Fic: Bloody Knuckles and Master Plans; Tim Drake/Jason Todd; R; Part 1/4
Title: Bloody Knuckles and Master Plans
Series: Bloody Knuckles Part 1/4
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Pairing: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: Violence, make outs and Jason.
Disclaimer: Not mine, everyone's legal
Word Count: 2,500/~12,000
Author's Notes: For Saavi With Love and Squalor. She won me at the help_haiti auction. Let's face it, we both knew this would be longer than 3,000 words. Also, I know I said I was done with first person after Trepidation, but this story just lent itself to the style. If you're not into that style, skip please. Also, thanks to Gloria for the beta.
Part One
Have you ever had one of those nights where you just know everything is going to go to shit?
I, Jason Todd, ex-good guy and not-quite-bad-guy, am currently having one of those nights.
It was Friday night, and I was sitting at home eating take out and watching bad kung fu movies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those dudes who stay home on a Friday night because they have nothing better to do. It’s just that clubs and bars in Gotham City are always filled with morons. In order to deal with morons, I have to be drunk enough, high enough or horny enough not to care that they’re morons. Due to a severe lack of funds and some extra time in the shower that morning, I was none of those things.
The knock on my door didn’t come as a complete surprise. I live in one of those neighborhoods where people often get ‘lost’ and accidentally find themselves walking through someone else’s front door. And by ‘lost’ I mean completely shitfaced.
I didn’t live in a bad area so to speak. That was about six blocks north of here. So the drunks and junkies don’t live in my neighborhood. The relatives that they take advantage of and mooch off live in my neighborhood.
I like to think it’s a step in the right direction for me. I’m not stealing tires, and I’m not fucking Richie Rich, but I have my own life now and that’s something at least. More than a lot of the poor fuckers living on my block have.
I dropped my take out on the table, slid a knife into the sheath at my wrist and pulled the cuff of my jacket down over it. I pushed two guns and some explosives under the couch and hid anything else that looked incriminating before I walked over to the door.
Dickie Boy probably had his placed wired as fuck. He probably had cameras and monitors and motion detectors and all kinds of fancy shit. I just had a hidden peep hole I put in myself that I pray the Slum Lord who takes my rent each month never notices.
I looked out the peep hole and saw a girl standing there looking impatient and pissed. Her hair was pulled up into a high pony tail and gelled harder than Batman’s cowl. She was wearing a short little skirt and a tube top, too much eye makeup and shoes that made me wince a little.
A working girl. I didn’t know her name, but I’d seen her working the corner about five blocks from here.
Obviously she had the wrong address. Even if my funds weren’t a bit lacking these days, I never had to pay for it.
Not that I have anything against working girls. Everyone needs to eat and to eat we need money. We all whore ourselves out to some extent. Most of us just whore out our minds, rather than our bodies. Sometimes I wonder if girls like her might not have more integrity than the rocket scientists and chemists that use their brains to kill.
I fingered the knife at my wrist and pulled open the door.
“Sorry, Sweetheart, you got the wrong place,” I said and gave her my best ‘get lost’ smile.
“No,” she said, eyeing me up. “I got the right place. You gonna let me in or what?”
“I wouldn’t want the neighbors to get the wrong idea about me,” I answered smoothly, glancing down the block for witnesses.
She rolled her eyes at me. “We all got the right idea about you, chief,” she snorted and pushed past me into the townhouse.
I sighed, loudly and pointedly and let her push past. Not one to pass up any advantage I could get, I took the opportunity to look down her shirt. It was very nice. She might not be there for me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t admire the merchandise.
She walked through into my living room and came to a stop in front of the ply wood and stacked cinder-blocks that served as my coffee table. Alfred would flip, but I like to blend with the natives.
She turned and faced me, her lower lip pushed out in a sort of defiant expression. Hands on hips and breasts jutting, she looked like she was getting ready for battle.
“Here’s the deal. Jimmy went down to the old playground on 18th for a business meetin’. Some new muscle moved into the neighborhood last week and said they needed to talk with Jimmy. I didn’t think much about it until Devon come down my way and tell me that it looked like the meetin’ was goin’ bad. Real bad,” she explained to me.
The old playground was a meeting place for dealers and their soldiers. It was a central location, the cops never went near it and it was pretty much impossible to bug with all the noise pollution around. I had scoped it out a few days before I moved in. I knew it was not a good place to be at eleven o’clock on a Friday night.
“I wouldn’t have thought you liked Jimmy enough to go to bat for him,” I said, trying to get a read on the situation. This could just be a trap. While no one was actively trying to kill me right now, there are almost as many crazies in Gotham as there are morons, who knows whose radar I popped up on.
