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This is the last time that Jason agrees to do a joint patrol, even if the person asking is Dick.
He should’ve said no right from the get-go. Despite reconnecting with his family, he still has this whole lone wolf persona that is really messed up by the traffic light colors of the Robin suit and obnoxious blue of the Nightwing one.
Jason says all this, but all it took was one overly polite ask from Dick to help him bust this strange magician wannabe villain that he just “really don’t want to take on all by myself, Jason. What if I get hurt?” for Jason to crumble. Damn family ties.
Going forward, though, he makes a pact to no longer cave to his family’s bonding requests, no matter who they throw at him. Well, he might still fold to Damian, but only because the kid is dangerously good at knowing which heartstrings to pull, even if he pretends not to.
“What the hell is this guy’s problem?” Dick asks between pants of air. He and Jason are standing on top of an apartment building, watching as a villain in an unflattering purple spandex outfit makes his way to their roof.
“I think the spandex is cutting off supply to his brain,” Jason responds, watching with growing dread as the magician knock-off makes his jump to the rooftop they’re standing on. He’s a little sad that the man didn’t miss the jump and go splat on the concrete below.
Sure, no killing and all that, but they’ve been playing a cat and mouse game with the guy for the past thirty minutes, and Jason just wants to go to bed. He’s dizzy and really doesn’t want to be on a rooftop right now with how uncoordinated he feels.
“You two can’t run forever! Soon all of Gotham will understand that I can do what all the other rogues cannot!”
“Is this guy for real? Did he get this villain monologue out of a children’s comic book or something?” Jason mutters, smiling at the snort of laughter he picks up from through the comm, either from Dick or Tim, who’s been listening in for the last fifteen minutes.
“I’m pretty sure he’s giving vibes from a villain from Captain Underpants,” Tim chimes in, probably where the laugh came from.
Jason wheezes out a laugh. “Holy shit you’re so right.”
“I’m gonna entertain him,” Dick mutters just low enough for it to go under Professor Tippy to notice. “What can you do that all the other rogues in Arkham cannot?”
The grin on Mr. Tinkletrouser’s face warps into something that reminds Jason almost eerily of the Joker. It’s nowhere near as stretched, nor scarred, nor red, but there’s something about a smile that stretches past where peoples’ would normally stop that still gets to Jason, even after all these years.
“This.”
Jason isn’t allowed the chance to avoid any sort of attack, is barely allowed enough time to tense before a thick plume of who knows what is blasted in Jason’s direction. Immediately, his shoulders sag in relief; his helmet will filter out any airborne particles.
But, because the Universe is a cruel mistress, the moment the fog hits Jason, he can feel it being absorbed by his skin. His thighs tingle where it seeps through the heavy kevlar, his fingertips buzz where it bites at the skin there.
To his left, Dick lets out a shout of alarm as he dances back away from the fog. Jason’s heart rate ticks up in beat when his eyelids begin to feel heavier and his vision vignettes at the edges.
“Good luck!” The fuck ass magician yells with glee as he disappears. Jason curses loudly, though can’t get his body to function well enough to race after him.
“Nightwing, Red Hood! Report!” Barbara yells through the comms, her voice sharp with panic.
Jason coughs, even though the airborne particles don’t feel like they’ve invaded his lungs. He sits down on the rough concrete floor of the rooftop when his legs wobble like jelly beneath his weight.
“Hit with something airborne. Losing fine motor controls and consciousness,” Dick reports, collapsing to the floor next to Jason, just a foot apart. He tries to reach out. To do what he’s not sure, but his hand doesn’t even make it close before his vision entirely blacks out.
===
When Dick wakes up, his body feels stiff and weird. The closest thing he can relate it to is after an intense day at the gym, where the muscles you didn’t even previously know you had are aching something fierce.
This, though, is still different. He opens his eyes to find himself thankfully still on the rooftop that the magician left them on. At least they hadn’t been taken to a secondary location.
There’s concerned chattering in his ears, and he finally tunes in enough to his body to realize it is Barbara asking them questions over the comms.
“Hey Babs, I’m-” Dick stops immediately after opening his mouth. His jaw drops in abject horror as he brings his focus away from the ground he’s sitting on and towards the other person just now waking up next to him.
“Jason? Are you okay?” Barbara prompts.
