hoodedmenace

[hoodedmenace]

i think at this point it's pretty obvious that i took a step back from writing on tumblr and i might come back some other time but for now i'm focusing on making art and occasionally writing fanfic : )

i'm still on tumblr, but you're more likely to find me on my personal blog @verusalkascove posting about d&d, dragon age, arcane, and occasionally batfam things. thanks, come again!

[hoodedmenace]

babe what’s wrong that death threat wasn’t intimate or graphic…don’t you love me

[hoodedmenace]

mid-conversation I toss a pistol onto the table not to suggest or imply anything but just to change the situation a little

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Jason deadpans. "You'd be surprised how hard it is for most people. Embarrassingly so." They guy wears glasses as a disguise, for fuck's sake.

With the water at almost the appropriate temperature, Jason gives up on fiddling with it and lets Buck pull him under the spray, his hair immediately flattening to his head in a mess of wet curls. "No one really does, it if makes you feel better. It's easier to just say that the bird theme needed to carry through."

The bruise on Buck's face looks somehow worse in the hot shower, and Jason makes a point of shuffling them both around so Buck isn't being directly sprayed on the head. He needs an ice pack, not water hot enough to melt skin. (That's for him.)

"Unfortunately the gossip's just as bad in the capes circle as it is anywhere normal. So." He shrugs a little, gently pushing Buck's hair off his forehead so water doesn't keep dripping into his eyes. "I'll probably hear about it later."

❛ i didn't catch him. he told me he could help if he could get to the stairs, and i told him that running wouldn't help, and then suddenly superman was right there. not...that hard to put those pieces together, y'know? ❜ buck's smart, but he figures that superman's secret identity probably isn't that easy to sus out. he doesn't want to discredit the guy.

he didn't know about the names, though. it makes buck smile, the same way that learning anything about jason does. he steps into the warm spray of the shower, shuddering at the sudden heat before he pulls jason with him. ❛ that's kind of sweet, ❜ it's really sweet, actually, but buck doesn't want to make the whole thing too intense. ❛ i didn't know where the names came from. i just sort of accidentally almost said that my boyfriend was flamebird, and i think he figured it out pretty quick. ❜

[hoodedmenace]

"You caught him." Jason sounds a little bewildered by that. Clark Kent means that he was here in his civvies. Meaning he was here on a job, or on a visit, or on a "visit," which is different from a visit, where he "stops by" when he knows he and Dick have their hands full, which means he needs to get to the bottom of whatever happened quickly. That's a tomorrow problem, when there's more details after the police department's finished processing everyone involved, and when he can try to convince Clark to be grilled in person.

"Right. Well." Jason makes a face—not quite one of embarrassment, but closer bashfulness, which is about as rare on him as a properly processed case is in Gotham. "Yeah. Um. That's—that's where the names came from. His home has a story about two ancient dragons who went by Nightwing and Flamebird, and after Dick and I gave up our previous mantles... he gave us those."

He leaves out the part where he didn't necessarily ask Clark, or get his blessing. He simply took it upon himself to take Flamebird, like he'd taken Robin from Dick.

It's not like Clark's ever told him to give it back.

buck knows he's being babied. he doesn't mind, right now. lets himself think it's as much for jason as it is for him, and that makes it easier. he doesn't ask what jason's ordered, and jason doesnt tell him, so buck figures it's okay. for now, he just...sits. and then he's standing, which means they're on step two.

shower. that's good. familiar routine, and buck settles back into his skin a little. tries not to think too hard about the question. ❛ uh, he wasn't. not at first, i guess. clark kent was, though, ❜ he flashes jason a smile that's not quite bravado but it's not far away, either. ❛ guess he figured since i'd sort of...taken charge that he could let me in on the secret. and also i kinda mentioned you. ❜

[hoodedmenace]

Pizza's an easy one. Not a lot of cleanup, no utensils. He throws in some vegetables they both like so it's filling, chicken for protein. Cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. Two stupidly sized drinks that they'll probably drink half of anyway.

He rubs Buck's back for a while, even after placing the order, just letting him sit there and stew in the way he needs before they move on to the next thing. It's a delicately balanced waiting game, of giving Buck enough time to settle, but not so much that he starts getting too deep in his own head about it. Jason wants to be mildly productive, even if it's to keep Buck's attention focused on doing a task rather than spiraling. He doesn't have to unwind much of himself to get them both standing and shuffling off to the bathroom.

Here, there is a bit of a routine. The least injured party takes care of the water, getting it set to the perfect temperature, the most comfortable pressure. The hiss of the water eats into the steady silence, offering some reprieve from everything hanging unsaid between them. It feels easier to ease back into speaking with the white noise there.

"...So how exactly was it that Superman ended up being there?" he asks, shrugging out of his sweatshirt and undershirt.

ah. okay so the thing is that now buck's stopping, actually stopping for real, he can feel it. he can feel the - the fear and tension and all the rest of it that's been hiding, and he's not interested right now. doesn't particularly want to fall apart because that doesn't seem like the right thing to do. luckily, jason goes for tacticle and buck goes right back. wraps himself around jason, tucked in close, and takes a breath that somehow stays steady. god, he's good at this.

