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kpiuniverse · 21 hours ago

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Penelope had nothing on you

This fic has been inspired by @ultimate-marysue Odysseus/Penelope's prompt here.

Roy deserves to have a little Odysseus/Penelope moment and say "you need to be able to string my bow to date me". Cue to Jason suddenly increasing the weights in every machine he owns. He eventually manages but it's a struggle. Like, he's on the floor sweating and out of breath, but the bow is strung. He's so very pleased with himself, it's really pathetic. Roy thinks it's super hot (he likes a wretched creature), the Titans are begging him to get better taste.

It takes place in an alternate AU where Jason did not die, but the motherfucker still managed to get the same character development as the comics...

Written and edited in a day (which had not happened since Vigilante Chaos and Sleepless Nights). I hope you enjoy it!

Read it on AO3

It starts as a joke.

Dick is at Titans Tower with his team, blowing off steam after a high-stakes mission. Naturally, alcohol is involved. Surprising absolutely no one, least of all Dick, the handful of unsupervised teenagers quickly spirals out of control.

It starts with them trying to string Roy’s bow. Emphasis on ‘trying’. It’s late into the night, and only the core Titans (Donna, Wally, Dick and Roy) remain after everybody else either went to bed or passed out from drinking. Wally jokes about Roy’s archaic choice of weapons, Roy counters by pointing out that a bow is much more reliable than mechanical weapons. The discussion escalates toward the respective merits of arrowheads or bullets to hold tricks, culminating with Roy deciding that Wally’s inability to use a bow renders his opinion irrelevant anyway.

It spirals down from there. Wally’s pride is picked, and he immediately snatches Roy’s bow from wherever his owner abandoned it earlier tonight. Posturing on top of their table, he loudly asks: “What’s in it for me, pretty boy?”

Roy falls on the floor with laughter and promises Wally the date of his choice – no veto from Roy - if he manages to string the bow. Pumped by the idea to humiliate Roy, Wally tries to string the bow at once. And tries. And keeps trying, under Roy’s degrading comments and Donna’s loud Wally doesn’t succeed and finally puts down the weapon with a sheepish look.

Roy’s trademark smirk is in place, and he offers the bow to Donna. Never one to shy away from a physical challenge, she gives it all she can. She can’t string it either and loudly curses Roy’s ancestors as well as his potential offspring with such colorful language that even Roy is impressed.

Roy presents his weapon to Dick next, a single eyebrow raised in challenge. The thing is, Dick already knows he’s not able to string it. He's fully aware of his physical abilities, for starters. While the most acrobatic of them in the air, his shoulder and arm strength is nowhere near Roy’s. Dick also knows that all the Arrow’s bows have a hidden release button, as a security feature. It’s supposed to prevent anybody other than Roy or Oliver from using their weapons.

Apparently, it also makes for a comical distraction among young, inebriated heroes.

Without a word, Dick slowly takes the bow from Roy’s hands as his friend's whistle. He doesn’t take his eyes away from Roy’s as he skims the weapon's surface until he feels an almost imperceptible catch. He lets his finger linger there for a couple of seconds, savoring Roy’s blanching when his friend figures out that, of course, the Bats would know all about his and Oliver’s dirty little secrets.

Still, even without the trick release, Dick is drunk out of his ass and nowhere near certain that he could actually string the weapon fully. He decides against risking making a fool of himself for the cheap price of parading Roy in lace panties and a cute dress all over Queen Enterprise - the man is shameless; he would probably enjoy it.

Dick still makes a good show of trying his best, waiting until color returns to Roy's cheeks before handing him back the bow with a knowing grin.

Roy recovers quickly and proudly announces. “Well, that settles it! Anybody that can string my bow can take me on the date of their choice and get a kiss from me. But I’m not holding my breath, losers!”

The party withers away after that, and they all return to their quarters. The next morning, the story is shared, embellished and deformed to the point it becomes an inside joke for the Titans. Never one to stay out of a good laugh, even at his own expense, Roy goes the extra mile and sacrifices one of his older bows by putting it up the wall of the Tower lounge, so that anybody can try to string it.

It becomes a fixed feature in their decoration and a good story to tell their new members.

***

It becomes an innocent afterthought.

