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The first thing Jason notices when he gets back to Earth is how much he missed gravity.
The second is that he is never letting Dick volunteer him for a space mission ever again.
Three weeks.
Three weeks trapped on a spaceship with Artemis, Bizzaro, and enough cosmic bullshit nonsense to permanently lower his tolerance for everyone around him. The mission itself had gone fine. Any mission with a kryptonian and an amazon goes fine. It was everything else that sucked. First the food then the sleeping arrangements which basically involved three shitty cots shoved together to form one big shitty cot. Then the fact that space somehow manages to smell sterile and dirty at the same damn time.
Plus the complete absence of any decent drinks. Alcoholic or otherwise.
Jason shifts the duffle bag higher on his shoulder and starts up the stairs to his apartment, exhaustion settling comfortably into his bones now that the adrenaline has finally burned off.
Home.
The thought still catches him off guard sometimes, because the apartment isn’t technically just his anymore. Sure his name is on the lease, but most of Roy’s stuff has somehow migrated into every available corner. With the slippers by the front door and the oat milk taking up permanent residence in his refrigerator, the apartment stopped feeling like just his a long time ago.
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth despite himself, his duffle bag banging against his leg as he pushes past the last step.
Inside are exactly three things he knows a certain five-year-old is going to lose her mind over. A smooth purple crystal from a trading station Artemis had dragged him through. An alien toy that Bizzaro had insisted on getting only after Jason had thoroughly inspected it didn’t have a chance of blowing up or emitting radiation, and of course something Jason picked up on the way home; a little dinosaur-shaped flashlight that projected stars onto the ceiling.
Was it from space? No. Was it adorable? Yes, so Jason went with it.
By the time he reaches the apartment doors, he’s already fishing his keys out of his pocket. The lock clicks allowing the door to swing open, and as soon as it does.
“JAY!” A small voice shrieks.
Jason barely has time to drop the duffle before a tiny blur launches across the kitchen.
Lian hits him full force around his legs hard enough to stagger him backward half a step.
He’s laughing before he can really stop himself. Not that he would.
“Hey, pumpkin,” Jason says through a smile that has his cheeks aching already.
“You were gone forever!” Lian protests loudly into Jason’s sweats.
“Three weeks is not forever.”
“Yes it was.”
Jason nods solemnly, “Ah. My mistake.”
Lian pulls back, staring up at Jason with the biggest blue eyes he’s ever seen and a gap tooth smile that pulls at every heart string he has left.
Her gaze drops a second later to the duffle bag, gaze narrowing.
“Wha’s in the bag?”
Roy’s laughter drifts from the living room just as Jason grins.
“Well I couldn’t leave for three weeks without bringing you something home could I?” Jason asks, crouching to the balls of his feet to pull the duffel bag in front of him.
If possible Lian's smile grows even wider, her eyes scrunching up and cheeks turning red.
Three minutes later Lian is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the entry way surrounded by treasures while explaining in excruciating detail why the flashlight is obviously the best gift ever created because it holds the ‘entire universe’ in it.
Roy watches her from the couch, a steaming coffee mug balanced in both hands, dressed in his usual lounge clothes—which basically just means he’s wearing Jason’s everything, but his smile is soft when Jason looks at him.
He hadn’t realized just how much he missed him until now. The feeling is enough to steal his breath and, thank god Roy crosses the room and kisses him hard before Jason can linger too much on it.
It’s slow and warm and feels so much like home that Jason can’t even comprehend it. He attempts to chase after another one, making Roy laugh into his mouth.
“Missed you too, Jaybird.”
“Shut up,” Jason whispers.
Roy grins, “Never.”
Jason rolls his eyes but lets the redhead pull him into a hug burying his freckled face into Jason’s neck. His body is warm beneath his hands in a way space never managed to be.
Jason lets himself relax into the embrace, inhaling the scent of the apartment around him. It smells like whatever Roy made for dinner. Savory enough to remind Jason he has survived three weeks of ration packs and what Bizzaro falsely considered good food. Lian is still on the floor with the flashlight, projecting stars across the ceiling and explaining to the alien toy that it has to be very brave because it is technically from space, even if Jason has already clarified that it is from a gift shop near the airfield.
Roy leans back just enough to look at him properly.
Jason means to make a joke about the shirt his boyfriend is wearing—one of Jason’s old Wonder Woman ones, stretched loose over one shoulder—but the words stall when he actually sees him.
