Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason Todd did not get good things.  

It was a universal realization. Decided the first time his dad decided Jason looked better with a bruise and out in a damp alley then tucked into bed with a goodnight story. The first time his mom got a package of something white and the last time she hugged him before all she became was a cold body on a molding bathroom floor. The first time the bigger kids realized the newest addition to the streets was all bark and no bite and the last time he let strange hands wander over him before he decided taking his chances with a rusted car iron was a better way to die.   

Jason Todd did not get good things, but Bruce Wayne made him think he could.   

Bruce Wayne had seen him, seen Jason , and had given Jason hope to become something more than another underfed body rotting in the back of an alley. Had given him food and books and his own room with a lock only he could open. Had sent him to the best school Gotham had to offer with a smile, and had offered to help him with his homework even if Jason taught it all to himself the night before. Had given Jason a family — something he thought he lost when he was nine and knew his mom was never going to wake up again.  

He made Jason feel like he could actually do something. Help people in the way he had wanted to be helped. He gave Jason Robin and Jason felt free for the first time since he learnt that dad’s beer led to punches and mom’s powder led to nothing at all.  

And then Jason died, and, well.  

Then there was something else inside him. Something rotten and twisted and green. Something etched into the right side of his brain that filled him with a permanent rage that made his body something other than his own. Something that hid in the space between his eyes and his skull and clouded his vision so bad all he could see was a green haze and then bloody bodies.   

Something that made him feel so full he felt he might explode. Something that left him so empty he didn’t know what he was without it.   

Something that made him look in the mirror and see his mother’s blank glaze instead of anything else.  

“Hood.”  

Jason Todd did not get good things, but, god, for one second he wish he did.   

“Hood?”  

There’s a dead body on the floor. The boy’s throat is bared open, too many slashes to justify it as impersonal. He has Tim's face, mouth parted in a silently deafening scream, eyes blue and scared and unseeing.  

Jason squeezes his eyes shut, lets out a breath, and looks away. It’s not real , he repeats to himself. It’s Fear Toxin. It's Crane. It’s something that could’ve happened but didn’t . It's not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.  

Because of course he got hit. Of course some goon decided to dose his knife in Fear Toxin and of course that’s the one weapon that sliced a line through his arm.   

Of course Nightwing decided to appear with just enough of an entrance to distract Jason while the goon got the cut in. Because Jason Todd did not get nice things and this week had been a bit slow anyways.   

“ Hood ,” Nightwing hisses, close, too close , and there's a hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm and touching him — and Jason couldn’t hold back the violent flinch back if he tried.   

There’s panic clawing the way up his throat and Tim’s throat has started to gurgle as broken lungs tried to draw in breathes through ripped organs and there’s a certain, horrible laughter ringing through his ears, coming from the utility closest of the evil liar warehouse of the week that makes Jason want to scream and shoot and cry.   

Nightwing backs off, or it looks like he does. His eyes are blurring, creating half illusions of red lipstick smiles and dark back-of-alley leers. The Pit is fighting it, beating and slicing and stabbing at the effects of the drug just like it does anything else in its path, but it's not working fast enough because Dick’s chest is growing red with a spreading stain and one arm is morphed into something so broken it can’t be fixed and Jason’s hands are stained with so much blood he knows it will never come off.   

“Hood,” Nightwing says again, more desperate, pleading, and Jason tries to latch onto the sound, the alive sound, instead of the bullet hole over his heart. “What’s going on? Report?”  

And Jason tries to force the words out, he does , but they get caught in the web of fear building in his ribs and all that comes out is a choked off whine, something hurt and scared and lonely.   

It's not real . Dick's chest, dripping red with too many gunshots to count, the bright blue bird stained so dark it looks as black as the rest of his suit, isn’t real . But it looks like it is. It looks exactly how Jason had dreamed it all those nights ago, when the green rage was all he had and he pictured dying family to fall asleep.  

Dick stumbles forward, and Dick never stumbles, is never anything less than grace carved into bones. Jason scrambles back to maintain the distance, familiar screams of no, stay back, I'm sorry, get away from me drowning out the quieting mantra of it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real .  

