Ficlet
Title: Nightmares
Pairing: Dick/Jason/Tim
Word Count: 534
Summary: They love each other enough to brave the mine fields in each other's heads.
Rating: PG
Warnings: vague references to violence and even more vague references to sex
They all have nightmares. It’s the reason they don’t sleep together, not unless Dick’s had a really bad night of it. Then it’s worth the patchy sleep to see Dick’s body relax as he curls into them and wraps himself up in arms and legs. It’s even worth waking up to screams and the resigned helplessness that comes with them. They can’t fight one another’s demons. Those nights always leave Jason a little shaky.
They still wake each other up, even as it is, with their separate beds in their separate rooms. (And, goddamnit, if Timmy’s room doesn’t develop some kind of mess real soon, Jason is going to have to spatter the walls with fucking paint. Or just tickle the kid until he begs for mercy. And then practice other ways to make their little brother beg.) They’re trained to wake up when one tree rustles out of time with the wind. Of course they wake up when someone screams.
But this way, they have a system worked out. It’s always Dick who goes to Tim, when the ghost of his scream worms its way through his pillow. (Babybird still tries to muffle them. It’s annoying and it’s also wrong, trying to hide from them, but some habits die hard.) It’s better that way; his face is never, ever the one grimacing dire threats from behind Tim’s eyes. Dick understands about kneeling in a pool of your father’s blood and wondering if you’re even real anymore.
But Tim isn’t the one who holds Dick through the shakes and the gasping sobs. Jason claimed that duty (privilege) a long, long time ago. Jason knows what it is to want and to hate yourself for wanting, and he never shrinks from a hug. Not even from the desperate clinging, like he’s the last solid thing in a quick-sand world. Hugging Dickiebird is always a full-body experience.
But, on nights when waking up feels like clawing his way out of a coffin and the air tastes thick as mud, Jason can’t really bear to see Dick’s face. Not at first. Not before time catches up with him and his gut realizes that Bruce’s Golden Boy never really existed. Tim gets it. Tim knows that sometimes a hug just feels like another sort of trap. He knows how to be there without filling the room up with his presence until Jason might as well be choking again.
None of them talks about it. Outsiders don’t need to know that they sleep together only in the euphemistic sense. They couldn’t explain it, anyway. It’s just part of their rhythm, like the way Dick always gets up in time to start the coffee or how Jason always gets the last parameter check. Comfortable as the photographs Tim matted for their walls.
Even if Tim’s face gets that lost-puppy look as they gather themselves up to say goodnight. Even if Dick tosses and turns every night, spreading across his bed in search of them. Even if Jason finds himself wondering, alone in his room, whether they ever really wanted him at all.
But they all have nightmares, and it's easier this way.