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It had been a calm night for Jason. As calm as a night in Gotham could be.
A burglary here, some college kids selling drugs in dark alleys, a few pickpockets there. Nothing exploded that day, which had just broken Jason's record of five days in that damned city without witnessing something, somewhere, or someone exploding. Still, with the "peace", the feeling that had fixated itself in his guts was the contrary of gratitude.
Gotham wasn't supposed to be quiet. It wasn't supposed to be uneventful. If your patrol had been both those things, it didn't mean the city had taken a pause from being the hell on Earth it had always been. It meant plans were being made amidst the stillness. It meant a victim didn't scream loud enough to be heard. It meant the silencer on their guns worked way too well. And, more importantly, it meant you weren't where you were supposed to be to help.
It was the rules of the city. An attribute of it every vigilante of Gotham knew by heart since their first day. "No matter how much you try, you can't save everyone. You can do your best, but it doesn't mean it will be enough, and that's alright," Bruce once told him. And Jason tried to believe in what he said.
However, trying doesn't mean accomplishing. Which is why, on his way home, Jason's thoughts kept screaming at him to go back, to patrol for longer, to see if he could help more. He had been out for six hours at that point, from eight to one, much longer than he should for a night as quiet as it seemed to be. Every fibre of every muscle he had yearned for rest. He climbed up and down at least a dozen buildings, crouched down on their rooftops in the search of anything suspicious, then did all of that again on the different sides of the city while ice cold drops rained and hit him like small knifes.
Jason learned his lesson in the past. Don't strain yourself too much, don't go over the roof out of paranoia. So, instead of listening to the alarms going off in his head, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, shut off those thoughts, and rode home on his motorcycle. The cold, wet wind biting the little exposed skin on his body and the coldness of the night spreading to his bones on his journey through the grey streets of Gotham.
By the time he arrived at his apartment, he had to control himself to stop shivering, peeling off his dripping jacket and throwing it on a hanger. A hot shower and a bit of tea, passionflower, would help him. In most days, the tea would be replaced by cigarettes to warm his insides, smoke away the cold that made all his limbs ache, but he had been trying to quit.
The shower was set up to the highest temperature it could reach. He stood under it, immobile, just taking in the warmth the water provided him, letting it run down his body. His skin quickly turned red from him soft boiling himself. It was like this every time, every night. And it was still unclear, even to Jason, why he did it. What exactly he was trying to achieve. What kind of warmth he was really trying to pursue. He didn't think much about it, didn't want to, didn't plan to.
When the bathroom door finally opened, so much steam poured out the room that anyone would believe a sauna had been installed in the apartment at some moment. Jason strode past the living room to the kitchen and turned on his electric kettle, towel still around his waist, then went to his bedroom to get dressed while it boiled the water.
At last, the couch cushions sank from his weight as he sat down. Sighing and leaning forward, he rested his head on his hand while the other held a mug filled with steaming tea. The contact with the hot ceramic slightly burned his fingertips and a part of his palm every second it lasted, but Jason would rather that than to grab the cup holder he forgot.
He closed his eyes shut, drinking little by little from his mug, wondering if the others of Gotham also felt it, the guilt from enjoying the silence. The moments when you're not hearing explosions or people screaming, or running around the city after a lunatic, and it felt almost offensive to not be going through any of those things.
Before his tea could be finished, a loud, forceful whoosh of wind made every single window of the apartment creak as loud as thunder, snapping Jason out of his thoughts. He jolted from the couch, his thankfully almost empty mug finding the carpet, with two fists in front of his face, as if he really thought he would be able to fight whoever was outside.
His arms, however, slouched at the moment he recognized the figure floating next to his fire escape. Superboy Prime. Even in the darkness of the broken streetlamps, the crest and shoulder pads of his suit were unmistakable. Still, Jason's posture remained tense. Prime wasn't moving, wasn't opening his window to enter, he barely seemed to be breathing.
Jason was the first to act. He stepped closer and into the fire escape and, at the same time, the low thump of Prime's boots meeting the metallic floor could be heard. He liked to think he had the ability to keep himself composed no matter the situation he was in, a poker face, to never let anyone know what exactly was going on inside his head. Yet, at the sight, against his best training, Jason couldn't help but stare with big, wide eyes the state of Prime.
"Jason…" he mumbled, barely holding back.
Tears, one after another, damped his face. His hands to his elbows were completely stained in blood. The parts of the suit that weren't marred in red were dark from what it seemed to be cinder. Prime was… shaking, his entire body couldn't keep itself still.
