#rubitan

jay has dreams (no. not dreams. nightmares.) of the cracks in his heart in his heart smoothing under dick’s touch, the faded color brightening so his heart is as luminescent as it was in his earliest memories. just as beautiful.

jay has to tell himself these are nightmares, because if these are dreams then jason would have to admit how much he wants. how much he needs. and if jason does that then he thinks the tenuous integrity of his heart just might shatter without him even having to hand it over to anyone else to mistreat.

jason and dick both have been burned too many times, given their heart away too people who should have cherished it only to have them carelessly maimed.

the worst part is that jason and dick blame themselves. for not being good enough. for choosing the wrong person to hold their heart.

jason curses himself a thousand times over for his blind trust in sheila haywood, birth mother or not.

dick mourns over the cracks that line his heart from the worst of his fights with bruce, the times when they’ve used their knowledge of each other to his where it hurts. he faults himself for the neat cleave of his heart after babs left him, for not knowing how to give her the support she needed as she grew beyond batgirl and into oracle.

It’s ridiculous to blame themselves of course. love isn’t without its risks. 

(it wasn’t even always a deliberate action on the heart holder’s part that caused damage. catherine todd and mary grayson were both in possession of their son’s hearts when they died.)

there are a lot of reasons for these two boys to wrap up their hearts and keep them close.

but then there comes a day when jason has a close call on patrol and dick ends up pulling jason in by his collar, shouting that he couldn’t stand to lose jason again. 

it’s fraught and intense and jason doesn’t know what to do with the fact that dick seems to care so much.

jason yells right back, anger creeping over over him, asking why it matters if he’s reckless. who would give a damn if he up and jumped off wayne freaking tower. 

nobody gave a crap when he was robin, why would they care now that he’s the big bad red hood.

dick’s about to slap him for the utter stupidity of that remark but he’s interrupted by jason shoving something into his hands. he nearly drops it.

in a mad effort to drive dick away (it’s gonna happen sooner or later. might as well be now) jason pushes the pieces of his heart into dick’s hands. 

jason’s certain his heart’s repulsive state will make dick to leave in disgust.

instead, dick looks between jason and the pieces of jason’s heart with wide eyes, his fingers curling protectively around the worn edges.

“why did you do that,” dick asked, his voice unsteady.

it hadn’t been the plan for dick to stick around, and now that he had jason couldn’t think of anything to tell dick but the truth. 

“because i thought it would make you leave.” jason smirked, but there was no real humor in it. 

dick stared at jason blankly for a moment then threw back his head, he was laughing so hard.  

there was never a question of him treating jason’s heart as anything but precious, broken though it was. and dick shouldn’t have expected jason to react any differently to his own broken heart.

he walked over to jason, who was looking at dick as if he wasn’t sure whether to get angry or check dick for a head injury. jason jumped when dick pressed the pieces of his own heart into jason’s broad palms.

“are you crazy,” jason yelped as his hands curled carefully, tenderly around dick’s heart. 

dick just chuckled and pressed a chaste kiss to the heart in his own hands, delighting in the way it caused a goofy smile to overtake jason’s face.