Chapter Text
Ric:
“Alright, honey. Last bite.” Ric swerves the spoon towards Johnny, making airplane noises, and Johnny claps his hands together with enthusiasm as he accepts the offering. Mentally, Ric fist pumps.
Baby food, so far, has been hit or miss with Johnny’s regretfully discriminatory palate. Applesauce is a yes. Mushed up carrots are a vehement, vengeful no. Sweet potato is okay, but only if Johnny is in a very specific mood, and how on earth is Ric supposed to tell when that is? It’s a new challenge every day.
Sound effects, at least, can reliably be depended on to appetize Johnny. Something about the idea of… eating an actual airplane? Something about that must appeal to him.
Ric won’t pretend to understand. He just knows he’d be willing to to perform a fully choreographed song and dance routine if that’s what’ll persuade Johnny to eat.
Ric is tempted to crack open another jar of baby food after Johnny swallows his final bite--he’s always worried that Johnny isn’t eating enough. That Johnny isn’t gaining enough weight, or that he’s gaining too much, or that he isn’t hitting his developmental milestones. That he’s got some rare genetic disorder or dysentery or scurvy or something.
It is possible, he allows, that he worries too much. It’s hard to sleep sometimes, with the weight of all the worst case scenarios pressing down on his ribs. But Johnny is the only person he has left--the only person he can’t stand to lose. He couldn’t stop the worry if he tried.
Anyways, a promise is a promise, and he’d told Johnny that they could have storytime if he finished his sweet potatoes. After he clears away the mess and wipes the orange smudges from Johnny’s chubby little cheeks, Ric scoops him up and cuddles him as tightly as he dares squeeze his delicate little body. Then he sweeps them both into the living room and settles them into Johnny’s favorite armchair (He assumes, at least, that this one is Johnny’s favorite, because that’s where they always sit to read. It’s possible that Johnny is still too young to have complex opinions on home furnishings, but it’s hard to know for sure).
Ric grabs a book off the shelf and opens it up. Unfortunately, Johnny appears to disagree with Ric’s literary preference. He waves his chubby arms around and knocks the book right out of Ric’s hands, straight onto the floor.
“The disrespect! Johnny, this is literature!” Ric stares with horror at his baby. “Who could have raised you to be like this?”
Johnny’s expression is utterly unrepentant. He giggles and announces, “Bah!”
“Bah” means “sorry, mom” in zero languages that Ric is aware of, including Johnny-ish. What an unruly child.
He stands, settles Johnny on his hip, and bends down to pick up the book. It slid under the chair when it fell, and Ric has to readjust his hold on Johnny to stretch his arm out far enough, but he still can’t reach the book. So he grabs his phone, flicks on the flashlight, and catches a strange, unfamiliar glint shining in the shadows beneath the chair.
Suspicious, bristling with the beginnings of anger and watery, sickening fear, Ric stretches out his arm as far as he can reach and closes his fingers around the little device. He pulls hard, yanks with all his strength, and it comes loose.
Ric stumbles back onto his ass on the floor, Johnny still miraculously clutched in one arm. He stares disbelievingly at the little device in his hand.
A camera.
*
Storytime is, tragically, cancelled after the camera’s discovery--Ric can’t fathom sitting down and reading a story to his kid like normal when he’s painfully aware that his every movement is being recorded. Probably analyzed. Stored away in infinite folders of evidence for God knows what.
His skin prickles all over and the anxiety makes him feel unbearably, incurably cold. Something deep inside him, something long pushed away, cries for the comfort of a packmate--but he squashes that instinct down as far as it will go. He doesn’t have packmates anymore. None that he remembers, at the very least, and none who care about Ric now that he’s no longer the man they remember.
Instead, he has Johnny. Johnny, who doesn’t care who he used to be. Johnny, who he loves more than he could have ever fathomed his heart had the capacity to love. Johnny, who he must at all costs protect.