"I-I couldn't save them," Superboy muttered, his voice low and frail. He stared at his own trembling hands. "I wasn't— I wasn't able to. I wasn't fast enough."
Many questions piled up on Jason's brain. His eyes were fixated at the man in front of him, always so arrogant and full of himself, now suddenly vulnerable and practically collapsing in desperation. He wanted to know what could have happened for Prime to end up this way, what did he see, who he couldn't save. But, much to Jason's disgust with himself, the question on top of the list, the most important at the moment, was why had Prime came to him.
They were partners who fought crime together because Jason thought a Kryptonian by his side would be helpful. It simply occurred that Prime somehow became more and more present in his life. He didn't know exactly how it happened. Superboy started visiting him during patrols and entering his house simply to hang out, and, surprisingly, after a while, Jason stopped shooing him away. How that evolved into Prime ending up in his bed more times than he was proud to admit was still a mystery to Jason.
Besides, even though they had been intimate frequently, said sweet sentences out of fervour that would be denied the moment the daze came down, and mapped every centimetre of each other's bodies by touch alone, they weren't exactly the type of people that talked about their feelings with one another. Not if Jason could avoid it.
"Jay, I—" the Kryptonian began, unsure of how he would finish his sentence; there wasn't anything he was sure about at that moment. He could feel himself physically falling apart in front of his… friend.
"It's alright, CK, it's fine," Jason uttered before he could acknowledge the words leaving his mouth. However, at the sight of Clark turning to him with hope in his eyes that what Jason said was true, he didn't regret them the slightest. "You should come in," he dared to continue.
All that Prime managed for an answer was a simple, short nod. Jason entered through the window, then offered his hand to Clark to help him inside, he couldn't imagine himself doing that any other day. Superboy took it on his own, smearing it with blood and too dazed to even realize it.
Once they were face-to-face in the middle of the living room, Jason took in the man once again, now in better lighting.
"What happened?" he whispered.
"There was a fire," Prime said, his sentence interrupted by a sob. "A building was burning down. I-I saved some people, almost everyone. But I was— I was too late. I couldn't save them."
Jason felt like a ticking bomb was on his hands. "Who is 'them'?" he asked, very careful with his tone.
"A mother and her kid. She couldn't have been older than six," Superboy cried, his voice becoming more fragile after every word. "The entire thing collapsed. I took too long in the other floors. I should have known. I could have saved them. I know I could. I-"
"Clark," Jason muttered his name, a failed attempt to ground him to his voice. He didn't think much about what he would do next, taking a step closer and lowering Prime's head to lay onto his shoulder while his other, bloodied, hand rested on his arm. A kind of pseudo-hug, the best thing Jason could let himself offer at the moment.
"I-I know I could," Prime repeated as he practically soaked the part of Jason's shirt that met his face. His arms moved alone to wrap themselves around the man's back and waist with all the strength he could use without hurting him.
"Prime, CK, look at me," Jason asked him, creating a small gap between their fronts, just enough for them to see each other eye-on-eye. "I know it doesn't feel that way, but it's not your fault."
"You don't— you don't understand. You can't know," Clark argued, words slurring out of his mouth. His eyes were glassy, his face was almost as red as his arms.
"I do know, CK. I know you did your best, you did all you could do, okay?"
"I killed them, Jay," Prime sobbed, gripping on Jason's clothes with his dear life. "I killed more people. I killed again. 'Cause that's what I do."
"You saved everyone else in the building," Jason tried to remember him.
"That doesn't change they are dead," he insisted, lowering his head, his back curving at every squeal of his. "A mother and her little girl are dead because of me."
There wasn't a single coherent thought on Jason's mind on what to do. Prime was inconsolable; at that state, nothing he could say would make him better.
Jason had once been like him, the first time an innocent person died right in front of his eyes, back on his Robin days. Bruce tried everything he could say to make him feel better but, in the end, it was all just different ways of phrasing "it wasn't your fault", which fell flat considerably fast. What helped him the most at that moment was Alfred's ever there presence by his side with a plate of biscuits and a firm hand on his shoulder. Someone being there for him was better than whatever anyone could say. Maybe, he could try something like that?
"Let's— let's get you cleaned up. What do you think?" Jason suddenly mumbled. Prime's eyes raised to meet his. His entire face was marked with a terrible mix of emotional exhaustion and genuine misery. It awakened some deep need in Jason's core to do whatever he could do to make it go away. He cupped Clark's cheek and brushed a tear away. What was he doing? He questioned himself.
