Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Their first meeting was in the League. At least, Jason assumed it was. In full honesty, much of his time before and after Talia brought him in — before she had the (not so) bright idea of dipping him in the Devil’s Mountain Dew — were blurred impressions of sound and pain and touch.

And eyes. Green eyes. Brown eyes. Eyes looking down at him from places eyes reasonably shouldn’t be in.

And then there was the Devil’s Mountain Dew, and the world slammed back into Jason with technicolour fury. Now, those eyes had faces: green for Talia and for the spawn, Damian, and for the Demon’s Head, Ra’s. And the brown eyes…

The brown eyes were for Peter.

Peter, who looked nothing like the Al Ghul’s, with his soft, rounded features and big, dark eyes and guileless smile (it wasn’t guileless, Jason would learn. Wasn’t guileless at all. That was what made him oh so dangerous). Peter, who sat somewhere in the shadowy grounds between family member and servant, guard-dog of Bruce’s spawn and bickerer with Talia, and on the very rare occasion, with the Demon’s Head himself (he never escaped those moments unscathed, but the cuts and the bruises disappeared as quickly as his grudges). Peter, whose laughter could bounce off tapestried walls as easily as he crushed bones. As easily as the men and women he murdered, were they to make the mistake of thinking he and Damian easy prey.

All of these memories were mere impressions Jason could never be sure were pure, or partially fabricated. The truth was, Peter and Jason rarely interacted because Talia did not allow Jason and Damian to interact. Too unstable, he was.

All they had of those early days were fragments of time caught in between Jason’s training, and then Jason was off, trapped in the desire to wreak havoc on the lives of those who’d failed him, jumping from monster to monster to learn their trade before deciding if they were better off dead, or deserving of his mercy.

Had they even shared one conversation together? Jason didn’t think they did… But he remembered Peter all the same. His eyes. That warm laughter. The guileless smile as he punched clean through a would-be assassin’s ribcage.

The blood.

The desperate, wretched sobs after, hidden behind a door with a child’s soft murmurs.

That… that, he was sure, he was never meant to remember.

— + —

Jason didn’t think much of Peter in the months after his departure from the League. He tried not to think about anything soft in regards to Bruce Fucking Wayne, and this definition of course, extended to his unknown son and the young man who guarded him. Then he was in Gotham, a monster’s old moniker for a name and the taste of blood behind his teeth. There was little time to think of anything but vengeance, in those days.

Then it all went south. The building blew with Jason in it, nursing a bleeding neck and a haemorrhaging heart — why, Old Man? Why him? Why choose him? Jason was there, he was right there! All he had to do was make the right choice! — he was ready for that to be the end.

It wasn’t. Because it was Peter who dug him out. Peter, dressed in black, with a veil of spidery webbing cast over his face to blur those soft features. Peter lifted away the rubble as though it weighed nothing at all — because of course it didn’t. To Peter, the world of men was feather-light, ready to drift away on a demon’s breath.

“You should’ve left me there,” Jason told him after he’d been dragged out. Peter had carried him up onto the roof of a building some blocks away, and the Gotham skyline spread before them in her familiar, grim glory. To the west, where Blüdhaven lay, the sky blazed orange.

“I could put you back, if you’d like.” Peter’s voice was as warm as his remembered laughter, but Jason wasn’t to be fooled.

“Why’re you here? Didn’t think they’d let you outta their sight.”

“The Prince grows older,” Peter said, his grin obscured by the veil. “They wish to see how he fares without a guard.”

Jason frowned in thought. It was a difficult act to achieve. Fuck, his neck ached. “They want to flush out conspirators?”

Peter’s grin remained, though he did not answer.

“That’s not all you’re here for, is it.”

“Talia sent me,” Peter confessed. “She wanted to warn you.”

Jason sighed heavily. “What? Is she done with me trying to kill her Beloved?” he spat the word out, chest a chasm of pain.

Peter tilted his head, smile still in place but his eyes were pits of black. “Soon, the Prince will come. Either you make peace with his sire, or you make yourself scarce from Gotham.”

Laughter burst out of him. Bitter and caustic, it burned all the way up from gut to throat to twisted lips. “And if I do neither?”

There was no movement. Nothing to suggest a shift to violence but Jason felt it in the air all the same. Somewhere in his monkey brain it registered the threat, and his heart rate picked up without permission. Run, that stupid animal brain told him. Get away.

Jason, never one to listen to the voice of reason, remained exactly where he sat. He didn’t flinch when Peter’s hand shot out. Equally, Peter did not startle at the blade suddenly jammed tight against his ribcage.

“Small knives?” he mocked, laughter crinkling around those terrible eyes. “Oh no! My one weakness!”

And then the knife was out of Jason’s hand, rent in two and dropped to the rooftop between one heartbeat and the next.

Jason snarled. He struck out, aiming for the soft flesh of the armpit. Peter’s other hand reached up as his torso twisted away and then Jason’s arm flew backwards, slamming into the galvanised metal air-vent so hard the metal dented, and pain lanced up and down his arm, directly from his wrist. He flinched without meaning to, but his arm stayed fast, stuck to the metal.

“The fuck is this?” he snarled, tugging ineffectually at the strange substance. Glue-like, but also not. Web-like, but also not. Whatever it was, it held fast and there was little he could do against it.

“Just a little something I cooked up.” Peter wiggled his long fingers, revealing a pair of cuffs wrapped around deceptively slender wrists. “I’m quite fond of them. Thematically appropriate, I think.” To demonstrate, he waved at the delicate spiderweb embroidered across his veil and League uniform. They marked him as Other, though the black on black was subtle enough that most would never pick out the difference. Most would never realise the depth of his threat.

“What?” Jason scoffed, though that animal instinct hadn’t let up. “You turning to poisons now? Didn’t think that was your style.”

“Who says it wasn’t?” Peter said, and grinned, wider than ever before. And maybe it was the light, or maybe Jason’s exhausted brain, but he thought Peter’s teeth were longer than a human’s should ever be.

Then again… when had Peter ever been human?

“I’m not done here,” Jason grit out. “Not by a long shot.”

“Really?” Peter sighed, drawing back a little. A twitch of a wrist and Jason’s other hand was trapped against the concrete. He curled up his legs, ready to kick if he had to, and Peter watched with amusement. A spider watching a fly. “Must we do this song and dance? Just take the warning at face value, Todd.”

“That’s not a warning. That’s an ultimatum.”

“Is it?” Peter asked lightly. “My, how stupid of me. Perhaps I don’t know the difference.”

Had he the freedom, he’d have clenched his fists. Peter wasn’t stupid. In fact, if he’d really made those… web-shooters as he said he had, he was dangerously intelligent.

Little wonder the Al Ghul’s chose him to guard their precious princeling.

“There’s nothing for you here,” Peter said, tone shifting from joking to sympathetic so quickly it couldn’t be anything but insincere. “Fly away, Robin. Make your name elsewhere. The world is big enough for you and the Batman both, but Gotham is not.”

“I can’t,” Jason bit out. “I can’t!”

“Why not?” Peter mused. His gaze turned distant, then slid back to Jason. “Is it the Joker? You want him dead?”

There was no need to speak. The answer, Jason knew, was clear enough on his bloodied face. Peter hummed.

“This, I can do.”

“I don’t need your help—”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking yourself that important.” Peter’s expression twisted with irony. “Maybe, I don’t want the Prince to breathe the same air as that man.”

Of course. If Bruce’s spawn was to end up in Gotham, of course Peter would want the worst of the threats dead.

“You lost this battle,” Peter continued. His voice was soft, layered with an earnestness Jason didn’t trust in the slightest. “Move on. Stay away from Gotham, until that rancour of yours is soothed by time.”

“Soothed?” Jason sneered. Trapped as a fly he may be, but he was as venomous as any spider. “You think time can sooth me? You think Joker dead will placate me?”

“It had better,” Peter warned. “Because if it does not? If you return and turn your sights on the Prince, I will end you, Jason Todd. That is my one promise to you. Find some place else to lay out your woes.”

Suddenly, the man drew close, and curse him, but Jason was too enthralled by those veiled eyes to kick as he’d been ready to do. Peter’s veil shivered with every breath he took, gossamer thin as if really made of spider’s silk.

“This world gave you a second chance at life,” Peter hissed. It was the first time such venom had entered his voice, in all Jason’s shattered memories. “Do not throw it away on a misguided quest for the holy grail vengeance. Be better, Jason Todd. Be free!”

With that, Peter stood, dancing away on silent feet. He paused, perched on the precipice between brickwork and freefall, and turned once more to Jason.

“This story ends here,” he said solemnly. “Be it by your hands or mine. The story ends here.”

Jason didn’t respond. The words were caught in his throat, trapped behind the enemy lines of teeth and lips too heavy suddenly to move. Peter took his silence as… well, who really knew what he took Jason’s silence as. From afar, he was little more than a pillar of black against a churning, furious sky.

Peter twisted on his heel and then was gone, dropping out of Jason’s life once more.

— + —

Two days later, while on the move between Philadelphia and Baltimore, the headline of a newspaper caught Jason’s eye:

GOTHAM FREE AT LAST: JOKER POISONED IN CELL.

There was no need to read the article but read he did. By the end, he was laughing so hard he was crying, and the old woman manning the counter of the gas station politely asked him to leave, a candy bar pressed kindly into his shaking hands.

— + —

The next they met, it was just Jason and Roy in the aftermath of Kori’s departure. Sad, determined to make something of themselves, but damn it all, but Jason felt more human than he had in years.

They were in Toronto, of all places, investigating a string of murders throughout the east coast and Canada: each victim a lobbyist with some connection to Big Oil and the like.

Personally, Jason wouldn’t have cared to look into it. So what if a few bastards who thought with their wallets and not their future kicked the bucket? But Roy had a connection who’d asked for their help, and when Jason learnt each victim was found with neurotoxin in their blood and the traces of a strange, web-like substance on their clothes, he knew he couldn’t leave the case alone.

The trail led them to Toronto, on the hunch that the assassin would be baited by the gathering of big wigs for the Principles for Responsible Investment conference. Greenwashing at its finest: at best, it was just going to be a bunch of self-important men and women talking about all the ways they were speeding the world towards environmental destruction, all the while pretending they were doing the opposite.

Potential target number one was Pierre DuPont, an unimposing man with thinning hair and a stumbling gait who nonetheless was an excellent speaker, charismatic and convincing and with fingers in a lot of money-filled pies. Several Canadian politicians had fallen for his charms, switching their support for a new oil pipeline through pristine Canadian wilderness and indigenous lands practically overnight.

The passing of the project was to happen in two weeks’ time, and DuPont had a meeting scheduled with three more ministers of the Crown in as many days.

They split up for the job: Roy remained at the conference, blending in as one of the many bodyguards dotted throughout. Heaven forbid something happen to capitalism’s best and brightest. Meanwhile, Jason watched over DuPont’s hotel; his room, and those of several other conference-goers in plain view of his sniper’s scope.

There was nothing of interest throughout the day. Jason whittled away the time listening to an audiobook of North and South, intermittently interrupted by Roy’s usual glib comments. As the hours passed, his partner grew increasingly unimpressed by the men and women who held the world’s economy by the balls.

“You can’t tell me that’s a real smile!”

“Oh my God, pretty sure they’re trying to break each other’s hands.”

“Carbon credits are a scam! Did you know that? I didn’t know that. My entire life has been a lie.”

“Are we seriously just letting them carve up Africa like pie? You should hear what—”

“Shut up,” Jason said, and Roy’s tone shifted.

“You’ve seen something?”

“Room service for 1113,” he said, eyeing the hotel room through the scope. “Only, looks like they’ve decided to enjoy the service for themselves.”

“Guess you were right,” Roy sighed. He’d put his money on DuPont getting nabbed on his way out: it’d happened at least once before. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“You can pay up later,” Jason muttered. The willowy man who’d come into the room had disappeared into the bathroom, to emerge again dressed head to toe in black. Only the lower part of their face was uncovered. Satisfaction and anticipation had Jason’s pulse picking up. “I’m going to intercept.”

“I’m coming up.”

Jason gave his acknowledgement and packed away the sniper quickly, though he wasn’t worried about the assassin leaving. They’d set themselves a trap for DuPont. No doubt they’d be lying in wait for the man’s return, flushed with the success of a day well-spent among the rich and the powerful.

Such a shame for them: their trap would spring on Red Hood and Arsenal instead.

He had his suspicions. Of course he did. The poison and the webs were enough for that; the targets merely another nail in the coffin. Roy thought it was Cheshire up to old tricks again, and Jason didn’t contradict him. Perhaps it was her. He could be wrong; it wouldn’t be the first time. Instinct told him otherwise. Instinct had him prepare accordingly.

But what Jason didn’t understand what why were they here?

An answer he’d find for himself, he reasoned as he readied his ride: a line already cast between the two buildings. Wrapped in the October evening, no one saw him pass from one hotel to the other. No one heard him rappel the three floors down to room 1113.

“I’m in position,” Roy’s quiet voice told him.

Jason’s response was to jump off the concrete and use his momentum — and a well-placed bullet — to blast his way into the dark hotel room.

The shattering of glass drowned out the assassin’s snarl. Jason was prepared for the body that smashed into him. He squeezed the trigger and fired, straight into their shoulder. The snarl transformed into a pained cry, but his assailant didn’t let go.

They were impossibly strong. He was slammed onto the floor. Head probably would have caved in were it not for the helmet. Still his teeth rattled and his vision blurred as the assassin straddled him, hands wrapping around his throat.

Choking, Jason shot them again, in the side this time. The hands weakened, enough to get a sliver of oxygen through, but didn’t let up. He switched to a knife, digging the blade into their thigh. Another cry as hot blood poured over Jason’s gloved hand. But rather than let go, the hands squeezed tighter.

Fuck. This was it. Death number two by strangulation, what a fucking way to go—

Then Roy was there, and Jason’s spotting vision caught him jamming a syringe into the assassin’s neck.

Three loads of tranquilisers in them, and finally they took effect. The hands slackened enough for Jason to bat them away, and Roy wrenched the man off him.

“Hood? You okay?” he asked, naked shock and concern in his voice as Jason coughed. He tugged off his helmet, desperate for air.