His usually bright green eyes are dull, dark shadows are cut deep under them. Even his skin is paler than usual in a faintly gray exhausted sort of way. Roy’s smile is still there, but it's threaded through with something worn down and thin.
It hits Jason in that moment that Roy is probably just as exhausted as he is.
Three weeks where Gotham didn’t stop being Gotham just because he was off-world. Three weeks of Crime Alley patrols, school pickups, grocery runs, bedtime negotiations, nightmares, Lian's endless questions, and Roy sleeping all alone in their bed. Or probably not sleeping at all.
Jason knows that better than maybe Roy does. The redhead doesn't sleep well when he’s not there. He’s never said it outright, but Jason knows the patterns.
His boyfriend catches him staring, furrowing his brows, “What?”
Jason blinks, “What, what?”
Roy’s mouth quirks.
“You’re doing the face,” he says with a laugh.
“I don’t have a face,” Jason argues, tightening his arms around the redheads upper back.
“You have several. This one is either murder or concern.”
“Could be both, you don’t know.”
Roy snorts, reluctantly pulling away and stepping back toward the kitchen.
“Dinner is almost done, and before I forget,” he starts as he settles behind the breakfast bar. “Lian and I will be gone tomorrow evening. Lian’s school has a parent thing tomorrow.”
Jason glances toward the floor where Lian is making the alien toy ride the flashlight like a horse.
“Parent… thing?” He questions aloud.
“Yeah, some beginning of the year classroom night. Meet the teacher, meet other parents, hear about events, pretend I don’t moonlight as a vigilante archer.”
Jason’s eyes drift back to Roy before he can help it.
His boyfriend says it lightly, but the exhaustion is obvious at the edges of his voice. Over the bar Jason can see him rub two fingers briefly against the bridge of his nose, before hiding the motion by reaching for his coffee mug on the counter.
Jason swallows around the guilt in his throat, and before he even registers the thought words are spilling from his mouth.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
Roy stills, his hand pauses halfway to the mug. Green eyes flick over to him, surprised, which makes Jason immediately regret opening his mouth. Mostly because Roy looks like he hadn’t even considered asking for help.
“You would… go?” His boyfriend asks, voice softer than Jason expects.
All at once he’s painfully aware of what he just volunteered for. A parent event at Lian’s school. With teachers and conversations and children who have no reason to be prepared for a six-foot-four wall of scar tissue and bad decisions standing near the snack table.
His instinct is to back track immediately, “Well—I mean, if that’s weird, I don’t have to—”
“YES!”
Jason’s head snaps toward the living room, where Lian is no longer on the floor, but full sprinting toward him. Before he can register she hits his legs at full force and immediately starts climbing him like she has no concern whatsoever for gravity, personal space, or Jason’s right to panic in peace.
“Jay’s coming! Jay’s coming! Jay’s coming!”
“Lia—”
“PLEASE COME!”
Jason catches her under the arms before she can elbow him directly in the throat, settling her over his shoulders.
Roy is staring at them both with his mouth slightly open. Then slowly his expression warms into something so bright and soft that Jason has to look away else he melts.
“You have to come,” Lian pleads, wrapping her arms around Jason’s neck and resting her cheek against the top of his head.
“I do, huh?”
Lian nods against his hair.
“Why?”
“Because you’re tall, and I can see everything when I sit on your shoulders! And we’ll never lose daddy cause we’ll be like eightthousand feet in the air.”
Before Jason can respond, she plants both hands on either side of his face and gives him the full force of that gap-toothed smile.
“Please Jay pleeease.”
Jason lets out a put upon sigh, relenting that there's no universe in which he could win.
“Fine,” he mutters, wincing as Lian shrieks in his ear.
Roy laughs, some of the tension he’d been carrying melting from him. He rounds the breakfast bar as Lian scrambles off of Jason's shoulder to parade around the living room like she has conquered an extremely grumpy mountain.
Jason lets Roy kiss him again, the redhead murmuring a quiet, “Thank you,” against the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, ‘course,” Jason says, planting one more soft kiss on the redhead's forehead.
Roy smiles again, and Jason pretends not to notice how much he needed to see it.
***
Jason doesn’t patrol in the evening.
Dick owes him three favors, two emergency stitches, and one extremely annoying extraction from a warehouse, so covering Gotham for two measly nights is practically generous on Jason’s part.
