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It’s with a vague sort of awareness that Dick realizes he’s spaced out. Conscious, but not. Present, only not. Dick knows that Jason is talking to him. They’re standing not a foot apart, crowded in each other’s space. Jason’s voice is a familiar thing to him, something that Dick is always listening for nowadays. So Dick can hear him. Of course he hears him, but it goes right over his head what Jason is actually saying. At least in this instance Dick listens more to the sound of him than what Jason says. Filtering in and out of the conversation because Dick is so distracted by it–Jason’s hands, his fingers.
It shouldn’t be so mesmerizing to watch someone peel an orange, but Dick is captivated.
Maybe Dick was a little bit enraptured even before he was drawn into this mundane moment though. Taken in by windswept hair and ruddy cheeks and a sweet smile—small and pleased and private up until when Jason heard Dick’s footsteps and looked up from where his attention was dropped to the fruit in his hands, catching Dick’s gaze and smiling something just as sweet, just as pleased. Something happy and warm and content that Dick would be loath to ever walk away from.
So he doesn’t. It’s not a conscious decision, but he veers off the path he’d been on to be closer to Jason. To get in his space. Before Dick even realizes, he’s leaning against the kitchen island, admiring the careful way Jason peels fruit with his fingers.
It’s different from how Dick learned to do it. There’s something charming about it though, given how pleased Jason gets when he keeps the peel almost entirely intact. There’s pride and triumph in his smile - a silly little victory for a game Jason had been playing with himself. Dick’s gaze slides from that smile back to Jason’s hands again, watching as Jason pulls the orange in half before peeling away one slice of it.
A slice that Jason offers to Dick alongside that same smile from before, only different: sweet, boyish, charming - bright although it’s a small, crooked thing.
Something about the gesture catches Dick off guard. He stares at the slice dumbly, overwhelmed because for just a moment he’s reminded of his mom, of all people. How she would peel oranges as an easy snack during long days of practice. How Dick would eat slice after slice but would always save just enough to share with some of the horses since the elephant always refused them. Spitting seeds into his hand so that he could plant them before their trope moved to another city - so that if they came back there might be a tree they could eat from.
(There never was, but one time he wasted his allowance on a packet of strawberry seeds because a farmer that came to watch the show heard Dick’s plight and suggested something with higher odds to take. Dick has never gone back to check if there’s a patch now, but he likes to think there is).
“Thanks,” Dick says, tempering himself and taking the slice of orange, smiling to himself at the memories and how the orange bursts bright and sweet across his tongue once he eats it.
(Nostalgia pulls at his chest, but Dick is fine. He misses his mom though - so damn much. If only because he feels he didn’t say it enough before, he wants to say ‘thank you,’ again. Again and again and again).
As it stands, Dick just lets himself enjoy the memory - and then simply that present moment as Jason offers him another slice of orange and then another. Pulling Dick into easy chatter as they snack.
When Jason pulls another orange from his pocket, Dick takes it to peel. Showing Jason the way his parents taught him to eat them. Cutting off the ends before cutting halfway down the middle and pulling it open. Quick and clean in a way that Jason marvels at and tries for himself with another orange he pulls from another pocket. It’s messier than how Dick did it, but still a success that Jason seems to preen at, holding the row of oranges open for Dick to see and be proud of, too.
It’s something that Dick can’t help but laugh under his breath over. Jason gets happy over the strangest things; timid, too. It’s so fucking charming. So charming that Dick has to drop his head into his arms lest he steals Jason’s easy contentment away with all the endearment Dick isn’t sure he can hide.
Flustering Jason has become something of a favorite pastime for Dick, but comfortably mundane moments like this are some of Dick’s favorites, too. So while Dick is content to let the moment be what it is, Jason is another matter. Sometimes Dick really has to wonder if Jason likes being teased; he sure provokes it enough.
The provocation that day? Jason pressing an orange to Dick’s cheek. It feels so much like a peck that Dick startles, jerking to look up with wide eyes only to see Jason standing there smiling at him–completely oblivious as he holds the orange slice out to him.
Such a cheeky yet unaware brat.
