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Jason closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and held it.
A lot of people, he reflected, asked him and Tim how on earth their relationship was like that. How they had managed to stay in the honeymoon phase seemingly indefinitely. Most of the bats had at some point or another, many of their friends, hell, random acquaintances had.
Most of them assumed it was all the sex. It wasn't.
The real answer was that they weren't in their honeymoon phase at all — and never had been, in fact. The way their relationship had formed and finally morphed into something serious, they'd just...skipped right over that, never really had the chance.
Of course they were both very in love with each other, but that sure as hell wasn't the answer to the question either, because of course they also got on each other's nerves and pissed each other off sometimes. Of course they did, any relationship had conflict; any people who were around each other this often had conflict. But they had their ways of dealing with it without letting it escalate. Well, Jason had his ways; he actually had no idea how Tim dealt with it when Jason upset him. But Jason had a very good system, which (despite the apparent popular belief to the contrary) got a fair amount of use.
Like right now.
Because Tim was rambling, yet again, about the same stupid ass goddamn book series that had been turned into a show and all the differences, and Jason hadn't given a shit the first time he'd heard the fucking epic of a presentation on it, and he sure as hell didn't the fourth time.
But. Jason hadn't gone through anger management and meditation classes all those years ago for nothing, and he'd gotten very good at noticing when he started to get frustrated and irritable, and just...stopping everything, and removing himself internally, giving himself some time to calm down, and then trying to sort through why and how to fix it.
So he sat there and breathed and tried to tune everything else out for a long few moments until he felt more even.
Right.
Well, first of all, Tim wasn't doing it on purpose. That didn't really make him feel better though.
He was...well...he wasn't even mad that Tim wasn't paying attention enough to know he'd already subjected Jason to this in-depth lecture three times. That would be one thing, if Jason was hurt that Tim wasn't paying attention to him, but he...didn't really care. He was well used to that sort of thing; it was just how Tim was with some things. What bothered him was really just that he didn't care about what was being talked about, and it was such a long fucking talk about it, and did he mention that he didn't fucking care?
Okay, so maybe he was being kind of a dick, but it was his own head, he was allowed to.
Tim would probably be really hurt to know what he was thinking though.
Fuck.
He should probably try not to be a dick. Fuckin'...UGH.
So fine, fine, not being a dick. He loved Tim and wanted him to be happy even if he was annoying as shit sometimes and that meant he loved every part of him. And...well, his passion would need to be taken away if Jason really wanted him to never be annoying like this, and he could never want that. Tim's passion was one of the things Jason loved most about him — yes, even when he took it to obsession, because that was just Tim, he just had an obsessive personality. And Jason loved that. Because he loved Tim.
Tim's passion was what made him so determined, so skillful at everything he did because it had driven him to become the best he could at it, it was what made him so alive.
And…
And the stupid books, show, whatever, they made Tim happy.
And talking about it made him happy. Jason couldn't possibly miss the way his eyes lit up and he started talking faster like he was on a time limit, and the way he'd start making vague shapes in the air, trying to show Jason everything he'd never seen. And Jason loved to see Tim excited over the things he was passionate about, he loved seeing Tim happy, he loved anything that made Tim happy to some degree.
And...Tim wanted to share that happiness with him; he just wanted to share something that he loved with someone he loved. Was that so wrong? Could Jason really not just give him that? It wasn't like Jason never did the same thing to Tim, after all. He knew Tim couldn't give two shits about the differences in guns, but he still sat there and listened to Jason when he went off on a tangent about how badly he wanted this specific one and comparing what it might feel like with other similar guns, or ranting about some complete idiot he'd taken down doing a half-assed assassination attempt with the wrong type of gun for the distance and all the others that he could've used that he totally could've gotten his hands on around here, or, or anything. It wasn't like he gave a shit about classic novels or Shakespeare either, Tim thought they were boring as all fuck, but he listened when Jason wanted to talk about them. He listened because Jason was talking about something he cared about, even if Tim didn't care, because he loved him.
Couldn't Jason return the favor?