Mostly though, Jason stays home because he’s tired, and more importantly, Roy is tired. Moreso after Lian spent the entire dinner discussing tomorrow’s school event like Jason had personally agreed to attend the Olympics.
By the time he’s finally out of the shower, the apartment is finally quiet.
Lian is asleep in her room and Roy is somewhere down the hall cleaning up the remnants of dinner.
Jason steps in front of the bathroom mirror with a towel wrapped low around his hips and water still dripping from his hair. He tells himself he isn’t staring, then winds up staring anyway.
The white streak catches his eye first—it always does. Then the scar right beneath it, the raised line cuts down from his forehead, around his eye then across the bridge of his nose where the skin never quite sits right anymore. It extends to the tip of his nose where a small piece is gone, wrapping up his cheek to rest at his temple.
After that his eyes drop. His entire body is littered with healed wounds. Knives that have turned into thin silver lines no wider than thread, faded enough that they almost disappear unless the light catches them right. Others are thicker—ropey ridges of scar tissue crossing his ribs and abdomen where stitches had pulled skin together imperfectly.
The burn scars are worse. They spread across his side and shoulder in uneven patches, the skin smoother than it should be. Too red. Too shiny.
Gun shots are easier to identify—small circular marks, neat compared to everything else over his chest, shoulder and thighs. Some are jagged and irregular where the bullet was dug out improperly and torn through flesh.
Then of course the damn Y scar. The one he’ll never escape from. It splits him down the center, old but never old enough to disappear.
No amount of time will ever make that one look normal. Taken together, coupled with the obvious slit across his throat, they turn his body into a map of every bad thing that has ever happened to him.
Most days Jason can live with them. Most days he doesn’t think about them longer than it takes to get dressed in long sleeves and pants, but tomorrow isn’t most days.
Tomorrow is a classroom full of kids and parents with clean hands and teacher name tags and normal lives. It’s people looking and staring and someone maybe deciding Lian’s tall, scarred, too-big pseudo-father should not be standing next to the cubbies.
The bathroom door opens quietly.
Jason doesn’t turn, but he watches Roy step in behind him in the mirror, expression softening the second he sees Jason’s twisted face.
“You okay?”
Jason can’t help the sarcastic huff, “Fantastic.”
Roy lets out a sigh as he steps closer raising a hand to rub up and down on Jason’s upper back.
“It was kind to offer, but you don’t have to go tomorrow,” the redhead offers, but the look on his face betrays his words.
“I can’t back out now,” Jason grits out, keeping his eyes trained on his boyfriend in the mirror and not his own body.
Maybe she would forgive him—maybe a tearful evening and three dramatic statements about betrayal later everything would be fine, but Jason can already picture her little face falling when he tells her he changed his mind.
He can’t do it.
He won’t do it. Not to her and certainly not to Roy.
the redhead settles behind Jason fully, resting both hands lightly at Jason’s waist just above the towel. His palms are warm against damp skin, his fingers dig in slightly at the muscle there.
Jason closes his eyes for a second, letting the redheads touch ground him a bit in the moment and not in the future.
“Talk to me, Jaybird,” Roy asks softly.
Curse you for knowing me so well. Jason thinks bitterly before letting out a humorless laugh. “Well—I don’t exactly fit in at school functions,” he admits.
“No?”
Jason opens his eyes long enough to stare at himself again in the mirror, eyes flicking to Roy just behind him in a deadpan glare.
“What if I scare them?” he asks, hating how small the questions sound. Hates even more how much he means it, but he swallows and forces the rest out before losing his nerve. “The kids. The parents. What if I scare them and then they’re scared of her because of me?”
Roy’s hands tighten at his waist, blunt nails digging into a shrapnel scar just above Jason’s hipbone.
“Jay—”
“She’s five, Roy. She shouldn’t have to deal with people asking questions. She shouldn’t have to explain me,” Jason interrupts, jaw tightening.
Roy’s reflection shifts, his hands snake up Jason's abdomen and over his chest before one falls away, the other landing on his shoulder, forcing him down a few inches.
The redhead then leans up, placing a kiss to the white shiny patch of scar tissue at Jason’s hairline.
Jason freezes but his boyfriend doesn't stop.
He kisses the scar near Jason’s temple, then the one on the bridge of his nose that cuts viciously across his cheek. His last kiss is on Jason’s neck, soft and careful like he’s correcting all the ugly thoughts.