Truth be told, Dick has a lot on his mind at this time. The bow running gag is far from any of his current concerns. That’s why he doesn't think anything of it when he returns to the Titans lounge, after updating Bruce on their outing with the Titans, and finds Garth vividly retailing the story of the bow and the unclaimed associated price to an impressionable young Jason in his new Robin’s colors. The boy – his young brother. God, Dick is never going to get used to it – is hanging on Garth’s lips, eyes wide and more focused than Dick ever saw him in the few weeks he has known him.

Sure, Dick saw the look Jason sent toward Donna and Roy's direction whenever he was around them during the weekend. But a bit of a crush on any of them was to be expected anyway, and it’s not like it could lead to anything harmful, after all. Jason isn't even thirteen yet, and both Dick’s friends are well into their twenties, not the least interested in a kid, especially one under Batman’s protection.

And if that night, back at the Manor, Jason shovels all the proteins onto his plate first and then goes over his usual shyness regarding food when asking Alfred for seconds, while grilling a bemused Bruce about the best diet to augment one’s muscle mass, well. The kid has a crush, that’s all. It’s kind of adorable.

It’s not like a heavily proteic diet is going to have any adverse side effects on a growing vigilante kid. Not under Alfred's watch, at least.

***

It turns concerning after that.

Jason's eating habits settle and become the new normal. Bruce and Alfred take it in stride and keep pushing high-protein meals toward him, never asking why. Dick doesn't let on that he has any insider information, because his relationship with Jason is still rocky at the best of times. Outing the kid’s crush isn't going to help anybody.

There’s a moment, though, when Dick hesitates.

Looking for Jason at Alfred's demand, he finds the boy in his room. Dick would not have thought anything of it if Jason's reaction to his unanticipated presence in his space hasn’t been that violent. Jason startles, pushes what he had in his hands under his comforter and quickly rushes Dick out of the room.

His little brother’s behavior is so removed from his normal one that Dick’s detective senses tingle for the rest of the day. Ashamed and concerned all at once, he uses the time Jason spent in the shower that night after patrol to go through his room.

Concern wins the match when Dick stumbles upon a bottle of prescription steroids that he knows for a fact Jason was not prescribed with. The screaming match that follows when Jason emerges from the bathroom and sees Dick sitting on his bed with the bottle clearly in sight, only stays at decent sound levels because neither of them wants Bruce involved.

Jason’s reasons for that are obvious; after two years at the Manor, he is well accounted with Bruce's overprotective behavior and old enough that it starts to shaffle. Dick’s own reasons are a lot more selfish; somehow, he feels responsible for Jason’s crush on Roy and his subsequent behavior.

They reach an understanding. Jason stays away from any pharmaceutical substances altogether - it was such an easy promise to extract from him that Dick doubts the kid really had any real intention of taking the pills in the first place - and Dick doesn’t share this misstep with Bruce. The compromise still involves telling Alfred, much to Jason’s chagrin, because Dick doesn’t live at the Manor, and his irregular visits aren’t frequent enough to really make sure that Jason keeps his word.

For a couple of days, Dick regrets his decision and spends a good part of his day job hovering over the call button on Bruce’s contact. Until he decides to go back to the Manor without advance notice and finds Jason struggling through his usual training regimen.

Dick breathes better after that. If he keeps his visits more frequent than he used to before the incident, well, only Alfred and Jason might figure out why. That’s good enough for him.

***

Then it gets ridiculous.

Dick is using one of his sporadic visits at the Manor to make good use of the extensive gym on the third floor. The natural light coming through the large windows feels nice after the winter months spent in Blüdhaven.

Distraction is the only reason Dick even takes his place on the weight bench without checking that’s already been put upon the bar.

He takes out the bar absently and almost lets it topple upon his chest from the surprise. The weight it’s carrying is way more than anything even Bruce usually uses. It’s not unmanageable for Dick, but he still struggles to put the bar back without incident.

Out of breath and shaking with leftover anxiety at the idea of what would have happened to him if he had to confess to Alfred his poor decision to train unspotted, he gets up and checks the leaded discs on the side. It is indeed a far cry from their usual regiment. He gets a look around the rest of the gym, and sure enough, all the machines are heavily loaded.