She narrowed her eyes at me, and her pupils flared a bit. Her chest also started heaving and I fought down the urge to smirk. I might need another shower soon if she kept this up.
“I don’t like Jimmy. None of us do. It’s just that if he end up dead, we outta a job. It’s not good for girls like us to not have protection, you see what I’m sayin’?” she asked.
I did see what she was saying. It made sense. A lot of sense.
Jimmy was a major player in this area. He was the pimp all the other pimps worked for. If he was in a bad business meeting that meant something was going down. Something that could result in a major shift in power in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Gotham.
Not good.
“So what does this have to do with me?” I asked her, trying to sound disinterested. I’m betting I failed but some of us aren’t that great with subtly. I’m betting little Miss Tube Top wasn’t so great at either.
“I don’t know what you are, man. I don’t know if you’re military, under-cover cop or whatever. Honestly, I don’t fuckin’ care. What I do know is that you’re protection in this neighborhood and right now you need to do some protectin’” she informed me flatly.
I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure what to say. When did I become protection in this neighborhood?
She seemed to read the question in my face.
“I saw you takin’ down those boys who was hasslin’ old Mrs. Jensen. I know you got it, boss,” she explained.
I wasn’t sure who Old Mrs. Jensen was, but I had a sinking suspicion she was the old lady who lived two houses down from me. I was so sure I hadn’t been seen when I took out the men who had been trying to rip her off. That hadn’t been about principle or protecting my neighborhood so much as it was about pride. Only a complete fuck up robbed an old lady. It took no style, no class and no skill. That was what had rankled me.
So I took the stupid motherfuckers out. I didn’t think anyone had seen me, but in a neighborhood like this, even deserted streets have eyes and ears.
Fuck me.
“Is it money?” she asked me, bottom lip thrust out again. “You need cash to help a guy like Jimmy?”
“Do you even have money?” I asked, looking at her well worn heels.
“I could get it,” she said with an edge to her voice.
I shook my head.
Fuck me.
“Tell me about the muscle,” I said shortly and listened to her while I cursed myself out.
Who says I can’t multitask?
“They came in ‘bout three days ago. They been sayin’ somethin’ ‘bout ‘annexin’’ and how Jimmy need to pay them some taxes. So Jimmy think if he just meet with the boss, he can smooth things over for us. He don’t want no trouble, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Jason did know. Jimmy was an asshole. He beat his girls, took their money and drank too much. But he did his level best to keep anyone else from doing the same thing. It was a mentality that I can understand, even if I don’t like it.
I sighed and dug through a pile of dirty laundry. I came up with a gun holster and strapped in. I grabbed two guns from the lock box under my coffee table. I added another knife to my other wrist and strapped a third to my ankle. I grabbed a pair of brass knuckles from my junk drawer.
I gestured towards my front door, and she reluctantly stepped towards it. I grabbed my keys, and we stepped outside. We both hesitated on my door step. I pushed the copy of one of my kung fu movies into her hands.
“Maybe you and the girls should have a movie night tonight,” I said pointedly. “Invite Devon to join you.”
She nodded mutely and took the DVD. I nodded to her and took off at a jog down the street towards 18th.
Even if I hadn’t scoped out the place months ago, I would have found the meeting spot without any trouble. All I had to do was follow the sounds of some poor fuck getting his ass kicked.
I came at the play ground from an angle, slipping behind some overgrown junk trees the city never bothered to prune. Landscaping was a much bigger priority at my former address. Here, people mostly worried more about stray bullets than stray plant life.
My boots crunched over old syringes and broken beer bottles, but no one could hear it over the sounds of screaming and breaking bones. I peered through the trees and tried to take stock of things.
There were eight guys. All of them very big. All of them very mean.
Meaner than me, even.
They had metal pipes, baseball bats, two by fours and one asshole even had a bright red crowbar. Muscles and prison tattoos were just about everywhere, and they were speaking a language I didn’t know.
Probably Russian.
There was a ninth man sitting calmly on the merry go round, watching. His eyes glittered in the dark and his face never changed as Jimmy’s cheek bone shattered and his arm bent in a way arms were not supposed to bend.
Unfortunately for my new female friends, there was nothing at all I could do for Jimmy. Jimmy was a lost cause. Jimmy was probably a lost cause before I even showed up. Maybe even before Devon sounded the alarm.
These guys weren’t just regular muscle. They boss-man hadn’t just rounded up some tough looking guys and given them fucking crowbars. These bastards knew what they were doing.
And they were doing it to poor Jimmy.
Slowly and with deliberation.