It makes Jason’s throat tighten, “Roy.” He chokes out, but before he can say anything else Roy leans up and places a kiss to his mouth, smiling into it.
“You are not something she has to explain,” he places another kiss to the corner of Jason’s lips, where another scar rests. “And you are not scary to her,” Roy whispers, placing a final kiss to the tip of Jason’s nose, hands sliding back down to his waist and pulling him into a hug.
Jason practically melts into it, part of him tired of pretending that wanting ‘normal’ wasn’t a bad thing.
“Lian is excited because you’re coming. Not because you look a certain way. Not because you’re normal, but because you’re you.” Roy murmurs into the crook of Jason’s neck, then adds, lighter now, “and because you’re tall.”
Jason can’t help the snort, taking in a deep breath of Roy’s department store cologne, and letting the evening tension bleed out.
For a long moment neither of them moves. Roy’s arms remain looped around his waist, Jason’s hands settled somewhere along the redhead’s sides. The apartment is quiet around them. No television. No dishes. No Lian asking increasingly impossible questions.
Jason feels Roy’s smile before he sees it.
“What?” He asks suspiciously.
“Nothing,” Roy says with a lilt.
“You’re a horrible liar.”
Roy laughs, pulling them apart to bore his green eyes in Jason’s blue ones, “Only when I want to be,” he teases, running a hand up and down Jason’s sides.
“Roy,” Jason warns, tilting his head to catch his boyfriend's eye who's staring straight at Jason’s chest.
“Just thinking…”
Jason snorts, “Sounds dangerous.”
“Perhaps…” Roy hums out, eyes flicking up to Jason's mouth before his hands slide lower along the towel still wrapped tight on his waist. “I was just wondering how many more times I’m going to have to explain that I love every part of you before you actually believe me.”
Fire races up Jason’s neck and burrows into his cheeks, “You’re insufferable.”
“I’m serious,” Roy teases, stealing another kiss, this one lingering with more heat.
When they part the redhead looks entirely too pleased with himself, freckled face flushed red.
“C’mon, Jaybird,” he murmurs after a moment, giving the towel at Jason’s hip a playful tug.
Jason catches the edge before it drops completely, sending his boyfriend a glare without any malice.
The redhead smirks, leaning in to steal one last kiss before slipping from Jason’s grasp and backing toward the bedroom door.
“Bed,” he declares, through half-lidded eyes.
Jason raises an eyebrow, “Bed?”
“Mmhm.”
Roy glances back over his shoulder, mouth curving into a slow, knowing smile. “Unless you were planning on standing there looking pretty all night.”
“That supposed to convince me?” Jason snorts out.
“No,” Roy says, backing into the bedroom. “I was actually going for ‘come to bed, Jaybird. Three weeks is too long without you.’”
The tease is evident and the look he sends Jason is pure invitation, “Though I can give you a five second head start if you need one.”
For one stunned second Jason just stares after him, letting the words settle. In the next second he’s following, opting to leave the towel behind.
***
The next evening arrives entirely too fast for Jason’s taste. He spends the majority of the short drive pretending he isn’t practically shaking with nerves.
Long story short, it does not work.
Lian’s been chattering away in the back seat for the better part of the drive, rattling off the names of classmates Jason’s never met and teacher he’s only heard about in passing. Roy hums along from the driver’s seat, occasionally contributing something helpful while Jason stares out the window and contemplates faking his own death.
He knows the ridiculousness of his nerves; he's just going to a school.
He’s fought aliens, trained in some of the worst conditions in the world, been conditioned to withstand the worst of tortures, he’s even died. Twice no less.
Yet somehow the elementary school parking lot feels more intimidating than any of those things.
By the time they first step through the front doors, the building is already buzzing with noise from both parents, teachers and kids running in every direction.
Jason instinctively finds himself reaching for Lian’s hand before he realizes he’s doing it. Her small fingers curl immediately around his larger ones, making the knot in his chest loosen slightly.
At least, that is, until Roy up and fucking disappears.
Within thirty seconds of entering the building, his boyfriend has somehow struck up a conversation with another parent near the office, then a teacher joins, then what seems to be a completely different parent.
Jason watches with equal parts irritation and fascination as the redhead slips effortlessly into conversation. Of slotting into whatever role he needs to be in. Sure, Jason’s a good actor—done his fair share of undercover work—but this is completely different.
“How does he do that?” Jason finds himself muttering.