At dinner, he tries to joke with Bruce about it, who does not react in the slightest. All it takes is seeing Jason's shoulders hunching and the tips of his ears blushing to understand that Bruce is not the one currently using the third-floor gym.

Which, duh. The man has never once in his life exposed himself to sunlight if he could avoid it, and there’s a perfectly useable gym in the Cave. Dick is still reeling from the implication when Jason finds him right before he leaves and asks him to not rat him to their joined paternal figure. Dick makes him promise to not train alone with this kind of weight, going as far as assuring his regular presence at the Manor to help Jason train if that is what it takes.

It kind of becomes their thing; Dick coming over every other day after work or whenever he can spare the time to help Jason slowly increase the weight on the machines and witnessing his once-upon-a-time malnourished little brother develop into a tank of a man before he reaches official adulthood.

As it happens, regular exposure and forced trust do wonders for their relationship, above anything else Dick ever tried with Jason. The fact that Dick has to take a step back from the Titans' most time-consuming missions – space ones, for example - to be there for Jason on the regular doesn’t hurt either, to be honest. After the induced panic attack Dick gets when Jason one day calls him out of the blue, proudly announcing his intent to go to Ethiopia of all places to look for this birth mother, Dick comes to realize that without their closeness, Jason most likely would have faced the Joker alone in the damned warehouse where his mother lost her life. Dick never misses a session after that day.

Dick has no doubts about why and who Jason is focused on reaching ridiculous bench press levels for. Dick is also a coward, because he never calls Jason out on it, but regularly shares his suspicions with his Titans friends, including Roy.

Roy finds it funny, because it objectively is. He also assures Dick that Jason always has been and always will be Dick’s little brother above anything else. With what Roy is currently going through with his newfound sobriety and having to take care of an infant full-time, Dick wasn’t really concerned to start with.

Still, Dick has known Roy for years, so any extra reassurance that his old friend has no interest in returning his little brother's crush is welcome.

***

At some point, Dick starts to get a little bit worried.

Jason is only nineteen, for crying out loud! Dick is well aware that his little brother is built like a double fridge. He also knows why Jason first started to develop his musculature a few years ago. That’s why Dick is absolutely not amused by the way Roy starts looking back at Jason.

After a couple of chance encounters in Gotham and on Titans business when Roy’s touch lingers a little too much on Jason for Dick’s taste, he corners his old friend for a chat.

The next morning at breakfast, Roy makes a show of renewing the bow story while Jason’s there. He lays heavily on the ‘not interested in anything right now with everything I have going on’ and emphasizes that of course being able to string his bow will stay the only exception to his new ‘no dating’ rule.

Jason looks crestfallen at Roy’s tirade. Dick lingers around after the meal, ready to be the supportive shoulder Jason could lay his young heart on. That’s the only reason he witnesses his brother glaring at the bow on the wall with renewed vigor.

Unfortunately, the matter does not settle after Roy, deciding to go all in, brings Lian to the Tower to meet the Titans. If Dick was expecting Jason to realize that dating a vigilante single father was not the best usage of his teenage hormones, he is sorely mistaken. Jason is in awe of the little girl, spends his time entertaining her and becomes her favorite uncle in the span of the weekend, making Dick ferociously jealous.

All in all, the operation of keeping Jason away from Roy is an astounding failure. Dick is going to cry.

***

So, as the mature adult Dick pretends to be, he learns to live with it. Some moments are easier than others.

Seeing Jason and Roy develop a tentative friendship based on a shared love of sarcasm, their tendency to stir trouble wherever they go, and repetitive babysitting emergencies is easy.

Jason doesn't have a lot of friends, civilians or vigilantes. He tries the college thing at Gotham City University, and manages to stick to it despite their lifestyle, much to Bruce's delight and Dick's surprise. His impressive physique and pick-and-choose attitude toward classes isn’t conducive to building closeness with the other students, though.

The Titans always have been Dick’s, and the Young Justice initiative the newest heroes started definitely has Tim’s dirty paw prints all over it. Somehow, Jason never manages to find his own hero team. He never complains about it, happy to focus on trying to make the City he grew up in a better place, whatever not-so-Bat-sanctioned methods it takes.

