Touch the flame (Bruce/Jason, Tim, NC-17, DCU)
Title: Touch the flame
Author: Mimic
Characters/Pairings: Bruce/Jason, Tim
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I don't play for keeps. DC owns them.
Notes: AU! It isn't quite fix-it, but I'm not breaking anything else. Jason survives getting blown up, Tim pays him a visit in his recovery. Batman needs a Robin, Bruce needs a Jay. naughty__pixie encouraged greatly, so thanks be to her. Technically written for merfilly 's Memorial Day Challenge where my claim was Jason Todd, and U2's Where the Streets Have No Name, title taken from the lyrics.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Word Count: 8000
Bruce never tells him, but Jason knows there was a second there -- after the numbers hit zero and before Bruce found him -- where he was dead. He wasn’t breathing, and his heart wasn’t beating, and now whenever he closes his eyes he can’t think of anything but what darkness feels like.
He’s not Robin anymore, and Bruce doesn’t have to tell him that either.
It isn’t just about not being able to move in a fraction of the ways he used to, it’s the way Bruce looks at him with sad, tragic hurt, and hope all at once, and how when Nightwing visits he isn’t a total asshole, and Jason thinks maybe they could work on being brothers now.
The world feels clearer, like all the things that used to be really important just aren’t anymore, and he’s okay with that.
He shambles down to the Cave the first time in months, taking the stairs as slow as he can. Bruce looks up at him from the computers like he’s seeing a ghost, and Jason can’t help the surge of anger that floods through him.
There’s a case with his suit in it, and he stares at it for a long time. “I’m not dead,” he says, and the words seem so pointless that he repeats it just to see if it makes it better, “I’m not.”
“That part of you is.”
It only hurts because it’s true.
Jason curls his fingers into fists, feeling the muscles tighten all up his arms, and glares at his feet. “I can’t just --“ he searches around for the words. He’s always hated talking, because his mouth always betrays him, never saying what he means, or saying too much of it. He scowls. “I can’t unlearn this, Bruce.”
“You aren’t going out again,” his tone is cold, all Batman, except Batman wouldn’t care about that. Not like Bruce does.
“That’s not what I said!” his voice rises to a shout, and he has to bite his tongue to shut himself up.
Bruce frowns, but his eyes are all pain. Jason swallows back the bile rising in his throat.
He wants to sit down. He knows if he doesn’t soon he’s going to collapse on the floor of the cave, but giving up like that would be so stupid that he keeps himself on his feet.
“Perhaps it would be better if you spent your time recovering somewhere else, Jason. Somewhere… better.”
He just gapes, for a moment, before the anger comes back so strong he can’t take it.
He thought it was gone. He thought… he thought he’d gotten over it.
“Fuck you! No! Fuck you, Bruce. This is my home,” and everything he’s been holding off feeling bleeds through, and he sort of slides down to his knees and just stares.
Bruce’s hand on his shoulder makes him growl, but he can’t pull away.
“This is my home.”
“I know, Jason,” Bruce says, and he wants to scream at him that he doesn’t, that he’s always known exactly where he belongs and how could he know what being ripped away from the first thing he’s ever had that was right feels like, but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out.
He sits there in silence until his knees start to protest, and then Bruce carefully scoops him up and carries him back up the manor.
“I could have done it myself,” he complains.
Bruce gives him a twitch-smile, which Jason’s beginning to realize is all he’s ever going to get from Bruce now, but that makes him want to cry like a sissy so he doesn’t think about it.
“I feel like a girl,” he says instead, and Bruce makes a noise like laughter.
Jason grins into Bruce’s shoulder, and it’s one of those times that he’s really glad he isn’t dead, because their family is always going to have issues and if it isn’t about him it would just be something else. At least he can handle it all right, not like when Bruce was all cut up about Dick.
Bruce puts him down at the door to his bedroom after Jason pinches his neck in something not quite hard enough to be a nerve strike.
He isn’t dead, and he’s going to keep reminding Bruce that until he at least acts like he gets it.
It isn’t like he gets a lot of visitors, even though his picture was all over the papers and the news ran a whole story about his ‘unfortunate accident’. The whole world knows what happened to him, or think they do, but not enough to actually care.
A few kids from his school came over the first month after he came back, when he still couldn’t get out of bed, with a card and some flowers. It was the kind of thing the teachers obviously made them do, but Jason got a laugh out of it.
The only people he really cares about anyway are Bruce, and Alfred, because who else does he even know?
He’s lounging in the ‘entertainment room’, which would be more like a library than anything except for the huge flat screen mounted on one wall when Alfred comes in to tell him there’s a young man here to see him.
He raises an eyebrow, and switches the crappy movie he’s watching to mute. “Who?” he asks again.
“His name is Timothy Drake, young sir.” Alfred doesn’t act freaked out at all, but he’s doing that thing with his eyebrows that means something not normal is going on.
Jason shrugs, and tries not to look totally surprised by this. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“He mentioned. Shall I show him up?”
He shrugs again. “Why not?”
It’s not like he wants to play ‘Bruce Wayne’s son’ for the inquisitive elementary kid, but he’s about two months overdue for something interesting to happen.
Bruce won’t even mention his nights as Batman, let alone offer up any gossip, and he hates going down to the cave now with that freaky suit like a pinned butterfly and Bruce’s eyes following his every step.
Everything else he’s handling okay, or he likes to think so, but getting cut out of the most important part of Bruce’s life makes him itch something fierce.
He stretches his arms, feeling the joints pop and creak in protest, and turns as Alfred returns with a kid in tow.
Jason has to wonder, first, just how old this kid is, because he looks about nine until he opens his eyes a little more and see the complete seriousness of his expression.
He’s dressed in geek clothes, a t-shirt that’s too big and has some kind of ‘net speak on the front, except that they probably cost as much as Bruce’s.
There’s a backpack slung over one of his shoulders, which makes sense, he probably just got out of school and drove (was driven?) up here.
“Hi,” he says in a voice that completely fails at being casual, and takes another couple steps into the room. It’s like he’s afraid Jason’s going to bite him, which is really kind of laughable, considering… everything.
He smirks. “Hey. So you’re…?”
“Tim Drake,” he answers after a second of just staring at Jason. He swallows visibly, and says, “I’m sorry.”
Jason’s mouth twists into a frown a second before he realizes that he’s not as mad as he should be to hear that, and then the reasoning kicks in. It was all about tone, and the way Tim wasn’t acting like he was some invalid a step away from death.
He was acting, well, half like it was somehow his fault that Jason was a dumbass, and half like he wanted to go one-two with the Joker right now to stop him from doing anything like that again.
It was kind of gratifying.
“So why’re you here?” he asks, before wincing and adding a second later, “I mean, we’ve never met.”
Tim’s throat works for a second, his mouth opening and closing before he pulls the backpack off his shoulder and hugs it to his chest. “I know.”
“I’m not gonna hurt you, kid,” he rolls his eyes, and sort of gestures at his pajamas and mussed hair.
That get’s him something like a smile, which Jason thinks is a step in the right direction.
“I live next door,” Tim says, after too many seconds of silence for Jason to connect that to the previous chain of conversation.
He raises his eyebrow. “Next door?” he echoes the words, thinking Wayne Manor and the huge ass grounds he hadn’t seen all of before he got hurt.
Tim just nods.
Rich kid, Jason thinks really loudly.
“So what?” he asks, because he’s never been a detective but he doubts even Bruce would be able to connect the dots with that. “Why visit me?”
Tim stares down at the backpack clutched to his chest, and doesn’t say anything. He’s doing that swallowing and gaping thing again, and Jason just watches his throat work for a while, because that’s easier than thinking up something to say that doesn’t sound lame.
He finally looks up. His eyes are a really interesting shade of blue, not as icy as Bruce’s but Jason thinks he could stare at them for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and Jason’s just about to start up with the what the fuck and all of that, until Tim says, “I know what really happened. I mean, I know who you are, were.”
Jason feels himself freeze all over, and sees Tim echo him however many feet away.
There is a panic button seven inches away from his hand on the underside of the couch, and if he pushed it Alfred would pull out the shotgun, and Bruce would come rushing home from whatever Bruce Wayne thing he’s doing today, but…
He looks at the kid, and Tim’s biting his lip and not breathing at all.
He looks like Jason’s about to run over his puppy.
“You -- what the fuck are you talking about?” He has to be sure, because if he isn’t and Tim’s just talking about something completely lame and not important then Jason can’t screw it up by making a bit deal, but Tim flushes to the roots of his hair, and opens up his backpack.
He pulls out a book, a photo album, and says, “I know you’re -- were Robin.”
“You. Wait,” he takes a deep breath, and closes his mouth.
Tim nods, or jerks his head in something resembling a nod, and steps a little closer, hovering just in line with Jason’s reach. He twitches like he wants to move closer, and Jason finally sighs and streaks out an arm, tugging him onto the couch next to him.
His eyes are really wide when Jason lets go, and he looks enough like a shocky statue that Jason snaps, “You knew I was Robin,” and leaves it at that.
He nods again, and shows Jason the picture he has at the front of the album.
The first thing Jason thinks is that he hopes to Christ the kid doesn’t carry that shit around with him all the time, but then he gets caught up in starting at the older kid in the picture, the one that’s really obviously Dick, arm wrapped around an even littler kid which is… Tim.
