaze.

Jason opens his mouth once, closes it, and opens it again. “Why’d you kiss me before you left Louisiana?”

Roy feels a sound escape out of his throat.

“You kissed me back, remember?”

“That not give you enough of an answer then?”

Jason’s voice is a little distant because he’s turned to look over the highway again. Roy figures it does, sort of – tells him that Jason probably feels the same for him that he feels for Jason, and that their friendship has probably shifted into feelings of something more. It’s a little scary, though. Roy thinks of Donna and Jade and Kory, three people he has a track record of teaming up with and getting into a romantic relationship with, all for it to later crash and burn.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Jason hums and Roy feels a little resentful. If Jason is big enough to drag them both out here then maybe he should be the one to admit something first, but Roy’s kidding himself if he thinks Jason has changed that much to be actually forthcoming with his emotions. He’s not even sure if Jason has dated anyone, whether it had even been a focus for him when he returned to Gotham and started running around as Red Hood. He supposes he can’t be too upset either, considering he’s too chicken shit himself to admit anything.

“I don’t know how I go back to normal.” He says, because it’s easier to talk about his fears than the ‘what ifs’, and Jason turns to face him. He looks earnest, which feels like splitting Roy’s chest in two.

“We’ll figure it out. We’ll get the best doctors we can from Bruce or Ollie or it can just be us together or we can go into space and get Kory and Artemis to help. It will be fine.”

“I haven’t shot an arrow in months, Jaybird. And I’ve gone a year constantly relapsing and detoxing and relapsing – what if this is just me for the rest of my life? You really gonna put your own shit on hold for me on the chance I can get better? Arsenal is probably done, but it doesn’t mean Red Hood has to be too.”

Jason swallows, his throat clicking. 

“Red Hood is… I’m not gonna lie and say I have plans to be giving it up any time soon. And at some point I’ll have to return to Gotham and probably help Artemis and Bizzaro out with some stuff I left unfinished when I started looking for you. But for now I have time. And for now I’m happy to help you, as my friend and my ex-partner and whatever else, and I accepted that the minute I decided to drive to this godforsaken state in the first place.”

Roy’s heart jumps against his ribcage. “And if you can’t help me and you have to leave before I’m ready to go?”

“I don’t know, Roy. But I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.” Jason stands abruptly, but pauses as he passes Roy. He brings his hand down to Roy's shoulder and squeezes, gently, before ruffling his hair and heading inside. Roy stays seated, mulling over their conversations from the day, and tries not to let the hope that maybe things will get better bloom and take root somewhere. 

He ends up dozing off in the afternoon sun, grateful that Jason had thought to pack sunblock for them both to use. His skin does look a little pink when he wakes an hour or two later, but the balcony has started to shade over anyways and he feels actually rested for the first time in a long time. 

He shuffles around the balcony for a little; stretches out the kinks in his neck and the stiff feeling in his hips, before entering the room. Jason’s sat on his own bed flicking through something on his phone screen, and there’s something cooking on the gas top.

“I’m making bolognese for dinner.” Jason tells him, eyes flicking up from his phone as Roy pulls off his shirt. Jason follows the movement of his shirt pulled over his head, but unlike the first say he doesn’t look shocked; instead he goes a little slack jawed and pink in the cheeks at the sight instead. Roy tries not to preen under the clear appreciation for it, tucking his elbows in close to himself and quickly pulling out a clean shirt for after his shower, but he can feel Jason’s gaze on him as he makes his way to the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

When he’s still flushed from the attention later, he’ll blame it on being too warm in the apartment. 

—

Days five and six pass with no issue. Roy thinks he’s probably been through the worst of the withdrawal symptoms, minus the continuous insomnia, and Jason continues to come and go whenever he needs to, usually leaving Roy behind to read or explore the outside of the motel.

He isn’t entirely sure what it is Jason gets up to in the times where he disappears. He supposes it’s likely some unfinished Red Hood business that he can solve from a distance but doesn’t want to bring Roy into, and Roy is thankful for being kept out of the loop.

They haven’t spoken seriously again since their conversation on the balcony and Roy is grateful for the reprieve of digging through his emotions and mental state, but there’s a big part of him that wants to tug on the loose ‘Jason thread’ and see what else he can pull out with it.

It sorta feels like they’re dancing around it all. Bumping into one another, getting too close while one of them cooks something at the stove, too many fleeting touches between them for them to be strictly accidental.

Roy thinks he’s going crazy. The jitters from the lack of codeine in his system have been completely ignored instead for the butterflies that erupt in his stomach every time Jason so much as grins in his direction, and it’s honestly making him feel a little ill. It doesn’t help that Jason is seemingly oblivious to the whole thing, sensing Roy’s unease as ongoing issues with his detox, and coming even more in contact with him to press a cool hand against his forehead or a supporting nudge to his knee when they sit out on the balcony and eat their way through a platter of sushi Jason had brought home from somewhere.

He’s fraying a little at the edges, and because he’s the unluckiest guy on earth, inevitably the fabric tears at the scenes.

He doesn’t even really remember the nightmare. He knows Wally was there, and Ollie too. There’s the pain of the bullets tearing across his torso and the fear, suffocating, as he accepts his death. He wakes panting and drenched in sweat, smoothing his hands over his body and through his hair while he tries to calm his heart rate. His pillow and sheets are soaked through, and the room is cold against his clammy skin.

“Hey.”

Jason’s whispering and Roy can make out his silhouette, sitting up in his own bed.

“Hey.” Roy whispers back, heart still thundering in his ears.

“You okay?” Jason asks, and Roy– Roy can’t answer. He’s not really, but they both already know that. At his silence Jason moves; Roy can hear the sound of sheets being pulled back and feet hitting the floor and then Jason is sitting on the bed beside him.

“My bed’s all gross.” Roy, still whispering, tells him. Jason just hums, throws the worst affected pillow onto the ground and pushes Roy over a few inches so he can slide into the bed next to him. He sits up against the headboard, fingers oh so cool against Roy’s nape as he manhandles him practically into Jason’s lap.

“You wanna talk about it?” He asks, fingers scratching against the base of his skull and Roy’s senses taken over with the overwhelming scent of Jason Jason Jason Jason. 

He lets himself relax against Jason, cheek resting against a clothed thigh, and shakes his head ‘no’. Jason hums again, under his breath, the tune of a song Roy can’t quite place. He can hear a truck pass on the highway outside, and the aircon continues its usual thrum, and against all odds he falls asleep again.

When he wakes he feels a little foggy, like he knows he didn’t sleep well but can’t immediately tell why. The sun is streaming through the usual gap in the curtains and the aircon has turned off on its usual timer during the night, and Jason– Jason is plastered to his back, a large arm swung over Roys hip and tucked up just below his sternum.

Roy can feel his breath on the nape of his neck and the slow rise and fall of Jason’s chest against his back. He feels like he should panic – the whole cliche of waking up like this is not lost on him – but weirdly, it feels right. He scrubs a hand over his face and turns under Jason’s grip, praying that the other man doesn’t immediately pull away from him when he feels a disturbance. 

Jason does grunt a little, grip loosening on Roy as he shuffles so they’re in a position where they’re facing one another. Roy can see the tiny scars littering Jason’s face from years of fighting the horrors of Gotham and everything else, his thumb coming up to press against one that hasn't quite faded and is still pink along his hairline. 

Jason’s feet flex under the sheets, eyes fluttering before closing and fluttering open again, trying to bring Roy into focus but failing.

“‘S’from Damian.” He mumbles, Roy’s thumb still smoothing over the raised skin. There’s a story there, either something that happened when the two of them were on patrol or from something completely unrelated, and Roy’s kinda hoping Jason will tell him about it one day.

Under the sheets Jason’s own hand is moving, and Roy gasps as he feels it slip under his shirt to immediately brush against one of the bullet wound scars under his ribs. Jason doesn’t say anything, just brushes the pads of his pointer and middle finger over it before dropping away, his arm pulling up to stretch towards the ceiling and run through his arm.

“Mornin’.” He tells Roy, finally opening his eyes wide, and Roy feels like he could melt into the bed at the fact they’re seriously waking up in one another’s arms after half a night of sleeping together, and the world seemingly didn’t end around them while they did it.

“Hey.”

Jason drops his arm between the two of them and Roy drops his own from Jason’s face, their two hands close enough to touch if they moved them just so. 

“I was thinking we should both get out of here for a few hours today. You haven’t really been out much and I finished my book.” Jason says, though he doesn’t move away and his eyes are still boring into Roy’s, as if this is a completely normal wake up routine for him. 

“Sure.”

They should get up. One of them should realise the precarious nature of their positions and quickly move away and make some excuse about needing to use the bathroom or needing to make a phone call or something along the same lines, but Roy, for reasons entirely selfish, has absolutely no interest in doing so. Jason himself seems more chilled out than usual; the normal crease in his brow isn’t as deep set and his eyes aren’t clouded over as if he’s trying to figure out some complicated equation. His hand moves again, soft, and Roy lies there as Jason takes a piece of hair that’s fallen over his face during the night and tucks it behind his ear.

“We should get you some new sheets.” Jason comments, but his voice is far away. Roy, throat dry, can only nod in agreement.

Jason smiles, a small thing, before his face fully splits into a grin. “Bags first shower, by the way.” Roy groans as Jason kicks off the sheets without preamble and literally rolls onto the floor before hightailing it to the bathroom and closing the door behind him with arguably more force than necessary. 

Roy sits around in bed for a few minutes longer before deciding to get up and strip off the sheets. Balling them up into a pile he leaves their room in search of what he thinks is a laundry room down the hallway, which he also assumes is where Jason has been washing their clothes because there isn’t a washing machine in the room with them. He can hear Jason banging about in the bathroom when he gets back, Jason popping his head round the door as Roy starts making the bed.

“Can you pass me a new shirt?"

Roy trudges to Jason’s bag, digging through until he pulls out a violent green t-shirt which upon closer inspection has a Green Lantern insignia embossed across the front.

“Jaybird?” He asks, walking into the bathroom and half-hoping Jason is at least decent. He looks up from where he’s brushing his teeth in the sink, face brightening as he looks up at the shirt raised in Roy’s fist.

“Oh, yeah. That. Uh, that was a gag gift for Bruce that he refused to accept, so I got to keep it instead.” He plucks it from Roy’s outstretched hand and pulls it on, and Roy is upset to admit that the green actually makes him look good. Asshole. 

Jason turns to face Roy at the sink once he’s wiped his mouth of toothpaste. Roy should probably exit the bathroom and pick out his own clothes for after his shower, but Jason reaches up with his hand and brushes softly against his cheek.

“Eyelash.” He murmurs, the small hair sticking to the pad of his finger as Jason withdraws and holds it between the two of them to look at.

“You know, Dinah used to say if you found one and blew it off your finger you could make a wish.” Roy says, eyes flicking between Jason’s finger and his eyes.

“Mm. Alfred said something similar a long time ago too. You wanna?” He asks, but suddenly Roy is so overcome with emotion he can’t voice he feels like he could burst with it. Gently he pushes Jason’s arm away with one hand, the other one coming to gently tip his chin up. 

He likes the fact he has an inch or two on the other man, likes how Jason’s pupils blow wide as Roy steps in closer and gets a firmer grip on his chin and finally pulls their faces together, his lips warm against Jason’s minty fresh ones. It feels electric; Roy can feel Jason’s hand immediately come to rest on his hip, a pleased sound coming from his throat as Roy angles his face to deepen the kiss, and Roy keens as he feels Jason swipe his tongue on his lower lip and suck on it a little.

He could stay like this forever, half-pressed against Jason and kissing him like there’s nothing else that matters. He surges forward, his other hand pulling on the god awful green shirt so he can also pull Jason even closer, pleased when Jason gasps and giving Roy even more access to lick into his mouth, across the back of his teeth and sucking a little on Jason’s tongue.