He trips over something, crashing to the floor with his hands thrown back to catch himself with a yelp, smashing into concrete and sending painful vibrations up to his elbows. He looks down at the leg he tripped over. Black and green armored legs.   

He looks to the side, sees Damian's face, eyes closed, skull caved in, and throws himself away from the corpse of his brother. His other brother. His youngest brother .  

It's not real, it’s not real it’s not – but there’s so much blood pooling from the crater in Damian's head, slowly crawling toward him like it’s reaching out, drawn to the creator of the lethal wound.  

His hands are so red– Jason’s hands are so red – they’re leaving small puddles of handprints as Jason backward crawls away from his brothers, from his family . His dead, murdered family. Because of him .  

“Little Wing, please .” And Dick is back, hobbling toward him like a zombie, blood dripping down his front and left ankle broken to the side and right arm twisted so backwards the elbow is facing Jason. The mask is gone, but his eyes are still white, iris cloudy and glazed over as Dick drags himself closer. The dead trying to pull him back where he belongs.  

Because Jason Todd should be dead, buried, forgotten. Just like he was the first time. Jason Todd should’ve stayed dead because Jason Todd does not get good things and life was obviously too grand for him.   

Because Jason Todd hurts people. It doesn’t matter if he means too or if he doesn’t. If they’re a stranger or his family. If they deserved it or if they didn’t. Jason Todd hurts people because he is his father’s son and not even dying could get him away from that fate.  

Dick drops down in front of him, and Jason can see the wounds that much closer, bone shining through holes. He tries to look away, cover his face– when did he take off his helmet? – but his hands are shaking– he is shaking too hard to do anything but stare wide eyed and anguished at the sight of his older brother broken and bloody and dead because of him.   

Dick’s eyebrows are furrowed, his mouth pulled into that concerning frown even as a line of blood leaks out of the corner. His hands raise cautiously, right arm bent unnaturally– horribly – and he grabs at Jason’s shoulders, keeping him still, keeping him trapped –  

“You’re okay, Jay.” His voice is soft, delicate. There’s an underlying level of worry that leaks into his tone, making it sound uncertain and weak. “You’re okay. Breathe.”  

He can’t and he doesn’t understand why and Tim’s fingers aren’t even twitching and Damian’s blood is making a determined line of death towards him and he can see Dick’s elbow bone sticking out from how he’s trapping Jason.  

“Hey, hey– just look at me. Eyes on me, okay? Eyes here.”   

Dick's unbroken hand traces up to cup his cheek, dragging his face away from Tim’s lifeless body and Damian’s broken skull. He knows his eyes are glowing, that sickly green that tints his nightmares and his anger. He knows because he can see the reflection in Dick’s clouded ones, a circle of green in a mirror of grief.   

“It’s not real, okay?” Dick’s voice is gentle. Every time he opens his mouth a fresh stream of blood pours out the right corner. “Whatever you’re seeing. Whatever you’re hearing. It’s not real. Can you talk to me?”  

Jason wants too, god does Jason want too, but Dick’s bleeding out because of him . Dick is dying– dead, too many bullets to be alive – because of him. Tim’s throat is gorged open for the crows because of him. Damian’s head is–  

“Hey, eyes here– here , Jason. I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re all okay, okay? Whatever you see isn’t happening. It's just us. They got away, I’m sorry. It’s just us.”  

Just them. Just them because everyone else was dead and Dick was dead and his zombie came back to drag him back to where he belongs.   

“I’m not going back,” Jason forces out. The words are choked, whispered, more scared then determined. But he is not dying again. No one is putting him six feet under. He can’t do that. Not again. “I’m not.”  

“I’m not going to make you,” Dick clamps down onto the words immediately. Like they’re a lifeline. Like its all he’s got to pull Jason where ever he wants Jason to go.  

It’s easy to imagine Dick’s broken hands– both twisted at the wrist until the bones jutted out– slipping down to wrap around his throat in a vengeful grip. Its easy to imagine the thrashing, the pain of no air, the clawing at Dick’s arms and knowing it’ll stop nothing because Jason’s already hurt Dick so horribly he died and he can’t do anything worse than that.   

It's easy because he can’t breathe. There’s not enough air coming in and too much air coming out and Dick’s gentle and broken fingers are pressing against his face and there’s panicked shouts coming from somewhere that might be him or Dick or Tim’s body jerking up or Damian’s head shooting sideways to stare blankly or–  

The world goes black.  

