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Roy was acting weird.
Jason had been in Star City for a couple of months now. He’d come out west on the trail of an arms dealer who’d been selling Apokoliptian weaponry to gangs across the country. It had just made sense to team up with Roy for old time’s sake. And after they’d put the asshole behind bars and dismantled his organization, it had made sense for Jason to stick around; he owed Roy a hand with Star City’s villains, and it wasn’t like Jason was in a rush to get back to Gotham and the suffocating cloud of Bruce’s judgment.
He was staying with Roy, but that made sense, too. There was only one Bat safe house in Star City, and it was a fifth floor walkup. And Roy’s security was as good as any safe house’s. And he had a guest bedroom. Lian was about as cool as middle schoolers came, too, even if she didn’t seem to entirely trust Jason. Smart kid.
And yes, he cooked for Roy and Lian most nights, which was embarrassingly domestic considering he wasn’t even twenty-five yet, but even that made sense. Eating out too much just let anyone watching you learn your habits. Bad opsec.
Which was one of several reasons it was weird that Roy had plucked the ground beef Jason had been about to unwrap and divide up into hamburgers out of his hands and put it back in the fridge.
“What the fuck, Harper?”
“I thought we could go out for dinner tonight. Just us, Mia’s helping Lian with her trig homework tonight over at Ollie’s.”
Jason frowned at him. “You said you wanted burgers.”
“They make a good burger at this place.”
“I make a good burger.” Jason eyed Roy. That was the second weird thing. “What kind of fancy-ass burger place requires a suit and tie?”
“I’m not wearing a tie.”
And no, technically he wasn’t, but he was wearing a nice blazer over a silky maroon shirt and slim-cut trousers. He was so much not wearing a tie that he’d left at least two buttons unbuttoned, baring his pale throat, his clavicle, and more than a hint of coppery chest hair.
He looked…good, Jason had to admit. Not that Roy didn’t look good wearing sweats and an old Great Frog t-shirt while sitting at their—at his kitchen table. But he looked like he’d made an effort.
“Don’t be a smartass,” Jason said, tearing his eyes away from that peek of chest hair. “That is not a hamburger-eating outfit.”
“Depends on the hamburger.”
Jason crossed his arms and waited.
Roy smiled. He’d always known when to pick his shot. “Wagyu beef and shaved truffles.”
Jason sighed. “I’ll go change.”
*
“Oh, yeah,” Jason drawled, giving Roy his most unimpressed look over the top of his menu. “I’m totally getting the burger here.”
“What?” Roy was clearly trying to look innocent. It wasn’t an expression he was particularly good at, considering what a natural leerer he was. “I heard it’s good!”
Jason was sure it was. Jason was sure everything at this restaurant was good, considering that it had three Michelin stars. And was at the top of Star City’s tallest tower, slowly rotating to give diners three hundred and sixty degree views of the city through its glass walls. And had gone viral for serving a filet mignon that had allegedly given someone an orgasm.
Roy had definitely unbuttoned three buttons, Jason amended. Not two.
“Okay, cut the bullshit,” Jason said, putting down the menu and leaning forward. He forced himself to look at Roy’s not-innocent expression and not the shadowy dip of his solar plexus. “Either criminal activity is going down up here, or you’re trying to fuck the hostess and you brought me here as your wingman.”
“Oh, criminal activity is definitely happening up here,” Roy agreed. “This many rich people in one place? No question.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Come on. You know I’m a shitty wingman.”
“Shockingly so, for a bird,” Roy said, still with that easy smile. “Luckily, I’m not trying to fuck the hostess.”
“The bartender, then.”
“You remember Paris?”
Jason blinked at the sudden nonsequitur. “Uh, yeah?”
Roy shrugged, making his shirt fall open wider. “I just thought it was nice. Good food, good company.”
“Mimes.”
Roy’s smile widened, slow like honey. “I can get you mimes, Jaybird. Just say the word.”
Star City sparkled beneath them. A few feet away, a violinist was playing something sweet and lilting that Alfred had liked. Jason was about to have triple-Michelin-starred steak with his best friend.
And if said best friend was still acting a bit strange, in a way that made the pit of Jason’s stomach go hot and confused, well, Jason had plenty of worse nights in his two short lives.
“Skip the mimes,” he said, shifting a little in his seat. His foot brushed Roy’s under the table. Roy didn’t move away, and so neither did Jason. “This is good.”
*
“Okay, now where are we going?” Jason asked. “It better not be work. I didn’t bring any of my gear.”
