Little Grayson |Titans|

|Chapter LIV: Confessions|

"That's fair. But what does that have to do with whatever you are clearly trying to tell me, without freaking me out and sending me running for the hills?" Liliana asked bluntly and Jason looked at her. "Spit it out already." Liliana said and he looked like he was choking on something, as she laughed. "All that time I spent trying to shut you up, and now you don't speak? Huh." She noted.

Her phone beeped in her pocket and she raised her eyebrows. Liliana looked at the phone lighting up in her pocket, then she looked at Jason who was raising his eyebrows, as the sound of his typing was easy to pick up on. "Oh, I get it. All right, I'll play along." She said and pulled out her phone, as she opened it with her retina scan, thumb print and then her password to boot.

The messages were fewer than she had expected and she raised her eyebrows, as she started from the top and scrolled down through them one by one, reading them as she went along with it.

"Did you ever really mean it?"

Liliana raised her eyebrows at the question, which didn't make much sense to her when she read it on its own, until she started scrolling down further to the next ones and the pieces of this text-message puzzle started to come together in her head and she was surprised that it took her so long.

"You always said it, but did you ever really mean it?"

"What the hell are you talking about, Jason?"

Liliana waited to see what the response text would be and she knew that he was typing, she could hear it but she kept her eyes squarely on her screen and she waited for the message to come through.

"They could have sent Barbara or Victoria to show you the photos of Haly's Circus. But think to yourself, why did they send me instead?"

"You volunteered." Liliana realized and Jason was avoiding her gaze, precisely because it held way too many questions for a single person to have to answer all at once. "Why the fuck would you volunteer, Jason?"

"Because I missed you more than I wanted to admit, but everyone else already knew. Are you getting it yet?"

Liliana shut her eyes briefly and snippets of memory flooded through her brain.

Jason always running directly over to her after a fight if he won, like he was instantly worried about if he had hurt her or not, even if he had bruises all over him from not keeping his weapons up in a position to help himself.

Almost seeming overenthusiastic to be home back at the Manor after a good fight, whereas he used to enjoy the fighting too much to care what happened after he got home from the fights on the streets and he was almost never eager to be back.

When it was his turn to stay back on the coms unit, he always had her ear and only when Bruce had to snap at him for intel, did he finally switch to the open coms channel and Liliana was often a completely different person when he was around.

Then there was the other stuff. Like being the first one of them all to run without any hesitation whatsoever, straight into the room if Liliana woke up screaming from a terrible nightmare. He didn't seem to ever be surprised or pissed off, when he found her curled up on the other side of his bed when she had a bad dream, he just left her alone until she was asleep again.

The brutal concern and the shouting when he discovered that she was on her way to Ohio without telling as he put it "them all first" before she prodded him until he admitted that it was mostly him that was upset about her lack of communication about where she was headed to with no warning.

The exchanges that must have numbered in the hundreds at least by now of the two smallest sets of three words, Liliana realized what she had been missing and now it was practically hitting her across the face.

"That is, what this is all about?" She asked quietly and her phone beeped and she looked down at it, as for once, she was deeply unsure about what Jason wanted her to do about whatever he was trying to tell her.

"Not even Bruce knows some of the stuff that I've told you, Lili." Jason murmured out loud and Liliana was shaking a little, as she was for once completely unsure, stunned into silence and she had no snappy retort to respond to him with.

"You don't have to say it." Liliana admitted and Jason looked at her, his eyebrows lifting up at the words and she smiled faintly. "Love you too, Jason." She answered the unspoken words and she pressed her mouth gently against his.

Jason returned it with a goofy grin on his face and Liliana couldn't stop herself from laughing at the expression on his face. "Just remember that my brother is a cop. I wouldn't be surprised if he still has a bunch of standard police-issued weapons somewhere." She reminded him and Jason was laughing at the words, as he moved his arms around her and went back to resting her head on his arm, happier than she had been in a long time.