Work Text:
Jason's body didn't feel like his own.
His hands were shaking, his breath was uneven, his feet were stumbling over themselves. Everything hurt. The coldness originated in his very core. There was no way to fight what rose from within.
What came from beyond his flesh was as strong. The wind, the rain lingering in the air, the splashes from the puddles when cars drove by him. They hit him like small knives, penetrating his skin, infiltrating his organs, weakening him from the inside.
The motorcycle with him on top almost fell for the third time already. His balance was as affected as his ability to think straight. He needed to get home. He didn't have an antidote, but Jason figured it was better to go through all of that at the warmth of his apartment rather than the cold late-evening streets of Gotham. He tried to find comfort in the fact that his pain would pass, that he just needed to wait. A few hours later, four or five, and he would be back to himself. When the sun rose on the next morning, it wouldn't hurt to move, to breathe or to think. But until then, he could only imagine, yearn for comfort. Long for a moment when ice cold liquid wouldn't move through his veins, his muscles wouldn't cramp, and his bones wouldn't creak and grind at any motion.
Bath, warm tea, layers and layers of clothes, dozens of blankets on top of him. That was all he could think about as he crossed yet another red light. Although he knew it wouldn't be enough. A heater soft cooking him wouldn't be enough. He needed someone, skin, flesh, contact with another person's body and the steady beat of their heart from their rib cage, next to his own. "And who would be willing to do that with you?" his brain tried to tell the rest of his body. Blankets and the half-working heater of his apartment would need to do.
Parking his bike half on the sidewalk, half on the street, he strode to the entrance of the familiar building, his trembling fingers barely able to hold the keys to enter the lock. Yes, he was Red Hood entering through the front door a place he definitely shouldn't be seen near, but the thought of climbing the fire escape was more than enough to convince him to take the risk. He could always just move out.
Making his way upstairs, every step of the staircase felt like a thousand. Jason's hold on the bannisters was as firm as it would be in a chicken's neck. Eventually, the door of his apartment opened with a bang as he stepped inside. He forced himself to lock it with the little reasoning he still had and removed his helmet, throwing it at the dark couch of the still gloomy living room. Oddly enough, the couch groaned.
"The hell, man?" a voice cursed.
Jason switched on the lights. Superboy was laying on their sofa, he was in boxer shorts with a pizza box on the coffee table by his side. He rubbed his head supposedly where the helmet had hit him. A man with a love for dramatics. He had been shot in the same spot only a few days ago.
An answer to Prime's theatrics, however, didn't come. Jason stood in the same position, shivering, he barely seemed to be breathing, his lips were as blue as a forget-me-not. Clark stood from the couch, his eyes tightening at the man before him.
"Jay?" He took a step on his direction. "Are you alright?"
Before Clark could get any closer, Jason practically fled to the bathroom, almost tripping several times on his way there. Prime didn't stop him or got on his way, but followed close behind, worried, until the bathroom door slammed shut on his face.
A tad of guilt was felt by Jason before the utter agony from his numbing fingers began to spread through his hands, the torturous ache subduing any rational thought. Turning on the shower with his clothes still on, he was barely able to take them off and wait for it to heat up before stepping on the white ceramic of his bathtub.
The steaming water that slowly burned and reddened his skin made his condition less excruciating. Yet, it wasn't enough. The warmth didn't go any further than his epidermis. His pulse was still as low as it could be without him fainting, breathing still felt like needles piercing his lungs, and, every time he blinked, it still took a second too long for him to open his eyes again.
Jason had gone through pollen before, but it had never been this severe. Ivy's pollen was made to weigh you down in battle, to get you shivering and more tired every second, until you were incapable to keep going. This was different, stronger. Jason could feel it, he had suspected it earlier but now was assured. He wouldn't say it was meant to kill him, but Ivy really had kicked it up more than just a notch.
Every inch of skin, every fibre of every muscle, every cell on his body was agonizing with a glacial throb that Jason could feel mutilating and disfiguring every single filament of his nervous system. Tears ran down his cheek, masked by drops of water. He breathed in and out, but each attempt came out as sob. At last, his knees gave up too. Jason curled into himself, holding his legs close to his chest and letting the water freely hit his back, its effects not much more than a placebo.
A faint sound ringed through his ears, muffled by the shower's noise and the numbness of Jason's own mind. It was his name, he figured out after a couple of minutes, followed by bangs on the wooden door. He couldn't bring himself to turn his head at its direction until the same door broke open.
Superboy, Clark stood at the bathroom's doorstep. His eyebrows were knit together, his mouth formed an anxious frown and his eyes were fixated at Jason. The alien was quick to kneel in front of the man, still keeping a certain distance, unsure if he was allowed to touch.
"What happened?" he asked, his voice as low as a mutter. "Jay, is there something—?"
Jason should have fought it, he should have kept it together, had better a grip on himself. Yet, deep inside, he knew, he never would have been able to control what he would do next. At the sight of Clark less than some feet away from him, he jolted in his direction. His arms wrapping themselves around him like a shipwrecked man would to a lifebuoy. Skin meeting skin. His grip on Prime couldn't have been tighter; he held him as if the purpose was to fuse the two together.
"Hold me," Jason slurred out a plea, the words barely leaving his lips. "Just— just hold me."
