THERE YOU ARE ⸺ HERE I AM, like a call and response, a groove worn into the world and a marble spinning down it. that should make jack the marble, the thing filling what dove has laid down, but her head is dizzy. she feels bodyless. that must, than, make her the little glass ball, struck silly by its own momentum.
she doesn't notice the bare expanse of his knuckles because she is fixed on his eyes, the flame-blue of them, and perhaps moreso because she has not looked for his wedding ring in quite some time. that's the condition of knowing someone the way she does jack, at a steadily increasing closeness: you stop seeing them as they are, and instead as what you wish them to be.
"no," she's standing very close, by the time dove crosses the gap between them and sews it shut with the hem of her sundress: white cotton cross-stitching over jack's raised knee, a delicate seam. his shoes could bruise her shins if he would lift them from their defiantly relaxed pose, or at least smudge her with polish. they're the same kind of mark on the whitfield estate. she thinks about getting it over with, sinking down into his lap now, but haste is what had made her a wife, and it will take patience to undo it. she doesn't have that, perhaps, but she has a latent survival instinct. "they can call it what they like, you're the only one with any sense."
still, dove lingers, and it's noticeable. her consideration ⸺ the act of it, if not the question itself ⸺ is open in the way she searches his face, until the moment she makes some unexpressed decision, her gaze turning down and off the line of his body. this close and he can see the wet of her eyes, how they've taken out the real things and replaced them with doll baubles.
"i couldn't stand it in there another minute. i ⸺ i can't," she moves past the chair, beyond the offer made to her, palm flattening against the wicker as she slips by. there is so much of his skin on the armrest it can only be purposeful that she doesn't touch it. "i can't go back in there."
jack chases a line of vision that takes him back to the house on the hill. the wedding cake molding and pearled columns have gone pink-cheeked in the setting sunlight. nearly as charming as dove had been in the face of the hartfords' politely early arrival that afternoon, when jack was brash enough to catch her eye ahead of formal greetings. it was hard to summon guilt, then, in the sweltering and direct heat of the sun. harder still when the clouds parted and jack found himself doubly exposed. it feels impossible now.
though, from this vantage even the topmost windows of the estate lie just below his eye line. appropriate, if a little painful its irony, to be sitting in the only place where whitfield might be looked down upon.
yet he tries to summon this sense of wrongdoing all the same. he traces each scalloped shingle and swollen flower box. he imagines the dinner table, empty now of all its seats but not yet cleared. picked over an abandoned, the rest no better than carrion. and the vultures digesting over cigars, cigarillos, and gossip. ungenerous, maybe, to lump his parents in with the rest, but not wholly undeserving. polly and john, for all their love of jack and tradition, have never exempted themselves of any significance.
it's an excuse. distraction. jack's eyes through the screened window frames, his posture thrown back against the chair. all of this to avoid the truth of jack's thoughts — not just the guilt, who has not answered its order and will not bear witness. but memory, crowding. breathing into the slick hollow of his neck where dove will not.
a different night, the same chair. different position, knees still canted open. the air just as muggy and awful, but a more desperate sort of urgency slicking the hair at jack's nape.
none of this is why jack stays looking at the house, though, not really. the liar lies still, even and especially to himself. not even well. jack stares at what ought to have been his and never will be so that when his fingers miss dove's wrist and instead, in reaching, find purchase on the smooth expanse of oyster-pale thigh (he imagines) beneath cotton and lace, he can pass it off as an accident. he wasn't looking, his gaze is elsewhere.
as if, with this simple dog-ear deniability, they might still walk out of this. they might miss the rain. as if jack's hand doesn't linger there, doesn't stroke against the fine downy hair.
he doesn't say, then don't. that's stupid. the house will call them back, if not the people in it. and jack is nothing if not doggedly realistic, even to the point of self-flagellation.
he says, thumb pressing his heartbeat into the swell of dove's hamstring, "i'm afraid you're mistaken, dove darling. my time up north has ruined me for this weather and the humidity's wrung me all out of sense and patience. i simply don't know what i might do next if i can't escape it."
jack turns, then, sharply. his hand doesn't shift with the rest of him, but his shoulder drops like it might soon follow. his eyes have lost the lightness they'd greeted dove with at her arrival. when jack looks up at her now, it's with a gaze meant for rending.
"what did you say? when you left." he's asking: how much time do we have, before you're collected back to the dollhouse?
11:56pm, the sterile expanse of Dick Grayson's apartment. Jason Todd is propped up on the kitchen island, hands spread behind him in a poor effort to display what he adamantly claims to be a very minor knife wound between his eighth and ninth ribs. Dick, unconvinced and with a healthy amount of data to back this skepticism up, sets to the task of cleaning and patching it with the help of a freshman biology dissection kit and some stolen veterinarian-grade sutures.
"If you want something, then you ask for it."
Dick fights a sigh building in his chest not too far from where he's poking and prodding at Jason's. It's his fifth battle of the sort this evening and his first victory. The sigh remains unheaved, but Jason doesn't miss the way Dick's eyes cut up sharply at him against the flat line of his brow, and back down again.
"Jason," Dick says tightly, through his teeth. His neck aches from both its current angle and the hits of his own he's taken tonight. His patience, even for Jason, is approaching levels of thinness only observed in Wayne Tech Scanning Electron Microscopes. "Will you please sit up straight?"
Jason Todd, for all he's put Dick Grayson through tonight and the two dozen at least that came before it, does so without complaint. Which should bother Dick, just a little. The lack of complaining. The lack of anything, really, as he presses tight-lipped tweezers to the rendered flesh of Jason's side, save for a few swigs here and there of Dick's whiskey.
Well — there were complaints about that, but not enough to keep it out of arm's reach, apparently. There he goes again, looking away from Dick and down the neck of it. He pretends it doesn't bother him by fishing out some gauze from the open first-aid kit and tears it open with his teeth.
"Good news," he starts again, through cotton and plastic, "you're not going to die." This gets him something, somewhere. Jason's mouth doesn't leave the bottle rim, but his eyes do slide over and snag on Dick's. He smirks back up at him. "Better news. I don't need to give you stitches."
"Uh huh. So glad we hauled all the way the fuck out here for you to figure that out."
Consummate professional that he is, Dick neither rises to the bait nor follows the jump in Jason's stomach muscles with his fingers as he applies the gauze and tapes it down. He does see it, though, and grind his teeth accordingly. Some things can't be helped or avoided. Don't ask if Jason Todd shirtless and sharing the same air as Dick, alone and nearing midnight, qualifies as either of those. Dick resolutely will not answer.
He also won't answer Jason, apparently, who says something that goes unacknowledged or unanswered, and then has to say Dick's name twice over and tap him on the cheek just to get him to look up.
Looking up, of course, from the chain hanging on Jason's neck that had only just now, on Dick's flick of a glance, caught the cool kitchen light. And the medallion that winked at him. To say nothing of the autopsy scars, healed but still raised enough to turn Dick's stomach, though they're a distant, distant third in terms of things on Jason's chest holding his attention like a fishhook through the eye.
Jason, undeterred and with the audacity to even look a little annoyed, flicks Dick smack in the middle of his forehead. "Earth to Grayson. You didn't even get hit that hard. What?"
And Dick weighs this question. He does. He presses his thumb to the edge of his marble countertop with that weight, lays his tongue along the roof of his mouth with it, too. There's an easy out right there — Nothing. Guess I did get hit that hard — wiggling around on the counter between them, asking to be gripped and bitten down on.