Sometimes, he feels so small. Too small to possibly contain the neverending scope of how he cares for Johnny. Sometimes, he doesn’t even feel worthy of being Johnny’s mom. Those are the nights he spirals--the nights he wonders where Johnny’s dad is, why doesn’t he care, why doesn’t he just come back.
It’s all Ric can manage to push those insecurities down and remain strong for his kid. He needs to get his head on straight and figure out how to get rid of the cameras.
He lays Johnny down for bed, because he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s not like they can just leave--there’s no way Ric’s shitty pay as a cab driver can cover the costs of moving.
When Johnny is sound asleep, Ric turns off all the lights and closes the bedroom’s door as softly as he can manage. Outside, in the living room, he paces. Bites his lip. Tries his hardest to remain rational, to think his way out of this.
He knows, of course, who bugged his apartment. In his new life, he can think of no one who would have any interest in spying on him, and in his old life, there’s only one person stealthy enough to bug his apartment without Ric noticing, and invasive enough to actually do so.
Batman. It has to be Batman.
The grim knowledge sends a shiver of fear down Ric’s spine. There’s no way he can take on Batman himself. Ric possesses only the bare bones of Dick’s old expertise, and a fraction of his physical fitness. Picking a fight with Batman would be suicidal.
As much as he hates to admit it, he’s going to need help to figure his way out of the corner he’s been backed into. And for the first time since he left the hospital, Ric is grateful that he still has the contact information of the entire caped community.
He just has to figure out who to call. Who knows their way around bat tech, but isn’t strictly loyal to the bat? Who would be willing to help?
*
Jason:
His eyes. From this far away, through the hidden cam’s grainy lens, it’s impossible to tell whether Johnny’s eyes are blue or green. Jason doesn’t know why that’s the thing that bothers him the most, why that’s the one thing that sticks out amidst the rest of the wreckage, but it does. He wants to know whether their kid has Dick’s eyes or his own.
He adjusts his position, stretched flat on the roof of the building adjacent to Dick’s apartment, and winces as his muscles twinge. A glance at his watch reveals that it’s been almost two hours, but God, it feels like no time has passed at all.
Well--that’s not necessarily true. So much time has passed that it’s almost impossible to remember the weeks and months and years that all led up to this: the tentative, undeniable chemistry between Dick and Jason that was like nothing Jason had ever felt before. The days and nights spent together in Dick’s bed. Or Jason’s. Or places that weren’t beds at all.
The KGBeast’s bullet. The weeks in the hospital Jason only heard about after. The endless unknown and the overwhelming fear and the wishing, wishing it had been anybody else but Dick. The fact that Jason hadn’t even been there.
And now: the dull, listless hours. Wondering how he ever filled his days without Dick. Wondering why any of his effort was worth it, why he ever tried to protect this goddamned city when the person he would have died for that day--the day that everything changed--was forever altered. Wondering what makes continuing forward worth it.
The answer is one story below Jason, across the street, dressed in a bright blue onesie and sucking on his own little fist while his mom tries to tempt him with a pacifier. Visible through the lens of Jason’s hidden camera.
His baby looks almost close enough to touch. Jason desperately wants to--he doesn’t think he’s ever wanted anything more. But Dick doesn’t even know he’s being watched. Doesn’t even know who Jason is anymore--and that is a very special sort of irony.
Jason couldn’t say when his hour-long stakeouts outside Dick’s apartment became a routine. But he knows what keeps him going: the sight of his son, safe and healthy and inexpressibly beautiful, and the inexorable awareness that if he doesn’t do something to keep Dick in his life, he will slip away from Jason entirely.
*
The sun is beginning to set beneath the Bludhaven skyline, and Jason has slipped into a contented relaxation. He knows his muscles will be stiff and achy when he finally stands up off the grimy concrete rooftop. His leg is asleep and he knows it’s gonna be hell when he reawakens it and the pins and needles start. So he’s really in no particular rush to go home, even when Dick finishes feeding Johnny (who, Jason notes, was in a sweet potato mood tonight. He only likes them every now and then) and relaxes into what Jason thinks is Johnny’s favorite armchair.
