always with the Dick jokes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrelevant) wrote2011-03-26 08:04 am
irrelevant) wrote2011-03-26 08:04 am
Entry tags:
[fic] pins and needles (DCU)
pins and needles
DC comics | Jason Todd, Dick Grayson | Jay/Dick (sort of) | pg-13 | ~5500 words
for Gloria. her prompt was: sharp. set somewhere before Countdown, and canon here is hand-wavy, oh but very, so go on and put your hands in the air, wave ‘em around like you just don’t care. Jay sure doesn’t.
summary: in which there is Jason and Dick and rain. and badly sung big-hair rock. also, a cat.
In July, in Gotham, when it rains, it pours.
It thunders and lightnings and fries people stupid enough to be walking around outside, but mostly it just pisses down like a mother.
Jason knows the signs, or he used to. Once upon a time and far a-fucking-way, he’d have recognized the smell, the ozone prickle of it creeping up on him, in time to get in out of the wet.
He’s been gone too long, though, and memory is a funny thing. Talia says he did fine on the streets when his brain was jello, but now that he’s fully functional, some synapses just aren’t snapping back like they should. Probably, that’s why he’s head in a bucket wet by the time he gets back, even if he isn’t fried.
He strips off standing just inside the door. Wants to peel away the clammy cling of leather and Kevlar before it sticks itself to him permanently, and he doesn’t want to wait the five steps it takes to get to his crappy little bathroom.
He’s balanced on his right foot, yanking at his left boot when he hears it.
He stops yanking for the second it takes to put a name to the sound. Says, “Fuck no,” and starts yanking again. By the time he’s on the floor, wrestling his pants off, the sound’s stopped.
He leaves his clothes in three fast spreading puddles and huddles his chilled ass into the tight shower stall. The combined sound of the storm and the shower is too loud for anything but his personal rendition of Turbo Lover to get through. His singing voice is as crappy as the bathroom, and his neighbor bangs on the wall hard enough to make his bottles of shampoo and liquid soap judder in place.
Such enthusiastic appreciation, Jason decides, deserves an encore. And he does so hate to disappoint his fans. Heat of the Moment has never sounded so bad, even if he does say it himself.
--
He’s boiling water for ramen when the noise starts up again.
He says, “Forget it, man,” and pulls a beer out of the fridge, flopping down on the couch in front of a rerun of some cartoon. The show looks to be stupid initially, but turns out it’s actually pretty funny. The main guy is supposed to be a samurai; basically he’s a massive dweeb. Reminds Jason of a couple of people, not that he’s naming names, but if the kimono fits…
Another plus, the show is noisy. On the minus side, Jason’s eardrums are in bat-perfect condition. He turns the volume up twice, but at the end of the day he’s never been good at ignoring stuff he knows is important, even when he wants to.
In the kitchen, his water is boiling away to nothing. He says, “Shit.” Throws the remote at the screen, and while it’s still bouncing, he’s yanking the front door open.
He can’t see anything, too much rain and dark, but the noise happens again, and he does a little mental triangulation. “Oh you bastard,” he says appreciatively. “You’re gonna make me come out there, aren’t you?”
The cat – has to be, no other animal on the planet besides Man-Bat can make a noise like a violin getting strangled by an accordion – wails again. Jason shoves his feet into his boots and grabs the only thing in the apartment that’s even remotely close to being an effective rain shield: a copy of Hustler.
“Sorry, babe,” he tells Miss June, “I know we’ve had some good times, but it’s you or me.”
--
It’s curled up under a pile of wet newspaper next to the dumpsters, so waterlogged and muddy he can’t tell what color it’s supposed to be. When he picks it up it wraps all four legs around his arm and bites the fuck out of him.
“Ow,” he says. And, “Fuck.” And once more with feeling, “Fuck.” Miss June’s tits are soaked through, dripping down onto his nose. Jason raises his arm until he’s looking into a pair of unblinking yellow eyes. “I’d feed you to the rats in Mrs. Nguyen’s basement,” he says, “but them I like.”
The cat blinks. He flicks its nose and it sneezes, taking its teeth out of his arm. It immediately digs its claws in. Jason tosses the soaked mag into the dumpster and starts walking back. “This is just for tonight,” he tells the cat as they climb the stairs. “No such thing as a free lunch, and I am not the meal ticket you’re looking for. That would be Grayson.”
The cat starts chewing on him again. “Everyone’s a critic,” Jason says, and shuts his door behind them.
--
There’s a short but intense disagreement concerning personal hygiene. Eventually, Jason wins, and once the mud and excess water are gone, a small orange and white tabby is sitting on the disaster area that used to be one of his two towels.
“Hungry?” he asks.
The cat yowls. It eats half a can of tuna, a piece of not quite moldy Canadian bacon, and two ramen noodles. Jason offers it water and non-dairy creamer, but it likes the puddle of beer he spilled on the kitchen floor better. It licks the spot clean then it washes its face and passes out on Jason’s spare towel.
Jason finishes his ramen and his beer and disinfects his brand new collection of scratches. He watches the news four times on four different channels (bad, super bad, even worse, and Arma-fucking-geddon) then he turns the TV off and watches the cat. It’s lying on its side, tail curled over its head and a paw over its nose.
Jason shreds yesterday’s Gazette, dumps it in the broiler pan without much hope. Leaves it in the kitchen and does a face plant on the couch without pulling out the bed, because he’s wiped.
He’s used to Bruce’s private army keeping a weather eye on him, but for reasons known only to himself, Nightwing’s riding him extra hard of late; which, given Dickie’s current living arrangements, is weird in and of itself. There’s no reason for his presence in a town he kicked to the curb when Jason was still all red and green backtalk and too stupid to live.
Unless, of course, it has something to do with the little prince sitting pretty up at the palace. Break out the champagne and kill the fatted calf. Timmy’s home, and he’s packing a lovely new hyphenation.
More than possible, it’s disgustingly plausible. Dick’s visible attachment to Mr. Fucking Drake-Wayne is a beautiful thing for society writers everywhere, and nauseating for Jason to behold, black-haired blue-eyed brotherly love bled out for the cameras.
Brothers, and there is a picture. Drake is Drake, and Jason is Jason, and Dick’s always spread himself around lavishly for everyone but Jason. Sue him if he gets a little nervous when some of the excess seeps down through the cracks in his direction. Seems like every time he so much as farts these days, Dickie’s in his face, and spread thin or not, Dickhead’s got enough nervous energy for three vigilantes.
Jason suspects it’s a side effect of Golden Boy Syndrome, in addition to Dick owning the blanket adoration of the superpowered community from age eleven on. Dick’s had so much sunshine blown up his ass over the years, he’s damn near solar powered. Hell, he’s practically Superman.
And Jason’s just going to stop there because putting Dick’s ass anywhere near Superman, even hypothetically, is treading too close to do-not-want territory for comfort. Jason hasn’t gone there in years. He’s not about to break his winning record now. Lucky for him, then, that he’s too groggy to focus on much more than the godawful orange and blue paisley pattern pressed up against his cheek.