Lian follows his gaze and giggles, “Daddy talks to everybody.”
Jason is barely past his brooding before Roy is waving them over just outside a classroom where him and the other parents had walked.
He follows reluctantly, still grasping tightly to Lian's hand so as not to lose her to the crowd.
The entire walk across the main entry to the classroom Jason is acutely aware of himself. How he towers over pretty much everyone in the vicinity. How broad his shoulders are. Despite wearing a hoodie and jeans in August humidity the scars on his face and neck are so prominent, and perhaps worst of all how people glance at him before looking away quickly.
They might not say anything, but Jason still catches the quick glances.
Lian, mercifully, sticks close at least until she’s a foot away from her classroom door. She’s barely letting go of Jason’s hand before sprinting across the room at full speed.
“Emi!” she squeals as her and another little girl collide.
Jason nearly follows out of reflex, but Roy catches his elbow.
“She’ll be fine, Jay.”
Jason watches Lian laugh with the other little girl before showing her something in her backpack.
“...Maybe,” he replies uneasily.
Roy barks out a laugh as they enter the classroom, the sound settling some of Jason’s buzzing nerves .
The classroom itself is decorated with construction paper projects and brightly colored posters. Tiny desks fill one corner while folded chairs have been arranged for the adults.
Jason is examining a wall covered in handprint turkey when a woman appears beside them, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Hi!”
Jason nearly jumps at the chipper voice.
The dark haired woman only smiles, “I’m Emilia’s mom—Morgan.”
Roy immediately returns the smile, extending his arm.
“I’m Roy—Lian’s Dad.”
They shake hands before Jason can find a way to escape the conversation.
“You must be Lian’s other dad then! Emilia said Lian had two.”
Jason freezes where he stands, eyes boring into Morgan’s dark brown ones. Roy goes still next to him and despite them the dark haired keeps smiling, completely unaware that she just dropped a bomb neither Jason nor Roy had addressed of late.
But before either adult can formulate a response a blur of movement rushes Jason’s legs.
“Ms. M! You met my dads!” Lian shouts, clinging to Jason’s legs and practically vibrating with excitement.
Roy makes a suspicious choking sound just as Jason is closing his eyes, because he just… can’t with that information right now.
Morgan only beams down at Lian and reaches to tuck a stray hair out of her face, then her dark eyes glance back up to Jason before darting back down to Lian.
“My goodness, you two look so similar."
Jason opens his eyes, very slowly, catching Roy’s flushed face before realizing Morgan is clearly looking at him and not Lian's actual father.
“I know right!” Lian agrees, shaking her whole body as she nods. “Jay is the best! He reads to me eeevery night and he made me… umm…” Lian plays with the hem of her skirt as she thinks, “Record thingies—for when he’s not here so I get bedtime stories all the time!”
Jason purses his lips together to fight the smile threatening to take over. Behind him Roy makes a sound very close to laughter.
“He does all the voices too in my superhero books,” Lian continues proudly.
“I don’t do all the voices,” Jason adds in, not entirely sure why he feels inclined to clarify that.
“Yeah huh—you do the best Batman impression.”
Jason grimaces, Roy is fully attempting to hold himself back from bursting out laughing, going so far as to shove a hand over his mouth.
Emilia's mom makes an awe sound while placing a hand over her heart.
“Oh OH! And he makes the best waffles!” Lian practically shouts, clinging tighter to Jason’s leg while twisting her face as if contemplating her next thought. “Actually he makes waaay better food than Daddy. Daddy’s food kinda sucks.”
Jason couldn’t stop the laugh that time—practically doubling over only to get swatted on his shoulder from Roy next to him.
“I certainly understand that feeling,” Morgan says to Roy with a playful expression, “My husband is the cook in our house while I… burn eggs.”
Roy laughs with her, starting up his own story of burnt breakfast while Jason looks down at the little five-year-old at his feet.
Despite everything going on around her, Lian's whole focus is on Jason.
She waves her hand at him tugging on Jason’s pant leg to bring him down to her level. Despite crouching he still towers over the little girl, but he does his best to get even lower as Lian cups her hands over her mouth to indicate she wants to whisper.
“I love you, Jay,” she ‘whispers’ enough that Jason winces at the sudden volume. “I talk a lot, but you are the best, and I know it’s scary, so I love you.”