“That’s you?” he asks, not quite believing it even in the face of evidence.
“Yes, and my parents and --“
“Dick and his parents,” he says, and his voice is flat and dead sounding in his own ears. “So wait. You met Dick and then… what?”
Tim swallows, and fingers the edge of the photo album in a way Jason can tell is all about not leaving visible fingerprints. He wants to laugh, but there’s bile building up in his throat again and laughing would just make him sick.
He stares up at the movie that still playing in the background of all this, watching the flashing lights without really seeing it.
“This was the night they died,” Tim says, and his voice cracks a little. Jason wonders how old he is. “I watched them… And then later I saw Di -- Robin, on television. They moved the same, and it was, it was obvious.”
He says obvious like any other kid would have seen it, like if it has been Jason at that circus all those years ago he would’ve seen it too, and there’s anger somewhere in that thought, but he can’t deal with it now.
“Fuck,” he swears, and presses his fingers to his eyelids, watching the spots that spring up behind his eyes. “Why are you here?”
His voice is worn out. He can’t talk as much as he used to since the explosion, something about smoke inhalation that he didn’t pay attention to because it was just one more thing he wouldn’t be able to do anymore.
He doesn’t really want the answer to that question, but Tim’s face is set in a determined frown, and he says, “Because you aren’t Robin.”
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense,” he snaps, annoyed at himself, and life, and just everything for being so fucking complicated and he can’t stand it.
“Batman needs a Robin,” Tim says, and Jason doesn’t see him say, but suddenly he sees everything else.
Tim’s dark hair and blue eyes, the set of his jaw, and the circles under his eyes that all show just how much he knows the world doesn’t have to offer him. There isn’t any childhood there, and the feeling washing over Jason now if nothing but fear.
He gropes under the side of the couch, and jams his palm against the panic button.
He hates how little convincing it takes for Bruce to let Tim down to the cave, and he just lets himself fade back into the shadows so he doesn’t have to look at Tim staring around in wonder at everything. He asks something about the computers, and Bruce answers in that tone that isn’t Batman and isn’t Bruce Wayne, and that Jason always thought was his.
His fingernails dig into his palms, almost cutting them until he remembers having to explain that to Bruce the last time he did it.
He can’t hate Tim though, because as soon as Bruce is finished showing him around, he comes right over to him and just gives him this look and nods.
“Thanks,” he says, and Jason glares.
“For what?” he demands, and then Tim is smiling at him, and playing with the strap of his backpack.
“You waited for me to explain.”
Jason stares at him for another minute before the words blurt from his mouth, “You’re a total freak, aren’t you?”
He blushes, and rubs at his arm. “I… probably.”
That’s even weirder than anything, and Jason just stares again, because he was expecting him to get mad or something normal like that but. He’s a freak, right.
“I have to get home, I’ll… see you later.”
“Right,” he says, and forces himself to swallow, because he’s going to be Robin, even though his parents are still alive and he could still be considered happy, all because he’s smart, all because he’s… better than Jason, now.
He watches Tim take the stairs up to the manor, one at a time, slowly and deliberately.
He could probably define spontaneous faster than he could enact it. Jason’s shoulder’s tighten, and he glares after him, not caring that Bruce has been edging towards him since the minute he and Tim stopped talking.
“He’s good,” he says, all childish anger hidden behind nonchalance, “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”
“Jason…” Bruce reaches out a hand, but Jason bats it away.
“Just say it now, Bruce. Tell me he isn’t going to be ten times better than me or Dick.” His throat closes up suddenly, and he can’t breathe. “He’s like a fucking godsend, dream come true, and I’m just last year’s model.”
He can see Bruce trying to interrupt, but Jason’s been wanting to say this ever since Bruce stopped talking to him in anything other than fake voices.
It’s like sucking all the venom out of someone else’s snakebite only to swallow it yourself, and maybe that’s why Jason feels so sick all of a sudden, but he can’t stop. “You tossed Dick to the side, too, so I guess no one is ever really good enough, right? Even if I hadn’t gotten fucked over by the Joker, you’d still fire me, or bench me, or whatever the fuck just --“
His sentence is cut off by a shaky sigh that he has to work not to become a sob. He was never this bad at not crying before.
Bruce is looking at him like Jason slapped him, and maybe that would’ve been better, because then Jason’s fist would be the only thing hurting.
“I’m not -- none of this is meant to hurt you, Jay,” Bruce says, his voice coming out like vow, and Jason’s breathing slows a fraction of a beat.
“Damn good job you’re doing,” he snorts, trying to hold on to the last strands of his anger even as it slips away, leaving him feeling tired and just empty, like living wasn’t worth it.
“Tim and Dick will never mean what you do to me, Jason. You know that.”
It’s the closest thing to a question and an apology that he’s ever going to get. He turns around, stepping into Bruce’s shadow and inhaling the smell of expensive cologne that he half-imagines never masks the underlying scent of sweat and Kevlar.
Bruce kisses him, long and slow, making Jason’s face flush and his fingers curl into the lapels of Bruce’s suit.
His lips are always softer than Jason thinks they should be, pliant and giving when Bruce is anything but, and he drags his tongue along them before opening his mouth as wide as he can, inviting Bruce’s tongue in and making a little sound of approval when their teeth click together.
It’s the first time Bruce kissed him since that hospital in Africa when Jason thought he was still dead, and Bruce was too eaten away with worry to act like he didn’t care.
All these months it’s been like a limb missing, and suddenly, with Bruce’s hands cradling him, and their mouths sucking each other dry everything is right again.
His fingers are just as good as they used to be, and Bruce’s suits haven’t changed at all. He works open the buttons, pushing at his chest and growling into his mouth until Bruce unfreezes and keeps kissing.
“I’m not dead,” he echoes the words he’s said a million times, and Bruce clenches his jaw as Jason pulls away.
“You can’t keep doing this… acting like I’m gonna break. Because I’m not, and it’s driving me fucking insane.” He shoves Bruce’s jacket and shirt off all in one motion, and begins tracing his fingers over the scars.
There are new ones, and it sends a pang through his chest that he wasn’t there. He didn’t even know. But then he just has to swallow that because Bruce reaches into his pants and grabs his bare ass.
He groans, and Bruce takes the hint, kissing him, fucking his mouth with his tongue.
“Fuck me,” he gasps between kisses, his fingers tightening against the muscles of Bruce’s stomach.
It’s still weird enough, having Bruce pick him up like he weights nothing, one hand still kneading Jason’s ass, and carrying him over right where he wants him, laying him out on the mats and trailing kisses all down Jason’s throat.
He can feel every scar Bruce’s mouth touches, lighting them up like fire. He makes a strangled sound in his throat, and scratches at the mat with his fingernails.
“Jay,” Bruce says, and when Jason sees him, lips shining with sweat, his eyes roll back and he breathes out raggedly. “I missed you. This.”
“Oh fuck, Bruce,” he groans, “Fucking. Talk later.”
“I suppose it was too much to hope your patience would be tempered,” he chuckles, sliding off Jason’s shirt, and hooking two fingers from both hands into the waistband of his sweatpants.
His throat tightens, but he still gasps out, “Still the same as ever, Bruce, not like you… gave me much incentive to change.”
“Hm?” Bruce slides down his pants, letting Jason lift his feet out of them, letting them drop somewhere below them.
“Haven’t changed yourself.” He sits up, just enough to get Bruce to kiss him again, and then they’re both falling back into the mats.
Pain is beginning to flair up along his back, but that’s just excuse to unzip Bruce’s fly, and push at his pants, tangling them around his hips and letting his palm slide over the smooth muscle there.
It was always shocking just how solid Bruce is, huge enough to crowd him just being in the same room, pressing against him and reeking of sex is enough to send his mind spinning, and he pants when Bruce sits up on his knees to slide off his pants all the way, kicking his shoes off as well.
Jason grins, his legs already spread and waiting.
“Come on Bruce. Fuck me,” he grins, his hair falling into his eyes, and Bruce growls, shoving him back further into the mats and spit-slicking a finger before pushing it into Jason’s hole.
He swears at the burn, before his tone smoothes out into moans, begging when Bruce just brushes his prostate.
It’s everything he remembers about sex with Bruce, all the teasing that shouldn’t be there, and all the darkness just held off around the edges. It’s like flying and falling all at once, and Jason will never stop wanting more.
Bruce gives him another finger, and Jason can’t breathe for a second, the feeling of being stretched and filled too much until Bruce sets a rhythm, and then he’s panting again, and pushing up into his fingers.
“Oh Bruce, god -- fucking -- fuck,” he gasps out. “Do it, dammit. just.”
“Please?” Bruce’s eyes are sparkling, too bright and too blue.
Jason growls. “Yes. Fucking do it.”
He’s going to come, he knows he’s so close, but then Bruce pulls out his fingers, and squeezes Jason’s hip, using more spit to slide over his cock, and Jason can just see through a haze of sweat and his hair tangling in his eyes, Bruce pushing himself in.
He swears, moans cutting off the jumbled words, and then it’s just Bruce’s name over as the burn of being taken dry comes over to pleasure at the slow, steady rhythm Bruce is setting.
He leans forward, and kisses Jason, murmuring his name softly, and still holding his hip in one hand, using the other to brace against the ground.
Jason moans into Bruce’s mouth, glad that he can’t hear just how loud Jason wants to be.