They pull away eventually. Roy’s chest is hammering and he’s admittedly panting a little, and Jason laughs breathlessly himself as he pulls his thumb over his bottom lip and sucks it into his mouth. Roy hears static.

Jason laughs again. “Steady, big boy.” He says, hands firm against Roy’s chest as he tries to dip down for another kiss or three. His eyes are bright so Roy’s not scared he’s upset him, but reality does come crashing down very quickly. The fact they’ve barely discussed this when they really ought to, the fact he’s still only a week or so into a detox and the fact he’s not even brushed his own teeth are all sticking out like a sore thumb.

Roy closes his eyes and breathes in deep, hoping Jason doesn’t notice how flushed he is.

“Sorry. I mean I’m not really, but… Sorry.” He admits, one hand flexing in Jason’s shirt and the other tingling at his side as if he can still kind of feel Jason’s stubble against it.

“I’m not complaining. Feel free to do it any time. Just, not when I have a basin digging into my lower back?” Jason says, trying to catch his gaze, and Roy can’t help but roll his eyes and shove him back a little, smirking when Jason lets out a defeated ‘oof’. 

He’s fallen in love with a complete loser. The plus side is, it seems the loser has fallen a little  in love with him too. “Get outta here, Jaybird.” He tells him, because he knows all he’s gonna do is get distracted again, and Jason leaves the bathroom with a dopey but accomplished look on his face, and Roy feels that seed of hope explode and blossom in every blood vessel in his body. 

— 

They end up walking along the Missouri River for most of the morning and past lunch. Roy switches between trailing several feet behind Jason and shooting ahead depending on what part of the trail they come across, and Jason is happy to set and even pace and match with Roy every ten or so minutes.

They make it to a clearing where a few picnic tables are sitting around. Roy continues down a worn trail to the river shore as Jason spies a table in the tree line. His phone buzzes as he sits down to unlock it.

Hi. How are things? B.

Jason chews on his cheek as he taps his phone against the tabletop. It’s kinda nice, in a weird way, to see Bruce trying to show he cares about the whole situation with Roy. Realistically the best thing for him would be to give Bruce the full lowdown of what’s going on; he’d have experts and allies from all over offering help if he needed, all of them arguably far more accomplished at dealing with this than Jason.

But then he thinks of sitting in canola fields, and eating food out on the balcony together, and being kissed in their shared bathroom where no one can interrupt. Sue him for being a little selfish. 

Its all good in the Hood

Roy walks back up from the shoreline, frowning against the sun in his eyes. Jason wants to point out the fact he’s wearing his cap backwards, but watching Roy come to the slow realisation himself is funnier.

“There’s some kids down there fishing. One of them was a bit eager with his cast off. I was half-convinced he was gonna take my eye out.”

Roy sits himself on the table, because he’s an animal, and Jason takes the opportunity to rest his elbow on his knee and grin up at him.

“Oh, I know that face. That’s a ‘Jason has a terrible idea’, face. What did you do?” Roy asks, though one hand comes down to cup Jason under the chin as he asks.

“Mm, nothing yet. B’s been texting.”

Roy’s right brow shoots up at that, fingers brushing Jason’s hair back off his forehead. Jason does discreetly look over his shoulder – he kinda doesn’t want to be the target of a hate crime so early in the day – but when no one else seems to be paying any attention he turns back and decides to let Roy do whatever it is he’s doing with his hand on Jason’s scalp.

“Texting? Jesus. What’s that like?”

“Uhhh… Lots of punctuation. Really makes you feel like you’re in the room with him, though.”

His phone buzzes on the table, and Jason picks it up, not caring to hide the screen away.

Funny. Keep me updated if the situation changes. You and Roy are welcome in Gotham if you need it. B. 

Jason angles the phone so Roy can read it, Roy’s hand dropping from where it was playing with the hair curled under his ear to take the phone into his hand so he can hold it steady.

“He hardly even invited me over when I used to hang out with Dick, you know.”

“Yeah well, he was a grumpy bastard back then. Personally, I think Cass has softened him up.”

Roy leans back, neck arching under the sun and the tendons in his arms flexing as the muscles shift under his skin. Jason kind of wants to bite them, but being arrested for public indecency is also not on his to-do list for the day, either. 

Jason can hear a cheerful shrieking coming from down by the water, and Roy twists his head in the direction before relaxing again. Jason taps his fingers in a beatless rhythm against Roy’s inner thigh, brain working.

He does miss Gotham. He misses his own safehouse and the pizza place down the road that’s open at all hours.

“You–” Jason cuts himself off, his fingers also stilling. Roy looks down at him, inquisitive, and Jason winces. “You could come to Gotham. With me.”

Out in the open like that, Jason wishes he could snatch the words back and bury them somewhere untouchable. Roy’s mouth parts before he clicks it closed again, jaw working.

“...Would we be driving?”

“Well the truck’s a rental. We don’t have to, but I prefer it to domestic flights. They’re not always a massive fan of my fake documents, if you can imagine.”

Which is true. He’s had a few near misses with the forgeries the past few times he’s had to fly Delta, and Jason isn’t willing to risk it just for the sake of saving a few hours of travel time. Besides, he’s not entirely sure Roy could handle a plane either; the enclosed space, the strangers, the stress of TSA. It might send him completely over the edge, which is exactly what Jason has been successfully avoiding this whole past week.

“It’s about what, twenty-five hours from here to Gotham?” Roy asks, face half covered from where he’s turned around to look at a woman throwing a tennis ball for her dog. Jason shrugs.

“More or less. I wouldn’t drive the whole way, probably stay somewhere at least for one night, maybe two if I got too sick of drivin’.”

Roy still hasn’t turned back to him, but he shifts where he’s sat, Jason’s hand slipping off his shorts fabric and onto his knee. 

“I wanna drive some of the way.” Roy says, finally facing down to look at Jason, eyes challenging.

Jason paid a premium on the insurance, and as much as he might love Roy, he’s not risking it. He’s seen how the archer drives – he’s a goddamn maniac behind the wheel.

There’s approximately zero chance of that happening. “We’ll see.”

“And we’re not spending the whole time listening to your pop radio stations, either.”

“Shit, Harper. Now you’ve just crossed a line.”

Roy’s face splits into a grin and Jason can feel himself mirror it. If they weren’t in public he might have stood up and leant in to kiss him, but he hesitates. Compromising with himself, he places a small kiss on the inside of Roy’s knee and tries not to make it feel like such a big deal.

“That a yes, then?”

Roy hums.

“Sure, Jaybird. Let’s go to Gotham.”

—

They make their way back to the motel, spend about an hour packing up the room and leaving it tidy for the guy behind the counter to properly clean it once they leave. Roy watches Jason pack the remnants of the fridge into a small cooler, biceps flexing as he swings his tote bag over one shoulder and carries his phone, the keys and the cooler in another.

It’s quiet as they load the back of the truck and pull onto the i-95. Jason does listen to his awful pop songs, window down and Roy having to put down his as well so the sound of the wind doesn’t kill both of their ear drums.

It’s mid-afternoon when it starts to rain a bit, the both of them rolling up their windows and turning the aircon up a bit to deal with the new chill in the air. The car smells like static, tar, and moss, the fields and roads around them finally getting a bit of water after a few drier weeks than normal.

“You okay?” Roy asks, head leaning on the window as he looks ahead at the raindrops splattering on the windshield.

“Yeah, I’m okay. You?”

Roy hums. “I’m a little bored.”

Jason laughs, scratching his brow with his thumb.

“Yeah, well, start up a game of yellow car or somethin’. I got games on my phone too, if you want.”

Roy doesn’t, not yet at least, but the prospect of them sitting in silence for the next however many hours doesn’t seem all that great either. Spending time with Jason is great, don’t get him wrong, but unless they’re suited up and on a rooftop somewhere waiting for a plan to get into motion he tends to have a habit of sitting very still and very quiet unless he’s prodded out of his shell a bit.

Roy thinks it probably has a lot to do with his upbringing, and a whole lot more to do with his training at the al Ghul’s Fortress, which is why he never brings it up all that much.

“What are you workin’ on with Artemis and Bizzaro?”

“Huh? Oh, we kinda all picked up the work on Underlife. It’s mostly all cleaned up now but they were sticking around to clean up the last bits of it.”

Roy remembers his and Jason’s last ‘mission’ together. Something unpleasant twinges in his stomach and he nods. “Didn’t think you would have continued with it.”

“Yeah, well, I got caught up helping out an FBI agent and her and Artemis unfortunately got on very well once they met, so…”

“Feels like there’s another story there, Jaybird.”

Jason smirks, but doesn’t speak for another few minutes. He pulls a candy bar out from the middle console and chews half of it down before responding, his voice just shy of nonchalant.

“We – Artemis and I – I guess we tried the whole dating thing. Or at least attempted to try it.” Roy’s stomach churns again, feeling like this is where the rug gets pulled from under him completely. “I dunno though. She’s cool, kick ass, I admire her and like her a lot. But it felt like something was missin’. Couldn’t quite cross that bridge between partners and something more. I guess I thought maybe some distance would be good, once you came askin’ for my help it seemed like the opportunity I needed to clear my head.”

He chews the rest of the candy into his mouth and chews roughly, dropping the wrapper into the console. Roy feels a bit like he can’t look at him but also doesn’t want to look away, worried if he does that Jason and the truck and the past week will evaporate into dust.

“I mean, it did help a little. You kissed me and I realised I wanted that a lot more and probably have done for a long time. Then you left.”

Roy can’t say anything, do anything, except let out a small strangled sound. Jason keeps going.

“I guess… I dunno. I had it in my head you’d be gone for a few weeks, maybe a couple months at tops, come back when we were finishing up with the Underlife and we could maybe sort things out between us. When I met back up with Artemis and Bizarro we had a talk. I guess she wasn’t overly impressed to begin with, but she was a lot more understanding when–”

Jason cuts off then, his head shaking as if he’s been pulled out of some trance.

“So I’m a home-wrecker, basically?” Roy says, half accusatory, and Jason turns to look at him with furrowed brows.

“What? No! Well… Maybe. She was a bit pissed with me; training sessions would leave me a little more bruised and battered than previous. Then you died and I guess it hit me pretty hard and she seemed to realise it wasn’t just me being fickle so… We got over it.”

Roy wants to push it further, like a bruise that hasn’t quite fully formed yet, but he squashes the urge. He does begin shaking his knee up and down again, a recent habit that occurs whenever he’s feeling particularly uncomfortable, gasping when one of Jason’s sickly cold hands reaches over and holds him firmly on the thigh.

“Hey. It’s my bad, alright? I should have said something sooner but I didn’t really know how to. She’s cool though; it’s cool. Her and Bizarro are both looking forward to seeing you and it will all be fine.”

“Are we cool?” Roy asks, eyes on Jason’s hand and moving to survey the side of his face. Jason flicks his eyes towards him, not wanting to break too much of his concentration on the road given the wet weather, but his fingers squeeze him tightly.

“I… I am cool. We’re cool. Are you cool? Are we cool?”

Jason getting nervous like this isn’t a sight Roy has seen since they first teamed up. It means he’s rattled about something. Roy realises, with slow clarity, that he’s rattled about him.

“I’m cool.”

“Cool.”

“We should stop saying cool, man. It’s not cool.”

“Fuck you, Roy. Find a new radio station, will ya?”

They drive a couple more hours, avoiding the obvious elephant in the truck and deciding to talk about the more safe options, such as training and Diana Prince being awesome and some of the TV shows neither of them have caught up with lately. Reaching the outskirts of Minneapolis at about eight in the evening, Jason takes them through the drive through of the first open place they spot, pulling up in the car park for them to get out and stretch their legs. 

“I’m tired.” Jason admits, a couple fries sticking out of his mouth, and Roy nods.

“You could have let me drive.”

Jason snorts, then washes down his mouthful with a gulp of soda. “Not a way in Hell. You know, they should use footage of you driving in driver’s ed to show people exactly what you’re not meant to do behind a wheel.”