“Restraints,” he wheezed out, and fished out a set of manacles. The strong kinds. The ones for metas, stolen from Kori’s ship long before she’d left them. Always have a contingency plan in place.

Roy was smart enough not to fuss. He clipped them in place over the clumsily struggling assassin’s limbs, pausing only briefly as he spotted the strange devices already wrapped around their wrists.

Jason hauled himself into a sitting position, rubbing his throat. With a weakness he detested, he reached out, dug his hand into embroidered fabric and yanked.

Fluffy brown hair and unfocussed, dark eyes. New scars, shorter hair, sharpened features… but Jason knew him.

“Peter.”

Peter bared his teeth and attempted to lunge for Jason’s hand — attempted to bite. But with three courses of sedatives and a knife wound, he missed easily. Still, Roy was dragging Jason away with a shocked, “Woah!

“You know him?” Roy’s eyes shot between Jason and Peter, frown visible even through the domino.

“We met in the League,” Jason rasped. He coughed.

Roy jumped to his feet and stalked out of view, only to return with a towel full of ice and a glass of water. Jason took both gratefully. He sipped at the water and held the improvised icepack to his throat, all the while, unable to tear his gaze away from Peter.

Peter, who last he saw was determined to ensure Damian’s smooth integration into Gotham, effectively banishing Jason from the city. He’d heard not hide nor hair from him in the years since, and it wasn’t as if Jason was close enough to Damian to ask after him.

They were two different Peters. This one was half-feral, staring at Jason with all the guile of a caged animal, trapped in a body that they’d managed to slow down enough to contain. Not even an ounce of recognition.

The flicker of disappointment was… embarrassing.

“You’ll wanna get those cuffs off him,” Jason said, wincing through his speech. Fucking hell. Should be grateful, he supposed: there was enough strength in Peter’s hands to squeeze his head clean off. And if those teeth were the things to deliver the killing blow to all his victims… “Don’t let him bite you.”

Roy sent him an unnerved look and pinned Peter’s neck to the ground with a knee as he worked on the clasps to Peter’s web-shooters.

He whistled as he inspected them. “These are a pretty piece of tech.”

“Geek out over them later.” Jason heaved himself to his feet. He drained the rest of the water and put his helmet on, hands still faintly trembling. “We gotta get out of here.”

Roy quickly divested Peter of the rest of his weapons: several knives and a lock-picking set were the worst of them. Jason wondered how Peter intended to make his escape after he’d killed DuPont.

 He rifled through DuPont’s belongings, neatly hanging in the small wardrobe by the TV, and helped himself to a leather belt.

“What’re you doing?” Roy asked warily as Jason crouched beside Peter.

“Gagging him,” Jason said, and did so. “Unless you’re volunteering to get bit?”

“Wait, we’re taking him?” Roy glanced between the door he’d smashed his way through, and Jason. “What about the—”

“I don’t give a fuck about that bounty.”

“But—”

“He’s coming with us,” Jason said firmly, and Roy shut his mouth. Jason’s grin was hidden by the helmet, but Peter hissed dangerously anyway. “There’s someone I reckon would be happy to see him.”

Roy suddenly groaned. “Aw fuck. We’re going to Gotham, aren’t we?”

A twitch of the eyes was all the reaction Peter had to the name.

What happened to you?

Jason swallowed back his misgivings and nodded. “There’s a little prince who’ll be happy to have his guard-dog returned, I reckon.”

Peter’s only response was a sharpening of the eyes. Jason jabbed him with another dose of sedative, just to make sure they were safe as they made their escape.

— + —

“Special delivery!” Jason announced as he strolled through the doors to Wayne Manor. Golden sunlight streamed through the enormous windows that bracketed the wooden doors. “Anyone home?”

Alfred materialised almost immediately. He looked from Jason to the sleepy, bound man dropped at his feet. “Master Jason?”

“Alfie. Is the gremlin here?” Jason pitched his voice louder. “Princeling! You’re gonna want to see this!”

“Jason?” Bruce appeared at the head of the stairs. He was ruffled and still in his pyjamas. That all too familiar frown appeared moments later as he took in the tableau: Jason, manacled man, and Roy, leaning casually in the doorway as he let in a stream of cold October air. “Who’s that?”

Jason ignored him in lieu of calling for Damian again. It didn’t take long for him to appear. “What is the meaning of this nons…”

The boy trailed off. Jason spread his arms wide and bowed theatrically. “I bring you gifts of frankincense and myrrh, young prince,” he said mockingly, then rolled his prisoner onto their back, revealing the little bow Jason had tied around their neck.

(At no small cost to himself. Peter had bitten straight through the belt and nearly clamped his teeth into Jason’s hand. That got him a new muzzle hastily fabricated by Roy and a warning not to go breaking his teeth. Good thing it was only his mouth that was capable of spitting venom.)

“Ahki?” Damian breathed, and then he was flying down the grand staircase, tearing himself away from his father to land on the ground floor. He hesitated a scant few feet away from Peter and shot an incredulous glance up at Jason. For the first time in many, many years, he looked his age. A child again at last. “You found him?”

“Not deliberately,” Jason shrugged. “Looks like someone’s not been treating him right. Figured I’d return him to his rightful owner.”

Damian let out a wounded sound Jason suspected he wasn’t even aware of. He kneeled beside Peter, and Jason tugged him back gently.

“Watch it,” he warned. “He’s been undomesticated.”

“He’s not a beast,” Damian snapped, slapping Jason’s hands away. “He won’t hurt me.”

Sure enough, Peter had stilled at the sight of Damian, pupils blown wide. He breathed heavy through the muzzle, unable to tear his eyes from his former charge.

Damian knelt again and reached out with a trembling hand to brush little fingers over Peter’s sweaty forehead. Peter flinched back and Damian cooed softly. “Ahki, you came back to me,” he breathed, syllables blurred with the dialect of the League.

Dark eyes shot from Damian to Jason without comprehension but were inevitably drawn back to Damian. Scarred hands clenched and unclenched in their restraints.

There was an ache in Jason’s chest. Was this how Peter felt, looking down at Jason during his sentient vegetable days? A mix of pity and anger at the vision of a monumental wrong?

 He watched, that wrongness churning away inside, as Damian reached out again to run his hand through Peter’s hair. He was murmuring something to the assassin. Something that had Jason wanting to flee the moment his sluggish brain interpreted them.

“Free, Ahki. You’re free—”

Jason stepped back. Job done, time to leave.

“Todd.”

Damian’s imperious voice stopped him as he turned about face, ready to leave with Roy.

He sighed. “Brat.”

The kid was suddenly in front of him, glaring with his usual intensity. Not an ounce of chill, that kid. Not that he ever had much chance at being a normal child, not with the blood running through him on either side. Still, those green eyes held Jason in their teeth and refused to let him flee.

“Thank-you. For bringing him back,” Damian said in halting words. He clapped his hands together in a way Jason had only seen once before and bowed. “I owe you a debt.”

Jason shook his head. “There is no debt to pay but my own,” he replied, and Damian’s head shot up in surprise. The corner of Jason’s mouth twigged upwards, and he nodded over to Peter. “He’s free, Prince. Just as he made me.”

And that was enough truths laid out for the day. He turned around for good this time and stalked out of the manor, Roy in tow.

Chapter Text

Returning the spawn’s guard dog opened a Pandora’s box Jason would have rather remained closed.

It began like many things: a mere trickle. A single text from an unknown number, three days after Jason dropped Peter off at the manor, bow included.

Today, Peter allowed me to read to him.

Jason did as he always did when he received texts from Gotham unrelated to world-ending events: he blocked the number and pretended it never happened.

End of story.

Or it should have been.

Unfortunately for Jason and his peace of mind, Damian inherited his father’s tenacity. Two days after the first, a new message appeared:

Today, Peter called me by my name.

This too, Jason deleted. And then he and Roy found themselves working in goddamn Iowa for ten days. Cell reception was scarce, even with phones as sophisticated as theirs^[1]. Jason, in his hubris, took the ensuing silence as a sign of the gremlin’s resignation.

Wrong.

The moment they were back in Cedar Rapids, Jason sick to the teeth of straight roads, his phone began pinging like a goddamn Geiger counter in Chernobyl.

A different number, each time, but the trickle had transformed into a deluge, the little device buzzing insistently in Jason’s hand. He petulantly contemplated throwing it out the window but Roy probably would have driven back and made him pick it up.

With great reluctance, Jason skimmed through the waterfall of messages:

He remembered mother, today.

Today, Peter chose cereal over toast for breakfast. He spoke of Froot Loops on occasion. Richard, the tasteless fool, approved.

This morning, Peter asked for exercise equipment.

This evening, Peter asked for more food.

At lunch today, Peter filled three pages of the notebook father left for him.

I am impressed by Peter’s intelligence. As a child, I did not appreciate his gift for the sciences.

This afternoon, Peter spoke to me for thirty-seven minutes. I do not think he remembers he had explained his web-shooters to me before our separation.

After dinner, I introduced Alfred the cat to Peter. He was very respectful and waited patiently for her to come to him.

Attached was an image of Peter, sitting cross-legged on a cot in one of the Batcave’s containment cells — the ones designed to contain metas. That damned cat had hopped up beside him and laid a paw on his thigh. Peter’s attention was centred wholly on the beast, petting her lightly. In an oversized sweater, Peter looked thin and tired and gaunt, but his gaze on Alfred was inquisitive and there was an excited flush on his cheeks.

Father has asked for the Martian Manhunter to speak with Peter. I wish very much for him to be free of his cell.

Father worries too much. Peter would never harm me.

It was as I feared: Grandfather twisted Peter. Debased his mind and soul. I am… ashamed. And grateful to you for bringing him home to me.

And then, the most recent messages, dated from half a day ago:

Peter relapsed this evening. A nightmare. He nearly broke free of his cell until I returned and calmed him. His hands are broken. They will heal.

He will heal. The Manhunter has promised it.

Jason sighed heavily at that final message. Roy, slouched in the driver’s seat as they waited at a red light, huffed a laugh.

“The brat’s not let up, then?”

“He’ll learn eventually,” Jason muttered and shoved the phone inside his jacket.

“He’s the son of a Bat. I wouldn’t count on in. Looks like the bird’s gone and imprinted.”

“One: bat or bird, you gotta pick.” Roy sent him a middle finger as the lights turned green. “Two: no, he ain’t. It’s Peter he imprinted on, long before I was ever in the picture. Three—”

“How long was he in the picture for?” Roy interrupted, uninterested in whatever Jason had to rebut with.

“I… don’t know,” Jason admitted. He stared out the window: November had swung in with force, and tinsel-fucking-turkeys hung from every lamp post. Welcome to fucking hell. “Before me, I know that much. I asked Talia, once… she said he’d only been a little younger than me when he was taken in.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning he’s been with the League since he was at least fifteen. Maybe fourteen.” Not that that meant much in the scheme of things. Peter was older than Jason, but by how much, Jason wasn’t sure. Faces like Peter’s seemed trapped in an eternal boyhood… until they hit their forties and things went rapidly downhill. “He’s been responsible for the brat’s safety since the kid was in nappies, though.”

“So… at least a decade. Or thereabouts.” Roy hummed thoughtfully. They turned down one street, then the next, and Jason shifted with relief as he spotted the motel. “That’s a long time to be stuck with a bunch of crazies.”

“Not as long as some,” Jason pointed out, though he agreed. Jason, at twenty-three, might have been able to claim a tenure like that, were it not for the years of death and his attempt at imitating a vegetable slapped in between.

They pulled into the motel. It was as unremarkable as every other motel he’d seen. Two stories, painted with faded and dated pastels, and a big old sign out the front that flickered uncertainly in the dying light. The parking lot out front was only half-full, but that was also a standard of motels in Jason’s experience.

“You gonna respond?” Roy asked as they hopped out.

“Of course not.” He slammed his own door shut. His cell was a conspicuous weight in his jacket’s inside pocket.

Roy paused, hand on the SUV’s trunk. The gimlet stare he levelled at Jason immediately put his hackles up.

“What?”

“Nothin’…” The trunk swung open, temporarily obscuring him from view until Jason joined to take out their gear. They planned to stay for just the two days before moving on — Roy’s insistence. I deserve a lie in, Jaybird. We’re flush, we can afford the luxury.

“You think I’m lyin’?”

Roy’s answering grin was crooked and sharp-edged. “Lying? To me? Oh no, Jay. Why would I ever think the great Jason Todd was lying to me?”

For that, Jason only picked up his own bag and left Roy to the rest. The idiot could carry in the rucksacks laden with their weapons by himself while Jason checked them in.

Roy’s predictable curses had him grinning as he stepped through the automatic doors and greeted the woman at the reception desk. What a sweet, sweet sound petty revenge could make.

— + —

In Jason’s defence, he only answered because he thought it was Roy.

Roy, whom he’d sent off to buy them something for dinner and various other supplies to allow for Roy’s desired sleep in. Jason had only just spread himself out on his bed, a novel from the motel’s delightful book exchange in hand.

Surprise! The previous owner had scrawled gleefully on the inside. They’re gay ❤

He’d be lying if he said that wasn’t what had sold him on it.

Ten pages in and his cell started ringing. Jason reached for it blindly and answered. “What? If you forgot your wallet again, I’m going to slap you.”

“Delightful,” a young voice drawled. “I take it you are alive then.”

Jason cursed and sat up. “Damian?”

“The very one. Grayson suggested I select another way of contacting you, since perhaps you did not trust messages from an unknown number.”

He pulled back the phone. The contact was for Dick. The prick must have loaned Damian his phone. That, or the brat had spoofed the number…

Knowing both, the answer could be either.

A heavy sigh escaped him, and he didn’t care that Damian could hear. “What do you want?”

“The holidays shall soon be upon us—”

“I don’t give a shit about Thanksgiving—”

“It is shocking to learn, but nor do I,” snapped Damian. “I am of course, referring to Hanukkah. Or Christmas. Or whatever it is you choose to celebrate—”

“How about none?”

“Don’t be asinine. I know you sent Alfred a gift last year.”

Dammit. Shouldn’t be surprised, though. He’d expected Alfred would’ve kept the cookbook Jason sent him to himself, but in a house full of detectives, they were bound to have worked things out for themselves. If Alfred hadn’t shared his bounty with the rest of them in the first place.