Chapter Text

Jason wakes up in a strange apartment.  

He’s on his back, which makes his veins freeze with fear and his breath stutter before he takes in the ceiling far above him and soft, wool bedsheets under him inside of silky satin. He heaves in a deep breath, tries to keep aware of his surroundings as he fights to get his breathing back under control.  

He doesn’t remember how he got here, or where here is, or how much time has passed, or—  

The last thing he remembered was Nightwing smashing through the skylight on his drug bust and a goon getting a lucky slice down his arm. After that it’s just a wall of green and remnants of fear burrowed into his gut.   

His head is pounding, but it does nothing to distract from the shiver of horror that shoots down his spine when the fact registered. The Pit took over. He had been doing so well, but the Pit took over and how many are dead —  

He needs to go.  

Jason stumbles to his feet, no longer in his Red Hood costume but some loose-fitting sweatpants and a shirt that smells like Bruce— rich coffee, wood, and something dark. It’s the only thing that makes him look around the apartment, take stock instead of rush to the window.  

There’s a photo of three people on the nightstand. He recognizes his own face immediately, still filled with baby fat and a determined gleam in his eyes he hasn’t lost in the six years since. He’s got on an elf hat that’s hallway to falling over his eyes, and his older brother has one arm wrapped around his shoulder, wearing an obnoxious reindeer antler headband that lights up and a beaming grin that’s Dick Grayson through-and-through. Bruce hovers in the space between, a fond look in his eyes that makes Jason sick, and a bright red santa hat that’s messed up the front of his hair.  

They look happy— Jason looks happy. He’s caught mid laugh in the photo, head tipped back a bit and body tilted towards Dick, and he’s reminded of how young he used to look, before the Joker and the bomb and the Pit and the guns.  

It’s not a happy reminder.  

There’re more photos on the far away, and Jason carefully moves closer, accepting that he wasn’t kidnapped by anyone he would need to shoot more than once. Most of them feature Dick, a key indicator of who owns the strange apartment, with his younger brothers. Tim and him at the arcade, Damian on his shoulders at the zoo to properly peer at the Hippo over the glass. Cass and him in an intense game of chess, a selfie of him and Barbara in some cafe with milkshakes. A purple mustache drawn under his nose with a cackling Stephine in the background and Duke and him holding up freshly baked cookies with matching proud grins.  

Jason scowls at them, shoves down the longing, and moves to the door, cracking it open and peering out into the hall. Empty. Good.  

He’s leaving now. He’ll figure out what the hell he missed later, when his head isn’t pounding and the fear churning in his gut decides it’s overstayed its welcome. He’s leaving and—  

“Oh,” Dick said, holding two steaming mugs awkwardly, turning the corner of the hall from the kitchen and pausing. “You’re awake.”  

Fuck.  

“I am,” Jason replied with, instead of what happened and why am I here and how many people did I hurt .  

Dick knows what goes unsaid anyways. He always does. Jason hates him for it, for the easy way he seems to understand what Jason tries to leave unsaid and untrue. For the way he understands everything Jason tries to hide, except for the way he wanted his older brother back and haven’t known how to fit the longing into words since the start.  

Dick Grayson; best detective until asked to notice how much he matters to the people he loves.   

“You’re leaving?”  

“I am,” Jason repeated. He ignored how his fingers twitched at his sides, curled them into fists and tried to forget how they felt cramped and restricted when he wasn’t swinging them hard enough to break a nose.  

Sometimes, (when he doesn’t know where he starts and the green ends) he looks down at his twitching fingers and wonders if he was ever really in control. Sometimes he punches a wall just to make the twitching stop. Most times that makes it worse.    

(Fists against flesh sooth his hands better than it should. Jason feels the guilt follow him like sludge).  

“You shouldn’t,” Dick frowns, voice sickeningly gentle, soft. Jason tenses. “You got hit with fear toxin. You need rest. It— it was bad, Little Wing.”  

Jason hides his uncomfortable grimace— never one to deal with emotions, with worry misplaced— by shrugging, forcing a casual stance and shoving his hands into his pants pockets to hide the shaking.  

