Chapter Text
“Congratulations on your exam.”
Dick stood dumbfounded by the door, staring at the massive bouquet of blue hydrangeas, a bottle of champagne and lit candles in his kitchen.
Dick looked down at his watch, turned to glance at the clock on the wall.
10 PM.
Usually this peacock wouldn’t show up this late but after a long day, Dick couldn’t bring himself to be surprised anymore.
“My exam.”
“Your exam.”
“Me.”
“You.”
They repeated each other like a machine until Dick’s eyes threatened to pop out of the socket staring at the luxurious bouquet. Jason chuckled and walked over, pushing the bouquet to Dick and reaching over to close the door.
His massive frame covered Dick’s vision, a cologne that wasn’t really there, lingering on his skin like the leftover of a party.
Sandalwood.
“Your promotional result came in today, didn’t it?”
Dick bitterly recalled the conversation he had with Chief earlier in the day, stepping back for some space. Catching the tension in the air, Jason immediately pushed forward.
“Rejoy. It’s a big thing, most get stuck on patrol all their lives.”
“Like my partner?” Like Amy.
“Your partner ain’t half as good as you.”
“She’s been in the force longer than me.”
“I’ve heard of dogs playing pianos but not of philosophers eating kibbles.”
“What does that even mean?” Dick frowned.
“Meaning you’re too good for the bar, Officer. Time is nothing but a fraction against talent, once it’s set on the right course.”
This conversation was exhausting. Dick snatched the champagne over and lazily got into the kitchen, searching for a vase big enough to put away the flowers.
Hydrangeas. Purity and Grace.
It didn’t suit a mob like him at all so of course he was mocking Dick, a mere cop that was walked in his palm like a chicken in the yard.
“Do you know the meaning of giving someone blue hydrangeas?” When Jason only tilted his head back, smiling innocently, Dick pushed further. “It represents an apology.”
“Is that so?”
“Do you have anything to say to me?”
“Not that I know of… Or perhaps, you are expecting something?”
Look at the smile. That uppity face. Those half-lid eyes staring down at Dick knowing he got the lower footing in this dog chase.
He looked straight at Dick’s face as if he didn’t open a big game of chess and set them as his pawns.
Dick wanted to pull out the gun he knew Jason strapped behind his back and whack him in the face with it. He knew he shouldn’t, but a small part of him knew Jason might let him get away with it. The other part? Not so sure.
“I’m running out of vases for this lover game, Red.”
“Red?” Jason repeated, frowning. “You are no romantic, Dick Grayson. I told you my name.”
“I am romantic, just not in a wanted criminal way.”
“I even let you say my name.” He repeated like Dick didn’t catch it the first time and it was his mistake to take the matter lightly.
“What? Should I not? What are you, Voldemode?”
“You don’t like my nose?”
Dick pulled his lips, turning his back to him to put his messy thoughts into the stubborn champagne bottle.
He did like his nose. It was a really nice nose.
In fact, he also really liked his face. A face that Dick didn’t even know was his type.
Dick just annoyingly realized, he actually liked everything about this man. Liked when he dressed himself up like a peacock for an impression. Liked even when he nearly got Dick killed last time and kissed the living shit out of him after seven months of ghosting.
What was worse? Dick realized he might still like this guy even after knowing everything he had done and might do in the future.
“Can I help?”
Jason’s voice became clearer than ever, channeling right from the side of Dick’s head into his ear. His warmth pressed against Dick’s back. Those lips against his ear. He found himself caged between those massive arms, now planted down the counter so close to his sides.
His chin set down Dick’s shoulder as his fingers walked themselves toward Dick’s hands where they were holding on the champagne bottle for dear life.
“Say something,” Warm breath winded down Dick’s neck. His lips left ghost touches, raising every fiber of hair on his skin. “Why do I have a feeling that you’re angry at me?”
Dick swallowed. Trying to light that fire in him back up, and failed miserably.
Somehow, the more time he spent with this man, the less angry he became. He had imagined the confrontation, the denial and the argument they could have had all day. But when facing this man and his nonchalant demeanor, that fire in him died down to a little spark.
“Dick?”
“Here.”
Dick swiftly turned over and yearned forward, closing their already thin gap. Everybody was all “push” until they were pushed back. Jason’s feet didn’t budge, but his body moved backward on instinct. The sense of a mob couldn't be doubted.