Yet, the doubt didn't stay for too long. Prime melted under Jason's touch, nudging his face slightly closer the palm that held it. It didn't take more than a few seconds for him to nod once again and to painfully loosen his grip on the man.
In a matter of minutes, Prime awkwardly stood in the middle of the already small bathroom.
Jason had left at some point to grab a bundle of clothes and towels; Clark didn't remember when or how long ago it had been. Time was blurred, as blurred as his vision was on the white tiles in front of him. Nothing made sense and nothing mattered. The blood on his hands was too numbing for him to think about anything else besides the feeling of it still wet over his fingers.
The poor man could only remember the moment over and over again. Every time he closed his eyes, if the faces of the victims didn't appear to hunt and to blame him, he would try to list all the things he could have done differently.
Maybe if his main priority was to keep the structure safe, then the building wouldn't collapse. Well, but a lot of people would suffocate from the time it would take to do that.
Or he could have save the mother and daughter first. Even so, the people from the level below that one would still die from the ceiling plus and entire floor falling on them.
But what if he had been faster? Wouldn't the speed break their bones?
"Stop that!" Superboy shouted out of silence, his fists curling on the side of his body. "You weren't there. None of you were. The story was following Jason not me. You don't know what happened, don't have a say on what happened. You don't know shit!" he cursed, running his hands through his face and hair, then sitting on the toilet lid.
"CK?" Jason asked in the middle of the corridor, two towels in hand and a few clothes under his arm. He had let Clark alone for less than three minutes and now he was shouting at the walls. "Are you okay?"
Prime's head turned on the direction of the voice. His mouth hung open, the words got caught on his throat. How did he look like right now? He swallowed once, twice. Nothing left his lips. He could feel his face starting to contort again into an ugly crying grimace. And covered in blood too, God. Jason must have thought he was crazy. Was that really far from the truth?
In just a few steps, Jason was in front of him. Clark had his palms covering his face but allowed Jason to move them away. Only because it was him.
"Just, let's shower, okay? Get that blood off you," he said simply. Nothing more, nothing less.
The shoulder pads, cape, and everything extra was removed still in the living room; all that Superboy wore was the simple layer of his suit. Jason peeled it off with care while Prime stood still, only reacting when prompted. The scar on his chest revealed itself soon after; Clark couldn't stand to look at it. The symbol, what it meant once, what it meant now, how he failed it. He could feel whatever he had eaten earlier that day to make its way up his insides. Prime didn't remember the last time he threw up, but it felt like he was about to break his streak.
With rapid movements, Jason took off his own clothes, also stained with blood, which was a pity because Prime could tell they seemed to be recently put on. Soon after, his hands were on him again, guiding him to the shower stall, only after Jason was sure the water was on the right temperature, not too hot or too cold, as if Clark's invulnerable body could be affected by it in some way. Prime did nothing, didn't say a thing or reacted, he placed his forehead on Jason's shoulder and let it rest on it for as long as it would be allowed there.
A loofah with some soap was brushed against his hands and arms, trying to clean off as much blood as possible, paying attention even to the space under his fingernails. The water dripping to the floor was light red, making their way down the drain. Jason then began to wash the other parts of his body covered in the remaining ashes, carefully, doing his best to not brush too hard or fast. All the useless care would have made Prime chuckle in any other occasion.
His eyes mindlessly lowered themselves to Jason's body. It might be the daze thinking by him, nothing in the world was on its axis anymore, but he always thought Jason was pretty, beautiful, with and without clothes, inside and outside. His hands were rough and full of calluses but always moved gently through Clark's skin in occasions it was feeling so. His lips uttered swear words day and night, but met Prime's with delicacy, as if handling a sacred object. And his eyes, every once in a while, in very specific moments only he could notice, told him entire sentences Jason himself would never be able to say.
And now that very man was taking care of him. Cleaning him. Holding him. Telling him what happened wasn't his fault. His fingers massaged his scalp with shampoo. He had never been this close to him in situations where they weren't in bed. Hell, Jason never even let Prime hug him. Yet, he wondered what in the world he could have done to deserve a man like Jason Todd.
"Can you lift your face for me, CK?" he asked Clark, who answered with nothing more than a hum and doing exactly what he was told.
Jason cupped his face with one hand and cleaned it with his other, soaped, one. Clark felt selfish for wanting more. Two people died, two souls lost, and he couldn't stop thinking about this guy, who probably didn't like him half as much Prime liked him, cradling him while he cried about fucking up the only job he had.