Roy rolls his eyes. Always one for the dramatics. 

“There’s a motel about twenty minutes from here which has 24/7 check in. I figure we stay there for the night, get up around dawn and get to Cleveland or thereabouts by nightfall.”

Roy considers it. The thought of driving, not including any stops, for twelve hours makes his neck ache. But he’s realising the closer he’s getting to somewhere familiar, the larger the feeling to bolt grows. He’s not even sure Jason could leave him at a gas stop unsupervised without him disappearing, which kind of terrifies him.

“Sounds good.”

“Sure?”

He thinks of Jason trusting him enough to tell him about Artemis even though he could have left it, of him leaving his other teammates behind to help him even when he wasn’t sure Roy would accept it, and the fact that leaving now would probably destroy everything between them that’s been building over the past week and more.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

—

They pull up to the motel. Jason leaves Roy to take all the bags because ‘he’s not being dragged to the room half unconscious this time, you know’, while Jason pays for the room. He wonders if Jason’s using his own money for all the money he’s blown on this trip or if this is all a courtesy of Wayne Enterprises, something that he knows would send Ollie into a mini-spiral. 

The room is on the ground floor. No kitchenette like the last one and no balcony either, but it will do for the night and has a working shower. In all honesty, Roy’s had far worse accommodation in his lifetime. 

He washes up in the bathroom alone because honestly, the close proximity has left him feeling a little like peeled fruit. Notes in the mirror that for once, the bags under his eyes aren’t the most noticeable things about his features and that his hair has some of that natural shine back to it.

Somewhere, in the back of his head, is an old psych or maybe even Croc, telling him that taking care of himself can sometimes be the first step to the long road of recovery. Roy smirks, and wonders what Croc would think of his continued team up with Red Hood.

He must exit the bathroom with a smile on his face because when Jason looks up from his bed he smiles too, completely unguarded, and Roy thinks to himself ‘I gotta tell this guy how I really feel about him soon’ but instead just smiles back wider and sits opposite him on his own bed.

“What’s got you all smiley?”

“I was thinkin’ about Killer Croc, and what he would say to me if he found out it was you who pulled me outta that bar.”

Jason nods. “KC and I are like this, you know." He crosses his fingers over one another. "I’m sure he’d have nothing but glowing praise to give me.”

They both know that’s a bold faced lie. Croc has no issues with Jason except for thinking him a little bit of a dumbass, but if he heard Jason refer to him as ‘KC’ he’d throw him through an interior wall. Jason grins again, probably coming to the same conclusion, before he stands.

“I’mma wash my face then hit the hay. You okay if I turn the main lights off?” He asks, pulling his shirt off over his head and dropping it on top of his bag. Roy gives him a blank look.

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

He shrugs, then pulls a bit of the stitching off his shoulder that’s finally started to disintegrate. 

“Guilty. But you ain’t complaining, and I haven’t yet found a reason to stop.”

He closes the door before Roy can get another word in. He mutters to himself, pulling his own shirt over his head and shucking his shorts off, burrowing under the covers and staring up at the ceiling as Jason messes with the taps in the bathroom for a good five minutes and finally exits again.

He flicks the light and immediately the room is shrouded in darkness. Roy can make out Jason’s silhouette as he makes his way to his own bed, his eyesight slowly getting better now that his head isn’t clouded in codeine and alcohol fog for most hours of the day.

They’re both quiet, but the tension is palpable. Roy shuffles onto his left side, fights the angle of his pillow, and turns onto his back again. Jason hasn’t made a noise, his breathing deep and even. Roy shuffles some more, the mattress digging into places along his spine and sighs again, pulling his covers off.

He sits up and squints at Jason’s figure in the other bed, thinks he can see the outline of his shoulder and his head on the pillow. He makes a decision, and stands before he can backtrack.

He doesn’t say anything as he lifts Jason’s covers and slips into the bed next to him. Doesn’t say anything as he comes up behind him and wraps an arm around the other man’s waist. He knows Jason is awake, or awake enough, because if he’d caught him unguarded Roy would probably already be sporting a broken nose. And the rest. 

“I’m sorry you worried so much when I died, Jaybird. Haven’t got a chance to tell you that but… Well I guess I’ve been thinking about it, and I’d be pretty devastated too if the tables were turned.” 

He can hardly hear his own voice it’s that quiet. He shuffles under the covers again, his face level with the back of Jason’s head. The other man doesn’t move, or even acknowledge his words.

Maybe he really is asleep. The fact he may be trusting Roy enough to cuddle up to him while unconscious is a whole other revelation in itself. He leans forward and presses a light kiss to Jason’s nape, his breath disturbing the hairs at his nose.

Jason still doesn’t say anything, but his hand comes up to interlink his fingers with the ones that Roy currently has splayed over his stomach. Roy closes his eyes, and sleeps.

—

They wake before dawn as Jason suggested. Sleepily pass one another as they go into the bathroom and slowly pull on shirts and pants and make sure they have everything, not that they’d really unpacked much in the first place, before locking the room behind them and dropping the key in a bucket by the front desk to check out.

They drive for an hour and manage to pull into a Starbucks before they start to leave the city skyline behind. Jason orders cabinet food that will have them sugar sick about three hours in but makes up for it with the quadruple-shot Americanos he orders for them both, with extra creamer for Roy, and Roy sips on his coffee and watches as the sun starts to rise.

He’s watched the horizon more these past nine days than he has in months. Watches how the sunbeams douse his skin in orange as the birds fly overhead, Jason slurping on the remnants of his coffee as his straw jangles against his ice.

“I should’ve got two of those.” He comments, discarding the cup in the centre console and wiping across his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Roy raises one brow. “Are you trying to induce early heart failure?” 

“No. And to be completely fair, I’ve put far worse in my body than a little bit of coffee.”

“You and me both.”

He means for it to come off lighthearted, but Roy thinks he can actually see where the words fall flat somewhere between exiting his mouth and them travelling the distance between the two of them and hitting Jason’s ears. Jason frowns, but it’s contemplative, and Roy shifts in his seat.

“Dick told me about the Bliss and all that business, when he found out I was lookin’ for you.”

That’s a shock to hear, in all honesty. Roy didn’t even realise Dick and Jason were on talking terms again, let alone after his and Bruce’s last big blow out. Still, weirder things have happened with the Robins, he supposes.

“He didn’t say much else. Just that he knew you’d already had that relapse and things between you and the rest of the Titans were tense. He actually seemed a little guilty about something, which is the worst kind of Dick to deal with, so.”

Roy still feels a little guilty too. He’d texted Dick here and there in the weeks before he ended up at the Sanctuary. He’d visited him at the hospital, once, after Ollie had come in a few times.

“I called Croc when we teamed up again. He was the one who gave me the idea of getting straight again. Also told me that I was stupid to be trying to help you out when I could barely help myself, which I suppose is true.”

Jason is chewing on his thumb as he listens.

“If you hadn’t– You interfering with my fight with Bruce before it escalated probably saved us from something neither of us could come back from, you know. In fact, I need you to know that. You think you didn’t help or you were in the way but you helped me, and I’m sorry I’m such a shit friend that I don’t know how to tell you these things when they happen.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Harper.” Jason puts both hands on the wheel, knuckles white, his eye flicking to Roy for a second before looking back at the road. “You are not… It’s not your fault. The Sanctuary and the relapse and everything else in between and after. I know I sound like a hypocritical asshole right now but it isn’t. You gotta get that one day, man.”

Jason is being hypocritical. Roy heard the stories of what he was like when he first came back. Has witnessed first hand the spirals Jason can have when things from his past come up and threaten to pull him back under with them. It’s like a weight has been lifted, though, being told he isn’t to blame. Ollie had been sympathetic at the hospital but Roy could sense the coddling underneath, the inevitable lectures that would follow once Roy moved back to Star City so Ollie could keep an eye on him via some overpriced rehab facility in the countryside somewhere.

“Okay.” He says. Because he can’t be expected to just accept it right away, but also doesn’t want to sit comfortably in the fear of never being good enough anymore. “I mean, the relapse was technically my fault. I purposefully followed Ja– Cheshire, when I knew what would happen.”

Jason scowls. “Cheshire? You saw Cheshire?”

“...Yeah?”

Jason accelerates a little, their speed hitting 70 mph as they overtake the few other drivers on the highway.

“Dick didn’t mention it.” His voice is clipped, and he won’t face Roy. Roy snorts.

“Are you jealous right now, man?”

“Not at all.”

“You so are.”

Jason tenses. “As if you didn’t have steam coming out of your ears when I was telling you about Artemis.”

“That is so different! Are you for real? I thought I’d been a real home-wrecker.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t care.”

“Sure you don’t.”

Roy’s smiling as he looks at him, noting the blush rising up Jason’s neck and across his cheeks. He reaches out to left hand and pulls it off the wheel, luckily with no resistance, and presses a chaste kiss to Jason’s knuckles.

“You’re so cute when you’re flustered, you know.”

“I will leave you on the side of this highway. Like, the next rest stop we come across and you’re done.” Jason’s fighting a smile though, letting Roy link their fingers for a few minutes before pulling his hand away again and putting it back on the wheel.

He’s definitely a kid of Bruce Wayne’s, even if some days he’ll vehemently deny it.

“Back to Dick… He’s been texting a bit. He wants to know if you’re up to seeing him maybe, when we get to Gotham.”

Roy’s kinda completely forgotten that once he steps foot in Bat city there will inevitably be Bats to deal with. Roy isn’t sure who he’s more nervous to come across: Bruce, who he’d managed to piss off twice within as many months, or his best friend who he’d left bleeding out in his apartment.

“Listen, before you consider jumping out of this car while it’s moving at the prospect of seeing him, I wanna remind you that you agreed to come along. But also, if you’re having second thoughts…”

“It’s not that.”

Jason clicks his teeth closed.

“I wanna… Well I don’t necessarily want to go to Gotham. But I want to…” Roy really wants the car to swallow him whole, right into the passenger seat and down into the tarmac and maybe a few hundred miles into the Earth’s core for good measure. But also: “I wanna be with you. Even if that means Gotham and Bruce and Dick and everything else in that fuckin’ city.”

An hour after they’ve crossed the Wisconsin state line, at the exact moment Roy decides to lay his heart bare on his sleeve, the radio crackles to life on the last frequency it was left on, a shrill opera note cutting through the silence.

Jason scrambles for the volume button, and the silence stretches.

Roy decides for once in his life to be patient. 

—

After they’re checked into the motel Jason disappears quickly into the bathroom. Roy chews on a few pieces of jerky and flips through the Bible left on one of the nightstands, glancing up when he hears Jason shout out.

“Jay?”

He hears another muffled yell, and Roy approaches the bathroom door, knocking before slowly pushing it open.

“Gimme a hand?” Jason asks, twisted over trying to look himself in the mirror. He’s only in his boxers and the shower is heating up. ”I can’t get the last of the stitches out.”

There’s no hand towel in the bathroom. Roy pushes Jason under the spray, pulling his own shirt off and standing in behind him, lightly rubbing his fingers over the old stitching in an attempt to wash off the more stubborn bits that are still a little stuck to the skin.

Roy tries not to look at where the water is running down the dips of Jason’s spine. “What the hell did you even do?” 

“Oh. I fell off a building. My grappling hook broke just as I was a couple feet off the ground.”

Roy traces the pink scar with his finger and Jason shivers, goosebumps erupting down his arms. Roy trails down further; over his shoulder blade, down the centre of his back, and over an old bullet wound just above his hip. Jason’s still under the water, hands paused from where he was bringing the bar of soap up to his hair to wash it.

“Roy.” He says, sounds a little strangled, and Roy pulls him around to face him and angle their faces out of the way of the water to kiss him. He feels crazed, the hours in the truck with him and the days before that all jumbling together in his head. Jason pulls away as Roy groans, chapped lips kissing him on his cheeks before biting at his jaw lightly. Roy feels dizzy, hands wrapping around Jason and lips at his hairline as Jason kisses over his neck and the meaty part at his shoulder.

