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" Rough patrol?" Oracle's distorted voice comes through with just a touch of static in Jason's busted comm.
He forces back a childish whine of distaste, "What can I do for you, Oracle?" He asks instead, gingerly swinging his leg over the windowsill, stabilizing his swollen knee with a shaking hand, "In the market for some intel? You know it'll cost you." He doesn't bother holding back a hiss of discomfort as he drops down to the distressed hardwood of his safe house.
" Not quite. " Barbara says cautiously, " I'm checking in ."
"Checking in?" Jason asks, raising an incredulous eyebrow beneath his hood. He limps into the kitchen, dragging his useless leg behind himself.
" You've been out every night for the past six weeks. No breaks, sunset to sunrise. Are you even sleeping?"
Jason grits his teeth, tugging off the helmet and letting it clatter onto the counter in front of him. Since when do you care? He wants to say, I don't take breaks .
"Bats are nocturnal, you know that, Barbie." He goes for instead, forcing a false grin into his voice.
She makes a disapproving sound, " You took some hits tonight ."
He bristles, knowing she's got eyes on him at every second is different than being reminded of it. "What is it you need, Babs?" He snaps, an intended slow crouch to the floor becoming a glorified fall.
" I told you I don't need anything. You know you're not effective in the field if you haven't rested. You need medical, and you need sleep. You're smarter than this. " She pauses for a moment, and Jason thinks that must've been his chance to respond, but he just busies himself with dragging his first aid kit out from the cabinets and setting it out on the tile next to his hip. " Nightwing's a few blocks out, eight minutes tops-"
"Fuck off." Jason growls, "Don't fucking send anyone here. I'm following all of Bats' goddamn rules, okay? I don't need the pageant queen acting as my fucking parole officer. And if you're really concerned, I'm fine, okay? Don't contact me." She sounds as if she's going to say more, in that even, irritated tone of hers, but he cuts in, "Forty eight hours." Because he knows he can't keep the bats off his back for any real length of time but it would at least be a breath of relief.
With that, he tugs his comm out of his ear and tosses it aside, letting it skid uselessly on the tile.
He spares a fleeting thought that she might be right as he digs a couple of antiseptic wipes from the kit and strips his jacket and shirt. He'd take the next few nights off if the thought of leaving the Alley unprotected didn't send anxious jitters crawling up his spine.
In the quiet emptiness of his apartment Jason allows himself a childish whine as he cleans out dried blood and dirt from the long slash of a knife wound on his upper arm. Presumably, the "hit" Babs was referencing. Clumsily, he cleans his hands with the same wipes, leaving them crumpled in his lap as he digs through his kit for a sterile needle and thread. Letting out a gusty sigh, he opens the packaging and readies the needle.
It’s an utter mess with one hand. He’ll be left with a crooked scar and he might’ve been better off just sticking some butterfly closures over it and hoping for the best. His fingers shudder as he stitches, so much so he has to rest a pinkie on his bicep to gain some semblance of stability. Jason’s hands don’t shake. They aren’t meant to. Shaking hands and a sniper rifle spells someone dead that shouldn’t be. His hands don’t shake.
He forces out a breath that’s almost a sob, tugging the thread through his flesh and mentally berating his hands for their behavior.
Sweat and grime coats the area around the wound, what he hadn’t bothered to wipe off, and fresh blood wells in the cut as he manipulates it, dripping down and forming slow, thin rivulets to his elbow.
It’s a long, miserable process, poking the needle into his flesh and tugging it through, manipulating the thread into tight knots and starting over a few millimeters down. He wonders if he should’ve left it for tomorrow. If he’s so exhausted now that he might’ve gotten a few hours of sleep before the relentless hypervigilance forced his alertness. But he would’ve gotten bloodstains on the sheets. And he’s almost done anyway.
He shakes and trembles through the final stitches before cutting off the excess thread and dropping his hand to his lap, releasing a breath he doesn’t remember holding. He’s meant to be in control of his breath- slow, steady breaths are a prerequisite to detailed work like this. It’s second nature to him. It should be.
Jason clumsily toes off his boot and slides the brace off his ankle, hissing softly as he rolls mobility back into it. He leaves the knee brace on, too exhausted to get up for an ice pack and hurting too much to take it off without anything else to ease the ache. He lets his eyes slip closed, needle and leftover thread, scissors and crumpled, bloody antiseptic wipes held in a loose fist. His head tips back, crown resting on the cabinets. He'll just rest for a minute, just breathe . Then he'll get up and stumble off to bed.
He can feel the all too familiar sink of unconsciousness though, the dreamless kind of knocked-out sleep he rarely gets these days, maybe he can just-
A faint thump sounds outside the walls of his apartment, wrenching him violently back into reality. He starts, a gun ready in his hand before he can finish the sharp gasp through his nose that accompanied his return to alertness. If he weren't so used to dealing with the deadly silent he wouldn't have heard it, or would've written it off as one of the many sounds of a bustling city. He’s right to be on alert- of course he is, and he remains carefully still as the traps on his window start to disengage, not a muscle out of place besides those stupid, stupid trembling hands. He’d melt into the shadows like he’s meant to if it weren’t for them. He might be able to catch the intruder while they’re busy with that, but it’s a risk, and right now his knee and arm are glaring targets. Better to keep his distance and go for a ranged attack when they show their face.