Two forces fought inside of him, one that yearned for consolation and another that begged to pay for what he allowed to happen. His mind wondered to dark places, far from the hands that held him close. He asked himself what would the mother say if she saw the man that was the reason for her and her daughter's death being comforted instead of punished. At the same time, a glimpse of Jason's terribly composed semblance of shock at seeing him so miserable came to him suddenly. Clark's state made Jason nervous and worried, and, even though Prime told him everything that happened, he still insisted Clark wasn't the one to blame. Would Jason lie to him?
Prime stepped out of the stall, Jason dried him and clothed him before he could present any other semi-coherent thought. He answered to every request without a second regard, as if a robot doing exactly what it was programmed to do. The world around him was fuzzy, he didn't pay attention to anything else but Jason's voice while he was getting dressed, or while Jason was getting dressed, or while he was being walked to Jason's bedroom.
"Can you… stay the night? I want to have you close," Jason had asked, his voice low, a murmur. "Actually, I— I would be thankful if you stayed for a little while."
And Clark agreed, of course he agreed. Where else would he go? Where else was less worse to be? Where else also had Jason Todd?
So, they laid there, in bed. Under the sheets. Jason had wrapped his arm around Prime's side and brought him close. Another thing they never did, cuddle. Not while awake. Jason could excuse wake up wrapped around or being wrapped by Superboy, but another thing would be to do that as a conscious decision, that was, for some reason, too far for him.
Knowing that, Prime savoured the contact, the feeling Jason's hand moving up and down his back, the sound of his heart straight from the source, the warmth that came from his body. The guilt was still there, from enjoying it, but he couldn't help himself at the opportunity of a whole new kind of intimacy he only dreamt to experience. A temptation he felt he had no other option but to indulge in.
"I'm not saying I know what you're feeling," Jason whispered after many minutes of silence, hesitant if what he would say would make things better or worse. "But I lost a civilian once. Many times, actually. But the first time it happened, I couldn't eat for a week without throwing up."
His eyes were fixated at the ceiling, they grew dark the same way his entire face wrinkled just from recollecting. "It was during one of my first solo patrols, I had begged Bruce to let me do it for months."
"One night, I followed a thug to an alley, we fought. I held the gun and he fired a few times to scare me away," Jason told him, his grip on the man growing tighter. "It hit a passerby. A high-school kid."
A hand, Prime's, found its way to Jason's chest, resting right above his heart, as if trying to soothe it from the outside. "Only seventeen years old. A boy, just like me. I still know his full name and birthday by heart."
Clark observed him. "Does it ever go away?" he asked, unsure if he even wanted to hear the answer.
"No. No, it doesn't," Jason said in a single breath. Prime closed his eyes in disappointment; at least, Jason had been honest. "But life gets bigger. The sirens turn into buzzes in your ear. Some days, it's lower. Some days, higher." He looked down at the man next to him, his red eyes, his bitten lips, his eyebrows that had been in a constant frown ever since he first saw him. Clark didn't deserve a fraction of what he was doing to himself.
"Listen, CK. I know you're afraid that what happened is a sign of you becoming what you once were. But look at you right now. You're bawling your eyes out for something you couldn't even control. You're not anywhere close to being a killer. Not anymore," he stated, his voice firm, a way to assure Prime that he was saying nothing but the truth.
"Still, I could have—" Prime tried to object, Jason was faster than him.
"I know you think that. That it's your fault. And, look, you have all the right to be sad about what happened, for as long as you want. Two people died way before it was their time and all you could do was to watch it happen. Anyone in your place would be devastated. But you have to understand that there wasn't a single thing you could have done. And, even if there was, it won't bring them back to life now."
He moved his hands to hold Prime's face, so close they could feel each other's breaths hitting their skin. Tears were once again running down's Clark's cheek. "I'm not gonna tell you when to do it, but can you please try to understand that? And come to me whenever that doesn't feel like the truth?"
Prime's mouth parted open, lips trembling. He clashed his face with Jason's, teeth meeting teeth. The contact short, yet intense and carrying incomprehensible weight. He then evolved Jason with his arms, snuggling his head on his neck and pressing their figures together like the objective was them to become one. "Yeah. Yeah, I will," he promised.
As if as natural as breathing, Jason hugged him back, holding Prime's head in place with one arm wrapping around his back. He sobbed, moaned and hiccupped. It only made Jason cling into him tighter.
This wasn't a thing that could be solved with a conversation, in a single night, with a hug. Jason knew. It wasn't something that could be solved. But it could be softened, helped with. Sirens could be muffled with the sound of laughter. Shaky hands could be held. Trembling lips could be kissed. Blood could be washed off.
And Jason felt like he might be ready to do all of that.