Chapter Text
Jason didn’t usually find clothes in the back of dumpsters unless he was diving around goodwill, but the navy blue hoodie definitely wasn’t a goodwill find. The thing looked brand new, and yet also well-loved.
It wasn’t until he got close did he notice it looked like someone had tried to bury it among the piles of trash bags.
He pushed aside the trash bags and reached for the hoodie. Something that nice wasn’t worth leaving and it was big so he could pull it over his coat.
The fabric was nice, soft, and thick enough to keep him warm, he swears that it changed to be thicker under his chilled hands, but that wasn’t how clothes worked.
Unless… It was a selkie coat. But it couldn’t be. No one left coats like that laying around. When Jason’s dad would take his coat he could hardly function. But if Jason could have chosen to hide his coat instead of giving it to his dad he would have. Was that what happened to this coat? Did the selkie have to hide it?
Jason clenched it tightly under his hands. He wouldn’t ever want to permanently leave his coat, so maybe the person was coming back and he should just leave it.
But what if they weren’t? What if it was traffickers and they were going to come back looking for the coat? It would be safer with Jason than, wouldn’t it?
He sniffed the coat. It mostly smelled like trash, but under it was a selkie sent. The smell instantly soothed his body, in the way that only pack could. Of course, this selkie wasn’t his pack, but if he closed his eyes he could pretend it was his ma’s coat.
The one time Willis had let her have her coat back, before the drugs, she had wrapped him up in it. Covering him in adult selkie scent, to warn off predators and make him feel loved and protected.
So he should take this selkie coat, to keep it safe for another fellow selkie. And he could just borrow it for a while, so they both got something from it. The rules of the alley were never to do something for free. So the other selkie should expect it.
Unless they came back looking for their coat, and it was gone. Then what would they think? He would just have to come back every day and look for them.
Carrying it around would attract too much attention, someone might think he was hiding something under it. So it would be best to wear it. To keep it safe. So someone didn’t try to take it.
Jason slipped the hoodie over his body. The sleeves hung off his arms. But it was pulsing with warmth, from its owner. Jason had forgotten coats could do that. His ma’s had never done that because she was never warm.
The owner was most definitely still alive. He tried to reach for their emotions. Were they scared? Calm? Angry? He couldn’t tell. The moment he touched them a sharp staticy feeling rushed through his brain and body.
They didn’t want him near their emotions then. That was ok, feeling emotions made him panicky anyway. The only emotions he had ever really felt were his fathers, and they were always made, or drunk, which slurred and changed the feeling like someone had applied a thick, fake paste through them.
He thought that maybe they were mad or frustrated. Both those emotions sent shivers up his spine. Were they mad at him? Most of the time emotions like that were passed onto Jason.
He hoped the selkie didn’t put his anger on Jason for taking his coat. He hoped the selkie gave him time to explain before trying to take their coat back. Or taking his. He did take their coat, so taking his made them equal.
Maybe he should just turn back and leave the coat where he found it. But what if it was just a puppy’s coat who had been trafficked. Would he want to be giving traffickers a free coat and a way to control a kid? If they didn’t just sell it first. Coats went for a lot. People like to wear them to show off their money.
Would the selkie think Jason was trying to sell his coat? If he did, would he then sell Jason’s coat to retaliate?
Jason looked across his alleyway. It was empty. Sometimes cops waited by the corners, trying to catch kids squatting in abandoned buildings. None had been near Jason’s nest. But he had heard people talking about it happening a few blocks down. And Jason had been extra careful ever since.
He tucked his fingers under a rotten board blocking off a window, and pulled it upward. The space he had carved out was just big enough for him to slip in. He liked to pretend it was keeping someone out. Like they couldn’t kick through the wood if they wanted to. The wind sure could.
He paid extra attention to the blue hoodie, so he didn’t tear or snag it. Willis had lit his coat on fire before and It hurt like someone had carved a piece of his soul. It did heal, but he still didn’t like fire. He would take being cold over huddling near garbage fires.
His nest was a small boarded-off room, the moving blankets he had stolen from a U-haul van covered the windows and any cracks on the walls. His bed was one torn comforter and a couple of piss-smelling pillows. A few unopened water bottles were stuffed under a broken floorboard with any packaged food that he had been lucky enough to stumble upon.
He was warmed enough by the hoodie that he didn't feel the usual need to borrow under his bed. And he knew he should use the energy to go through his store and see how long he had before he was out, but he actually wanted to take a nap.