The orange slice gets offered to Dick again along with some lighthearted chiding about how Dick must have overworked himself while training earlier when Jason was out jogging (which Dick didn’t; it’s just a little warm in the tower). Once, twice more the orange is poked to his cheek, Jason’s badering smile an open display of what a menace he is.
If only to match that energy–if only because suddenly Dick wants to tease Jason back, Dick catches Jason’s wrist in his hand. Keeps him still so that Dick can eat the orange slice straight from Jason’s fingers and watch as Jason blanks, then scoffs, cutting his head to the side as he flusters in that way Dick has come to like so much.
Warmth dusts over the high points of Jason’s face, the tips of his ears. Not a full-body blush like usual, but just as delightful. It’s funny–Dick never really cared for the color red until he saw Jason blush. Never took quite so much pleasure in teasing as he does like this. It’s something about the way Jason reacts; his pouts, his scowls, the tizzy he works himself into. Doe eyed and slack jawed and overwhelmed whenever Dick pushes just a little bit more–
(Dick might be becoming a bit of a budding bully. His only defense is that Jason is always so obviously pleased at the attention, the undercurrent of affection).
“They’re good,” Dick says, changing the subject and letting go of Jason’s wrist–his fluttering pulse. “Where’d you get them?”
Jason’s petulant scowl at him morphs into an ornery smirk. With all the pride in the world, he answers, “You know those houses up on the hill?”
Dick grimaces, already knowing where the story is going. The reaction has Jason scoffing at him, nose scrunched as if to say that Dick’s adverse reaction is the real crime here. He gripes, “Oh, don’t make that face at me. They were wasting good food–just letting it rot! May as well give it to people who need it.”
By no means does Dick condone stealing (and trespassing although it’s often part of their vigilante duties), but it’s hard not to be endeared by it knowing that Jason stole away into some affluent neighbor’s yard to steal from their orange tree just to share some fruit with and take care of those less fortunate. The reasoning is so typical of Jason and it softens Dick’s disappointment and makes him feel warm with fondness instead. Dick smiles smally, a soft and tender thing. He teases, “A modern day Robin Hood, huh?”
“Hah, hah.” Jason says with a roll of his eyes. He eats another orange slice. “More like one of those things outside tire shops. The blow up things,” Jason says, wiggling his arms like the waving inflatable some shops use to draw attention. He bites another slice of orange off the peel and adds, “But instead of air, oranges.”
The whole interaction leaves Dick delighted. As discreet as he can, he hides his smile in the cradle of his hand and asks, “The what things?”
Jason seems surprised, but does the wiggling gesture with his arms again, “The inflatable thing; we saw one the other day. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Do it one more time?” Dick asks. Even if he hides his smile behind his hand though, it shows in the way his eyes light up, the mirth there.
When Jason realizes that Dick is messing with him, his eyes widen in realization before he laughs. “Oh, fuck off.” He complains, embarrassed but not bothered by it. Not with Dick. Not with this.
Jason goes on to regale how many oranges he carried back down the hill and around the city until he handed them all out. How he went back for a second trip but ran out of people to give them to, so he brought home the remainder as a treat for them. All the while pulling oranges from various pockets on his person and even straight from his sleeves. More and more until he’s made a little pyramid that he tops off with an orange that had been hiding in his hood.
It makes Dick huff on a breath of laughter, his smile humored and fond and warm.
That there was a point in his life where Dick didn’t like Jason is wild to him now. That he could ever not want Jason around feels like the greatest disservice he’s ever done for himself, especially with how full his life feels now; content in that way he only feels with family: the Titans, the circus. The manor.
Dick didn’t think he’d ever feel this sort of happiness again. That’s what it is, too, isn’t it? Happiness. Because Jason makes him happy.
(What a frightening thing).
Dick imagines how everyone at Haly’s would have taken to Jason. Knows in his heart that Dick would have been beaten out as the circus sweetheart, hands down. If not because Jason is too much of a spitfire not to adore, then surely because Dick finds him so darling: a punkass on a good day, a brat on the others.