Bruce bites at his lip, and Jason’s hips shake and thrust against Bruce’s cock, moaning and gasping louder when he speeds up the pace.
His eyes roll back under his lashes, seeing just through slits Bruce’s face wide and open as he fucks Jason through the floor.
“Bruce, oh Bruce. Fuck.”
He grips him by the shoulders, the muscles under his fingers tensing and working, and then Bruce shifts, moving his hand from Jason’s hip to his dick.
He strokes him off in time with his own thrusts, and that’s too hot and too much, and Bruce’s eyes are still staring at him. “Bruce,” he cries, voice rough from overuse and comes all over their stomachs and Bruce’s hand.
Bruce is still thrusting in him, still sending waves of pleasure through Jason’s body, and he mumbled useless babble, until he gives way to just panting. Bruce stills and comes, hips shaking and growling out Jason’s name into his ear.
He sucks in his breath, catching it faster than Jason ever could, and pulls out, carefully rolling off of him. Jason just lies back on the mats and breathes.
It’s enough, he grins up at the darkness of the cave, even if it isn’t perfect and he isn’t Robin.
Tim can have Batman. He’s not giving up Bruce.
He doesn’t want to be around for Tim’s training in the beginning, but after a few days of Alfred making tsking noises whenever he saw him around the Manor, and catching glimpses of Tim’s glowing look when he slipped out of the cave, he starts going, and it isn’t long after that that he starts figuring things out.
His bones are too weak, most of them, that he can’t punch and kick like he used to. His body is just that, a body after to be beat and broken, and he knows that now. But fighting isn’t just about punching hard, or even the pretty flips that Dick gets off on.
He’s just as fast as he had to be when he was stealing for food, which isn’t quite as fast as Tim, but if he works on that, and regains the muscle he lost when he was healing the maybe he can be a hero again.
He never says that to Bruce. Even though they’re fucking again, and Bruce is actually paying attention to him in the good ways, it isn’t the same as before.
He’s not Robin, he get’s that, and he’s even pretty much okay with that, but it changes things.
He isn’t Batman’s partner, just Bruce’s. Jason can sense around the edges every time they’re laying next to each other after they’ve exhausted themselves that this isn’t going to last forever. It’s fucking with them pretty severely, but it isn’t in his nature to give up, so he’ll hold on to it as long as he can.
It’s not all about Bruce anymore, though, and that’s another thing that’s changed. They have Tim now.
He’s just as much of a freak as Jason figured out when he first met him, maybe even more than that, because he smiles for the weirdest reasons and then just doesn’t every time else. He’s always making Jason feel like he’s missing something.
But then something will happen like two minutes ago when Bruce went off on a lecture about criminals and due process, and all the other stuff Jason doesn’t give a fuck about, and Tim looked at him and raised an eyebrow, and then Jason had to do everything not to laugh.
He shoves him in the shoulder when Bruce finally waves them off to the bars, and Tim gives him a whisper smile in return a second before he drops into a kick that would’ve at least knocked Jason off balance if he didn’t dodge.
Jason fakes to the left, before twisting and kicking out at Tim’s right. He falls for it, and it sends him down, slapping against the ground before he kicks into a handspring and lands on his feet a yard away.
He lifts his hands, and twitches his fingers in a dare. The whisper smile on Tim’s face grows, and soon their tagging each other across the cave.
Tim doesn’t hold back with him, he never seems to be afraid Jason’s going to get hurt, and maybe that’s just because Jason manages to kick his ass a good eighty percent of the time. (The number is rapidly decreasing, but he’ll say it while he can.) Still, it makes him grin and just loosen up all over.
Bruce lightens up about him when Tim’s around, too, which Jason is really fucking thankful for because they’re both of the broody, dark variety naturally, and Jason really couldn’t handle that.
He sends Tim to the mats again with shoulder strike, only to be downed himself when Tim manages to jump all the way over his head and snap him in the back. He swears, rolls himself to his feet only a second later, meaning to pay him back.
Tim’s already over by the bars, chalking up his hands.
Figures. He rolls his eyes, and then his shoulders, hurrying over to join him before Bruce snaps at him for slacking off.
“How are you holding up over there, little wing?” Dick’s voice crackles over the com.
He rolls his eyes. “Peachy, N.”
“What’s this about a new kid?”
Jason knew he was going to ask that, that it was the real reason Dick even bothered calling. It still makes him glare at his room’s ceiling. “His name’s Tim.”
“Tim, right. Who is he?”
“Our next door neighbor, apparently.” He can feel Dick’s unasked question in the pause. “He met you at the circus the night your parents ate it.”
There’s a long pause. “You ever think about not being such a fucking asshole, Jay?”
He smirks, feeling awful and vindicated all at once. “Not really, I don’t think it would suit me right. Anyway, he figured out all our secret IDs before I even entered the picture.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. He’s like Bruce miniature.”
Dick laughs into the com, and then there’s a long string of sounds of violence. He must have found his targets.
“He’s redesigning the costume. Black cape, and get this, tights.” Jason lets a little of his irritation bleed through.
Dick’s become a lot more understanding of him since he almost died and everything, which makes this conversation even possible. They still aren’t anything like friends, though, but maybe since they’re brothers they don’t have to be.
He’s getting closer to being Tim’s friend, though. If the kid even knows what friends are.
“Bruce is letting him?” Dick’s voice is all amusement.
Jason feels himself beginning to smile, too, and cuts it off. “Yeah, but I think Tim like, out grimed him about it.”
Making Dick laugh is like a reward in and of itself. He doesn’t do it as often as Bruce says he did when he was Robin, but when he does it’s still as free and open as ever.
It’s kind of like looking into another time period now.
“Hey,” Dick’s voice comes back from the laughter, “I’m catching the train in a minute. It’s good to hear your voice, little wing.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“You’re not as bad as you act,” Dick says after a second, and Jason can hear the smirk in his voice.
He cuts the connection.
A second later Tim melts out of the shadows in the corner of his room.
He’s getting really fucking good at that, and maybe the black cape makes a lot of sense for him, because sticking him in yellow would be like a sin against subtleness when it comes to the kid. He’s biting his lip, dressed in his rich boy geek clothes, and that makes Jason roll his eyes more than talking to Dick.
“Heard of a door?” he asks.
Tim smiles, which is still very freaky. “It was open.”
“Knocking?” he continues, imitating the action with one hand, and Tim’s smile grows.
“I’ll think about it.”
“I’m sure,” he rolls his eyes again, and pats the empty stretch of bed next to where he’s sort of flopping.
“You were talking to Dick,” Tim says, and it isn’t a question in the same way everything that Bruce says isn’t a question.
If he didn’t treat it as one they would never say more than three sentences to each other. “Yeah.”
“Hm.”
Tim is managing to look perfectly Battish and out of place in his teenage boy room, he grabs him by the arm and pulls him into the big, squishy pillows covering half the bed.
He collects himself into a better position, and stares at Jason. “I’m thinking of traveling. To Paris.”
Jason’s eyebrows shoot up. “What the -- wait,” he frowns, “No, actually. What the fuck?”
“I can learn things. Bruce won’t teach me.” Tim pulls at a loose feather in one of the pillows, and continues to stare at Jason, like he has all the answers of the universe or something.
“What things?” he demands, feeling his shock reaching new levels with this one.
Tim grimaces. “Weapons training.”
“Bruce can’t teach you that?” He’s not sure, at this point, he wants to know exactly what Tim has planned, but he has to make the effort.
“He isn’t a master, nor does he use what he has been taught on a daily -- nightly -- basis.”
He bites his tongue so he doesn’t laugh, and more so he doesn’t start seeing the overwhelming logic. “You aren’t even Robin yet.”
“No,” Tim agrees, in a tone that says pleasantly he doesn’t see Jason’s point, but it’s nice of him to try.
“I mean -- why worry about this shit?”
Tim frowns. “I just want to do the best job, Jason.”
He’s starting to think that’s all Tim ever wants, and also that he’s never going to realize he’s already good enough.
Better than Jason, at any rate. If he could work more at flexibility he would overtake Dick as well.
It scares him, because he wants to like Tim, not this thing Tim is making himself into.
Robin. The best one yet.
He can’t hate Bruce for letting Tim go, because by the time Tim had even started in on convincing him Jason was already on his side about the damn thing.
It’s only two months, he tells himself, but it feels just as fake as six weeks for a cast to get off.
Even if he isn’t hating Bruce it doesn’t mean he can’t blame him, or stop talking to him for a week, and he knows how childish that is, but he can’t really bring himself to care.
It’s been close to a year since he was taken out by the Joker, and he’s gained back everything he’s going to since then. He’s better, a better fighter and probably just a better person because he thinks he gets life now, as much as people can.
It isn’t bad or good, or any of that shit that pissed him off so much when he was a kid. It just is, and there’s good and bad in it but none of that really matters if he doesn’t let it.
So he doesn’t hate Bruce, because it’s fucking pointless, just works on showing him that he thinks it’s a bad idea, letting Tim run off.
He doesn’t know what his new name is going to be. It’s the most important part, really. Maybe he’ll let Tim name him when he gets back, but for now the black domino covering his face is good enough.
His suit is all black, no cape, and a heavier belt. It’s actually one of Bruce’s, before it had been painted, so it’s just a matte gray, but it works.
