Begrudging Affections

Chapter 1

The last thing Jason expected when he came out of the shower after patrol, exhausted and ready to fall into bed, was Dick in his bedroom, leaning back against his window with a hand clamped around his calf, which was leaking blood steadily onto Jason's floor.

"What the hell happened to you?" Jason blurted out, his hand falling from the towel around his neck that he'd been drying his hair with.

"Hi," Dick said weakly. "Got shot a little bit."

"Jesus christ, why didn't you go to B or something?" But Jason was already going over to him and wrapping an arm around his waist, pulling Dick's free arm over his shoulders and starting to help him to the bathroom.

"Was nearby," Dick got out before gasping in pain as he jostled his leg. "Fuck. Don't think I could've gotten all the way to the Cave."

"He has the Batmobile, idiot, he would've picked you up."

Dick was silent for a moment. "I'm going to be honest, I've lost a lot of blood and that did not occur to me. You should be nice to me, I've been shot."

Jason snorted and helped him to sit down on top of the toilet before hastily rummaging under his sink for the medical supplies. "Alright you big baby, what's the damage?"

"Fuck you, you try being shot right now," Dick snapped back. And then, "It went all the way through, it should be easy to stitch up."

"Good." Jason opened a fresh suture needle and a sachet of surgical thread, and threaded the needle, setting it back in the packaging before uncapping the iodine and soaking a gauze pad with it. "Come on, you gotta take your hand away."

Dick reluctantly unclenched his hand from his calf, and the blood immediately started running down his leg faster. Jason helped him roll up the leg of his suit and then swiped over the whole area with the iodine as best he could on both sides before deciding to just get stitching.

He got both sides closed up fairly quickly and neatly, if he did say so himself, and soaked another gauze pad in iodine, cleaning over the area again, finally clearing it of blood.

"Nice work," Dick said, startling Jason out of his head — he'd gotten so focused on the steady rhythm of the stitching and cleaning that he'd entered a quiet, sort of meditative state. Dick tilted his leg to the side to get a better look at the stiches. "Thanks."

"No problem." Jason taped a clean gauze pad over the wound on each side of his leg. "You're lucky it missed the bone and didn't break your leg."

"Well I did get shot, so I'm not sure I'm that lucky."

Jason recapped the iodine and started gathering up the trash. "Really milking the sympathy on that one."

"I think it's deserved."

Jason tossed the trash and started putting the medical supplies away.

"Hey..." Dick spoke up again. "Can I crash here tonight? I don't think I'm up to making it all the way to one of my safehouses."

Jason looked up, fulling intending to say, 'Well suck it up, big bird — I patched you up and let you bleed all over my floors, that's my limit of good deeds for the night,' but then he made the fatal mistake of looking into Dick's big, pretty, pleading, puppy dog eyes and his mouth wound up saying, "Fine." before he even gave it permission to speak. Fuck, shit, goddammit.

Dick beamed at him.

"Thanks Jay," he said warmly. "Can I use your shower?"

"Uh, yeah, just...hold on." Jason got up from where he was crouched on the floor and got the cling film from the kitchen, bringing it back and wrapping it tightly around Dick's leg and sealing all the edges with medical tape so the wounds wouldn't get wet.