Jason could pretend he didn’t want to cry at this moment, but it would be a complete and utter lie, so instead he places a kiss to the top of Lian’s head and smiles down at her.
“I love you too, kiddo,” he whispers back as Lian turns back on her heel to join her friend.
“...ou should be very proud of Lian, she's such a sweet girl,” Morgan says, seeming to finish whatever conversation her and Roy were having, as Jason tunes in. “We should get together for the girls to have a playdate. My husband works at GCPD so we don’t get out too much with other parents.”
Roy nods excitedly, pulling his phone out to exchange numbers.
Jason watches the scene play out with a strange sense of detachment.
Playdates.
The word alone feels so bizarre, like from another person's life. Another universe maybe, and certainly not his.
Morgan and Roy fall easily into conversation, discussing schedules, after-school activities, and the logistics of getting two overly energetic five-year-olds in the same room without someone eventually climbing furniture.
Jason mostly just stands there, listening, watching, existing in the moment. To his surprise, nobody seems bothered by it. Other than a few confused searching looks nobody looks at him with disgust or asks about his scars. No one gives that cautious expression he’s spent years growing accustomed to.
He waits a moment longer before another parent wanders over. Then another, and another. The conversation expands to field trips and fundraisers. School supplies and apparently a heated disagreement over whether the school carnival should bring back dunk tanks.
Beside him, Roy’s shoulder bumps his lightly, a knowing look evident in his green eyes and the most perfect smile across his lips.
Jason looks away before the heated feeling rises too far up his cheeks.
Across the room, Lian and Emilia are sitting beneath a row of paper butterflies, both girls bent over a worksheet while talking a mile a minute. Lian throws her head back laughing at something Emilia has said.
For a brief moment Jason lets himself imagine it; playdates, school field trips to the zoo, little league baseball games, and parent meetings. The ordinary rhythm of childhood he never got to experience. The kind of life he never thought he’d get even remotely close to. Certainly not the kind he’d ever be participating in.
A warmth settles comfortably beneath his ribs—nothing painful, just unfamiliar.
“Dad!”
Jason startles, half the room looks up for the noise.
Lian is waving frantically from the other side of the classroom… at him.
Not Roy—Jason.
“Dad! Come look at the butterfly!”
Jason freezes as everyone goes back to the conversations. Nobody corrects her, nobody looks confused. They’re all completely unaware of the war being fought in his head.
Roy shoots him a cheeky wink and a knowing grin, jerking his chin toward Lian's direction, “Go,” he mouths.
Jason swallows around the lump in his throat, and before he can think too much about it, his feet are already carrying him across the classroom, because apparently that’s what dads do.
***
The ride home is just as loud as the ride there.
Lian spends this drive talking about Emilia, butterflies, and how their class hamster escaped once and was found three days later in the principal's office. Jason catches maybe half of it. He listens the best he can, one hand resting against the car door while he watches the city lights slide past the windows. Mostly though he watches the way Roy’s smile lights up every time Lian gets particularly animated from the back seat.
By the time they pull into the apartment parking lot, the little girl is still going.
She doesn’t fully run out of energy until dinner, but even then it’s only because she’s too busy chewing to talk.
Afterwards, the apartment fills with the familiar sounds of an ordinary evening: the clink of silverware against plates, the hum of the refrigerator, Lian's commentary around mouthfuls of her dessert despite being told not to talk with her mouth open.
Jason washes dishes while Roy packs tomorrow's lunch at the counter. Warm water runs over his hands as he scrubs plates clean, and behind him he can hear Roy opening cabinets and snapping lids onto containers. Lian sits at the kitchen island with a box of crayons spread around her, tongue poking out in concentration as she colors another masterpiece.
It’s all very… normal.
Which still feels strange when it drifts through Jason’s mind.
By the time bedtime rolls around, Jason is drying his hands on a dish towel when Lian appears beside him in dinosaur pajamas.
“Dad?”
Jason hums his response, still not fully used to the name.
“Will you read again tonight? I missed your stories.”
The request is so casual and so completely expected that it catches him off guard. The little girl asks it like there is no possibility of any other answer.
“Always, pumpkin.”
The smile he gets in return could probably power Gotham for a week.
A few minutes later he's sitting on the edge of her bed with a book open in his lap. The dinosaur-shaped flashlight spinning stars across the ceiling, washing the room in soft blue and green light. One of her stuffed animals is tucked beneath her arm, and a pile of blankets has somehow migrated into a tangled nest around her legs.