I’d been beaten like that a few times. It’s much scarier than just a dude freaking out and coming at you because you know that they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re going to do it all to you. It will be terrible, and it will be painful, and you will probably die before it’s over.
And there’s nothing you can do.
I know what Jimmy’s thinking, what he’s feeling.
Unfortunately for Jimmy, I don’t want to be back in that position, so he’s just going to have to keep thinking and feeling those things.
I watched until Jimmy stopped moving. A few minutes after he went limp, the scary guy on the merry go round made a short gesture with one hand, and the men stopped their beating. Several of them spit on him before following their boss, who had stood and turned to leave.
My heart was pounding loud and hard in my chest as I followed them back down the street. I stayed behind a dumpster and watched them get into a couple of anonymous looking cars. I didn’t bother to try and follow them further. I didn’t have a death wish.
I memorized the plates, just like Batman taught me a million years ago, then I turned and walked back over to Jimmy.
The whole area smelled like blood and shit and puke. I tried not to breathe in through my nose as I got close.
Jimmy was dead.
Very, very dead.
To be honest, the only way I knew this even was Jimmy was that’s who the girl said he was. His face was a mass of blood and gore. Every finger on his hand was broken and it looked like a large chunk of his upper torso had been caved in.
I gave a low whistle.
“Poor bastard,” I said and shook my head.
I dialed in a tip to the GCPD. Not out of courtesy so much as I just didn’t want some poor kid to trip over Jimmy’s body while he was on his way to Grandma’s tomorrow morning. I disguised my voice, made up a fake name, and made my way out of the park at a slow pace.
Tip made, I flipped my phone shut, pursed my lips and thought.
Just because I never finished high school doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I know things. Things I need to know and what I know is the streets. This wasn’t just about a small time turf war. Jimmy was an example of things to come. This was big, and this was bad, and this was way more than I could handle.
Give me something in front of me, something I hit and scare and intimidate and I’m good. I can make magic happen with my fists.
This planned out war-shit wasn’t my style.
Drake on the other hand…
It was absolutely Drake’s style.
That was when it all struck home.
I was living in the middle of disputed area in a turf war, I had tried to slit the throat of the only person alive who could maybe help me out of this mess, and I’d given that chick my last kung fu movie.
It was official. My night was shit.
Fuck me, man.
Just fuck me.
Part 2: in which Tim is sleepy and Jason eats raisins.
Series: Bloody Knuckles Part 1/4
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Pairing: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: Violence, make outs and Jason.
Disclaimer: Not mine, everyone's legal
Word Count: 2,500/~12,000
Author's Notes: For Saavi With Love and Squalor. She won me at the help_haiti auction. Let's face it, we both knew this would be longer than 3,000 words. Also, I know I said I was done with first person after Trepidation, but this story just lent itself to the style. If you're not into that style, skip please. Also, thanks to Gloria for the beta.
Part One
Have you ever had one of those nights where you just know everything is going to go to shit?
I, Jason Todd, ex-good guy and not-quite-bad-guy, am currently having one of those nights.
It was Friday night, and I was sitting at home eating take out and watching bad kung fu movies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those dudes who stay home on a Friday night because they have nothing better to do. It’s just that clubs and bars in Gotham City are always filled with morons. In order to deal with morons, I have to be drunk enough, high enough or horny enough not to care that they’re morons. Due to a severe lack of funds and some extra time in the shower that morning, I was none of those things.
The knock on my door didn’t come as a complete surprise. I live in one of those neighborhoods where people often get ‘lost’ and accidentally find themselves walking through someone else’s front door. And by ‘lost’ I mean completely shitfaced.
I didn’t live in a bad area so to speak. That was about six blocks north of here. So the drunks and junkies don’t live in my neighborhood. The relatives that they take advantage of and mooch off live in my neighborhood.
I like to think it’s a step in the right direction for me. I’m not stealing tires, and I’m not fucking Richie Rich, but I have my own life now and that’s something at least. More than a lot of the poor fuckers living on my block have.
I dropped my take out on the table, slid a knife into the sheath at my wrist and pulled the cuff of my jacket down over it. I pushed two guns and some explosives under the couch and hid anything else that looked incriminating before I walked over to the door.
Dickie Boy probably had his placed wired as fuck. He probably had cameras and monitors and motion detectors and all kinds of fancy shit. I just had a hidden peep hole I put in myself that I pray the Slum Lord who takes my rent each month never notices.
I looked out the peep hole and saw a girl standing there looking impatient and pissed. Her hair was pulled up into a high pony tail and gelled harder than Batman’s cowl. She was wearing a short little skirt and a tube top, too much eye makeup and shoes that made me wince a little.