Almost as if you didn’t really care if they found out .

“No can do, princeling. Roy and I will be—”

The door swung open and the devil himself strolled in, laden with more bags than one simple trip should have merited. “We’re what?” he asked, dumping the bags down on his own bed.

“Nothing,” Jason said quickly.

“Holidays!” Damian, the little turd, yelled over the phone.

That stupid crooked grin returned. Roy danced over to Jason and threw himself onto the bed. Jason was too startled by the alarming creak of bedsprings to react when Roy yanked the phone from his hand.

“Oi!”

“Holidays, you say?” Roy held Jason at arm’s length. They might have been the same height, but Roy had the advantage when it came to arms. And then he put the phone on speaker and it didn’t matter anyway.

“I suppose Alfred can make space for you too,” the brat was saying, though he sounded reluctant.

“A thrilling invite, but I’ll pass,” Roy said cheerfully. “I was thinking of stopping into Star City. I’ll drop Jaybird with you lot first.”

“Like hell you will!”

“Oh? You wanna spend Christmas with Ollie?” Roy jeered and Jason promptly closed his mouth. His traitorous friend returned his attention to Jason’s phone. “We’ve got another job lined up for the end of the month, but it should only take us about two weeks. Jason’ll be with you from mid-December.”

“Does Jason get a say in this?”

“No,” came the concert of replies.

Jason huffed. “I’m not bring presents.”

Liar, Roy mouthed at him.

Fuck you, Jason mouthed back. And for good measure, he backed it up with both middle fingers.

But damn it to hell… Roy, of course, was right.

— + —

In protest of the festive season, Jason arrived at the manor with his gear slung over his shoulder and a trash bag full of presents in hand. He’d bought all of them last minute from a string of thrift stores in Blüdhaven, having driven through the shithole on the way. Roy dumped him on the doorstep with a kiss on the cheek and a be nice dear! like Jason was a six-year-old and Roy a parent delighted to be free of their child for six hours.

Probably not far off. Jason had, admittedly, complained a lot on the drive to Gotham. No doubt Roy was sick of him. Hell, Jason was sick of himself.

But he couldn’t shake the misgivings that swelled up at the thought of spending so long at the manor. Sure, he’d been there the odd day or three, but they were during times of crisis. Times when the Bats needed all hands on deck, even if two of those hands were stained with blood and lacked the stamp of approval the rest of the family so easily claimed.

Staying in the manor in those instances was… well, it was never easy, but it was a hell of a lot less daunting. Exhaustion had them moving about the place like zombies and there wasn’t much space for things to go south. The moment he was rested, Jason was out the doors and away. Anything to keep himself out of the kinds of conversation he knew Dick and Bruce wanted to drag him into.

How are you? Have you killed anyone recently? Are you and Roy friends, or friends? Why won’t you come back to Gotham? How did you come back to life? Did you mention if you’d killed anyone recently?

Yeah… No way was Jason sticking around for the twenty questions.

So it was baffling to find himself knocking on the front door four days before Christmas — three before the first day of Hanukkah. No menorah in the window yet, but Jason had a vague memory of Bruce putting it up the day of… maybe? The whole thing had been a novelty to Jason, who’d grown up Catholic in the vaguest sense of the word. He thought his dad might’ve taken them to church once at Christmas, back when he was real small, but that was the extent of his experience with holiday rituals. 

No time for him to second guess himself and leave anyway. The doors opened almost immediately, an exasperated, “That is my job, Master Damian,” coming through before Jason could even see who’d opened them.

And there was Damian, a four-foot-something pillar of poorly disguised excitement. The glare might’ve been convincing were it not for the way he vibrated, eyes darting over Jason eagerly.

And there was Peter. Two feet behind Damian, those rounded shapes back in his face and his expression placid. Still no beguiling smile like Jason remembered, but the feral anger had faded, replaced with open curiosity. He stared back at Jason with vague recognition, dark eyes lingering especially on Jason’s forehead, where his fringe curled over.

Jason’s guts churned uneasily.

“Todd,” Damian said, still standing in the doorway. Jason tore his eyes from Peter. Despite being almost two feet shorter than Jason, his stare was imperious enough it still felt like he was looking down at Jason. “You are late.”

He shrugged. “The job went on longer than Roy thought.”

Was that partly Jason’s fault? Perhaps, but he’d never in a million years confess to it. If only Roy hadn’t found a quick solution to the spanner Jason had snuck into the works…

Bastard had probably already made a contingency plan for Jason’s sabotage. He needed better friends. The kind that would enable his poor life choices.

“What Master Damian means to say,” Alfred cut in smoothly, “is that he has been eagerly awaiting your arrival.” He ushered Damian out of the doorway so Jason could finally come in out of the cold.

“Tt. I did no such thing! I merely wished to know from which time I would have to tolerate his presence.”

“From now,” Jason said, and mussed up Damian’s head before the kid could slap his hand away with another miffed click of the tongue.

Peter had twitched at Jason’s movement, but other than that, remained a faithful shadow behind his former charge. He didn’t look away when their eyes met, and it was Jason that gave in, turning back to Alfred when he spoke.

“And you’ll be with us until New Years?” Somehow, while Jason was attempting to ruin Damian’s spiked hair, Alfred had acquired Jason’s pack. He blinked with surprise. The fuck.

“… Yeah. Roy’s expectin’ to be back on the first. I’ll be out of your hair then.”

“A week and a half,” Alfred said, and there wasn’t an ounce of the misgivings Jason felt in his tone. “It is so good to have you here, Master Jason.”

The back of Jason’s eyes burned. He nodded, unable to say anything else in the face of Alfie’s raw happiness.

— + —

Somehow — and Jason had no idea how, but his money was on Damian — Jason and Bruce didn’t end up at each other’s throats. It got dicey a couple of times, when Jason wanted to go out on patrol alone, but between one breath and the next, Bruce backed down, leaving Jason to blink with confusion and the feeling of anti-climax at an argument extinguished.

By the time the 24th came around, Jason felt trapped in a strange sense of unreality. Things had been… almost pleasant. The only one to show him any kind of hostility was Drake, and considering the shit Jason pulled in those early days of his return, he didn’t exactly blame the kid. If anything, the antagonism was grounding. Normal.

Was this how things would have been, had Jason returned without the bitter seed of vengeance buried in his heart? Maybe… but Jason had done so, and there was no taking that back. Not that he even wanted to. To do so felt like he’d be… sacrificing a part of himself, somehow.

But now as the family — God, it’d grown so much in the years he’d been gone — was gathered in a circle around the right window of the entryway in the dark, Jason felt ever more like an outsider. There was a hush while Bruce rumbled the three blessings and lit the shamash. Jason watched the flickering profile of the man he’d once thought of as a father and couldn’t shake the ache settled deep in his chest. Not with the familiar anger or resentment he usually managed it with.

Here, surrounded by the respectful silence of the Batlings, it was difficult to summon such feelings. Not when a memory returned to him, sharp as cut glass, of another holiday when Jason was barely pushing five foot and wrapped up in awe and gratefulness and terror. Terror that all of this was only temporary. That Bruce would suddenly realise that a street rat didn’t belong among the glossy pages of his public life and would throw him away.

In a way, twelve-year-old Jason hadn’t been wrong… Sometimes he wished it had happened before the fallout could have been so devastating…

Unbidden, Jason’s eyes were drawn across the circle to Peter. He stood close to Damian, who held a box of spices, and watched with great intensity as Bruce dipped the shamash to light the first night’s candle, then set it in its place in the middle of the menorah.

And then, as Bruce began reciting the first of the Havdalah blessings — it was the end of Shabbat^[2], but as far as Jason knew this was one of the few times Bruce acknowledged it — Jason was surprised to see Peter mouth the Hebrew himself — or fragments of it, at least.

The ache grew fiercer. Kinship, it told him. Someone else who’d had a life stripped from them. An identity and family stolen by a cruel and greedy world.

(Though he was sure Peter and Damian would insist that was the extent of their similarities.)

Throat closing on itself, Jason dragged his burning eyes away before Peter could notice him staring.

— + —

Christmas Day, and they had all settled in the drawing room after a late breakfast. A fire blazed cheerfully in what had to be the only working fireplace in all of Gotham. Between the large windows sat the Christmas tree, decked out tastefully in silver and gold, then covered garishly over the top with purple and yellow and the most appalling hand-crafted decorations Jason ever had the misfortune of seeing (he had his money of Steph, Cass and Duke). He was talking decorations of the dried pasta sprayed gold variety, and miniature wreaths made of the torn shreds of plastic bags.

Every now and then, as Alfred filled up glasses with mulled wine or hot chocolate, Jason caught him sending disgruntled glances at the monstrosity.

Presents first. Jason kept himself out of the way in an armchair a little back from the fire and was surprised to get anything at all. But sure enough, they came to him: a beautiful set of leather-bound Hardy novels from a tentative Bruce; a soft red cardigan from Dick; to Bruce and Alfred’s consternation, a pair of jambiya daggers from Damian (possibly from his own collection. The mother of pearl inlays on the hilts were familiar)… even Tim and the others had pitched in and bought him chocolates. It left him flustered and a little guilty at the lacklustre collage of knick-knacks he’d scrounged for in Blüdhaven.

Perhaps… next year…

He ended the thought before it could finish. This was a one-off, and only because the princeling was determined to show his appreciation for something Jason would rather went unacknowledged. The kid’d be satisfied with this, and the next year Jason would be free to do as he pleased when the holidays came around.

There wouldn’t be a next year. That was that.

After the sea of torn wrapping paper was dealt with — much to the disappointment of Alfred the cat and Titus — Jason excused himself. The whole ‘happy family’ thing was too much and besides that, he wanted a cigarette.

He left, unnoticed by the others, and slunk through the manor, out through the conservatory and into the gardens. It was bitingly cold, but the sky was a crystalline blue that faded to a hazy gold along the tree-lined horizon. A thick frost had fastened itself to the grounds during the night and still clung to life throughout the day. Jason was reminded of the one time he’d made the mistake of baking with Dick, before… well. Before. Dick swiftly proved that following recipes was a skill he didn’t have and by the end of the ordeal, powdered sugar dusted every surface.

It took them two hours to clean the kitchen, Alfred directing them both with hawklike precision.

Shoulders easing now he was alone, Jason let out a breath and watched the plume tumble through the crisp air. Dick’s cardigan was thick and soft and only a little tight around the biceps. Jason was glad he’d had the intelligence to take it with him as he’d left.

Out came the cigarettes, and he tried not to feel like he was twelve again, guiltily smoking the precious few he’d smuggled into the manor as his ears strained for the near-silent feet of Alfred or Bruce. He wasn’t twelve anymore. Jason was a full-blown adult (and then some), and neither man could chide him for the habit even death couldn’t shake off.

He hated it. Hated that his hands shook as he lit the cigarette. Hated that the smoke he inhaled felt cold — colder than the warmth of the living room with its blazing fire and laughter. Hated that all of this was just one more thing Joker and Sheila had stolen from him, and that Jason let them fucking keep—  

No. He wouldn’t be coming back next year.

The doors opened again and Jason spun around. Reflex had him dropping the cigarette and grinding it under his foot.

But it was just Peter (just Peter. As if there was ever anything as limiting as just Peter). Jason stared mournfully at the half-smoked cig, then up at Peter.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked and held back a wince at the unintended rudeness in his voice.

“It was loud.”

Jason blinked. It was the first time Peter had spoken to him since he’d turned up. He spoke softer than their last conversation. Haltingly, as though hunting for his words. The steel that threaded through his tenor was gone. Jason hoped its absence was only temporary.

He fished out another smoke rather than respond and lit it. Peter declined with a shake of his head when Jason offered him one — good, he had to ration them until New Years or Roy’d be on his ass about falling into a habit.

Peter joined him, light feet crunching over the frost with deliberate weight. They stood together as Jason worked through his cigarette and his jangled nerves calmed.

No longer a caged animal ready to lash out at the slightest provocation, Jason put the butt out in his pocket ashtray. Picked up the one on the ground too. Who knew what Alfred would make him do around the frozen gardens if he found it.

“Walk with me?” he asked. His breath clouded around him like there was a fire still burning away.

Peter hummed his assent and Jason set off without checking to see if he followed. They walked without talking, following the salted path that meandered around the manor and Jason took in what had changed. He’d never really paid attention before. Didn’t want to. Now, he noted the new sculptures and the growth in the trees and the box bushes that had been swapped out for lavender and felt… not nothing… but not anger, either.

“How have you been?” he asked as they turned a corner and the sun fell away, caught by the looming manor. The air instantly chilled, dropping a good five degrees in its absence.

When he turned to look at Peter, he saw the man was pale and shivering. Jason tutted, and without thought, shrugged out of Dick’s cardigan and passed it over. “Should’ve stayed back if you were cold.”

Peter eyed the garment dubiously, glancing between it and Jason with naked distrust. Rather than embarrass himself with further insistence, Jason shoved it against Peter’s chest and let go, forcing the man to catch it before it fell.

He couldn’t prevent the smirk that formed as Peter put the cardigan on. At least Peter’s answering glare as his hands popped out of the sleeves was something. Something more than that placid stare, at least.

“Keep walking or go back?” he asked, and Peter’s glare sharpened at Jason’s amusement.

“Walk,” Peter said. He did so, arms pinned straight at his sides, hands swallowed by the red wool. Peter wasn’t small, but he wasn’t Jason either. It swamped him, gaping at the neck when he did up the buttons and only his fingertips peeked out the ends of the sleeves.

Belatedly, Jason wondered if Peter was even allowed outside yet. From what he’d gathered, they were taking things slow. Frankly, he was surprised Damian — fiercely protective and possessive of his ahki — hadn’t sought them out already. They’d been gone a good ten minutes or so. More than enough time to get the brat’s hackles up.

He glanced back the way they’d come uneasily, half-expecting the gremlin to come barrelling around the corner, but there was no one outside but the two of them. Still not the least comforted, he followed after Peter.

“I’m fine,” Peter said when Jason caught up to him.

“Eh?”

“You asked me. How I was.” Peter glanced at him, and there was amusement crinkling at the corners of his eyes and thin lips. “Or did you forget?”