Jason can feel it working when he tears out of the cave on one of the bikes, and yells against the wind as loud as he can. In that instant he changes his mind, feels it reorder itself, because this is what living really is, and he can’t believe he ever forgot.
He isn’t doing this to get back at Bruce, isn’t doing this because of Bruce at all. It’s just about doing what he wants, like freedom. Which is why he leaves the com in his ear off most of the night, and just focuses his attention on street crime.
He’s not looking to jump into the center ring his first night back, and probably if he saw the Joker again he’d show him exactly what a crowbar feel like buried in your kidneys, so he steers away from all of that.
There’s a huddle of gang members going for assault on a little family very clearly not from around here, and Jason parks the bike in the mouth of the alley, and then just rushes into the shadows.
He picks off two of the guys and has them tied before the others even notice, and then they all spring into action the same time Jay rushes out from the shadows and puts on the show of violence he’s been penning up for months.
He’s not bothering to clean up as much as he should, feeling the crunching pop of a snapped jaw when he kicks one guy in the face. The family is running just like they’re supposed to, though, and Jason grins and uses one of the downed guy’s stomachs as a spring board to off the last one.
When Bruce flips his shit Jason’ll blame it on the difference between the boots and Dick’s pixie shoes.
He comes back to the cave fully prepared to snap and argue until dawn, thinking up counter arguments to all the idiotic crap Bruce is probably preparing to unleash on him.
Jason parks the bike where he found it, and starts rubbing solvent around the edges of the mask to unstick it from his face. He’s just pealing it off when Batman arrives in all his fucked up glory.
He doesn’t bother trying to hide. That’s in the past, and Bruce needs to finally get that he isn’t a kid playing dress-up in another guy’s shorts anymore.
If that means Bruce not wanting him operating in Gotham, fucking fine then, because Jay isn’t backing down from this.
“Batman,” he says, smirking around the corners of he name.
He seems to notice Jason for the first time, just getting out of the car, and staring at him for long enough to make Jason grin. “Jason,” Batman says, all low and growling.
“I haven’t thought up a name yet,” he shrugs, keeping his tone casual.
Batman frowns, deeply. “I never authorized you as street ready.”
“I authorized myself. We both know I’m as fucking ready as I need to be.”
“Jason,” Batman says, and it makes his fingers twitch, but isn’t enough to stop him.
Not now.
“Gonna kick me out?” he dares, arching an eyebrow.
Batman glares some more, before his frown smoothes out into something more like a human expression. “You aren’t street ready until you have a name.”
He grins. “Fuck you, then.”
He growls, and Jason licks his lips. “You know how I feel about figurative speech, Jason.”
Jason keeps his grin up, not letting it slide into the smirk it wants to be quite yet. “Maybe I should relearn that lesson, Batman. What was the punishment again?”
He walks as he talks, crowding Batman up against the car, resting his gloved hands against Kevlar covered hips, and finally smirking.
“Jay,” and the octave is almost Bruce, so Jason kisses him as rough as he can, biting at his lips, to get him to shut up.
He snaps open the hidden catches in the costume, letting his fingers hook and yank, dragging off Batman’s jock along with the tights.
Jason sinks to his knees, going just slow enough to be a tease, until Batman twists a hand into his hair and shoves him the rest of the way down. He sucks in his breath at the impact of his knees against the ground, but growls when Bruce starts to pull his hand back.
He digs his thumb into the soft, exposed flesh along Batman’s hip line, and licks his lips again before his tongue darts out to lick against the head of his dick. It’s still perfect, his hands braced on Batman’s hip and the gloved hand in his hair urging him to speed up.
He licks and sucks lightly a bit more, waiting until Bruce is hard and his hand is tugging insistently at Jason’s hair.
It’s the closest he’ll get to a beg, and he sneaks his hand not squared on Bruce’s hip into his own tights, squeezes himself as he swallows around Batman’s dick.
There’s saliva dripped from his chin, and his cheeks are hollowed, sucking and letting his eyes fall shut, his lashes brushing the tops of his cheeks.
He squeezes his own balls, gasping and moaning around Bruce’s cock buried in his mouth. His hips shake, and Jason swallows again, the motion threatening to gag him. He pulls back, just slightly to lick around the head of his cock, swirling his tongue and sucking.
Batman growls, thrusting into him, fucking his mouth even with Jason’s hand bracing his hips.
He swallows when Bruce comes, gasping and licking at his chin when he pulls away. He can feel Bruce’s eyes taking him in, staring down at him, and it feels like forever before he drags Jason up by the arms, and turns them so he’s the one pressed against the car.
Bruce pushes his jock and tights out of the way, and starts jerking him off, still wearing the gauntlet. Jason moans, and shudders, his body still and then shaking when he comes.
He watches from hooded eyes as Bruce brings his come covered fingers to his mouth and begins to lick them clean. “Fuck,” he breathes, “So fucking sexy.”
He kisses Bruce again, pushing the cowl off so he can tangle his hands in his hair, and he can taste his come on Bruce’s lips the same as he can taste Bruce’s, and that’s really the hottest thing ever.
“So let’s go to bed,” he groans when he pulls away, making quick work of his tights and boots.
He stripes off his shirt as he walks towards the stairs, knowing if Bruce is anything like sane he’ll follow.
Before Tim left on his little training excursion he hadn’t been able to move like he had just been born doing it, not like Dick when he was in the air, or Jason when he was street-fighting. It wasn’t what he was good at.
He watches Tim with that staff for a grand total of five minutes before making a vow never to get into a tangle with him while he’s using it. It’s the perfection of motion he had been lacking, and now, Jason thinks as bile rises in his throat for the first time in months, he’s perfect.
The perfect Robin, all sharp and deadly, with a scary ass smile that’s only friendly until you look at it.
Jason crosses his arms, and smiles his own smile, just to cover up the terror and self loathing he feels when Bruce hands over Tim’s new suit.
It’s really just as bright as Robin should be, except when Tim settles his arms at his sides, and the cape falls closed around him. He’s a perfect miniature shadow to match Bruce, and Jason retreats back to the Manor.
Bruce doesn’t let him out every night. One of the conditions of their new arrangement, and he doesn’t get to go near the real crazies either.
He can handle that, it isn’t like he really wants to, anyway.
Jason hasn’t actually come up with a name yet, either. He’s J on the com, though, and somehow that translated to Jay when he’s on the street and Bruce or Barbara or whoever actually needs to talk to him.
It works, until he can figure out something better.
He slips into his room, and Alfred’s already set out a plate of cookies and milk right next to the homework he’s supposed to be doing to catch up so he can still graduate on time. He doesn’t really care, but he does it so Bruce won’t glare too much.
It’s all fractions and simple algebra, so he eats his cookies while he works, and takes to staring out the window at the crisscross of bright lights that represents his city.
It’s been a weird year. He finishes up his milk and stripes down to his boxers to stretch before he goes to bed.
He isn’t really asleep when the knock comes somewhere next to his window, but he’s not awake enough not to be a bit pissed off about it. He pulls the covers off his bed, and stumbles across the room until he sees that it’s Robin outside his window.
Jason mutters a few stunned curses to himself and unlatches the window. Robin, Tim, drops down and lands in a neat, little crouch in his bedroom.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks.
Tim shrugs, he’s raising an eyebrow under the mask. “I -- I couldn’t go home,” he says, and says the last word like it doesn’t belong right.
Jason freezes, just a bit, before his brain kicks in and he remembers it’s more than just Tim being a quiet freak that he doesn’t see him all that much. He has this whole other life that Jason doesn’t have a clue about.
He thinks he gets it, though, because he knows how he felt after his first couple patrols. Like he could take on the world and live, and it’s not a feeling meant for normal people.
“Have a good time?” he asks, knowing how stupid the question is.
Tim smiles, and it’s a completely different effect with the lenses covering his eyes. “It was interesting.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Fucking freak.”
It actually hurts a bit to smack Tim in the shoulder, but he does it anyway. “Take that mask off, actually, just strip. I’m not sleeping with you wearing that.”
“Jason,” Tim blushes, but begins pealing off the mask.
“I didn’t mean we’re gonna do anything.” He hits Tim’s shoulder again. “Idiot.”
Tim’s smile returns. “I’m smarter than you.”
“That doesn’t make you any less of an idiot,” he snaps, and reaches out to help Tim off with his cape.
It’s different from Jason’s, closer to Batman’s in the way the catches open, but he gets it off after a second, and Tim starts in on the tunic before Jason can help with that too.
He gets back under the covers, which he’d mostly kicked off anyway, and just watches Tim strip the rest of the way.
He wolf whistles when Tim finally steps out of his tights and jock, making him blush again.
“Do you think I’ll do a good job? As Robin,” Tim asks as he slides into bed next to Jason, for once not shying off when Jason wraps an arm around him.
His eyes are wide and a little vulnerable, and it’s one of the few real questions Tim asks, so he puts on his best smile, and answers, “You’re a hell of a lot better than I ever was.”
Tim swallows. “I don’t know about that.”
“You are,” Jason squeezes him. “Fucking perfect, and you’re a shithead if you can’t see that.”
“Language,” Tim says, making a noise like a laugh.
Jason ruffles his hair. “Go to sleep, Boy Wonder.”
“Night, Jason.”
He grins, and presses his head into Tim’s hair, inhaling the smell of sweat and Kevlar and hair gel that makes up Tim in his mind now.
