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“I have to fight with Cissie for it sometimes, but it might as well be my room. I’m the most regular guest. Other than Paula, maybe.”
Roy pushed the door wide open and held it with one heel, angling out of the way in invitation. Jason stepped past him and dumped his duffle bag on the floor next to a tidy, wooden dresser, sweeping a glance around the room.
If Roy’s safehouse was anything to go by, this bedroom was considerably neater than anything Jason should expect to see if he ever brought him to his real one. The room was small and cozily dressed, all off-white walls and earthy green fabrics. It was clear that at least some of the space had been co-opted as a repository for Will’s extra weapon storage, but if anything, that actually did make it look more believably Roy’s.
Jason glanced back at him. “You consider that ‘yours’ as well,” he inclined his head toward the full size bed tucked against the far wall, underneath the curtained window, “or are you gonna be a gentleman and take the floor?”
The quirk of Roy’s mouth was all flirtatious smirk and reckless promise. The mattress bounced as he took a seat, thighs spread wide and revealing in his ridiculous, too-thin sweatpants as he leaned back on his hands.
“Now, now, Jaybird. Didn’t Bats ever teach you how to share?”
He was the picture of ease as he fixed Jason with an innocent tilt of his head—as if happenstance alone was responsible for putting every curve of his lean, muscled legs and noticeable dick print on display for him like a full course meal on a silver platter. That it was simply Jason’s fault for noticing.
Jason resisted the urge to roll his eyes, ignoring Roy’s obvious peacocking.
“I’m not sleeping in the same bed with you at your brother’s house.”
If Will saw and then told Dick, he’d never hear the end of it. He was here to drum up allies, not gossip.
Roy’s cheeks dimpled dangerously out of the corner of Jason’s eye. His gaze dragged slow and blatant from the hollow of Jason’s throat to his thighs and back again. “Oh, I’m not exactly asking you to.”
Jason’s cheeks betrayed him. He angled his back to Roy under the guise of inspecting the contents of the lone, tall bookshelf.
“I’m also not having sex with you at your brother’s house,” he drawled, exasperated.
Roy’s reflection hefted an exaggerated shrug in one of the shelves’ silver photo frames. “Technically, he’s my clone.”
Jason exhaled a long breath through his nose, head tipping back.
Roy wasn’t slick. He was trying to get Jason riled up enough to march over there and kiss him. He was trying to distract Jason from his nervousness so he didn’t run out of the house and drive as far as possible in the opposite direction.
Unfortunately, it was working.
Roy pressed his advantage, shoving to his feet and swaggering up behind him. His mechanical hand traced slowly over Jason’s waist, the cool brush of his metal fingertips skimming in towards Jason’s belly button. The other spread wide over the swell of Jason’s thigh, long, crooked fingers pressing at the inner seam of Jason’s pants, searing in contrast.
Jason’s jaw clenched. He resisted looking behind him.
“—Harper,” he warned, barely keeping his voice from trembling. He could hear Roy’s stupid grin.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
His breath ghosted along the back of Jason’s ear, his body a warm and solid mass at Jason’s back. Heat erupted low in Jason’s belly, blooming bright over his cheeks. God, he was going to fucking kill him. He decided to tell him so.
“One of these days, I’m going to fucking kill you.”
He didn’t sound the slightest bit convincing. Roy laughed by Jason’s jaw. “I can think of worse ways to go.”
Jason’s frustration and desire spilled over. He whipped his head to the side and yanked Roy forward by the hair, kissing him squarely on his stupid, smart mouth. Roy gasped sharply through his nose, tightening his grip, and leaned more of his weight against the expanse of Jason’s back. Jason sank into him in kind, sliding Roy’s flesh hand higher up his leg, then inward.
Roy Harper’s groan had a way of thrumming deep inside his bones—of quite literally getting under Jason’s skin—shaking apart his foundations. He hated him for that. He adored him for it more.