Fear toxin . Fuck. Fuck, he didn’t remember it. Nothing after the burning pain of a knife swiping his arm (bandaged now, skin tight and sore) and a numbing sensation that had spread from his bicep to his mind.   

Everything else was a haze of green.  

Jason knew he was unpredictable most days, even without the Lazarus Pit making its rounds through his cognitive thinking. Knew that he lashed out, got aggressive, got dangerous. Knew that sometimes it felt like he didn’t control what his body did, who he killed, why he did it. Why he felt like it.  

Adding fear toxin to the mix would've been horrible, a mistake of a lifetime. He would’ve been uncontrollable, unreachable, a weapon stripped down to its most basic program.   

He scanned Dick up and down, searching for a sign of injury, of weakness. He looked fine— minus the worried look on his face that Jason wanted to punch off half the time— he looked fine . No secret wounds. No hidden injuries Jason had inflicted that Dick didn’t think he could handle knowing about.   

Then again, Dick was always the best at hiding. Natural born circus freak or whatever.  

Jason shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I’ll survive,” he said lightheartedly, but Dick’s expression turned severe. Bad choice of words, then. He powered on, pushing down the choked feeling of guilt rising in his throat. He turned to anger, defensiveness, bitterness instead. Like he had been trained. “Nothing we all haven’t dealt with before. Don’t need coddling because my nightmares got a little more vivid this time.”  

“That’s not the point, Jay,” Dick said gently. Jason couldn’t help the way he immediately took a step back, an unnecessary spike of fear clawing the words from his mouth. Dick froze, arms held up in surrender. “You tried to choke yourself.”  

“I— what?”  

Dick's lips twisted into a pained frown, eyes going distant as he re-imagined the situation. He looked– he looked bad, Jason notice. Eyes tired and puffy, face suspiciously splotchy. His hair was unkempt, ruffled and sticking up in strange places like he had ran his fingers through it too many times.  

“You— you weren’t exactly lucid, at all. You kept staring past me, at things on the floor. And when you looked at me, god , it was the most terrified and heartbroken look I’ve ever seen. You— Jay, you looked so young . Young and tortured.”  

Jason blinked, stared because it was all he could do. All he knew how to do. He didn’t attack anyone. He didn’t lash out. He didn’t stab and maim and kill. He just hallucinated and let his trauma out for the world to see. In front of his brothe— Dick. In front of Dick.   

Argumentatively, that might’ve been worse.  

Dick continued; voice strained. “You kept saying you weren’t going back; that you couldn’t. You looked so scared of me, Little Wing. Like I was the one choking you. Do you think that I’d actually—?”  

“ No ,” Jason cut in, voice raw, because he didn’t. He didn’t , right? He didn’t think would do that. That any of the bats would do that. He wasn’t worth the effort, the backlash it would cause.   

But sometimes, when Bruce got too angry at the number of criminal casualties in a bust, Jason would be sent back to that rotten apartment building with the moldy walls, the sharp slice of a batarang across his neck and the choking warmth that drenched his side. Get flashbacks to holding his shaking, weakening hand to his throat, trying to force out words through the rush of blood filling his mouth, watching Batman, Bruce— his dad — drag the Joker out of the building and leaving Jason in a pool of his own blood.   

Jason had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t take much to repeat that incident, with the outcome ending a lot more permanently. He knew that bats didn’t kill, that Bruce tried to apologize, that he was close enough that he shouldn’t have to worry if anyone would try to stop Bruce if he went too far— but.   

But there was a part of him that would always remember how it felt to feel his life slipping through his fingers for the second time, knowing it was Batman— his dad, his dad, his dad — that caused it. That would remember the fear, the anger, the sadness, the resignation. Remember how hard it was to speak after; the weak, husky whispers he could only force out after weeks. How he had worked his way up to some resemblance of the voice he had before, but on rainy days it still had the undercut of raspiness that Jason couldn't bury.  

But he didn’t think Dick— golden boy, precious son, perfect solider— Grayson would do that. He didn’t. The words still came out forced, tense.   

“I would never think you’d kill me. Must’ve been the toxin talkin’. Might hate you, Dickhead, but I know how far your morals push.”  