Not that Jason necessarily expected a lot of crime to be happening where they were. They were walking down a street in the gray, nebulous overlap between Star City’s history Warehouse District, now converted into disgustingly expensive lofts and overpriced coffee shops, and the part of the city’s former industrial neighborhood that had yet to be gentrified and was still authentically cool, if grubby. Or maybe it was cool because it was grubby. Back home in Gotham, this kind of neighborhood would be home to at least three supervillains and two abandoned factories full of toxic waste, but in Star City it was mainly empty fish canneries.
“It’s a surprise. Don’t worry, you’ll like it,” Roy said, smiling. He’d been smiling a lot tonight, which wasn’t unusual—Roy was generally an upbeat guy, or at least very good at faking it. But there was something about the particular caliber of his smiles tonight, a softness to them, that had Jason fidgety with anticipation.
“It’s after eight. Isn’t everywhere going to be closed?” Except bars, but Jason was fairly confident they weren’t going to a bar.
“Not everywhere.”
They turned the corner, and sure enough, one storefront was still lit up, people streaming in and out or standing in little clusters outside and talking. READ YOUR HEAD, the peeling letters on the window said.
“A bookstore?” Jason asked.
“Best used bookstore in Star City,” Roy said. “It used to be a head shop, too, back when it opened in the seventies. Then they swapped that out for a fair trade coffee shop in the nineties. They do open mic nights and mixers and things, so they’re usually open late.”
Jason had quickened his pace at the sight of the bookstore, but he stopped short at that, just outside of the door. “If you think I’m participating in an open mic night…”
Roy laughed and opened the door, putting his hand on the small of Jason’s back to guide him in. His palm was warm, even though Jason’s shirt and blazer. “Nah, I think tonight’s a stitch and bitch. No, we’re just here for the books.”
“Excuse me,” someone said, making Jason startle and realize he’d been blocking the door for fuck knew how long, looking at Roy’s smile with Roy’s hand on his back. He flushed and backed out of the way.
“Sorry,” he said, looking away from Roy. “Uh, come on, let’s…let’s look at the books.”
He got a little carried away after that. The store was Jason’s favorite kind of bookstore—not a ton of square footage, but determined to make somewhat deranged use of every single inch. Books were crammed in every which way, two or three rows deep on the shelves and stacked in teetering piles on the floor. There didn’t seem to be any particular kind of order, either. Handwritten cardboard signs that looked several decades old vaguely indicated things like “Fiction,” “Star City History 1879-1904,” and “Gardening and Transcendentalism,” but Jason found an irresistibly angry poetry chapbook hidden among several dozen mass market clinch cover romances from the 80s, and what appeared to be a first edition of The Phantom Tollbooth next to a book on home dentistry. He needed his hands free to dig for treasure, so Roy patiently held his growing stack of books as Jason grew progressively dustier and happier.
“Wait. There’s a whole upstairs?” he groaned as they rounded a corner and came into view of a rickety staircase, also lined with stacks of books. “What’s up there? What time do they close?”
Roy laughed. “Like half an hour. But I’ll take you here any time you want, Jaybird.”
It was an objectively dumb thing to say. Jason possessed feet, and a driver’s license—admittedly forged since he was legally dead, but still—and a StarRail pass. He could take himself to any bookstore he pleased. Still, he found himself fighting what had to be an unforgivably dopey expression as he looked at Roy.
“Oh!”
They both turned. Coming down the stairs, a couple of books in hand, was Roy’s brother Connor.
“Hey, Roy, Jason,” Connor said, smiling as he reached the ground floor. “Funny running into you two here. Where are you coming from?”
“Oh, uh, we had dinner at the Stellar,” Jason said when Roy didn’t answer. He didn’t know Connor very well but Connor had definitely established himself as the least annoying of Roy’s family after Lian. A used bookstore with a knitting circle seemed exactly his speed, especially since Jason was pretty sure he’d noticed a community garden next door before they’d gone in.
Connor was looking back and forth between the two of them, a slight furrow in his brow. Jason felt himself growing oddly embarrassed as Connor visibly clocked the books in Roy’s hands, Jason’s tie, the growing flush on Roy’s face.
Wait. Why was Roy blushing? For that matter, why was Jason embarrassed? There was nothing weird about going to a bookstore with a friend.
And then Connor beamed.
“Finally!” he said. “Oh, I’m really happy for you two. Does Dinah know?”
“Uh, no, Con—” Roy started, glanced at Jason, and shut his mouth.
“Know what?” Jason asked.
“It’s okay, I know this is where Roy likes to come for date night,” Connor said, still smiling. “I won’t—what was the phrase Kyle said? Cock block you.” Roy groaned quietly. “Have a good night!”
He waved and was gone. Jason snorted to cover his embarrassment and turned to Roy. “Do you think that’s the first time Connor has said the word ‘cock’ and not meant chickens?” he started to say.
Then he saw the look on Roy’s face.