The window begins to slide open with a horrendous screech. Jason swallows, tightens his grip around his gun, thinks maybe he should get to his feet to face this threat and decides he won’t bother.
Long legs slip through the open window. Jason considers shooting right then, maybe breaking into his apartment is reason enough to end up with a hole in your foot. Contrary to popular belief, however, he’s not interested in turning to violence before he can get a read on who he’s shooting at and what they’ve done to deserve it. It’s a read he can gather in fractions of a second, but an effort he makes nonetheless.
A torso contorts its way into the apartment, stopping with a jerk until a jacket is yanked frustratedly away from where it was caught. It's not Nightwing that finally straightens up and brushes dust off of himself, but Dick Grayson, shabby in joggers and a hoodie.
"I told her not to send anyone." Jason growls, not yet lowering his weapon. The sink of relief in his gut feels like a betrayal. He wants so badly to hate Dick, to see him as a threat and an enemy and no more, but he’s never truly been either of those anyway.
Dick shrugs, turning around to shut the window- the traps reset automatically with a click, "She told me not to come." He lets himself in, shrugging off the jacket and tossing it onto Jason's couch.
Jason lets his head bang back against the cabinets again, exasperated, “Fuck off.” He groans, finally slipping the gun safely back into its holster.
Dick strides over to him, that easy swagger that gives a sort of bounce to each of his steps, and he crouches down in front of Jason. He’s doing the detective thing, taking in all the details of Jason’s demeanor and the marks on his skin. They all do it, with Bruce and Tim, he can see it in their eyes, scarily identical between the two of them, a sharp glean that reads as much joy as it does analysis. For Dick, it’s the set of his mouth, a downturn, ever so slight, on one side, reminiscent of a child focused on a math problem that's stumped them, but subtler. It takes him all of a few seconds to get the information he wants, and he breaks the gaze, the distinctive expression, reaching for the first aid kit.
“It’s taken care of, Dickie. What are you doing here?” Jason snips, wanting to snatch the kit from Dick’s hands and childishly zip it up to be thrown into its cabinet. He suppresses the urge.
Dick doesn’t answer, just glances up from what he’s doing to shoot Jason an incredulous, knowing sort of smile. He pulls out a fresh antiseptic wipe and gently but firmly cleans off the messy stitches on Jason’s arm. He pays closer attention to the area around it, swiping up the blood that had dripped down to his elbow, more patient than Jason had been. When he’s finished, he brushes back Jason’s bangs, bringing a clean corner of the wipe up to a spot on his forehead.
“Fuck-” Jason hisses, the alcohol stings against a wound he hadn’t remembered getting.
Dick snickers under his breath, “Baby.” He teases, swapping the wipe in his hand for a package of butterfly bandages. He presses one to the cut and combs Jason’s hair back into place with careful fingers.
Dick leans back and holds out an expectant empty palm. Groggily, Jason gathers up the detritus in his lap and dumps it into Dick’s waiting hands. He shuts his eyes and listens to Dick’s footsteps track around the room, first getting rid of the trash, then moving to the fridge to fill a water bottle Jason had left on the counter with water from the pitcher inside. “Ice?” He asks.
Jason makes a soft sound in the affirmative and listens as the freezer door opens and shuts before Dick’s footsteps begin to move back toward him. When he settles back on the tile next to Jason, he takes a moment to press the water bottle insistently into his hand.
“You wanna sleep in these?” Dick asks, tugging on the ankle of Jason’s tactical pants. Jason grunts and shakes his head. Together they work off his knee pads, before Jason undoes his belt and wriggles out of the pants and holsters. The brace comes off his knee next, angry red indents left behind in his flesh. Dick covers them in ACE wrap, a barrier for the ice pack before he secures that as well.
“Want to take anything?” He asks, turning back to the first aid kit to get everything put away neatly the way Jason likes it.
“Advil.” He answers. Dick pulls out the bottle and hands it to Jason, who shakes out four pills and takes them with a swig of the water.
Once the Advil is slotted back into its place and the first aid kit is pushed back under the sink, Dick gets to his feet. “Alright, up you get.” He prompts, offering a hand to help Jason up. He ignores it and gets to his feet on his own, staggering as he does. He intends to shove off Dick’s offer of support as well, but without the brace on, his knee is a lot less steady underneath him. He grabs Dick’s shoulder, and thankfully, he doesn’t say anything, just steadily walks with Jason to the bedroom.
Jason collapses face first in bed when he gets there. Dick’s still puttering around, and Jason tries to let it sink into the background. Thanks , he knows he should say, you can go now . But he feels a sort of aching dread at the thought of Dick leaving, the idea of being alone again, it makes anxiety tick up in his chest and nearly wipes away any hope of getting a peaceful night of sleep.
But Dick is there, a gentle hand on his shoulder, rolling him over and guiding him to sit up. He slides a sweatshirt over Jason’s head and guides his arms through the sleeves just like a toddler.
Jason’s lying down again, on his side and now there’s a blanket over his hips, he doesn’t remember how he got here, but the cocoon of soft fabric is perfect . For a moment he panics again, he should be alert, there’s someone in the room and he needs to-
Gentle fingers slide through his curls, “Sleep, little wing, I’ll watch your back.”
And he does, and truthfully it’s the first real full, dreamless sleep he’s gotten since he left the manor at fifteen.