A groaning sound leaves Jason, who looks exactly like Dick. Now that Dick is really thinking about it, part of the weirdness that his body is feeling is the unfamiliar feel of kevlar as opposed to his normal spandex.
The wind is no longer gently brushing past his cheek, which is now covered by a mask that Dick has a horrible feeling he knows exactly what it looks like.
“Jason?” Barbara asks again when Dick doesn’t respond.
“Yeah?” The real Jason responds, sounding disorientated. It is the weirdest feeling in the world to see yourself outside of your body. Dick watches with a morbid fascination as his brother stills suddenly at the sound of his voice, hands darting up to his face before his eyes whip over to Dick.
“What the fuck?” Jason asks, eyes of the mask going wide to convey his brother’s abject horror.
“Babs we- I don’t know how to explain this,” Dick starts, taking full body inventory of Jason’s body that he’s somehow found himself in. “This is Dick speaking right now. I’m- I don’t even know- in Jason’s body?”
“And I’m in Dick’s,” Jason adds on, staring down at himself as he pokes and prods his stomach, then arms, then legs, as if testing to see if they’re real.
Dick would be lying if he said he isn’t tempted to do the same. He feels a sense of derealization as he watches his body function without the true owner behind the driver’s seat. It’s making him dizzy, and his heart pounds in his ears.
“I think there are still side effects to whatever toxin he threw at us, I’m pretty dizzy,” Dick comments, leaning a hand back on the ground to steady himself when the disorientating feeling only grows.
At that, he notices his brother tense up, suddenly looking over him with a look of nervousness that looks weird to see on his own face.
“Babs, is Dick’s heartrate high?” Jason asks, not breaking eye contact with Dick, who grows steadily unsettled.
“Yeah, why? Are you feeling dizzy too?”
Jason curses under his breath, just loud enough for Dick to pick up. He’s honestly a little surprised at how good the sound system is in Jason’s helmet, having never worn it before. He always thought the sounds would be muffled to a certain degree. Especially considering the number of gunfights the man gets into.
“It might not be because of the toxin. Dick, just lay down for a second and put your feet up on my lap,” Jason orders, scotting closer so that Dick could do so without moving.
Reaching up to take off the helmet– which he thankfully knows how to do– Dick exposes his face to the cool night air as he levels a suspicious look at his brother. Even outside of his body, he knows something being played off when he hears it.
“Why?” he asks, even as he moves to do so. He rests his head on the ground, settling his legs onto Jason’s lap, the visual of putting legs that aren’t his onto his own lap only serving to further his confusion. It makes his head spin, and he closes his eyes before he passes out altogether.
Jason is quiet for a few moments, cracking his knuckles. Dick almost scolds him for cracking his knuckles, but decides to leave it for now. He already knows it’s going to be a challenge and a half to get his brother to stretch his body after patrol, if it even comes to that.
“I have the tendency to get dizzy sometimes. Usually lying down and putting my feet above my heart will settle it,” he finally hears his own voice say. It’s another strange thing to hear his own voice from someone else’s ears. It’s never something he’s thought about, but it sounds different than how he always hears himself.
“This is so trippy,” Dick says, throwing an arm over his eyes, only to wince when an armored elbow pad stabs into his eyelid. “And I hate this suit. Why is it all so stiff?”
Jason laughs. “Because I need more protection than some flimsy fabric. I don’t know how this protects you from anything.” Jason pulls at the fabric around his wrist, letting it snap back with a soft noise.
“Just hold on a little longer, you two. B is coming with the Batmobile to pick you up so we can try to figure out what this is,” Barbara says suddenly, which startles Dick slightly, who had honestly forgotten about her presence for a second.
The two devolve into silence- something that isn’t quite tense, but not entirely comfortable. When Dick finally hears Barbara tell them that Bruce is there with the car just down the street, he forces his arm away from his eyes and sits up.
“Woah, easy there,” Jason says immediately, darting out to grab Dick’s shoulders when he starts swaying, overcome with a sudden rush of vertigo that causes the ground beneath him to feel like it’s moving. “You can’t sit me up that fast.”
Dick blinks hard. “Why do I feel like this?” He realizes now that Jason never answered him the first time he asked, and he was too distracted by everything going on that he let the question slide.
“C’mon, let’s get going so we can head back to the cave,” Jason says instead of answering Dick’s question, hopping up to his feet with a flourish that Dick knows is just his own mucle memory.