Sure, Jason didn't repeat the same rants, but half the time, to Tim, for all intents and purposes it probably seemed like he was. And if Tim could sit there and listen to shit he didn't care about just because Jason did, well then Jason could certainly do the same thing to make his partner happy. Because it would make him happy that Jason was paying attention to any and everything about this little fantasy world he was so obsessed with. Even if he already knew way more than he'd ever needed to from the previous rants.
But that was okay; he could sit here and eat his dinner and stare at how happy talking made Tim, and how beautiful he was like that — always, but Jason especially liked seeing him all lit up — and think how lovely it was to see him not looking stressed without sex having to be involved, and how very in love he was with his incurably obsessive partner.
He opened his eyes, and Tim stopped talking.
Jason looked over at him and reached over to place his hand over Tim's, which was resting on the table, and gave him a soft smile. "I'm sorry sweetheart, I was thinking about something for a minute. What were you saying?"
Tim watched him for a second. "Okay, well then of course there's Darling Llewellyn. In the books, she lives in the cargo bay and vents of Admiral Fantome's ship, just like in the first season of the show, and steers clear of most of the Necronauts except for Annie, but of course there's no Glurp like in the show to frighten her even if she's a bit fascinated by him too, but personally I just thought his character was ridiculous and unnecessary. I mean he was supposed to be 'for kids', but the whole rest of the show contains so much that's just so clearly not for kids, and I mean it's not like Darling needed any more bothers…"
Tim had noticed when Jason had closed his eyes and started consciously breathing, and he knew what he was doing, that he was controlling himself because Tim was getting on his nerves. It was easy to be hurt.
But it was also easy to remember the way Jason seemed to work it out within himself every time he did this. The way he always relaxed his body and looked at Tim with so much love in his eyes when he opened them again. Started paying closer attention afterward. Usually told Tim he loved him when he was done talking and pushed him onto the nearest flat surface to show it. And then after, after, he'd run his lips all over Tim's body, ghosting kisses along his skin, trailing his fingertips lightly behind, whispering a million different 'I love you's into his skin that were said every way but that. 'You're so perfect' and 'I'd do anything for you' and 'I adore every single thing about you'.
And truly, even if he didn't, it wasn't fair to begrudge him his annoyance. He was bound to get annoyed — or worse! — with Tim sometimes. That was just how relationships were. And Tim definitely got annoyed with Jason at times. It was just that usually, if he was genuinely annoyed, he didn't allow himself to react or say anything in the moment until he could think about it later and how reasonable it was, and ninety percent of the time it just...wasn't actually that big a deal. It had either already resolved itself, been forgotten, or just wasn't worth quibbling over.
Sure, if Jason did something actually fucked up and upsetting, he would probably say something in the moment, but he really couldn't recall a time when Jason had ever even pushed any serious boundaries. Actually, no, when he'd thought he was springing a proposal on him, that had almost made Tim shit a brick and he'd definitely snapped at him then, but it had turned out to be a non-issue for the same reason Jason hadn't otherwise pushed boundaries: they knew each other well because they'd talked about that shit a lot.
It was pretty simple, really. Not always easy. Definitely not easy to talk about some things (and sometimes the boundary was that this certain thing just couldn't be talked about yet). But it was straightforward.
And habit had made it a lot easier. There was nothing important that had happened to Tim or that he had discovered since their relationship became an actual Relationship™ that he had not told Jason about within a week or so, and usually relatively easily compared to older stuff. Because he was simply in the habit; if something new happened or Tim discovered something new about himself, usually his first thought would be to tell Jason, he just wanted to share everything important with his partner and he assumed Jason felt the same.
What it came down to was that he loved Jason. More than harboring unnecessary resentment about things that clearly didn't matter when Jason was sitting here right now, a forkful of food hanging forgotten in the air halfway to his mouth, with his cheek propped on his fist and staring at Tim like he'd hung the moon while he continued rambling on about the Necronauts.
He smiled back at Jason, and he could feel that he was absolutely giving ridiculously soppy heart eyes, but who cared? Nobody but Jason was around to see anyway.
For just a moment, as their eyes met, they both happened to have the same thought:
I'm the luckiest person in the whole goddamn universe.