It’s been a weird year, but overall he’d pretty glad he’s not dead.
Author: Mimic
Characters/Pairings: Bruce/Jason, Tim
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I don't play for keeps. DC owns them.
Notes: AU! It isn't quite fix-it, but I'm not breaking anything else. Jason survives getting blown up, Tim pays him a visit in his recovery. Batman needs a Robin, Bruce needs a Jay. naughty__pixie encouraged greatly, so thanks be to her. Technically written for merfilly 's Memorial Day Challenge where my claim was Jason Todd, and U2's Where the Streets Have No Name, title taken from the lyrics.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Word Count: 8000
Bruce never tells him, but Jason knows there was a second there -- after the numbers hit zero and before Bruce found him -- where he was dead. He wasn’t breathing, and his heart wasn’t beating, and now whenever he closes his eyes he can’t think of anything but what darkness feels like.
He’s not Robin anymore, and Bruce doesn’t have to tell him that either.
It isn’t just about not being able to move in a fraction of the ways he used to, it’s the way Bruce looks at him with sad, tragic hurt, and hope all at once, and how when Nightwing visits he isn’t a total asshole, and Jason thinks maybe they could work on being brothers now.
The world feels clearer, like all the things that used to be really important just aren’t anymore, and he’s okay with that.
He shambles down to the Cave the first time in months, taking the stairs as slow as he can. Bruce looks up at him from the computers like he’s seeing a ghost, and Jason can’t help the surge of anger that floods through him.
There’s a case with his suit in it, and he stares at it for a long time. “I’m not dead,” he says, and the words seem so pointless that he repeats it just to see if it makes it better, “I’m not.”
“That part of you is.”
It only hurts because it’s true.
Jason curls his fingers into fists, feeling the muscles tighten all up his arms, and glares at his feet. “I can’t just --“ he searches around for the words. He’s always hated talking, because his mouth always betrays him, never saying what he means, or saying too much of it. He scowls. “I can’t unlearn this, Bruce.”
“You aren’t going out again,” his tone is cold, all Batman, except Batman wouldn’t care about that. Not like Bruce does.
“That’s not what I said!” his voice rises to a shout, and he has to bite his tongue to shut himself up.
Bruce frowns, but his eyes are all pain. Jason swallows back the bile rising in his throat.
He wants to sit down. He knows if he doesn’t soon he’s going to collapse on the floor of the cave, but giving up like that would be so stupid that he keeps himself on his feet.
“Perhaps it would be better if you spent your time recovering somewhere else, Jason. Somewhere… better.”
He just gapes, for a moment, before the anger comes back so strong he can’t take it.
He thought it was gone. He thought… he thought he’d gotten over it.
“Fuck you! No! Fuck you, Bruce. This is my home,” and everything he’s been holding off feeling bleeds through, and he sort of slides down to his knees and just stares.
Bruce’s hand on his shoulder makes him growl, but he can’t pull away.
“This is my home.”
“I know, Jason,” Bruce says, and he wants to scream at him that he doesn’t, that he’s always known exactly where he belongs and how could he know what being ripped away from the first thing he’s ever had that was right feels like, but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out.
He sits there in silence until his knees start to protest, and then Bruce carefully scoops him up and carries him back up the manor.
“I could have done it myself,” he complains.
Bruce gives him a twitch-smile, which Jason’s beginning to realize is all he’s ever going to get from Bruce now, but that makes him want to cry like a sissy so he doesn’t think about it.
“I feel like a girl,” he says instead, and Bruce makes a noise like laughter.
Jason grins into Bruce’s shoulder, and it’s one of those times that he’s really glad he isn’t dead, because their family is always going to have issues and if it isn’t about him it would just be something else. At least he can handle it all right, not like when Bruce was all cut up about Dick.
Bruce puts him down at the door to his bedroom after Jason pinches his neck in something not quite hard enough to be a nerve strike.
He isn’t dead, and he’s going to keep reminding Bruce that until he at least acts like he gets it.
It isn’t like he gets a lot of visitors, even though his picture was all over the papers and the news ran a whole story about his ‘unfortunate accident’. The whole world knows what happened to him, or think they do, but not enough to actually care.
A few kids from his school came over the first month after he came back, when he still couldn’t get out of bed, with a card and some flowers. It was the kind of thing the teachers obviously made them do, but Jason got a laugh out of it.
The only people he really cares about anyway are Bruce, and Alfred, because who else does he even know?
He’s lounging in the ‘entertainment room’, which would be more like a library than anything except for the huge flat screen mounted on one wall when Alfred comes in to tell him there’s a young man here to see him.
He raises an eyebrow, and switches the crappy movie he’s watching to mute. “Who?” he asks again.
“His name is Timothy Drake, young sir.” Alfred doesn’t act freaked out at all, but he’s doing that thing with his eyebrows that means something not normal is going on.
Jason shrugs, and tries not to look totally surprised by this. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“He mentioned. Shall I show him up?”
He shrugs again. “Why not?”
It’s not like he wants to play ‘Bruce Wayne’s son’ for the inquisitive elementary kid, but he’s about two months overdue for something interesting to happen.
Bruce won’t even mention his nights as Batman, let alone offer up any gossip, and he hates going down to the cave now with that freaky suit like a pinned butterfly and Bruce’s eyes following his every step.
Everything else he’s handling okay, or he likes to think so, but getting cut out of the most important part of Bruce’s life makes him itch something fierce.
He stretches his arms, feeling the joints pop and creak in protest, and turns as Alfred returns with a kid in tow.
Jason has to wonder, first, just how old this kid is, because he looks about nine until he opens his eyes a little more and see the complete seriousness of his expression.
He’s dressed in geek clothes, a t-shirt that’s too big and has some kind of ‘net speak on the front, except that they probably cost as much as Bruce’s.
There’s a backpack slung over one of his shoulders, which makes sense, he probably just got out of school and drove (was driven?) up here.
“Hi,” he says in a voice that completely fails at being casual, and takes another couple steps into the room. It’s like he’s afraid Jason’s going to bite him, which is really kind of laughable, considering… everything.
He smirks. “Hey. So you’re…?”
“Tim Drake,” he answers after a second of just staring at Jason. He swallows visibly, and says, “I’m sorry.”
Jason’s mouth twists into a frown a second before he realizes that he’s not as mad as he should be to hear that, and then the reasoning kicks in. It was all about tone, and the way Tim wasn’t acting like he was some invalid a step away from death.
He was acting, well, half like it was somehow his fault that Jason was a dumbass, and half like he wanted to go one-two with the Joker right now to stop him from doing anything like that again.
It was kind of gratifying.
“So why’re you here?” he asks, before wincing and adding a second later, “I mean, we’ve never met.”
Tim’s throat works for a second, his mouth opening and closing before he pulls the backpack off his shoulder and hugs it to his chest. “I know.”
“I’m not gonna hurt you, kid,” he rolls his eyes, and sort of gestures at his pajamas and mussed hair.
That get’s him something like a smile, which Jason thinks is a step in the right direction.
“I live next door,” Tim says, after too many seconds of silence for Jason to connect that to the previous chain of conversation.
He raises his eyebrow. “Next door?” he echoes the words, thinking Wayne Manor and the huge ass grounds he hadn’t seen all of before he got hurt.
Tim just nods.
Rich kid, Jason thinks really loudly.
“So what?” he asks, because he’s never been a detective but he doubts even Bruce would be able to connect the dots with that. “Why visit me?”
Tim stares down at the backpack clutched to his chest, and doesn’t say anything. He’s doing that swallowing and gaping thing again, and Jason just watches his throat work for a while, because that’s easier than thinking up something to say that doesn’t sound lame.
He finally looks up. His eyes are a really interesting shade of blue, not as icy as Bruce’s but Jason thinks he could stare at them for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and Jason’s just about to start up with the what the fuck and all of that, until Tim says, “I know what really happened. I mean, I know who you are, were.”
Jason feels himself freeze all over, and sees Tim echo him however many feet away.
There is a panic button seven inches away from his hand on the underside of the couch, and if he pushed it Alfred would pull out the shotgun, and Bruce would come rushing home from whatever Bruce Wayne thing he’s doing today, but…
He looks at the kid, and Tim’s biting his lip and not breathing at all.
He looks like Jason’s about to run over his puppy.
“You -- what the fuck are you talking about?” He has to be sure, because if he isn’t and Tim’s just talking about something completely lame and not important then Jason can’t screw it up by making a bit deal, but Tim flushes to the roots of his hair, and opens up his backpack.
He pulls out a book, a photo album, and says, “I know you’re -- were Robin.”
“You. Wait,” he takes a deep breath, and closes his mouth.
Tim nods, or jerks his head in something resembling a nod, and steps a little closer, hovering just in line with Jason’s reach. He twitches like he wants to move closer, and Jason finally sighs and streaks out an arm, tugging him onto the couch next to him.
His eyes are really wide when Jason lets go, and he looks enough like a shocky statue that Jason snaps, “You knew I was Robin,” and leaves it at that.
He nods again, and shows Jason the picture he has at the front of the album.
The first thing Jason thinks is that he hopes to Christ the kid doesn’t carry that shit around with him all the time, but then he gets caught up in starting at the older kid in the picture, the one that’s really obviously Dick, arm wrapped around an even littler kid which is… Tim.
“That’s you?” he asks, not quite believing it even in the face of evidence.