A working girl. I didn’t know her name, but I’d seen her working the corner about five blocks from here.
Obviously she had the wrong address. Even if my funds weren’t a bit lacking these days, I never had to pay for it.
Not that I have anything against working girls. Everyone needs to eat and to eat we need money. We all whore ourselves out to some extent. Most of us just whore out our minds, rather than our bodies. Sometimes I wonder if girls like her might not have more integrity than the rocket scientists and chemists that use their brains to kill.
I fingered the knife at my wrist and pulled open the door.
“Sorry, Sweetheart, you got the wrong place,” I said and gave her my best ‘get lost’ smile.
“No,” she said, eyeing me up. “I got the right place. You gonna let me in or what?”
“I wouldn’t want the neighbors to get the wrong idea about me,” I answered smoothly, glancing down the block for witnesses.
She rolled her eyes at me. “We all got the right idea about you, chief,” she snorted and pushed past me into the townhouse.
I sighed, loudly and pointedly and let her push past. Not one to pass up any advantage I could get, I took the opportunity to look down her shirt. It was very nice. She might not be there for me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t admire the merchandise.
She walked through into my living room and came to a stop in front of the ply wood and stacked cinder-blocks that served as my coffee table. Alfred would flip, but I like to blend with the natives.
She turned and faced me, her lower lip pushed out in a sort of defiant expression. Hands on hips and breasts jutting, she looked like she was getting ready for battle.
“Here’s the deal. Jimmy went down to the old playground on 18th for a business meetin’. Some new muscle moved into the neighborhood last week and said they needed to talk with Jimmy. I didn’t think much about it until Devon come down my way and tell me that it looked like the meetin’ was goin’ bad. Real bad,” she explained to me.
The old playground was a meeting place for dealers and their soldiers. It was a central location, the cops never went near it and it was pretty much impossible to bug with all the noise pollution around. I had scoped it out a few days before I moved in. I knew it was not a good place to be at eleven o’clock on a Friday night.
“I wouldn’t have thought you liked Jimmy enough to go to bat for him,” I said, trying to get a read on the situation. This could just be a trap. While no one was actively trying to kill me right now, there are almost as many crazies in Gotham as there are morons, who knows whose radar I popped up on.
She narrowed her eyes at me, and her pupils flared a bit. Her chest also started heaving and I fought down the urge to smirk. I might need another shower soon if she kept this up.
“I don’t like Jimmy. None of us do. It’s just that if he end up dead, we outta a job. It’s not good for girls like us to not have protection, you see what I’m sayin’?” she asked.
I did see what she was saying. It made sense. A lot of sense.
Jimmy was a major player in this area. He was the pimp all the other pimps worked for. If he was in a bad business meeting that meant something was going down. Something that could result in a major shift in power in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Gotham.
Not good.
“So what does this have to do with me?” I asked her, trying to sound disinterested. I’m betting I failed but some of us aren’t that great with subtly. I’m betting little Miss Tube Top wasn’t so great at either.
“I don’t know what you are, man. I don’t know if you’re military, under-cover cop or whatever. Honestly, I don’t fuckin’ care. What I do know is that you’re protection in this neighborhood and right now you need to do some protectin’” she informed me flatly.
I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure what to say. When did I become protection in this neighborhood?
She seemed to read the question in my face.
“I saw you takin’ down those boys who was hasslin’ old Mrs. Jensen. I know you got it, boss,” she explained.
I wasn’t sure who Old Mrs. Jensen was, but I had a sinking suspicion she was the old lady who lived two houses down from me. I was so sure I hadn’t been seen when I took out the men who had been trying to rip her off. That hadn’t been about principle or protecting my neighborhood so much as it was about pride. Only a complete fuck up robbed an old lady. It took no style, no class and no skill. That was what had rankled me.
So I took the stupid motherfuckers out. I didn’t think anyone had seen me, but in a neighborhood like this, even deserted streets have eyes and ears.
Fuck me.
“Is it money?” she asked me, bottom lip thrust out again. “You need cash to help a guy like Jimmy?”
“Do you even have money?” I asked, looking at her well worn heels.
“I could get it,” she said with an edge to her voice.
I shook my head.
Fuck me.
“Tell me about the muscle,” I said shortly and listened to her while I cursed myself out.
Who says I can’t multitask?
“They came in ‘bout three days ago. They been sayin’ somethin’ ‘bout ‘annexin’’ and how Jimmy need to pay them some taxes. So Jimmy think if he just meet with the boss, he can smooth things over for us. He don’t want no trouble, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Jason did know. Jimmy was an asshole. He beat his girls, took their money and drank too much. But he did his level best to keep anyone else from doing the same thing. It was a mentality that I can understand, even if I don’t like it.
