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Spending his heat with Roy was a long time coming.
Years of having each other's back cumulated in him reaching for his phone, heat-sick but still aware enough to choose, to dial Roy’s number without even looking because he knows it by heart.
Roy was at his door in minutes, hair a windswept wreck. Called in a favor from Wally, likely. Either that, or Jason’s hazier than he thought and somehow missed the hours in between hearing the synthetic crackle of Roy’s voice and hearing the real thing.
It was such a relief to have his partner close enough to scent, and Jason knew instantly that he made the right call. This was Roy. His partner, his best friend.
Roy, who put in effort and showed up when Jason needed him and God, Jason needs him.
He had never shared his heat before, never trusted anyone like that who wasn’t already slotted into the ‘family’ category in his mind. So when Roy climbed into his nest, he had only fleeting fears and bone-deep desperation to give. Roy didn’t seem to mind.
It was good—fuck, Jason didn’t even know it could be that good. Warm skin, warm lips, somehow warmer whispers. Reverent hands caress him with care. Roy watches with those sharp green eyes, observing and adapting and never giving Jason the time to freak out, instead laving his tongue over Jason’s neck whenever he tenses up.
That certainly does the trick.
Jason never put much stock into the ‘magical first times’ that featured in all the dime novels. Part of the fantasy, he figured. On Roy’s knot, Jason revises that opinion. Maybe it’s not for everybody, but he wouldn’t trade this sweetness for the world.
The rest of his heat passes in a daze of pleasure and too-soft words. When the heat breaks, Jason is officially fucked-out.
He’s left panting open-mouthed into the damp pillow. His mind is hazy with satisfaction, his muscles loose and quivery. The air reeks of sex—his overpowering heat scent and Roy’s alpha musk.
Roy has his mouth pressed to Jason’s neck. No teeth, because Roy cares about shit like being gentle and making this a mutually enjoyable experience. The pressure’s nice. Reassuring.
“I’m gonna get water and some more fruit,” Roy says into Jason’s neck.
Jason hums in agreement. He wants strawberries, but he can’t seem to open his mouth and say so—Roy’ll know anyway. He’s good at hearing the unspoken words. He always is, but these last few lust-filled days have had them connected like nothing else, so in-tune with one another that they might as well be bonded.
Lord, that’s a thought.
Bonded.
Roy leaves and the room gets a little colder, like Roy had been warming it with his very presence. That’s—normal. Everything chills once the sun dips out of sight. It’s to be expected.
The cold is fine because the bed is still warm, the thick blankets of the nest trapping the heat. The bedroom door is open now—open because Roy walked out it. That’s fine too. He doesn’t need the meager protection it offered. He’s still the Red Hood, and a fully capable adult besides, even if he feels about as weak as a kitten right now.
The cold is fine and the open, unprotected entrance is fine and everything is fine.
Jason shifts, suddenly very aware that he’s lying on damp, filthy sheets.
Disgusting.
It’s almost funny, because he wasn’t one bit bothered by the mess that comes with a well-spent heat before five seconds ago. Now his skin crawls with the invisible ants of contamination.
The air reeks of sex, but Roy’s not here. He’s not here to pump out calm relaxing happy pheromones. It’s just Jason and his own rapidly souring scent. filling the room with choking panicking-omega.
…Did Roy leave?
Jason wouldn’t blame him. Maybe he didn’t like the way Jason whined, the way he was so needy—
The way he’s being needy even now, going to pieces the second he's left alone.
His stomach roils, hot writhing snakes trying to brute-force their way into his esophagus. Latent gag reflex triggers like it’s trying to make up for the relaxed, heat-lost days. Jason manages to swallow the bile down. Up-chucking in the nest is the last thing he needs.
He’s still dirty. God, he’s dirty. Covered in drying fluids, lying like an helpless omega waif in his own filth. He needs to—he needs to get clean.
Jason tries to roll over, to sit up, but he’s too sore and shaky. He collapses back into the sheets, the soiled nest. It’s gross and he’s gross and it’s no wonder Roy left, what alpha would want to stick around with—with this.