Jason starts reading.
Halfway through the story, Lian scoots closer. By the third chapter she's practically curled against his side, her shoulder pressed into his arm. By the fourth she isn't even pretending to stay awake anymore.
Jason keeps reading anyway.
Partly because he knows she likes hearing his voice. Partly because he isn't quite ready for the moment to end.
The apartment beyond her bedroom door is quiet now. He can hear the distant murmur of the television from the living room and the occasional creak of old pipes in the walls. The stars continue to drift lazily across the ceiling as he turns another page.
When he finally looks down, Lian's eyes are closed. One small hand is fisted in the fabric of his shirt just holding on.
Jason goes still. Something filled with so much warmth it almost burns settles behind his ribs, and for a moment he doesn't know what to do with it. The feeling isn't painful. If anything, that's what makes it so overwhelming.
He remembers being her age. He remembers cold apartments and empty stomachs and used needles. He remembers learning early that adults left, that promises broke, that people disappeared without warning. He remembers never falling asleep fully convinced that someone would still be there when he woke up.
It’s a refreshing thought to know Lian doesn’t know that. She falls asleep expecting the people she loves to still be there in the morning. The certainty of it sits in her relaxed posture, in the way she clings to his shirt without fear, in the complete trust written across her sleeping face.
Jason swallows back the tears as he carefully sets the book aside, easing himself free from her grip. She makes a small sleepy noise but doesn't wake. He tucks the blanket higher around her shoulders, pauses to watch her for another second, then rises from the bed.
At the doorway, he reaches back and switches off the lamp, leaving only the soft glow of the dinosaur flashlight behind. Then he quietly closes the door.
The apartment is dim except for the light above the stove. Roy is waiting on the couch, just sitting, one arm stretched across the back cushions.
The second Jason steps into the living room, his expression softens.
Jason makes it exactly three steps before the redhead stands.
The hug happens before either of them says a word. Strong arms wrap around his shoulders, and Jason immediately buries his face against Roy's neck. The familiar scent of laundry detergent and coffee clings to him.
All of it hits harder than he expects, making his eyes burn and throat tighten.
“Hey,” Roy murmurs into his hair.
Jason shakes his head against his shoulder, not entirely sure what he’s trying to say, but Roy seems to understand him anyway. His hand slides to the back of Jason’s neck, fingers carding through the trimmed hair there in steady motions.
“She called me Dad,” Jason says through a rough laugh.
Roy’s arms tighten around him, “Yeah, she did.”
Jason pulls back enough to look at him. The redhead is smiling, a soft and proud one, more than a little teary-eyed himself.
"Roy,” Jason groans.
"I know,” Roy laughs out, pressing a kiss to his forehead, then another, then one at the corner of his mouth.
“Thank you,” he says softly into the skin of Jason’s cheek.
“For what?”
Roy seems genuinely confused by the question, but his answer is simple.
“For loving her.”
The simple honesty of it nearly knocks the air from Jason's lungs, but before he can think of a response Roy points toward the refrigerator.
Jason follows his direction, the drawing there is new—perhaps from today—held up by three magnets and what appears to be a glittery sticker. Crayon figures stand in front of a house beneath a bright yellow sun. A purple dinosaur occupies one corner of the page. Roy’s red hair is colored in bright red Lian is next to him wearing a purple dress and next to her… is Jason.
There are no labels, no explanations, no attempt to define who is there or who isn’t. Just a family. Jason stares at it for several seconds before looking away.
“Are you crying?” Roy asks with his own choked up voice.
Jason shakes his head despite feeling the tears roll down his cheeks.
“It’s allergies.”
Roy glances toward the dark window, “Babe you don’t have allergies.”
“Sudden onset.”
The redhead snorts, but reaches up a gentle hand to brush the tears away, making Jason laugh. A real laugh this time—and the sound settles through the apartment.
Roy smiles and slips his hand into Jason's, placing a soft kiss to the back of it.
“Well if you’re done with your ‘allergies’, your daughter informed me she expects waffles tomorrow morning,” he states with a mischievous grin.
Jason can’t stop the grin, casting one last glance at the drawing on the fridge, before nodding.
The apartment feels warm around them, filled with mismatched furniture, stuffed animals, and the lingering smell of dish soap from the kitchen. It's loud, ridiculous, and imperfect in all the ways that matter. And for maybe the first time in his life, Jason can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.