Down on its towel, the cat rolls over and starts drooling. Jason’s too busy following suit to notice.
--
The cat wakes him up by repeatedly flicking its tail over his nose and mouth. He almost kills it before he gets his eyes open all the way.
When the homicidal, pre-caffeine brain fog lifts, he’s sitting on the couch with his knife in his hand. The cat is on the floor, gnawing on his ankle. “It is too early for this shit,” he says, and flips the cat off his foot. It lands on its back and lies there for a moment, all four legs in the air, then it rolls to its feet and stalks away, pointedly ignoring him.
“You better not piss on my floor,” Jason calls after it. Not that he cares, but he kind of likes it here, crappy as it is, and cat piss on the rug adds nothing to any kind of ambience.
Closing his eyes, he leans back, sinking through the blurry grey space between sub and fully conscious. Takes almost a minute, but he finally hears some ruffly, scratchy, newspaper-type noises. Sometime while he’s listening to what sounds like an endless stream of cat pee, his brain decides it wants to be fully conscious.
“That works,” he says, and gets up. Somewhere, there’s a pot of coffee with his name on it.
--
He stands in the open door and looks at the cat. It hops up on the couch and starts washing its face. “Fine,” Jason says. “You want to stay so bad? Stay.”
He waits ten more seconds, counts them off in his head, and he says, “Fine,” again and leaves, slamming the door and walking out into a night thankfully devoid of rain.
He doesn’t have time to argue with a stupid cat. He has shit to blow up.
--
Because Jason’s life is fucking perfect that way, Nightwing lands on top of the water tower while he’s setting the last charge.
Nightwing crouches there like an unbelievably limber black and blue vulture and watches Jason twist off the wires. “You know,” he says conversationally, “I could have sworn B gave you the don’t play with high-ex unless I say so lecture.”
“Right after the one about the birds and the bats,” Jason agrees. He stands slowly, his arms loose at his sides, and he can’t feel the detonator as anything but a hard-edged shape through his glove. “You really want to do this?” he says. “Sure daddy doesn’t have some other little bat errand for you to run?”
Nightwing bares his teeth. “Oh yeah.”
Jason shrugs a shoulder. He says, “Put a dime in the jukebox, beautiful. Let’s dance.”
--
Rooftop tag. That’s what they used to call it back when Jason was still chafing himself raw on Robin’s green panties seven nights out of seven.
Batgirl made every jump look easy, but Nightwing was always the best. Still is. Six buildings and a lot of fancy flying later he lands in front of Jason, fucking poetry in acrobatic motion, and says, “We can still do this the easy way.”
“Actually, Dickie,” he says, and he sees Nightwing’s mouth tighten, bad Jay, broke the superhero code, no biscuit, “I don’t think we can.” Thumb on the trigger, he holds up the detonator.
It’s weird, all the different phrases people use to describe someone getting a brain drain. Lost their color. The blood left her face. He turned sheet white.
It’s kind of fascinating to watch it happen in real time.
“Jay,” Nightwing says hoarsely. “Robin’s still in there.”
Jason tsks and shakes his head. “Defusing duty, huh? You guys should be more careful with your boy wonders. They break easy.”
Nightwing’s hands are fists. Jason’s willing to bet there’s involuntary moisture in the corners of his eyes under the mask. He says, “Jay,” again. He says, “Please.”
Jason rubs his thumb back and forth over the trigger, a suggestion of pressure, the round shape of it familiar and alien at the same time, and sighs. He says, “You are getting to be a regular pain in my ass, Big Bird,” and tucks the detonator into his jacket.
He hangs around long enough to see Nightwing’s face get about ten years younger, and then he throws a flash-bang and jumps off the roof.
--
He shakes his feathered shadow for good somewhere on the Hill, but he still circles around through the Botanical Gardens and the Bowery before he jumps a crosstown bus to Robbinsville. He picks his bike up at the warehouse, and he’s planning on heading over to West Burnley, see if any of the bullshit he’s been spreading around is sprouting horns yet, when he remembers.
He kills the engine and checks his chrono. It’s fifteen to one. As usual, Dick’s timing sucks ass. He says, “Screw it,” and starts the bike again.
Ten minutes later he opens his front door and the cat stops clawing the couch and screeches at him. Jason shuts the door with his heel. He drops his keys on the floor, throws his jacket at the TV and says, “Had yourself quite a party.”
If it’s made of paper, it’s in shreds. Everything that was in his duffle bag is all over the floor and there are socks draped across just about every surface. Through the open bathroom door, he can see one dangling from the sink.
The cat comes over and sits on his foot (probably because it knows there are socks under the boots) and looks up at him, tail curled around its feet like one of those ancient Egyptian statues. “Tomorrow,” Jason tells it, “you too will be history.”
He tips it off his foot, changes its water and gives it the rest of the tuna, then he strips his clothes off, dropping them on the floor on his way to the bathroom. He’s going to have to pick all this shit up again, anyway, so he might as well do it all at once.
In the shower, the water goes cold and then hot and cold again. Ms. Perkins must be shaving her legs. Jason thinks about banging on the wall, but that would be rude. Alfred would have his balls for being impolite to the nice teacher lady. Jason serenades her instead.
It probably works faster than banging would have. In under a minute the water temperature evens out. Jason finishes scrubbing his hair to the strained strains of Sweet Child o’ Mine. He rinses off with Slice of Your Pie. He leaves the bathroom on a rousing chorus of Dead or Alive and a wave of steam, and Nightwing is sitting cross-legged on the floor. The cat is on its back in his lap, purring like a rusty engine and shamelessly displaying its female attributes.
“The fuck?” says Jason. Nightwing tugs gently at the cat’s belly fur. He smiles blindingly at Jason.
Serious major wattage, and it’s official: dude absolutely runs on solar power.
“Something new,” Nightwing says. “Nano tracker in aerosol form. I sprayed you when you took the jump over Dixon. Incidentally, you’ve got an interesting musical repertoire, there. Do you do weddings?”
“Fuck you,” Jason says without heat. He finishes drying his hair and tucks his (new) towel around his waist. He flops down on the couch and crosses his arms over his chest, thinking unkind thoughts about Bruce, WayneTech, and dicks of all definitions. “He always did give you the best toys.”
The wattage ramps up by a factor of ten. “Bruce won’t say, but I think he got it from Beetle.”
“I hate you with an unending hatred that spans centuries, comic book crises, and all eight inches of my dick,” Jason says. “Quit suborning my cat.”
They both look at the cat, which purrs some more and juts its chin at just the right angle for black and blue fingers to scratch. Nightwing obliges. “I didn’t know you had one,” he says.
“I don’t,” Jason says. “Cats happen. This one happens to be as promiscuous as you in a roomful of redheads. Really not feeling the loyalty here,” he tells the cat.
Nightwing laughs. It’s real and a real pleasure to listen to, but not half as much of a pleasure as watching him stand up. He does that thing he calls walking, and everybody else calls sex, and lays the cat carefully down on the couch beside Jason.