Jason has a camera planted beneath that armchair, because it gets a great view of the mat on the floor where Johnny likes to sit and play with his little Zitka. But he also has one above it, so he can watch as Dick picks out a book and settles in to read with Johnny on his lap.
Johnny, despite his usual enthusiasm for reading time, does not appear to be thrilled by Dick’s book selection. Jason zooms in to see the book’s title: it’s a collection of Aesop fables. Honestly, Jason is kind of with Johnny on that one. Fables are too educational for his liking. People who read fables probably think they’re better than everyone else, Jason thinks. No son of his would ever partake of such bullshit.
Johnny knocks the book right out of Dick’s hands, and Jason doesn’t bother to suppress his wide grin. Oh hell yeah.
Dick heaves a gigantic sigh, says something complainy to Johnny, and then crouches down beneath the chair to retrieve the book.
Jason taps into the camera under the chair. Dick gropes around in the shadows, missing the book by a mile, and takes a momentary retreat. He returns with a flashlight, and it is only then that Jason thinks, oh shit.
But from this distance, there’s nothing he can do but watch, frozen, as Dick grabs the hidden camera and yanks it off its mount.
Jason turns off his comms. He turns off his cameras. He lays, flat on his stomach on the rooftop, and thinks, oh fuck oh fuck oh fucky fucky fuck.
And, okay, he knows things are bad. He knows Dick is onto him, and it’s only a matter of time before he realizes how obsessively the Red fucking Hood has been stalking him and his child, oh god. But, as he wriggles from his hiding place and grapples onto the next rooftop over, swift and silent as a predator, there is a moment where he almost forgets that Dick... isn’t Dick.
He’s transported back in time. It’s three years ago. Spending time with Dick makes Jason’s stomach go all fluttery and a lump rise in his stomach. He can’t remember ever feeling happier or in more pain at the same exact time and he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know anything anymore except that being apart from Dick feels like his insides have been pulled out. Dick and Jason are like magnets: turned the right way, they’re impossible to pull apart. Turned wrong, and they repel, they clash, they bite and snap and drive each other insane. Jason loves him loves him loves him the same way his heart loves to beat.
Jason is back at his safehouse, panting and grinning like he’s gone entirely insane, in record time. He glances over his shoulder, half expecting to see Dick right behind him in pursuit, and it’s only then that everything comes crashing back down. Dick didn’t chase him. Dick isn’t here. Not at Jason’s safehouse, not anywhere at all.
It’s not three years ago--it’s today, it’s right now, and Jason has nothing. He has a pup who’s never met him and doesn’t know who he is. He has a mate with no memories.
He has the crumbling ashes of their life together, and he wishes he had been afforded the same luxury as Dick. The luxury of forgetting.
Inside the safehouse, Jason disarms the security setup and locks the door shut. He grabs a beer from the fridge, slams it closed, and divests himself of all his gear. The leather jacket is hung on a hook. The boots are placed on a shoe rack.
He remembers the first time he spent the night at Dick’s place. He asked where Dick’s coat rack was--Dick looked at him like he’d gone crazy and asked what he could possibly need a coat rack for. He took Jason’s jacket from him, peeled it off his shoulders with slow, careful reverence that made Jason’s breath catch and all his blood go south, and laid it out carefully in his nest. He laid himself out after, stretched out over the covers like a rare, precious offering, and just remembering it makes Jason’s heart clench, and--
Anyways. The jacket hangs on a rack now. It’s been long enough that it doesn’t smell like Dick anymore.