“What, like you?” Jason immediately winced at his words, but Peter was unoffended.

“Yes. I forgot… a lot of things. Things I knew had been taken from me… things I didn’t even know had been stolen.” He paused and Jason stopped to match, looking down and fighting the urge to fidget beneath the weight of his scrutiny. “I… remembered you,” Peter murmured. “The boy with the white hair.”

His hand shot out suddenly, and Jason held himself still as cool fingers brushed through his fringe.

“It reminded me of spiderwebs.” The words were soft and dream-like, as if Peter was trapped in a memory. But his eyes sharpened soon enough. “You’re all grown up.”

Jason shifted uncomfortably. His heart throbbed in his throat. “Been that way for a while now.”

“Mmm.” Peter frowned as he looked away again, lost in thought. “There was… a rooftop?”

He nodded. Didn’t offer further explanation: Damian had pulled him aside early into his stay and ordered him to “Remain silent if Peter begins to remember something”. Advice apparently given to them by Martian Manhunter.

The frown cleared as Peter pieced together the jumbles of his memory. “You were angry. Bleeding. I…” He laughed softly. It was hushed and brittle, but a laugh, nonetheless. Thrill at the sound shivered through Jason and was firmly ignored. “I threatened you.”

Jason grinned. “I was a brat.”

“Mm,” Peter hummed. “But it was deserved, I think…” His expression darkened and when he looked back up at Jason, it was with the most lucid expression he’d seen from the man all holiday. “Joker should have died long ago.”

“So that was you…” As if he’d had any doubt… Jason’s grin widened as Peter glanced from him to the manor warily. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

Peter settled some and they continued on their walk. A few more words were spared between them but otherwise they both were content to share in the peace of the day. Only as they approached the conservatory again did Peter stop them, wrapping shockingly strong fingers around his forearm.

“Jason.”

He paused. Looked down, but Peter didn’t let him go. His fingernails were neatly trimmed and someone — Jason had his money on Steph — had painted them with a subtle golden shimmer.

A squeeze had Jason looking up. Peter stared at him intently. “Thank-you. For bringing me back to him.”

Jason grimaced, never comfortable these days with the sentiment of gratitude. “It was nothing—”

“No,” Peter said firmly, squeezing again. “No. It wasn’t nothing. What you did… it was everything. You gave me back my freedom.”

As you did, me, Jason thought, but couldn’t say. Not like he felt that way in those early days. But just as Peter had predicted, time had eased those wounds. Softened the sharp edges of his rage. Now he looked back at that time and the familiar anger he felt was tainted with embarrassment.

Because Bruce, he finally understood, could never do what Jason so badly wanted from him. To do so would mean… he just… wasn’t Bruce anymore. And that hurt. It hurt, to know Jason wasn’t enough to change him in that way. But equally, he thought perhaps… it would be even worse if he had changed Bruce. For the worst.

Had he stayed in Gotham — worse, had Joker still been a thorn in both their sides — Jason would have cut and cut and cut until there was nothing left between them but bloodied bones. He certainly would never have learnt to appreciate exactly what Peter said when he’d told Jason he’d been gifted a second chance. That future wasn’t one of life. Only death.

None of these things he could say to Peter. All Jason found he could do was nod. Peter’s hand slipped away, and Jason turned back to the manor.

Unseen by Jason as he stepped back into the conservatory, Peter ducked his chin and nose beneath the cardigan’s neckline and breathed deep. He was smiling faintly as he shut the door behind them both and the manor’s warmth wrapped them neatly into her embrace.

^[1] So, I did in fact look up the cell reception in Iowa and apparently, it’s pretty OK, but as someone living in England which is mostly flat and 30x smaller than Australia but somehow has worse fucking phone coverage (in Australia I could be 50KM from the nearest town and still get some kind of coverage. In England? You could be in the middle of a city and get jack shit), I have decided that on Earth G, Iowa’s cell coverage is trash, just like England’s.

^[2] I’m prefacing this by saying that I am not Jewish. I did go looking for confirmation on whether the Havdalah service (essentially the rituals and blessings that mark the end of Shabbat, the holy day of rest) is done before or after the lighting of the menorah during Hanukkah, but the consensus seems to be ‘do what is your custom’ (I found this entry helpful: https://aish.com/shabbat-candles-havdalah-on-chanukah/). So if you are Jewish and this is different from how you would approach Hanukkah on the Shabbat, then please know this is the information I’m going off.

Chapter Text

Eight months passed before Jason returned to Gotham. It was the ass end of summer but the city still clung to the season by its filthy fingernails. The air was syrupy thick and just as sticky, skin itching with the unseen vapours that saturated the streets.

Then as Robin and now as Red Hood, Jason hated this time of year. At least in those stupid panties and short sleeves, there was space to cool down. Running around as Red Hood? A unique misery. All it took was one night. One sweat-drenched miserable night of running across rooftops and slapping a few dealers across the head for Jason to eschew his standard brown leather for a jauntier combo of short sleeves and a Bat-grade tac vest. Jason still dropped a weight class in sweat but it was leagues better than the night before.

… Jason Todd, back in Gotham… Alone again and unsure of what to do with himself. He and Roy parted ways a little over a month ago, now that Roy had a surprise daughter to play single father to. Sure, Jason could have stayed in Star City with the two of them — Roy made it clear he was welcome to try out dadhood in a ‘completely bromantic and platonic sort of way’ (Roy’s words) — but he just… couldn’t. Lian was a beautiful baby — Jason loved her, colic nights and all — but that didn’t remotely make him the right kind of person to be living with an infant. There was blood on Jason’s hands that no amount of hushed lullabies and changed nappies could ever hope to sponge away.

So he left, fighting hard to ignore Roy’s poorly hidden disappointment. It wasn’t as if he was throwing Roy to the gumless wolves! Roy had Ollie and Dinah and Connor and Mia, and at least two of those were people Jason would trust around a baby.

Even so, the guilt remained.

A handful of shiftless weeks later, drifting from city to city, and Jason exactly where he knew he’d end up: Gotham. He settled in a pay-by-the-week, furnished apartment on the edge of Park Row — on the opposite side of his old haunts as a kid — and resolutely chose not to tell the family he’d returned to roost.

Not that it mattered. Two nights in and donned in new threads, and Jason was accosted by the Bats.

Or Robin, more specifically.

Or Robin and his new(ish) shadow, the Spider-Man, more specifically than that.

Of course, Jason knew of the new addition to the Gotham lineup. The brat continued to message Jason even after the holidays, although his updates about Peter had gradually shifted into a more generalised picture of the kid’s life. School. What terrible things Drake or Bruce had done that week. Alfred the cat. Alfred the man. Damian’s begrudging friendship with Duke and some kid called Maps. Sketches.

Jason wondered if the kid had started seeing Jason’s number as a void for him to pour his thoughts into. He… wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

There was a lot one teen boy could write about in the span of eight months.

(Sometimes, when Jason was feeling daring, he even shot the kid a response back.)

It was a web that announced their appearance. Jason had been perfectly happy minding everybody’s business as he took a break from the rooftop of Park Row’s tiny library, when his protein bar was rudely yanked out of his hand by something blink-and-you-miss-it fast. There and gone again and BAM! No more protein bar.

He yelped, and the throwing knife he drew was prompted torn from his grip as well. It was only as he jumped and rolled away that he realised what it fucking was.

“You dick!” he snarled, flipping onto his feet and brushing off the dust from his pants as foreign laughter danced through the sweaty night.

“Wrong brother,” said one of the miscreants, smirking as he toyed with the stolen dagger. His partner in crime had tugged up their mask to eat Jason’s goddamn protein bar. Prick. Jason paid extra for the ones that didn’t taste like cardboard.

Robin and the Spider-Man (or was it just ‘Spider-Man’? No one had told him and Jason didn’t want anyone to know he cared enough to ask) were crouched on the stepped rooftop of the neighbouring building. Their figures were deeply shadowed. It was a new moon and for all the light pollution, Crime Alley wasn’t the brightly lit cityscape of Upper East Side or the Fashion District.

How’d they crept up on him? Had to be Peter and those webs. No way Jason wouldn’t have heard a grappling hook latch on.

Jason’s opinion see-sawed when it came to Peter’s inclusion on the roster. Surely his brain was still scrambled from whatever mindfuckery Ra’s had pulled on him? But then Jason would remind himself that he’d been out jumping from instructor to instructor a scant handful of weeks after Talia dunked him in the pit and that was without an imperious henchling-slash-pseudo-brother to keep him humble. So he wisely kept his thoughts to himself, lest Damian trace his phone and do something regrettable like sicc Dick on him.

Sighing heavily, Jason pulled another protein bar from his cargos. He took a bite before that too could be stolen.

“Come the fuck down, would you?”

The pair did so, alighting silently onto the library. The ripple of Robin’s cape confirmed Jason’s suspicions. Up close, Jason took his time to study the two. Damian’s costume had undergone a redesign since Christmas, replacing the traditional traffic-lights for red, black and grey. The morose colours were tempered by the jaunty upwards curve of his boots, the jagged line of his tunic and the flash of yellow on the underside of his cape.

Still a kid. Still a Robin.

Peter on the other hand… the only black he wore was the webbed pattern radiating from his neck. The skintight suit left little to the imagination, highlighting the long, lean lines of his torso and legs, and the whipcord strength of his arms. A faint air of menace hung about him: the spider motif on his chest looked mean. Mirrored eyes glared back at Jason, juxtaposing the broad grin Peter wore as he finished chewing.

Interest stirred in Jason’s gut. He tamped it down: the helmet had come off to eat and he wasn’t about to let anyone know he was intrigued by a nice, sleek suit.

“Got another?” Peter asked, and Jason was so blindsided by the cheerfulness of Peter’s voice that he threw the man his last one without thought.

Damn. There went his hopes of going to bed without having to cook something.

“What do you want?” he demanded, gruff to conceal his fluster.

“To confirm your intentions—”

“To be a bother.”

Jason raised a brow. Peter’s cheeky quip certainly matched his grin. It was a far cry from the solemn young man at Christmas or the feral assassin Jason captured last October. Then again, he had fuzzy memories of a similar smile in the League… though the image was marred by images of blood smeared across Peter’s youthful face.

Jason held back a shudder. That wasn’t… he didn’t think that was Peter, either. Not really. Not when that wretched sobbing still cut clear through the soft matter of Jason’s brain on occasion. Little wonder Bruce had let Peter into the family with open arms.

The two of them were not the same. The blood on their hands was not the same.

“Gotham ain’t no blushing maiden,” was what Jason said instead of any of that. “She don’t need some upstart princeling checking out her suitors.”

“Knowing your history, Hood, I would beg to differ.”

“And what would you really know, huh?” Jason settled back into his perch rather than reveal his ruffled feathers. “Not like you were around when I made my glorious return.”

“Gloriously idiotic,” Damian muttered.

Jason chewed sedately on the last bite of his snack, though he was tempted to laugh. “If you wanted to bother me, it ain’t workin’. Try harder, Gremlin One and Two.”

The kid clicked his tongue, but Peter laughed. Jason zeroed in on the sound without conscious thought.

(Little did he know it’s impact, then. The way it would haunt him in the weeks to follow, in those softened moments between waking and slumber… A sweetened torment that would drag him back into the waking world… A warmth smouldering in his gut and sending his own hands south, to stroke himself to hardness while his fuzzy mind rolled over thoughts of the man.

But he would. Oh God, would he know soon enough.)

“We spoke about this, Robin,” Peter said. He set a long-fingered hand on Damian’s shoulder. It was a testament to their relationship that the kid didn’t shake it off. “We use the nice words.”

“But that is for people. Todd’s not people, he is just Todd.”

“Gee, I’m flattered. And how do I earn such personhood, great prince?”

“Tt. See? He is impossible,” Damian scoffed, turning to Peter. “We should go. Father will be content with knowing he is up to no good.”

Geez. Anyone would have thought the brat didn’t treat Jason’s phone number like his personal journal, the way he carried on. Jason might’ve said something about it, except the brat did use his cell like his personal journal, and he wasn’t cruel enough to take that outlet away from the kid.

“No,” Peter hummed and held Damian in place. He turned back to Jason, who irrationally wished there weren’t masks between the two of them. “We want to know if this is a visit, or if you are returning to Gotham for good.”

Jason swallowed the remainder of his protein bar.

“Dunno.” To his surprise, Damian’s shoulders relaxed marginally…. Was the kid… hoping he was here for the long term? Surely not. “Arsenal’s gone into early retirement.” Though he doubted it was permanent. Heroes were like musicians, in Jason’s experience. They never stayed out of the life for long. Always had to make a comeback. “Figured I’d check things out. Not sure if it’ll stick.”

Roy’s retirement or Jason’s residency.

“I see.” Damian finally shook off Peter’s hand and straightened to his full height, which was less impressive than the kid probably thought it was. “Then you will patrol with us.”

“Oh, I will, will I?”

Peter laughed again. “Black Mask has a shipment of new weapons. They turn up tonight.”

Jason perked up. “Does he?”

“They’re to be smuggled in through Amusement Mile.”

Amusement Mile. Once the territory of Joker. The Bats had worked hard to eradicate the remainder of his lackeys still clinging to possession of the cursed ground. City officials had tried to reclaim it, turn it into a new district, but Developers refused to bite. At least, none of the ones who’d do a good job at it. These days it was the haunt of the homeless. Those too desperate to turn their noses up at poisoned earth.

Increasingly, Gotham’s underbelly had turned their sights on it as a place for smuggling.

He jumped to his feet. “On a scale of yes to no, how likely is it I can blow it up?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely not.”

Oh. That was permission as far as Jason was concerned. And if Bruce chose to complain about destroyed evidence, Jason would just claim he was confused by who had seniority. Silly old Jason, brain still scrambled from death and the Lazarus Pit! How was he to know?

“Like old times.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. Fucking over Sionis with a few delightful explosions? What an absolute treat. Maybe he’d take a few pictures with the blaze in the background and send them the bastard. That’d really get the man frothing^[1].