It took Clark a moment or two to even have an idea of what was happening. Jason had never hugged him, never. Maybe that one time a car exploded next to them, Prime threw himself on top of him and they kinda wrapped themselves on each other might count, but, besides that, never. At first, it felt unnatural, not necessarily wrong, but something that simply shouldn't be happening. Then, he noticed how cold and wobbly was Jason's body, how weak his heartbeat sounded, how frail was his clasp considering how much of himself he was putting on it. Only a second later, Superboy found himself holding him, as if of instinct, like he had done a thousand times and now was just one more.
On the other side of the hug, "euphoria" wouldn't be a word nearly as long or fair to describe exactly what Jason felt when he touched Clark. He was holding everything precious in the world in the shape of a single man. All the warmth, all the stars, the power of every furnace there was, concentrated. He was a flick of sunlight in snowy days. A fireplace you can't resist keeping yourself close at all moments. The fireball that made every planet, comet, or natural satellite orbit around it for the solemn exchange of its heat and presence. He wanted to crawl inside Clark's chest and live there forever.
"It's alright, I have you now," Prime swore to Jason's hair in a mumble, cradling his head and nuzzling it closer to himself. "You're going to be fine. I promise."
In any other context, Jason and Clark's current arrangement would have been awkward, to say the least.
On the living room's couch, while an episode of "Gossip Girls" played on the TV, Jason was piled on top of Prime, both still considerably undressed as their boxer shorts were the only piece of clothing keeping the decency in the room. The vigilante's head rested lazily over the other man's shoulder, their legs tangled together underneath the blankets while Clark had a hand on Jason's waist and another on his back. He kept them as tamed as he could, still unsure of what he was and wasn't allowed to do —at some point, he even considered running his fingers through Jason's locks, like his mom used to when he was sick, but figured out it would've been too much.
They had been like that for about forty minutes, Jason appeared to be getting better in a steady pace. For Prime, it was a relief seeing the priorly sobbing man now much calmer. Jason's muscles were less tense, he was able to take deep breaths freely, and his head seemed to be more grounded at the moment rather than the general discomfort of his condition.
Now with his mind clearer, a dilema formed inside of Jason. While a part of him wanted to detach himself from Superboy and run away from that damned apartment for being seen in such a vulnerable position, another desired nothing more than to snuggle closer, nudge his now dry face onto the man's neck and breathe in his warmth. Kryptonians had body temperatures naturally higher than humans, and Jason couldn't be more thankful for that now.
He was feeling very thankful towards Prime, also. The man was an annoying prick but never put too little thought into Jason when it seemed he needed help. It was with him that Clark learned how to stitch a knife cut, change bandages, and to mix the perfect amount of analgesics to make a bullet wound feel like a little scratch without anyone ODing. It was useful to have Prime around most of the time. And, sometimes, Jason simply liked having him by his side.
The rational part of him wondered what would happen from now on, how their relationship, partnership, "roommationship" would deal with what was happening. Cuddling in underwear with your friend while every inch of exposed skin in your body was in contact with his, in most contexts, wasn't something that could be ignored and forgotten. Did Jason even want it to be forgotten? The sound of a throat being cleaned snapped him out of his thoughts.
"You know, we don't need to talk about this tomorrow, or ever really, if you want," Clark began, shyly drawing patterns with his fingertips on Jason's skin. His voice and fidgeting made it transparent he was nervous about what he should say. He wasn't anywhere used to seeing his roommate with his walls down like this. Even when he was bleeding out on their couch, Jason still managed to keep his composure as this unflappable guy. "I just, well, I just want you to know I'm not going to like, use it against you or bring it up next time we argue."
Jason raised his head slightly, his greyish blue eyes meeting Prime's own baby blues. "Thanks, CK," he huffed to the skin of the man's neck.
The fidgeting still didn't stop, if anything, it grew more pitched. Clark ran a thumb up and down Jason's spine. "And, uh, just saying, if you want to do this again, I won't mind it. Like, if you had a bad day or something like that and you just want, like, someone to be next to. Pollen or not. You can come to me. As bros, you know?" he pretty much stammered out. It made a grin form on Jason's lips without his consent; he couldn't help but to think about how endearing it had been to see Prime like that.
"As bros?" he repeated with an eyebrow raised, more to tease Prime than to actually question anything.
"Yeah," Prime mumbled out. "As… friends. We're friends, right?" he asked, just to confirm.
"Something like that," Jason answered. It had a different meaning now than it would have at around two months before. He wasn't much sure about anything anymore; his head had been like that for a while.
It might have been the pollen speaking, or it might not —considering he could feel almost all the effects wearing off—, but Jason could get used to this, to Prime. He came to imagine how it would be to get this close to him in other moments. And even began to remember nights after exhausting patrols that could have ended so much better if he found himself in Clark's arms. They simply fit together, like they were meant to be that way, as if it was their natural state.
He raised his hand to Prime's face, pulling a few strands of hair away. Clark's eyes widened at act, as composed as he tried to keep himself. At Jason retracting, his surprise fell short quickly; he guided Jason's hand to cup his cheek, holding it in place with his own. For a few seconds, they stayed like that, not uttering a single word, in the comfortable silence of the living room, plus the white noise the TV show had become.
"I might hold you to that offer," Jason announced, rubbing his cheek with his thumb.
"You can hold me any day," Clark answered with a pathetic little smile.