I sighed and dug through a pile of dirty laundry. I came up with a gun holster and strapped in. I grabbed two guns from the lock box under my coffee table. I added another knife to my other wrist and strapped a third to my ankle. I grabbed a pair of brass knuckles from my junk drawer.
I gestured towards my front door, and she reluctantly stepped towards it. I grabbed my keys, and we stepped outside. We both hesitated on my door step. I pushed the copy of one of my kung fu movies into her hands.
“Maybe you and the girls should have a movie night tonight,” I said pointedly. “Invite Devon to join you.”
She nodded mutely and took the DVD. I nodded to her and took off at a jog down the street towards 18th.
Even if I hadn’t scoped out the place months ago, I would have found the meeting spot without any trouble. All I had to do was follow the sounds of some poor fuck getting his ass kicked.
I came at the play ground from an angle, slipping behind some overgrown junk trees the city never bothered to prune. Landscaping was a much bigger priority at my former address. Here, people mostly worried more about stray bullets than stray plant life.
My boots crunched over old syringes and broken beer bottles, but no one could hear it over the sounds of screaming and breaking bones. I peered through the trees and tried to take stock of things.
There were eight guys. All of them very big. All of them very mean.
Meaner than me, even.
They had metal pipes, baseball bats, two by fours and one asshole even had a bright red crowbar. Muscles and prison tattoos were just about everywhere, and they were speaking a language I didn’t know.
Probably Russian.
There was a ninth man sitting calmly on the merry go round, watching. His eyes glittered in the dark and his face never changed as Jimmy’s cheek bone shattered and his arm bent in a way arms were not supposed to bend.
Unfortunately for my new female friends, there was nothing at all I could do for Jimmy. Jimmy was a lost cause. Jimmy was probably a lost cause before I even showed up. Maybe even before Devon sounded the alarm.
These guys weren’t just regular muscle. They boss-man hadn’t just rounded up some tough looking guys and given them fucking crowbars. These bastards knew what they were doing.
And they were doing it to poor Jimmy.
Slowly and with deliberation.
I’d been beaten like that a few times. It’s much scarier than just a dude freaking out and coming at you because you know that they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re going to do it all to you. It will be terrible, and it will be painful, and you will probably die before it’s over.
And there’s nothing you can do.
I know what Jimmy’s thinking, what he’s feeling.
Unfortunately for Jimmy, I don’t want to be back in that position, so he’s just going to have to keep thinking and feeling those things.
I watched until Jimmy stopped moving. A few minutes after he went limp, the scary guy on the merry go round made a short gesture with one hand, and the men stopped their beating. Several of them spit on him before following their boss, who had stood and turned to leave.
My heart was pounding loud and hard in my chest as I followed them back down the street. I stayed behind a dumpster and watched them get into a couple of anonymous looking cars. I didn’t bother to try and follow them further. I didn’t have a death wish.
I memorized the plates, just like Batman taught me a million years ago, then I turned and walked back over to Jimmy.
The whole area smelled like blood and shit and puke. I tried not to breathe in through my nose as I got close.
Jimmy was dead.
Very, very dead.
To be honest, the only way I knew this even was Jimmy was that’s who the girl said he was. His face was a mass of blood and gore. Every finger on his hand was broken and it looked like a large chunk of his upper torso had been caved in.
I gave a low whistle.
“Poor bastard,” I said and shook my head.
I dialed in a tip to the GCPD. Not out of courtesy so much as I just didn’t want some poor kid to trip over Jimmy’s body while he was on his way to Grandma’s tomorrow morning. I disguised my voice, made up a fake name, and made my way out of the park at a slow pace.
Tip made, I flipped my phone shut, pursed my lips and thought.
Just because I never finished high school doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I know things. Things I need to know and what I know is the streets. This wasn’t just about a small time turf war. Jimmy was an example of things to come. This was big, and this was bad, and this was way more than I could handle.
Give me something in front of me, something I hit and scare and intimidate and I’m good. I can make magic happen with my fists.
This planned out war-shit wasn’t my style.
Drake on the other hand…
It was absolutely Drake’s style.
That was when it all struck home.
I was living in the middle of disputed area in a turf war, I had tried to slit the throat of the only person alive who could maybe help me out of this mess, and I’d given that chick my last kung fu movie.
It was official. My night was shit.
Fuck me, man.
Just fuck me.
Part 2: in which Tim is sleepy and Jason eats raisins.