“Fucking impossible,” Jason muttered.
Roy popped open the button of Jason’s jeans, too distracted to hear him. “Mm?”
Jason answered by unzipping his fly as well and shoving the jeans down roughly. Or, at least he tried to. The stupid fabric always found a way of catching on his thighs. Roy’s eager hands rose to Jason’s waistband without hesitation to take over. His mouth latched onto the top of Jason’s spine.
Jason’s heartbeat skyrocketed as a shiver raced down the center of his back, goosebumps erupting over the top of his shoulders and the nape of his neck. Roy peeled Jason’s jeans down further, dragging them to Jason’s knees where they didn’t hug so tight. Then Roy was down on his knees, jerking Jason’s pants abruptly to the ground.
Jason nearly lost his balance, tipping forward onto the balls of his feet. Roy steadied him, hands smoothing over the points of his hips, then the backs of his legs, thumbs dipping up beneath the fabric of his boxer briefs to trace the bottom curve of his ass.
“How much can I kiss you then,” Roy asked, half joking, as he nosed under the hem of Jason’s shirt—speaking a hair’s breadth above the dip of his lower back, “before it counts as having sex with me?” Jason was half hard already, heart thumping against his ribs.
He was never one to back down from a fight, but this wasn’t one Jason ultimately wanted to win.
Jason sighed. “You always need to find shit out the hard way, don’t you, Harper?”
Roy grinned—a bright flash of trouble—then sprung to his feet and pulled on Jason’s hand.
Jason was ninety-percent sure having Roy’s mouth pressed anywhere besides his lips still counted at least as sex-adjacent. His body certainly seemed to agree with him.
He was on his back on Roy’s small bed, the boy in question slotted between Jason’s spread, bent knees and determined to make a meal of Jason’s neck. Jason was so hard it was embarrassing, his breath coming in harsh, ragged pants.
He’d given up trying to stop himself from clinging to him. Given up even more easily on masking just how much Roy was affecting him. Roy wasn’t an idiot, he already knew.
Jason had been wrapped around his little finger from the first time Roy’d said his name with disbelieving wonder. Had fallen for him the moment Roy’d leaned in for their first kiss. It was only a matter of time before Roy got wise to that as well. That he realized he was teasing out a limit Jason couldn’t maintain if he wanted to.
Roy, for his part, was achingly hard too. A jolt of electricity leapt through Jason’s body every time Roy shifted enough to rub them together, a gaping maw of want stretching increasingly wide within him. It didn’t help that Roy had kicked his own pants off after he’d pushed Jason into his bed. Only having one layer of separation between them left very little to the imagination—an imagination that, for Jason, was currently running rampant.
Roy approached kissing Jason with the fervorous hunger of a boy who’d never heard the word ‘moderation.’ He sucked Jason’s skin between his teeth with the same languid charm he used to grin. Jason didn’t think Roy was trying to be a tease, but he was. He was killing him. Roy’s tongue was laving over Jason’s Adam’s apple like he was a savory dessert, and Jason was going to die a second time, and it was all Roy’s fault.
Unable to stand it a moment longer, Jason scraped his fingers up the short fuzz at the back of Roy’s skull to the longer strands by the crown of his head, then tugged, dislodging Roy roughly from his throat. Roy’s labored breaths tingled over the damp slope of Jason’s skin, his pupils blown as he gazed questioningly down at him. Before he could say anything, Jason surged up to kiss him. Really kiss him. Like he never wanted to do anything else but kiss him ever again.
The line of Roy’s body went taut in surprise, breath stuttering shakily in through his nose, nervous and guarded. Jason wouldn’t have that.
With a heavy press to Roy’s back, he invited Roy’s full weight against him. Roy carefully followed him down, maintaining the kiss as Jason’s head lowered again to the pillow.