Clean. He’s gotta—
He scratches at the dried mess on his thighs. It flakes off and he gags. He scratches harder, deeper, none of it helping in the slightest.
“Jason!” The loud alarmed alpha voice has him baring his neck and redoubling his efforts to be clean. He can still feel the warm wetness under his nails.
The air is thick with his own distress, and yet the alpha’s displeasure is still choking in its clarity. He smells of concern and unhappiness and it is so far from the alpha who was saying sweet things and not hurting and Jason doesn’t know what to do but dig deeper. He doesn’t know how to make the alpha happy with him again; he’s never been able to get people to love him easy.
“Stop,” Roy orders, command thick in his voice.
Jason's body freezes without his input. He can’t—he can't move. Not even—Jason tries to twitch his toes, panic ratcheting up as he fails, the whole of him completely at his alpha’s mercy.
Roy’s safe but he’s looming and Jason can’t move.
Distantly, he hears a high frightened whine pierce the air. Jason’s neck aches, twisted uncomfortably so all his alpha would have to do is lean in and bite, and then he would never leave again.
“Shit.”
Horror and regret and everything his alpha should never sound like. Jason’s already doing all he can, desperately letting his instincts guide him. What more is there but to detach and hope that his alpha is done being angry by the time he checks back in?
The dissociation isn’t even a conscious choice really, just the logical conclusion to his instincts screaming get away while iron blocks are tied to his torso. Jason lets his mind drift, noting the changes to his body as a distant observer, miles away.
Light touches to his shoulders, his face. A trick, or he enough away that the pain doesn’t register?
His limbs are manipulated, pulled into his body before he’s lifted into his alpha’s arms.
Jason’s numb face is pressed against a rumbling freckled chest. There are words—he knows from the rumbling—but they float over him, an indecipherable hum.
He’s lowered into warm water. Not hot enough to scald, not hot enough to clean his dirty self, but warm. He worries vaguely that he’ll drown, but his alpha leans his neck against the rim of the tub, makes sure he won’t slip in.
That’s kind—plenty of other alphas would have held him underwater just to watch him choke. Jason tilts his chin up, trying to show how grateful he is.
(He wants to lick at his alpha’s mouth in gratitude, but he’s not sure he’s allowed to. His alpha is so good and he doesn’t need Jason’s filth. All he can safely offer is his submission.)
A warm, damp rag sweeps over his face in perfunctory swipes. Jason stays so still. He can be good.
Familiar hands smooth body wash over him. Roy’s body wash. Jason’s body relaxes reflexively. His alpha is taking care of him. Painting Jason in his scent so he’ll smell like him, smell owned, none of the icky sour-sweet of omega distress, just his alpha’s body wash and maybe—maybe if he’s really good—maybe his alpha will even scent him, mark him.
He lets himself drift, focusing all that he has on being as pliant as possible. Time blurs under his alpha’s skilled hands.
The water’s lukewarm now.
Roy heaves him out of the water, depositing him on the bath mat. Jason takes a second to be grateful that his alpha spared him the cold tile. Roy’s—being nice, rewarding his omega’s quiet obedience. He rubs him down with a coarse towel. Jason is just barely able to bite back the hurt little noise—the towel is sandpaper on his sensitive skin.
And then the alpha—
And then Roy—
Leaves again, walks out the door and leaves Jason shivering on the soggy bath mat and all he hear is his own ragged breaths and he tastes wet iron and—
Jason stares at the white tile and lets it blur. There’s noises in the background, but they’re muffled and removed, so far removed, he’s removed—
Hot fingers curl around his wrist. Jason tries to pull his focus in.
Red obscures his vision for a split second; Jason drags his gaze down to follow the color. Sensation comes with it. It takes him a second to comprehend what he’s looking at, what he’s feeling. Warm wool envelops him, soft and easy, the polar opposite of the rough towel.
It’s the sweater Kory got him, the one that the alpha—that Roy—likes to steal.
Roy’s dressing him in it, in the comfortable familiar garb, threading his arms through the sleeves the way he does Lian.