He kinda wishes he’d taken his shorts off. He feels Jason slip his thigh between his legs and pull him back so Jason is pressed against the shower wall, hands fumbling with the tap so the water turns off. He’s got one hand in Jason’s hair, angling his head back so he can kiss him again, teeth clacking before Jason is sucking his tongue into his mouth. 

His heart rate starts to slow as the adrenaline bleeds out of them both. He pulls back and pushes Jason’s wet hair off his forehead to kiss it, breathing deeply through his nose. Jason is panting himself, his chest rising quickly where it’s pressed up against Roy’s.

His shorts are heavy on his legs from all the water.

“I feel dizzy.” Jason says, as if Roy can’t only hear static, and the two of them laugh as they finally pull apart. Jason’s flushed all up his chest and neck but he’s looking right at Roy. 

“Maybe we should have had more of these road trips and motel stays a couple years ago.” His tone of voice is serious but sincere and it makes Roy want to immediately flee the building.

“We would have torn one another to shreds.”

“You really think so?”

Does he?  What he does think is that the reason he tried to ignore this for so long was because he was scared of this all blowing up in his face if it went wrong. But maybe things can change: once upon a time Roy was scared of Jason’s reaction to his drug addiction, and the alcoholism, and everything else wrong with him, yet if the past week and a half has shown him anything it’s that Jason is harder to get rid of than a stray cat.

“We’ve grown a lot since we were two vigilante’s putting our number on billboards for quick jobs.” He points out. Jason bites his bottom lip, nudging past Roy to pull the two bath towels off the rack and passing one over for him to pat himself dry. 

“I guess I was kind of an asshole, huh.” He twists in the mirror again to try and see the scar, mouth downturned when he gets a good view of it.

“I think we both had our moments.” Roy replies, but really they both know Jason’s pricklier exterior took a lot longer to break down than Roy’s. Roy towels his hair off roughly, his head cocked to the side when he pulls the towel down to look at Roy again.

“Do you ever regret it?”

It could be easy to say yes, or that that’s a big question for the middle of the night in a motel they don’t even know the name of. But it’s too easy to be honest. “Nah. Never.”

Jason smiles softly. He holds the towel close to his chest as Roy pulls his shorts off and hangs them over the shower door to dry off before they hit the road again in the morning.

“You gonna ask me if I ever do?” Jason asks, when they climb into bed next to one another. Roy considers it as he links their ankles together, eyes searching Jason’s face.

“Sometimes it’s hard to ask the questions you dread an answer to, Jaybird.”

“Oh.”

His pupils are dark in the dim light from the lamp on the bedside table. Roy can almost see his outline in them, hair longer than it has been in years and sporting a five o’clock shadow.

“I don’t think I’m gonna stay awake for much longer.” He whispers, thick lashes fanning over his cheek as his eyes fight to stay open. Roy yawns himself.

“I don’t regret it, though. I don’t know why the hell you think I would– Okay, actually, maybe I can see a few reasons why. But I…” he cuts off to yawn himself, jaw clicking. “I enjoyed our team ups.”

“Go to sleep, Jason. You can’t live off Starbucks Americanos forever, you know.”

Jason smiles, eyes closed. Roy reaches over behind himself to switch off the light. Roy smiles back but stays awake a little longer, the sound of Jason snoring an unfortunate comfort in the hours that sleep refuses to come. 

—

They finally get to the outskirts of Gotham as dusk is falling the next day, Jason having decided to take the ‘scenic route’ back for the last stretch of their drive. 

He seems to relax when they pass the city lines, which is weird but at the same time Roy gets it. Roy’s half expecting them to just drive straight through to Jason’s safe house, but instead he pulls into a side road and takes them down it for about twenty minutes until they pull up to a nondescript field.

There’s a simple fence outlining it with a polite ‘No Trespassers' sign hooked onto the gate. Jason pulls right up to it, the engine idling.

“You okay?” Roy asks, because Jason’s been quiet for the last hour or so and he’s worried that maybe both of them are imploding a little.

“Yeah. Come on.”

He turns the truck off. Leaves the key in the ignition and the door open as he vaults the fence into the field. Roy follows, but closes the doors because he doesn’t want any bugs feeling like it’s an invitation, and vaults over the fence too.

It surprises him that he’s still got that going for him, at least. Jason sits himself down a few feet away and Roy notices what he didn’t from the truck windshield: hundreds of wildflowers in their last week or so of bloom, white under the rising moonlight and their petals slightly swaying in the breeze.

“It isn’t quite the canola fields in North Dakota, but it’s still nice.” Jason comments, patting the ground next to him for Roy to sit. 

It’s quiet. Roy almost finds it hard to believe that they’re only twenty or so minutes out of Gotham city centre, but then again, the city has always had its hidden gems. Maybe he can understand why Jason still calls it home after all these years.

“I used to come here back in the day. Bruce used to know whoever it was that owned the land. Hell, he may have been the one who owned the land. Anyways, there used to be a massive tree in the middle of it where I’d sit under and read in the summer holidays.”

Roy can imagine it: Jason with his stacks of paperback books and sunblock slapped across his cheeks at the insistence of Alfred. 

“I used to get drunk in parks with Wally, but his metabolism would burn through it too fast for it to ever last long enough to be amusing.”

He should call Wally. And Donna. And he should talk to Dick, once he’s showered off the remnants of car seat smell and maybe slept more than seven hours in a bed that hasn’t been used by hundreds of others before him.

“I wish I’d known you when we were younger. You seemed like an utter terror.”

“Sure, ‘cus you were a complete angel?”

“Yeah, yeah. Terrible Todd and his Terrible Temper. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Roy nudges his shoulder against Jason, laughing, who nudges back. They keep their arms pressed against one another. Above them the sky turns from indigo to black.

Roy yawns where he’s sat, and Jason brushes his knuckles against his knee.

“Wanna go?”

“Mm.”

They stand. Roy ends up walking a little faster than Jason, making it over the fence a beat before he does. He doesn’t realise Jason hasn’t followed him until he turns around, Jason still stood at the fence. 

“Wait there.” He tells Roy as Roy approaches the passenger seat. Jason takes in a few deep breaths before he climbs over the fence and walks right up to Roy.

There’s a glint in his eye that makes Roy’s stomach flip.

He doesn’t know what Jason’s planning but goes with it anyways. Lets himself be backed up against the truck, Jason getting into his space and slipping his fingers slipping into his belt hoops.

Roy feels like his whole heart might burst, Jason slowly dipping his gaze down to his lips and back up to his eyes. He wants to make a wisecrack about something but doesn’t even get the chance to fully open his mouth before Jason is leaning up to kiss him.

It’s achingly tender. Gone is the tension from their kiss in the bathroom back in North Dakota and the rush from their make out last night. Jason is slow, his free hand coming up to cup Roy’s jaw, and Roy is happy to be kissed and lazily kisses back, smiling when Jason bites once on his bottom lip before he pulls away. 

“Okay. Now we can go.”

Roy just looks at him, amused, as Jason rounds the hood of the car and gets back into the driver's seat. They drive about ten minutes, Roy feeling more and more familiar as the neighbourhoods pass by.

“If you didn’t get it,” Jason says, voice thick, “I wanna be with you too.” 

He’d got it. Had got it the minute Jason had pulled him out of the bar and stayed with him in those first days of detox, when Jason had boarded the plane to Beijing no questions asked, when he didn’t immediately try to pull him back into it all when Roy had left him in Louisiana.

“Thank God. Could you imagine if we’d driven all this way and you didn’t?”

Chapter Text

The weeks turn to months turn to Winter in Gotham, and Roy ends up holed up in Jason’s apartment with him, the both of them attempting the whole cohabitation thing while also juggling Roy’s recovery and Jason’s… everything else.

It isn’t all rosy. Roy wakes some nights still, body clammy and muscles rigid under the sheets. His mind flits between the exercises he’s been given over the years to calm down; erratic. He breathes in through his nose, holds it for a few seconds, exhales. He counts his own fingers against his thumbs and runs through the grocery list he’s been adding to on the fridge for the past few days.

Jason stirs beside him, a hand slowly making its way to the nape of Roy’s neck.

Jason runs cold, still. It’s a comfort and a reminder all in one of exactly what’s wrong with the both of them; taken too early and brought back a little off , and Roy shivers as Jason’s fingernail accidentally scratches at his hairline.

“You wanna talk ‘bout it?” Jason asks, voice low. He sounds alert, like he might have been awake even longer than Roy and probably aware of the inner turmoil Roy was going through before his nightmare finally woke him up.

Roy counts his fingers again under the sheets, just for good measure. Slides one palm onto his sternum and feels the steady, if fast, pitter patter of his heart under his fingertips. He swallows, and shakes his head, and feels as Jason pulls his hand away to curl it around Roy’s other wrist.

It’s another bad night, and they repeat this ordeal another three times before Jason sighs in resignation next to him, the sun just breaching the horizon.

“Come on.” He says, kicking the sheets off the both of them and flicking his lamp on. The warm glow across the room breaks through some of the horrors Roy has dreamt up for himself and he shuffles, uncertain, before sitting up.

“You know, you can’t just keep taking me on joy rides across the city every time I have a bad night, Jay.”

Roy says this, even though he easily accepts the hoodie Jason holds out to him. He pulls it on, slides his hands in the front pocket, and follows Jason out of the apartment and down into the underground carpark, his breath blowing out in front of him in clouds as the cold air hits them. It’s almost too cold for them to be out in just their sleep pants and hoodies, Gotham’s Autumn harsher than Star City’s by a long mile, but within a few steps he’s already in the car and watching Jason fumble with the heating, warm air blowing across his knees.

They sit in the car park for a little bit as the windscreen de-fogs. Roy taps his fingers against one knee, rhythmic, and Jason sends him a searching look for a split second before he’s turning to look out of the rear-view window, reversing them out of the spot.

Roy’s mood has him in a bad place, and there’s a sick feeling of guilt that crawls along his skin the further they drive across town.

Jason’s got better things to do these days than sit around with his ex-addict boyfriend struggling to make sense of the world post-resurrection, and it’s for that reason that Roy doesn’t allow himself to drift off against the window, Jason humming the tune of some eighties hit playing through the window as they otherwise drive in silence.

—

"Harper."

The voice is muffled, a bit like it's coming from underwater. Roy shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut.

"Hey. Roy. Are you awake?"

The voice is closer now, a bit clearer. There's something familiar about it; inviting. Roy turns and blinks his eyes open, breathing in deeply.

Something slaps him on his bare shoulder lightly, rough fingertips against his skin.

"I gotta go, something’s come up."

Roy turns again to catch a glimpse of Jason’s back as he leaves his bedroom. Jason has opened the blinds of the one window in their room and already made up his side of the bed. Outside the bedroom, likely coming from the living area, is the sound of the Good Morning Gotham news show. 

Roy can’t hear well enough anymore to pick out what exactly is being said, but can pick out that it’s the usual news reporter duo, the one that Jason alleges are secretly seeing each other when the cameras are off.

Roy sighs into the empty room and rubs his hands down his face, groaning. He kicks his sheets off and shuffles into the living area, eyes immediately flicking to the breaking news report on the flatscreen. He squints at it, brain catching up to him as he notes Jason’s usual Red Hood duffel bag sprawled across the couch, Jason in the corner pulling on his kevlar shirt.

“Jay.”

Another explosion can be seen on the screen. The headline ‘Commotion in Central’ flashes up on the screen, and Jason grimaces.

“It’s fine.”

“What did you do ?” Roy accuses, and Jason waves him off as he approaches.

“Come on, you think this was me?”

“It has something to do with what you and Artemis were working on though, right?” Roy says, not letting Jason pull him into his usual embrace. Jason clicks his tongue against his teeth.

