Soft

Darkness clung to the boys, gently settling into the room like an old friend. Hours previous the team had completed a mission and shared dinner together. Exhausted, the pair decided to spend the night at HQ; El Paso and Central City could wait till morning. Jaime, already stripped to boxers, crawled into bed. He laid on his side, curled, leaving a space for Bart. The muscles in Jaime’s back relaxed, allowing a dull ache to ebb through him. A breath escaped him as he pulled the covers to his waist, stretching his muscular legs.

Bart, beside the bed, was a shadowy figure, his features becoming clearer as Jaime’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. The younger boy pulled at the t shirt layered above a button up, abandoning it to the floor of his room. Breathing slowly, he moved to the collar of the second shirt, fiddling with the buttons before actually undoing them. His fingers felt sticky with sweat. Jaime closed his eyes and thought about all of Bart’s civies: long hoodies, long shirts, long pants--all concealing, like his skin didn’t want to be seen by the sun. Or the team. Jaime’s toes curled. His speedster was always cloaked in clothes, always cloaked in something.

But for now, he was bare in the darkness. The bed shifted under Jaime, causing his eyes to peel open, sleep clinging desperately at their corners. Bart climbed into the curve of Jaime’s body. Pressing closer, Jaime could feel the jagged skin of Bart’s frame. The scars no longer surprised him; they had become the familiar landscape of his boyfriend’s anatomy.

Bart wrapped around him, adhering himself to the older boy. The Reach had been gone for years now, but it was like if Bart didn’t hold on to Jaime tight enough, he might slip away; close was never close enough.

Jaime had gotten used to this too, immersing himself into his tangle of a boyfriend, intertwining their legs, moving his hands around the speedster. The scars littering his skin fumbled under the older boy’s fingers. Jaime tried not to let them remind him of shackles and smog and death. He wilted with guilt, his stomach aching at the thought.

Bart borrowed closer still, “Hey.”

He breathed hotly, fingers digging into Jaime’s skin. Shifting uncomfortably against his now flaccid boyfriend, “Don’t make it weird.” He needed Jaime to be present. Bart didn’t blamed him for the weight of his scars. They were too heavy, too suffocating, too all-consuming to pin against the sugar in Jaime’s fingers. He needed him to feel the same.

“I need you here,” He hummed against Jaime, who jolted into his hold, startled by Bart’s annoyed vibrating.

“I-I’m sorry, carino,” The words tumbled clumsy out of his dry lips. Unconsciously he bit and released his bottom lip.

“Don’t be, that was another life, okay?” It was rare the hardness the future had instilled in Bart rose to the surface. Being in the past had coated him in a softness that seemed so familiar to Jaime. He’d kissed it so many times: when the speedster mispronounced Spanish words, when he’d touched his fingers to Bart’s lips to quiet his incessant talking, when he cooked homemade food for his ravenous partner. Bart’s soft exterior had become so commonplace that when his edges were exposed, Jaime recoiled at their sting—at the idea his hands had sharpened them.

“I—“Jaime began to protest but Bart’s lips caught him before it could form on his tongue. The redhead tried to seal the subject with a kiss, lock it away with the rest of fragments the future had left in him. He ghosted his hands over Jaime’s chest, coaxing a groan from the older boy.

Jaime grabbed his elbows, “Bart.”

Face twisted with impatience, a look Jaime knew well, he replied, “What?”

“You can’t always do this hermano.”

Bart moved to his neck, nibbling at the tender brown skin. Jaime had tried to have this exact conversation before, Bart always slipping away before it came to fruition.

“You have to talk about it at some point.”

Annoyed, Bart bit at Jaime’s flesh, “Why? What’s there to talk about?”

Jaime’s hands felt heavy. He thought about the weight of his plasma cannon, he thought about it pointed at Bart, he squeezed. Feeling Jaime slipping into visions the future again, Bart said, “Jaime, I’m here. I’m here and I’m fine and there’s nothing to talk about.”

Jaime touched his face, “I just want—“

“What? For me to mope? To cry? Where I’m from you can’t do that. Jaime, I can’t do that.” Bart huffed, his chest hard. Where he was from the drag of sorrow got you killed—if you slowed down enough to feel it, the smog would burn through your skin. Bart had survived many things; he could not stand to be eaten alive now. Not where he had hot food anytime his stomach whined, clean running water, Jaime. In a time where Bart could be laying against Jaime, he did not want to deal with the trauma shifting under his skin. It didn’t matter that it ghosted so close to the surface that Jaime could feel the scarring with his hands. Or that he still woke up violently in cold sweats some nights or that his hands still hesitated when they ran over the scarab at the base of Jaime's neck. Bart breathed deeply, trying to break up the glue in his lungs, “I can’t.”

“Bart.” Jaime challenged, “You’re not there anymore, you're allowed—“

“You’re right,” Bart shot back, “I’m not. So there’s no need to talk about it.”

Frustrated, hands grasping at Bart’s marred skin, Jaime said, “It doesn’t just go away.” Bart scrunched his face bitterly, hurt sloshing in his belly. He thought about the times Jaime ran his fingers through matted hair to calm the night terrors, the times Jaime had quieted the bubbling anxiety stirred by snow that looked too similar to ash, the times Jaime had pressed his lips to Bart's temple and assured him he was himself until the hyperventilating stopped.

“You don’t get to decide that,” He said quietly, all teeth.

Jaime pursed his lips, but pressed, “Bart, I’m here. “ He felt the suffocating urge to pull Bart into him, to envelope the child soldier beside him, to hold together the pieces of him that threatened to fall away. So he did, muttering, “I’m here,“ He wanted Bart to be soft against him, to be soft all the way through.

“Fine,” Bart sighed, shuddering into his boyfriend’s desperate hold, “Fine.”

Bart took a moment and relaxed all his muscles. The older boy’s hands caressed his skin, touching the scars gingerly. Jaime wanted Bart to melt into him, to whisper the stories behind each ridge and valley adorning him. He wanted all the smog inside of Bart to come billowing out, to allow Jaime to reach in and rebuild the abandoned buildings.

So he did.