Which was stupid. He had slept for six hours that night. Six hours was a good number. A better number than what he usually got. He was so afraid to freeze in his sleep he had stopped sleeping.
He leaned down to pry open his storage food board when the loud slam off his rotten log falling back in place alerted him to someone else in his nest.
Jason shot back up, feet already scrambling away from the intruder, who stood still, observing Jason’s panic.
His intruder was dressed in a black sweater with a black domino over his face and was holding a… batarang. The bats often dropped and left theirs laying around, but that one looked new and sharp.
Jason pressed himself tightly against the wall, trying to leave plenty of room between him and his intruder, and his intruder’s weapon.
“Go away!” he yelled, baring his teeth. He didn’t think the intruder would listen, but he did, slowly backing away like he hated the idea but couldn’t stop himself.
“Put the knife down!” Jason demanded, still yelling. He knew it wasn’t a knife, but if it could cut, and if it was going to cut him, he counted it as a knife. And so did the intruder, apparently. He let his hand open, and the batarang fell with a clank to the ground.
“Kick it over to me,” Jason shrieked when he saw the intruder leaning over like he was going to grab it.
When the intruder kicked it over he bent down and scooped it up into his grasp. He didn’t feel any safer holding the weapon, he knew how easily those could change hands.
The intruder was still looming over him, grinding his teeth together and staring at Jason.
Jason didn’t like to be loomed over. His dad loomed over him, and it wasn’t a good loom he had seen parents do. It was never to keep him safe.
“Sit—sit down,” he stuttered, trying to figure out why he was listening to Jason. Was he worried that Jason would stab him? No, that couldn’t be it, he had listened before Jason had the batarang.
“Ok, ok, I’m sitting,” the intruder said.
“Do you have any more weapons? And don’t lie to me,” Jason added as an afterthought. If the intruder had decided to listen to Jason before, then he might as well listen now, too.
“I do.”
“Where?” Jason looked over him, but he couldn’t see a weapon on him. They could be concealed in his black sweater.
“On my person,” the intruder grunted out like it hurt him.
“Where on you?” Jason stressed.
The intruder looked away and pulled at the sleeves of his jacket while digging his nails into his palms. “On my body,” he grunted again as if he was trying to cover up words while they were trying to escape his mouth.
“Ok but-”
The intruder cut him off “Look kid, what do you want?”
“For you to leave me alone,” Jason squawked. How was that not obvious? He broke into Jason’s home and acted like Jason was the crazy one.
The intruder buried his face into his hands with a muffled sob. “I can’t do that.”
Jason didn’t know why he couldn’t do that. Was it so hard to walk away now? Why was he crying? Why was it Jason’s problem? He already had so many!
“Why can’t you? I want you to leave,” Jason shrieked. Maybe he came for something, for someone. Was he here for Jason? Had someone found out he was a selkie and now he was being trafficked? The intruder looked a little too young to be a trafficker. Maybe it was one of those ‘use a kid to bring in a kid scam’. Jason would cry if he had to lure an innocent kid into trafficking.
The intruder started to pull at his hair while he stumbled to his feet. He kept his back pressed against the wall while his body jerked towards the exit. His fingers clawed against the wall, trying to find grip. He looked as if it pained him not to leave, but it hurt even more to leave.
Jason didn’t want to watch, he tried to turn his head, but a horrific strangled yelp coming from the intruder made him jerk back to attention.
“Stop! Stop!” he screamed, desperate for the dying animal noises to stop. He didn’t know why it seemed to pry open his chest and grasp at his soul. But it did.
The intruder collapsed to the ground, arms wrapped around himself he panted on the floor. “Thank you,” he sighed, and Jason had the horrible gut-wrenching feeling that he had been the one to cause his pain.
“I didn’t…I am sorry,” he said.
“What do you want for it, please,” the intruder begged.
Jason tilted his head. “What?”
“My— my coat. I need it. I’ll give you anything,” he pleaded again, eyes moving to look at Jason.
“Your coat?”
He nodded, still looking at Jason
Jason had forgotten about the coat draped over his body, keeping him warm and content. But now that he had remembered it, he could feel the hum of desperate-please-need-pain, flowing between the warmth that leached into Jason’s skin.
He had commanded a selkie through their coat. Only horrible people did that. He had hurt him. He had told him to leave, to leave his coat. He had—he was evil. How had he not realized that it was the selkies coat? How had he forgotten?