Dick made a strangled noise. “Not because of the morals. Because it’s you , Jason. Fuck B’s rules. I would never kill my brother. Do you understand that? Never. I could become a mass murderer tomorrow and I would never raise a hand against you.”  

Jason didn’t know what to say to that. Forcing out a strained “Oh.”  

Dick looks stricken, halfway to mourning and filled with guilt. It rolls out of his shoulders like waves, leaking from his bones, and hits Jason like a tidal, submerging him in passed down grief and regret. Dick knows that Jason doesn’t believe him, not really. It breaks him. He's trying to bury it.  

There’s this unexplainable urge boiling up to do whatever he could to make Dick stop making that face, stop curling in on himself, stop not being happy. Some twisted remnant of the ratty street kid in him that begged to keep people happy. That knew that when people weren’t happy he got hit and chased and thrown out. That cried please don’t give up on me. I’ll do anything to fix it as long as you keep me.   

I love you and I’ll keep you happy, I promise. Just love me back.  

He caves, folding back into old habits like he barely left.   

Back in the old days, when he would hear Dick moving around in the kitchen late at night– on the rare nights Dick would stay at the manor overnight. On the less rare nights Jason would lay awake in bed, waiting for heavy footsteps to enter his room even if Bruce promised he would never– he would pretend he had a nightmare. He would offer to make hot tea for them both, a lie about his mama making it whenever he felt sad slipping off his tongue easier than he wanted it to, and just sit with Dick until the wariness too old for an eighteen-year-old faded into a dull ache instead.  

But Dick isn’t eighteen and Jason isn’t a kid. Jason was nineteen with a rage that chipped cups if he slammed them down too hard and Dick was an adult with a new family to make him tea when his ghosts stayed up past midnight.  

“I made tea,” Dick said lamely after a minute, holding out the mugs awkwardly.   

Of course he did. Golden Boy .   

He made tea, because that’s how Jason got Dick to stay when they were young and unknowing and cracked, and maybe, just maybe , that’ll get Jason to stay when he’s old and burdened and broken.   

Jason snorted despite himself. “With your history in the kitchen, I might live longer if I pass.”  

“Excuse you!” Dick gasped, offended. There’s a small, genuine smile tugging the corner of his mouth upwards, a single hint of amusement. “My tea is perfectly fine!”  

“You, kitchen, and perfectly fine aren’t exactly words people mix in the same sentence,” Jason says, just to be rude, just to fall into a banter that doesn’t have hidden meanings and pleading eyes and watery smiles.   

“That’s not fair. Like, at all. You’re such a jackass.”  

Dick clicks his tongue and shakes his head, but there’s relief in the smile he gives him. He holds out the cup to Jason and Jason takes it without complaint. He tries not to notice how his cup has a half-faded Wonder Woman logo on it, the edges and handles of the cup already cracked and chipped enough for Jason to know it’s survived worse than what Jason could put it through in one night.  

He tries not to notice how his hands shake around the mug. He wraps both hands around it in an effort to protect his pride— hide — and slowly raises it to his lips.   

It’s good, warm. Made just how Alfred would, lemon instead of milk with a spoonful of sugar. It reminds him of being curled up in the library, fourteen and content, Alfred dropping off a fresh cup halfway through his sixth re-read of Pride and Prejudice. Comforting.   

The memory is tinged bittersweet, knowing the utter sadness Alfred had looked at him with last they spoke. The regret, the pain, the longing for a boy long dead. He pushes the thought away and drinks until his tongue feels burnt.   

“Not bad, huh?” Dick says, smug and amused. There’s that undercut of worry that seems to always hide just behind his eyes, beside the anger that simmers beneath his skin. Care and anger, hand in hand since the beginning.  

Sometimes Jason wonders why only he can unearth both in Dick so easily.   

Jason scoffs, swirling it around to watch the tea rise to the edges. It isn’t, not at all. It’s damn near perfect, for not being made by Alfred himself.   

“It’s alright,” is what he says, because brother or not, he is never allowed to let Dick’s ego inflate too high. “Needs more sugar.” It doesn’t.   

Dick understands. He always does. He smiles softly, too soft to be looking at Jason, and fondly shakes his head. “You’re impossible. Please stay.”  