Dick finds he doesn't have the stomach for it.
He turns away from puzzling out the right answer, because there never seems to be one where Jason is concerned and says softly, "you still have it." He allows his fingers to find the worn edges of the once-fluted cross, his own inked twin staring back.
Because this is Dick Grayson we're talking about, who has not allowed himself to be this close to Jason Todd since he was in a casket, who is finding it quite difficult to breathe, actually, at this sudden proximity and cannot let it on at any costs for reasons only he seems to be the sole arbiter of, he fixates on his own imperfections.
Vis a vis the cross.
This close, he can see the ridges where his file wore down the corners unevenly — so it doesn't cut you again. See? Look at mine. They were twelve and eighteen, then, Dick wrestling his own Magen David from beneath his suit to show his blunted corners. Like Jason, he still has it warmed to his skin. Then they were thirteen and nineteen, Jason grounded and Dick trailing Bruce into the bowels of the Diamond District, his memory the only lever long enough to raise Bruce's sentimentality off the ground. Then it was just Dick, twenty-one, then twenty-two, shouldering the dark side of that very same sentimentality, bandage and clingfilm wrapped tight around his forearm.
It's always hard to tell these days if Jason is breathing, so Dick isn't particularly bothered by the way Jason's chest doesn't seem to rise again beneath his fingers. He's allowing himself this indulgence, so indulge he will. His thumb traces the scalloped edges of the cross, the smooth curvature of the medallion. If Jason were to speak, Dick would feel the rumble of it against his knuckles. He doesn't, though, which is as much of an invitation as Dick needs to keep going.
"God you should have seen their faces. Bruce only knows what Bruce knows, right. So it was like running down the line of these ancient Hasidic dudes and their wives, who won't even look us in the eye, right. I'd long lost my functional Yiddish at that point, so Bruce is looking at me sideways but I've got nothing as far as eavesdropping and we just have to play it straight. Sliding the closest thing I could find to a replacement and some haphazard sketches. It was — ," and he makes a fatal error, here, looking back up at Jason from the memory.
Fuck. Motherfucker, fuck. There's something wrong with Jason's face, now, and it settles a stone in Dick's stomach, dropped from a height. Steals the air right out of his throat, so all he can finish with is a weak, belated, "— what?" as he tries to parse the individual shapes. Brow flat, mouth flatter. Jaw tight. Cheekbones sharp — christ, get a grip, Richard. Eyes — piercing. Boring, even, right into Dick's.
"What, Jason?" It's barely above a whisper, and he might have an edge to his mouth, now. Prey instinct, a smile in the face of something baring its teeth. Something self-deprecating. Schrodinger's-type pivot, I mean it as much as you do.
But Dick doesn't even get that far, because Jason's fingers are on his wrist, thumb to pulse point. God, he's so fucking cold, it's inhuman. It's grounding, too, though, more than it has any right to be. Pulls Dick right out of whatever abyss he's allowed himself to stare into, yanks him back from that ledge he only lingers on alone in the dangerous quiet. Prying — Jason is prying him off. Has every right to. Dick's just stomped across at least a dozen lines, kicking them clear like dry sand on the hottest day of the year. What is wrong with him — there is something so wrong with him, and Jason just let him go on like that —
But he can't pull back. Jason's still got him, holding him there. Staring at him like he's the one tipping over, and god, if they're both falling then who's holding the net?
"You're a fucking idiot, Dick Grayson," Jason sighs finally, voice gravelled. Which — fair enough. But what about specifically this time?
❛ you look ridiculous in that outfit, by the way. ❜
4:09am, a cratered stretch of asphalt where The Bowery meets what was, moments ago, the mouth of Sprang Bridge but which now crumbles quite spectacularly into its eponymous river.
"You look ridiculous in that outfit, by the way."
The man in Dick Grayson's body tilts his head. He needn't look down to know: black suit, brown panels. Gilded breastplate, shoulders, and gauntlets fitted all the way with a quite profound array of throwing knives tucked beneath each hinge. Claws extended from one hand, katana in the other. Boots fit for combat or climbing. Paraglider wings, undeployed. Black hood, gold goggles. Ventilator.
He — Talon — says nothing.
"I mean talk about derivative," the Red Hood continues, either as if he had spoken or uncaring either way, gesturing in his direction with a deceptively loose wrist and a very loaded gun. Talon watches the barrel nose warble in the air between them. No point in looking at the Red Hood's face for tells. "Now personally speaking, Discowing was my favorite for obvious nostalgia reasons. Can't comment on your little red wing era given that I was, yknow, but — ah, ah, ah. Don't even think about it."
Perceptive little thing. Talon's weight shifts ever so slightly, and the gun swinging towards his shoulder (tolerable, if annoying) levels directly at his chest (considerably less so). He waggles his claws ever so slightly, but the Red Hood's finger doesn't even quirk against the trigger. Talon blinks to zoom in. Safety off. Comms are still out, though, courtesy of the delayed detonation, so he's flying blind on what to do next, other than wait and see what the fuck Red Hood is stalling for.
"As I was saying, derivative. Uninspired. I mean, sure, at least it's not those backrooms-ass white masks, but come on. Big wonder where they got their inspo from. Got a mood board back at HQ, some sexy little candids of me all up in there? I mean, I'm flattered for sure, but you will be hearing from my lawyers."
Enough of this. See — Red Hood is fast, even with the firearm crutch, but Talon is faster, lighter, and leaner. He doesn't attempt to grapple, he's not stupid, but he is tired of this bullshit and ready to get to the fun part. There's about twelve bullets left in that chamber, by his estimate, and another three, maybe four magazines hiding in the caverns of those cargoes. Nothing to shrug at, but not worth sweating over, either.
So he dives, feints, goes for the ankles with his katana, claws flinging bullets aside like flies — and misses. Fuck. Tries again, misses again. Goes in during the reload, a little shameless and disgraceful, sure, but again: Comms down. Grandfather isn't watching. And nearly gets a stray grip to the jaw for his effort.
Okay, back out of arm's reach. He rolls his shoulders, flutters his claws for the way they catch in the waning moonlight since they're going to peacock about it. What he wants, really, is Red Hood in close. No guns, no swords. Hands and fists and teeth and maybe a crowbar, if he's lucky. He was promised the real thing and by god he fucking wants it. Seems like maybe Red Hood wants it, or something, too.
And yet, it's this dance for a while. Nothing given nor taken, only feinted and dodged. He's better than the court let on, this Red Hood. Almost as good as Talon. Louder, though. And Talon might have accused him of overcompensating, opting for distraction in lieu of skill, if not for the way sweat has started to gather in small spaces between skin and suit, scalp and hairline. If not for how his breath comes harder, now, pulse elevated and ventilator ticking up to accommodate. He's working, harder than he has before. Earning it, maybe, if he can get that stupid fucking hood between his hands.
But the stupid fucking hood continues to evade him, blow for blow. It's only when they're the closest they've been to a grapple, three bullets still in the chamber and one more mag to go, that Talon realizes and blurts at the same time, "you're not shooting to kill." And then he laughs.
Red Hood looses another vulgarity and shoots again, but it's more easily dodged than anything thrown Talon's way thus far. He sees the pattern now. Game's almost over. Hope you had your fun.