“Perhaps…” 

Roy sighs. Their agreement was that while Roy was still working on his sobriety and post-Sanctuary everything was that he wouldn’t have to get involved in any Arsenal (or Red Hood) work. He finds himself itching these days, though, eager to get out – if only just to make sure Jason is staying out of stupid shit.

Jason kisses him on the mouth, hard, and pats him on the cheek.

“I’ll be home before dark. Promise.”

Roy stands in the living room for some minutes as the news reports continue to stream in, knowing that their hypotheses on who is behind the attack are all incorrect, that it’s a new player most of them won’t even know the name of, and that Jason and Artemis’s counter-actions have just ruined months of work put in as an attempt to destroy the city.

He turns off the news as they bring on a reporter from the scene and sits back on the couch. He winces as he does – bare legs accidentally sitting on a sheathed knife Jason left behind in his haste to leave – and sighs again.

Another day begins.

—

Three days after the clean up in Central Gotham, and two days after Artemis had gallivanted off ‘somewhere West’, the hospital waiting room is quiet when Roy steps out into it, hands tucked into his jean pockets.

Jason is spread out across one of the plastic chairs, arms folded across his Gotham Knights jersey and face covered by his cap. Roy smiles as he walks up to him and nudges Jason's ankle with his toe.

"Jaybird."

Jason looks up and gives Roy a smile of his own, standing to full height. They don’t touch each other much still when they’re in public, aware of prying eyes and nosy members of the public. But Jason does clap Roy on the arm as he steers him into the reception area, the workers behind the desk paying them no mind as they walk past. 

Jason turns his cap backwards as they exit. "Did it go okay?" 

The hospital car park is as empty as the waiting room. Roy figures these private hospitals probably don't get as much clientele as the places he’s used to frequenting, and he nods as he registers Jason’s question.

"Yeah, it was… Fine."

It had been a condition of Ollie's, that he had to enter real therapy if he wasn't going to go to one of the various rehab centres picked out for him. Ollie had given him a list of psych’s that spanned the entire West Coast, and Roy, with his teeth pulling at the raw skin of his lips, had sent the details across of the one guy he had found for consideration.

A compromise. 

His new therapist is middle aged and plain and knows nothing about Roy's connections to Arsenal or the Titans or Red Hood, and most importantly, he lives near Gotham. Roy thinks it's great. 

He just wishes Jason didn't jump out of his skin every time the third Thursday of the month for Roy's sessions rolled around, his own apprehension against the faceless therapist seeping from his body and into the space they both cohabitate these days. 

Roy’ll bring that up with him one day. Maybe.

"Just fine?" Jason asks, as they approach the car. He's swindled a long-term rental from some car dealer in Gotham, and Roy is only half grateful it's some sedan model instead of the God-awful truck he drove them around in across the country. 

Roy squints at the car and bites at a bit of loose thumb cuticle. "He thinks I've got control issues." 

He doesn't see Jason, who's halfway ducking into the driver's seat. He does hear him bark out a laugh, though, loud and surprised.

Roy schools the crack of a smile forming at his own lips and gets into the passenger seat.

"Asshole." He says, because it's not really what he wants to spend the twenty-five minute drive home discussing. 

Jason squeezes his thigh and starts the ignition.

—

Ollie calls sometimes. Asks about Roy has been doing, how’s the therapy, how’s Jason, how’s the therapy ?

Roy must answer his questions well enough because Ollie stays holed up in Star City, never deeming his estranged son’s recovery anything worth getting worried over – and Roy will unpick that, sometimes, when he’s sat in the bland room with his bland psychiatrist – happy enough to keep updated via stilted phone calls and bank transfers bigger than most people’s monthly pay cheques.

Jason disappears sometimes too, which means he’s talking to a Bat, and apart from Dick sometimes swinging by inbetween everything else he seems to have going on, Roy’s social life seems to be worse than it ever was before the Sanctuary.

“I might give Donna a call.” He tells Jason, one evening. Their legs are tangled together on the couch, Jason picking at the label of an alcohol-free beer, Roy’s eyes unfocused on the movie they’ve been meaning to watch for weeks.

Jason stretches. “That would be good.”

“Yeah?” Roy asks. He’s aware, there’s history even between those two – missions and trips long ago to the Justice League tower back when they were both Robin and Wonder Girl, but like most of Jason’s friendships pre-death, he tends to keep most of them at a distance.

“It will be good for you. Get out of the house without me trailing behind you.”

Jason’s voice is even, but something about it stings slightly. Roy stiffens.

“You don’t have to follow me everywhere I go, you know. I’m not going to immediately dive off the deep end if I’m unsupervised for a few hours.”

It’s a shitty thing to say and Roy already knows it as the words are leaving his mouth. He’s had ample chance to leave the apartment – Hell, leave Gotham – and for his own reasons has decided not to. Jason’s grip tightens on the neck of his beer bottle, nail scratching through the label and ripping at it. His brow furrows.

“I know that.” Defensive. The two of them pull away from each other slightly, legs separating as Jason pulls his knees closer to his chest and Roy plasters himself closer to the couch cushions.

Something happens in the movie between the two main characters and Roy swallows, throat clicking, as he tries to re-engage with it before it becomes a complete waste of time.

Roy reckons he should probably say something, make an attempt at apologising or something, but before he can get his jaw working again Jason stands, beer bottle discarded on the coffee table, and makes his way to the kitchen.

Roy’s nails are bitten to hell. He bites at the cuticle of his thumb, hissing when he pulls too hard and the skin comes away from the nail bed, stinging. Jason is silent in the kitchen, taking care to close the cupboards quietly. Roy could make an educated guess at what he was doing but decides against it, sucking the blood off his thumb and turning to face the TV.

He doesn’t particularly enjoy the churning feeling he gets in his stomach, the longer Jason stays in the kitchen. There’s an increasing feeling in him to flee – to get the fuck out of the apartment, to get somewhere away from Jason and everything they’ve got together. Hard to fuck something up if you destroy it in a blind panic, the mean little voice in his head says to him, and Roy frowns at the TV and jiggles his knee up and down on the couch.

“Hey.” Jason says, maybe a few seconds or minutes or hour later, and Roy looks up, chest constricting.

He’s holding a bag of chips, Roy’s favourite flavour, and when Roy looks at him he chucks them to the couch, the bag landing with a soft crunch on his chest.

Jason’s face is unreadable, but it makes something uncurl in Roy’s stomach. “I’ll make dinner, but it’ll be a while. Eat something. Call Donna.” 

Jason turns back into the kitchen, scratching a hand through his hair. Roy picks at the chip packet and slowly tears it open at the top, making sure to use the hand he wasn’t gnawing on to pull out the chips covered in salt and vinegar. 

It strikes him, as he pulls out his phone, he doesn’t have a number to get in touch with Donna in the first place.

—

It’s freezing the next day, a good few degrees colder than it has been in past weeks. He and Jason went to bed the night before without discussing their conversation on the couch, and while he knows it will be something that will bite him in the ass in days to come, Roy doesn’t particularly feel like bringing it up while Jason is already forcing him into an activity he already isn’t fond of in the first place.

“All those legs and yet it’s me with the better pace.” Jason nudges, slowing to a jog as he turns to face Roy, continuing his path backwards.

Roy wonders how much shit he’d be in if he tripped him over, but decides against it.

“Not all of us got resurrected by a magical pit of youth, you know.” It’s a low blow, but Roy’s had stitch for the past mile and a half, and Jason doesn’t seem to show any appetite for cutting their eight-mile run down to six.

“I could always give Talia a call, if that’s what you’re insinuating.” Jason bites back, though he does turn to face forward. Roy pushes on, keeping pace.

“You’re a dick,” His breath is getting a bit shallow, but he’ll blame that on the near-freezing temperatures. “Look, about last night… It just… It wasn’t what I meant to say. But you could learn to handle my bad moods a little better than deciding seven am runs are the fix-it to our communication problems.”

Jason comes to a slow then, jogging on the spot for a few seconds before stilling. It’s disgusting and, Roy supposes, a little admirable, that he’s actually managed to work up a sweat already. 

Jason blows a bit of his fringe out of his eye. 

“I’m… If I had known you were gonna spend most of your time here sat around and feeling like you can’t do anything else I would have told you to go with one of those psych’s Ollie found for you.” Jason’s eyes dart around a bit as he’s talking, almost like he’s checking for people listening in.

Though, this is Jason. So he absolutely will be checking for people listening in.

“You can call your friends. Even if it’s–” There’s a grimace, barely concealed, “Even if it’s Dick and you want to invite him over for a sports game or what the fuck you two get up to when you hang out. I mean I’d appreciate a heads up when he’s coming over but…”

There’s a flush across Jason’s cheeks and ears, which tells Roy he feels like he’s been put on the spot. He seems frustrated, too, though the rational part of Roy (which doesn’t get as much time to raise its voice these days as it used to) seems to argue that Jason’s frustrations appear internal, and not at all directed towards Roy.

Roy presses his palm into side to squash the remainder of his stitch feeling, and nods.

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Jason echoes. He still looks a bit put out.

“I’ll… I’ll call Dick tonight. I need to get Donna’s number from him and you said you were out anyways, so…”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

It’s way too cold for them to be fucking about in the middle of the park, both of them unable to properly apologise or accept an apology if either of them did, but Roy stands even though his balls feel like they’ve curled up and died and Jason looks at him like a puzzle he can’t quite figure out.

Jason’s lips curl into a cheeky smile. “Two more miles?” He finally breaks their impasse with, and Roy scoffs before smacking him on the side of the head.

“Feel free, Jaybird. I’m going home.”

Jason chuckles then, pushing into Roy’s space and smacking him back on the arm. His fingers linger, warm for once through the thermals and layers Roy has on, and Roy has to look away from where Jason’s looking up at him with wide sparkling eyes before he does something stupid like kiss him in the middle of a park in Gotham.

—

“Do you think there is an ulterior motive for Jason to want to keep an eye on you at all times, as you believe?” His therapist asks, after some moments of the two of them sitting in silence.

Roy picks at one of the fraying threads at the knee of his ripped knees, and shrugs.

“Just trying to figure out any of Jason’s ulterior motives is…” Roy thinks back to being picked up in the bar in the middle of nowhere, of Jason and him sticking their number up on a billboard in search of work, of him sitting on his hands to physically stop himself from picking up to call the other man in the months they were apart. “He’s not the easiest guy to read.”

“Hmm. Do you want him to be?”

Roy looks up at the desk behind where they’re both sat, bare except for a closed laptop and a notepad. He averts his eyes back to his knee.

“It can be frustrating feeling like you’re always a step behind someone. Especially when, in the past, you seemed to always be in sync with one another.”

“How so?” His therapist prompts, and Roy cringes. Increasingly, getting into his and Jason’s partnership means trying to skirt around the fact they’re not just Jason and Roy but Red Hood and Arsenal, and it’s getting harder to be vague in the examples he’s giving. 

“Uh…” Roy scratches his wrist. “We used… We used to work together. Quite high-stakes stuff, the kinda stuff that could get one of us injured or killed if we weren’t careful. And I guess, in work like that, you learn to trust the people you’re partnered with – learn to read their body language, think alongside them so neither of you are left catching up to the other when you have to act.”

“Ah. And with you no longer working at all, it feels you’re out of sync with how things used to be?”

Roy shrugs again. “I guess.”

“Does Jason still work in this… Job?” 

“Yeah. He has a new team though, but still the same sort of work.” There’s a doubt that claws itself up his throat; that maybe only the two of them worked when they were Red Hood and Arsenal because they needed the stakes of the job to keep up with one another otherwise. Now that Roy isn’t in the same stakes, they’re unequal. 

“You seem upset about something.” His therapist comments, shuffling in his seat to cross one leg over the other. Roy tries to relax his shoulders and notes they’ve crept right up under his shoulders. “Have you at all… Voiced these feelings with him? I suspect, having had you as a partner for some time, he probably felt some loss too when he moved onto his other team.”