Roy, too, now that he thought of it. The guy was going stir-crazy. He tried to hide it in their weekly video calls — Jason might not be an appropriate presence in Lian’s life, but he still wanted to see her, dammit — but Jason knew Roy Harper far too well for that to work. Roy was getting twitchy… The next time they talked, Jason’d recommend Roy get into something that didn’t involve running around at night with a bow. Woodworking, maybe. Or guerrilla gardening or something.

“I take it you are interested, then?” Damian asked.

Jason might have given him a noogie if he was sure the kid wouldn’t stab him and Peter wouldn’t bodily throw him off the roof. Instead, he pulled out his grappling gun with a theatrical flourish.

“Lead the way, Robin.”

Again, Peter laughed. He bounded over to stand beside Jason as he tugged down the mask, smile tragically hidden from view. Jason fit his helmet back on in response.

“I’d race you,” Peter said lowly, the amusement that was ripe in his voice fizzing pleasantly through Jason’s blood. Fuck it was a change and a half. “But I reckon you’d lose.”

“Oh yeah? Had a handful of months here and think you know the city, Charlotte?”

“No.” Mask or not, Jason knew Peter was smiling that dangerous smile again. “I just know I’m faster.”

And then Peter’s arm sprung out, web erupted from his wrist and he was leaping into the empty air with a whoop of delight.

Jason watched with interest. That suit really was something, though he didn’t know how someone like Bruce would have allowed Peter out with that little protection. Even Dick’s costume had more to it.

“Tt.” He didn’t jump at Damian’s appearance at his elbow. “Show off.”

“That he is.” Peter was right: there was no way he’d keep up.

With a grappling hood, that was.

He looked down at Damian. Someone had let him grow to Jason’s shoulders. When the fuck had that happened?

“You gotta bike?”

“Not tonight.”

“Shame… Wanna lift?”

“… Yes.”

— + —

Afterwards, as the armoured delivery truck burned cheerfully against the backdrop of a cloudless night sky and Gotham County glittering across the bay, Peter stood closer to Jason than he thought strictly necessary. They watched the bright flames with equally wide and hidden grins.

“Welcome back to Gotham,” Peter said in a lull between popping explosions. There was something in that truck that packed a punch. Batman was gonna be real mad. What a shame.

“Oh? Was this my welcoming party? You know how to treat a guy.”

Off to the side, the small group of smugglers and False Facers groaned as they were buffeted by the blast. Tied up or webbed to various flat surfaces, they all shared a satisfying number of bruises.

(Jason was past his days of indiscriminate killing. Call it growing up, or a greyer understanding of the world… just don’t call it unresolved daddy issues, thank-you very much, Roy.)

The wail of incoming police sprung up — not Jason’s preference, but Damian had already called them in. All three of them stood sentinel over the wailing blaze and goons until they arrived.

Knowing the system — and who they worked for — most would be out on bail (or without charges at all) by the end of the week. Jason made sure his helmet got a good picture of each and every one. Some were just in it for the money, he knew, but throwing your money in with Black Mask was a statement, and Jason would be watching. If they stepped out of line, they’d have the Red Hood to pay.

The police roared onto the scene and all three of them melted into the shadows before the first cop’s boot hit the pavement.

“Come back to the cave?” Peter asked while they watched the False Facers kick up a stink as they were manhandled into the paddy wagon.

Surprising even himself, Jason thought about it rather than dismissing the invite outright. But the outcome was the same either way.

“Naw. Can’t imagine I’ve got anything to add that you two couldn’t.”

“That wasn’t why I asked.”

Jason shrugged. “Gonna make a final run of Park Row then call it a night.”

“Suit yourself.” If Peter was disappointed by the rejection, Jason had no way of catching it. His voice was perfectly placid.

Damian turned on Jason, squaring up his shoulders. “Sunday is family dinner. I demand your presence.”

Jason couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, you demand it, do you?”

“I have already promised Agent A your attendance.”

Jason held back a wince. The brat went for the jugular, didn’t he? Fucking low blow.

“We’ll see,” Jason managed, and was rewarded with another clicking of the tongue.

With that, he fled, hoping he might somehow escape the feeling he’d somehow been adopted as a ‘troubled case’ by the pint-sized terror.

Peter’s laughter chased him the entire ride back to Park Row. And then later, it did the same… just as he was on the cusp of falling asleep.

Fuck.

— + —

Damian’s invite went forgotten — out of sight, out of mind — the remainder of the week. Fortunately for his sanity, Jason didn’t see anyone else during patrol. Even with the bat out of the bag, the others appeared to have agreed to leave him to his old haunt rather than poke the bear.

That was A-OK with Jason. All the better to reestablish himself in the district and start eating away at the influence of Black Mask and the Falcones who’d reclaimed control in the wake of the Red Hood’s power vacuum four years back.

So Jason was wholly unprepared to return from his pre-breakfast (or more like lunch by the time he woke) run on Sunday to find Peter in his apartment.

Peter was slouched on the tiny — and wildly uncomfortable — couch, watching the TV on mute. No wonder Jason hadn’t realised he’d been broken into.

“The fuck’re you doing here?” he asked, still frozen in the doorway in shock. No one broke into Jason’s home. No one.

Okay. Some ones. But usually Jason noticed, dammit!

“I thought I’d say hi,” said Peter. Dark eyes flicked appraisingly up and down Jason’s body. Too hot for anything else, he’d gone out in running shorts over compression leggings and a sleeveless tee he suspected might once have been Roy’s. Nothing unusual, Jason thought, until he felt the weight of Peter’s stare.

“How’d you get in?” he rasped.

“I came down the chimney. Ho, ho, ho.” Peter’s voice had shifted into a low and slow drawl that left Jason suddenly dry mouthed and strangely nervous.

He shut and dead-bolted the door rather than let anything show. Not that it apparently meant anything.

“You could’ve messaged?”

“I enjoy surprises,” Peter said. He made no attempt to get up. Shameless fucker.

Jason sighed and turned to his sink. The lukewarm water was a balm against his heated face and he nearly drank straight from the tap (he’d installed a purifier the moment he moved in) before remembering his unwelcome guest.

A glass, then. Like civilised people. He drank deeply, then refilled it to sip from. In the reflection of the window above the sink, he caught Peter watching him still. His skin prickled.

“You want a drink?”

“Already got one, ta.”

Sure enough, when Jason spun around, Peter was holding up a glass soda bottle. He frowned in suspicion.

“Is that one of my Mexican Cokes?”

“Oh, yeah.” Peter was smirking even as he sipped pointedly from the bottle. “I get the hype. High fructose corn syrup just doesn’t hit the same, you know?”

There was no stopping the scandalised sound that escaped his throat. “You fucker! Those are fucking five times the price of a regular Coke!”

“Are they? How generous of you to share.”

“It ain’t sharing if you fucking stole it!”

“Tomayto, tomahto.” Peter took another drink, and Jason was absolutely not enthralled by the pursing of his reddened lips or bobbing Adam’s apple. Not even remotely. And he absolutely wasn’t fascinated by the sound Peter made when he finished and set the bottle down on the upturned milk crate that aped as a coffee table. “I’m here to take you to dinner.”

His mind blanked—

Crap. It was Sunday.

“I’m busy.”

“You are not.”

“How the fuck would you know?”

“Because, and bear in mind, I am quoting Damian here, you ‘have zero life and have allowed your vigilantism to become your entire personality’.” Peter’s sharp eyes flicked around the room. The only scrap of individuality to be found was Jason’s backpack, the duffel with most of his weapons, and a pair of paperbacks left on the windowsill. The place could have been a shitty motel room. “It doesn’t seem like he’s too far from the truth.”

Well, that was fucking rude. “Get out.”

“Not unless you’re coming with me.”

“Get out, or I’ll throw you out.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Again with that sharp-toothed smile. “Do you know what day it is?”

“Sunday. I know. But I’m not playing happy family — once a year is more than enough.”

“It’s the sixteenth.”

Jason stared.

“Of August?”

His stomach dropped. “Fuck.”

In one fluid move that had Jason’s pulse thrumming with surprise, Peter stood. He stalked across what little space hung between them and stopped, barely a foot away.

Peter’s eyelashes were long and thick. He smelled, somehow, of the wind.

“Happy birthday, Jason Todd.”

If there were words to spit out in response, in that moment Jason couldn’t find them. Peter was close — too close — and looking up at him with that wicked smile and oh God, he had freckles. Why had Jason never noticed the freckles? They were a damning constellation of blemishes that Jason rightfully should’ve gone the rest of his life without noticing. But there was no taking back the knowledge.

“Now…” Peter’s heavy gaze drifted from Jason’s face to his chest and arms. “Go and have a shower. I’ll pick out something for you to wear that puts those guns away.” He patted Jason’s bicep and sent him an impish grin. “They’re lethal.”

Half-dazed, Jason nodded woodenly. He stepped past Peter to head towards the bathroom.

“Oh, and Jason?”

He froze, back to the man who was once again close enough Jason could smell that fresh wind smell.

“If you run, I will bite you,” Peter said, low and crisp and right against his ear. “I promised Damian your presence, and your presence he shall get.”

“I’d fucking bite back,” Jason breathed. Certain that he’d spontaneously combust if he turned around, Jason kept his eyes trained stubbornly on the bathroom door’s peeling paint.

“I know,” Peter sighed happily and stepped away. “Now be quick, birthday boy. I’ve got better things to do than wait around for you to get your shit together.”

“I think I liked the feral Peter better.”

“Liar. Steph and Dick say I’m an absolute delight.” And then Jason yelped when Peter slapped his fucking ass. “Now get.”

Jason got.

His hand was on his cock the moment the shower spray hit his chest. No way was he getting in that car with Peter with a goddamn erection. As his muted gasps echoed off the glass cubicle, he prayed the rattling extractor fan was loud enough to swallow up his torment.

— + —

The ride to the manor was a torment, but not in the way he imagined.

“Jesus!” he yelped as Peter roughly overtook yet another truck that immediately honked at them. “Do you even know how to drive?”

“My license says I do.”

The engine growled as Peter pushed it to the limits of sensibility. Jason spotted the gap and immediately knew his intentions. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Relax,” Peter drawled. “I have excellent reflexes.”

To prove his point, Peter squeezed them through the narrow gap between two enormous SUVs as he switched lanes again, and again the driver behind honked furiously. Peter immediately wove back to the right lane and Jason was surprised he’d not torn the grab handle out of the roof already.

Blessedly, there was a long gap of empty highway ahead. With the way Peter was speeding, it wouldn’t take long to hit the next pocket of traffic, but for now Jason took the moment of peace to shoot a text to Roy, informing him of where to find his last will and testament.

???? Came Roy’s immediate reply. Also, Happy Birthday.

Accompanying the message was a photo of Lian, looking tooth-achingly adorable in a too-big party hat. Jason immediately saved the image, chest squeezing with more than just fear.

“Honestly, I’m a bit surprised,” Peter said, tearing Jason’s attention from his cell. “I’d have thought you’d be a thrill seeker like the rest of them.”

“You fucking know I am. It’s different when you’re not the one driving!”

“Batman drives like a lunatic,” Peter said, pouting. They’d reached the traffic and thus the weaving began again. “You were Robin. You’ve seen the kinds of corners he takes.”

“Batman drives like a highly trained lunatic. If you’ve had any training, I’d eat my goddamn hood.”

“Chill—” Peter shot him a charming smile complete with fluttering eyes, “if we crash, I’ll pull you from the wreckage again.”

“If you don’t keep your eyes on the fucking road there’ll be nothing to pull either of us out of! And watch out for cops: the last thing we need is to get pulled over.”

“Don’t even worry about that,” Peter said, in a tone that had Jason immediately worrying about that. Peter tapped his forehead. “My spider senses will let me know if there’s police nearby.”

“Spider senses? What kinda bullshit is that?”

“The kind that gives me a built-in cop-dar.”

“Oh my fucking God,” Jason moaned, clutching his head in his hands. Built-in cop-dar, what the fuck. “I’m gonna die. On my goddamn birthday.” He shot up as a thought occurred to him. “This is payback for the bow, isn’t it?”

“Oh, trust me, Jace.” Peter squeezed him on the knee and grinned at him once more. It could’ve been comforting; could’ve been a warning. Jason’s brain fritzed out at the touch and was unable to discern either. “When I get you back for that bow, you’ll know it.”

Jason, stomach churning with something between fear and anticipation, wisely remained quiet for the rest of Peter’s manic drive.

— + —

Time passed. Despite his attempts to keep the Gotham menagerie at arm’s length, Damian continued to text and Peter crept more and more into the peripherals of Jason’s life.

Four weeks in, Jason finally admitted defeat and came to terms with Gotham being a semi/permanent move. Not long after securing himself a proper apartment, this one planted deep into Park Row, he returned from a run to find a houseplant hanging from a web above his sink. A post-it with a poorly drawn spider had fallen off, lying puckered with water stains on the stainless steel.

(The post-it still sat on the top of his fridge. Embarrassingly, Jason was too chicken-shit to throw it away.)

A week later, one of the higher ups in Black Mask’s gang was left bound, gagged and half-shitting himself with terror in Red Hood’s hideout. Mo, one of his favourite lackeys, had been the one to find him. More webs. Another post-it.

Word of a spider teaching the kids in the Bowery self-defence — in between helping them with their homework — reached him a week after that.

Bit by bit, the spider was casting its web through Gotham. Jason wasn’t sure what he felt about it, and so, out of morbid curiosity more than anything else (and it was definitely only morbid curiosity), he let it.

So, it wasn’t a surprise when, in the second week of October, they crossed paths once more while Jason was going undercover. The meeting smacked of fate or some equally fanciful shit and by that point Jason had resigned himself to seeing how things would play out.

He was in a nightclub — one of the many bordering the stretch between north-west Park Row and Newtown. Two of his informants had passed on the warning that some chucklefuck was handing out what was meant to be ecstasy but left some unfortunate clubbers in giggling fits that lasted hours. It wasn’t as bad as Joker Venom — there’d been no long-lasting effects from what he’d learnt, only bruised ribs and light-headedness — but it was more than enough to ring alarm bells.

He’d suited up for the evening in the tightest jeans he owned (a ripped pair Roy had fobbed off on him after wearing them once before swearing himself off them for life) and a lavender button-down that clung uncomfortably to his shoulders (he thought it might’ve been Kori’s? She liked lounging in oversized shirts on occasion); spent far too long on his hair before saying ‘fuck it’ and ruffling it into a curled mess; made sure he had trackers in easy reach and his knives safely concealed; and left.