Jason's controversial choice of moniker when he leaves the Robin colors to Tim doesn't help him maintain a healthy working relationship with Bruce either; not that Dick is judging him for rebelling at age nineteen and slamming the Manor door in Bruce’s face after a dispute.

He isn't that much of a hypocrite. Choosing to name himself after one of the Joker's old names, on the other hand, it was maybe a bit too much of a slap in Batman’s face. But the rogue did kill Jason's biological mother in front of him, so if anybody is allowed to claim the ‘Red Hood’ name, it should be him.

Roy’s sobriety comes and goes in unpredictable turns, until he loses Lian and... well, it’s not pretty. Jason is by his side throughout all of it, probably preventing Dick’s friend from using more fucked up coping mechanisms than his addictions. Dick might be bitter that Roy prefers Jason’s support over his, but he would never voice anything about that, since it might push Roy to stop seeking Jason’s help when he needs it.

When Jason blows up everything and everybody to jump at Roy’s rescue in Qurac without any backup, it’s difficult. Seeing his not-so-little-anymore brother really heartbroken for the first time when Roy falls in bed with Kori in the aftermath is even worse. Then Kori leaves and the pair decide to start some kind of twisted vigilante-for-hire business, Dick is too worried to evaluate where it falls on the spectrum.

It all goes up in flames, as per usual with them. For the first time ever, Jason walks away from Roy and cuts ties with everybody else. But the moment they find out Lian is alive, and a teenager now, Jason is back faster than a comic book retcons, playing uncle with her at Roy’s place every other weekend.

Throughout it all, Dick knows Jason stays in love with Roy. Because after everything the two of them went through, there is no way both the heated looks his brother throws at the redhead when he thinks no one is looking and his fearful protectiveness over the Harpers are fueled by a childhood crush. But Jason never tells anyone, never makes a move other than wistfully looking at Roy’s bow whenever he comes by the Tower.

Dick stays a coward, because he never pushes the issue with either Jason or Roy. He decides to stay out of it, fairly confident that his previous interventions on the matter made things harder for them. And if he keeps seeing the way Roy’s face dropped before hardening into resolve the day Dick all but threatened him to stay away from his brother, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

***

Everything comes down to it with a bang. A real one.

There’s an unusual number of Titans – current and previous ones – at the Tower that day. They are loudly celebrating Tim's eighteenth birthday, much to his dismay. Roy is there, having tagged along with Jason. Or Jason tagged along with Roy, nobody’s sure and nobody really cares. The two of them almost live in each other's pockets these days.

Of course, with Tim’s luck and his uncanny ability to piss off powerful beings, the party is rudely interrupted by a stressing amount of assassins from the League Of Assassins bypassing the Tower’s security system and falling upon them all. Between the genuine surprise – because targeting the Titans in their own living room, really? - and the packed room, it takes Dick’s fellow heroes a distressing delay to deal with Ra’s inappropriate birthday gift.

It comes to the point where Dick worries that collateral damage is inevitable. Most of the Titans are meta-humans or aliens or something, so unlike the Bats and the Arrows in the room, they aren't under-equipped or weaponless. But they aren't used to working together, and the lack of clear leadership shows.

One of their opponents passes both Roy and Jason's defensive positions around Lian and gets his hands on her. The teenage girl holds her own, of course, but Roy panics and launches himself at the man gripping his daughter by the throat with only his bare hands. Suffice it to say, when Dick catches sight of the situation through the global mess, he realizes there is a good chance Roy is going to be the collateral damage.

Before he can react or shout at Wally and Donna to go help Roy, Jason has all but ripped Roy’s old bow from the wall, clenched the emergency arrow embedded in the frame and strung it with a grunt so loud it covers the battling sound surrounding him. He releases the arrow right where the ninja's head is hovering over a fallen Roy, taking care of the threat. Roy freezes on the floor when the arrow passes him, gets rid of the body that fell onto him and launches at Lian to check her for injuries in the same breath.

Having one of them almost get killed seems to be the trick to organize the present Titans into something resembling a functional team. They make good work of the rest of the League’s assassins, sending them back to Ra’s Al Ghul in a handful of minutes.

