Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?
(JayDick - Vet and Mercenaries AU)
Dick kissed Jason passionately, his hands roaming down the wall of muscle that was his very sexy, flight attendant lover. He still couldn’t believe how quickly he was falling for the large, powerful man lying on his bed. Dick was sitting on Jason’s hips, rolling his own every now and then, pulling the most exquisite noises from him.
He looked down at Jason’s body, bared before him with only a sheet separating them from one another. There were a lot of questionable scars. Ones that were concerning. Dick wasn’t a fool; he’d seen plenty of bullet wounds to know what they looked like. Both on people and on various animals.
“Something on your mind, Babe?” Jason asked as he reached up and placed his hand gently on the side of Dick’s neck.
“You’re a flight attendant?” he asked.
Jason snickered but didn’t answer.
“Why do…?” Dick bit his lip. It was going to kill the mood if he brought it up, and yet… how could he not ask? “Why do you have so many scars, Jason?”
Jason stared up at him, but he didn’t look angry or frightened, more resolved, and that made Dick even more nervous.
Dick closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he climbed off Jason. “You’re not a flight attendant are you?”
Dick bit at his bottom lip. “Do you want to tell me what you really are then?” he asked as he opened his eyes and stared at Jason.
Jason sat up, keeping the sheet in place to cover ‘the goods.’ With a very calm look, he shrugged, “Do you want to know what I really do?”
“I think, I think I can guess,” Dick tried as he focused on remaining calm and thinking it all through logically. He grabbed hold of Jason’s hands and felt the rough textures along the bottoms of his fingers and across the tops of his palms. “You use your hands a lot. Calluses don’t lie.”
His lover grinned and nodded, but otherwise he held still. Even when Dick let go of his hands and pressed his own against two bullet scars that should have struck his stomach, just beneath the left side of his ribcage.
“These are bullet wounds, and you’re only what? Twenty, twenty-one?”
Jason didn’t deny anything. “I’ll be twenty-one this August.”
Dick nodded and continued toward a particularly thick, deep scar just above his heart. “You’ve been stabbed, or maybe impaled.” He didn’t allow Jason to confirm or deny as he leaned in and pressed his lips to the flesh. He skimmed up to his neck where a jagged scar rested. “Another knife wound?”
“Something like that,” Jason whispered as Dick felt a firm grip take hold of his left wrist. “Dick,” Jason moaned.
He didn’t pull away from Jason’s hold, but he did sit up again as his right hand came up and touched the thin, smooth line that ran along his lover’s hairline. The one that began the growth of pure white hair along Jason’s widow’s peak. All that black hair and then the trauma line of a nearly deadly wound. Dick had recognized it almost immediately when they first met.
“What about this? Scalped, of course, but how and why?” Dick asked, peering into Jason’s teal blue eyes.
“Goes with the few on my shoulders, and the one on my left cheek,” Jason answered softly.
“Some clown with a crowbar.”
Dick’s eyes widened. It was worse than he thought. “You’re a vigilante?”
Jason shook his head. “No. Not a vigilante.”
Dick felt his heart race as Jason frowned and looked away.
“You’ve heard of Batman, right?”
He almost laughed at Jason, because… Wow. Of course he knew. Dick wasn’t a fool, but even if he had been, Bruce never hid that lifestyle from him or his brothers. They were all trained to take care of themselves. All three of them were taught how to fight and defend anyone else in danger, but only as civilians. They were forbidden from joining Batman on the Gotham skyline.
“Yes, Jace, I’ve heard of Batman.”
“If Batman offers a temporary reprieve to Gotham by aiding the police in their apprehension of criminals, you could say that I offer a permanent solution in the reduction of criminals running around whatever city I’m working in.”
Dick’s brows furrowed as he jumped off his bed and stared. Jason’s eyes were down, his back now resting against the headboard, sheet still firmly in place. Dick could see that Jason was clearly concerned about Dick’s reaction, but there wasn’t a hint of remorse exuding from the self-admitted murderer.
“Are you, do you…? What’s your code name?”
“Who says I have one?” Jason asked.
“You do, or you would have outright denied it,” Dick reasoned. He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re not Justice League; I’d know.”
Jason leaned his head against the headboard. “Look, I’m leaving for Paris in a few days anyhow. Can you just not try to figure this out? Either you want me to come back and we’ll deal with this then, or you don’t, and there’s no reason to worry about my codename.”
Dick continued to bite at his lip, unable to sit down or even calm down. He barely noticed Jason getting out of the bed and moving toward him. It wasn’t until Jason was taking Dick’s face in both of his hands that Dick could even refocus his thoughts on anything except who the younger man might be.
“Dick, stop,” Jason spoke gently, but with a firmness that brooked no argument. “You are not Batman and I know for a fact he doesn’t have nor condone the use of sidekicks, so this doesn’t really matter for you. You’re a veterinarian, Dick.”
He scowled up at Jason. “So because I work on animals, I shouldn’t care about the humans you just admitted to murdering.”
“Are you going to turn me in?” Jason asked as he pressed his forehead down on his own.
“Are you going to tell Batman?”
That one Dick wasn’t so sure about. “I… I don’t think… No. No, I won’t.”
“Then tell me, Love, what is there to discuss beyond whether or not you want me to come back to Gotham?”
Dick looked into Jason’s eyes and blushed. “Do you kill innocent people?”
The immediate, natural response told Dick it was either well-practiced or true. He’d like to believe the latter, so he did. Jason hadn’t technically done anything to lose his trust. If anything, the man had been loving, compassionate, selfless and rather generous in almost every instance.
“Believe it or not, Dick, I don’t always kill, either. Sometimes, I gather intel. Sometimes, I sabotage things on a corporate level. Sometimes, I steal.”
“You’re a mercenary,” Dick realized. “You know that narrows things down.”
Jason chuckled and finally pulled his head away from Dick’s. “Only if I have a codename. Not all of us do, you know?”
“Is that so?” Dick asked, trying to get back into a happier, playful place.
“Mmm,” Jason nodded and then bent down one more time to kiss him.
Dick moaned into the kiss, wrapping his arms around Jason’s broad shoulders. He made up his mind and was speaking before he could second-guess himself. “Come back to me, please?”
Jason grinned. “I was hoping that’s what you’d choose.”