"I'm a little insulted." Shoot, dodge. Shoot, dodge. He shouldn't be talking this much, he really can't be talking this much, but Comms are still fucking down and he's tired of this playing with food. "Am I good enough for murder, Red Hood?"
He licks his teeth and smiles something sharp. Somewhere distant he gets the feeling this is not a shape his face is used to making, but discards it. These things crop up from time to time: memories he feels but can't recall, emotions he remembers but can't reach. They'd try to confuse him, his grandfather had warned, play to something they think is there, but isn't. Use his injuries against him. Lie. Cheat. Manipulate. It's why he's here, right now, getting into the Red Hood's space again — not because he sees an opening, but because he wants to invite one.
You want me so badly? Here I am.
It doesn't go as planned.
That's the thing about secret societies and eyes in the sky. The illusion of knowledge is worse than the absence of it. All the training in the world, and by god has Talon had it, can't compensate for something unspoken. Algorithm, meet confounding variable. Court of Owls, meet Jason Todd. Talon, meet his fucking fist.
"Fuck. You." Red Hood bares his teeth. Talon keeps smiling, up until MaryKate meets his temple and dark night goes black.
❛ i ain’t trying to get in your business, but… i need an alibi. ❜
10:19pm, the fire escape of what is now Dick & Barbara's apartment but will, in approximately nineteen days and twenty-two hours, be just Barbara's. The collateral of their most recent domestic has already been swept into the trash chute and washed down the garbage disposal. Dinnerware is replaceable and the tension between Dick's shoulders will, eventually, recede to normal Newtons. All that's left to do, as Babs so ungently put it, is to let the dog out.
"I ain’t trying to get in your business, but… I need an alibi."
He doesn't respond for a long time. He doesn't turn around for longer, as if refusing to look Jason Todd in the eye will make him go the fuck away. As if Jason Todd going the fuck away now will make him unsee the last thirty minutes. As if Jason Todd unseeing the last thirty minutes will somehow make it not have happened, or better, re-spool the tapestry of Dick Grayson's life he has so diligently been unravelling since Jason Todd dropkicked his way back into it.
The worst part is that Dick doesn't have to turn around for him to know that Jason is seeing this calculus, too, and following him to the end of the equation. Might even be already there, at the other side of those two thin lines, standing at the ready for the inevitable outcome. But Dick will make him wait just that little bit longer. God knows he has the patience, as far as waiting games are concerned.
Dick doesn't need to count the seconds to know there are two of them, then five, then ten each stretching out in silence as he slides the window back into its sill, until it sticks. Then there's three more seconds of wood whining against metal and glass, and a further five, silence again, while Dick takes stock of his own apartment through double-glazed glass. Arguments bead up like blood in the back of his throat, but none of them hold their structure up against the light.
Statement: Ask someone else. Strength: moderate, assumption heavy. Counter: Already did. Weight: Strong. Alternative counter: Can't. Has to be you. Rebuttal: weak without further questioning, too risky.
Statement: I'm busy. Verity: none. Counter: He literally just saw your girlfriend slam the bedroom door on you, idiot. Rebuttal: none that aren't mortifyingly pathetic.
Statement: I can't. Flaw: ambiguous. Obvious counter: Why not? Second obvious counter: Yes you can. Rebuttal: Fuck off. Efficacy? Maybe, but not if you want to sleep tonight.
Bottom line: Dick isn't getting out of this one without some heavy contorting, and the volley with Babs has wrung him right the fuck out. Jason gets points for his timing.
He doesn't bother to wrestle the resignation off his face when he does, eventually, turn around. Not to spare Jason anything; he certainly couldn't give two fucks what mask Dick slapped onto his face, if any, so long as there's a domino resting at the top.
Jason is plainclothes, though, which is interesting and brings Dick up short. Takes him beat to recover. Not that kind of alibi, then. A real one. Hard to say from up here if that's going to be worse, or not. Dick double-dips on that beat to reconfigure himself. He leans against the splintering windowsill now, back pressed up against the glass, arms crossed and brow quirked. Head at a gentle cant, curls freshly carded through. The island pendants are still on in the kitchen and catch Jason's eyes in a primordial, predatory glow. It's almost a shame he decided to go full hood, for all they stand Dick's hair up on end.
He's looking at Jason's clothes, frayed collar to belt chain, to — whatever that is tucked into the waist band — when he says, "Shirts or skins?"
Jason doesn't miss a beat. "Skins."
No suits, then, for real. Fuck me.
"How bad?"
"Sure you wanna ask that question?"
"I could start guessing. CCTV?"
"No."
"Positive?"
"Are you going to help me or not, Grayson?"
"Not sure yet. Witnesses?"
"No. I'm not sure you understand what "alibi" means."
Silence, then more silence. Dick would be lying if he said he didn't want to see Jason squirm, just a little. Ask nicely. He's not stupid enough to hope for an apology, or even an acknowledgement of this whole wild breach of privacy, however Bruce-like it is. But an admission of what this is would be nice. Jason, asking Dick for help. It shouldn't be too much to ask for — shouldn't feel like it, anyway — and yet the longer silence stretches on between them, the battle of wills it proves to be, the more Dick loses his grip.
Because, at the end of the day, Dick Grayson can lose a lot of things. Arguments, bus passes, sanity, apartment keys, patience — hope, even, on occasion. But not Jason Todd. Certainly not again. So he relents.
"Dinner. You can have dinner with us. Babs'll back it up." It occurs to Dick, belatedly, that that might be why Jason sought him out in the first place; a two-for-one Jason Todd defense committee. Stone, bird, bush and all that. Wouldn't have been a bad choice to make, in the grand scheme of things. Not something worth holding against him. He adds, "We'll go for drinks when I'm finished cleaning up. But you're opening the tab."
jack was around a lot, and he was told that the man conducted business within the warren, but all he saw the man do was drink and brood, which didn't seem like much work. then again, his idea of work was to create holes in people and that wasn't much for work either, from what he's been told.
but jack didn't bother him, or the club, and he had no reason to act with hostility towards jack so he didn't. instead, he tried to make "small talk" as he'd been told that that's polite with acquaintances.
jack had other idea, however, as he gestured to the mess of a man and made what abel could only assume was a joke about his synthetic nature.
"it is rather unsightly. my new upgrade packaged included that observational skill." he attempted a joke, using his frame of references that the best jokes tend to refer to previous statements and build upon them.
he didn't wait to see if his joke had landed, and instead approached the man on the concrete. he grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him towards the wall, propping his mangled body against the wall, only for him to slump against some crate beside him. able stood back and nodded. "this is substantially less distressing. thank you, jack."
there's a moment — just a small one, fleeting, where jack loses his grip on himself and more importantly his face. it doesn't linger long, a heartbeat in the grand scheme of things. certainly not long enough for an untrained eye. unfortunately for jack, he is in the presence of the highest trained eye anyone on his block is capable of affording. and that's coming from a hartford.
jesus. the rope is sliding out from his fists hand over forearm. he's no one. he's jack rabbit. what the fuck is a hartford anyway, amiright folks?
all this to say, jack's grip is shot to shit and there's no way abel misses the moment of open horror that cracks across jack's open mouth. eyes glazed in the dim streetlights, hands flexed open and closed, and open and closed again. one heartbeat passes, a second. his mouth is dry and swallowing only makes it worse.
and then —
hold the fuck on.