Jason holds his hand out to Dick, who crosses his arms over his chest childishly, frustrated all of the sudden. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is. You’re being cagey for a reason, so don’t even try to tell me it’s nothing,” he says, adding on the last part when he sees Jason open his mouth, likely to brush it off.
“I don’t have you tell you jack shit. It’s my body.”
Dick laughs without humor and uses Jason’s arms to gesture to himself. “Well, right now I’m in it.”
Jason glares, suddenly tensing up more. It’s interesting to see Jason’s brand of anger play out in a body that isn’t his own. The fact that it comes on just as suddenly and aggressively as it has for a while now tells him all he needs to know about how much the lingering of the Pit truly affects Jason.
“That doesn’t matter. You- you’re just holding my body captive. Drop it,” Jason orders, his voice sounding colder than Dick thought his could go. It makes Dick’s voice sound almost scary, something Dick shudders to hear.
“Fine,” Dick says, suddenly jumping up to his feet without any prior warning. His vision completely blackens, and for several weightless seconds, he can’t hear anything.
The moment record scratches when suddenly he can hear again, and it’s to Jason shouting with alarm and unfamiliar arms wrapping around to catch him when Dick suddenly loses his balance.
It’s weird. Sure, he’s wrapped his arms around himself for comfort before, but never has he been able to hold himself the way that Jason’s– Dick’s-- arms are wrapped around his back and under one of his arms.
He can feel the press of his muscles into his shoulder, can feel the tension lining his own body and the fact that those are his arms wrapping around himself, but he can’t feel it when he touches his own spandex outfit.
“Shit, Dick, you can’t just-” Jason cuts off at the worried look on Dick’s face. “Are you okay?”
Dick realizes that he’s staring at the arms wrapped around him, and coughs, steadying himself and gently stepping out of Jason’s embrace slash catch. “Yeah. Just- it’s weird to feel my body without feeling it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Not that I’m not loving this bonding moment you two have going, but Bruce is still waiting with that car,” Barbara chimes in, sounding vaguely amused.
Jason tilts his head back and cackles, and Dick rolls his eyes, deciding to let the question go right now in favor of heading back to the cave. At least there, it will be harder for Jason to grapple away like he normally does when people ask too personal of questions for his liking.
===
The ride back to the Cave is weird, even though Jason pretends that it isn’t. Dick still sends him the occasional glance that tells him that the whole questioning hasn’t been dropped yet.
Instead, Bruce picks up his own style of questioning as the Batmobile drives the three of them to the Manor. He goes through physical sensations and mental connections the entire fifteen-minute drive back, much to Jason’s chagrin.
It’s strange and frankly dissociating to watch his body function without him controlling it. Even though he knows that he has his own body he currently controls, even though he can feel the sensation of everything that Dick’s hands touch, it’s almost worse to look down and truly see hands that aren’t his own.
It’s a sensation he’s familiar with, especially in the year after grappling with the changes the Pit left on his body, as well as the fact that his body changed so drastically in the year or so he was training in Nanda Parbat.
The feeling of dissociation has never been lost on him, and watching Dick talk using Jason’s mouth only serves all the more to make him feel like a ghost witnessing his body function without him.
Maybe Dick took Jason’s silence as stubbornness, but Jason didn’t say anything to the contrary. He is mad that Dick keeps on pushing about the whole dizzy thing.
He’s managed to keep his POTS diagnosis away from the bats for this long now, he is going to try his damndest to keep it for a little longer. Besides, he has actual money on keeping this secret, considering he had to bribe Leslie to not tell anyone (not that he thought she actually would without his consent).
It’s just- Jason doesn’t want them to think of him differently. Sure, it’s not that big of a deal when looking at everything else they’ve dealt with, but if Bruce thinks that Jason could be a liability on the field, he might try to convince Jason to step back from patrols.
He passes out occasionally, sure, and sometimes it does happen on patrol, yes, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. The last thing Jason wants is his family messing with something that is under his control.
(He ignores the fact that he doesn’t want his family possibly finding a control for something that is so out of his control. That he doesn’t know what it would say about him if his- if Bruce finds a solution that should’ve been so damn simple that Jason just can’t figure out.
