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The bedroom was dark, save for the sliver of moonlight slipping through the curtains—Gotham moonlight, pale and bruised around the edges. It painted a silver line across Salix's bare shoulder, and Jason couldn't stop staring.
Couldn't stop touching.
He was propped on one elbow, the sheets tangled around his hips, his other hand tracing lazy patterns across Salix's back. Spirals. Triangles. The shape of a bird maybe, or a bat. It didn't matter what he drew. What mattered was the texture.
Salix was face-down, one arm tucked under the pillow, his long braid draped across the headboard like a silken rope. His mismatched eyes were closed. His breathing had that deep, even quality that meant he was hovering on the edge of sleep.
But Jason couldn't stop.
"Jay," Salix mumbled, voice muffled by the pillow. "It's been forty-five minutes."
"Bullshit. It's been ten."
"It's been forty-five minutes." Salix's hand emerged from under the pillow to wave vaguely. "I counted."
"You were counting?" Jason's hand paused on the small of Salix's back, right where the spine curved into something distractingly perfect.
"You were petting me like I'm a cat. I had nothing else to do." Salix turned his head just enough to crack open one eye—the brown one, warm and sleepy. "Go to sleep."
"I can't."
"You can. You just won't."
Jason grinned, unrepentant, and dragged his fingertips down the length of Salix's spine. The skin there was impossibly smooth. No hair. No stubble. No rough patches or calluses. Just… silk. Permanent, unearthly silk that made Jason want to press his whole face into it like a man dying of thirst.
"You're not human," Jason said, not for the first time.
"That's not news," Salix replied. "You've known this for eight breakups."
"Eight reconciliations." Jason corrected, leaning down to press a kiss to Salix's shoulder blade. "And every time, I forget how soft you are. It's unfair. It's cheating."
"It's genetics." Salix's eye closed again. "I'm a half-blood Yōkai of unidentified origin. My body doesn't produce the same keratin structures as humans. No body hair, minimal scarring, and a healing factor that makes your Lazarus dip look like a papercut. Now sleep."
Jason did not sleep.
Instead, he traced the line of Salix's ribs, featherlight, counting each one like a secret. Salix shivered, just once, and Jason felt that shiver travel up his own arm like electricity.
"You're doing it again," Salix murmured.
"Doing what?"
"Being down horrendously bad."
"I prefer 'appreciative.'"
"You've said the word 'soft' fourteen times in the last hour. Fourteen. I counted."
Jason laughed, low and warm, and pressed his forehead to the space between Salix's shoulder blades. "You're a menace. You know that?"
"You're the one who crawled back to me. Eight times."
"Third time's the charm. Eighth time's… commitment."
Salix snorted. It was an undignified sound from someone who could pin Jason to a mat in under four seconds. Jason loved it.
He loved him.
But that was a thought for a different hour, preferably one where they were both more awake and less likely to defuse it with sarcasm.
"Your hands are warm," Salix said quietly, after a long moment.
"Is that a complaint?"
"It's an observation." Salix shifted, rolling onto his side to face Jason. His mismatched eyes, brown and blue, like earth and sky—were half-lidded but watching. The moonlight caught the curve of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the faint marks Jason had left on his neck an hour ago. "You're warm. You're always warm. It's like sleeping next to a furnace."
"And you run cold," Jason said, his hand settling on Salix's hip. "Like a very pretty, very lethal ice cube."
Salix's lips twitched. "An ice cube that can kill you."
"Kinky."
Salix reached up and flicked Jason's forehead. Lightly. Fondly. "You're impossible."
"You love it."
The word hung in the air, casual and sharp as a knife. Neither of them flinched. They'd earned that, Jason thought. After eight breakups and nine reunions (he'd lost count), they'd earned the right to let words like that sit without explanation.
Jason's thumb traced small circles on Salix's hip bone. The skin there was just as soft as everywhere else, smooth and unmarked except for the bruises Jason had left earlier. Proprietary marks. Territorial ones.
Jason wasn't usually the possessive type. But Salix made him feral.
"You're staring again," Salix said.
"I'm admiring."
"Same thing."
Jason leaned in and kissed the corner of Salix's mouth, soft and slow. "Go to sleep, love. I'll behave."
Salix's eyes narrowed. "You won't."
"No," Jason agreed, pulling him closer until Salix's head rested on his chest, that ridiculous silken braid spilling across both of them. "But you'll sleep anyway because you're exhausted, and I'll keep petting you because your skin is illegally soft, and in the morning, we'll pretend this didn't happen."
"We will not."
"No," Jason said, grinning into Salix's hair. "We won't."
Salix's arm draped across Jason's stomach, possessive in its own quiet way. His breathing deepened within minutes, finally surrendering to sleep despite Jason's wandering hands.
Jason kept tracing patterns on Salix's back. Spirals. Stars. The shape of a name he'd known by heart for years.
So fucking soft, he thought, and pressed a kiss to the top of Salix's head.
Outside, Gotham hummed with its usual chaos. Inside, wrapped in moonlight and the impossible warmth of a half-blood Yōkai who'd somehow chosen him, Jason Todd let himself be still.
He'd crawled back eight times.
He'd do it eight hundred more.