Roy snorts a bit at that. Jason’s lived more lives than the both of them in that room together. Donned different outfits and aliases depending on what team he had to play for at a particular time in his life. What Roy knows, intrinsically, is that under it all, Jason can always only count on one person entirely – and that’s himself. 

“Jason isn’t like that. He’s adaptable. I mean, when we first started working together we almost killed each other, he was always bitching about my habits and how I made decisions on different stuff.”

“And how did you respond to that?”

That gives Roy some pause. The frayed thread on his jeans comes loose, ripped from where he was tugging at it with his thumbnail. “I suppose I didn’t exactly take it lying down.”

The clock on the wall chimes into the next hour, and his therapist smiles.

“I think you should consider that, the next time the two of you get into conflict. See if you can’t…” He waves a hand in the space in front of them “Get yourself to that partnership again, instead of relying on the bitching to get you through.”

Roy swallows, nodding. The two of them stand, and Roy shakes his therapist's hand as he always does, and leaves down the quiet hospital hallway like he always does, and makes his way to the waiting room too.

Jason is still sat there, hunched over in one of the too-small waiting room chairs, looking out of place. The words of his therapist wash over him as Roy approaches, and as he nudges at Jason’s shin with his toe, the smile he gets from the other man is blinding.

—

“Well, well, well. Fancy hearing from you, stranger.” Donna’s voice is light and teasing and Roy feels something dislodge somewhere in his ribcage. He smiles down the phone.

“Hey, Donna.”

“Hey, Roy. I’d ask how you were but a birdie told me you’re still in Gotham, so clearly things are terrible.”

He actually laughs at that, seating himself on the couch and pulling one of the pillows onto his lap. The apartment is quiet, Jason having left some time in the early hours for a stakeout. In the background, the washing machine starts its spin cycle.

“Well, usually staying in Gotham for a long period of time would make me want to slit my wrists, but…”

“But, this time there’s Bruce’s black sheep kid to keep you company?”

Roy can picture Donna raising her eyebrows as she says this, and he clicks his tongue against his teeth.

“Just how much has Dick told you, exactly?”

“Oh, come on. Just about everything, but you know I always wanna hear it from you, too.”

“Yeah, yeah… I–” Roy scrubs his free hand over his face. “Jason obviously makes it more enticing.”

“Is he being nice to you?”

Roy stalls, wondering just how much everything exactly means in terms of what Dick has told her. Roy hasn’t ever gone into the details of his and Jason’s relationship – platonic or otherwise – with his friend, but he’s a detective in his own right. He probably smelt the bad mood on Roy the other day the minute he pulled Roy into a one-armed hug.

“He is. I can’t say with one-hundred percent confidence I’m being the nicest to him, though.”

Donna hums, and he can hear her shuffling on the other end of the line. “I mean, I guess the thing about you choosing to date the Red Hood, of all people, is that, he probably gets it the most. You know, out of everyone.”

Roy slumps against the back of the couch.

“Feel like you’ve been swappin’ notes with my therapist.”

“Oh, honey. I’d never be crazy enough to go into a profession like that.” She says to him, and Roy bites back a smile. 

“Anyways, enough about me. How… How are you? Up to anything? Surprised you’re even on Earth.”

“Oh, you know. Just helping lead the Titans, all of that fun stuff. Dating, which is less fun, but I’ve gotten a fair few free dinners out of it, so who am I to complain?”

“Donna Troy dating ? Jesus, maybe it is time I leave Gotham.”

“Ha, ha. You bring that grump of a boyfriend of yours with you, and maybe I’ll invite you to my new place.”

It’s the first offer beyond Dick, really, of someone showing a genuine interest in being okay to rebuild bridges with him. Roy feels himself flush, pride and nervousness swirling through him. 

“I– Yeah. Maybe in a few weeks or something we could come over.”

There’s a silence on the phone, and Roy feels like he’s maybe messed up somewhere. Suddenly, there’s a choked off sound, quickly cut off, before Roy hears a sniffle.

“Oh, Donna. Don’t cry, I didn’t wanna make you upset.”

“Shush, shush. It’s not just you it’s… Well it is you, obviously. Last I saw of you really you were running around with Cheshire and fighting with us all and then you were dead and then you weren’t and then you disappeared and now–” She cuts herself off with a big sigh, and Roy feels the weight of everything he’s been putting off the past couple months crash down on him. He clutches the phone in his grip.

“I’m just glad you’re okay. And you’re getting better – or, it seems you’re really trying to, this time. You deserve to be happy and I know we all had a joke and a laugh back in the days when you and Jason were teamed up but… I get it. It works when at first I guess I thought it shouldn’t. And if he’s the guy who can go out and drag you back without you kicking and screaming then screw what the others say.”

Roy isn’t sure who the ‘others’ she’s referring to could be, though he has some ideas, and that’s something to file away for later. Instead he just nods.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just don’t go trying to kick our asses again, Harper, or I’ll put you in the ground for real.” 

It’s a joke that maybe many others wouldn’t get away with - wouldn’t even risk - but Roy finds himself barking out a laugh anyways, laughing harder when he hears a little shocked sound from Donna before she’s laughing along too, giggles tapering off to silence again after a minute or so.

“I am sorry.”

“I know, Roy. You’re not the kinda guy to call if you weren’t.”

That’s… A consolation, of sorts.

“Anyways, I’m sorry to cut this so short, but I have another dinner planned tonight and this hair won’t curl itself.” Donna says, and Roy hums.

“It sure won’t. I still remember the burns Wally got when he tried to help you all those years ago.”

“Oh, don’t even remind me. Goodnight, Roy.”

“Night, Donna.”

“Love you.” She tells him, as if they’re teenagers again and best friends and think they’re undefeatable. Maybe one of those could be true again, though.

“Love you too.”

—

Roy’s awoken, abruptly, by the sound of banging coming from the front door. He feels his blood chill, awake immediately even though seconds ago he was in a deep sleep, and he listens for another moment before the banging continues.

He gets out of bed, and makes his way slowly to the front room. The door handle is shaking, like there’s someone trying to get in on the other side. 

It isn’t like he’s completely defenceless these days, like he was when Jason first found him. He’s got his fitness up a bit from the runs Jason takes him on, and he can still throw a decent punch if he needs to.

He waves his hand over the peep hole in the door and, once satisfied that there’s no one on the other side who wants to blow through it with a gun, peeps his eyes through. He isn’t sure whether to be distressed or amused by the sight he’s met with, but a panicked noise does let its way out of his lips.

“Jesus Christ.”

He unlocks the door. Rips it open. Looks at the state of Red Hood currently bleeding onto their threshold and pulls him onto his feet and distributes his weight onto Roy. He just prays there’s no CCTV or nosy neighbours with a video camera doorbell that would have picked this up.

“The fuck, Jason?” Roy hisses, kicking the door closed behind them both and hiking Jason further up his side. There’s still blood pooling in his kevlar, swiping across Roy’s side and some of it dripping onto his bare foot. Despite how cold Jason runs all the time, the blood is hot, and Roy pulls the both of them through the apartment and into the ensuite.

Jason’s hardly lucid, an indicator that he has clearly been bleeding out for some time.

“Where the fuck are those damn Bats when you actually need them, huh.” Roy mutters, turning the water onto warm and letting the shower head heat in the bathtub. He lowers Jason into the tub fully clothed, makes an attempt at pulling his shoes off gently, and then makes work at rinsing off the kevlar.

The wound looks long but not too deep, but Roy’s worried that there’s more damage under the kevlar than what he can see through the gash in the fabric. He makes an attempt at pulling it off, one handed, before he abandons the shower head and rips at it, the damaged material falling away to uncover a blood-stained undershirt.

He rinses the wound again, pleased that after a few rinses and pauses the blood flow seems to be slowing down. Jason is shivering, now, the shock setting in as any of the adrenaline left in his system finally wears off, and Roy shuts off the water so he can dig around in the cabinet for a piece of gauze big enough to cover the wound.

When he turns back around, Jason is struggling. His arms are making an attempt to bring his waterlogged shirt over his head. Roy tsks and brings his hands down, surgical scissors in his hand to cut away at the fabric instead.

“You must be out of your damn mind. I must be out of my damn mind.” Jason flinches when the scissors slide against his rib cage, and Roy presses his lips together. “You said you were on a stakeout. Now here I am like some deranged housewife trying to figure out if I have any right to tell you off or not.”

“N… N… Not…” Jason bites out, teeth chattering, and Roy flattens the gauze in his hand before pressing it firmly against Jason’s side. He’ll need stitches, the wound spanning most of the length of Roy’s hand, but Jason for now bites down on the sting of the gauze against raw flesh and rests his forehead on Roy’s shoulder, breathing laboured.

“Sorry.” He says, teeth still chattering. Roy gulps, feels guilty at the fact two people today have apologised to him when they really have nothing to apologise over, and kisses Jason on his forehead.

“You okay?” Roy asks, finally, when Jason feels less like he’s about to jump out of his skin and the rushing of his own blood in his ears subsides.

Jason nods, once. “Yeah. I wasn’t followed. I had… Batgirl was out, but I didn’t want Bruce to know. Jus’ wanted to get home.”

Motherfucker, Roy thinks, as if that admission hasn’t just shattered his entire doubtful outlook on their whole relationship. 

“You got any painkillers in here?” Roy asks, and Jason stills before slowly raising his head.

“No… Because that would be super irresponsible, keeping painkillers around two idiots who used to be addicted to ‘em.”

Roy’s face flattens.

“Jason.”

“Fine, ow- Ow! Fine. Second shelf, in the toothpaste box.”

Roy places Jason’s drier hand over his to press down on Jason’s side and pulls back to turn to the cupboard, pushing past some cotton buds and bars of soap before he pulls out a faded box of Colgate. It rattles when he picks it up and he frowns, a multitude of emotions rushing through him as he thumbs the box open and tips a few of the pills into his hand.

He has no desire at all to take them, but can’t help consider for a moment what it might feel like if he did. The weightlessness, the fogginess, all the good stuff that comes once the drug finally settles in his bloodstream.

“Harper. You with me?” Jason croaks, and then it shatters. The illusion, the feeling – Roy blinks and he’s back in his shared ensuite, Jason sat in a puddle of his watery blood, clutching at his side and looking at Roy like he might bolt. 

He holds his hand out and fills the cup on the side of the sink with some water, passing it over to Jason once he gingerly plucked the pills off of his palm and popped them on his tongue.

“You uh…” Roy coughs, closing the toothpaste box. “You may wanna hide those later on. Just in case.”

Jason nods and closes his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose.

“You okay?” Roy asks again. Because it’s been a while since Jason’s kept his guard down long enough to be hurt like this. Because it’s been even longer since they’ve patched one another up. Because Roy isn’t sure he is, and he needs to know one of them has their shit together for the moment.

“I’m good. Gonna be a fucking pain to get the blood off the carpet though.” Jason says, which reassures Roy that he will be absolutely fine.

“Think you can take your pants off from there?”

“Oh, so forward.” Jason jokes, tries to wink and instead winces as his butt slides a bit in the tub.

Roy crouches down. “That serves you right.” He tells him, pulling off damp socks. Jason flips him off with his spare hand but otherwise sits silently as Roy wrestles with his belt. Jason links his arm around Roy’s shoulders to be brought to kneeling position so Roy can pull his cargo pants off him, and now that the bleeding has been controlled he decides to pull the remaining half of his shirt off too.

He kneels at the tub, doesn’t resist the urge to bring his palm up to Jason’s cheek, smiling softly when Jason leans into it and lets Roy rub his thumb across his lower lip.

“Flirting with a man when he’s down? That’s rough.” Jason mumbles, lips catching on the tip of Roy’s thumb.

Roy hums. “What can I say? Seeing you all wet and pathetic gets me going.”