Afterward, it’s business as usual, all of them still high on adrenaline. Roy and Lian are huddled together in a corner, Jason quietly speaking to them with a hand on Roy's trembling shoulder. Wally sees them getting out of cleaning duty and decides to act jealous, ignoring Dick’s signal to shut his mouth.

“So...” he announces to the room at large. He waits until everybody is looking at him, the asshole, before pointing at Roy’s bow, discarded on the floor next to where Jason is crouching. “Are we going to address that?” He adds.

The entire present company looks at him with various degrees of bewilderment. Some of them don’t realize, of course, because they are in the aftermath of a battle that almost cost the life of one of their own and don’t immediately understand what he is talking about. The ones that understand what Wally is referring to are still taken aback, because they are in the aftermath of a battle that almost cost the life of one of their own.

In addition to being in the second category, Dick is also reeling from the disaster that this has been. Suffice it to say, his temper is as short as his tone when he cuts whatever retort Jason was trying to get out from under his blush.

“Shut up, Walls!” Dick takes a deep breath and opens the eyes he closed on reflex while trying to center himself. He is met with concerned looks he does not care for. What he does care for, however, is Roy’s single eyebrow raised in surprise and Jason’s frown.

Before he can apologize and explain himself, Jason shoulders his way out of the room under Roy’s desperate expression.

He was right, Dick suddenly realizes. No intervention he ever made into Roy and Jason’s relationship has ever failed to worsen the situation.

***

It ends like it started all those years ago. With a joke.

The beginning of the end is when Jason corners Dick a couple of hours later and lashes out at him. “What the fuck is your problem with me and Roy, huh?” Jason asks while pushing him to the wall.

Dick somehow doubts a shouting match with his brother over Roy’s honor in one of the Tower corridors while the better part of every hero that was ever a Titan is in attendance is the best way to handle this.

“I’m talking to you, Dickface!” Jason escalates in the spare seconds it takes Dick to find his target. Without a word, Dick takes Jason by the wrist and all but shoves him through a not-so-random door.

They find themselves in one of the Tower cupboards. Jason raises an eyebrow at him, but Dick quickly shuts him up with a pointed remark about their weight difference and how Dick never would have been able to manhandle him here if the younger one did not allow it. Jason concedes the point and takes pointed inspiration, ready to resume his shouting.

“I don’t have a problem with you and Roy,” Dick cuts Jason before he can alert the entire Tower about his obvious feelings for a certain redhead.

Jason startles, clearly not expecting Dick’s answer to his questioning. He gets over it quickly and retorts. “Well, that’s new, for starters. Care to share what your little outburst was about, then?”

Dick shakes his head and counters. “Please, you can’t tell me that having Wally publicly grill you over your feelings for Roy felt appropriate. Roy was shaken; we all were.”

He looks directly at Jason and delivers what feels like a long-overdue apology. “I’m sorry about that, though. And I’m sorry about any part I have played in keeping you from telling Roy how you feel about him.”

On cue, the deep dive into emotional territory takes Jason off balance. He scratches his head, a nervous tick, and avoids looking at Dick when he answers. “’s okay. It’s not like I didn't always know how you felt about me going after Roy, ever since I was just the street rat Bruce brought home. And it’s not like I became a catch ever since.”

Then it’s Dick's turn to struggle. What? All those years, Jason kept his feelings for Roy hidden because of Dick? No way. No way?

“Jason,” he asks slowly, approaching the situation the same way he would approach a cornered predator cornered. Which is not so far from the reality of the situation, really. “Why did you never tell Roy how you feel about him?”

Jason looks over Dick’s shoulder and explains. “Look, I know I’m not good enough for him, okay? And he’s your friend. And you’re my brother. And...” He hesitates and concludes. “It’s not worth endangering that, that’s all.”

Dick places both hands on his little brother’s shoulders and waits for Jason to look back at him. “Jason, you are worthy of anybody that catches your interest. Why would you let what I think keep you from going after something that makes you happy?”

Judging by the odd look Jason gives him, Dick may have dialed too much on the melodramatic here. Time to back-pedal to more comfortable zones. He tries for humor. “If anything, it’s Roy that isn’t worthy of you!”