“So,” Jason says, moving his hand away from the cat’s demanding nudges. “You just stop by to say hi? Toy with my pussy and leave her hanging?”
There’s that laugh again. He’s not going to get used to it, and he doesn’t have to: Nightwing sobers up almost too fast. He says, “I came to say that if anyone had died in that building tonight, you’d be in jail right now.” He fumbles briefly with the domino; it peels off and if Jason knew all the words to Electric Blue, he’d start singing right now.
“If Tim had died,” Dick just keeps going, “you’d be back under dirt.”
Dick’s still looking at Jason. Jason wouldn’t look away for a billion Brucie bucks. The cat nips his finger and he rubs automatically, hands and brain on autopilot. She starts purring again, slow rusty trickle of sound pushing the silence away, and Dick’s mouth stops looking like a rule-drawn straight line.
“Well, gosh, golly gee whiz, Dickiebird,” Jason drawls into tension gone suddenly slack. “You surely do give one hell of a warm fuzzy. Wanna go two for two?”
Dick’s gaze drops to the domino in his hand. He doesn’t look at Jason again until it’s back in place on his face. “Thank you,” he says, his voice stuck somewhere in the no man’s land between Nightwing and Richard John Grayson. “I’m—” He swallows hard, work that throat, Boy Wonder, get all that nasty gratitude down— “Thanking you.”
There’s only one response to magnanimity of this magnitude, and Jason wouldn’t want to be thought backward in his attentions. He says, “Sure thing, baby,” and if leers came with offense grading, this one would rate a ten. He can feel it in his pelvic bones. “Any time you want to pay me back…” He drops it down into his open lap, sprawled out everywhere he’s bendy, his knees spread as wide as they can go, his towel an indecency.
Nightwing’s mouth sours behind his smile. “Don’t push it,” he says, and turns away.
Jason watches him go. Watches him crawl back out the window he came in. No reason not to. The view is spectacular and this show is free.
Crouched on the sill, half in, half out of the room, Nightwing half turns. “Have you taken her to the vet yet?” he asks.
Jason’s spider sense of doom isn’t impending. It already impended like motherfuck a split second after Nightwing landed on the water tower. “No?”
“You should,” Nightwing says, so much earnest, do-gooding Young America in a domino. “Spaying your pet is the responsible thing.”
“Because you know I am all about the responsibility,” Jason says. “Go piss in someone else’s cornflakes.”
Nightwing smirks. He gives Jason a two-finger salute, and dives through the window. Jason gets up and slams it shut. He locks it just for spite.
So much for free.
--
In the morning, he wipes his laptop, sets off an EMP and leaves the apartment for good. He doesn’t take anything but the laptop, his knife, and his clothes from last night. There’s nothing left that can ID him, but Dick had plenty of opportunity to leave all kinds of goodies behind, and while Jason is admittedly paranoid, they also really are out to get him.
The anything he doesn’t take includes the cat.
He puts his two relatively clean towels, more tuna and a bowl of water on the fire escape landing outside his window. Then he puts the cat out there with it. “Told you I wasn’t your meal ticket,” he says.
It blinks at him and curls its tail around its feet, alabaster and amber displaced in time. Jason adds a pair of socks to the towel pile and leaves.
--
He buys jeans, boots and a t-shirt at a local secondhand store before driving to the warehouse, then he spends most of the day wiping his files and rigging the building. At sunset he stands in the middle of the warehouse and changes into the clothes he bought at the thrift shop. He drops his cell on top of the pile of discarded clothes and walks out, taking his knife and a grapple.
The cycle he leaves. He can always get a new one and the grapple will get him where he wants to go. Right now, that’s several rooftops away, on top of the old opera house. He leans against a nymph with weirdly gargoyle-esque features and hits the detonator.
He’s always good, but this was his place, so he took his time with the set up. Threw in a little more artistry than he would’ve for, say, a crack house. They can probably see the flames in Hoboken.
It’s almost enough to make up for having to waste his favorite bike.
Well. Not really.
--
The base in West Burnley isn’t as large as the one he just blew, but it’s fully equipped and it has adequate sanitation facilities. He’ll be sleeping in a bag on concrete until he finds a new apartment, but he’s done worse. Lived worse. A few days on a hard floor aren’t going to matter, and it’s not like he’ll be hanging out. This is where he works; he doesn’t need pretty, just functional, and his equipment is designed to his own specs: response time always counts. He learned that before the cave and Bruce.
The console hums on when he brushes a finger over the touchpad. He activates the sensor array and gets to work.
Bruce comes first, always. That’s just smart. And a few other things.
Then Talia. He owes her a couple of emails. She never acts like it but she starts freaking out when she doesn’t hear from him at least once a month.
He always sends two. One that says he’s still alive. The other…
Let’s just say he’s not the only one with Bruce on the brain.
He’s been in residence for maybe half an hour when the north quarter proximity alarm goes off. He isn’t… no. The in the crosshairs, breath on the back of his neck twitch isn’t new.
He kills the alarm. Pushes his chair back for a clear view, canvasses the monitors, assimilation speed Bruce pounded into him years ago. Which is never going to be Super fast, but damned if it’s not the next best thing. Takes six seconds to clear twenty-four screens. Dick is waving to him from number twenty-five.
He’s holding the cat. Its mouth is open. Jason can just about hear the screech. He throws an empty Zesti can at the monitor and slumps down in his chair.
He’s giving killing them some serious thought. One press of a button and boom. A little air pollution and a lot more peace of mind.
Biggest con would be: Dick Grayson isn’t some random dirtbag. He disappears, there is going to be a world of hurt and trouble coming down on Gotham, and Jason’s not quite ready to pull up stakes. Also, Bruce would probably fall on one of his batarangs in an orgy of self-condemnatory masochism. Might even cry.
The trigger switch is looking better all the time. His finger hovers over it, skates across it, sweat-slick and possible, but new movement drags him back in (blue and black and red), somewhere, away, now. On the monitor, Dick is tapping his ear. He’s in a sharing kind of mood. Fucking awesome.
Jason sticks his earpiece in and switches over to the secure party line. “Tell me why I’m not going to scramble your atoms, again?”
“I told Babs where I was going.”
Jason’s shaking his head, because that is one sad effort. “Not even close, Winger.”
“—and I didn’t tell Bruce,” Dick finishes.
The new mics, Jason thinks, are amazing things: the cat sounds like it’s right on top of him.
“Look, do you really want to leave me standing around out here?” Dick asks. He smiles for the birdie.
Jason throws another can. This one’s full.
--
“Hold this,” Dick says. He shoves a shallow plastic box and a twenty pound bag of cat litter at Jason and walks past him, the cat draped around his neck.
Jason lets the box and litter hit the floor without trying to catch them. He pushes them out of the way with his foot and shuts the door.
“It’s not the cave,” Dick says, “but it’s better than my old place in the Haven.” The cat yawns, stretches, and jumps down from his shoulder. He turns around and smiles at Jason. “You going to blow this one up, too?”
Jason leans his hip against his weight set and folds his arms. “Why the fuck are you here?”
“Why are you?”