"is that a joke?"
he doesn't mean to say that out loud — he doesn't mean for any of this, not the body propped like morbid marionette, not the rictus of his face that should be a flat-casual expression, and certainly not whatever the fuck is going to come next out the barrel. but gone with the rest of it there goes the anchor. jack's talking like a blind man digs.
A TANNED FOOT DANGLED OVER THE EDGE OF THE PORCELAIN TUB , suds clotted atop a glistening shin . her other foot stretched up , toes fanning as if stretching to grab the amber bulb that hung in the ceiling light . dorothy was sunk to her chin in the water , which had long since gone cold ; arthur's tub as much hers as it was his .
this was not the first time this had happened , , , which is why it came as no surprise that his knuckles eventually knocked against the door frame . dorothy turned her head so her temple was pressed firm to the tub's lip , drawn out of her trance and back into reality . fuzz still clung around its edges , but his honey pot hues found a way to ground her as dark pupils of her own swelled like eager hearts . " i borrowed your tub , " she stated , voice floating like a prayer , hardly striking her vocal chords firm enough to be heard . " — but i couldn't find a towel . "
the thing about arthur, the last unshakeable thing — unaltered by time, or fate, or tragedy. the thing that neither god nor man could break in him, priest nor king, father nor brother, lover nor enemy, brother nor son — the thing that follows him still, up the cemented stairs and down the age-slanted hallway, under arch and doorframe, through turn-key and stubborn lock. the only thing left besides his face and his name and all the memories he wishes he could forget: his god-awful fucking posture.
so there he stands, shoulders hunched no differently than when he was a boy. or a king. or nothing. leaning into the doorway like it towers over him. quite the opposite, the very ends of his hair would brush the top of it if he stood straight, looked forward, kept even. but anyone who would tell him as much can't or won't anymore. and so he leans, slouched and smaller than he should be, neck bent and spine bowed. eyes averted.
eyes averted — that one took practice, coming into his own bathroom or bedroom. even with the door ajar as she always leaves it. but averted they are, as he enters and as he leans. almost absurdly so, to the point that half his cheekbone might as well be level with dorothy's gaze.
"dor —," he starts, with that elsewhere gaze. so far away from dorothy herself it would be impossible to miss the way it snags, hooks, flicks out like a fish from its net to the long line of her body and where it disappears behind his cracked porcelain, until he wrestles it back against the wall again.
arthur coughs, works his jaw, and tries again.
"closet, same as always. d'you want me to grab you one?" a ridiculous question, given the circumstances, but he can't let himself move, in or out, further or back, until it's asked.
❛ you can yell at me later. just let me help you. ❜
2:37am, a wide-mouthed alley three blocks down from where the fight started in earnest. Gotham's financial district looms black against a swollen yellow moon, standing in neither witness nor judgement at what the sewer has hacked up on her feet. The street lights, shot through and glass erupted onto the asphalt, stare down with empty sockets. The foot traffic – what little of it there was, at this yawning hour – cleared not long after the bullets began flying one corner up.
"You can yell at me later. Just let me help you."
Nightwing stares up at the hand extended towards him. Bare and open-palmed, fingertips smudged with gunpowder. If he turned it over, he could count the crosshatch of scars woven through twice-bruised knuckles or trace the purple-blue veins until they disappear beneath black nylon.
Y'know, more or less exactly the type of shit that got him laid the fuck out in this filth in the first place. Real winning streak he's on here. C-c-c-c-combo! Jason'll give him hell for it later, and Dick'll give it right back, but at least one of them can pretend not to remember on account of all the head injuries. No chance of that backfiring.
Nightwing blinks. The fingers waggle. Almost, if he were a betting man, like they're specifically trying to make him go cross-eyed, or see if he will.
"Who says I can't do it twi — fuck," there's no space between taking the hand and getting hauled upright by the arm it's attached to, forget Dick's kneecap that just got busted and the opposite shoulder hanging not-quite-in it's socket.
"Jesus Christ," he adds belatedly, when the air starts moving through his lungs properly again. And honestly, folks, best guess as to what towards: the pain, radiating from skull to metatarsal with highlight tours in the aforementioned fucked-to-Sunday shoulder, spleen, jaw, and knee; the bicep his functioning hand is vice-gripped around — because honestly, what in the actual fuck; or the aborted carnage strewn between Nightwing and Red Hood's feet, as many bullets rolling between crusted rat shit and moldering pizza boxes as there are broken bodies bent unevenly around them. Best bet is some combination of all three.
Red Hood, for his part, seems altogether unmoved by the mess he's gone and made of things. Business as usual, save for the aborted reach for Nightwing's elbow as he steadies himself and the almost too slow way he says, "easy."
"Sure was, 'till you showed up," Nightwing coughs. And you can't see an expression under that goddamned hood for love or money, not even a hint, but he doesn't miss the way Jason's head cants, just a little.
"'s that?"
"Nothing."
"Uh huh." And Dick swears he can hear the half-cocked eyebrow, but all he does is flash his teeth and try not to grab Jason's hand back when he finally retracts it from Dick's elbow.
Which was a mistake, evidently, because the world spins about twice and a quarter between Nightwing planting one foot and trying to move the other. Red Hood doesn't hesitate; that hand comes right back up and brings the other alongside it until Nightwing's bracketed long enough for him to realize — and maybe even lean against it, just a little.
"I got it," he says.
"Uh huh," Red Hood says. But neither of them move.
And it's about here Nightwing realizes that there's a reason Red Hood has stopped to dust them both off. And that it has a lot to do with the two bodies that had been, until quite recently, some real fucks of a problem Nightwing put himself to task in fixing. Until Mr. Twenty-Round-Problem solver showed up, unasked for and clearly not shooting to ask later, either.
"Oh — my god, you fucking — you asshole. You killed them."
"Uh huh."
"I had it."
"Sure. But now you also have your brain still in your skull."
"Fuck you."
"Not at this rate. You're gonna — no —" Here, Nightwing tries to walk again, makes it just about a step outside Red Hood's reach, and promptly doubles over, palm to the brain-smeared brick wall, and heaves up the rest of his dinner, "— yep. Sure are."
"Fuck." Heave, dry. "You." Heave, dry. Cough, damp. Mouth wipe, wet. Limp hand attached to dislocated shoulder, flicking in Red Hood's direction. A summons, met promptly. And then there's a hand on Nightwing for the third time, gentler still, smoothing his back and disentangling the tacky curls sticking to the collar of his suit.
"You ready to go yet?" And, god fuck, Jason's voice is soft, too. Water over clattering stones.
"Ugh. Yeah. My bag's behind the dumpster at Ernie's."
"That was optimistic."
"No, I — yeah. Maybe. Fuck. No, fuck, let's just go. Forget the bag. Get it tomorrow. What?"
And Jason seems to think better of what exactly, because his arm just finds its way around Dick's waist with only moderate amount of ribbing the rest of the way home.
❛ i don't even remember why we started fighting. ❜
The problem, as always, is that Dick does. He watches the spread of Jason's hands across his countertop, traces the ridge of his fraying shirtsleeve over his corded bicep, and counts the beats of the argument back along side the freckles that dot up Jason's forearms. It's less a skill than it is a curse, bearer of memory that he is. Connector of dots. Collector of shit you wish he would just let the fuck go. The real skill, if you could call it that, is the way Dick has learned, through years of trial and error, to actually, in reality, let it the fuck go. And he's gotten better at it, even. The casting of his arguments, like fishing line in Gotham sludge, and a loosening of his fists around the grip of his own self-righteousness. But generally speaking he needs to be a few ticks down from still seething to get there.