Lola’s wasn’t a gay club persé but it wasn’t not a gay club, either. Perhaps if Jason ever spoke to its owners — and if he didn’t wrap this up tonight, he would be — he’d ask if the name took inspiration from a certain shoe-themed musical. The uninspiring martini glasses clinking in neon lights beside the club’s name gave nothing away.

Jason’s size always got bouncers nervy, so he wasn’t surprised when they stopped to pat him down before entering. He tolerated it without complaint and was let in with only a warning glare. No point taking it personally; it was a good thing the bouncers gave a shit about who was coming or going. Meant the place was a safe place. And considering the crush of highly intoxicated revellers inside, that was pretty fucking important.

Even so, he’d definitely be making a call as Hood when this was done. There were always gangs sniffing around these sorts of places. Better to keep tabs on them just in case — provided someone hadn’t done so already.

Inside was the usual sleaze of nightclubs: loud music, louder dancers, ample alcohol and throbbing lights manned by some prick who thought themselves an artiste. To blur the experience from unpleasant into thrilling was the familiar haze of a fake smoke machine or three. It sank into the dancing pit, where bodies melted into a mass of churning limbs that caught on the blades of light cutting through the smog. Peeling and graffitied ‘no smoking’ signs were plastered all over the place, but years without the ban left the club still stinking vaguely of stale cigarettes, perfume, sweat and sex.

Eyes fell on Jason almost immediately. He was unsurprised, even if he didn’t really understand the attention. Scarred, with a face that leaned closer to mean than handsome, Jason couldn’t see why anyone would bother with a second look, but as Roy once told him, being tall and owning thighs ‘thick enough to crush watermelons’ was more than enough for some.

Just keep that grumpy personality to yourself for at least the first date, Roy had also told him, slightly loopy after two days without sleep à la Lian. You can look mean, but you can’t be mean, you get me?

Jason did not get him, though he certainly acted like he did. Besides, there wasn’t much risk of Jason turning ‘mean’ after the first date. From experience, he was more at risk of boring someone away than he was scaring them off^[2].

He compartmentalised the appraising looks from the men and women and people somewhere in between and headed for the bar. Ordered himself a beer — they had reds, which was a nice surprise. As he waited, turning back to watch the pit, he thought he saw a familiar face — whose, he couldn’t have pinned down, the moment too fast to catch — but it was immediately swallowed by the crowd. Then the bartender slid his beer across and Jason paid and retreated to the floor above. It circled the pit like a grungy amphitheatre and Jason laughed with sudden remembrance.

Lola’s — before it became Lola’s, that was — had been a fight club. People, animals, metas. They held ‘feature nights’ that frequently ended with a traumatised victor and a dead competitor. He and Batman — in Jason’s early days as Robin — had shut it down, thanks to a story one of the working girls in Park Row had passed on to Jason. The organisers had been looking to diversify their entertainment and started sniffing around the streets for girls desperate enough for a hit that they’d subject themselves to a different kind of hit as payment.

The new owners had certainly cleaned it up, even if the sleaze was sunk deep into the concrete and paintwork. That wasn’t something you could simply scrub out.

Settling against a pylon by the railings, Jason sipped slowly at his beer as he watched the club, on the lookout for dealers or less savoury behaviour. The familiar face was gone: maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, or maybe they’d already made themselves scarce. Either way, Jason wasn’t chasing. There was a job to do, and he had no interest spending more time than needed in the too loud, too flashy nightclub. He tucked himself away from the view of most, just an observer that was swiftly forgotten.

Or not quite forgotten. Thirty minutes into his vigil and half his beer down, someone slid close to him, bringing with them the scent of fresh and clean.

“Fancy seeing you here,” they said, voice pitched in the right way for it to reach Jason despite the throbbing dance music.

His flinch was held back only through his years of training. Jason turned to look at them with a frisson of surprised delight. Guess that was the face he saw.

“I could say the same. You here for business, or pleasure?”

Peter grinned, dancing lights catching on the white glimmer of teeth. “I’ve not decided yet.” His eyes raked up and across. Jason didn’t fidget, though he wanted to. “The clothes say, ‘for pleasure’, but the position says, ‘for business’. That, or you’re more of a wallflower than I thought.”

Jason swallowed. Peter’s trousers were in an even sorrier state than Jason’s and worse still, a fucking mesh shirt. Jason could see his nipples, dark rounds poorly obscured by the black mesh. Peter’s cheeks glittered, catching the pulsating lights in flashes of gold. In the manner of glitter, some had even worked its way up to Peter’s hair, which was mussed, as though windblown. Or as if someone had run their fingers greedily through it.

His mouth was dry. Why was it dry? He took a fortifying sip of his beer, but the drink no longer held any appeal.

“There’s word of an adulterated batch of E making the rounds. Effects are suspiciously close to Joker venom.”

“Mm.” Peter nodded sagely. “Do you mean like this?”

And then the devil in a mesh shirt pulled a little baggie from his jeans. The handful of pills flashed an incriminating white as the lights bounced off them. Jason snatched it from him — or tried to. Mostly he just succeeded in holding the man’s hand against his chest.

“Are you mad? Did you buy this?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Peter purred. He appeared to take Jason’s touch as permission to return it, pressing his lithe body against Jason as if they were dancing down in the pit. “I stole it. I’ve got sticky fingers, you know.”

The impish look was back and it promised nothing good.

“You idiot! What if he noticed?”

And the imp was gone. Hard eyes drilled into him. “I’d like to remind you, Jason Todd, that I was part of the League long before you dug yourself out of that grave.”

Jason winced. “I — right. Sorry.”

As though all was forgiven, Peter relaxed even more into Jason. He stretched his unclaimed arm upwards to brush his long fingers through Jason’s hair. Jason was abruptly reminded of a cat, luxuriating in the sun. A big cat. The kind that bit.

“So…” Jason struggled to rally against the warm weight leaning against his chest. Peter was heavier than he looked. Shouldn’t be a surprise given how strong he was, but here Jason was. Surprised and unsure if he should put a steadying hand around Peter’s waist. “Fancy showing me who the dealer is? I’d — uh —like this one nipped in the bud before it becomes a problem.”

“I can do you one better.” Those fingers carding through his hair were very distracting. As wildly uncomfortable as it had suddenly made him, Jason was grateful he’d thought to put on a cup. “I put a tracker on him.”

“You what?” Jason laughed breathlessly and Peter’s dark eyes crinkled with shared amusement. “You sneaky shit.”

“Well, I’ve been called worse,” Peter mused. He rose up onto his toes. Brushed the tip of his nose along Jason’s jawline. His breath stuttered in his chest. “I hope you don’t mind, but you’d been gathering some stares. I didn’t like it.”

Jason struggled to swallow. That close, he had no doubt Peter could hear the thundering of his pulse.

“Sure,” he managed to get out. “When I came in.”

“That was enough,” Peter rumbled. And then the hand in Jason’s hair clenched, startling an unfamiliar sound from Jason’s throat, before he was left cold and bereft and achingly hard as Peter stepped away.

“He’s leaving. We should follow.”

Unmoored, Jason blinked back dumbly. “Already?”

“Not much point hanging around without his goods, is there?” Peter smirked.

Right. Peter stole his drugs. Still… “How do you know he’s leaving?”

“My tracers work a little different from yours,” was all Peter said, tapping at his forehead with a mystifying smile^[3]. “C’mon, Jace. Let’s bag ourselves a fish.”

And then he was tugging on Jason’s hand and leading him out of Lola’s. Jason didn’t resist. His mind was still reeling from the feeling of a hand tugging at his hair and hot breath against his ear.

That was… Jason wondered if he would survive further entanglement with Peter.

— + —

Peter’s mysterious tracer led them to a Chinese restaurant still open at the late hour, deeper into Newtown, though they made a quick pit stop to suit up along the way. Both of them had thought to plant some gear about a block from Lola’s, though Peter’s was behind an air-conditioning unit two stories up. Jason had the dubious honour of watching him treat gravity like it was a mere suggestion and was glad that his open mouth was hidden by the helmet.

It at least explained why he had memories of eyes looking down from high up, before his unholy baptism.

They took Jason’s bike to the location, with Peter directing him from behind, hands tugging this way or that to point him the right direction. The entire time, Peter didn’t once refer to any kind of tracking device. Jason was half tempted to call his bullshit, but sure enough, when they did stop, they arrived in time to watch the dodgy dealer exchanging a hefty stack of money for a box of noodles.

Either that was the world’s most expensive chicken lo-mein, or those weren’t noodles in that ‘Thank-you 😊have a nice day!’ bag.

Peter went for the buyer; Jason went for the real dealers. He was ashamed to say that sexual frustration made him meaner than he meant to be — Peter should have looked ridiculous in the half spider-suit, half torn jeans ensemble, but instead he just looked fucking hot. By the end of it, the kitchen was in shambles, Jason was lightly bleeding where a chef’s knife just clipped him at the waist, and the two dealers/cooks were down, groaning and tugging ineffectually at their bindings.

“Now.” Jason hauled the first up by their collar and shoved them against the walk-in cooler. “If you don’t want to be sporting any third-degree burns, you’ll tell me where those drugs came from.”

“Fuck you!” the man spat, eyes flashing with anger and fear. “I ain’t telling you shit!”

“Say anything and we’re dead,” the other hissed in Cantonese. Jason chuckled and switched to it, easy as pie.

“You’ll be dead anyway. You know how many people will tear you apart for lacing drugs with Joker Venom?”

Both paled. It didn’t take much more than a threat to baste them with their own frying oil for them to spill. By the time Peter returned — sans dealer, though his posture suggested he’d not lost him — the two brothers were singing a pitiful story of payday loans, aggressive debtors and False Facers swooping in to save the day. For a steep price.

Fucking Sionis. Jason needed to do something about that bastard before he ended up poisoning the city with half-baked Joker Venom. The beast might’ve been dead for years by now, but there were still the odd opportunistic freaks like Black Mask who hoped to capitalise off his legacy.

But that would have to be for another night. Reluctantly, Jason cut through their bindings.

“Thank-you!” they sobbed. The younger man was bordering on hysterics. Jason waved them off gruffly.

“You aren’t out of hot water,” he reminded them, scrawling out a number on a blank order pad. “The next time they give you a shipment, you tell me.”

“Wh-what will you do?”

“The less you know, the better.” Jason hauled them both up. He winced as he surveyed the chaos. “Uh. Sorry. About the mess.”

“The mess we’ve been in is far worse,” said the elder. “We won’t let you down.”

“See that you don’t. And be careful.”

He dragged Peter away, out the back door he’d entered through. Peter allowed him.

“You just… let them go?”

“Yes,” Jason grunted.

Peter stopped, effectively yanking Jason to a halt too. “Why?”

Jason turned. With the mask, Peter was unreadable, but his tone wasn’t disbelieving, it was curious. And beneath that… something he couldn’t quite pin down.

“‘Cause they’re victims, too. And they’re of more use to me free than they are behind bars. They ain’t the masterminds any more than that guy I bet you tied up somewhere for the cops to find.”

“I see…”  Peter didn’t disprove him, and he allowed them to continue back to the bike. When there, he stopped again. His foot tapped on the ground. Once, twice, then he muttered ‘fuck it’, and dragged Jason into the pillowy shadows of the alley he’d parked in. In two deft moves, he yanked up his mask and tore off Jason’s helmet.

Jason yelped, startled that Peter knew how to even open his helmet, and then he was slammed up against a wall, a hand cradling the back of his head to stop it bouncing off the brick, and a mouth was on his.

Maybe he hit his head anyway, because Jason was dead sure he saw stars as Peter kissed him. His wicked mouth moved against Jason’s, forceful and biting and — fuck — so fucking good. Jason clutched at Peter’s waist, pressed his palm flat between his shoulders. Soft lips moved with Jason’s, tongue slipping in when Jason gasped, Peter’s hand grabbing and squeezing his ass.

When they finally drew apart, both were breathing hard. His skin prickled with heat that Peter chased with open mouthed kisses to Jason’s jaw. With Peter’s other hand still woven tightly through Jason’s hair, he could do little else but let the man tug his head to the side to expose the sensitive skin of his neck. Not that Jason felt like stopping anyway.

“Take me back to yours?” Peter purred into Jason’s ear.

Jason bit back a moan. “Fu-free loader,” he taunted, though the insult lacked any heat.

Peter raked his teeth up and down Jason’s jugular and his pulse skyrocketed. “Well, I could fuck you at the manor, I s’pose…”

“Ugh.” Jason shuddered for a completely different reason. “No. Nope.”

“So, yours?”

“Mine.”

“Wonderful.”

With a parting nibble at Jason’s neck, Peter stepped away, once again leaving Jason blinking in a daze, his front iced cold. He watched dumbly, feeling a little like he’d been led straight into a trap, as Peter stripped off his Spider-Man hood and shirt, revealing that goddamn mesh shirt.

Reason returned. Jason frowned. “You’ll freeze.” He pushed himself off the wall, still feeling light-headed, and wriggled out of his leather jacket. “Here.”

Peter took it off him, slow and hesitant. But he paused as they parted again. “You’re bleeding.”

Jason barely glanced down. He already knew the pale fabric made it look worse that it was. “It stopped ages ago. Barely a knick.”

Unsatisfied with Jason’s dismissiveness, Peter yanked up his shirt. In his haste, he tore off at least one button.

“Oi!” Jason cried, as if he was ever planning on wearing the thing again. It was so fucking tight he was shocked he’d not popped out of the seams while fighting. That any of the buttons had survived felt like a miracle.

Peter ignored his bellyaching. Light fingers brushed over the wound, cool against Jason’s over-heated skin.

“Just a graze,” he murmured, relieved.

“I told you. I know how to take care of myself.”

The days of Jason carrying around a death wish were long over. There were things to live for, now. Real, tangible things that summed up to more than just a desire for revenge or a sign that his death might have meant something to Bruce. Roy. Kori. Lian. Fucking Damian.

Be better, Peter had ordered him on that awful night, while Jason contemplated moving the wrong way and letting himself bleed out. Be free.