“I asked first.”
He’s not built like Dick. Always been better at punching his way into and out of bad places than flying through them. His training equipment is more about lifting things other than himself, but he does have a set of parallel bars. Dick drifts over to them like he can’t stay away and wraps his hand around one. He says, “Would you believe me if I said I was curious?”
“Nope.”
Dick grins and pulls himself up onto the bars and into a handstand. “Worth a try,” he says. He’s wearing jeans so light and tight and old they look like they want to split their seams, and a peacock blue polo shirt. He’s doing lifts and dips and holds and Jason watches the muscles in his forearms work effortlessly, knows the curl of him before a double flip the same way he knows Barbara’s hands on his shoulders, springboarding her over him into the middle of a fight.
The same way he knows how to take Bruce’s weight, take it and hold it, let it push him down but never out.
Double flip, and yeah, he called it. Dick straightens and looks back over his shoulder. “I took her to the vet. He said she’s a healthy little sucker and if she hasn’t caught any of the usual diseases yet after a year on the streets, she probably never will. She’s had all her shots and there’s some stuff for the fleas in there.” He points, and Jason glances at the duffle bag he remembers leaving in the apartment, now sitting by the closed door.
“Fleas?” he says.
“It’s that time of year,” Dick informs him. He walks over to the bag and kneels down, unzipping and pulling something out of it. He shakes it out, and unrolled it becomes a small rag rug he spreads across the floor. He rubs his hand over it, croons, “Come on, kitty,” in the kind of voice rich old bitches use to call their fucking Pomeranians, and the cat immediately jumps down off Jason’s chair and proceeds to rub herself all over Dick’s leg.
“Stop that,” Jason tells her. “Have a little self respect.” She starts purring. “Whatever. Just don't come crying to me when he dumps your furry butt. The pretty ones will always fuck you over, trust me.”
“You should give her a name,” Dick says, stroking away. Jason shrugs.
“Cat’s a name.” The shortened version of a longer one. Fits, too. The original could be just as vicious as this one is, usually when something or someone was threatening him. “Are we there yet, Mommy?” he asks, instead of doing what he really wants to do, which is hit Dick.
Dick strokes Cat one last time and curls to his feet. “You didn’t answer my question,” he says.
“Trained by the World's Greatest, folks,” Jason says. “Give the kid a hand, he is on the ball, today. Whatcha gonna do about it, D-D-D-Dick?”
Dick looks like he doesn’t know what to do with his empty hands. He keeps closing them then opening them back up. His shirt is the same color as the stripe on his suit. “I didn’t follow you here,” he says. “Bruce already knew about this place.”
One more reason to blow it up. Jason bounces a little on the balls of his feet. He needs to move, to hurt, throw a punch, make Dick bleed somewhere, he doesn’t even need it to be surface damage. Dick looks like he wants the same thing turned around.
“Jesus, just come on,” Jason says, and bounces again. Dick’s mouth opens, god damn, he looks so fucking torn up, in half, over nothing, and Jason laughs, he’s almost there… “Prettier when you’re pissed, did you know?”
And Dick’s on him. Takes him, takes them down together onto the mat under the bars. Back of his head hits and Dick’s face fuzzes and they’re rolling, knocking elbows into ribs, knees together, legs twisting, trying for purchase. Not enough room to really move, and the bars trap them, curl them around and in, too close to get in a good hit, make it count.
Dick’s breath gusts across Jason’s face, sick sweet and sour, and his arm is hard across Jason’s throat when he says, “Stop it, Jay. I’m not—”
“You started it.” Liar, liar, pants on fire, he wanted this, he’s driving it; he bucks up, pushing for it, grinning, and there’s Dick’s face above him, split lip gorgeous and lost. “You gonna finish it or what?” he says, spits it, stupid angry boy, doesn’t know how to get his kicks any other way. Doesn’t want to.
Black and blue all over him, on top of him, and this could go any which way. Dick’s chest ins into him and out, stutters and stops and starts up again. If Dick’s knee goes any higher the shower's going to be hearing Bringing on the Heartbreak for a week.
Dick starts to push himself up, and he’s going, going, almost gone, and Jason grabs on to skin, pulls him back down and their noses knock, chins, Dick’s teeth catching, tearing into Jason’s lip. Jason hears himself laughing. He tastes blood and he sees the shadowed patch on Dick’s chin he missed shaving this morning, he sees his blood on Dick’s mouth. He sees Cat up on the bar, balanced, and she’s coming down.
She lands on Dick’s back and digs her claws in. Dick jumps and jerks like a guy on the wrong end of electrical current and says, “Fuck!” He rolls over Jason up onto his knees, and Cat drops from his shoulder onto Jason.
Jason lies on his back and laughs, laughs, laughs at all of them.
--
Later, Dick opens the bag of litter and fills the box. He shakes it until the surface is even, and then he pushes it away and says, “I don't think you killed anyone this week." He looks up at Jason through the fall of his hair and the shadow of his lashes. “I think you’re getting better.”
“Screw you sideways, Dickiebird.” Jason’s always looking for a fight. He gets a laugh.
Cat gets into the litter box.
--
Dick leaves after he's through arranging Cat’s living area, which is fine by Jason. He’s not sure what the hell he would have done with him if he hadn't.
Well, he can think of a couple of things, but they don’t count. Not now, or even yet, and he doubts they ever will.
Dick has been and will always be the second best worst idea Jason has ever and will ever have. Although, Babs would be worse by a long shot, and there are no words to describe the failure and fallout that would be Bruce. By comparison, and from certain angles, Dick almost looks less like the holy grail of fuck ups. As long as Jason’s sane enough to realize that, he’s probably doing okay.
“Oh yeah,” he murmurs, glancing at the top row of monitors. “Real sane.” He watches Bruce move past one series of his feeds, bat-stalk fully engaged. Watches until even the cape’s swirl is gone.
And he laughs, because if sanity was a serious consideration, none of them would still be here in this city.
His fingers move across the keys and one by one, the screens go dark. He stands and stretches. Past time to get out there and kick a few asses, break a few kneecaps, do some hot damage. Play a little catch and release. The pretender to the scaly panties is staying in town this weekend; might be fun to give mini-me some of his own back.
Robin…
He activates the second row again, checking to see if he’s right, and his movement shoves the chair back farther, and there’s a squeaking protest from the floor. Jason looks down.
Cat is sprawled on the rug Dick brought, cleaning her paws. Jason leans down to scratch her ears and gets a purring screech for his efforts. “So,” he says. “Spaying. All the fun and none of the consequences. Sound good?”
She stops licking long enough to bite him.
Good enough.
see, this is why I don't take prompts very often. because I always start out with good intentions centered around writing a dozen three-hundred word ficlets, and then I get stuck on one prompt and end up with a 5.5k fic. oy.
DC comics | Jason Todd, Dick Grayson | Jay/Dick (sort of) | pg-13 | ~5500 words
for Gloria. her prompt was: sharp. set somewhere before Countdown, and canon here is hand-wavy, oh but very, so go on and put your hands in the air, wave ‘em around like you just don’t care. Jay sure doesn’t.
summary: in which there is Jason and Dick and rain. and badly sung big-hair rock. also, a cat.