Jason cupped the nape of Roy’s neck and squeezed Roy’s waist between his thighs. He kissed him again more deeply as they settled. Roy loosened in stages, then finally melted above him, muscles easing from head to toe as he let Jason’s tongue delve past his lips.
Jason kissed him rough and greedy until neither of them could breathe properly. He kissed him like he was a man about to drown. He was. He had. He’d tumbled straight into the deep end with Roy Harper, and had no hope in hell of resurfacing now.
Finally, Roy wrenched their mouths apart with a heavy gasp, his rib cage expanding into his. Jason’s eyes slit open to look at him, an indecipherable look playing across the other boy’s face.
Roy’s throat bobbed thickly as his breathing evened. He coaxed up a self-deprecating smile. “Careful, hoodsie cup. You keep kissing me like that and I’ll start to think you actually like me.”
Jason skimmed his thumb over a cluster of small, brown moles hiding just below Roy’s collar. His voice barely rose above a whisper. “Well. Keep kissing me back like that and I may start to think you want me to.”
There was a boyishness to Roy’s face that only became apparent when his walls fell all the way down. When he let his heart hang open.
“Jay…” he started softly.
Jason barely registered the jangle of the knob before the door suddenly banged open. They sprang apart so fast they may as well have teleported.
“Uncle Roy!!”
Jason’s vision went spotty from standing too quickly, his blood clearly still elsewhere even as his heart rate spiked. At first, his split-second glance toward the door revealed nothing. Then his eyes traveled downward as he heard a loud thunk.
In her haste to say hello, Lian had tripped and fallen forward, her little hands flailing out to catch herself on the hardwood floor.
To his credit, Roy scooped her into his arms with sweet concern before even thinking to put pants on. Jason, meanwhile, took full advantage of that extra, distracted second to snatch Roy’s discarded sweatpants off the floor and tug them on.
And to think he’d been regretting the paranoid choice to keep their shirts on.
“Whoops.” Roy rubbed Lian’s hand gently, his thumb nearly the full width of her wrist. “You all right there, bean sprout?”
Lian didn’t answer, ignoring what was clearly old news to her already in favor of staring with big brown eyes at the deer-in-the-headlights that was Jason.
“You’re tall,” she informed him.
An amused huff rose unbidden to Jason’s lips. Ah, five year olds. Well, at least she probably had no idea what he and Roy had been doing, thank fucking god.
“Nice to meet you too, Speedy.”
All suspicion fled her face as it erupted into a bemused, unbridled grin. “I’m not Speedy!” she corrected, like that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
“No?” Jason asked, feigning shock. “Guess your uncle had it wrong then. He said you two were doing all kinds of bow and arrow training recently. I figured that meant you’d be putting on the feathered hat and kicking butt just like your old man.”
Lian dissolved into giggles like he was being ridiculous, her nose, so like her mother’s, scrunching up adorably with mirth.
“Don’t give her any ideas.” Roy hoisted her higher on his hip. “Will would kill us both.”
“Eh, let him try.” Jason shoved his hands in his borrowed pockets with a cocksure shrug. “I could use the workout.”
Considering her parentage, Jason somehow doubted Lian would be the kind of kid who’d give anyone else a choice in the matter regardless, if it came to it. Their littlest Harper was pure, gleeful exuberance in her uncle’s arms, holding that exact same spark of trouble in her smile laced with sunshine.
God, she really looked just like him.
It must have been so strange for Roy, waking up to the revelation that he not only had a clone, but said clone was a father. To see his own features reflected in this rowdy little girl. It was certainly strange enough for Jason to have Lian there in front of him, like it was no big deal. Cheshire had been extremely cagey when it came to discussing her daughter with anyone on Infinity Island. Protective to a fault.
He couldn’t blame her.
“Hey, Lian, guess what?” Roy gestured his head toward Jason. “Do you know who that is?” Lian shook her head. “That’s Jason. Uncle Dickie’s brother. Remember how I told you I was bringing him to visit?”
