Warmth Part 3
Kissing wasn’t something that Jason was used to. It was intimate, it was open, and it just wasn’t something you did when you were just looking for a cheap fuck on a dirty bed.
With Dick it was different. The man was a born kisser, openly affectionate and not backing down from the intimacy of the act. Rather, instead, he faced it head on. His kisses were those of a lover, someone who knew how to give to their partner, who wasn’t just taking for personal gratification. And even though Jason had only experienced the touch of one other man on his body the feelings couldn’t be further apart.
Jason had never thought about being with another man, and he hadn’t really cared about people who did. It was never something that interested him. With women there was never any doubt about who was in control, who had the power, with men the dynamic was different, or he thought it should be, so he’d never considered it of any merit before.
But with Dick it was different. It didn’t matter that they were both men. Jason remembered his first nervous kiss with a girl he’d actually liked, so very long ago, a lifetime ago. Kissing Dick felt like that, a warmth in his stomach, a nervousness, a shiver across the skin that made goose bumps rise. It didn’t feel like he was kissing another man, because sex didn’t matter, in their world of two people such insignificant details meant nothing. All it meant was that Jason could let go.
Dick was focusing his attention completely on the younger man in front of him, the rest of the world and its troubles fading away. There was a moment when he pulled away and looked at Jason’s face when he felt a twinge of guilt, a voice whispering what would Batman say? in the far reaches of his mind. He pushed that voice away, silencing it maliciously. Bruce would undoubtedly disapprove of this; he had never understood the basic human need for contact, for connection to another person.
Dick didn’t care. This wasn’t about sex. It wasn’t about physical gratification it was about something much deeper, the soul-deep healing of scars that someone had left on a dear loved one of Dick’s. Messed up and strange as their family was, Dick loved each and every member of the Bat family with unabashed devotion. So when he touched Jason, it wasn’t out of lust, there was only the gentle exchange of touch, the passing of one scarred soul over another, their scars matching and mending at the touch of the other.
To the two of them, this was an act of deep emotional value, it had very little to do with the physical joining of bodies, it had everything to do with Jason putting all of his trust in Dick’s hands. The older Robin did everything possible to take good care of him.
//
There was lust eventually, of course. It didn’t start that way, but the heat of skin touching skin, the friction of that contact sparked the heat.
Jason found himself admiring Dick’s scars, tracing them with slow fingers, wondering at each of them. There was a lifetime of hardship written on his body, scars overlapping scars and Jason was struck by how fragile they were. It never occurred to him to compare Dick’s body to his previous experiences. This man was nothing like the soft skinned, sleek bodied women that Jason chose for himself, and somehow that didn’t matter.
They were just people, after all. Without names or identifying features, just two people seeking comfort in each other, and that was all they needed to be. He was a little surprised at how easy it was to give in to that feeling, to just let go and let Dick take care of him. But it really was just that easy.
Dick laid him down gently, lips tracing gently over naked skin, lean body pressed against Jason’s broader one, each ridge and dip of their bodies fitting together. Dick mapped his body with slow touches, extending those intimate, soul-searching kisses beyond just his lips. His body drifted in the sensations, the slow build up. So slow, so patient, Dick didn’t rush him into anything, slowly easing him into every step of the process, making him sigh and moan without any kind of urgency. It just felt good.
The first orgasm almost took him by surprise, with how slow and sweet Dick was being. But with Dick’s mouth wrapped around him and pulling unbelievably intense sensations from Jason’s body he was thrown head first into the feeling and didn’t think for a moment of resisting it.
Dick was amazing, this was amazing.
He wanted to do this forever.
//
In the aftermath of sex, laying in tangled sheets and pressed together intimately, as close as was possible with Dick still curled against his back and inside of him. Jason’s breathing slowed and evened, welcoming the embrace of the older around him. This was part of it too, this holding, allowing himself to care and feel despite what logic said of what they had just done.
“Dick…” he murmured, voice husky and low.
“Hm?” Dick replied, his hands pausing from where they’d been softly stroking Jason’s side.
“… Would you tell me what happened to you?”
Dick was silent for a few moments. He had expected this, knew it would be part of the healing. Jason wanted to understand, wanted to bring their healing full circle, know Dick’s pain as Dick knew his. Still, it was difficult to bring up and Dick found himself pulling away, separating their sticky bodies and rolling on his side away from Jason.
“Are you sure you want to hear about it now? It’s… not exactly pleasant pillow talk.” He said, holding onto the plain white sheet with one hand, nervously tense for the first time in this entire night.
Jason rolled to look at Dick, taking in the tense silhouette of his shoulders in the dark. “If you can’t I won’t make you. But I…l want to know.”