“Yes, and my parents and --“
“Dick and his parents,” he says, and his voice is flat and dead sounding in his own ears. “So wait. You met Dick and then… what?”
Tim swallows, and fingers the edge of the photo album in a way Jason can tell is all about not leaving visible fingerprints. He wants to laugh, but there’s bile building up in his throat again and laughing would just make him sick.
He stares up at the movie that still playing in the background of all this, watching the flashing lights without really seeing it.
“This was the night they died,” Tim says, and his voice cracks a little. Jason wonders how old he is. “I watched them… And then later I saw Di -- Robin, on television. They moved the same, and it was, it was obvious.”
He says obvious like any other kid would have seen it, like if it has been Jason at that circus all those years ago he would’ve seen it too, and there’s anger somewhere in that thought, but he can’t deal with it now.
“Fuck,” he swears, and presses his fingers to his eyelids, watching the spots that spring up behind his eyes. “Why are you here?”
His voice is worn out. He can’t talk as much as he used to since the explosion, something about smoke inhalation that he didn’t pay attention to because it was just one more thing he wouldn’t be able to do anymore.
He doesn’t really want the answer to that question, but Tim’s face is set in a determined frown, and he says, “Because you aren’t Robin.”
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense,” he snaps, annoyed at himself, and life, and just everything for being so fucking complicated and he can’t stand it.
“Batman needs a Robin,” Tim says, and Jason doesn’t see him say, but suddenly he sees everything else.
Tim’s dark hair and blue eyes, the set of his jaw, and the circles under his eyes that all show just how much he knows the world doesn’t have to offer him. There isn’t any childhood there, and the feeling washing over Jason now if nothing but fear.
He gropes under the side of the couch, and jams his palm against the panic button.
He hates how little convincing it takes for Bruce to let Tim down to the cave, and he just lets himself fade back into the shadows so he doesn’t have to look at Tim staring around in wonder at everything. He asks something about the computers, and Bruce answers in that tone that isn’t Batman and isn’t Bruce Wayne, and that Jason always thought was his.
His fingernails dig into his palms, almost cutting them until he remembers having to explain that to Bruce the last time he did it.
He can’t hate Tim though, because as soon as Bruce is finished showing him around, he comes right over to him and just gives him this look and nods.
“Thanks,” he says, and Jason glares.
“For what?” he demands, and then Tim is smiling at him, and playing with the strap of his backpack.
“You waited for me to explain.”
Jason stares at him for another minute before the words blurt from his mouth, “You’re a total freak, aren’t you?”
He blushes, and rubs at his arm. “I… probably.”
That’s even weirder than anything, and Jason just stares again, because he was expecting him to get mad or something normal like that but. He’s a freak, right.
“I have to get home, I’ll… see you later.”
“Right,” he says, and forces himself to swallow, because he’s going to be Robin, even though his parents are still alive and he could still be considered happy, all because he’s smart, all because he’s… better than Jason, now.
He watches Tim take the stairs up to the manor, one at a time, slowly and deliberately.
He could probably define spontaneous faster than he could enact it. Jason’s shoulder’s tighten, and he glares after him, not caring that Bruce has been edging towards him since the minute he and Tim stopped talking.
“He’s good,” he says, all childish anger hidden behind nonchalance, “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”
“Jason…” Bruce reaches out a hand, but Jason bats it away.
“Just say it now, Bruce. Tell me he isn’t going to be ten times better than me or Dick.” His throat closes up suddenly, and he can’t breathe. “He’s like a fucking godsend, dream come true, and I’m just last year’s model.”
He can see Bruce trying to interrupt, but Jason’s been wanting to say this ever since Bruce stopped talking to him in anything other than fake voices.
It’s like sucking all the venom out of someone else’s snakebite only to swallow it yourself, and maybe that’s why Jason feels so sick all of a sudden, but he can’t stop. “You tossed Dick to the side, too, so I guess no one is ever really good enough, right? Even if I hadn’t gotten fucked over by the Joker, you’d still fire me, or bench me, or whatever the fuck just --“
His sentence is cut off by a shaky sigh that he has to work not to become a sob. He was never this bad at not crying before.
Bruce is looking at him like Jason slapped him, and maybe that would’ve been better, because then Jason’s fist would be the only thing hurting.
“I’m not -- none of this is meant to hurt you, Jay,” Bruce says, his voice coming out like vow, and Jason’s breathing slows a fraction of a beat.
“Damn good job you’re doing,” he snorts, trying to hold on to the last strands of his anger even as it slips away, leaving him feeling tired and just empty, like living wasn’t worth it.
“Tim and Dick will never mean what you do to me, Jason. You know that.”
It’s the closest thing to a question and an apology that he’s ever going to get. He turns around, stepping into Bruce’s shadow and inhaling the smell of expensive cologne that he half-imagines never masks the underlying scent of sweat and Kevlar.
Bruce kisses him, long and slow, making Jason’s face flush and his fingers curl into the lapels of Bruce’s suit.
His lips are always softer than Jason thinks they should be, pliant and giving when Bruce is anything but, and he drags his tongue along them before opening his mouth as wide as he can, inviting Bruce’s tongue in and making a little sound of approval when their teeth click together.
It’s the first time Bruce kissed him since that hospital in Africa when Jason thought he was still dead, and Bruce was too eaten away with worry to act like he didn’t care.
All these months it’s been like a limb missing, and suddenly, with Bruce’s hands cradling him, and their mouths sucking each other dry everything is right again.
His fingers are just as good as they used to be, and Bruce’s suits haven’t changed at all. He works open the buttons, pushing at his chest and growling into his mouth until Bruce unfreezes and keeps kissing.
“I’m not dead,” he echoes the words he’s said a million times, and Bruce clenches his jaw as Jason pulls away.
“You can’t keep doing this… acting like I’m gonna break. Because I’m not, and it’s driving me fucking insane.” He shoves Bruce’s jacket and shirt off all in one motion, and begins tracing his fingers over the scars.
There are new ones, and it sends a pang through his chest that he wasn’t there. He didn’t even know. But then he just has to swallow that because Bruce reaches into his pants and grabs his bare ass.
He groans, and Bruce takes the hint, kissing him, fucking his mouth with his tongue.
“Fuck me,” he gasps between kisses, his fingers tightening against the muscles of Bruce’s stomach.
It’s still weird enough, having Bruce pick him up like he weights nothing, one hand still kneading Jason’s ass, and carrying him over right where he wants him, laying him out on the mats and trailing kisses all down Jason’s throat.
He can feel every scar Bruce’s mouth touches, lighting them up like fire. He makes a strangled sound in his throat, and scratches at the mat with his fingernails.
“Jay,” Bruce says, and when Jason sees him, lips shining with sweat, his eyes roll back and he breathes out raggedly. “I missed you. This.”
“Oh fuck, Bruce,” he groans, “Fucking. Talk later.”
“I suppose it was too much to hope your patience would be tempered,” he chuckles, sliding off Jason’s shirt, and hooking two fingers from both hands into the waistband of his sweatpants.
His throat tightens, but he still gasps out, “Still the same as ever, Bruce, not like you… gave me much incentive to change.”
“Hm?” Bruce slides down his pants, letting Jason lift his feet out of them, letting them drop somewhere below them.
“Haven’t changed yourself.” He sits up, just enough to get Bruce to kiss him again, and then they’re both falling back into the mats.
Pain is beginning to flair up along his back, but that’s just excuse to unzip Bruce’s fly, and push at his pants, tangling them around his hips and letting his palm slide over the smooth muscle there.
It was always shocking just how solid Bruce is, huge enough to crowd him just being in the same room, pressing against him and reeking of sex is enough to send his mind spinning, and he pants when Bruce sits up on his knees to slide off his pants all the way, kicking his shoes off as well.
Jason grins, his legs already spread and waiting.
“Come on Bruce. Fuck me,” he grins, his hair falling into his eyes, and Bruce growls, shoving him back further into the mats and spit-slicking a finger before pushing it into Jason’s hole.
He swears at the burn, before his tone smoothes out into moans, begging when Bruce just brushes his prostate.
It’s everything he remembers about sex with Bruce, all the teasing that shouldn’t be there, and all the darkness just held off around the edges. It’s like flying and falling all at once, and Jason will never stop wanting more.
Bruce gives him another finger, and Jason can’t breathe for a second, the feeling of being stretched and filled too much until Bruce sets a rhythm, and then he’s panting again, and pushing up into his fingers.
“Oh Bruce, god -- fucking -- fuck,” he gasps out. “Do it, dammit. just.”
“Please?” Bruce’s eyes are sparkling, too bright and too blue.
Jason growls. “Yes. Fucking do it.”
He’s going to come, he knows he’s so close, but then Bruce pulls out his fingers, and squeezes Jason’s hip, using more spit to slide over his cock, and Jason can just see through a haze of sweat and his hair tangling in his eyes, Bruce pushing himself in.
He swears, moans cutting off the jumbled words, and then it’s just Bruce’s name over as the burn of being taken dry comes over to pleasure at the slow, steady rhythm Bruce is setting.
He leans forward, and kisses Jason, murmuring his name softly, and still holding his hip in one hand, using the other to brace against the ground.
Jason moans into Bruce’s mouth, glad that he can’t hear just how loud Jason wants to be.
Bruce bites at his lip, and Jason’s hips shake and thrust against Bruce’s cock, moaning and gasping louder when he speeds up the pace.