Jason twists his head, a little bit to bare his throat and a lot to hide his smile in his shoulder. His alpha left but he came back, soft things in tow.
That’s… that means Jason’s been good, right?
His alpha must be pleased with him, the way he’s gathering him up in his arms and lifting him like he weighs nothing. Jason presses his face to his alpha’s shoulder.
He wants to cling closer, irrationally afraid he’ll be dropped or thrown, but his alpha doesn’t loosen his hold until Jason’s already on the bed, set down so gentle he doesn’t even bounce.
The sheets are fresh and clean and Jason feels a breath leave him. A thick quilt that smells of Roy and satisfaction and safe is laid over him. It weighs him down, forces him to take deeper breaths. Grounding.
Minutes stretch as he’s dragged back into his body by inches.
Jason blinks slowly, like he’s just waking up, the effort to drag his eyelids back up nearly insurmountable. He can smell the residual scraps of sour distress and repressed alpha panic. Thank God the sheets were cleaned, they must absolutely stink with the misery of it.
Roy’s lying next to him, big green eyes fixed on his face.
Fuck.
“Hey,” Roy says quietly.
Jason works his jaw, but doesn’t manage to push any words past his dry throat. What the fuck would he even say anyways?
“Back with me?”
It’s a fair question, but it still has Jason wanting to strangle the softness out of him, out of his own damn self. He nods, wordless.
“I’m sorry,” Roy says, and Jason blinks at him because what? “I’m so fucking sorry, Jay.”
“Uh, sorry for what?” Jason asks warily. Since when does Roy have anything to apologize for? He saw him through his heat and was perfect and gentle and yeah, the leaving wasn’t great, but he didn’t actually leave. Jason just got in his head about it. As per fucking usual.
Guilt wafts off Roy, green-grape sour. “I know this was your first time really sharing your heat, and I know—I know what that means to you. I wanted to make this a good experience for you and I—” he breaks off, jaw working.
Jason rolls his eyes. Roy’s such a drama queen. “Oh, please. It was fine. Bit of a rough ending, but if I expected everything to go perfectly on the first try, I wouldn’t have even made it through Robin training.”
Much less everything that came after.
“I sent you into fucking heat-drop,” Roy says, tone hardening.
There’s a tinge of command underlying his words—light enough that it was likely unintentional. It scrapes at the raw nerves of him regardless.
It’s just enough to have Jason craning his head back again, this time lucid enough to hate the vulnerability of it. There are no weapons in their nest, but he still pictures a knife run clear through his throat—even though Roy would never.
“Shit, sorry,” Roy murmurs, softening. He rubs his cheek against Jason’s, soothing him like he’s a wayward pup.
Jason snakes an arm out from under the quilt. He catches Roy’s hand in his, lacing their fingers together. “It was—more than fine. A lot more.” Honesty tastes foreign on his tongue. He wants to pull the quilt over his head to stop Roy from looking at whatever too-vulnerable, too real expression is on his face.
Roy’s quiet for a few seconds. “I still hurt you.”
Every fiber of his body rebels at the thought. Roy helped. This is just—look, there’s responsibility and there’s just Hero Guilt™. Jason refuses to put up with the latter, not when there isn’t any real blame to lay at Roy’s feet.
“That’s—everything, that’s not you, it’s—” Jason breaks off, searching for the words to make the maelstrom make sense. “Everything has hurt in it. That’s just—I cut people and they cut me and now it’s just…” Jason shrugs helplessly. “Too used to the hurt I guess. But just cause I got mixed up—once, in extenuating circumstances—doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.”
He finishes strong, conviction clear in his voice. Roy doesn’t say anything, mulling it over or maybe figuring out how quick he can run for the hills.
Jason puts his wrist over his mouth and bravely manages to not chew on his sleeve like an anxious toddler.
It would be fair, for Roy to bail now. More than fair. But if he leaves, it has to be after all the honesty that Jason can muster, and he’s not quite at the end of that yet. Already out of his comfort zone, he pushes himself to offer one last awful truth.
“I liked it,” Jason says softly, cracking open his ribcage and showing his heart, handing over all the soft bloody parts of him.