And Jason doesn’t want too. He doesn’t want to be trapped in four walls with this burning itch under his skin and a person who can anger him like no other. He wants to go find a two-bit gang to go beat up in some back alley and a way to keep his hands from trembling whenever they form a fist. He wants to ignore the fact that Dick saw the most vulnerable parts of himself, high out of his mind and hallucinating death, and made him tea so that he would stay.  

But he wants his brother. He wants to be close, to talk, to fall into that familiar banter that comes out so forced with anyone else. He wants to go jumping rooftops with Dick like they used to as kids, and he wants to have his hands wrapped in Dick’s warm ones, comforting in the way only Dick knew how to extrude. He wanted to keep drinking the tea that reminded him of home before he lost everything, and be close to the brother he’s wanted back since the start.  

It’s confusing. It’s weak. It’s pathetic. It is so, so human it fills Jason with that twisted sort of relief you feel when you remember you are real and alive and existing, instead of just a single-minded screen for the world to play through.   

It reminds him that he is human, alive to dead to alive. Alive .  

“Yeah,” he says, and the words are quiet, as soft as Dick’s smile. “Yeah, I’ll stay.”  

Chapter Text

When Jason says he doesn’t remember the fear toxin hallucinations, it isn’t a lie.  

Dick asks, worried and pensive, voice quiet when they sit down at the kitchen counter to drink the tea. He broaches the subject with all the caution you approach a feral animal cornered and wounded, and Jason ignores the flashes of fear and pain and horror when he says he doesn’t.  

He remembers the slice, the fear clogging his throat, green crowding his memories and the harshness of the concrete after he tripped and fell over— something.  

At the time, that’s it, that’s all. Nothing more to say, nothing less.   

Jason can still feel the panic, churning somewhere at the base of his stomach, artificial and rancid enough that he can separate it from the authenticity of his anger. But the pit is combating it and the antidote is doing its work and Jason is going to be fine. Jason doesn’t remember.  

But then Dick leans in closer, tilts his face up to meet Jason’s eyes with furrowed eyebrows and a twitch in his frown that leaks worry after Jason is quiet for a beat too long and for a second— a blink — there’s blood slipping from the corner of Dick’s mouth and his eyes are clouded over, blank and unseeing, and there’s a spreading stain of blood drenching his shirt.   

Another blink, it’s gone. He pushes Dick away with a hand on his shoulder and a scoff and tries to ignore how his hand feels colder after the flash of warmth from human contact or how his eyes dart back to study Dick for injuries when Dick looks away.   

He doesn’t remember, but it comes back in flashes. Tim’s body, pale and lifeless, throat open and bared hiding just behind the kitchen counter when Jason peers over Dick’s shoulder. Damians head caved in and crumpled on the rug when Dick shows him the couch and says it’s the only spare bed he has apologetically.   

Jason doesn’t mention the solution of leaving, of going back to his safehouse. Partly because Dick’s shoulders tense whenever Jason isn’t in his line of sight, and partly because Jason isn’t ready to give up feeling warm and cared for, no matter what he has to sleep on to make it last only a few minutes longer.  

Dick asks. If he’s fine sleeping, if he’s feeling sick, if there’s any remnants of the toxin, if he just doesn’t want to be alone. Jason ignores how his hands are covered in blood and stained to the elbow, dripping onto the carpet, and says he’s fine.   

Dick sends him one last concerned look before disappearing into his room. Jason lays on the couch, chill seeping back into his familiar bones easily when the apartment is dark and empty and missing Dick’s warmth.   

It’s funny, how cold he gets. Or, Jason likes to think it is, because if he can’t find humor in the fact then he will find fear. It’s funny, how his body still feels dead even when he knows he isn’t, not anymore. It’s funny, how the cold seems to start from his ribs and expand until he’s curling up on the couch in Dick’s spare blanket—superman themed, of fucking course — trying to keep the heat in.  

(It’s cruel, is what it really is. It’s cruel to know that he could be warm if he had anyone to touch, to hold, to let him leech off the human warmth he doesn’t have in his core anymore).  

Dick is a door away and has never felt so far.  