As it stands, neither his blood pressure nor his pulse are quite in range. As it stands, Dick is pacing the opposite side of the kitchen island, not quite hand-wringing but near enough you might as well call it as much. As it stands, he has no interest in watching the rise and fall of Jason's chest and matching it to his own because as it stands he is replaying the argument in his head, again, front to back.
It's raining, hard. Hard enough that the windshield wipers are set to full throttle and still doing fuck all. The only relief is when they slide below an overpass, until the rain slaps them again all at once like it missed them. Jason is driving, cutting a slick line down an empty 95 North, either unaware or uncaring towards the risks of hydroplaning on their way home. Likely some combination of both. Dick, for his part, is tucked up in the passenger seat in silence, save for the chewing of his cuticles to shreds. He's been stormy since before the weather turned. Since before Bruce dropped his Amex on the dinner bill and they all scraped back their chairs, even.
Jason, evidently, has had enough. Between one lane and the next, he sighs. "C'mon. Spit it out."
A beat. Then another. It's the opening Dick has been waiting for since they shut their car doors and Jason turned the engine over. He isn't totally sure he wants to take it, now, though. It feels like a bad idea – not quite a trap, but something close. Unfortunately for his better judgement, however, two straight hours in an empty restaurant save Bruce Wayne and Associates (else known as family, eugh) does absolute wonders for his worst impulses. Despite the exhaustion sagging at his shoulders he's practically sparking, and Jason might as well have just put a match between his teeth and smiled at him.
Dick sighs back and relents. He says, "You always do that."
"Do what," Jason volleys, and now they're in it.
Dick rolls his eyes. "Oh, don't."
"Don't what."
"Okay, fuck you. Now you're doing it on purpose."
"Do what, Dick. Are you going to tell me or just keep shredding your fucking fingers over there."
"You always —," Dick sighs again, this time notably at Jason, rather than simply in his general direction. "You always have to start something. You have to light something on fire and throw it onto the table. It's like you can't — I don't know, actually, if it's because you can't help yourself, or you're bored, or you think it's funny, or what. But it's fucking annoying and I don't know why you feel like you need to just — why we can't just have a dinner. Just one dinner. Where nothing happens."
"And I did that. Back there. Just now."
"Oh my god, Jason. Yes. Are you winding me up on purpose for real right now, because I swear to god. Yes."
"Okay. Okay – no, give me a second. If you're not going to tell me when I ask you, let me piece it together myself. What you're saying is I ruined dinner because I let everyone know that your commencement would be at the end of the month and it would be nice to do something like this for you?"
Pinched fingers over the bridge of his nose. Head titled back. Deep sigh. "You can't be serious right now."
"Humor me."
A fourth sigh, for those counting at home. "Because you went out of your way to make a big deal of it when you know goddamn well I wasn't going to say anything. And I just — what, are you trying to punish me, or something? Because I'm the only one who will say out loud that I want you there and you make it fucking miserable every goddamn time. Because it's like you like pushing my buttons even when I'm the only one who goes to bat for you. Jesus Christ, Jason, like. Are you trying to piss me off on purpose with this shit?"
"Okay, well first of all, you didn't drag me anywhere, so jot that the fuck down. I'm here because Babs invited me to her dinner and because you'd be a fucking nightmare when you got home if you'd come here solo for pretty much any fucking reason. So fuck you for implying this is anything but a favor to the both of you. And double fuck you, actually, because I told your goddamned family that you are graduating law school, Dick."
"And I specifically did not want you to do that!"
"That's funny, I don't remember you telling me not to say anything."
"Oh my god, Jason."
"Oh my god, Dick. I'm not a fucking mind reader. If you didn't want me to say anything, maybe you should have said so."
"Oh, come on. You can't put two and two together? God, you're fucking impossible. You think I wouldn't have told them if I didn't want them to know?"
"No."
"What —"
"No. I don't think you would have."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"I don't think you would have told them. And maybe I think they deserve to know."
"And that's not your call to make. This is my life. You don't get to throw it out in front of everyone just to cause a reaction."
"Sure. Are you ever going to let any of us into it, though?"
"What —?"
"Your life, Dick. Are you ever going to let any of us into your life?. Because," and this is where he starts counting, one finger at a time pulling off from the steering wheel, "you didn't tell anyone you were starting law school. You didn't tell anyone you got in, let alone applied. You don't tell anyone when you're on patrol, god forbid any of us want to make sure you make it home at the end of it. You sure as shit didn't tell anyone you left the force, or that things ended with Babs, or when —"
"Not everything is everyone's business."
"No, but some people deserve to know some things going on with you. Like, fuck, Dick. We care about you. Maybe we're even fucking happy for you. Maybe, god forbid, some of us are proud of you."
"You know I don't do any of this for the validation."
"Jesus fucking christ. Here we go. Fuck right off, Grayson. I'm so sick of this martyr shit. No one asked you to start picking crosses to drag around behind you and I'm sure as shit not going to congratulate you for building another one out of thin fucking air."
"I'm not —"
"You absolutely the fuck are. Do not look at me like that. Don't even start. I'm not asking a lot from you, Dick. I don't, generally, ask anything from anyone, least of all Bruce and his orphans. But I am asking you to let me in. Let them in. Please."
Another pause, here. Not because Dick thinks Jason might have a point, and certainly not because the please, thrown around so casually in Jason's gravel tones, lodges itself uncomfortably between his left shoulder blade and ribs.
"I don't see what this has to do with the commencement ceremony," he says finally.
Jason doesn't even hesitate. "Were you going to go? Forget the mail thing and dinner. Were you going to go?"
Dick's brow furrows. What a ridiculous question. "Obviously not."
"And why not?"
"It's a waste of time."
"Why is it a waste of time?"
"Because it's not — there's nothing of value there. It's two, three hours of nothing but self-congratulatory bullshit and academic circle-jerking."
"You don't think celebrating your accomplishments has any value."
"That is not what I just said. Christ, Jason, if you're going to drive this fast at least stick to one lane."
"Stop deflecting. Tell me why watching you get your diploma is a waste of time. C'mon. Stop glaring and tell me."
"Because it's just a piece of paper. It's not — the hard part happened already."
"The hard part that you didn't tell anyone about."
"Because it's not anyone's business! God, this is so fucking — this is so rich coming from you, Mr. Red Hood. Mr. Warehouse in Crime Alley. Mr. I don't need to explain anything to anyone. Mr. Fuck you I do what I want."
"Okay, now who's picking fights and getting personal."
"Well only because you set me off on purpose in the first place."
"Classic deflection. Nice."
"You know what, fuck this." And Dick would be lying if he said he wasn't contemplating wrenching the door open just now, two miles in from Gotham's city line, and taking his chances with the asphalt over the rest of this conversation. Jason seems to get that sense, too, because the speedometer needle warbles in the corner of Dick's eye, starts to slide downward just a touch, and then they're hooking a hard right off the highway towards Fin District and Dick's high rise in silence.
And it's pretty much been running on loop in Dick's head since, from parking lot to elevator and upwards. So when Jason says this, I don't even remember why we started fighting, it's almost too easy. Dick does remember, in the sense that there was never any space between it happening and ending big enough for him to forget. He could pick it back up again like a ball already resting in his hands, lob it as hard as he wants to or could right at Jason's head.