She turned her attention to Roy with an inquisitive stare. “For ‘til after dinner?”
“Nope. All the way until tomorrow. I’m sleeping over, and he’s staying too.”
“Oh! Yeah,” Lian agreed as if she’d known it all along, flopping a bit to the side as if in thought. “Jason’s staying til tomorrow, ‘cause Daddy said we needed extra groceries because of company, and you usually stay when Bà doesn’t.”
“Is that who brought you home?” Roy asked. “Were you with Bà today?”
Lian didn’t answer, busy studying Jason again like she was piecing something together.
“Are you Uncle Dickie’s big brother?” she asked pointedly. “‘Cause Daddy said you’re his little brother but you’re bigger.”
Okay, yeah, he liked this kid already.
Jason grinned. “You know what, I think you have the right idea. Next time you see him, tell him that from now on, I get to be the big brother.”
“Um, excuse me, Earth to squeaker,” Roy redirected, poking her stomach until she squirmed. “Did Bà bring you home? Or was it Auntie Mouse?”
“Daddy brought me,” Lian answered finally. “but I brought all the fruit in.”
Ah. The boys exchanged a look. Will was probably unloading everything from the grocery store as they spoke, Lian serving as the cockblocking canary in the coal mine. Nervousness invaded Jason’s stomach again full force.
Fucking hell. Pull yourself together, Todd. It’s just Will. It’s just Artemis. It’s not that big a deal.
Except it was, wasn’t it? No matter how much he tried to tell himself otherwise.
Alfred had given him a lot of books when they took him in, but not the well worn copy of Pride and Prejudice Jason had secretly coveted. The one she caught him pilfering from her room at the cave in the dead of night so many times that she finally just told him to keep it.
She’d been one street over his entire childhood, they’d discovered. Probably even frequented the same corner store.
Bruce may have tried to raise him, and Dick may have tried to love him, but Artemis was the one who’d gotten him in a way his adopted family never could.
As for Will…he wasn’t just his brother’s hot, older friend anymore. He was Jade’s husband. Roy’s clone. Two people Jason now owed his life to.
“Hey, Uncle Roy?” Lian ducked her head close to his conspiratorially, pulling Jason out of his thoughts.
“Yeah, baby girl?”
Lian cupped her hands around Roy’s left ear, voice just a smidge too loud to actually be an effective whisper. “Did you know that Auntie Mouse is—um—did you know that Auntie Mouse has a boyfriend Jason too?”
It took every ounce of Jason’s self control not to snort. The look on Roy’s face was priceless, his cheeks decidedly crimson.
“Uh—”
To be fair, Jason didn’t know what to say to that either. They’d yet to actually talk about it. Put a word to it. Give up the façade that they could still get up and walk away.
(His stomach clenched just thinking about it).
“That’s a different Jason, kiddo.”
“I know,” Lian scoffed. Roy floundered.
“Is that what your dad told you?” he settled on at last. “That that’s what Jason is?”
“No,” Lian said, like Roy couldn’t possibly be more of an idiot, “but you were kissing him.”
Jason had to quite literally hold his breath to contain himself. He was 99% sure there was a ‘duh’ built into the end of that sentence, her tone so hilariously reminiscent of Artemis it ought to be a crime.
Well. So much for her having no idea what they’d been up to. At least if the only thing she tattled on them about was kissing, they might get to skip the lecture about rudely taking advantage of their host’s empty house.
Roy glanced over his shoulder at Jason, shrugging with a sheepish grin. “I mean, she’s got me there.”
Jason shook his head softly, wiping a hand over his mouth to hide his smile.
“You know, Lian,” he said, “your Uncle Roy was just telling me how nice it would be to surprise Arte—uh, Auntie Mouse with some flowers as a gift when she gets home. We have to finish unpacking though, so you think you and your dad could go for a walk and pick some? It’d really help me out.”