Dick knows Alfred would have adored Jason, too, if only they were given a chance to meet. And Dick has done his best to make peace with that loss, but suddenly he feels it all again like it’s fresh because it’s so easy to picture–Alfred and Jason talking about the classics they love to read, playing cribbage at tea time and nagging Bruce at all hours to eat, sleep, be human because Bruce always needs the reminder.
He wonders if Bruce does [adore Jason]; if the man really knows what a good thing he has. Dick can only hope so. A protective concern and worry makes him curious about how Bruce is with Jason. Although Dick has seen them talk over the phone before - has been made nostalgic and melancholic by the ease of their banter and the apparent fondness between them - it’s a difficult thing to parse out the strife he has with Bruce. All the grief there that tore them apart.
There will come a day when Jason has to go back to Bruce. Jason has been trying to be a bridge between them, but Dick is reluctant given all the bitterness and hurt feelings there. He has to level with himself on what’s more important though: Jason or Dick’s falling out with Bruce? Tormented as Dick is by all the circumstances that led up to cutting ties with Bruce–there’s no question. Not even close.
The tables turn with Jason being desperate to be a part of Dick’s life and Dick wanting to stay a part of Jason’s. If Dick is honest, he can’t imagine Jason not being there. Dick doesn’t want Jason to ever not be there.
(The lengths Dick would go to have Jason stay - it might be frightening. People, friends, have expressed concern over how ruthless he can get in his feelings and passions. Dick can’t help himself - he tries to, but Dick gets to be someone he likes with Jason - wild and warm and wonderful. He might be intoxicated by the vulnerability Jason gives him, that softness and contradictory challenge; always pushing, pulling, beckoning.
It’s bewitching. It’s enthralling.
It reminds him of Robin—that heart racing feeling from when that namesake was an endearment spoken by his family, when it became a curse breathed by rogues, and now made soft again because of Jason and all his kindness.
Jason told him once that it felt like Robin gave him magic; truth is, at least for Dick, Jason brought that magic to Robin, to him).
(So many important things have been taken from Dick throughout his life - he refuses to let Jason be another).
Dick peels a slice of an orange off its peel and holds it out to Jason. He shares the story about how his mom would peel oranges for him during long practices; how he’d share with the horses because the elephant didn’t like them. Dick tells him about how he tried to grow orange trees at every stop their trope made, but nothing ever grew–about the strawberry seeds he scattered in hopes that a patch might grow. And Jason–he leans against the counter and smiles around the slices of oranges he slips past his lips. He laughs with warm fondness over youthful follies, snickers at childishly endearing gullibility.
Afternoon light slants through the kitchen window, cutting across the kitchen and warming where it hits Dick’s back. Dick feels distracted again at how the white light hits Jason’s hands, his fingers, his chest and the length of his neck; the sharp cut of his jaw, the contrastingly soft roundness of his cheek. There’s something striking about how it bisects Jason’s face–how Jason is warm regardless of whether sunlight does or doesn’t touch him.
“Where did you grow the strawberries?” Jason asks him, head tilted curiously to the side as he picks the last slice of orange from its peel and hands it to Dick. “We should go see them. Bet you there’s a whole damn field by now.”
Dick stares at the proffered fruit, thoughtful as he takes the last slice and holds it. When he glances back at Jason, he smiles something small and crooked and boyishly charming, “You’d want to go abroad with me? To go strawberry picking?”
“Or to steal some oranges.” Jason tells him, then cackles softly under his breath, “Or we can stare at some weeds if nothing ended up growing. It’s all the same to me.”
Something like butterflies swoop in Dick’s stomach, making him feel young and dumb and giddy. It’s been a long time since he’s felt so smitten, but Jason charms him time and again.
“Okay,” Dick says.
“Okay?” Jason asks in surprise.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Dick smirks at him, charming and boyish; wild and wonderful. The promise of adventure together already has excitement singing through Dick’s veins. Whether or not anything has grown–oranges, strawberries, weeds–it doesn’t rightly matter. It’s not like they can’t go looking or try again (orange seeds spat in their hands, or a packet of strawberry seeds scattered in the wind and wilderness; a garden on their patio or right at the window sill).
When he eats the orange slice, flavor bursts tart and sweet and refreshing over his tongue. Dick smiles at the memories of it: past, present, future.