#Dick actually cares even a microscopic percentage of the amount he does

[flowerflamestars]

Albatross Snippet

"Wasn't good enough to look at alive," Jason exhaled, horribly quiet, "Still not good enough dead?"

Dick stared down at his putrid coffee. Bitterness seemed to have taken over his senses- hated taste in his mouth, the sound of Jason's voice- like nothing else existed.

"Fuck you," Dick enounciated clear despite the lump in his throat. "Fuck you for dying, fuck you for lying, and fuck you for leaving."

His voice didn't shake. Vehemence tasted shitty too.

Slumping all at once into the crooked booth across from him, Jason seemed to nearly fall. "Dick."

He made it half a minute, watching yellow light highlight the coffees oily sheen. Pink circles on diner ceramic, two chips. Less than forty seconds- he had to look.

And Jason was just Jason. Handsome. Tired. Physically arresting as the night Dick had really met him. Freshly shaved jaw, a half days bruise ever so slightly discoloring. Not an open wound or an adolescent ghost, a shape in the dark holding Dicks hand as tightly as he'd held onto all his secrets.

Not exactly the same, but enough, pushing all the air from Dicks lungs because it could never, ever be the same.

"You cut your hair."

Quiet. Furious. Not at all relieved.

Delighted.

Jason blushed. Faint, not unapparent, not to Dick, just a little bit of pink on those broad cheekbones. Too sudden to blame the cold.

"And you let yours grow," Jason said, after too long a beat, gripping the table edge. He swallowed, all of Dick's anger seeming to condense down on watching stress play out on his person. "Alf giving you shit yet?"