Dick pulled the champagne bottle out from behind his back and nudged it toward Jason, wiggling his eyebrows lazily. “Since you’ve brought all of these…”
A flash of delight crossed through those greyish blue eyes.
“Of course, little berry.” A slip of Russian accent at the end of his tongue. The familiar pet name rolled out heavy and throaty like a dry crack of an icicle in mid-winter. Jason didn’t hide his joy and chuckled happily, stepping back and popping open the champagne without looking.
And POP!
The gas fuzzed, bubbles sizzled like music. Within a second, champagne and bubbles were everywhere. They were in the air, and all over Jason’s face. Liquid gushed out from the bottle, spilling all over his body and onto the floor.
Dick covered his mouth, trying to act at least a little bit astonished.
“Oh my.”
“You shook it.”
“Did I?” Dick gasped, theatrically.
“You’re angry.”
“Am I?” Dick dragged.
Jason didn’t say anything further, just stared back with a drenched face. And Dick, who clearly wasn’t as surprised and half as apologetic as he should be, tried to pull the edge of his lips down to make everything less obvious.
“You really are angry at me.”
“Thank you for noticing, I’ve been hinting since the beginning.”
Jason stepped back, flicking his champagne-wet hands and clicking his tongue while shrugging his clearly expensive wool coat and scarf off.
Okay, not that Dick didn’t enjoy the sight of that shirt clinging to Red’s very impressive body, but a little pinch of something apologetic jolted his heart, the way one would feel when seeing a wet stray in a rainy 40 Fahrenheit day.
“If seeing me in a wet shirt makes you feel better, so be it.”
Apologetic no more.
Dick quickly put some distance between them and threw him a towel. “Didn’t I say not to meddle with my workplace again?”
“No foreplay. You’re no fun at all.”
“For a man like you, I thought you’d like to run things quickly.”
“For a special someone, I can take things slowly.”
Oh the things Dick could do to this man if he wasn’t a major underground tycoon and a serial offender who could annihilate a whole squat within a night.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Dick pinched the bridge of his nose, putting his hand down and putting together his questions in order. “How many moles do you have in my station, exactly?”
A little squint, but soon followed up a smirk. “As many as one should, given my profession.”
“Did you or did you not kill that man?”
“It’s not important whether or not I did it, it's whether or not you think I did it.”
“I think you are dangerous enough to do it.”
“But?” His eyebrow arched up arrogantly, the way he knew there was something else following up Dick’s answer.
“But it seems my opinion is more important than the fact.”
“Trust is fact until you get stabbed in the back.”
“And you trust me to not stab you in the back?”
Jason leaned back, scoffed and waved off his hand, as it wasn’t something worth discussing.
“You think I’m harmless, don’t you?”
“There’s a difference between a pebble and a bullet in a gun with its safety on. The same difference between you and the word ‘harmless’. It’s never about what you can do, but about what you refuse to do. It takes a whole lot more courage for a man who knows exactly how to kill to not kill than one who doesn’t know what to do at knife point.”
He stepped forward, again and again, until Dick was pressed against the counter. He pulled his gun out from the waistband, the gun he never said he had yet Dick knew he had, and laid it on the surface, so close to Dick’s range that all it took was a tiniest thought and a quick hand.
“Here’s my trust. So what is your fact , Officer?”
“My fact is that you are wanted in 12 different countries, categorized as a third-grade felony and have 230 years over your head.”
“And I assume all of that is affecting your speculation on our certainly unfortunate John?”
“They are affecting my vocation to the bright side of the law. ”
“ Yagodka maya , the bright side is wherever I hold the light.”
He leaned over, all of that brick wall he called a body. Dick leaned back to maintain some poor disctance between them until his head hit the cabinet and all it felt like was a little push for Jason to tilt his head aside and kiss him.
It would have been romantic, with a wet shirt, flowers and champagne and a paper-thin gap between their lips.
It would have been, if Dick wasn’t fucking pissed right now.
“So what do you think, my little be— A a a ah my ear– Ouch ouch…”
Dick pinched and pulled harder, until Jason’s head was forcefully pulled back by his ear despite his stubborn force to continue their eyecontact.
Yeah, Dick might not shoot him for the flowers, the moles in the station and all the craps he put Dick through. A pebble can’t kill like a bullet, but it can still hurt.