❛ yeah, ❜ that's steady too, and buck's really batting a hundred here. it's easier to let himself focus on jason's breathing, focus on the beat of his heart and the tap of his fingers against his phone. buck's alive, and he didn't even nearly die, so there's no reason he should be scared, or shocked, or anything else. he's alive. he was never at risk of not being alive.

[hoodedmenace]

“Brave warrior.”

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Jason sighs gently. Now's not the time to point out he'd already showered before he left the manor. It's not about that.

"Okay. Just... just sit for a minute." He guides Buck to the kitchen island by the elbows, so he has a vantage point on him, and goes to get his stuff which he'd dropped unceremoniously in the doorway, bringing it to the top of the stairs so he can count a single win for his things. When he sits back down beside Buck, it's with an arm wrapping around his back, chin tucking over his shoulder, his other hand scrolling through the not so small handful of delivery apps running in Blüd. "You want me to just make a decision here?"

❛ you're not yelling, ❜ and the answer is instinctual but buck gets what jason's saying. this isn't a you're in trouble thing. this is a jason's worried and to be fair buck's gone through something kind of fucked up so actually it's probably justified thing. even if buck doesn't want to fully admit it.

❛ better compromise. we order food, then we shower together, then we sit and eat it, then we go to bed. which is clingy, i know, but also i think maybe if you leave me alone right now i might actually realise what's happened and i don't wanna do that again. i had to call bobby last time. ❜

[hoodedmenace]

If Jason realizes anything immediately it's that they're not going to get anywhere going back and forth like this. "I'm not trying to yell at you." Half of him is trying to reign it in, but the other half of him needs to say this, needs to make sure Buck understands. "I am going to be worried about you whether or not you're... mollified. I can't not be. It's not your fault either but I can still... I can still be upset that you went through that experience anyway. That's not the same as freaking out." He is freaked out, by the way, but he knows he can tone that down at least, knows that actually freaking out won't help the situation.

He pulls Buck's hands off his face, first kissing one, then the other. "So let's compromise. I'll order food. You take a shower. I can sit with you. You tell me literally everything else about your day instead. We eat. We go to bed. Okay?"

Jason thinks he's freaking out an appropriate amount, considering this was one of his major hang-ups when they were getting together. The worst part is that everyone always assumes that the act of getting into bed with a vigilante or a cape is what's going to put them in danger, except most times, it's regular, every day circumstances instead. Circumstances he wasn't there for, that could have gone sideways had Clark not been there.

"...Don't do that," he mutters, leaning heavily into Buck's palms. "Don't turn it back around to take care of me when I'm trying to take care of you. All things considered, I'm fine. I'm not the one coming home from a hostage situation."

[hoodedmenace]

Jason thinks he's freaking out an appropriate amount, considering this was one of his major hang-ups when they were getting together. The worst part is that everyone always assumes that the act of getting into bed with a vigilante or a cape is what's going to put them in danger, except most times, it's regular, every day circumstances instead. Circumstances he wasn't there for, that could have gone sideways had Clark not been there.

"...Don't do that," he mutters, leaning heavily into Buck's palms. "Don't turn it back around to take care of me when I'm trying to take care of you. All things considered, I'm fine. I'm not the one coming home from a hostage situation."

❛ jason, babe. take a breath. ❜ buck pulls his other hand out of jason's so he can hold his boyfriend's face properly and look him in the eyes. ❛ i'm okay. it was scary, and i was scared then, but i got out of it, and i'm okay. i was punched one time, and i punched one time, and that's it, okay? ❜

because jason's really freaking out, here, in a kind of worrying way. honestly, if buck had known jason would be this rattled by it he probably wouldn't have opened it with a joke. ❛ ...you look tired, jace. so i'm gonna go ahead and guess that you're flying on not enough sleep and way too much adrenaline, here. so let's do takeout, and then we'll go to bed and you'll feel better, 'kay? ❜

[hoodedmenace]

A quick evening trip to the convenience store

Bonus:

[hoodedmenace]

Even here, Jason's face crumples a little—not because of the reality of the situation, it's never that. He's been there, on both sides, so many times that he thinks he lives in a perpetual state of fight or flight. His therapist loves him.

"...Babe. Do you—I can run a hot shower? Bath? If you don't want to stand. Or—we can just go to bed, I don't need to put my stuff away until tomorrow morning. I can get that fuzzy blanket off the couch." Which is saying something, because Jason hates not putting things away as soon as he is physically capable of doing so. "And an ice pack? Tylenol? I can order take out, you shouldn't take pain meds on an empty stomach—”

It's not often these days that Jason is taken completely off guard but Buck's words filter back to him in a haze and he blinks like a deer in the headlights, face going slack, hands stilling on the sides of Buck's neck.

