Chapter Text
“You called?”
Dick opens the window and deactivates the security. Trust Jason to call him and forget to make sure he doesn’t get killed while entering the safehouse. Though, Dick thinks as he sees the blood all over, maybe he couldn’t.
“Um, are you alive?” he asks the safe house.
There is a noise from the bathroom. “Yes, looks worse than it is, now come and help me.”
Dick hurries to find Jason kneeled down, holding a gauze patch on his shoulder awkwardly. “Finally,” he says when he sees Dick.
“Thank you for coming Dick, I know you might have other things planned tonight, and also you live in a whole ‘nother city, but I’m glad you cleared your schedule.” Dick replies sarcastically.
“Yeah, yeah. Now come and help me. Guy got a lucky shot; the bullet is still inside, and I can’t remove and clean up properly. I’m not all bendy like you, I actually have muscles.”
Dick kneels down next to Jason, taking stock of the med kit left open next to Jason. Thankfully, it seems well stocked. He bats Jason’s hands away and gets to work.
“And you called me?” Despite what he said, he’s glad. He’s happy his number is once again one Jason can call if he needs help.
“You were the only one available that wouldn’t immediately run to snitch to the Bat. You won’t do that, right?”
“I won’t,” Dick confirms. His relationship with Jason is fragile enough as it is, they don’t need that. “Unless you don’t take care of it properly and it ends up getting infected.”
“It won’t get infected, because you’ll clean it up properly.”
“You know sometimes it’s not-”
“I know. Geez, you’re worse than Alfred, sometimes.” But there is no heat behind the words.
Dick works in silence for a few moments, before asking, “So, how come someone got a lucky shot on you?”
“I was protecting a guy. A small tech company, Cichlid Tech, got robbed by a group I was tracking, but they got angry when they couldn’t find anything they could use as a weapon. I thought everyone had left but a guy was still there, mind you, he wasn’t even an employee, just the co-founder’s ex-husband or something? And a friend of the current CEO?”
Dick stops cleaning the wound for a second. “No way! I know those guys!”
Jason turns. “Oh? They’re fairly small, and Metropolis-based. Their Gotham factory is quite new.”
“Yeah, but they started in Gotham. I helped solve the co-founder’s murder, it was… It was just before I went to spend a few days in the manor for the first time when you were-”
“When I was Robin,” Jason finishes for him. It’s hard to gauge where the limit is when it comes to talking about the past with Jason. To figure out what will be the thing that will trigger one of his many fuses.
Their relationship is like a card castle, and he has to be careful around the edge of it.
“Yeah, I remember that a bit,” Jason says, “You fell ass first in a garbage container.”
“This is what you remember? Not about how I single handedly stopped a Venom cargo from being delivered while injured?”
Jason fakes thinking for a minute. “Um, no, I don’t remember that. You know, trauma and all.” He gives Dick a large smile, knowing how much it annoys him when he says, “I died.”
Dick just rolls his eyes, but his heart misses a beat when he feels Jason’s back tensing a second later. “Still, I can’t believe what B told you that day. He had no right-”
“Lot of water had passed under the bridge. It’s okay,” Dick says, even if he still doesn’t know what was said. He never found the strength to ask.
“No, it’s not,” Jason says. Thankfully, he doesn’t elaborate, and Dick is left in his blissful ignorance.
They stay silent for a short while after that, and Dick wonders if maybe this is it. But Jason doesn’t tell him to leave or anything, so he finishes cleaning up and dressing the wound.
“Done,” Dick says when he’s satisfied with his work.
He fully expects Jason to tell him to get out of his hair, but the younger man just stands up and says, “Feel free to make yourself breakfast while I shower, but everything you burn, you pay back.”
Dick gets out of the bathroom and just looks at the kitchen without starting anything until he hears the shower running. Strangely, he can feel the scar from all these years ago, on his right back shoulder. It’s not really painful, not even an ache. It’s just there, like the memory of his failed relationship with Jason. The memory of what could have been. The memory of a call he missed. The memory of a card castle that fell too fast and he’s not sure how to rebuild.
“If you turn off the hot water,” Jason yells from the shower, “I’m murdering you!”
Dick smiles. Maybe they can fix this. Maybe they can try to rebuild that card castle.
Worst case scenario, they will tape it.