Roy exhales noisily.
“It’s fine if it’s too much,” Jason says, schooling his tone into casual annoyance. “I know this isn’t exactly what you signed up for. Some crazy omega who freaks out at the slightest—oof.”
Roy rolls on top of him; not pressing him down, just letting his weight fall flat. Paradoxically, the pressure helps Jason breathe easier, like a weight was lifted from his lungs instead of another being dropped on.
“Jason, I know you’re a neurotic mess. I know you.” Roy squishes him down into the blankets just a little. “So, yes, I absolutely signed up for all of this.”
Scents don’t function as aromatic lie detectors, but Jason thinks he can smell the truth as clear as he can see it in earnest green eyes, logic be damned.
Jason’s always wanted to believe the lie; even death hadn’t trained that out of him. Sometimes that ends in a gun to his face, cigarette betrayal, and a pretty new gravestone. He wants to think it’ll end somewhere different this time. He wants to think that maybe, just maybe, it never has to end at all.
At the end of the day, he’s a hot mess of a human being who somehow lucked into this—a kind-hearted alpha on top of him, swearing that he means every precious care.
Jason closes his eyes and remembers in vivid detail the way Roy touched him—like every kiss was an act of devotion. Jason had chocked it up to Roy being a generous lover, which he is, but maybe—
Maybe there was more to it too.
He opens his eyes and Roy’s watching him, hovering over him, gaze steady and sure. Jason doesn’t know when the last time he felt steady was. Sure is easy enough, because Jason is confident in himself if no one else. Only one person you can truly count on and all that. Except that’s not quite right either now, is it?
Roy’s reliable. Roy’s Speedy and Arsenal and a Titan, the kind of hero Jason was culled before he could become. Roy holds his trust like he knows what it means, like it’s something precious and valuable.
Jason hasn’t been valuable since he was a billionaire’s son—and even then, most saw him for what he was. He didn’t know it could feel this nice. This validating.
He almost opens his mouth and vomits about how loved he feels and how stupid in love he is—because that is the shape of it, isn’t it?
He’s in love with Roy Harper, and it’s going to fucking kill him.
Some truths can’t be danced around. Some truths will strike him dead as soon as they pass his lips.
Roy and his fucking soothing pheromones just wait for Jason to speak. Because—patient.
“I want this to happen again,” Jason blurts, sick of the silence. “Not the heat-drop, obviously, but—the heat part was fine. Kind of great, really. Fantastic. Five stars in that department.” Roy looks like he’s gonna try to say something, so Jason keeps going, “And you handled it fine. Heat-drop isn’t, like, ideal, but—I trust you to get me through it.”
Trust means more than love, even though they go hand in hand for Jason.
(They always have, he loves and trusts until they turn on him and the trust dies but the love stays, stubborn and undying and the truest barest part of him.)
(Gun to the face. Batarang to the throat. Roy hasn’t buried an arrow in him yet and maybe one day he’ll stop looking for it.)
“Okay,” Roy says softly, seeing the trust and acting like it’s special, like it’s something to covet. “Okay.”
Jason pulls the quilt over his head because it’s too much, looking at Roy when he’s being soft. Then he immediately tugs it back down because how can he possibly look away when Roy is giving him everything he shouldn’t need, everything that he craves in the depths of his soul.
Roy lets him look, lets him drink in his fill of the alpha’s presence.
Of his alpha’s presence.
That’s never going to get old.
When Roy has to leave to get food and water, he bundles Jason up in the quilt—in spite of his loud protests—and carries him into the kitchen. He sets him in a chair and sings obnoxiously loud whenever he’s out of Jason’s line of sight.
It’s dumb, probably—definitely—but it helps.
Later, he goes on forums and reads about heat-drops, reads horror story after horror story and realizes just how poorly that could’ve gone, just how perfect Roy’s response had been.
Jason didn't think he could be more grateful for Roy’s presence in his life. He was wrong.
He’ll get to keep being wrong, keep getting smacked in the face by gratitude, for as long as Roy will let him—and that’s shaping up to be a very long time indeed.