“Aw, fuck. Don’t make me laugh. Or at least wait til’ the painkillers have kicked in fully.”

“Do I even wanna know what the hell kinda concoction it is I gave you?”

A pause.

“If it makes you feel any better, I got ‘em from Leslie.”

Roy is undecided on if it that does make him feel better, so he keeps quiet. Watches as over the next few minutes Jason’s pupils begin to dilate, his head dropping further into Roy’s hand.

“Okay, Jaybird. Let’s get you stitched up.”

He pulls out the suture kit from the cabinet. Threads the needle with hands as steady as they were back when Roy could hit a bullseye from a couple hundred metres out, and doesn’t flinch when Jason bites into his bicep when the needle first breaks skin.

He thinks Jason passes out somewhere between him being half way and three quarters way done, his head lolling on Roy’s shoulder as he finishes the last few threads.

“Man. I forgot how much getting stabbed sucks.” Jason says, voice echoing against the quiet of the bathroom. Roy says nothing in response, afraid to mess up his concentration. Jason stills until Roy is finally tying off the thread and cutting the needle away. He pulls out a fresh bit of gauze, pats at Jason’s side with antiseptic wipes until he’s certain the area is clean, before taping the gauze around the wound and stepping back to wash his hands at the sink.

Jason looks a bit dazed, still, hands loose at his side, back slumped.

“Stay here. I’m gonna get the bed ready.”

Jason grunts in affirmation, well and truly spent. Roy pulls a clean towel out from the cupboard and lays it on Jason’s side of the mattress, knowing already he’ll start bitching in the morning if he gets any blood on the sheets. Pulls out some pyjama pants too, because he’s a charmer, and flicks the lamps on in the room so they don’t trip over one another and completely fuck up all his hard work.

When he gets back into the bathroom Jason is leant over the bath, hair drooping over his forehead into his eyelashes. Roy’s just noticing the few scrapes and scratches on his cheek and knuckles, thinks he should probably sit with him another few minutes and clean those up at least, when Jason looks up at him stead and smiles softly at him.

“Harper. Take me to bed, will ya?”

It should be jarring; Jason, cheesy and lax, grinning like the cat who got the cream as Roy helps him out of the tub and into their room. It should be jarring, this whole situation – there are days, still, when Roy feels like he’s going to wake up and this has all been some drug-induced dream.

They settle into bed though.. Jason is on his back, careful not to jostle the bandages. Roy turns on his side so he can face him, fingers coming up to brush Jason’s hair off his face.

“You know tomorrow you will have to tell me what the fuck happened, right?” Roy asks.

Jason squirms. “Kinda hoped I’d got off the hook for it.”

“Cute.”

“Sure you don’t just wanna forget about the whole ordeal and we continue as usual tomorrow morning.”

“Mmm. Is that gonna be before or after you’re begging me to change your stitches?”

Jason sniffs. Waves his hand in the air. “I could just go see Leslie. And I wouldn’t have to tell her. And if I did, you couldn’t ask her about it because of doctor-patient confidentiality."

“Or I could just tell Alfred.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Jason says, but the corner of his lip is turned up in a smile. “Fine. In the morning, yes, I’ll tell you.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

There’s silence. Roy thinks maybe Jason has passed out again.

“Love you.” Roy says, into the silence, and coughs to clear his throat again. His phone call with Donna has clearly got to his head already, and he feels his cheeks flame up. 

In between them, Jason links their fingers together.

“Love you too, Harper.”

—

Jason is groggy when the two of them wake the next morning, covers pulled to his neck and eyes slow to follow Roy as he makes his way across the room getting dressed.

“Hey big guy.” Roy grins down at him, and Jason slowly pulls an arm out from under the duvet to flip him off. 

“I need to check your stitches. Dying of sepsis wouldn’t suit you.”

Jason groans and mumbles something under his breath Roy can’t quite catch before he sits up. His torso is stained in some places where some of the blood dried on his skin, and as Roy pulls away the bandages he notes that the edges of the wound have started to bruise.

It still looks clean, though. The stitches have held too, which is surprising, considering the last time Roy had ever had to patch someone up had been well over a year ago.

“You wanna shower or should I just get you a damp towel?” Roy looks up at Jason from where he’s crouched in between his knees, and catches Jason looking at him with the same searching face he’s tended to look at Roy with over the past few weeks. Roy bristles.

“What?”

Jason frowns. “What?”

“You lookin’ at me like…” Roy can’t even describe it himself. Jason’s eyebrows furrow even further and Roy shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

“Am I not allowed to look at you?” Jason asks, and Roy hates the fact that he can still be a nefarious son of a bitch just hours after he was bleeding out in their bathtub. Still, it brings his last conversation with his therapist to the forefront of his mind again.

Roy goes to swat at Jason’s knee but at the last minute is overtaken with the urge to lean up to kiss him instead. It’s tender, more so than he was going for, but Jason immediately curls a hand around Roy’s neck to hold him in place and kisses him back, only pulling back when he leans up too far and his stitches pull.

Roy stays hunched over him, his arms planted at Jason’s sides, eyes closed as Jason’s breath fans onto the hollow of his neck.

“You ever think about how we’re probably both way too fucked up to make this work?” Roy ends up asking, hates that his voice is barely above a mumble, and Jason is still under him as he considers the question. 

“Nah.”

“Really?” Roy asks, leaning back to look Jason in the eye. Jason’s eyes have a bit of focus to them again, and maybe Roy is a real asshole, bringing this conversation up when the painkillers will only just be leaving his system, but his voice is steady when he answers:

“You’re probably one of the best fuckin’ things that’s ever happened to me. Why would I ever think about losing that?”

Roy feels like he’s been punched. Jason, for all his ability to skirt around a subject for as long as humanly possible, also has a unique knack for hitting people right where it hurts when he wants to. It’s jarring.

Roy licks his lips to pass some extra time and resist the urge to bolt out of the room. “Bet you never considered you’d find yourself here when you came to pick me up from that bar, huh?” 

Jason smiles.

“‘Course I did. You ever known me to dive head first into a situation without thinking through it in every meticulous detail?” 

“I should have left you for the neighbours to find this morning.” Roy sighs, finally standing to full height and crossing his arms over his chest. He doesn’t miss how Jason’s eyes linger on one bicep, or how they trail over to the tattoo on his chest, but he doesn’t mention it either.

Jason pulls his own arms over his middle, and sucks air through his teeth. “You wouldn’t have. You care too much about what that woman in apartment 39 cares about you.”

“Maybe...”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe.”

They stay like that for another moment, just looking at one another – assessing, sizing up their next move. Roy breaks first. Roy breaks first, because in their shared room in their shared apartment, it probably won’t kill him or leave him heartbroken and spiralling. He leans down and kisses Jason again because the past few weeks has felt like they’ve been more begrudging roommates than boyfriends, even though just referring to one another as that makes him cringe still, and he’s missed being in Jason’s space without feeling like he’s trampling all over it.

“Help me up?” Jason asks, when Roy pulls away for the last time, and Roy nods before he wraps one arm around Jason’s lower back and pulls him to standing.

Jason’s lips curl up into a smile and Roy side eyes him as they make their way into the ensuite.

“Don’t even.” Roy warns, and Jason gapes.

“You have absolutely no idea what I was gonna say!”

“I have an idea. Something about you, and me, in a hot shower together, and you trying that whole ‘oh I can’t possibly scrub myself down’ act you always put on.”

Jason sniffs. “Well, my range of motion is limited–”

“I’m not having shower sex with you not even twelve hours after you’ve been stabbed, idiot.”

He turns on the shower and leaves Jason to scowl in the middle of the bathroom alone. The grazes on his face have scabbed over in the night, and he really just looks a bit pathetic. Once the water warms up, he pulls the door open and guides his arms towards it for Jason to stand under the spray.

“Seriously. Harper. You can’t possibly think I can clean all the blood off my back by myself, right?” Jason asks, as Roy closes the door behind him, and smiles at him through the glass. 

—

Winter comes in hues of grey and more grey, snow finally falling a few days before Christmas, and Roy watches from the window of their bedroom as kids below take advantage of the district school closures and set up snowball fights in the street below.

“We could go down there, show them a thing or two.” Jason comments from beside him, slurping at his Americano, and Roy sends him a flat look.

“Are you twelve?”

“No. I did die at fifteen though, so…”

“Oh for fuck– You know what, if you wanna go and get pummeled by some kids in the street, be my guest. I need a good laugh.” Roy tells him, and presses his nose against where his breath has fogged up the glass. Jason titters, pushing at his face and wiping away the marks, and Roy smirks.

Jason makes no other efforts to move, though, instead bringing his mug up to his lips again. Roy holds his hand out after a few seconds and grins wider when Jason rolls his eyes but still hands the mug to him.

He hates his coffee black, which is the sole reason Jason has started drinking his that way, but he’s freezing and trying to have a nice moment, so he takes a mouthful anyways. 

“Listen, not to ruin this or anything…” Jason starts, as he plucks the mug back out of Roy’s fingers and into his own. “But Bruce invited us over for dinner next week. And there were thinly veiled threats towards yours truly if you didn’t show up again. So obviously, I told him you’d be there and we’d bring a mac and cheese.”

Roy sighs. “Of course you did.”

“Look, I am less happy about this than you. But I figure, we show up early, get in Alfred’s good graces, stay long enough at least to sample the starters and then we bounce.”

Family dinners remind Roy that he should probably call Ollie at some point in the week too, pretend like he hasn’t been purposefully avoiding the fact Christmas is just around the corner, and continue to paw off Ollie’s attempts at getting him back to Star City for the new year.

“Sure.” At the very least, he might be able to catch Dick. 

—

They don’t end up catching Dick, or Alfred, or making it to the Manor at all. Batman falls four stories on patrol one evening and is lucky – depending on who you ask – that Catwoman happened to be in the area to get him out before things could have escalated any more than they already had.

Bruce Wayne feigns a skiing injury to cover up the broken ankle on the evening news the day after it happened, and Jason makes a pointed effort to record the segment on both the TV and his phone, laughing to himself throughout the rest of the evening whenever he seems to remember it. Roy’s just glad they both seem to be headed for a somewhat normal holiday season. 

He reminds Jason anyways that there was a promise of mac and cheese and a few nights later they curl up again on the couch together, reattempting to watch the movie they never finished when Roy first up the thought of calling Donna.

“I can’t even remember the reason we had for wanting to watch this in the first place.” Jason comments about half an hour in, and Roy bites against the spoon as he finishes the last of his meal.

He stays silent as they watch the protagonist struggle to graduate high school. Jason shifts his legs against Roy’s and Roy pokes his toes into Jason’s side. Under his shirt, the wound from his unfortunate stabbing has finally started to scab over, pink and raised, and Roy wants nothing more some days to just run his fingers over it and watch Jason get overwhelmed with the sensation of it.

“Please keep your toes off my ribs. They’re cold.” Jason tells him, squishing one of the pillows between himself and Roy’s feet, and Roy barks out a laugh.

“ My toes are cold?”

Jason turns to face him, the movie practically abandoned.

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Jay. You’re a walking fuckin’ ice cube.”

Jason waves him off and turns back to the TV. A few minutes later and he’s turning again though, hand landing on Roy’s ankle–

“I don’t run that cold, you know.”

“Uhuh. People just hate being around you from September til’ March because of other reasons completely unrelated to the fact that you bring a room’s central heating down a few temperatures.”

That gets him a flick to the ankle bone, and he hisses, but Jason immediately smooths it over with his thumb.

“You seem to put up with it fine.” Is what Jason says, conversation over, and Roy nods.

“Sure do, Jaybird.”

— 

In the last week before New Year’s, Roy makes his way back from his therapy session alone, because he’d decided there were things he needed to start doing himself again, like driving to the hospital and home again but not before sitting outside the field Jason had driven them to when they first arrived in Gotham afterwards in an attempt to remind himself the things he was experiencing right now were real and okay and weren’t immediately going to go up in smoke. 