Jason defaults to his comfort zone as well. Except, for him, it’s anger. “Oh yeah? Then why did you do everything you could to keep me from landing Roy when I was younger?” He accuses.

Dick gasps audibly. “Because you were a child! A child with a crush on a man a decade older than you. Can you see how it could have been seen as concerning back then?”

Jason huffs and crosses his arms in front of his torso, making himself even bigger than he already is. His posture adding to the choleric vibes coming from him have Dick’s reptilian brain screaming ‘danger’.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jason retorts. “We’re only 8 eight years apart.”

Dick prays for patience and pinches the bridge of his nose to display that fact to the present company. “An eight-year gap is concerning when one of the parties involved is so young any relation between them falls under statutory rape!” He takes a deep breath and adds. “You were a child back then. But you haven’t been a child for a long time, Jason. And if I have kept being your brother all throughout the insanity that passes as your teenage crisis, you dating Roy is not going to change that fact.”

Their discussion ends with a hug and a joint agreement that neither of them is equipped to handle more emotionally charged conversation.

Dick figures the conversation was worth it the next day during breakfast. Roy and Jason emerge together, hand in hand. Roy sports a grin that could illuminate the state of New Jersey during New Year's Eve while Jason darts a nervous look toward Lian the moment they pass the door. The kid flashes him a toothy smile as reassuring as it is threatening – she is Jade's daughter, as much as they tend to forget it – and gives him a thumbs up for good measure. Jason visibly relaxes after that and courteously accepts the banter all the Titans present rain on the two of them.

Dick waits until the catcalls and the unsubtle innuendos recess before sitting next to them. “There’s still one thing I don't understand,” he asks, gaining their attention. “If you always knew how to string the bow, why didn’t you do it when you were younger?” He directs the question at Jason, because Dick is a known masochist who wants to imagine his underage brother dating one of his best friends.

Jason looks at him like he sprouted another head during the night. “Because I physically couldn’t, Dickiebird. You would know, you were there.” Roy, bless him, stays silent and keeps smiling. Dick insists. “No, what I meant is when did you figure it out?”

“Figure what out?” Wally asks over his shoulder. Jason doesn’t look like he has any clue about what Dick is talking about, which is infuriating, to say the least. Dick hesitates and catches Roy's eye. His friend shrugs noncommittedly, as to convey he doesn’t have any stake in the game anymore. Which, fair. Dick guesses the joke went on long enough as it is.

“Roy’s bow.” He explains to his suddenly attentive surrounding audience. “It’s not about being strong enough. There’s a hidden release in it. That’s why nobody ever managed to string it. It’s a trick.”

Wally cries outrage all over the place, Donna grumbles about how she always knew, because of course she should have been able to do it otherwise, and the others have a good laugh. All of them, except Jason, who seems star-struck in his seat. “What?” He finally asks. “What do you mean, it’s a trick?”

Everybody sobers up. A good part of the present company, Roy included, have heard Dick rant about the herculean tales of his little brother over the bow. Present company also has been in the field with the Red Hood and knows from first-hand account the kind of violence he is capable of when pushed.

There is an audible gulp in the room. Lian retrieves the bow from his usual place on the wall and shows Jason the small dentition that releases it, then effortlessly strings it with her only four feet and a half body. Jason stays notably silents during the demonstration.

“Wait a minute,” Wally suddenly says. “If you didn’t know about the trick,” he gesticulates at Jason, “how did you do it?”

Roy slowly turns toward his new boyfriend. Dick has known him for more than a decade at this point. He knows Roy, and he knows that look.

“I...” Jason hesitates. “Adrenaline, I guess?” He tries, because he might be a proud man, but he is not one to flash any type of superiority over Wonder Woman or any other Amazon. He’s a gentleman like that.

Jason grimaces and turns to Roy, as to apologize for having put his precious bow under duress. He must recognize the look in Roy’s eyes as well, because he turns redder than Dick ever saw him – first encounter with Wonder Woman included - in a handful of seconds. Without a word, Roy gets up and grips Jason's elbow to make him follow him.

The room erupts in laughs and catcalls until they disappear toward Jason’s room and Dick takes a second to appreciate their choice. Roy’s room is next to his, and there are definitely things about his little brother and his friend’s relationship he does not need to know about.

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