That, perhaps even worse, he finds out just how truly incurable this thing is if even Bruce Batman Wayne can’t figure out how to stop him from passing out. Jason is scared to grapple with the fact that he could be passing out a couple times a week for the rest of his life and there’s nothing he’ll be able to do to stop it-)
“Jason?” It’s the sound of his name that snaps him out of whatever spiral he was going down. He looks up to see that Bruce is turned around so that he can make eye contact with Jason, a concerned look on his face.
Obviously, this isn’t the first time his name was called. “Sorry, I was zoning out,” he says by way of explanation.
Dick stares at him again, not even bothering to hide it. Jason pointedly doesn’t look over at him. “We’re here,” Bruce says.
Jason blinks, looking out the window in muted shock. He must’ve been zoning out for longer than he thought. Sure enough, the car is parked in the cave, and Jason can see Alfred in the corner by the computers, likely setting up for the no doubt numerous tests they are about to do.
Instead of answering, Jason climbs out the door, marveling at the ease in which Dick’s limbs move. In his own body, there’s always one joint or two that gives him issues. Something is always locked up, another something always hurts.
It’s amazing, the way that he can move so fluidly. Maybe all the talk Dick makes about stretching before and after patrol actually did amount to something. Plus, Jason would put money on the fact that this body would not feel so loose if Dick too had been beaten to death.
“I’d like to start with a blood panel to see if any of the toxins are lingering in your blood,” Bruce starts, following behind Jason towards the medbay.
“We might want to call Constantine and see if he can figure anything if the blood panels don’t show anything,” Dick chimes in. Bruce’s face goes stony, and Jason almost laughs.
“If it comes to that,” Bruce concedes.
“Young Masters. Please, sit. Are there any other ailments besides the obvious?” Alfred prompts by way of greeting.
Jason can feel Dick looking at him, and when his body talks through Dick’s command, Jason knows immediately that he’s screwed. “I felt really weird and dizzy for a solid ten minutes. It’s mostly better now, but Jason isn’t saying anything about it.”
For someone so popularly known as the eldest kid in the bat clan, he sure does act like a younger brother. Immediately, all the attention is on Jason, who folds his arms in front of his chest, which he’s pretty sure looks decently less intimidating through Dick’s body.
“Dick just got dizzy and thinks I cursed him or something, I don’t know,” he answers, proud at the smooth way in which the lie comes out. He knows it won’t hold up against the “world’s greatest detective”, but at least he can say he tried.
“That is not what happened. I felt like I was going to pass out, and Jason seemed to know a lot about how to mitigate it.”
“Jason?” Bruce prompts.
Jason hates how he can feel his hackles rise. He feels like a cornered dog, growling at everyone who comes close. He hates that there’s no way to avoid this, not with his own body being held hostage. He wants to stomp his feet and scream and throw a temper tantrum like he’s a kid all over again.
He’s twenty years old, though, so he can do none of that. “Okay, fine. I get dizzy occasionally. It’s really not that big of a deal.”
Sometime during their chat, Tim wandered into the cave, and Jason only notices when the boy pipes up. “Do you ever pass out?”
The attention in the room mercifully turns towards Tim, who studies Jason and Dick with fascination written into the widening in his eyes and quirk of his lips that indicates he’s thinking.
“Um, occasionally. I can usually tell in advance, so it’s not bad.”
Dick’s head snaps over to him. Jason avoids eye contact with himself. “You know what this is,” Bruce says, not phrasing it like a question.
With nothing left to say to avoid spilling everything, Jason nods. “Yeah, Thompkins referred me to a specialist, and I got diagnosed with POTS. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.” So much for keeping his secret. He really shouldn’t have had hope, though. That’s on him.
“Oh, I know what that is. Bernard’s sister has that,” Tim says, perking up.
“Yeah, well, there you go. I’m gonna go upstairs, this is weird,” Jason says, heading out of the cave before anyone can protest.
===
Dick watches Jason leave in his body, feeling only slightly bad that he forced Jason to share his diagnosis with them. Maybe there were better ways to approach it, but Dick knows Jason. He knows that Jason would rather never talk about something like this which could show a weakness.
Maybe it’s a bit wrong of him, but Dick knows an opportunity when he sees one. He knows that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to help Jason. If his brother won’t ask for help, Dick can do it for him.
Still, he can’t help the curl of guilt that builds in his gut in the silence that follows Jason’s departure.
“Master Dick, can you inform us of some of the symptoms you felt?” Alfred asks politely, breaking the silence.