He’s reclining half-naked on his couch, trying to gather up the gumption to get his ass in the shower, when his phone rings and he almost spits out his mouthful of beer all over the sofa. With trembling fingers, he snatches up the phone. He fumbles it and it nearly falls, but then he makes a clutch save and juggles it for several heart-pounding seconds as it continues to ring. Finally, he manages to accept the call, and slaps the phone to his ear so hard it hurts.
“Hello?”
“Um,” says Dick’s voice, and Jason almost cries right then and there. “Is this Jason?”
Now he’s nearly crying again, but for different reasons. “Yeah,” he says, and then because he doesn’t want this new Dick to think he cares that much, he adds, “Who’s this?”
“Ric Grayson,” says Dick.
It feels like Jason’s fallen twelve stories and landed flat on his back. It feels like all the air has been punched from his lungs. It feels like he’ll never get up off the ground.
“To what do I owe the pleasure,” he says.
“Listen,” says Ric, “I have a problem and I was hoping you can help. Batman bugged my apartment. I found one of his cams beneath my chair.”
Jason does a mental double-take. “Batman bugged your place?” he repeats.
“I can’t think of who else would have done it. It’s all his tech. I recognize it ‘cause it matches all of Dick’s old Nightwing stuff.”
Jason is still lying beneath that dozen-story building. He’s still leaking blood onto the concrete. He still can’t breathe. Nightwing isn’t here to save him anymore. He’s gotta try to pick himself up, all alone.
“So?” asks Jason.
“I don’t know how to get rid of them,” Ric admits. “I’m not stupid enough to think he only planted the one, but there’s no way I’m going to find them all on my own.”
“Why ask me?” Jason asks. He hates himself for it, but he’s already letting in the treacherous hope that maybe Dick is starting to remember. Maybe he’s calling Jason because he remembers their connection, their chemistry, remembers that they’re magnets and sure, they’ve been repelling for a long year, but now they’ve turned just right and they’re attracting again. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
“I still have all your guys’ numbers in my phone,” Ric says. “You’re the only one who knows your way around the bat tech, who won’t turn around and tell Batman every word I just said the moment you hang up the phone.”
Jason’s mouth is drier than sand in the desert. With the last of his fleeting hope, he asks, “How do you know I wouldn’t tell him? I thought you forgot what each of us were like.”
“Your kills make the front page every other day, man. It’s obvious that you don’t follow him like the rest of them do.”
Feeling lost, feeling desperately alone, feeling like Dick has just shined a light on Jason and examined his every flaw, Jason barks out a laugh and says, “I guess you got me there.”
“So… can you help?”
Jason wants to say no. After all, he’s the one who placed the cameras in the first place. If he removes these ones, he’ll have to sneak back in later and add more, even better hidden ones, and that whole endeavor just sounds like an unnecessary pain in the ass.
But, his instincts helpfully chirp, but Dick is inviting you into his home! You’ll get to see him! You can talk to him!
Maybe. Maybe if he sees Dick, talks to him, spends time with him, Dick will remember. Maybe Jason’s scent will mean something to him.
Maybe he’ll get to meet Johnny. For real this time--no camera, no lens, no distance and no careful hiding spots. Just… just a guy and his mate and their son.
Jason’s hopes are getting away from him, but they’re impossible to reign back in. He wants, so badly it's like a gnawing hunger inside of him.
“I’ll be by tomorrow.”
What the fuck are you doing? yells Jason’s remaining rationality in the meantime. Cancel, abort, fuck fuck fuck!
“Great,” says Ric, sounding relieved. After a moment of grudging silence, awkward on Ric’s part and one hundred percent horrified on Jason’s, he adds a small, “Thank you.”
“No problemo,” says Jason, and instantly wants to smack himself. No problemo? Who the hell is he? What the hell is he saying?
“See you then.”
The phone goes silent. Jason sits for a moment, frozen, silent, and absolutely Jason puts it facedown on the couch cushion beside him and sets his beer on the side table. Then he buries his head between his knees.
“Nooooo,” he moans.
What has he done?