In July, in Gotham, when it rains, it pours.
It thunders and lightnings and fries people stupid enough to be walking around outside, but mostly it just pisses down like a mother.
Jason knows the signs, or he used to. Once upon a time and far a-fucking-way, he’d have recognized the smell, the ozone prickle of it creeping up on him, in time to get in out of the wet.
He’s been gone too long, though, and memory is a funny thing. Talia says he did fine on the streets when his brain was jello, but now that he’s fully functional, some synapses just aren’t snapping back like they should. Probably, that’s why he’s head in a bucket wet by the time he gets back, even if he isn’t fried.
He strips off standing just inside the door. Wants to peel away the clammy cling of leather and Kevlar before it sticks itself to him permanently, and he doesn’t want to wait the five steps it takes to get to his crappy little bathroom.
He’s balanced on his right foot, yanking at his left boot when he hears it.
He stops yanking for the second it takes to put a name to the sound. Says, “Fuck no,” and starts yanking again. By the time he’s on the floor, wrestling his pants off, the sound’s stopped.
He leaves his clothes in three fast spreading puddles and huddles his chilled ass into the tight shower stall. The combined sound of the storm and the shower is too loud for anything but his personal rendition of Turbo Lover to get through. His singing voice is as crappy as the bathroom, and his neighbor bangs on the wall hard enough to make his bottles of shampoo and liquid soap judder in place.
Such enthusiastic appreciation, Jason decides, deserves an encore. And he does so hate to disappoint his fans. Heat of the Moment has never sounded so bad, even if he does say it himself.
--
He’s boiling water for ramen when the noise starts up again.
He says, “Forget it, man,” and pulls a beer out of the fridge, flopping down on the couch in front of a rerun of some cartoon. The show looks to be stupid initially, but turns out it’s actually pretty funny. The main guy is supposed to be a samurai; basically he’s a massive dweeb. Reminds Jason of a couple of people, not that he’s naming names, but if the kimono fits…
Another plus, the show is noisy. On the minus side, Jason’s eardrums are in bat-perfect condition. He turns the volume up twice, but at the end of the day he’s never been good at ignoring stuff he knows is important, even when he wants to.
In the kitchen, his water is boiling away to nothing. He says, “Shit.” Throws the remote at the screen, and while it’s still bouncing, he’s yanking the front door open.
He can’t see anything, too much rain and dark, but the noise happens again, and he does a little mental triangulation. “Oh you bastard,” he says appreciatively. “You’re gonna make me come out there, aren’t you?”
The cat – has to be, no other animal on the planet besides Man-Bat can make a noise like a violin getting strangled by an accordion – wails again. Jason shoves his feet into his boots and grabs the only thing in the apartment that’s even remotely close to being an effective rain shield: a copy of Hustler.
“Sorry, babe,” he tells Miss June, “I know we’ve had some good times, but it’s you or me.”
--
It’s curled up under a pile of wet newspaper next to the dumpsters, so waterlogged and muddy he can’t tell what color it’s supposed to be. When he picks it up it wraps all four legs around his arm and bites the fuck out of him.
“Ow,” he says. And, “Fuck.” And once more with feeling, “Fuck.” Miss June’s tits are soaked through, dripping down onto his nose. Jason raises his arm until he’s looking into a pair of unblinking yellow eyes. “I’d feed you to the rats in Mrs. Nguyen’s basement,” he says, “but them I like.”
The cat blinks. He flicks its nose and it sneezes, taking its teeth out of his arm. It immediately digs its claws in. Jason tosses the soaked mag into the dumpster and starts walking back. “This is just for tonight,” he tells the cat as they climb the stairs. “No such thing as a free lunch, and I am not the meal ticket you’re looking for. That would be Grayson.”
The cat starts chewing on him again. “Everyone’s a critic,” Jason says, and shuts his door behind them.
--
There’s a short but intense disagreement concerning personal hygiene. Eventually, Jason wins, and once the mud and excess water are gone, a small orange and white tabby is sitting on the disaster area that used to be one of his two towels.
“Hungry?” he asks.
The cat yowls. It eats half a can of tuna, a piece of not quite moldy Canadian bacon, and two ramen noodles. Jason offers it water and non-dairy creamer, but it likes the puddle of beer he spilled on the kitchen floor better. It licks the spot clean then it washes its face and passes out on Jason’s spare towel.
Jason finishes his ramen and his beer and disinfects his brand new collection of scratches. He watches the news four times on four different channels (bad, super bad, even worse, and Arma-fucking-geddon) then he turns the TV off and watches the cat. It’s lying on its side, tail curled over its head and a paw over its nose.
Jason shreds yesterday’s Gazette, dumps it in the broiler pan without much hope. Leaves it in the kitchen and does a face plant on the couch without pulling out the bed, because he’s wiped.
He’s used to Bruce’s private army keeping a weather eye on him, but for reasons known only to himself, Nightwing’s riding him extra hard of late; which, given Dickie’s current living arrangements, is weird in and of itself. There’s no reason for his presence in a town he kicked to the curb when Jason was still all red and green backtalk and too stupid to live.
Unless, of course, it has something to do with the little prince sitting pretty up at the palace. Break out the champagne and kill the fatted calf. Timmy’s home, and he’s packing a lovely new hyphenation.
More than possible, it’s disgustingly plausible. Dick’s visible attachment to Mr. Fucking Drake-Wayne is a beautiful thing for society writers everywhere, and nauseating for Jason to behold, black-haired blue-eyed brotherly love bled out for the cameras.
Brothers, and there is a picture. Drake is Drake, and Jason is Jason, and Dick’s always spread himself around lavishly for everyone but Jason. Sue him if he gets a little nervous when some of the excess seeps down through the cracks in his direction. Seems like every time he so much as farts these days, Dickie’s in his face, and spread thin or not, Dickhead’s got enough nervous energy for three vigilantes.
Jason suspects it’s a side effect of Golden Boy Syndrome, in addition to Dick owning the blanket adoration of the superpowered community from age eleven on. Dick’s had so much sunshine blown up his ass over the years, he’s damn near solar powered. Hell, he’s practically Superman.
And Jason’s just going to stop there because putting Dick’s ass anywhere near Superman, even hypothetically, is treading too close to do-not-want territory for comfort. Jason hasn’t gone there in years. He’s not about to break his winning record now. Lucky for him, then, that he’s too groggy to focus on much more than the godawful orange and blue paisley pattern pressed up against his cheek.
Down on its towel, the cat rolls over and starts drooling. Jason’s too busy following suit to notice.
--
The cat wakes him up by repeatedly flicking its tail over his nose and mouth. He almost kills it before he gets his eyes open all the way.
When the homicidal, pre-caffeine brain fog lifts, he’s sitting on the couch with his knife in his hand. The cat is on the floor, gnawing on his ankle. “It is too early for this shit,” he says, and flips the cat off his foot. It lands on its back and lies there for a moment, all four legs in the air, then it rolls to its feet and stalks away, pointedly ignoring him.