Dick breathes out, and does just that. He tells Alfred about the dizziness on the rooftop, how Jason told him to put his feet in his lap, and the utter weightless feeling he experienced when he stood up too fast out of spite.
Bruce is silent throughout Dick’s recap, which Dick can’t discern, even after all his years of knowing the man.
“I know we’re talking about this whole thing, but can we address how weird it is to see Dick talking in Jason’s body?” Tim interrupts at one point, blurting the words out as if he couldn’t bear to keep them inside any longer.
Dick laughs, grateful for the change of topic. “It’s so weird. It was really trippy to see Jason walking around in my body. Gosh, even hearing my voice speak through someone else’s ears was weird.”
Tim shudders. “That sounds awful.”
“Honestly, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It looks and feels weird, sure, but it’s also kind of cool to see myself through someone else’s eyes. I just don’t think Jason feels the same way.”
He’s pretty sure that Jason was doing his best to pretend that he’s fine with everything going on, but Dick knows his brother, and he also knows himself. He could notice the unnatural tension in his own shoulders every time he and Jason made eye contact.
It was also impossible not to notice the way that Jason zoned out during the drive home, staying silent throughout Bruce’s questioning and instead staring off at his hands as the world passed by.
“I think it would be kind of fun to see myself through someone else’s eyes. Maybe we can replicate the toxin,” Tim jokes, drawing a smile to Dick’s face.
“Sure, you say that until you switch bodies with someone who doesn’t take care of themself like they should,” he says, rolling a shoulder that has been stiff ever since he woke up on the rooftop. Truly, he doesn’t know how Jason can live like this.
He’s going to take a hot epsom salt bath before they change back just to do Jason a favor. Actually, no, he does not want to see all that. Even if it’s technically his body right now. Sure, there isn’t much privacy in a family of vigilantes, and modesty has long since been lost, but taking a bath seems a bit more violating.
Maybe he’ll go through a yoga session or something.
Actually, Dick thinks as he rotates his arm and inwardly cringes at the tenseness in the muscle, a yoga session won’t be a bad idea at all.
“I’m going to go do some stretches. Do Jason some good while I’m in his body,” Dick says, waving to the three remaining in the cave before heading upstairs to his own room.
He stops when he reaches the top of the staircase, surprised to see Jason standing just a couple feet away from Dick’s bedroom door, turning towards Dick looking like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Uh, I was gonna see if you were back in your room yet,” Jason says, shifting awkwardly.
“Why?” Dick asks, suspicious.
“Well, I’ve encountered a bit of a problem.”
Dread pools in Dick’s gut. “What?”
A slow, shit eating grin morphs onto Jason’s— Dick’s — face. “You stink and I wanted to ask consent before I shower or whatever.”
“Fuck off, Jason, I thought something was actually wrong,” Dick says, scrubbing a hand down his face while Jason laughs. “Yeah, go ahead. Just— I don’t know — don’t go ogling me or anything.”
Jason only laughs harder. “There goes my plan at jacking it.”
Dick’s face scrunches in disgust, and he leans over to smack Jason’s shoulder. “Gross! Don’t say that,”
“Sorry, you just looked so uncomfortable that I had to,” Jason says, still laughing. Dick glares, using the intimidating look that he knows Jason has to his advantage.
“I’m going to stretch, you’re welcome, and probably shower as well.”
At this, Jason’s playful grin changes to something a bit more uncomfortable. “…If that’s okay…” Dick says, trailing off. He thought, based on this whole conversation, that Jason would be fine with that, but maybe not.
“No, that’s fine. Just, well, I have that whole.” Jason gestures to his own chest. “Autopsy scar that I know y’all get weird about.”
Oh, Dick hadn’t thought of that. Now that he thinks about it, he hadn’t really been paying attention to the myriad of scars littering his brother’s body. He brings his knuckles up to his face, eyes tracing over the layers of scarring on Jason’s knuckles.
“Dick? If you want, you can wait until after we switch back, or shower with the lights off. I do that sometimes when seeing it gets… overwhelming,” Jason continues when Dick doesn’t answer, sounding more and more unsure of himself in a way that Jason rarely is.
Dick snaps himself out of it, ignoring the heart clenching image of Jason having to avoid looking at himself because of all the reminders his scars hold. “No, I’ll be fine. I just hadn’t thought about it, I guess.”