“Ouch—What the fuck is– Ouch– this for–Would you fucking stop?!”
“You’re really upity for a piece of shit, you know that.”
“You’re really violent for a piece of cookie, you know that–OUCH Motherfuck–”
Dick finally let go of his ear and flicked his nose, the way he would to the kids that had a bad habit of smuggling only to end up getting dragged into the station.
“I didn’t kill him.” Jason’s voice was nozzy from where he covered his nose, glaring back at Dick with a mixture of anger and embarassement like a little boy whose diary just got read.
“I know.”
“Then why do you act like this!”
Because watching you puffing up your chest acting all cool and collective was really interesting.
“Because you deserve it for treating me like a pawn in your act. You put me into the investigating department. You gave me the flash drive. You knew I’d be the first one on the scene and take over the case. You didn’t want him dead. You want his death cracked, investigated and solved by a familiar hand within the range that wouldn’t surprise you.”
That pause and the uncomfortable pinch on Jason’s face said it all. “You aren’t secretly a psychic, are you?”
Dick rolled his eyes. “Been a pawn all my life. I know when I’m being played.”
A scoff and another lazy wave of his hand.
“A game this is, but a pawn you never were.”
“Touche, I prefer to be a knight.”
This time, it was a laugh. A guffaw so loud, aggressive and long-lasting, it swayed Jason on his own feet, swinging him left and right, back and forther until balance left him and forced his palms to land on both sides of the counter, caging Dick in between.
“What?” Dick asked nervously. Surprise, confusion and anxiety circulated within him like a mad ride of a merry-go-round.
“What!” Dick pressed, again, with a pinch of anger bubbling through his guts.
But then Jason suddenly surged forward and pressed his lips against Dick’s. His nonvisible stubbles scartched agaisnt Dick’s chin, his lashes tickled his cheeks. Dick’s back was pressed against the counter edge, Jason’s shirt was still soak wet. He smelled of sour wine, tasted of tobacco and felt like hot coal. He had to crane his neck. Dick should stay angry. There should be absolutely nothing comfortable about the circumstances they were in.
But it was.
From the moment their lips were locked together in that rush of heat, joy and lust, the world itself ceased to exist, blurred and indistincted as an impressionist masterpiece.
He was all Dick could feel. And Dick was all he could feel.
Jason kissed as if it was their first, hungry and needy and clumsy. Swaying on his legs, leaning against Dick’s body, searching for balance as if there was morphin, nicotin on their lips, and he was too high to stay grounded.
Dick too.
He must be out of his mind to let this happen over and over again. He never understood what kept bringing them into this position, with this mafia boss’ lips on his neck, right below where the collar of his lawful uniform could hide.
An odd, intimate affair, they were.
Until Jason’s canines gazed his pulse and he realized, this wasn’t the first, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Because this man could tear open his throat and make him bleed out withering on his hands. But instead, he chose to kiss.
And when he looked back at Dick with those durnken eyes, heavy breaths, Dick knew he would let this man’s lips be on him over and over again.
“Dick Grayson.”
“Yes,” Dick replied between gags of air. His hands wet from the fists on Jason’s shirt. They laid their foreheads against each other, breathing in each other’s air, drinking in every look, every touch, every fiber of the other’s existence.
“I’d never kiss a pawn, nor a knight. Not even the goddamn queen.”
Focus , he told himself. He should stand his ground, stay angry, and forget about the honey-wrapped nonchalant things he said.
He thought about the ballet, about the first kiss they had after seven months, about the shit he pulled and the way he barged back into Dick’s life unexpected, unannouced. As if there would always be a spot to park himself in Dick’s life.
“If you want to play, try to lie a little better.”
A rough finger, yet gentle strokes moved along Dick’s cheek, up to the root of his bangs. “You’re too damn difficult even if I wanted to play.”
See?
This was exactly Dick’s problem. Whenever he should stay angry at him, he found the perfectly right thing to say to put that fire out in Dick. And what was worse was that Dick was more than ready to trust this guy. Even though he was in every position to not to.
Jason tilted over and landed a sweet little peck on the tip of Dick’s nose before giving him back some space. He stepped back into the middle of the kitchen, shrugged off the rest of his shirt and vigorously shook his hair like a wet Labrador.
“It’s mischievous, the way you always manage to make me go shirtless.”