“You better not piss on my floor,” Jason calls after it. Not that he cares, but he kind of likes it here, crappy as it is, and cat piss on the rug adds nothing to any kind of ambience.
Closing his eyes, he leans back, sinking through the blurry grey space between sub and fully conscious. Takes almost a minute, but he finally hears some ruffly, scratchy, newspaper-type noises. Sometime while he’s listening to what sounds like an endless stream of cat pee, his brain decides it wants to be fully conscious.
“That works,” he says, and gets up. Somewhere, there’s a pot of coffee with his name on it.
--
He stands in the open door and looks at the cat. It hops up on the couch and starts washing its face. “Fine,” Jason says. “You want to stay so bad? Stay.”
He waits ten more seconds, counts them off in his head, and he says, “Fine,” again and leaves, slamming the door and walking out into a night thankfully devoid of rain.
He doesn’t have time to argue with a stupid cat. He has shit to blow up.
--
Because Jason’s life is fucking perfect that way, Nightwing lands on top of the water tower while he’s setting the last charge.
Nightwing crouches there like an unbelievably limber black and blue vulture and watches Jason twist off the wires. “You know,” he says conversationally, “I could have sworn B gave you the don’t play with high-ex unless I say so lecture.”
“Right after the one about the birds and the bats,” Jason agrees. He stands slowly, his arms loose at his sides, and he can’t feel the detonator as anything but a hard-edged shape through his glove. “You really want to do this?” he says. “Sure daddy doesn’t have some other little bat errand for you to run?”
Nightwing bares his teeth. “Oh yeah.”
Jason shrugs a shoulder. He says, “Put a dime in the jukebox, beautiful. Let’s dance.”
--
Rooftop tag. That’s what they used to call it back when Jason was still chafing himself raw on Robin’s green panties seven nights out of seven.
Batgirl made every jump look easy, but Nightwing was always the best. Still is. Six buildings and a lot of fancy flying later he lands in front of Jason, fucking poetry in acrobatic motion, and says, “We can still do this the easy way.”
“Actually, Dickie,” he says, and he sees Nightwing’s mouth tighten, bad Jay, broke the superhero code, no biscuit, “I don’t think we can.” Thumb on the trigger, he holds up the detonator.
It’s weird, all the different phrases people use to describe someone getting a brain drain. Lost their color. The blood left her face. He turned sheet white.
It’s kind of fascinating to watch it happen in real time.
“Jay,” Nightwing says hoarsely. “Robin’s still in there.”
Jason tsks and shakes his head. “Defusing duty, huh? You guys should be more careful with your boy wonders. They break easy.”
Nightwing’s hands are fists. Jason’s willing to bet there’s involuntary moisture in the corners of his eyes under the mask. He says, “Jay,” again. He says, “Please.”
Jason rubs his thumb back and forth over the trigger, a suggestion of pressure, the round shape of it familiar and alien at the same time, and sighs. He says, “You are getting to be a regular pain in my ass, Big Bird,” and tucks the detonator into his jacket.
He hangs around long enough to see Nightwing’s face get about ten years younger, and then he throws a flash-bang and jumps off the roof.
--
He shakes his feathered shadow for good somewhere on the Hill, but he still circles around through the Botanical Gardens and the Bowery before he jumps a crosstown bus to Robbinsville. He picks his bike up at the warehouse, and he’s planning on heading over to West Burnley, see if any of the bullshit he’s been spreading around is sprouting horns yet, when he remembers.
He kills the engine and checks his chrono. It’s fifteen to one. As usual, Dick’s timing sucks ass. He says, “Screw it,” and starts the bike again.
Ten minutes later he opens his front door and the cat stops clawing the couch and screeches at him. Jason shuts the door with his heel. He drops his keys on the floor, throws his jacket at the TV and says, “Had yourself quite a party.”
If it’s made of paper, it’s in shreds. Everything that was in his duffle bag is all over the floor and there are socks draped across just about every surface. Through the open bathroom door, he can see one dangling from the sink.
The cat comes over and sits on his foot (probably because it knows there are socks under the boots) and looks up at him, tail curled around its feet like one of those ancient Egyptian statues. “Tomorrow,” Jason tells it, “you too will be history.”
He tips it off his foot, changes its water and gives it the rest of the tuna, then he strips his clothes off, dropping them on the floor on his way to the bathroom. He’s going to have to pick all this shit up again, anyway, so he might as well do it all at once.
In the shower, the water goes cold and then hot and cold again. Ms. Perkins must be shaving her legs. Jason thinks about banging on the wall, but that would be rude. Alfred would have his balls for being impolite to the nice teacher lady. Jason serenades her instead.
It probably works faster than banging would have. In under a minute the water temperature evens out. Jason finishes scrubbing his hair to the strained strains of Sweet Child o’ Mine. He rinses off with Slice of Your Pie. He leaves the bathroom on a rousing chorus of Dead or Alive and a wave of steam, and Nightwing is sitting cross-legged on the floor. The cat is on its back in his lap, purring like a rusty engine and shamelessly displaying its female attributes.
“The fuck?” says Jason. Nightwing tugs gently at the cat’s belly fur. He smiles blindingly at Jason.
Serious major wattage, and it’s official: dude absolutely runs on solar power.
“Something new,” Nightwing says. “Nano tracker in aerosol form. I sprayed you when you took the jump over Dixon. Incidentally, you’ve got an interesting musical repertoire, there. Do you do weddings?”
“Fuck you,” Jason says without heat. He finishes drying his hair and tucks his (new) towel around his waist. He flops down on the couch and crosses his arms over his chest, thinking unkind thoughts about Bruce, WayneTech, and dicks of all definitions. “He always did give you the best toys.”
The wattage ramps up by a factor of ten. “Bruce won’t say, but I think he got it from Beetle.”
“I hate you with an unending hatred that spans centuries, comic book crises, and all eight inches of my dick,” Jason says. “Quit suborning my cat.”
They both look at the cat, which purrs some more and juts its chin at just the right angle for black and blue fingers to scratch. Nightwing obliges. “I didn’t know you had one,” he says.
“I don’t,” Jason says. “Cats happen. This one happens to be as promiscuous as you in a roomful of redheads. Really not feeling the loyalty here,” he tells the cat.
Nightwing laughs. It’s real and a real pleasure to listen to, but not half as much of a pleasure as watching him stand up. He does that thing he calls walking, and everybody else calls sex, and lays the cat carefully down on the couch beside Jason.
“So,” Jason says, moving his hand away from the cat’s demanding nudges. “You just stop by to say hi? Toy with my pussy and leave her hanging?”
There’s that laugh again. He’s not going to get used to it, and he doesn’t have to: Nightwing sobers up almost too fast. He says, “I came to say that if anyone had died in that building tonight, you’d be in jail right now.” He fumbles briefly with the domino; it peels off and if Jason knew all the words to Electric Blue, he’d start singing right now.
“If Tim had died,” Dick just keeps going, “you’d be back under dirt.”
