Preview for Chapter 3 of Tale Spin.
And so it was that Jason found himself sprawled out on his couch 20 minutes later, toweled off and changed into a dry pair of sweatpants, though he’d had to forgo the warming shower he desperately craved.
“Fuck’s sake, Dickie. You’re about to remove shrapnel, not deliver a baby. You can stop looking at me with the damned Bambi eyes.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, averting his gaze, though the tension held in his jaw, shoulders, and every movement of his hands.
Jason sighed heavily, leaning back again to rest his head against the arm of the couch. It was an awkward-ass angle and his neck was already killing him, but it was also the only way he had a half-decent view of what Dick was doing. It wasn’t that Jason thought—he knew Dick would never hurt him the same ways others had. And even when they were pissed at each other, he could still trust him for a patch job—he wouldn’t have let Sunshine within a hundred yards of his wounded body otherwise. But even still, Jason could remember other ways they had hurt each other, and he could never forget the memories of other people who’d hurt him in the past, and sometimes when he was feeling…anxious…it got harder to tell one fear from the other, took him just a split second longer to process. It got extra hard when he was cold and tired and already hurting, so this was just…for the best. His neck could deal.
“I still think we should get you another pillow,” Dick said after a beat.
“And I think you should get to work. You worried about my comfort, you could start by not keeping me here.”
It was Dick’s turn to sigh. “And you don’t have anything stronger than lidocaine here?”
Jason lifted a brow at him. “The lidocaine was a stretch. Be glad I’m letting you use it at all.”
Dick actually gave a small snort at that, though he didn’t quite smile. “I feel like this is the opposite of how a conversation like this normally goes. Pretty sure the person administering the anesthetic gets to say that line.”
“My house, my rules, Dickwing.”
Dick lifted one hand in surrender as he continued prep with the other.
“Shit wasn’t for me, anyways,” Jason added in a mutter.
Dick blinked, and furrowed his brow. “Then who was it for, if you weren’t gonna use it yourself?”
It was Jason’s turn to blink. “Whoever needed it,” he said quickly enough, sorely hoping the heat he felt crawling across the base of his neck and back of his ears wasn’t reflected by his tawny complexion. “You know the ambulances can’t always get here quickly enough. Never know when a vic’ll need triage in the meantime.”
“Right,” Dick said slowly, “and if the vic just happens to be wearing a mask—”
“I would like to remind you,” Jason said in a calm, steady voice, “that you currently have hypodermic needles and scissors within reach of me. Pick your battles, Grayson.”
Dick snorted, a tiny but very real smirk twitching at the corner of his mouth now.
“And put the sword away, Demon Spawn. I can hear you glaring right now.”
For those of you coming directly from the website, here are the links to the Discord server, my coauthor’s Ao3 profile, my own Ao3 profile, and our first released joint project:
- Sapphire’s Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Fandom_Related_Name/pseuds/A_Fandom_Related_Name
- AJ’s Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AhsokaJackson/pseuds/AhsokaJackson
- SAU Batfam Server: https://discord.gg/W3K28yPVU8
- Our Short Story, “When It Pours”: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39332946
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