His laugh didn’t die all the way to the end of the hallway where he invited himself into Dick’s bathroom like it was his own, the kind of carefree, heartfully childish and joyfull laugh Dick never thought he could hear from a man like him.
He had felt special
So he blamed himself for being lonely for too long. Blamed the wet shirt, the flowers and all the carrots he brought along before the unseen, incoming sticks, and poured himself a glass from the half-filled half-wasted expensive champagne that Jason brought over.
At the end of the glass, he flipped it over and put it on a candle that Jason had lit like a fool, one by one, until the last light went out and the smoke detector remained rested and silent.
He started cleaning up in the dark while the shower ran and Jason took his leisure time treating this place as if it was his own. There was something casually mundane about this. This kitchen was imprinted of their co-existence, Jason’s dirty shirt twirling in the washing machine, his coat hanging on the rack in the bedroom instead of the one by the front door.
And for that, Dick did what any decent citizen with an honest heart would do, and went into the bedroom and checked Jason’s coat.
He patted through and through the mafia’s Loro Piana double-breasted overcoat, seeking between the linens for a clue, anything, a burner, leftover bills, a flashdrive, phone numbers.
But there was nothing. Nothing but a lingering scent of sandalwood. The spicy kind just like Creed.
He wore it here as a reminder that Dick got homework to do. That their John had something he wanted in his death, and Dick was made specifically to figure it out.
He walked out disappointed, wandering in the dark apartment like a ghost to the light of the bathroom was still on. He chewed over the thought of prying for more clues from the man himself until…
“Who are–”
His voice died out when the figure in black immediately turned and balled their eyes staring back at Dick.
It was a man, it had to be. Even in the dark with that black outfit, Dick’s vision was better than any cat could be. Their face half covered by a mask, gloved hands, soft sole shoes and a silver Glock 19. Standing right in front of the bathroom door, waiting, anticipating. Shocking when seeing Dick coming out from the bedroom.
As if he had thought Dick was the one inside the bathroom this whole time.
They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Until it clicked.
And Dick couldn’t tell if either of them moved first. He immediately jumped out of sight, the gun went off but with a muffler head. Dick ducked low, worked his knees close to the ground and went for the legs.
Gunners. It takes too much focus to shoot, they forget about everything else.
He kicked on the ankles, watched him go down and went full force on his elbow down the gunned hand. He didn’t let go, even whacked a few stars out of Dick’s head with the handle.
Fuck.
There were grunts, groans, heaving, but they both understood the mutual law that was to not make a sound.
Dick went for the ear instead. Guns weren't designed for close-range combat. The longer he held onto that Glock, the less focus he would put into working his body. That was where Dick came in.
He used every trick in his sleeves, ear slapping, hair pulling, elbows and knees and even the mask. Yes, the mask. When people had something to hide, hit them hard on their secrets. The moment he managed to get the gun to drop, he twirled around the guy, crossed legs, locked himself on top of him and started hammering down, inching forward at best. If this tree was coming down, it better be coming down away from the bathroom.
He was tough. Not big nor built but he lasted this long. He was good at what he did.
It took forever for the man to go down, but he did go down. Dick quickly kicked the gun further away, pulled his arm, locked his legs into a headlock.
It was a test of strength, stamina and determination not to… well, die. For both of them.
Dick started counting down when he could feel his body begin to shut down.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five…
But before both of them could seek the finale, the bathroom door suddenly swung open.
They both held their breath, looking up from the floor.
Jason walked out with nothing but a towel around his hips. Wet hair dripping down to every bulge and wave of perfectly built muscles. His big hand pushed over and tucked all of his hair back. Those icy eyes finally dropped down onto their attention, seemingly flowing in the dark like a hound in a blood hunt.
“Well well well,” he clicked his tongue, chuckled low. “You came later than I expected.”
The sound of what was voiced sucked the life out of Dick. He felt the ground twirling for seconds.
He couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t even feel the struggle and the burn between muscles from where the fight was still going. All he could do was stare.
He balled his eyes, watching Jason take one by one of lazy, casual step toward the Glock by the wall.
He picked it up, unassembled, checked the round, and put it all back together.
And that smirk. That goddamn smirk again.
It was all he could see before the metal was raised, and all that looked back at him was the insidious, black hole of the cold, silver barrel.