Dick sighed, reaching back and pulling one of Jason’s arms around him, feeling suddenly exposed and vulnerable. Jason sensed the feeling and pressed close, his chest supporting Dick’s back.
“It was when I was sixteen. Bruce had been sending me to that fancy prestigious high school and I was balancing my school life with my life at his side. That was when things started getting kind of tense between us, and so I spent less and less time at home if I could manage it.
“I was helping one of my favourite teachers clean up her classroom, so I was there late. I ended up talking to her for a while about a project I was working on so I didn’t leave until around six. But when I went upstairs to get my stuff I saw something…
“One of the school’s star athletes was there with a girl in a wheelchair, talking to her just in front of the stairwell. He was saying horrible things to her, telling her about how useless and ugly she was, how she should kill herself, telling her to roll herself down the stairs and hope that the impact broke her neck. I saw red. I was so furious, I went up there and I made him stop. I only just kept myself from beating the shit out of him. I got the girl away. She was crying a lot and I talked to her for a while. I managed to calm her down, get her feeling a bit better.
“The next day I went to the principal of the school and I told him what I’d seen. I told him I was reporting it to the school board too, I wasn’t going to stop until that guy had been thoroughly punished for what he’d done. He was a star football player and he was looking towards a promising career as a professional athlete, but I ruined that for him. Because of my report, and the girl he’d abused backed up my story, he was taken off of the team and expelled. He lost every chance at a scholarship, at getting into a nice school again. I was glad. A guy like that didn’t deserve anything good.
“A couple weeks after getting him expelled, I was attacked. I didn’t see who it was before they knocked me out, I only caught that they were bigger than me, and they caught me completely by surprise. When I came to I was tied up in a dark classroom after school hours, with that guy standing in front of me. He said he was going to get me back for what I’d done to him, how I’d ruined his life. I figured he would try to beat me…”
He paused, holding on to Jason’s arm, having difficultly continuing. Finally he took a deep breath.
“I figured I would wait, let him get a couple hits in before I slipped the ropes and kicked his ass royally. He did hit me, a couple times but… but then his teammates came in…”
He shuddered a little, an involuntary reaction that made Jason hold him tighter, the younger man’s eyes wide as he listened to the older’s story.
“Two held me down, making sure I didn’t struggle while the rest of them took turns with me. I was so shocked I couldn’t even think of getting away. I couldn’t believe it was happening…. There were nine of them that raped me, one after the other… When they were finally done all I could do was lay there, it took me an hour before I managed to clean myself up and limp home… Bruce still doesn’t know. I couldn’t tell him.”
There was silence while Jason processed what he’d been told, feeling sick to his stomach. It wasn’t the same as what had happened to him, it wasn’t the same at all. He felt horrible and sick and angry. He wanted to find every single one of the fuckers that had done this and tear them apart, make them suffer for everything they had done.
“I think the cheerleaders were there too…” Dick murmured, still caught up in the swirl of dark memories. “I heard them laughing while they watched.”
“Fuck!” Jason sat up, pulling Dick up with him and nearly crushing him against his chest, breathing a little raggedly. “Tell me who they are… I’ll… I’ll…”
Dick smiled sadly, leaning against Jason and stroking his naked back soothingly. “It was a long time ago, Jay.” He murmured, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Like hell it doesn’t matter!” Jason replied indignantly, pulling Dick back to glare at him. “Those assholes deserve a special place in hell, every single damn one of them! I’d do about anything to be the one to put them there!”
Dick continued to smile sadly at Jason’s vehemence, touching his brother’s face tenderly. “I’m afraid that’s not really an option anymore.” He said, sighing. “The whole team got in a bad accident on route to a game at another school. No one survived. It was a tragedy at our school, but I guess it was just karma at work…” Dick shook his head a bit. “The guy I got expelled got in trouble with unfortunate debts and got himself hit by sharks. I imagine they’re all at their reserved spot in hell by now.”
Jason growled a bit, not liking being denied the satisfaction of making them pay, but Dick ran a hand over his brow to sooth away the angry lines. “Jesus, Dick…” he murmured finally, shaking his head slowly. “I’m sorry…”
“Nothing to be sorry for. Like I said, it was a long time ago. The scars fade over time, when you have people to care for you…”
Jason looked at Dick quietly. “Does Kori know?” he wondered, looking at Dick’s solemn face that was resting on his chest.
“Yeah… She helped me through a lot of it. Just like I’m helping you.” He said, kissing Jason’s shoulder gently and laying them both back down on the bed. “Get some sleep, alright? I’m tired.”
Jason nodded a little, his arm going around Dick’s waist. They both lay awake for what seemed like forever before sleep finally claimed them.