He was trying. Fucking hell, Jason was trying.

— + —

It was a cold and maddening ride home. The wind cut straight through his torn and bloodied cotton shirt, and though Peter had started off as a well-behaved pillion, by the time they reached his apartment block, that had devolved into straight-up groping. Evil, evil hands squeezed at his chest and throat while Peter slotted himself tight against Jason’s back. It was only Jason’s sorely won ability to compartmentalise that prevented them from skidding out of control.

But did Jason tell him to stop? Peter would if he told him to…

No… no, that would be the sensible thing to do. And never let it be said that Jason had a history of making sensible decision.

As soon as he’d parked the bike, Peter was flipping off and plastering himself to Jason’s front to kiss him. Just the once, but hard enough to steal the breath straight from Jason’s lungs when they parted.

Then he was stepping away again to let Jason off the motorcycle.

They were silent as Jason secured the bike and took the stairs up to his apartment, but the air was charged hot and electric. Jason felt like one of those plasma balls. Every time Peter drew close, a stream of energy connected between them. His skin crawled with anticipation and nerves.

What was it Peter wanted from him? Was this just a fuck? A controlled burn of the tension that had flourished between them ever since Peter dragged him, bloody and anguished, out of that rubble? Or was this something more? Jason didn’t know. Didn’t know if he wanted to know. Not when the blood was scorching and his skin zapped with electricity every time Peter drew close.

Whatever good behaviour Peter displayed on the climb up to Jason’s apartment, it promptly disappeared the moment Jason locked and secured the door.

A long, lithe body draped itself over Jason’s back to pin him against the door. The arms that wrapped around his waist crept up and down respectively. Taunting fingers brushed beneath the waistband of his jeans, along the swell of his pectorals, but no further.

He’d not even managed to switch the lights on.

“I want to fuck you,” Peter breathed into the sensitive skin of Jason’s neck. A full body shiver erupted from the point of contact. “Can I?”

Jason’s breath pooled unevenly across his door. He regretted the choice to wear a cup, even if it had proven useful at the Chinese restaurant. He swallowed, nervous and excited and thrilled all in one.

“Yes.”

Peter purred. There was no better way of saying it. The low rumble of an oncoming storm reverberated through Jason’s vertebrae and through his chest. He bit back a moan as one of Peter’s questing hands finally reached up to brush harshly over his nipple.

“Couch, bed or wall?” Peter asked. The tone might have been conversational had it not been interspersed with light nips beneath Jason’s collar and another swipe of his thumb across Jason’s nipple.

It didn’t require much thought. “Bed.”

No way was Jason having sex on his couch — it was bought second-hand and covered with several thrifted throws to hide the suspicious stains on the cushions. And despite the adrenalin still burning excitedly from the fight, he knew he’d crash too quickly for a wall fucking to be fun.

By the shift in Peter’s humming, Jason had made the right choice. Peter pulled back, just enough to make Jason turn to face him. They kissed filthy. Open mouthed. His startled moan was swallowed by Peter when he was picked up, and Jason wrapped his legs around Peter’s waist on reflex. Pain twinged at the move but swiftly dulled to a muted burn.

A novel thing, to be carried by someone like he weighed nothing at all. It sent a secret thrill through him as Peter backed away from the door, his arms tucked easily under Jason’s ass.

Still, it merited protest. “I can carry myself.”

“Maybe—” Peter pressed up for a quick kiss, “I just wanted to show off. Is it working?”

“Not at all,” Jason lied.

Peter grinned back wickedly. “I guess I’ll just have to try harder then.”

Despite his best efforts, a sound escaped him when Peter bounced him effortlessly. Peter looked immensely smug at the noise and Jason dragged him back for a furious kiss that was happily returned. Strong fingers flexed under the backs of his thighs. Perhaps wall sex wouldn’t be off the table after all…

Not that the re-evaluation mattered. Peter casually strolled through the apartment, shifting his grip on Jason only so he could open the door to the bedroom. Inside, he was let down — with some prompting from Jason’s side.

“Stand still,” Peter ordered. Jason might have challenged at the presumption, but Peter merely took the opportunity to unbutton Jason’s shirt — or what was left of the buttons. He paused, partway through tugging the shirt off Jason’s arms, as though just remembering Jason’s wound. In all fairness, so had Jason.

“Hmm.” Peter frowned. He glanced up at Jason. “Where’s your kit?”

“It’s fine.”

“Where’s your kit?” Peter repeated, firmer.

Jason sighed and glared up at the ceiling. The mould he’d scrubbed away just last week was back. Fuckssake. He’d have to push for someone to check out the roof.

“Kitchen. Above the sink.”

“Good boy.”

Whatever Jason might have reflexively in response went unspoken. Peter was already out of the bedroom and rummaging through Jason’s cupboards. He returned swiftly, well-stocked first-aid kit and a clean, wet towel in each hand.

“Sit.”

Jason contemplated refusing, but the look in Peter’s eyes when he flicked on the bedroom light brooked no argument. So Jason sat.

The towel made goosebumps erupt across his chest, swiftly followed by a flush as Peter’s eyes narrowed in on Jason’s chest, nipples raised with the cold. Still, Peter’s hands were gentle as he cleaned away the dried blood, smeared antiseptic over the skin and stuck on a dressing. He left Jason again to dump the towel in the sink — Jason heard the thump as it hit the stainless steel. And then he was back, standing between Jason’s parted legs and weaving his hand through Jason’s hair to tug his head upwards.

This close, it would cost Peter little effort to unzip his fly and direct Jason’s mouth to other places. His pulse quickened at the thought, and he clutched the back of Peter’s thighs with anticipation. But Peter didn’t do anything more than run his spare hand over Jason’s bottom lip in contemplation. Jason’s bedroom light was deliberately dim and unnaturally warm. It cast what little of Peter’s skin was on display (he still wore Jason’s jacket) in bronze.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Peter murmured into the quiet. Jason confirmed his assertion by closing his lips around Peter’s thumb. He tasted faintly of chemicals from the antiseptic. In response, Peter let his thumb slip in further, pressing down on Jason’s tongue and forcing his jaw to open wider. Jason breathed heavily through his nose. “But tonight, I’ve other plans.”^{[FADE T0 BLACK]}

His touch disappeared as Peter stepped back. Jason might have felt bereft were it not for the heat in Peter’s stare.

“Take off your clothes.”

Jason tilted his head. “And you?”

Peter grinned crookedly. “They’ll come off when I’m ready.” He plucked at the collar of Jason’s jacket, pressing it to his nose and breathing in deep. “I’m quite partial to this. Think I might keep it.”

An image of Peter, naked but for Jason’s jacket, sprung up unbidden. Once more he was painfully reminded of the stupid cup.

“We can fight for it.”

“It’s cute that you think you’d win,” Peter laughed. The condescension was tempered by the way his eyes crinkled with fondness. “Now take off your clothes. Please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.”

Jason remained on the bed and made quick work of his belt, tearing it out of Roy’s stupid jeans and dropping it to the floor. His boots were next. Jason took his time loosening the laces, all the time aware of Peter’s gaze that fell over him, heavy with lust. The thud as his boots fell onto the rug was extra loud in the loaded silence. The socks that came after were scarcely more than a rustle.

Only then did Jason stand, and Peter twitched at the move, just enough to keep Jason bold. Nakedness, he was used to. He’d lived long enough with Roy and Kori that such things meant little anymore. But nakedness and intimacy? That he was not. His pulse throbbed low in his throat as he undid the first button, then the fly, then shimmied jeans and underwear off together. The relief as his cock — half hard — was finally free from that damn cup had him breathing out heavily.

It matched Peter’s exhale, but it was only when the last of Jason’s clothes were tossed to the side that Peter moved, crowding back into Jason’s space like he belonged there.

Peter dragged him down for a kiss, superheated and biting. His other hand clutched Jason’s uninjured side, digging into his flesh possessively.

Jason gave as good as he got. He undid Peter’s belt, his button and fly so he could slide his hands beneath the denim to grab Peter’s glorious ass and draw him even closer. Peter moaned into Jason’s mouth, thrusting just the once against Jason. The rough scrape of denim over his unclothed, hardening cock had Jason gasping for air.

Peter chuckled darkly and this time the grind against Jason was deliberate, slow and torturous. His hand trailed down to grip Jason’s ass in retaliation, refusing to let Jason pull back when he tried.

“Peter—”

“Jace.” Peter pressed the sweetest of kisses to the corner of Jason’s open mouth in stark opposition to the cruel grind of his hips. “I want you on the bed.”

Peter dropped him onto the bed and Jason crawled back so there’d be space for two, limbs weak and ungainly. They’d done barely anything, but Jason felt like he did at the end of a gruelling workout. If said workout left him furiously hard, that was.

As Peter started working himself out of his own jeans, Jason went to touch himself, only to be stopped by a growl.

“Don’t,” Peter warned, glaring at Jason’s hand and its destination. “That’s mine.”

Jason quirked a brow and closed his hand around his cock anyway. “I don’t see anyone’s name on it.” He thumbed the slit and let his head fall back in pleasure. He reached down with this other hand to fondle at his balls. “It’s attached to me.”

^{[END FADE]}The rustle of fabric. A softened series of thuds as most of Peter’s clothes hit the floor. Then he was on the bed and Jason’s hands were ripped away, pinned above his head as Peter straddled him. He was naked from the waist down, flesh searing against Jason’s.

Jason tugged. He twisted. Bucked his hips — or attempted to. It was all to no avail. Peter was unnaturally dense and inhumanly strong. Jason’s breathing caught and Peter’s glare shifted into smugness as he saw Jason realise he was unable to move.

“I could stick you to the bedpost if you’d prefer,” Peter said, grinning crookedly.

Jason twisted, trying to look at his wrists. “Didn’t think you were still wearing those shooters,” he taunted back. He thought he’d heard them drop with his jeans.

“Who says I need the shooters?”

And there was a thought. As Jason contemplated what Peter meant, the man dipped his head low, only to stop just an inch away from Jason.

“Kiss me?” he asked, and the challenge spread out in invisible neon lettering between them. Kiss me, and I’ll take over.

The hands pinning Jason to the bed shifted their grip. Fingers twined themselves between Jason’s. Their breaths pooled together. He wanted to. Wanted to close that gap. Nearly did, but the question he’d thought to himself before filled the space instead.

“What is this?”

“Inevitable,” came Peter’s immediate reply.

“Peter—”

“Do you believe in fate, Jason?” He pulled back, just enough so Jason could properly see him. Peter’s expression was still intense, but it had softened into something a little more solemn.

“… Not really.”

Peter’s smile was wry. “Nor I. But sometimes, I can’t shake it. Do you know how easy it was for me to find you, that first time?” Jason swallowed but shoot his head. “I knew exactly where to find you amongst all that rubble. Didn’t even have to listen, just followed the yellow brick road and there you were. Spitting mad and full of life.”

Jason certainly didn’t remember it that way. Or at least, he remembered being spitting mad. But equally ready to let himself die.

Peter must have read the doubt in Jason’s face because he chuckled. “It was novel for me, okay? For the longest of time, you were just Talia’s pet project. You ate. You slept. You fought. But there wasn’t much there. It saddened me. Talia once showed me footage of you as Robin. I grieved for the boy that man ripped from the world. And I—” Peter swallowed. His eyes darted away, then back again. “I feared the same fate for Damian… for myself.”

“You got him out.”

“Eventually.” His mirthless laughter brushed over Jason’s cheeks. “I paid the price for it. I knew I would; I’d accepted it. But the fear of what you’d been… it haunted me.”

“You weren’t mindless,” Jason pointed out.

“No. But I broke for Ra’s all the same.” Peter leaned in, not to kiss Jason, but to trace his lips over the scar that travelled like lightning across Jason’s cheek. A remnant from Joker that even the Pit couldn’t erase. “And then you found me. Seven billion people in the world, but it was you who found me and brought me back to Damian.”

He sat back, settling his weight onto Jason’s hips and pulled one of Jason’s clasped hands up with him. Jason’s stomach swooped to watch Peter reverently kiss his scarred knuckles. “I don’t care if it’s fate or nothing but chance. I just want you.”

As Peter spoke, his voice darkened. Thickened again with desire. Jason’s breathing picked up again in response. If he wanted to, Jason thought Peter would let himself be bucked off now. Allow Jason an escape.

“Then have me,” he said instead.

Peter took it as the permission it was. He let go of Jason’s hands to clutch at his cheeks and kissed him, pressing Jason hard into the bed. Jason gave as good as he got, and let his hands wander up, under the back of Peter’s stupid mesh shirt to dig his blunt nails into stubborn muscles. That strange purring picked up again and Peter ground against Jason once more.^{[FADE TO BLACK]}

Jason felt as if his skin was filled with static. His muscles twitched beneath Peter’s touch and left him gasping when Peter finally moved back, but only to kiss a trail from mouth to neck to chest, shifting as he did to nestle between Jason’s legs.

Long-fingered hands groped Jason’s chest. “God, I love these tits,” Peter moaned, and left an open-mouthed kiss just to the right of Jason’s sternum for good measure. Jason squirmed with discomfort, unused to the praise.

Peter immediately clocked it. He looked up, gaze sharp. “You don’t like it?”

“It’s… not that,” Jason admitted. He was glad Peter hadn’t pulled back. Hands still pressed warmly against his ribcage and pectoral. Usually, people saw Jason’s size and they took whatever they wanted… or they made Jason give them what they wanted.

Peter looked at him, contemplative. “You have a gorgeous pair of tits, Jace.”

Jason tried to school his expression, but Peter was observant. His eyes gleamed dangerously as he realised Jason liked it.

“So pretty,” he crooned. He maintained eye contact as he lowered his mouth directly over Jason’s nipple and they crinkled smugly at the punched-out sound that Jason couldn’t hold back. Teeth brushed lightly over the sensitive skin and Jason tried to cover his mouth with his hand. Anything to keep the sounds at bay.

Peter was having none of it. He bit at the fleshy swell of muscle just beneath Jason’s muscle to get his attention.

“Uh-uh. Hands on the bed, or on me,” Peter ordered, then he blew on Jason’s damp skin and Jason whined. He didn’t know when he’d moved, but suddenly he found one hand full of Peter’s hair, attempting to tug it away or maybe to press him closer. Who knew. Certainly not Jason.