It’s something about having the chance to reach out. Something about not having the excuse of not being able to, anymore. When Dick didn’t know Jason was alive, it was easy to justify the chill in his bones as unavoidable. When Jason was too busy fighting Batman and getting the Joker out of Arkham and hiding in the dirty corners of crime alley, it was easy to brush it off as something Jason couldn’t change.  

Jason could change it now, if he wanted too, and that’s the most terrifying idea Jason’s had in a long while. He has fought people the size of mountains, villains with powers strong enough to turn him to ash with a glance, and fucking aliens without so much as a tremble in his fingers, but the idea of asking his big brother for a hug has his breath stuttering.  

Jason Todd did not get good things. Dick Grayson is much too grand for him.  

--  

Dick can’t sleep.  

He’s been trying for the last hour and fourteen minutes, but every time he closes his eyes, he sees his little brother shaking and terrified, pressed against the warehouse wall because he thought Dick was going to hurt him.    

He sees Jason’s eyes, green and horrified and lost, and feels so sick he debates bringing a garbage closer to the bed.   

So, Dick doesn’t sleep. He stares at the ceiling and tries to remember that Jason is safe and fine and alive, on his couch right now, probably sleeping soundly and not remembering what he saw on the concrete floor behind Dick that made him stop breathing.  

It's fine. It's fine, Dick’s fine, Jason’s fine, everyone’s fine. Dick ignores the welling of guilt— the one that’s settled in his gut like a permanent addition since he found out Jason died wearing Dick’s colours and Dick’s mantle— that screams that he should’ve protected his little brother. That tells him he failed.  

He knows he’s failed. He’s been failing since he was sixteen and staring at a malnourished twelve-year-old dressed in yellow, green, and black, wrongfully-placed resentment churning in his gut.  

He’s been failing from the second Dick let Bruce take Robin — Mary Grayson’s grinning little eight-year-old boy who flies like a bird— and turn it into Robin — Bruce Wayne’s failsafe child solider to keep Batman from slipping too far into the darkness he hides in.  

Jason Todd. A good solider. Dick has failed from the start.  

He promised himself he wouldn’t fail again, that he would do better with Tim, with Damian, with Jason when fate gifted him the second chance he’s half convinced he doesn’t deserve.  

But then there’s Jason— nineteen-year-old, filled with unfamiliar anger and spite and hatred— curled up in a corner of a warehouse, tears streaming down a broken face, begging for Dick not to kill him (and then strangling himself , hands locked so tightly around his own throat Dick couldn’t pry them off) that shows him he couldn’t protect Jason. That he failed, once again.   

That he’s always failed his little brother. That he might never stop. That he never did stop.  

It makes Dick want to cry, in all honesty. His first brother, his first family, slipping through his fingers just like his parents did when Dick was eight and still smiled without feeling grief.  

The bedroom door creaks as it’s pushed open.  

Dick jolts to the side, head snapping to peer over his shoulder to the looming six-foot-something-ridiculous figure standing hesitantly at the doorway, a fading blue superman blanket pulled tightly over his shoulders.  

“J’son?” Dick mumbles, voice cracking over the word in false tiredness. He clears his throat and sits up, facing his brother properly. “What’s wrong?”  

Jason huffs, and takes a step into the room, tense and uncertain. “Fuckin’ freezin’ in this apartment, Dickface. Can’t find any spare blankets.”  

Which, Dick winces, is true. He runs like a heater most nights, and normally when he’s in Gotham, he’ll sleep at the manor unless Bruce is being particularly unbearable. There’s no reason to buy more than one blanket.  

“Sorry,” he says, and Jason takes another step closer.   

Dick’s struck with a weird sense of déjà vu, old half-forgotten memories of when Jason would knock on his door when he stayed over at the manor, making snappy remarks and slowly inching closer to the bed until Dick caved and lifted up a cover for him.   

When Jason would slowly inch himself closer to Dick during movie nights, until Dick finally slung an arm over his shoulder and pulled him into his side. When Jason’s hands would clench and unclench whenever Bruce lectured the pair, and Dick would slip a warm hand into his to keep his breathing even.   

Jason never asked for affection; was never raised to. Never taught. All he had was wants buried in his mind and the slow itching in his bones that Dick learnt to recognize as pleas.   