His eyes roll back under his lashes, seeing just through slits Bruce’s face wide and open as he fucks Jason through the floor.
“Bruce, oh Bruce. Fuck.”
He grips him by the shoulders, the muscles under his fingers tensing and working, and then Bruce shifts, moving his hand from Jason’s hip to his dick.
He strokes him off in time with his own thrusts, and that’s too hot and too much, and Bruce’s eyes are still staring at him. “Bruce,” he cries, voice rough from overuse and comes all over their stomachs and Bruce’s hand.
Bruce is still thrusting in him, still sending waves of pleasure through Jason’s body, and he mumbled useless babble, until he gives way to just panting. Bruce stills and comes, hips shaking and growling out Jason’s name into his ear.
He sucks in his breath, catching it faster than Jason ever could, and pulls out, carefully rolling off of him. Jason just lies back on the mats and breathes.
It’s enough, he grins up at the darkness of the cave, even if it isn’t perfect and he isn’t Robin.
Tim can have Batman. He’s not giving up Bruce.
He doesn’t want to be around for Tim’s training in the beginning, but after a few days of Alfred making tsking noises whenever he saw him around the Manor, and catching glimpses of Tim’s glowing look when he slipped out of the cave, he starts going, and it isn’t long after that that he starts figuring things out.
His bones are too weak, most of them, that he can’t punch and kick like he used to. His body is just that, a body after to be beat and broken, and he knows that now. But fighting isn’t just about punching hard, or even the pretty flips that Dick gets off on.
He’s just as fast as he had to be when he was stealing for food, which isn’t quite as fast as Tim, but if he works on that, and regains the muscle he lost when he was healing the maybe he can be a hero again.
He never says that to Bruce. Even though they’re fucking again, and Bruce is actually paying attention to him in the good ways, it isn’t the same as before.
He’s not Robin, he get’s that, and he’s even pretty much okay with that, but it changes things.
He isn’t Batman’s partner, just Bruce’s. Jason can sense around the edges every time they’re laying next to each other after they’ve exhausted themselves that this isn’t going to last forever. It’s fucking with them pretty severely, but it isn’t in his nature to give up, so he’ll hold on to it as long as he can.
It’s not all about Bruce anymore, though, and that’s another thing that’s changed. They have Tim now.
He’s just as much of a freak as Jason figured out when he first met him, maybe even more than that, because he smiles for the weirdest reasons and then just doesn’t every time else. He’s always making Jason feel like he’s missing something.
But then something will happen like two minutes ago when Bruce went off on a lecture about criminals and due process, and all the other stuff Jason doesn’t give a fuck about, and Tim looked at him and raised an eyebrow, and then Jason had to do everything not to laugh.
He shoves him in the shoulder when Bruce finally waves them off to the bars, and Tim gives him a whisper smile in return a second before he drops into a kick that would’ve at least knocked Jason off balance if he didn’t dodge.
Jason fakes to the left, before twisting and kicking out at Tim’s right. He falls for it, and it sends him down, slapping against the ground before he kicks into a handspring and lands on his feet a yard away.
He lifts his hands, and twitches his fingers in a dare. The whisper smile on Tim’s face grows, and soon their tagging each other across the cave.
Tim doesn’t hold back with him, he never seems to be afraid Jason’s going to get hurt, and maybe that’s just because Jason manages to kick his ass a good eighty percent of the time. (The number is rapidly decreasing, but he’ll say it while he can.) Still, it makes him grin and just loosen up all over.
Bruce lightens up about him when Tim’s around, too, which Jason is really fucking thankful for because they’re both of the broody, dark variety naturally, and Jason really couldn’t handle that.
He sends Tim to the mats again with shoulder strike, only to be downed himself when Tim manages to jump all the way over his head and snap him in the back. He swears, rolls himself to his feet only a second later, meaning to pay him back.
Tim’s already over by the bars, chalking up his hands.
Figures. He rolls his eyes, and then his shoulders, hurrying over to join him before Bruce snaps at him for slacking off.
“How are you holding up over there, little wing?” Dick’s voice crackles over the com.
He rolls his eyes. “Peachy, N.”
“What’s this about a new kid?”
Jason knew he was going to ask that, that it was the real reason Dick even bothered calling. It still makes him glare at his room’s ceiling. “His name’s Tim.”
“Tim, right. Who is he?”
“Our next door neighbor, apparently.” He can feel Dick’s unasked question in the pause. “He met you at the circus the night your parents ate it.”
There’s a long pause. “You ever think about not being such a fucking asshole, Jay?”
He smirks, feeling awful and vindicated all at once. “Not really, I don’t think it would suit me right. Anyway, he figured out all our secret IDs before I even entered the picture.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. He’s like Bruce miniature.”
Dick laughs into the com, and then there’s a long string of sounds of violence. He must have found his targets.
“He’s redesigning the costume. Black cape, and get this, tights.” Jason lets a little of his irritation bleed through.
Dick’s become a lot more understanding of him since he almost died and everything, which makes this conversation even possible. They still aren’t anything like friends, though, but maybe since they’re brothers they don’t have to be.
He’s getting closer to being Tim’s friend, though. If the kid even knows what friends are.
“Bruce is letting him?” Dick’s voice is all amusement.
Jason feels himself beginning to smile, too, and cuts it off. “Yeah, but I think Tim like, out grimed him about it.”
Making Dick laugh is like a reward in and of itself. He doesn’t do it as often as Bruce says he did when he was Robin, but when he does it’s still as free and open as ever.
It’s kind of like looking into another time period now.
“Hey,” Dick’s voice comes back from the laughter, “I’m catching the train in a minute. It’s good to hear your voice, little wing.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“You’re not as bad as you act,” Dick says after a second, and Jason can hear the smirk in his voice.
He cuts the connection.
A second later Tim melts out of the shadows in the corner of his room.
He’s getting really fucking good at that, and maybe the black cape makes a lot of sense for him, because sticking him in yellow would be like a sin against subtleness when it comes to the kid. He’s biting his lip, dressed in his rich boy geek clothes, and that makes Jason roll his eyes more than talking to Dick.
“Heard of a door?” he asks.
Tim smiles, which is still very freaky. “It was open.”
“Knocking?” he continues, imitating the action with one hand, and Tim’s smile grows.
“I’ll think about it.”
“I’m sure,” he rolls his eyes again, and pats the empty stretch of bed next to where he’s sort of flopping.
“You were talking to Dick,” Tim says, and it isn’t a question in the same way everything that Bruce says isn’t a question.
If he didn’t treat it as one they would never say more than three sentences to each other. “Yeah.”
“Hm.”
Tim is managing to look perfectly Battish and out of place in his teenage boy room, he grabs him by the arm and pulls him into the big, squishy pillows covering half the bed.
He collects himself into a better position, and stares at Jason. “I’m thinking of traveling. To Paris.”
Jason’s eyebrows shoot up. “What the -- wait,” he frowns, “No, actually. What the fuck?”
“I can learn things. Bruce won’t teach me.” Tim pulls at a loose feather in one of the pillows, and continues to stare at Jason, like he has all the answers of the universe or something.
“What things?” he demands, feeling his shock reaching new levels with this one.
Tim grimaces. “Weapons training.”
“Bruce can’t teach you that?” He’s not sure, at this point, he wants to know exactly what Tim has planned, but he has to make the effort.
“He isn’t a master, nor does he use what he has been taught on a daily -- nightly -- basis.”
He bites his tongue so he doesn’t laugh, and more so he doesn’t start seeing the overwhelming logic. “You aren’t even Robin yet.”
“No,” Tim agrees, in a tone that says pleasantly he doesn’t see Jason’s point, but it’s nice of him to try.
“I mean -- why worry about this shit?”
Tim frowns. “I just want to do the best job, Jason.”
He’s starting to think that’s all Tim ever wants, and also that he’s never going to realize he’s already good enough.
Better than Jason, at any rate. If he could work more at flexibility he would overtake Dick as well.
It scares him, because he wants to like Tim, not this thing Tim is making himself into.
Robin. The best one yet.
He can’t hate Bruce for letting Tim go, because by the time Tim had even started in on convincing him Jason was already on his side about the damn thing.
It’s only two months, he tells himself, but it feels just as fake as six weeks for a cast to get off.
Even if he isn’t hating Bruce it doesn’t mean he can’t blame him, or stop talking to him for a week, and he knows how childish that is, but he can’t really bring himself to care.
It’s been close to a year since he was taken out by the Joker, and he’s gained back everything he’s going to since then. He’s better, a better fighter and probably just a better person because he thinks he gets life now, as much as people can.
It isn’t bad or good, or any of that shit that pissed him off so much when he was a kid. It just is, and there’s good and bad in it but none of that really matters if he doesn’t let it.
So he doesn’t hate Bruce, because it’s fucking pointless, just works on showing him that he thinks it’s a bad idea, letting Tim run off.
He doesn’t know what his new name is going to be. It’s the most important part, really. Maybe he’ll let Tim name him when he gets back, but for now the black domino covering his face is good enough.
His suit is all black, no cape, and a heavier belt. It’s actually one of Bruce’s, before it had been painted, so it’s just a matte gray, but it works.
Jason can feel it working when he tears out of the cave on one of the bikes, and yells against the wind as loud as he can. In that instant he changes his mind, feels it reorder itself, because this is what living really is, and he can’t believe he ever forgot.