“Peter — fuck, Pete — fucking get a move on!”

Peter chuckled darkly and refused to be moved. “I had a girlfriend once… before.” Before. Jason had never heard a trace of Peter’s ‘before’. How had he even ended up with the League, playing babysitter to their not-so-precious heir? Whatever possibilities he’d started to cook up dissolved as Peter pinched his nipple meanly and he cried out a fuck! Jason wanted to punch that smug expression right off his face. “She’d not thought much of it, but once I made her come just by playing with her tits… I wonder if I could do the same again.”

Jason doubted it, but Peter was a man who defied expectations. He kept such thoughts to himself for fear Peter might take it as a challenge. 

Peter grinned wickedly, likely thinking the same. “Perhaps another time,” he warned or promised or threatened or maybe it was all at once. Jason wouldn’t put it past him.

Peter took his fill of Jason’s chest. Squeezing, pinching, kissing, biting, until Jason was gasping and cursing at him, clutching at anything he could touch to try and ground himself. Peter’s hair. His shoulders. His neck. The bedspread. Without his notice he’d wrapped his legs around Peter’s waist, only realising when Peter finally began to travel lower, unwrapping Jason’s thighs like they were nothing. The casual display of strength thrilled Jason.

Settling on his haunches between Jason’s legs, Peter wrapped his hand around Jason’s cock and Jason bucked with the shock of it.

“Fuck!” Jason was steadily leaking, and Peter rubbed his thumb through the precum curiously, smearing it across the head.

“I’ve never been with a man before,” Peter suddenly confessed. He looked up. “But you have, haven’t you?”

Jason nodded. “A few times.” He didn’t sleep around. Had no real interest in it. But he’d had his share of men and women through the years.

One of Peter’s hands trailed down the crease of Jason’s thigh to press lightly behind Jason’s balls, then even further back. “Have they ever touched you here?”

“No,” Jason rasped. All his encounters with men, and most of those with women, had been rushed, hasty trysts. The bed and the nakedness was a novelty, even if Peter still wore Jason’s jacket.

Peter’s eyes tightened with satisfaction, and he rubbed with more strength at that sensitive place. Jason threw his head back and moaned. “One day, then,” Peter hummed with approval.

“I — fuck! — I thought you wanted to fuck me.”

“I do. And I will,” Peter agreed easily. Jason looked down just in time to see him bite into Jason’s thigh. He gasped and jerked in reflex but Peter held him still. When he let go, he kissed the reddened skin. “Tonight, I’m happy sating myself with these,” he sighed happily, and Jason was abruptly reminded of Roy’s comment about his legs.

I may be straight-adjacent, but those gams are weapons of mass destruction, he’d said once while they’d been lounging on the beach of Kori’s island. She’d nodded in agreement before offering Jason a set of her bikinis for ‘combat purposes’. Jason had thrown a handful of sand at the pair of them before disappearing into the water to hide his mortification.

Those were good times. He missed them both fiercely.

Peter yanked him back to the present via his cock. Jason shouldn’t have been so turned on by Peter’s explorative gaze and touch, but he was all the same. When Peter’s mouth finally alighted on the head, his blood was boiling, breath short. Peter’s tongue was hot and clever, as were his eyes, watching Jason and studying his reactions carefully.

Experimentally, Peter took him deeper in his mouth and Jason nearly forgot Peter’s earlier command. He settled for returning his hands to Peter’s head and gasped as Peter purred with approval.

“Holy fuck,” he gasped, unable to stop himself from thrusting into that vibrating heat. “That’s — fuck — that’s—”

But he couldn’t find the words.

Peter pulled back to suckle at the head, wrapping his hand around the base of Jason’s cock and squeezing. His other arm he used to pin down Jason’s hips and all Jason could do was moan. Then Peter sank down again, choking but not as badly as Jason would have expected. Jason let himself be lost in that warm clutch, content in the knowledge that Peter had control. That Peter wouldn’t hurt himself.

“So good for me,” he babbled, tugging unconsciously at Peter’s hair and the man moaned around his cock in response. “Oh, fuck — yeah, just like that — holy shit—!”

He nearly shouted with surprise when Peter’s hand crept up and plucked meanly at a hypersensitised nipple. Nearly came, but the hand that pinned him down wrapped back around the base of his cock.

“Fucking fuck!” He had to be hurting Peter with how tightly he pulled his hair, but Jason couldn’t bring himself to care. Close. He was so close!

And then Peter, the sadistic fuck, pulled himself off Jason’s dick to laugh breathlessly. Jason whined and twitched at the breath against his cock.

“You motherfucker—!”

The hand squeezed a little more and Jason’s voice shattered. 

“That’s more fun than I expected,” Peter said, his conversational tone spoiled by the haggard rasp that Jason was all too familiar with. Although usually, it was accompanied by aching knees and a stinging scalp on his end. “Let’s do that again sometime.”

“Sure,” Jason gasped. “So long as you don’t leave me fucking high and dry again.”

“Mm.” Peter bit again at Jason’s thigh, right beside his previous mark and Jason nearly kicked him. “But that’s part of the fun.”

“You’re a fucking— oh, fuck!” Peter had popped the head of Jason’s cock in his mouth and Jason found himself not above begging. “Fuck! C’mon, Pete. Please, just let me—”

“Naw.” Jason could have slapped that smug grin right off his pretty face. “I’ve got better plans.”

He let go of Jason’s cock and surged upwards to capture Jason in a kiss. Desperate for release, Jason tried to thrust himself against Peter stomach, but Peter backed off instead, only to hoist up Jason’s legs and drape both over one shoulder. He wrapped an arm around them at the knees, and Jason’s head was momentarily filled with the absurd image of Peter playing a cello, or the double bass.

Then Peter leaned forwards, forcing Jason’s body to curl over itself, and they were kissing again. The backs of Jason’s thighs burned with the stretch, even if he was more flexible than most people with his bulk usually were. The angle offered no potential of release, and he bit angrily at Peter’s lip in retaliation.

“You got any lube? Or lotion?” Peter asked in between filthy, faintly bitter kisses.

“Second drawer.”

“Thanks, baby.” Peter plucked one of Jason’s arms up and wrapped it around the back of his own damn legs. “Be a dear and hold these for me.”

Jason really did kick him then. Peter sprawled, laughing, across the bed.

“See if I play nice again,” he snickered as he rummaged through the bedside drawers, bare ass on full display. Jason sorely wanted to smack it, but Peter was back too soon for him to move, a half-used bottle of lube in hand. Peter paused, just out of Jason’s reach as his amusement faded. Turned pointed. Expectant.

Jason stared back in defiance. He’d stopped holding up his legs the moment he’d kicked Peter.

“I’m not gonna,” he said, but even he could hear the wavering in his voice. Peter was unmoved.

“You will.” Peter settled back onto his haunches. That placid look settled into place. The one Jason remembered from the League.

There was no fighting that look. They’d be here all night. Rock, meet hard place. And there was Jason’s aching cock, stuck in the middle.

Fuck.

Heart in his throat, cheeks aflame, Jason closed his legs and lifted them. Held them up as Peter had instructed before.

Immediately, he was rewarded with a warm smile. “Good boy,” Peter purred, and a shiver ran through Jason at the endearment.

Then Peter was back, tugging Jason’s arm away and tucking his legs over his shoulder. He kissed the side of Jason’s knee, right at head height. Jason’s lower half hung above the mattress and he was breathless all over again at Peter’s easy strength.

Breathless still when Peter opened the lube single-handed and squeezed a generous amount between his thighs. Cold against his superheated skin, Jason breathed in sharply.

“Give a guy some warning, Jesus!”

Peter grinned toothily. “So sorry,” he said, about as unsorry as someone could be. “Press your thighs together?” The words fell somewhere between an order and a suggestion. Jason, who felt close enough to jump the man, did so. He wanted. So badly he was dumb with it.

Then, Peter slid his cock between Jason’s thighs. It brushed against Jason, hot and slick and they both groaned.

“Feels so good,” Peter breathed, and gave a few experimental thrusts. His cock glided smoothly, rubbing with enough pressure against Jason’s that he bit back a curse. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t’ve been enough. But Jason was highly strung enough he knew it’d get him to the finish line.

He reached for Peter, but the angle was wrong and all he could manage was his fingers brushed against his side as Peter thrust, chasing his own pleasure.

“Pete,” he bit out, swept enough that there was no embarrassment.

“I got you,” Peter murmured. He bent forwards and Jason had no choice but to curl. The change of angle left him moaning into Peter’s waiting mouth but at least now he was close enough to touch. Jason dug his nails into the meat of Peter’s shoulder. Buried his fingers into Peter’s hair as they kissed.

Pleasure licked up and down Jason’s spine. Sweat prickled across his chest and for once Jason didn’t care about the muggy night. With Peter clutching at his thighs, he didn’t even have to do anything but take it. Still, Jason wasn’t satisfied. He wanted the spring coiled in his gut to break.

“Harder,” he snapped. “C’mon you spidery — fuck!”

To his fury, Peter almost slowed to a stop. Jason wrenched his head to the side and bit the closest piece of flesh to him, which turned out to be a shoulder.

“Shit!” Peter yelped a laugh. “Glad you’re not the one with venom.”

Jason nearly froze. Fuck. He’d let Peter’s put his mouth on his—

Peter laughed again at Jason’s conflicted expression. He stole a kiss from Jason before he could protest. “It’s on command. You’re safe, promise.”

Jason opened his mouth to retort, but all that escaped was a startled, “Uhn!” as Peter picked up the pace again, doing just as Jason had told him to.

He picked up a brutal pace and Jason held on for dear life. In between messy, desperate kisses, Peter breathed out filthy praise and Jason burned with it.

When Peter reached down and plucked his nipple, Jason tipped over the edge with a ragged moan.

“Yeah, c’mon,” Peter hissed, pulling back enough to see Jason’s face. “Fuck—”

“Peter—”

“I know.” He helped himself to another kiss and eased back, enough that he wasn’t thrusting so hard against Jason’s oversensitive cock. It bordered on the too much, but Jason revelled in it. “God, you look so good like this, Jace.”

Impulsively, Jason titled his head back and braced his arms against the bed frame, knowing it emphasised his muscles. Peter groaned at the sight and ground into the tight press of Jason’s thighs. When he looked down, Jason was gifted by the obscene sight of Peter’s cock poking between his thighs with every thrust. Jason squeezed his thighs tighter.

“C’mon,” he dared. “Finish the job.”

“Fuuck.” Peter picked up the pace again, punching the breath from Jason’s lungs.

When Peter came, Jason was watching. He saw the spasm across Peter’s face, the way he bit his lip. He felt the spurt of wet heat across his own cock and stomach.

Peter slowed as he crested, still thrusting and grinding into Jason, but it was reflexive now, uncoordinated. Then he stopped, chest heaving. Jason’s legs were finally allowed to drop down onto the bed. He laughed to see the mess of cum and lube .

^{[END FADE]} “Hush,” Peter muttered and collapsed onto him, uniquely heavy. Jason gasped but still couldn’t help but laugh softly, even as Peter bit lightly at his collarbone. “I don’t appreciate being laughed at so soon after sex.”

“Sorry,” Jason said, but couldn’t stop the laughter bubbling up. “It’s not — that was good, I promise.”

“‘Course it was,” Peter grumbled into his skin.

Jason supposed the grumpiness was merited. He’d be the same if it’d been Peter to laugh at him. But Jason was floating, even if the backs of his legs ached and his inner thighs faintly burned. He felt good. Lighter.

Peter’s hair was faintly damp as Jason raked his fingers over his scalp and he grinned to feel that funny purring pick back up. “Will the princeling be hunting for you tomorrow?”

“Mm. Maybe.”

Jason stared up at his ceiling in thought. “… Should I expect threats of castration?”

Peter momentarily stiffened, only to relax once more as Jason continued petting his hair. “We can lie to him.”

Fat chance of that. Jason was pretty sure they’d sooner manage to convince Bruce the moon was made of cheese than successfully lie to the brat about that. But of the two of them, Peter was the expert in all things Damian, not Jason.

“You think he’d buy the ‘you seduced me’ card?” After all, it wasn’t as if it wasn’t true.

“I think I’d like to watch you try.” Peter finally lifted his head enough to look at Jason instead of absently mouthing hickies across his neck. “You could make him waffles in the morning as a peace offering? I hear you’re good at them.”

Jason paused in his petting, narrowing his eyes. “Didn’t think the brat liked waffles much.”

Dark eyes blinked beguilingly. “Does he not? I was so sure… damn. Must be the amnesia playing up again.”

There was no stopping the quirk of his lips. “… I take it Alfred’s got no better at them.”

“They’re diabolical.” Peter shuddered. “It’s comforting, in a way. Reminds us all that perfection is impossible, even for men like Alfred Pennyworth.”

“Hrm.”

Despite his gruff masking, Jason was conflictingly pleased. That Peter wanted to stay the night. That Jason wanted him to. That he was happy even to have a five-foot-something terror of a teen insert himself into Jason’s apartment at who knew when tomorrow morning.

Peter and Damian were a matched set, after all. Jason was already resigning himself to putting up with the bratling’s inevitable outrage at having somehow corrupted his precious ahki.

Catlike, Peter bumped his head upwards and Jason resumed his petting with a soft huff. Peter’s eyes crinkled as he grinned back. Then he surged upwards to steal from Jason a soft, lingering kiss that tasted of shared laughter and freedom.

^[1] For anyone who hasn’t read Under the Red Hood, Jason works his way under Black Mask’s skin by blowing up almost much every single shipment of illicit paraphernalia he smuggles into Gotham (that or stealing it, like a ton of kryptonite). It’s great, though the satisfaction of his actions is tempered by the fact that Jason’s not hesitant to kill the drivers.

^[2] So, when Jason goes on a date with Isabel in RHATO (n52) Vol 2, she says his date was the most boring date she’d ever been on. This was in part because Jason was putting on a bit of a mask, but either way I find this endlessly funny. Casanova he is not. Behold the rizzless wonder.

^[3] In the comics, Peter invented these tracers that emit a frequency Peter can track with his spider-senses.