Furtive. Guilty. Like a dog that had gotten into the trash.
Had Roy not wanted Connor to see them here together? Jason felt a quick flare of hurt before realizing that didn’t make any sense. Roy hung out with Jason all the time. Jason had been staying at Roy’s house for months, and it wasn’t even the first time they’d lived together. Connor knew that, and Roy knew that he knew that.
Date night, Connor had said. Was Roy here for a date? Was he about to ditch Jason for some hot knitter over in the cafe? Jason’s wounded anger flared again. He would have just let Roy go on a date, Roy didn’t have to disguise it with an expensive steak dinner and books and making Jason dress up like they were…like this was…
“Oh shit,” Jason said.
“Don’t shoot me,” Roy said immediately.
This was the date. Roy had bought that expensive steak dinner for Jason. Roy had come to this bookstore for Jason. Roy had unbuttoned his shirt practically to his waist for Jason.
“Were you going to tell me?” Jason asked. The words were accusatory, but he could hear that his tone just sounded bewildered. “Or just wait until we were married?”
Roy winced, still holding Jason’s books, which now felt increasingly like it was the 1950s and they’d just gotten pinned. “I was…soft launching it?”
Jason frowned. He’d seen Roy shoot his shot with alien princesses, assassins who were actively attempting to kill him, and everyone in between, and never with even a hint of nerves. It was kind of insulting that Jason was apparently the exception. “What, you didn’t have the balls to just ask me? I scare you that bad, Harper?”
“Yeah, obviously,” Roy said, and Jason scowled harder. “You barely date, you’re my best friend in the world, and my kid likes you. If I fuck this up, what the hell am I gonna do?”
“Lian likes me?” Jason asked, startled momentarily out of his scowl.
“Don’t tell her I told you.”
Roy offered him a crooked smile. Jason felt his mouth twitch in response before he forced it down. “Don’t be cute.” He grabbed the books out of Roy’s hands and added them to the nearest stack, then stormed towards the door. “And button up your fucking shirt. I can’t think when it’s like that.”
The people outside had dispersed and it was quiet outside the store. Jason made the mistake of looking back to see that Roy’s smile had widened. “You think I’m cute?”
“Don’t fucking start with me, Harper.”
Roy moved closer. He had not buttoned his shirt. “I thought it was a pretty good date, is the thing.”
“It was not a date.” Jason stepped away and felt a brick wall at his back. “It doesn’t count as a date unless both parties know it’s a date. And someone was too much of a pussy to ask me.”
Roy put his hands on the wall, boxing Jason in. Jason had lost control of this conversation, somehow. He’d had it for a second, in the wake of Roy’s initial panic, and then he’d made the mistake of smiling at Roy and it had all slipped away.
“Yeah?” Roy asked, his voice a low murmur. He was looking, unmistakably, at Jason’s mouth. “And what would you have said if I had asked?”
Jason couldn’t wrap his head around the question, even with Roy pinning him to the wall with his gaze locked on Jason’s lips, even when Roy had spent all night courting him like a fucking knight of the realm. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to date Roy, to kiss him, things so far out of reach Jason hadn’t ever really even admitted to himself that he wanted them.
“No,” he managed. “We’re not doing hypotheticals. Shit or get off the pot.”
Roy laughed, soft and low. “Okay,” he said. “It’s a little late in the evening to start a date now so okay if I change the question?”
“Just fucking ask already.” Jason thought he knew what was coming. He could feel the rush of his pulse inside his own head.
“Can I kiss you, Jaybird?”
Jason made him wait as long as he himself could bear it, which wasn’t long enough for him to come across as cool as he wanted. “Sure, I guess.”
Roy leaned in. Jason watched his eyes shut, red-gold lashes fanning over freckled cheeks before he went blurry, and then Roy’s mouth was on his. A whisper of a touch, then a firmer press, warm and coaxing, and Jason’s own eyelids fell shut as his lips parted.
Roy kissed him a third time for good measure, tongue darting over Jason’s lower lip before he pulled away. It took Jason a long moment to open his eyes and then it was only after he felt Roy’s callused thumb stroke over his cheekbone.
“Will you go on a second date with me?” Roy asked. His cheeks were pink and his voice sounded a little funny. It was a relief to know Jason wasn’t the only one shaken by that kiss. Or the one after it. Or the one after that.
“No,” Jason said, unable to resist. He must be losing his edge because Roy’s mouth just curved at the corner. Damn. “I already told you, that one didn’t count. I’ll go on a first date with you. But you better make it a good one. You owe me a whole stack of books.”
Roy’s mouth curved further, irresistible, and it was Jason who pulled him in for another kiss. “Okay, Jaybird,” Roy said, close enough that Jason could feel his smile. “You got yourself a deal.”