He isn’t doing this to get back at Bruce, isn’t doing this because of Bruce at all. It’s just about doing what he wants, like freedom. Which is why he leaves the com in his ear off most of the night, and just focuses his attention on street crime.
He’s not looking to jump into the center ring his first night back, and probably if he saw the Joker again he’d show him exactly what a crowbar feel like buried in your kidneys, so he steers away from all of that.
There’s a huddle of gang members going for assault on a little family very clearly not from around here, and Jason parks the bike in the mouth of the alley, and then just rushes into the shadows.
He picks off two of the guys and has them tied before the others even notice, and then they all spring into action the same time Jay rushes out from the shadows and puts on the show of violence he’s been penning up for months.
He’s not bothering to clean up as much as he should, feeling the crunching pop of a snapped jaw when he kicks one guy in the face. The family is running just like they’re supposed to, though, and Jason grins and uses one of the downed guy’s stomachs as a spring board to off the last one.
When Bruce flips his shit Jason’ll blame it on the difference between the boots and Dick’s pixie shoes.
He comes back to the cave fully prepared to snap and argue until dawn, thinking up counter arguments to all the idiotic crap Bruce is probably preparing to unleash on him.
Jason parks the bike where he found it, and starts rubbing solvent around the edges of the mask to unstick it from his face. He’s just pealing it off when Batman arrives in all his fucked up glory.
He doesn’t bother trying to hide. That’s in the past, and Bruce needs to finally get that he isn’t a kid playing dress-up in another guy’s shorts anymore.
If that means Bruce not wanting him operating in Gotham, fucking fine then, because Jay isn’t backing down from this.
“Batman,” he says, smirking around the corners of he name.
He seems to notice Jason for the first time, just getting out of the car, and staring at him for long enough to make Jason grin. “Jason,” Batman says, all low and growling.
“I haven’t thought up a name yet,” he shrugs, keeping his tone casual.
Batman frowns, deeply. “I never authorized you as street ready.”
“I authorized myself. We both know I’m as fucking ready as I need to be.”
“Jason,” Batman says, and it makes his fingers twitch, but isn’t enough to stop him.
Not now.
“Gonna kick me out?” he dares, arching an eyebrow.
Batman glares some more, before his frown smoothes out into something more like a human expression. “You aren’t street ready until you have a name.”
He grins. “Fuck you, then.”
He growls, and Jason licks his lips. “You know how I feel about figurative speech, Jason.”
Jason keeps his grin up, not letting it slide into the smirk it wants to be quite yet. “Maybe I should relearn that lesson, Batman. What was the punishment again?”
He walks as he talks, crowding Batman up against the car, resting his gloved hands against Kevlar covered hips, and finally smirking.
“Jay,” and the octave is almost Bruce, so Jason kisses him as rough as he can, biting at his lips, to get him to shut up.
He snaps open the hidden catches in the costume, letting his fingers hook and yank, dragging off Batman’s jock along with the tights.
Jason sinks to his knees, going just slow enough to be a tease, until Batman twists a hand into his hair and shoves him the rest of the way down. He sucks in his breath at the impact of his knees against the ground, but growls when Bruce starts to pull his hand back.
He digs his thumb into the soft, exposed flesh along Batman’s hip line, and licks his lips again before his tongue darts out to lick against the head of his dick. It’s still perfect, his hands braced on Batman’s hip and the gloved hand in his hair urging him to speed up.
He licks and sucks lightly a bit more, waiting until Bruce is hard and his hand is tugging insistently at Jason’s hair.
It’s the closest he’ll get to a beg, and he sneaks his hand not squared on Bruce’s hip into his own tights, squeezes himself as he swallows around Batman’s dick.
There’s saliva dripped from his chin, and his cheeks are hollowed, sucking and letting his eyes fall shut, his lashes brushing the tops of his cheeks.
He squeezes his own balls, gasping and moaning around Bruce’s cock buried in his mouth. His hips shake, and Jason swallows again, the motion threatening to gag him. He pulls back, just slightly to lick around the head of his cock, swirling his tongue and sucking.
Batman growls, thrusting into him, fucking his mouth even with Jason’s hand bracing his hips.
He swallows when Bruce comes, gasping and licking at his chin when he pulls away. He can feel Bruce’s eyes taking him in, staring down at him, and it feels like forever before he drags Jason up by the arms, and turns them so he’s the one pressed against the car.
Bruce pushes his jock and tights out of the way, and starts jerking him off, still wearing the gauntlet. Jason moans, and shudders, his body still and then shaking when he comes.
He watches from hooded eyes as Bruce brings his come covered fingers to his mouth and begins to lick them clean. “Fuck,” he breathes, “So fucking sexy.”
He kisses Bruce again, pushing the cowl off so he can tangle his hands in his hair, and he can taste his come on Bruce’s lips the same as he can taste Bruce’s, and that’s really the hottest thing ever.
“So let’s go to bed,” he groans when he pulls away, making quick work of his tights and boots.
He stripes off his shirt as he walks towards the stairs, knowing if Bruce is anything like sane he’ll follow.
Before Tim left on his little training excursion he hadn’t been able to move like he had just been born doing it, not like Dick when he was in the air, or Jason when he was street-fighting. It wasn’t what he was good at.
He watches Tim with that staff for a grand total of five minutes before making a vow never to get into a tangle with him while he’s using it. It’s the perfection of motion he had been lacking, and now, Jason thinks as bile rises in his throat for the first time in months, he’s perfect.
The perfect Robin, all sharp and deadly, with a scary ass smile that’s only friendly until you look at it.
Jason crosses his arms, and smiles his own smile, just to cover up the terror and self loathing he feels when Bruce hands over Tim’s new suit.
It’s really just as bright as Robin should be, except when Tim settles his arms at his sides, and the cape falls closed around him. He’s a perfect miniature shadow to match Bruce, and Jason retreats back to the Manor.
Bruce doesn’t let him out every night. One of the conditions of their new arrangement, and he doesn’t get to go near the real crazies either.
He can handle that, it isn’t like he really wants to, anyway.
Jason hasn’t actually come up with a name yet, either. He’s J on the com, though, and somehow that translated to Jay when he’s on the street and Bruce or Barbara or whoever actually needs to talk to him.
It works, until he can figure out something better.
He slips into his room, and Alfred’s already set out a plate of cookies and milk right next to the homework he’s supposed to be doing to catch up so he can still graduate on time. He doesn’t really care, but he does it so Bruce won’t glare too much.
It’s all fractions and simple algebra, so he eats his cookies while he works, and takes to staring out the window at the crisscross of bright lights that represents his city.
It’s been a weird year. He finishes up his milk and stripes down to his boxers to stretch before he goes to bed.
He isn’t really asleep when the knock comes somewhere next to his window, but he’s not awake enough not to be a bit pissed off about it. He pulls the covers off his bed, and stumbles across the room until he sees that it’s Robin outside his window.
Jason mutters a few stunned curses to himself and unlatches the window. Robin, Tim, drops down and lands in a neat, little crouch in his bedroom.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks.
Tim shrugs, he’s raising an eyebrow under the mask. “I -- I couldn’t go home,” he says, and says the last word like it doesn’t belong right.
Jason freezes, just a bit, before his brain kicks in and he remembers it’s more than just Tim being a quiet freak that he doesn’t see him all that much. He has this whole other life that Jason doesn’t have a clue about.
He thinks he gets it, though, because he knows how he felt after his first couple patrols. Like he could take on the world and live, and it’s not a feeling meant for normal people.
“Have a good time?” he asks, knowing how stupid the question is.
Tim smiles, and it’s a completely different effect with the lenses covering his eyes. “It was interesting.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Fucking freak.”
It actually hurts a bit to smack Tim in the shoulder, but he does it anyway. “Take that mask off, actually, just strip. I’m not sleeping with you wearing that.”
“Jason,” Tim blushes, but begins pealing off the mask.
“I didn’t mean we’re gonna do anything.” He hits Tim’s shoulder again. “Idiot.”
Tim’s smile returns. “I’m smarter than you.”
“That doesn’t make you any less of an idiot,” he snaps, and reaches out to help Tim off with his cape.
It’s different from Jason’s, closer to Batman’s in the way the catches open, but he gets it off after a second, and Tim starts in on the tunic before Jason can help with that too.
He gets back under the covers, which he’d mostly kicked off anyway, and just watches Tim strip the rest of the way.
He wolf whistles when Tim finally steps out of his tights and jock, making him blush again.
“Do you think I’ll do a good job? As Robin,” Tim asks as he slides into bed next to Jason, for once not shying off when Jason wraps an arm around him.
His eyes are wide and a little vulnerable, and it’s one of the few real questions Tim asks, so he puts on his best smile, and answers, “You’re a hell of a lot better than I ever was.”
Tim swallows. “I don’t know about that.”
“You are,” Jason squeezes him. “Fucking perfect, and you’re a shithead if you can’t see that.”
“Language,” Tim says, making a noise like a laugh.
Jason ruffles his hair. “Go to sleep, Boy Wonder.”
“Night, Jason.”
He grins, and presses his head into Tim’s hair, inhaling the smell of sweat and Kevlar and hair gel that makes up Tim in his mind now.
It’s been a weird year, but overall he’d pretty glad he’s not dead.