Being a rookie cop is exhausting, being Blüdhaven's single vigilante doubly so. Add to that Bruce going off the rails after Jason's death, the Titans imploding yet again, and a rather spectacular breakup… Dick is tired.
Every single step that leads to his apartment feels like too much. It’s June, but his clothes are soaked with rain. All he wants to do is pass out; sleep through the next year, maybe. Isn’t like it could get any worse.
Dick stumbles in, and Jason shoots up off the couch. Literally, he’s been practicing flying. Nothing else to do when you can’t touch anything and there’s no one there to talk to you.
Jason watches as Dick drops face-first onto the couch, laying motionless. “You good?“
Then Jason rolls his eyes. Dick can’t hear him.
Jason kicks the couch, sending a pillow toppling onto Dick’s back. Oh, now he can make contact, great. The more Dick refuses to get up or even pull his head out of the couch cushions, the higher the irritation grows.
Jason wants... attention? He’s not entirely sure.
Dick makes a whining noise, a sad stressed out sound smothered in the couch. He hasn’t even bothered to take his cop shit off.
“Alright, sad-sack, I’m gonna climb on ya if you don't get off.”
Predictably Jason is ignored, so he climbs on top of Dick’s back like he wasn't just a ghost, and to his surprise, Dick actually sinks further into the couch.
For a moment, Jason panics. What if Dick can feel him? This isn’t how he meant to announce himself—then his senses return to him. No way Dick would be so calm if he actually felt Jason in the way one feels another living person.
Curious now, Jason shifts experimentally, plastering himself against Dick’s back. “Hey, Dickface, you feeling this?”
Dick feels something push him further into the couch and whines. Maybe it’s just his body settling. Maybe it’s something sitting on his shoulders, even if he has no idea where that thought came from.
Either way, he should probably go to his bed. This is definitely a sign he needs a nap.
With shaking arms, Dick lifts himself off the couch. Jason floated above him, shocked as a ghost can be.
Dick can apparently... feel him? What the?
Dick stumbles his way into the bedroom, shoes kicked off in the doorway. He strips to his boxers and tosses himself in bed with an awful whine, blankets haphazardly draped over his ass.
“Man, you're real sad today,“ Jason mumbles.
He tugs at the blanket experimentally. Nothing happens.
Dick shivers, too tired to move, but also tired enough that the cold and his sluggish circulation is getting to him.
“Okay, this is ridiculous.” Jason frowns at him, tugging ‘harder’ at the fabric. “Seriously, dude, I can’t do this—“ The blanket moves.
Jason stares at it curiously. Then with a burst of something—hope, maybe?—he rips at the blanket, spreading it over Dick’s form. Dick curls into it, burrowing his face in the plush fluff. He still looks half frozen, and Jason barely hesitates before layering himself over Dick, rubbing his face into Dick’s shoulder, holding him as tightly as his semi-transparent limbs will allow.
Dick shivers again, but this time there’s a sort of… resistance? It’s hard to describe. He doesn’t know how he’s gotten the strength to pull up the blanket, can’t remember actually moving, but he must have, and it feels like the best decision he ever made. The blanket is heavy on top of him, warm; almost like a hug.
Dick closes his eyes, burrowing in deeper, and lets himself imagine.
(This is chapter one of “The whole ‘being dead’ thing” by @scootboot97 and me. Find it here on ao3.)