But that's not really what Jason's saying, though. Not if Dick listens, which he can't help himself from anyway. It's another opening, yes, but a sure-footed one. A rope thrown through a blown window. An out. An excuse.
He does remember, he can't help but remember, but it doesn't matter. Not when Jason is looking at him, half plea and half hope. When the space between him and the countertop is so easy to slide into that Dick does, heavy sigh exhaled right into the shirt fabric at Jason's shoulder. When his waist is right there for Dick to wrap his arms around, his mouth just one slow roll onto his toes away from pressing into.
"Me neither," he says into the space between their breaths. Neither lie nor confession. "But I'm sorry anyways."
There's not really anything to say after that, and Jason doesn't bother trying to find something for the sake of it. Just his hands on the backs of Dick's thighs and Dick's arms around column of Jason's neck, the sure weight of his shoulders. Jason lifts him like he's nothing, which frankly never gets old, and just for a second Dick thinks he's getting deposited right back on that island before Jason walks them both to bed. And there's certainly no more talking from there.
THE WALK TO HER DOOM ISN'T EASY, NO MATTER HOW YOU'LL INDICT HER FOR IT LATER ⸺ for how quickly the woman takes it, how precise. but she moves like that because there isn't any choice left, because she can't stand to linger amongst the rosebushes and their judgement, nor afford to turn back: the gardens here have never loved her. they love clay, and they love jack, but never her. if she doesn't do something now, on the spur of her pain, it will always be this way. forever in this towering white house and its sprawling muck, a bundle of rose petals shoved down her throat, left to smile while she chokes.
the swiftness is no remark on the sensation: every step hurts, and acts as its own labour. the feeling of her body is gritty from where she has looked back and turned into salt then been given grace again, leaving behind specks in her joints that grate with each movement. sand like that from sparta's beach, dragged up on the heel of helen's lovely foot and into paris's seafaring quarters, left behind in her knees. sand like gravel ground up, pebbles crushed into a thousand infinitesimal pieces under the weight of guinevere's horse as she goes to lancelot.
dove, another woman waterlogged by fate. by history.
she finds him in the gazebo, the one they both love, that little glass house you aren't supposed to throw rocks from while living within.
"there you are," dove says, hiding the stone behind her back. she says it like she's been looking for @convexing, because she has, and she says it without putting a tablecloth over the tremor of her voice, because she can't. this is raw material, unstained. to precious not to use, as well she knows. outside, the air is filled with pre-storm pressure, and it files in after her through the open door.
resistance is a myth. a house of cards. a mirage, like water on burning asphalt just shy of the horizon. jack knows this in the way the air presses to him like a pair of hands, heavy and wanting. it strokes at his hair, curled unruly at the ends now under its ministrations, and presses his shirt into his skin in uneven patches. resistance is a myth, and jack knows this because he's spent one fucking summer in the north and now it's july, in his own home – else what should have been – and he feels like he's clawing through wet soil just to breathe.
but maybe that has less to do with the late july heat, which is oppressive, or the rising humidity, which is already too high, and more to do with the woman, whose narrowing distance presses harder on jack's chest, jack's hands, the soles of jack's feet kicked up loosely against the well-loved floorboards.
he knew she was coming, of course. in the same way the clouds grow dark behind her: inevitable, at this late hour. the end result of an equation as predictable as the individual terms are unknowable. jack couldn't tell you why the storms come like they do this back half of july, except for a shrug and indelicate hand gesture. heat rises. because it doesn't really matter, in the end, what makes the lightning crack and the wind rattle at door hinges. you know it's coming. pretending otherwise will just get you soaked through.
so it's with this knowledge, if not understanding, that jack greets dove, thrown back as he is against his grandfather's old wicker chair. one balled fist pushing up against the fullness of his cheek. blue eyes alight over bare knuckles. his amusement is genuine, as is his surprise. just because he was waiting for her, wanting her, doesn't mean he anticipated she'd answer his invisible call.
"here i am," he says back. his voice, unlike his gaze, is heavy. each word is a stone of jack's own, worried between forefinger and thumb. he turns one over before the next, feels the weight in his palm and pictures the crack it might make in the glass. then he pulls his punch, and nudges another ancient chair with the toe of his shoe. "brooding. or pouting, depending on who you ask. come to commiserate? or am i to be dragged back for pavlova and more gossip at my expense."
( dialogue prompts taken from episodes 1 - 4 of max's the penguin (2024), created by lauren lefranc. feel free to edit and change as you seem fit.. )
❛ i see you've made yourself at home. ❜
❛ so this new deal you got going... maybe i can help. ❜
❛ you know what i like most about you? you are who you are. you couldn't change if you tried. ❜
❛ you got a girl? good looking guy like you... ❜
❛ can you imagine? to be remembered like that? revered? ❜
❛ you really think people’d make a float of your dumb face and march it down the street, chanting your goddamn name? ❜
❛ you messed with the wrong fucking guy on the wrong fucking night. ❜
❛ you’re gonna do everything i say. or else i’ll murder you and, uh... anyone you care about. ❜
❛ what do you think of this? it’s a little air freshener. aqua paradise. you smell it? ❜
❛ we used to go there every day in the summer. you know, we’d mix the flavors for a suicide. you ever mix the flavors? ❜
❛ i ain’t trying to get in your business, but... i need an alibi. ❜
❛ i asked for extra pickles, and they give me two? so what, a normal amount of pickles is one? makes no goddamn sense. ❜
❛ there’s a nice sunrise behind you. you should take a look. ❜
❛ i could help you with whatever it is. whatever you need, whatever it is, all right? ❜
❛ well, maybe it’d be useful, keeping you around. for now. ❜
❛ but if you step out of line just once, i swear to god, i’ll gut you like a fucking fish. do you understand? ❜
❛ all right, listen, if i don’t come out... nah, i’ll be fine. you’ll be fine. it’s gonna be fine. ❜
❛ you know, maybe you don’t like me. that’s fine. i’m an acquired taste. ❜
❛ i’ve been rehabilitated. ❜
❛ you’ve really moved up in the world, haven’t you? ❜
❛ are you nervous? i’d hate for you to feel nervous with me. ❜
❛ you know, people underestimate you, but not me. i’ve always known you were capable of more. ❜
❛ this city is meant to be yours, sweetheart. what are you gonna do to get it? ❜
❛ the world wasn’t built for guys like us. that’s why we gotta take whatever we decide is ours. ❜
❛ but i gotta know. no bullshit. can i count on you to pull through? ❜
❛ i know who you are. i know what you are. i don’t work with people whose loyalty is for sale. ❜
❛ i’m gonna run this goddamn city. and i want you in on it. ❜
❛ i'm not safe. i'm home. ❜
❛ very, very convenient that, all of a sudden, you’re on my side. ❜
❛ you are scrambling for whatever dignity you have left and you’re hoping i will save you. ❜
❛ rough night, detective? ❜
❛ i refuse to let these old fucking men push me aside again, like i’m nothing. so, i’m going to take from them now. ❜
❛ you in? ❜
❛ let's dance. ❜
❛ you act like wanting more is a bad thing, but, i mean, don’t you want a better life than this? ❜
❛ are we, uh, kinda... partners now? ❜
❛ i mean, you fucked up. huge. but you learned, right? ❜