“I’m sorry,” he yelped, pulling the coat over his head, and handing it to the other selkie. He didn’t have time to mourn the loss of the heat before the selkie had snatched it back, and curled around it like Jason had done for years when his father would hand him back his coat.
Maybe the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
The other selkie brought his coat up to his nose and inhaled, breathing it in. Jason would have done that if he didn’t think his dad would have taken it back for him being a disgusting seal.
His head turned toward Jason and with beathly he said, “you’re a selkie.”
Jason nodded his head and rubbed the sleeves of his coat between his fingers to soothe himself. “I am really sorry,” he mumbled. “I ‘adn’t realized it was yours. I was only ‘olding onto it for you, incase you had lost it, or got trafficked.”
The selkie slipped his coat over his head, and looked much calmer to be surrounded by his coat.
“It’s ok. I shouldn't have broken in and pointed a weapon at you. I was worried you were going to sell it.”
Jason quickly shook his head. “I wouldn’t,” he protested.
The selkie nodded his head in agreement. “I know you wouldn’t now, but I didn’t know you were a selkie before.”
Jason pulled the collar of his coat over his face. He was still worried that the other selkie was going to be mad. He didn’t seem mad. But sometimes people changed their mind and got mad with Jason.
“I’m Dick.” the selkie—Dick stuck his hand out for Jason to shake.
Jason tiptoed closer, grabbed it quickly and then dropped it like he had been burnt. Dick was so warm and felt so safe. Like his ma before the drugs. He hadn’t been near another selkie in years.
Dick must have felt Jason's electric response, Jason was so open without pack bonds to pour his emotions into they just blasted out, but Dick ignored the proper response to make fun of Jason for being weak, and instead asked for his name.
“Jason,” he mumbled around his coat, still covering his face. His dad would have smacked him for being rude but Dick just smiled and said it was nice to meet him.
“Is this your nest?” Dick asked him.
Jason nodded. He wondered if his coat had kept any of Dick scent in. that would be nice, it would almost be like sleeping with a real pack.
“This isn’t right,” Dick said, and made an exaggerated thinking face. “Where's the water?”
Jason scrawled at him. Did Dick seriously think he would have a swimming pool if he couldn’t even afford an apartment?
“You should come to my nest,” Dick suggested. “It’s got two gaint pools. Indoor and outdoor. There's also plenty of rooms. I’ve always wanted a little brother to play with! Bruce never wants to swim with me,” he rambled.
Jason scrunched his nose. “Who’s Bruce?”
“Bruce is my dad, sorta. He’s my adopted dad, and he’s great but he isn’t a selkie so he never wants to swim with me, which can get very boring.”
“He’s human, but doesn’t mind that you’re a selkie, and he lets you swim?” Jason had never heard off a human letting a selkie swim. Maybe Dick was doing something for him?
Dick nodded. “He loves to watch me swim.”
Jason’s face recoiled and he gagged. Bruce was a creep. Poor Dick.
Dick face lit up with surprise and disgust. “No, no. Bruce isn’t like that. He doesn’t like kids like that, he doesn’t like anybody like that, I think.”
“But he lets you swim,” Jason pointed out.
“Yeah, because swimming makes me happy, and he’s my dad, so it makes him happy when I’m happy.”
That didn’t sound right to Jason, his dad wa a never happy just ‘cause Jason was happy. Jason always seemed to be the thing he was mad at.
“He lets you keep your coat?”
Dick jerked like he was being stung. “You dad doesn’t?”
Jason shook his head. “I was bad so I didn’t get it, and I was bad a lot.”
“That's—that's horrible.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “I’m not bad anymore,” he quickly explained.
“I didn’t—well if you come back with me you can keep your coat. Bruce won’t take it,” he promised.
Jason squinted his eyes, trying to spot a lie.
Dick stood up, pressed their coats together and curled his coat into Jason’s fingers. “Bruce won’t take your coat, I promise,” he repeated.
Jason couldn’t feel emotions of deception or the guilt of lying, Dick felt strong and confident, he wasn’t lying.
“Bruce won’t mind me being there?”
Dick smiled, he knew that Jason had made up his mind, he could probably feel it through Jason’s coat. “He’ll love you.”
Jason nodded his head in thought. “Ok, I’ll come back to your nest if I can keep my coat.”
Dick thread his fingers through Jason’s. “Deal.”
Jason could feel a packbond warm his soul.