//
The dark presence in Jason’s living room moved as a shadow does through the rooms of the house. It paused in the bedroom, looking down at the couple tangled in the sheets, a frown showing under the black of the cowl.
“Dick.” Was the sharp command, an unvoiced order to wake up.
Said man opened his eyes and sat up quickly, shoulders tensed defensively, ready for a fight, ready for anything. He froze when he saw Bruce, in full Batman gear, standing next to the bed.
“Bruce.” His voice was dull and stunned, completely unprepared to deal with this situation. He’d figured Bruce would find out, he always finds out, but he hadn’t prepared a logical, Batman-proof explanation yet.
Jason shifted a the sound of their voices, eyes opening and body freezing next to Dick’s as he took in the cloaked figure, mind screeching to a halt. This was not something he wanted Batman to see, the last thing he wanted to see right now, in his and Dick’s world of two people, were the cold impersonal eyes of the Batman mask.
“T-the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, trying to keep to the anger and the violence that was easiest.
Bruce spared Jason a glance, seeming to glare for a moment before he looked back at Dick piercingly. “I’m here to speak to Dick.” He said dismissively. “Alone. Put some pants on.” He said gruffly, turning with a swish of the cape and leaving the room.
The two men on the bed looked completely stunned, trembling just a little, though neither would admit to that. There was still something completely intimidating about that tone, about the commanding voice of the man who had mentored them both.
Dick pulled away from Jason slowly, going and grabbing his pants and pulling them on. They glanced at each other for a moment, an unspoken support passing between them as Jason went to grab his pants as well, only wincing a little at the pain in his lower back.
Dick walked out to the living room, clearing his throat at Batman’s back and tensing when he turned to him.
“I’m not here to talk about what just happened with you and Jason.” He said briskly, “We’ll deal with that later.” The tone of his voice promised that Dick would not like how it was dealt with and the younger man swallowed thickly. “I’m here, because someone left this on the doorstep of the Manor.”
He pulled out a disk, showing Dick the blank sides of it and examining the man’s face. Dick just frowned, looking at the disk warily, wondering what was on it that had provoked such a visit.
“It’s footage from a video camera taken several years ago. It belonged to a girl you went to school with…” Dick’s face went pale as he predicted where this was going, shaking his head slowly. “Was there something you didn’t tell me about back then?” Bruce asked in a rough tone. “About the football team, and the boy you got expelled?”
They had videotaped it... Dick couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. He could only stand there with wide horrified eyes. He’d known that the cheerleaders were there, he had heard their voices, but he’d never seen the camera, he hadn’t known that they’d kept a memento of the occasion. It added a whole new layer of humiliation to what had happened to him. Had they kept the disk to blackmail him with later? Did they watch it and laugh to themselves at what they had done to him?
Bruce was watching him, and the expression behind his mask was sad. “Dick, why didn’t you tell me?”
Dick shook his head. He couldn’t answer, when he took in a breath it shuddered and caught, nearly sobbed. Jason stepped out from where he’d been listening and put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Dick shuddered, turning to Jason, away from Bruce, causing an unreadable expression to cross the eldest man’s face.
He tossed the disk on the coffee table. “I wanted to give it to you to destroy. I figured it was best you knew… I don’t know who left it there… But I’ll find out.” He said.
As he passed by he touched Dick’s shoulder, brushing a hand over his hair. A gesture of affection that was so rare it made another shiver go through Dick’s body. Bruce couldn’t comfort him, not really. He didn’t know how. He’d work the case, he’d find out who did it. The case was easier to deal with than feelings were.
There was a swish of the cape and he was gone, out of the apartment, out of their space and both of the boys felt like they could breathe just a little easier. Dick looked at Jason with wide eyes that were incredibly vulnerable. Jason frowned at his expression and pulled him in, letting the older bury his face against his neck.
They didn’t need words, simply walking back to the bedroom and curling up together, with Jason holding Dick this time. They didn’t say a word, no words could possibly be found to express the pain of the moment. So Jason held him, and Dick let himself be held and they just lay awake that way.
Sometimes Jason wished that Bruce would just leave them all alone. Now more than ever, he wished that for Dick.
//
I was surprised by a couple of reviews over at ff.net that were surprised by the slash. I thought that I hinted at the slash pretty strongly but I guess I didn't. Haha, oops. Sorry, non-slashers, but that's how I roll. For those of you who do enjoy that sort of thing I hope you're enjoying it so far.
As for this chapter, this is my interpretation of the whole thing, try not to hate me too much for what I did to poor Dick but I do love the drama.
And Daddy Bat really needs to work on his interpersonal skills. He sucks at it.