❛ whaddaya think the new clothes are for? you’re my guy. can’t have you lookin’ like a schmuck. ❜
❛ and from now on, you want something, you ask for it. ❜
❛ how’s anyone supposed know your worth unless you tell ’em, huh? ❜
❛ man of the hour, i was just thinking about you... ❜
❛ you do anything stupid, i’ll sense it. ❜
❛ that’s why you’re here. you seem to know everybody’s business. so, now’s your time to shine. ❜
❛ you’ve got a good thing going here. i’m really happy for you. ❜
❛ i know you’re not right in the head. i mean, that’s pretty damn clear. but i’m not scared of you. ❜
❛ you think i’d come here empty-handed? come on, we both know that if i ever truly left you hanging, there'd be a bullet between my eyes. ❜
❛ i got a real opportunity for you here, but it’s kinda hard to focus with a gun pointed at my face. ❜
❛ you got fight in you. you gotta let it out. ❜
❛ you’re fun at a card game, or over drinks, i’ll give you that. but people don’t keep you around because they think you’re smart. and they sure as shit don’t trust you. ❜
❛ i wouldn’t ask you to do this if i didn’t know you could handle it. i believe in you, kid. ❜
❛ i can't tell who wants this move. me or you. ❜
❛ i want this for you. ❜
❛ what you did to me. was it worth it? did you get everything that you wanted? ❜
❛ you wanna go, what are you waiting for? fuckin’ go. ❜
❛ you coulda left whenever you wanted. but you chose to stay. how about you ask yourself why. ❜
❛ i fucked you over. that what you wanna hear? ❜
❛ i’m fuckin’ sorry for everything that’s happened to you. ❜
❛ you meant something to me. still do. ❜
❛ i don’t know where to go from here. i don’t know how to trust you. ❜
❛ you need a cigarette, take the edge off? ❜
❛ a lobotomy couldn’t take the edge off. ❜
❛ when the time comes, i want you to take my place. i want you to run this family... if that’s something that would interest you. ❜
❛ they know you're mine. they'll do as i say. ❜
❛ why would you do this now? picking away at old wounds... you know how it upsets me. ❜
❛ you still haven’t told me what you want for your birthday. ❜
❛ i don’t need your advice. i don’t care what you think. no one does. you are my driver. that is all you are. so stop talking and drive. ❜
❛ listen, i get that you’re angry, you know. but i was just doing my job, looking out for you. ❜
❛ i’m not gonna make it in a place like that. i’m gonna die in there. ❜
❛ it’s okay to be scared. i was scared at first, too, but it’s not so bad here. you get used to the noises. ❜
❛ a woman beat the shit out of me while everyone stood around and watched. so, yeah, i had an incident. ❜
❛ i don’t know how to convince you i’m sane when you’ve already made up your mind about me. ❜
❛ i told you i’m fucking innocent. ❜
❛ i’m gonna get you something to eat. if you wanna get cleaned up, there’s a towel and a change of clothes in the guest bath upstairs. ❜
❛ i trusted him... when everything in my body told me not to. i should have killed him when i had the chance. ❜
❛ you abandoned me. ❜
❛ i left because i had to. because i could. i know you didn’t have that choice, but I’m here now. ❜
❛ you don’t have to pretend with me. ❜
❛ i haven’t forgotten, you know? the way you looked at me. so curious. ❜
❛ what did it feel like? to get to watch a person unravel? and now, you’re numbing yourself as punishment. ❜
❛ they think i'm broken. i'm not broken. ❜
❛ i'm not the one who's sick. and neither are you. the world is. ❜
Dick comes to just about when his head hits the concrete for the fourth time, grunting for the first. Can't help it, getting his shit canned so many times in one night. He's only human.
But there are still small mercies to be found: from this angle, bent-necked and half broken as he is, suit and skin soaking up more of his blood on the floor than there must be left in him, one and a half eyes swollen shut, he can see there aren't enough goons around to hear it. And thank fuck. He tugs at the binds on his wrist and ankles, delirious enough to hope the ropes went the way of the hook holding him up – gonna need a tetanus after this one for sure – but they don't give an inch. Which is fine, because another cough racks him just then, more blood tacky with foamed saliva and maybe a tooth on the ground in front of his face now, and he's pretty sure rope is the only thing keeping his shoulder in its socket, actually.
After that it's just red.
But not blood red. And not siren red. Not brick red, either, and about here is where Dick loses track along with a clear line of sight. He knows what it is, though. Likely has since the door's hinges exploded alongside his kneecap. It's a hood red, which means two things are for certain as long as Dick still wheezes in air: several people are very, extremely dead, and more of them are going to die. Not because of Dick, exactly, but not despite him either.
The picture never comes back entirely, not whole, but Dick more or less pieces the night from an upright perspective together along the following lines.
There's a call and two voices. One crackly and gleeful, the other flat. Disinterested, if you didn't know any better. Crackly doesn't, and is far too pleased with himself besides.
They've got the bat, see. Not the big one, no, the little bat. The little blue bat, yeah, that's right. Couldn't make him scream yet, but they'll sure keep trying. They're all sentences, these crackly words on the line, but they end in a not-quite-question. An expectation. A hand held out, a dog wagging it's tail for his treat.
Dick knew who they worked for, probably. Put it together sometime between the first and second brain-to-concrete connection, most likely, before he lost it again by the third. He probably told them they were going to die, too. He might've laughed when he did. Jason would've laughed.
There's two wheels in a straight line, carving red through the beating heart of Gotham and a stretch of 95 so pockmarked it ought to see a dermatologist yesterday. Several dozen traffic laws are broken and several fewer fucks are given. More than Jason would've liked to give, though, probably. More than Dick would ascribe to him, certainly.
Why the Red Hood is across town and doubling back like his life depends on it is no one's business, though, except for his own. He leaves a few rough-trodden pedestrians and a couple of kicked bumpers, but all in all makes good enough time, circumstances permitting. Which means not nearly good enough.
It's funny how the Bruce-isms always get you on your backside, don't they? Less the kick that knocks you windward and more the ground coming up to meet you. There the whole time, just at the most inconvenient of places.
The warehouse doors whine, then scream, then erupt. The motorcycle is on it's side, smoking in the open entryway, but not as much as the barrels pointing from the Red Hood's palms will be in a moment. Goons are buzzing like flies, rubbing their hands together in much the same glee. They got him boss. They got him just for you.
The Red Hood stands in his own warehouse amongst his own men, counting them. He thumbs the long spine of Mary Kate's grip, then Ashley's. He's counted his boys before, sure. In the way you count bodies, even, but breathing ones. Now he's counting them dead.
They're still falling when Dick does, too. He knows the difference between showmanship and necessity as well as any of them, so he knows when the shot drops the meathook holding him suspended it's not for lack of care so much as the opposite. Jason had to get him down now, and Dick can't really take him to task for that now or later.
He's not totally sure when the bullets and bodies stop rolling, except that, slowly, Jason's boots stride up towards the line of Dick's nose. Red hood and white eyes, then pale face and green. Streak of white sticking to his forehead so lopsided Dick's fingers itch too smooth it down or push it back. Curl it around his fore finger and tug. And then the white streak along with the rest of Jason Todd disappears out of sight. The only thing Dick's left with to tug against are his binds, still intact. Jason trains his boys good, Dick will give him that.