“Oh!” Lian’s eyes blazed to life with purpose. “Auntie Mouse loves sunflowers,” she announced, squirming in Roy’s arms as she tried to get down. “I’ll get it.”
The moment Roy put her down, she took off running.
“Make sure you take as much time as you need to grab the best ones, okay?” Roy called after her.
“Yes!” Lian called back loudly as she raced down the hall. Roy closed the door firmly behind her.
A loaded silence descended as her footsteps faded toward the front of the house. Roy ran a hand over the fuzz on the back of his head.
The moment their eyes met, Jason finally lost it, bending over double as Roy covered his face with his hands.
“Fuck me,” Roy groaned, utterly mortified. “That’s it. I’m never bringing you here again.”
Jason’s cackles hiccupped out of him as he fell back on the bed. Maybe it was the pent up nerves, or maybe it was just all too ridiculous. Either way, he couldn’t stop.
There was that look again, of open wonder, as Roy held Jason in his gaze. One corner of Roy's mouth lifted into a bemused little smile.
Jason was still grinning dopily up at him as Roy crossed the room to flop beside him. Eventually he caught his breath, laughter petering away.
Exhaling heavily, he lifted his arms away from where he’d been clutching his aching sides, stretching until his fingertips skimmed the wall behind him. Roy’s eyes trailed the length of his torso, watching Jason’s muscles shift beneath his skin.
God, it made him crazy, that open desire. Jason swore Roy never tried to hide a single glance.
Embarrassed all over again, Jason crossed his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, filling the quiet with his deep and steady breaths.
“...Maybe I do,” Roy murmured after a while, apropos of nothing. Jason turned his head.
Roy said it casually enough to come off as incidental, but the line of his body was tense. He didn’t clarify further, but Jason supposed he didn’t need him to.
Jason’s chest felt too tight, butterflies rioting in his stomach. Clearly I more than just like you, dumbass, he wanted to tell him, picking up their former tangent. Instead, he rolled to face him.
He didn’t think Roy was going to kiss him again without an answer, so. He swallowed thickly, forcing the words out.
“...Maybe I do, too.”
Roy’s head jerked up involuntarily to look at him. There was a longing there that Jason hadn’t expected. A disbelief so potent it hurt. Jason wanted to shy away from the vulnerability of it all. He wanted to punch a lecture into him about how of course I do, you’re perfect.
“Jay…” Roy started again, voice nearly cracking. “I—”
“Don’t,” Jason rasped tightly. “Don’t say anything. Just—just…” Just kiss me again, you asshole, was what he was trying to say. Roy seemed to get the message.
He crushed his lips to Jason’s with a fervor that made Jason’s chest ache. Jason gave himself over to it, pushing back against him fiercely and fisting the fabric of Roy’s shirt.
Abruptly, Roy stopped short and broke away, springing to his feet and angling toward the door. Jason’s stomach dropped, confused panic blooming inside him.
What—? He sat up as his throat began to close, heart threatening to shatter at the sight of Roy’s retreating back.
Roy didn’t leave, though. Perplexingly, he shoved a heavy, old weapons case underneath the doorknob instead.
“What…?” Jason voiced aloud this time.
“I’ve got a long list of things I wanna do to you right now,” Roy said, making sure the case was secure, “and getting interrupted again? Not one of them.”
Oh.
Relief knocked Jason’s laughter loose again. Roy looked at him like he wanted to bottle up the sound and savor it later. He walked back to the edge of the bed, pushing lightly at Jason’s chest.
Jason lay back, thighs falling automatically open. Roy’s gaze lidded, turning ravenous. Rapturous. His voice was all husk.
“Fuck, you are so…” His eyes trailed over Jason helplessly as he knelt above him. Jason’s heart pounded, likewise feeling something dangerously close to hope.
This time, when Roy kissed him, he did it with his whole body. This time, when Jason kissed back, it felt like lighting the wick of a firework.