“Okay, just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also, don’t put the water on too hot if you’re still feeling dizzy,” Jason adds, walking away before Dick can continue what he knows will be pointless questioning.
Dick is left in the hallway in front of his room feeling lost. He forces the body to move, opening his door. He strips down to only the under layers of Jason’s suit, grabbing an epsom salt rub to put on before the yoga because he’s feeling like a good brother.
Yoga actually goes fine, even though Jason’s body is nowhere near as flexible as Dick’s own. Still, he doesn’t pull anything and his joints only mildly creak throughout the whole process, so Dick calls it a win.
Soon enough, he’s standing in only his boxers in front of his bathroom mirror, against his better judgment. The obvious and most glaring of the scars is, of course, the Y-shaped autopsy scar across Jason’s chest. It goes deep into the skin, creating a ridge over the scarred expanse of Jason’s chest.
There are other scars all over Jason’s body. Slashes from what must be knife wounds on his thighs, bullet holes on his shoulder, a gnarly slash across his back that Dick does not want to think about the origin of.
It’s worse than he thought it would be. Dick can’t tear his eyes away from the white scars made more apparent by Jason’s tan skin.
Eventually, he forces himself away by turning the shower on, waiting for the water to heat up enough for steam to start filling the bathroom before he walks in, relishing in the scalding hot liquid on Jason’s sore muscles.
About halfway through the shower, Dick stretches his arms above his head to wash his hair when his vision darkens and the slippery ground beneath his feet seems to shake beneath him.
He takes in a sharp breath and quickly sits down on the floor, water pelting his half-soapy hair as the world spins around him. Closing his eyes is almost worse when he can only feel the floor moving. His head feels like it’s floating two feet above his head, which is already a feat considering he’s not even in his own body.
For a moment, Dick thinks this feeling is because of the magician, and for a breathlessly terrifying several seconds, he’s convinced that he’s going to die. Then the feeling slowly gets better, and Dick remembers what Jason told him about showering with hot water.
“That little shit,” Dick curses, reaching up to turn the water temperature down while still sitting on the floor of his shower, cursing Jason and his entire lineage. He especially curses that stupid magician because being in someone else’s body is no longer fun.
The rest of the shower wraps up considerably fast, and Dick puts on pajamas that Jason had set out for him feeling upset and still slightly dizzy. He grumbles his dissent as he crawls into bed and tries to get some sleep.
===
Jason wakes up slowly in the morning. He sits up and goes to wait for a couple minutes before standing up like he does almost every morning now when he remembers that Dick doesn’t have a problem with sitting up fast.
A grin stretches across his lips as he jumps out of his bed, the grin widening when his body doesn’t protest. He pointedly keeps his eyes away from his hands as he puts on slippers and heads downstairs for the breakfast that he can smell even from his bedroom.
Going downstairs and seeing his own body seated at the table, talking to Bruce and Damian is definitely weird, but he had more time to prepare himself than he had yesterday. It’s still strange, though, and he takes a several good seconds to observe himself before forcing his eyes away and sitting at the table on the same side as Dick so the man is out of his eyesight a little better.
Except, he can feel Dick glaring at him. A type of glare that he’s pretty sure only his body can truly capture, and suddenly he feels a little bad for some of the goons who have been victims of his glare.
“If you have something to say, just say it,” Jason says, immediately going on the defense.
Damian looks between the two of them from the other side of the table like he’s watching some sort of fight.
Alfred brings breakfast to the table, with sleepy thank yous being sent his way. Once the man leaves, Dick finally speaks. “I almost passed out in the shower. Actually, I might’ve. I lost vision and sensation for a second.”
Jason shrugs, forcing his eyes down to his plate. “I mean, I did warn you to keep the water cool.”
“I shouldn’t have to keep the shower water cool to keep from passing out! Plus, do you know how unsatisfying it is to shower with cold water?”
”Actually, I do. Some people don’t have money for hot water, you know?” Jason retorts.
“Boys,” Bruce chides. Jason looks to the man as if expecting him to tell off Dick like they’re children all over again, only for his hackles to raise when he realizes that Bruce is staring at him with this look on his face.
“Dick was just saying that he was worried about having whatever episode he had. I was wondering if you could tell us a bit more about whatever it is that’s causing it,” he says, voice soft in a way that makes it hard for Jason to snap at the man.