Dick’s still looking at Jason. Jason wouldn’t look away for a billion Brucie bucks. The cat nips his finger and he rubs automatically, hands and brain on autopilot. She starts purring again, slow rusty trickle of sound pushing the silence away, and Dick’s mouth stops looking like a rule-drawn straight line.
“Well, gosh, golly gee whiz, Dickiebird,” Jason drawls into tension gone suddenly slack. “You surely do give one hell of a warm fuzzy. Wanna go two for two?”
Dick’s gaze drops to the domino in his hand. He doesn’t look at Jason again until it’s back in place on his face. “Thank you,” he says, his voice stuck somewhere in the no man’s land between Nightwing and Richard John Grayson. “I’m—” He swallows hard, work that throat, Boy Wonder, get all that nasty gratitude down— “Thanking you.”
There’s only one response to magnanimity of this magnitude, and Jason wouldn’t want to be thought backward in his attentions. He says, “Sure thing, baby,” and if leers came with offense grading, this one would rate a ten. He can feel it in his pelvic bones. “Any time you want to pay me back…” He drops it down into his open lap, sprawled out everywhere he’s bendy, his knees spread as wide as they can go, his towel an indecency.
Nightwing’s mouth sours behind his smile. “Don’t push it,” he says, and turns away.
Jason watches him go. Watches him crawl back out the window he came in. No reason not to. The view is spectacular and this show is free.
Crouched on the sill, half in, half out of the room, Nightwing half turns. “Have you taken her to the vet yet?” he asks.
Jason’s spider sense of doom isn’t impending. It already impended like motherfuck a split second after Nightwing landed on the water tower. “No?”
“You should,” Nightwing says, so much earnest, do-gooding Young America in a domino. “Spaying your pet is the responsible thing.”
“Because you know I am all about the responsibility,” Jason says. “Go piss in someone else’s cornflakes.”
Nightwing smirks. He gives Jason a two-finger salute, and dives through the window. Jason gets up and slams it shut. He locks it just for spite.
So much for free.
--
In the morning, he wipes his laptop, sets off an EMP and leaves the apartment for good. He doesn’t take anything but the laptop, his knife, and his clothes from last night. There’s nothing left that can ID him, but Dick had plenty of opportunity to leave all kinds of goodies behind, and while Jason is admittedly paranoid, they also really are out to get him.
The anything he doesn’t take includes the cat.
He puts his two relatively clean towels, more tuna and a bowl of water on the fire escape landing outside his window. Then he puts the cat out there with it. “Told you I wasn’t your meal ticket,” he says.
It blinks at him and curls its tail around its feet, alabaster and amber displaced in time. Jason adds a pair of socks to the towel pile and leaves.
--
He buys jeans, boots and a t-shirt at a local secondhand store before driving to the warehouse, then he spends most of the day wiping his files and rigging the building. At sunset he stands in the middle of the warehouse and changes into the clothes he bought at the thrift shop. He drops his cell on top of the pile of discarded clothes and walks out, taking his knife and a grapple.
The cycle he leaves. He can always get a new one and the grapple will get him where he wants to go. Right now, that’s several rooftops away, on top of the old opera house. He leans against a nymph with weirdly gargoyle-esque features and hits the detonator.
He’s always good, but this was his place, so he took his time with the set up. Threw in a little more artistry than he would’ve for, say, a crack house. They can probably see the flames in Hoboken.
It’s almost enough to make up for having to waste his favorite bike.
Well. Not really.
--
The base in West Burnley isn’t as large as the one he just blew, but it’s fully equipped and it has adequate sanitation facilities. He’ll be sleeping in a bag on concrete until he finds a new apartment, but he’s done worse. Lived worse. A few days on a hard floor aren’t going to matter, and it’s not like he’ll be hanging out. This is where he works; he doesn’t need pretty, just functional, and his equipment is designed to his own specs: response time always counts. He learned that before the cave and Bruce.
The console hums on when he brushes a finger over the touchpad. He activates the sensor array and gets to work.
Bruce comes first, always. That’s just smart. And a few other things.
Then Talia. He owes her a couple of emails. She never acts like it but she starts freaking out when she doesn’t hear from him at least once a month.
He always sends two. One that says he’s still alive. The other…
Let’s just say he’s not the only one with Bruce on the brain.
He’s been in residence for maybe half an hour when the north quarter proximity alarm goes off. He isn’t… no. The in the crosshairs, breath on the back of his neck twitch isn’t new.
He kills the alarm. Pushes his chair back for a clear view, canvasses the monitors, assimilation speed Bruce pounded into him years ago. Which is never going to be Super fast, but damned if it’s not the next best thing. Takes six seconds to clear twenty-four screens. Dick is waving to him from number twenty-five.
He’s holding the cat. Its mouth is open. Jason can just about hear the screech. He throws an empty Zesti can at the monitor and slumps down in his chair.
He’s giving killing them some serious thought. One press of a button and boom. A little air pollution and a lot more peace of mind.
Biggest con would be: Dick Grayson isn’t some random dirtbag. He disappears, there is going to be a world of hurt and trouble coming down on Gotham, and Jason’s not quite ready to pull up stakes. Also, Bruce would probably fall on one of his batarangs in an orgy of self-condemnatory masochism. Might even cry.
The trigger switch is looking better all the time. His finger hovers over it, skates across it, sweat-slick and possible, but new movement drags him back in (blue and black and red), somewhere, away, now. On the monitor, Dick is tapping his ear. He’s in a sharing kind of mood. Fucking awesome.
Jason sticks his earpiece in and switches over to the secure party line. “Tell me why I’m not going to scramble your atoms, again?”
“I told Babs where I was going.”
Jason’s shaking his head, because that is one sad effort. “Not even close, Winger.”
“—and I didn’t tell Bruce,” Dick finishes.
The new mics, Jason thinks, are amazing things: the cat sounds like it’s right on top of him.
“Look, do you really want to leave me standing around out here?” Dick asks. He smiles for the birdie.
Jason throws another can. This one’s full.
--
“Hold this,” Dick says. He shoves a shallow plastic box and a twenty pound bag of cat litter at Jason and walks past him, the cat draped around his neck.
Jason lets the box and litter hit the floor without trying to catch them. He pushes them out of the way with his foot and shuts the door.
“It’s not the cave,” Dick says, “but it’s better than my old place in the Haven.” The cat yawns, stretches, and jumps down from his shoulder. He turns around and smiles at Jason. “You going to blow this one up, too?”
Jason leans his hip against his weight set and folds his arms. “Why the fuck are you here?”
“Why are you?”
“I asked first.”
He’s not built like Dick. Always been better at punching his way into and out of bad places than flying through them. His training equipment is more about lifting things other than himself, but he does have a set of parallel bars. Dick drifts over to them like he can’t stay away and wraps his hand around one. He says, “Would you believe me if I said I was curious?”
“Nope.”