They're both older. Jason isn’t fourteen and perfectly fit to mold into Dick’s side and Dick isn’t eighteen and repressed. Jason has changed in more than he can understand and Dick has lost himself in more ways than he had ever wanted.  

He still lifts up the corner of his duvet. “C’mere.”  

Jason falls forward easily, tension draining from his shoulders with each step until he’s sliding into bed with a soft sigh and an uncharacteristic hesitance in his movements.   

Dick huffs out a soft laugh and rolls over until he’s pressed against Jason’s side, arm thrown over his waist and leg hooked around his knee. He shifts until his head is resting on Jason’s shoulder, and if he tilts his head just so, he can feel the faint thump-thump-thump of Jason’s heart.   

There’s something bittersweet about it. About how the last time Dick held his brother, he had been skinny and short and scared, and now he was tall, annoyed, and pure muscle. How he had been easy to bundle into his arms back then— promising a movie night filled with popcorn and ice cream when he got back from his mission in space— head tucked under Dick’s chin and thin arms wrapped around his waist. Now Dick doubted Jason would even bend down low enough to fit into the curve of Dick’s shoulder and neck like he used to love.  

Sometimes Dick doubted he knew Jason at all.  

Jason goes rigid for a moment, and Dick has a brief second that he’s misread, that his brother didn’t want this, that he was actually just cold and wanted more blankets (that Dick didn’t know him anymore) before Jason went near boneless, an unsure hand curling under Dick and around his shoulders to press him more firmly against him.  

He melts, eyes fluttering closed and a soft, relieved sigh escaping his mouth, and his body curls towards Dick subconsciously, like a cat trying to soak up the heat from the sun.   

It’s quiet for a long moment, Dick content to listen to Jason’s soft breathes and the steady beat of his heart, before his brother speaks.  

“I’m always cold.”  

Dick hums softly. Jason feels cold, not like a corpse (never. never ) but something authors dramatized in writing. He presses closer and has an absurd wish that if they stayed curled up like this for long enough, some of his heat would transfer permanently into Jason.  

“Ever since I died,” Jason’s voice trailed off for a second, hoarse and uncertain, and Dick’s arm around his waist tightened at the reminder. Jason’s horrified face pleading not to bring him back to death flashes behind his eyes. “I’ve always felt cold. Can’t get warm, no matter what.”  

“A side effect?” Dick prompts carefully. He feels Jason shrug underneath him. 
 

“Dunno. Feel warm when people touch me.”  

And Dick doesn’t know what to say to that. Can't put how his heart cracks a bit more at that information into words. Can’t fight the urge to press closer to his little brother, head buried in his shoulder and hand rubbing a comfortable motion on his side. Pray that if he holds on tight enough, for long enough, Jason won’t feel that chill sweep back into his bones when he has to go.  

“Ask me anytime,” Dick says firmly. He doesn’t leave any room for hesitation, none for doubt. Doesn’t give Jason the choice. “Anytime, and I will be there. Okay? You are my brother and I love you. Ask.”  

Jason’s chest stutters, hand curled around Dick’s shoulder squeezing once before he gets control of himself and nods, eyes still pointed at the ceiling. His voice sounds suspiciously watery when he speaks. Brothers . “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I will.”  

“Goodnight, Little Wing.”  

Jason squeezes him a little tighter. “G’night, Big Bird.”  

--  

Jason wakes up warm for the first time since he opened his eyes six feet under, heat soaking into his bones in a way so achingly familiar he’ll feel fourteen for the first time in years. Dick’s shifted in his sleep, constant movement no matter his state of consciousness, and he’ll be sprawled on top of Jason completely, ear pressed over Jason’s heartbeat and hand fisted in his shirt like he can single handily keep Jason from never leaving his side.  

Jason will leave out the fire escape while Dick is in the bathroom, emotional limit met for at least another month, but will show up at family dinner the following Saturday with the excuse of returning a book he borrowed from Alfred ages ago. Dick will make sure to rest a hand on his shoulder when Jason tries to brush past to drop his dishes in the sink, and Jason will try to pretend that the warmth doesn’t thaw the slowly returning chill or carry a soft sense of family through his heart.   

Jason Todd did not get good things, but his brother made him feel like maybe he could.