He sighs, poking at his well seasoned scrambled eggs with his fork halfheartedly. “It’s been happening for a while. Leslie said that it was probably spurred on by the pit.”
”It’s been happening that long?” Dick asks, shock clear in his voice.
“What did she say it is?” Bruce prompts.
“It’s a form of dysautonomia called POTS, like I said earlier. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It basically means that my blood pressure and heart rate don’t work together, so it makes me dizzy and occasionally pass out.”
Silence falls over the table, and Jason does his best to avoid sinking into the chair.
“Is there a cure for this?” Damian asks, though the look on his face shows that he likely knows the answer.
“Nah. There’s things that can help it and make it better, but no actual cure.”
The silence that falls over the table has Jason fidgeting with his fingers, doing what he can to expel the anxious energy building in his chest.
“Anyways,” Jason starts, deciding to just screw it and change the topic. He’s given a look by both Dick and Bruce, but they don’t try to redirect the conversation, which he takes as a win. “Did you guys figure out how to switch us back?
“Yes, actually,” Bruce says, which sends elation running through Jason like a fizzy soda.
“Thank god,” he breathes, leaning back in his chair.
Dick makes an offended noise. “What’s so wrong with being in my body?”
Jason raises an eyebrow, pleased that Dick’s face lets him do that. “Do you really want me to start on that list?”
He laughs when Dick visibly deflates, so much expression working into his body that it almost looks alien. Jason looks back over to Bruce, who opens his mouth to explain more.
“It works similarly to an illness, in a sense. It should work its way through your system, and will likely wear off in the next ten hours or so.”
Letting out another long breath, Jason rights himself in his chair, nodding. “Yeah, okay. I can work with that.”
He can make ten hours go by fast, right? It’s not that he doesn’t value the fact that he can stand up quickly without passing out, and the nimbleness of Dick’s muscles, but it is constantly throwing him off to be in someone else’s body, like a dream he’s yet to wake up from.
It’s as if his brain intentionally forgets the situation, causing Jason to be reminded anew again, and again, and again. He’s going to take the longest nap of his life when he’s back in his own body.
“You just have to go another ten hours without passing out,” Jason teases, laughing when Dick glares at him.
Surprisingly, ten hours does pass by quicker than Jason thought it would. He decides to pick up a book to pass the time, and when he finishes the novel he was working his way through, he starts on another.
Five hours passed in the span of minutes, it felt like. Then he spent the rest of the time getting some chores done around the house; the menial shit that Alfred doesn’t bother to do anymore, like organize the case files he keeps at the cave, and finding a new set of books to bring home to his apartment.
Soon enough and also definitely long enough, he gets a text from Dick telling him to come down to the cave. He does just that, entering to everyone and their mother showing up. He swears, anything will entertain nighttime vigilantes during the day.
“I am so ready to switch back, your body sucks,” Dick complains as soon as Jason is within talking distance.
He rolls his eyes. He’s aware of that, thank you very much.
“How do-”
He’s cut off by blacking out, which really isn’t supposed to happen in Dick’s body, last time he checked. Only, when he opens his eyes again, him and Dick have switched spots, and suddenly he’s back in his own body.
Jason and Dick share baffled looks.
“Well, that happened early,” Bruce says, something akin to shock on his face.
“What the heck! That was so anticlimactic!” Tim yells, throwing his arms in the air like his favorite football team just lost a game.
“Next time you and Damian can switch bodies, maybe it’ll be more entertaining then,” Jason says, stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles, pleased at the familiarity of his own body. It makes him appreciate it more, in some awfully Disney movie poetic way.
Tim shudders, and even Damian looks disgusted by the idea. “Actually, I’m good.”
“This doesn’t mean we’re done talking about POTS, Jason. I want you to meet with a specialist and discuss medication options,” Bruce says, stealing Jason’s attention.
He groans, knowing it sounds childish. “But Bruceeee, I don’t want to,” he complains, really laying it on thick.
Bruce just crosses his arms, though there’s hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“Don’t make me pull the ice cream trick on you.”
Jason gasps, recalling a time when he first moved in with Bruce and was terrified of the doctors. As the sentence would suggest, Bruce would lure him in with “ice cream” and actually take Jason to the doctors. The fact that they still got ice cream after never lessened his distrust.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, he so would,” Dick says with a laugh.