"Oh. Fuck. I said that out loud, didn't I? Like, with my full chest and everything. Jesus Christ." If Bruce could send him a report card, it'd be F's all the way down. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to bring the train of conversation back around. "Just. Wait. Focus for a minute. I'm gonna need more details about the actual hostage situation in a bit because what are the fucking odds that you and Superman — actually. I changed my mind. I don't want to know the odds anymore. God. Fuck." He's running on four and a half hours of sleep and everything is filtering through like sludge, and his brain is still trying to pull in details from recent calls he might have missed, chatter on the radio he half-listened to. He's already mentally preparing to check the news as soon as he remembers what pocket he put his phone in—

"...that explains why your hand looks like a boxing glove." He winces sympathetically as it waves past his face and grabs it gently out of the air, holding it to his chest. "Seriously, though. Buck. Are you alright? And not just physically."

[hoodedmenace]

It's not often these days that Jason is taken completely off guard but Buck's words filter back to him in a haze and he blinks like a deer in the headlights, face going slack, hands stilling on the sides of Buck's neck.

"Oh. Fuck. I said that out loud, didn't I? Like, with my full chest and everything. Jesus Christ." If Bruce could send him a report card, it'd be F's all the way down. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to bring the train of conversation back around. "Just. Wait. Focus for a minute. I'm gonna need more details about the actual hostage situation in a bit because what are the fucking odds that you and Superman — actually. I changed my mind. I don't want to know the odds anymore. God. Fuck." He's running on four and a half hours of sleep and everything is filtering through like sludge, and his brain is still trying to pull in details from recent calls he might have missed, chatter on the radio he half-listened to. He's already mentally preparing to check the news as soon as he remembers what pocket he put his phone in—

"...that explains why your hand looks like a boxing glove." He winces sympathetically as it waves past his face and grabs it gently out of the air, holding it to his chest. "Seriously, though. Buck. Are you alright? And not just physically."

"I was... barely gone for a full 48 hours." Jason hasn't even stepped entirely over the threshold and he already looks exasperated, trying to shrug out of his backpack as quickly as he can to cross the room and takes Buck's face between his hands. He was just barely spared from having a full shiner, it looks like, but his cheekbone looks like it took a solid hit. "You have one job when I'm not around, and it's to not get fucked up, and yet you go around getting fucked up anyway—"

Which brings up a deluge of other questions, like where was Dick? Where was Wally? Surely he doesn't need to beg capes to babysit his own boyfriend in the city he lives in, right?

"Are you in pain? Do you need me to get you anything from the pharmacy? You should have called me, I could have picked something up—also, ew, he's like my uncle."

[hoodedmenace]

First base is beating the shit out of each other second base is having a civil conversation

[hoodedmenace]

"I was... barely gone for a full 48 hours." Jason hasn't even stepped entirely over the threshold and he already looks exasperated, trying to shrug out of his backpack as quickly as he can to cross the room and takes Buck's face between his hands. He was just barely spared from having a full shiner, it looks like, but his cheekbone looks like it took a solid hit. "You have one job when I'm not around, and it's to not get fucked up, and yet you go around getting fucked up anyway—"

Which brings up a deluge of other questions, like where was Dick? Where was Wally? Surely he doesn't need to beg capes to babysit his own boyfriend in the city he lives in, right?

"Are you in pain? Do you need me to get you anything from the pharmacy? You should have called me, I could have picked something up—also, ew, he's like my uncle."

@hoodedmenace

❛ superman saved me today, ❜ buck drops it casually, like the bruised face and bruised knuckles don't give away that something happened. ❛ he's really handsome, huh? ❜

[hoodedmenace]

“   Third base is me telling you about my father. ”

"Then it's a good thing we already did everything between base one and two, huh?" Like salt in an old wound, healed, but still a bit annoying, in the good way that reminds him something is still there. "Which, by the way, you did tell me about your father, so... when and where is the wedding?"

[hoodedmenace]

"Ugh." And here he thought he was going to get off scot-free about this half of the conversation.

"Things are fine."

Which they are.

"Which is why I'm not talking about it."

Which is half-true. Mostly, what Jason is realising, is that they're in this weird liminal space where they both know they're projecting onto each other, and don't quite know what to do about it, which means pacing the conversations they have been having about it.

It's not bad, it's good, they're supposed to be working through their shit together, it's just...

Jason's not used to feeling like a stumbling fawn in his own relationships.

"Because if they weren't fine, I'd tell you."

He's always been better at giving out advice than taking his own.

dick rolls his eyes and rolls himself backwards off the lip of the roof, curling out of a backwards somersault to straighten up with practiced ease. ❛ you really have a way with words, y'know that? ❜ like he's trying to prove a point, dick throws himself into a cartwheel and then folds into a handstand, gaze finding jason's again.

❛ how's things with buck, anyway? you're not talking about it as much so if figured things are good right now? ❜