Roy bounces his leg where he has it in the footwell and chews on his lip.

He’s okay. He hasn’t felt like he has been for a while, but he’s also man enough to admit (to himself, in the silence of the car miles away from home) that maybe the thought of being okay was scarier than not, and that’s what had made him spiral slightly in the months leading up to Autumn.

And that’s fine too.

His phone vibrates in the middle console, bringing him out of his thoughts, and Roy reaches for it with one hand, already starting the ignition with the other.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, hey. Sorry, I know this is like your time and everything but we’re out of milk.” Jason says from the other end of the line, straight to the point as he usually is over the phone, and Roy nods.

“I’ll be home soon.”

They hang up quickly and Roy drives towards the city centre. Drops into the corner store where the woman both knows him and Jason by name, stares a little too longingly at the cigarettes behind the till before impulsively dropping a few Chupa Chups on the counter instead, and leaves with a cherry one on his tongue, the milk and the rest of them shoved tightly into his coat jacket. 

The apartment smells like honey and thyme when Roy finally gets through the door; notes when he’s wiping his feet Jason has succeeded in getting any remaining blood from the welcome mat out.

He puts the milk in the fridge and dumps the lollipops on the bench, knowing that when he walks past it later in the evening Jason will have swiped half of them for himself. 

When he walks into their bedroom Jason is lying on his back, a book held up to the sky in both eyes, legs crossed at their ankles. Roy leans against the doorway.

“Milk’s in the fridge.” He tells him, and Jason turns the page to his book quickly before shutting it completely, dropping it to his side.

“How was therapy?”

Roy shrugs, shoulder sliding against the doorway. Jason stays lying on the bed, head flopping back against the mattress. 

“C’mere.” Jason shuffles over and pats the bed next to him, and Roy pushes himself off the wall and over to the bed, flopping down beside him.

Jason’s tactile when he likes you. One of the things that used to throw Roy off when they first started working together was all of the shoulder grabs and grabby-ness when they were meant to be sticking close to one another. He shuffles into Roy’s chest and presses his forehead into Roy’s sternum, breathing him in.

“Missed ya.” Jason mumbles, and Roy brings a hand to stroke through Jason’s hair, scratching at his scalp.

Roy gets a tight feeling in his throat, like he might spill all of his thoughts out at once, so instead he just wraps his arms around Jason’s shoulders and kisses him on the head, feeling him smile against his shirt.

—

On New Year's Eve Roy packs himself into the stands of the MackLife Stadium, bundled up in more layers than he can count, and has to remind himself the only reason he’s doing this is because Jason allegedly had no one else to go with.

The group sitting in front of them jump to their feet, cheering, and Roy avoids being smacked in the head with a wayward foam finger as Jason screams from his own seat beside him, hands slapping together as he calls out the chant for the Knights’ new Quarterback.

Roy grimaces as the cheering eventually subsides, and takes a sip of his lemonade.

“Since when do you like sports?” Roy asks, head turning right into Jason’s ear so he’ll hear him over the crowd. It’s an ongoing conversation they’ve had since the football season started, and Jason just shrugs as he pats Roy on the knee.

“What’s not to like? A bit of violence, athleticism, some friendly sportsmanship when they need to. I thought you liked this shit too.” He says, then nearly clocks Roy in the jaw when he pumps his fist into the air as the Knights’ defence do something good.

Roy rubs his chin and shakes his head. “Baseball, Jaybird. I like baseball.”

Jason nods, not really paying attention, and Roy sighs as he pulls out a – now cold – hotdog from where he’d saved it from Jason’s jumping about earlier. He takes a bite and offers it to Jason, who shovels most of it into his mouth, tomato sauce and mustard sticking to his lips.

It’s disgusting. Roy is reminded frequently and boldly that despite the work Alfred, and later Talia al Ghul, put into his manners that it’s often second to Jason getting what he wants. More worryingly, is the thought that flashes across Roy’s mind that were they not in public, he might lick the sauce off Jason's face for him.

“You’ve ruined me. Bringing me to football games, having me stay in Gotham longterm – Ollie might actually disown me.”

“That’s all you, honey.” Jason yells, again over the roar of the crowd, and Roy slaps him on the arm as Jason’s attention is diverted again, as he joins in with the crowd yelling abuse at the ref. 

The game ends with a surprising win for Gotham, and Jason is in good spirits as they get the bus home and walk along the frozen streets to their apartment. Roy pulls off his many layers and searches for something that doesn’t taste like stadium food.

From the bathroom, he can hear the bath running.

“Jay?” He calls out, slowly closing the cupboards.

“Yeah?” Jason calls back, voice muted.

Roy decides to make his own way to the bathroom instead of them shouting back and forth over a non-issue. 

Jason’s sat in the bath already as it fills up around him, bubbles thick from the soap he’d taken from one of the guest bathrooms in the Manor a few months ago, and he smiles up at Roy when Roy passes the threshold, hands in his pockets.

“Hey.” Roy tells him, appreciating the flush already rising on Jason’s chest from the heat of the water.

“Hey.”

“You want any food?” Roy asks, eyes raking up Jason’s shoulders to meet his eyes, and Jason shakes his head ‘no’.

“Fair enough,” Roy steps further into the bathroom. “Mind if I join you?” Roy follows up with, and Jason’s jaw slacks for a second before he’s grinning, pushing himself against one end of the tub and making a vee with his legs. 

Never let it be said that Roy Harper doesn’t know how to take a hint. He pulls off his shirt, shucks his pants and boxers and finally manages to get all his upper layers off in one go. Jason will bitch at the pile of discarded clothing when he wants to walk back into the room, probably, but for now he’s silent as Roy slowly lowers himself into the water opposite him, bubbles popping against his lower back.

They sit in silence for a while while the tub continues to fill, until Jason leans forward to flick the tap off, the bathroom fully silent except for the soft movement of each of them in the water.

“C’mere.” Roy tells him, stretching his own legs out down the length of the tub. Jason raises a single brow at him, lips pursed.

“Jay, just indulge me for a minute, ‘kay?” Roy asks, his own heart thundering in his chest, and Jason nods before he twists in the bath and plants his back across Roy’s chest. His stomach flips, and he immediately brings has hands to Jason’s hips, thumbs rubbing over the tops of Jason’s thighs.

Jason rests his head against Roy’s shoulder and Roy bend over to kiss him, teeth pulling at Jason’s bottom lip despite the odd angle, and he can feel Jason shift against him as he runs his left hand up to the scar tissue on Jason’s side.

“Fuck,” Jason breathes, pupils blown wide already, and Roy just kisses him on the cheek and continues, hand circling Jason’s balls as he squirms against him.

“Don’t…” Jason whines. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare. This is the good soap.” Roy barks out a laugh, the sound of it echoing in the small space, and Jason doesn’t do anything but push his head further into Roy’s shoulder as he slowly starts to jack him off under the water.

“Want me to stop?” Roy asks, teeth nibbling on Jason’s earlobe, and Jason mouths wordlessly over sentences he can’t get out before finally shaking his head ‘no’. Roy thumbs the head of Jason’s cock and Jason’s back arches, the dip of his hips pressing Roy’s own erection against his stomach. 

Roy’s hand stutters for a moment before he reels himself back under control. Keeps his other hand firm on Jason’s side, pinning him down slightly, and he gasps as Jason turns his head into the crook of Roy’s neck and starts sucking at the spot under his ear. They’re both panting at this point – a mixture of the heat and steam of the bath, plus the fact they really haven’t had sex with each other in a while, and Roy feels his own balls tighten just from the little attempts Jason makes at reaching behind himself to get a grip on Roy’s dick.

“Fuck–” He stutters, sensitive all over and gut curling, and then it’s Jason’s turn to smirk as he bites particularly hard on the junction between Roy’s neck and shoulder, Roy crying out as he comes between them with absolutely no effort at all.

He tries to keep his movements up, Jason antsy now as his own orgasm approaches. His hair is even more curled at the ends than usual, the moisture plastering the curls to the nape of his neck and hairline, and Roy twists his hand so his thumb catches under the slit, Jason dropping against Roy and whimpering.

“Baby… Please.” 

Jason hardly ever bothers with the nicknames unless he’s taking the piss or really desperate, so Roy shushes him and pulls his other hand away to cup under Jason’s ball sack, fingers rubbing up his taint.

“Oh my Go–”

Jason’s silent when he comes. Body taught like a bow string, teeth biting into his lips, hands digging into Roy’s thighs so tight it’s possible they may leave bruises. Roy milks him until he breaches the territory of oversensitive, Jason letting out a gasp as he flops back against Roy, boneless.

Roy swishes his hand through the water before bringing it up to hold under Jason’s jaw, angling his face so he can kiss him again, sloppy and open-mouthed.

Jason hums. “You’re vile.” 

“You love it.” Roy says back, still panting a bit, and Jason shrugs.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Roy wraps both arms around Jason and rests his chin on his head. They should get out, and probably rinse off again in the shower, but there’s a pleasant buzz in his ears and the not-too-common awareness that his head is clear of thoughts for the first time in months. Their breathing is in sync, Jason’s shoulder blades flat against Roy’s chest, and Roy lets his eyes drift close just for a moment, before Jason starts to fidget and start ranting about the soap again.

—

Roy is a few non-alcoholic beers deep and full of Alfred’s finger food when Ollie calls him the afternoon of New Year’s day.

“Hey.” Ollie says in greeting, as eloquent as ever, and Roy sets his beer bottle down on one of the coasters and makes his way into the hallway to hear him better.

“Hey yourself.”

“Happy New Year.” Ollie tells him, and Roy knows that his old man was probably out until sunrise celebrating like he usually does, while Roy was in bed just after midnight and drooling into his pillows.

“You too.”

There’s a beat of awkward silence. “Any chance… uh… Any chance of you coming back for a visit before the winter ends? Might be nice to get a break from all of that snow.”

At that moment Jason wraps his head around from where he’s been rifling around in their freezer for something or another, eyebrows quizzical as he brings his hand up to his face to mimic the phone. Roy mouths out about Ollie and Jason nods, ducking back into the kitchen in silence.

“I… I guess so,” Roy clears his throat, “It would be nice to see you all. If you’ll have us.”

“Us?”

“Well. Jason will probably wanna come with me.”

There’s silence on the line again, and Roy can hear some rustling coming from Ollie’s end.

“You sure he’d want to come all the way out to Star City?” Ollie asks. Roy walks his way back to the kitchen, watching Jason pick out the red m’n’m’s from the share packet he bought himself some time earlier in the week.

“He’ll come with me. It’ll be fun.”

Jason turns to face him, arms folded over his chest as he gives Roy another inquisitive look, likely at him being signed up for something without his input.

Roy thinks Jason can survive a week or two in Star City. Roy hopes Jason can survive a week or two in star city.

“Okay then. I’ll text you my availability the next few weeks and we can get some flights booked.”

Roy smiles at Jason, and nods into the phone. “Sounds great.”

Roy hangs up his cell, and places it in his back pocket. Jason clicks his teeth on his tongue.

“Star City?”

Roy laughs. “Yeah.”

“Ah… I might be busy that week.”

“Jaybird.”

Jason laughs back at him, Roy moving so they’re side by side and leant against the bench, the two of them taking up too much space in the small apartment kitchen. 

Roy thinks of where he was a few months ago when they first arrived in Gotham. When Jason didn’t stock any perishable food in his cupboards to make use of the brand new kitchen appliances on his benchtop, and when Roy used to stand in the shower for minutes and minutes, the water trickling down his bath, his memories slowly trickling back like the shampoo down his back.

Jason’s shoulder is cold where it presses up against Roy’s bicep.

There’s food in the cupboards now. Cans and snacks and fancy bits from the expensive wholefoods store by the Wayne Manor. Most of Roy’s memories are back. 

Roy turns his head to the side to kiss Jason on the temple, just because he can, and feels something settle in his chest, warm and at rest.