Dick grins and pulls himself up onto the bars and into a handstand. “Worth a try,” he says. He’s wearing jeans so light and tight and old they look like they want to split their seams, and a peacock blue polo shirt. He’s doing lifts and dips and holds and Jason watches the muscles in his forearms work effortlessly, knows the curl of him before a double flip the same way he knows Barbara’s hands on his shoulders, springboarding her over him into the middle of a fight.
The same way he knows how to take Bruce’s weight, take it and hold it, let it push him down but never out.
Double flip, and yeah, he called it. Dick straightens and looks back over his shoulder. “I took her to the vet. He said she’s a healthy little sucker and if she hasn’t caught any of the usual diseases yet after a year on the streets, she probably never will. She’s had all her shots and there’s some stuff for the fleas in there.” He points, and Jason glances at the duffle bag he remembers leaving in the apartment, now sitting by the closed door.
“Fleas?” he says.
“It’s that time of year,” Dick informs him. He walks over to the bag and kneels down, unzipping and pulling something out of it. He shakes it out, and unrolled it becomes a small rag rug he spreads across the floor. He rubs his hand over it, croons, “Come on, kitty,” in the kind of voice rich old bitches use to call their fucking Pomeranians, and the cat immediately jumps down off Jason’s chair and proceeds to rub herself all over Dick’s leg.
“Stop that,” Jason tells her. “Have a little self respect.” She starts purring. “Whatever. Just don't come crying to me when he dumps your furry butt. The pretty ones will always fuck you over, trust me.”
“You should give her a name,” Dick says, stroking away. Jason shrugs.
“Cat’s a name.” The shortened version of a longer one. Fits, too. The original could be just as vicious as this one is, usually when something or someone was threatening him. “Are we there yet, Mommy?” he asks, instead of doing what he really wants to do, which is hit Dick.
Dick strokes Cat one last time and curls to his feet. “You didn’t answer my question,” he says.
“Trained by the World's Greatest, folks,” Jason says. “Give the kid a hand, he is on the ball, today. Whatcha gonna do about it, D-D-D-Dick?”
Dick looks like he doesn’t know what to do with his empty hands. He keeps closing them then opening them back up. His shirt is the same color as the stripe on his suit. “I didn’t follow you here,” he says. “Bruce already knew about this place.”
One more reason to blow it up. Jason bounces a little on the balls of his feet. He needs to move, to hurt, throw a punch, make Dick bleed somewhere, he doesn’t even need it to be surface damage. Dick looks like he wants the same thing turned around.
“Jesus, just come on,” Jason says, and bounces again. Dick’s mouth opens, god damn, he looks so fucking torn up, in half, over nothing, and Jason laughs, he’s almost there… “Prettier when you’re pissed, did you know?”
And Dick’s on him. Takes him, takes them down together onto the mat under the bars. Back of his head hits and Dick’s face fuzzes and they’re rolling, knocking elbows into ribs, knees together, legs twisting, trying for purchase. Not enough room to really move, and the bars trap them, curl them around and in, too close to get in a good hit, make it count.
Dick’s breath gusts across Jason’s face, sick sweet and sour, and his arm is hard across Jason’s throat when he says, “Stop it, Jay. I’m not—”
“You started it.” Liar, liar, pants on fire, he wanted this, he’s driving it; he bucks up, pushing for it, grinning, and there’s Dick’s face above him, split lip gorgeous and lost. “You gonna finish it or what?” he says, spits it, stupid angry boy, doesn’t know how to get his kicks any other way. Doesn’t want to.
Black and blue all over him, on top of him, and this could go any which way. Dick’s chest ins into him and out, stutters and stops and starts up again. If Dick’s knee goes any higher the shower's going to be hearing Bringing on the Heartbreak for a week.
Dick starts to push himself up, and he’s going, going, almost gone, and Jason grabs on to skin, pulls him back down and their noses knock, chins, Dick’s teeth catching, tearing into Jason’s lip. Jason hears himself laughing. He tastes blood and he sees the shadowed patch on Dick’s chin he missed shaving this morning, he sees his blood on Dick’s mouth. He sees Cat up on the bar, balanced, and she’s coming down.
She lands on Dick’s back and digs her claws in. Dick jumps and jerks like a guy on the wrong end of electrical current and says, “Fuck!” He rolls over Jason up onto his knees, and Cat drops from his shoulder onto Jason.
Jason lies on his back and laughs, laughs, laughs at all of them.
--
Later, Dick opens the bag of litter and fills the box. He shakes it until the surface is even, and then he pushes it away and says, “I don't think you killed anyone this week." He looks up at Jason through the fall of his hair and the shadow of his lashes. “I think you’re getting better.”
“Screw you sideways, Dickiebird.” Jason’s always looking for a fight. He gets a laugh.
Cat gets into the litter box.
--
Dick leaves after he's through arranging Cat’s living area, which is fine by Jason. He’s not sure what the hell he would have done with him if he hadn't.
Well, he can think of a couple of things, but they don’t count. Not now, or even yet, and he doubts they ever will.
Dick has been and will always be the second best worst idea Jason has ever and will ever have. Although, Babs would be worse by a long shot, and there are no words to describe the failure and fallout that would be Bruce. By comparison, and from certain angles, Dick almost looks less like the holy grail of fuck ups. As long as Jason’s sane enough to realize that, he’s probably doing okay.
“Oh yeah,” he murmurs, glancing at the top row of monitors. “Real sane.” He watches Bruce move past one series of his feeds, bat-stalk fully engaged. Watches until even the cape’s swirl is gone.
And he laughs, because if sanity was a serious consideration, none of them would still be here in this city.
His fingers move across the keys and one by one, the screens go dark. He stands and stretches. Past time to get out there and kick a few asses, break a few kneecaps, do some hot damage. Play a little catch and release. The pretender to the scaly panties is staying in town this weekend; might be fun to give mini-me some of his own back.
Robin…
He activates the second row again, checking to see if he’s right, and his movement shoves the chair back farther, and there’s a squeaking protest from the floor. Jason looks down.
Cat is sprawled on the rug Dick brought, cleaning her paws. Jason leans down to scratch her ears and gets a purring screech for his efforts. “So,” he says. “Spaying. All the fun and none of the consequences. Sound good?”
She stops licking long enough to bite him.
Good enough.
see, this is why I don't take prompts very often. because I always start out with good intentions centered around writing a dozen three-hundred word ficlets, and then I get stuck on one prompt and end up with a 5.5k fic. oy.
no subject
no subject
no subject
And at the same time, the family is so obsessed with each other, and they're all broken, and none of them know how to fix it, can't help prodding at each other's weakspots, Dick 'trying' to thank Jason for not blowing Tim up by saying that if anyone had died Jason would be underground, and Jason not saying how much he does want Dick to love him the way Dick clearly loves Tim.
And Cat is just, like him. Like Gotham, except Cat could take care of herself, if necessary, while Poor Jason still wants love.
no subject
Exactly. And thank you! It's really nice to know that someone got out of the fic what I tried to put in. ♥
no subject
Then again, the Family isn't exactly the best at giving the love in a form that Jasons can recognise.
no subject
(I can't think of anything more coherent to say right now. 'Night!)