A beat passes, then another, but still — no give. He can hear Jason, his breathing through the smoke and the tread of his boots against rubble. So Dick twists, despite the screaming just about everywhere clavicle to calcaneus, to try and get a good look at what the fuck Jason is idling over back there. He gets his answer in the waver of a knife's edge, silver warbling in the stray light of a streetlamp. Jason's hands are shaking. Badly.
Dick's been cracked open seven ways to Sunday over the last three, maybe four hours. His head throbs in time with his knee, ankle, jaw and like four fucking ribs. He's got missing fingernails and loose teeth. His vision is rocked to shit at best and his goddamned achilles might even be sliced through, the motherfuckers. He won't be walking out of here on his own. He might even have to be carried. And none of that matters the way Jason's hands do. The way his voice wrecks itself over the words.
"Say something, anything, please."
It's the most honest, awful thing he's ever heard.
And Dick tries, both as Jason fumbles with the ropes about his wrists and after, free and scrabbling loose on the smooth concrete. He does try to say something, anything. But all he can do is cough at first, then hack blood and bile, then wheeze and cough again. He tries to push onto his knees in lieu of answering Jason's plea, but that's a worse mistake than trying to talk out the gate. The best he can manage those first few seconds is his own fumbling. Pushing, slowly, one hand on the ground until his forearm is parallel with it, his chest is not entirely collapsed, and he has what he's looking for.
Jason's skin is tight when Dick finds it, corded over his bicep, flexing the tiniest amount at Dick's scrabbling touch, and deliciously cool. He wants to press his forehead to it, bite down on it, slip between the layers and never come out. Jason is colder than he has any reason to be. The room is ablaze still with smoke and other remnants of Jason's rage. Just the air between them, their heavy panting filling the gaps in Dick's buzzing ears, must be a thousand degrees. But Jason is cold to the touch and Dick sags against him, searching for more. Stream in a forest fire.
"Say something, anything, please."
Words feel awful. Dick's throat is a raw landscape of screams he refused to let out and curses he did. Just the thought of speaking turns his stomach out again, makes him cough into the rock of Jason's shoulder and grip his arm tighter.
When Dick does speak, finally, it's low and hoarse. So hardly audible even to himself that he has to repeat it, over and over, just to make sure he's saying the words right enough for Jason to understand. Jason, who is looking at Dick with his own face, which can only mean that Dick is the only person in the room with eyes capable of seeing it. With ears capable of hearing. Heart, by extension, capable of beating."
"I'm okay," he says in a breath that comes out more like a choke. "I'm okay — Jason. I'm okay. It's fine, I'm okay. I'm okay, Jase." Totally unsure of who he's meant to be reassuring. He presses on. Well, he presses in — his face, bloody and broken, split and swollen, to the cool crook of Jason's neck. His hands into the rough fabric of Jason's shirt. His eyes, unearthly blue into Jason's inhuman green. There aren't enough nerve endings in Dick's body to keep screaming like they are and move, so he doesn't much try to get out of his current contortion. Jason will move him when it's time to go. But first Dick needs him closer.
His hand gets into Jason's hair after about a century of searching up the continent of his back, but from there it's only a half-hearted tug to get their foreheads to meet. The contact is uncoordinated and Dick winces but doesn't let go, even as Jason threatens to for a dangerous second. He matches his breathing with Jason's, slower and steadier now, if still ticked up in a way Dick doesn't like.
"Thanks for coming." Their noses brush. "Your guys suck absolute dogshit."
as EVENING descends into NIGHT, purposeless as much as it is intentional, so too does a BIRD seek a BUNNY down his RABBIT HOLE in the hopes that he might strike her a deal. else, we enter THE WARREN and find JACK RABBIT in his private booth, alone. ╱ @killerdame
there was a hole rubbing in at jack's left elbow. he'd noticed it in the bathroom mirror one, maybe two hours ago — which, given the discreet nature of the warren's preferred lighting, bode poorly for the state of his jacket once inspected in harsh daylight; to call the winding halls and nestles alcove of the warren dim was at least as strong as the whiskey they poured and far more generous than jack felt at present.
only he couldn't stop worrying at it, which in turn just made him worry more. slowly, as he had for the last one, maybe two hours, jack ran his thumb in an unhurried spiral towards the peak of his elbow, as if he might feel between one thread and the next where it had begun to thin. as if the more time he spent thinning it further with the friction of his fingers, or chewing a larger welt into the inside of his bottom lip, might eventually confer the ability to mend it when this night finally ended, and cleanly.
a year ago and two lifetimes ago he would have tossed it on sight. then again, a year and two lifetimes ago he had more than one nice jacket and a checkbook heavy enough to compensate for what amounted to a very old, debatably sentimental garment finally beginning to show its age.
it wasn't just the jacket, of course, that kept jack's knee bouncing under the lacquered tabletop, nor his fingers and teeth busy; it was only the most tangible, the nearest to grasp and easiest to needle himself over.
careless, jack. can't ever take proper care of your things — but who's surprised. so strapped for cash you've started taking anonymous meetings.
his eyes flicked up quite suddenly then, tugged from tracing a water stain in the table's woodgrain to the heavy velvet curtains, which had shifted again as if they might finally slide back and reveal the face of his evening's appointment, if not the name. but no dice. only more gentle undulating as night gets comfortable in her seat and more patrons swell into the adjacent booths.
only a matter of time before someone finds you face down in a ditch. might as well start going by jack doe for all this whole charade worth. fucking joke.
god — enough. jack had had enough. mostly of himself and his compulsion for self-directed insults, but he'd had enough of the rest of his night, too, and it had barely started. certainly enough to doubt his own judgement in taking this meeting and nearly enough to eschew it completely.
jack was, in all, only a few moments from convincing himself out of the warren and into some other, far less reputable watering hole and then home when this time the curtain really did pull back, and not with another server or lost guest.
just — a different sort of mistake, apparently. he blinked, but there she stood and there she stayed, lingering. even as jack leaned back against the booth cushion and carved his fingers through his hair. even as he arched one dark brow at her and tilted his chin in her direction.
"birdie, then? please — have a seat. eyes like to wander into cracked curtains around here."
it was clever, he'll give her that. funny, even, if you're in on the joke, which jack was starting to get the sense he maybe wasn't supposed to be. he watched her crossover with as much of a reigned gaze as he could muster, circumstances what they were. his jaw, tight already, clamped down on the usual niceties. all he could let through was a quick flash of teeth.
there was always some kind of trouble at the warren, hence the necessity for a bot like abel; a brooding giant that looked rather unassuming until his fist was in your gut and he was hauling you out the door. being put to work never troubled him, though. the scene had changed so drastically from before, he was happy to stand around and listen to lounge singers, or eavesdrop on petty conversations. only recently did he learn the notion of preference.
i prefer this to over the warzones.
even as he was pulling a man by the collar, button up now covered in blood, and fallen teeth trickling in their wake, he was humming to the tune in the lounge, enjoying the serene backdrop it provided.
disappointment settled when the alley door opened and the song was no longer in range of his audio sensors. he should get back in as quickly as he could, and he hadn't even noticed when he threw the man out and his head hit the brick wall across with a distinct crack.
just about to turn back, he noticed he wasn't alone, and he stopped. "hello," abel nodded politely. "everything okay out here?"
jack's brow had drawn into a low, straight line in the days since the murderbot had taken up residence at his front door and showed very little sign of letting up any time soon. so, apparently, did the murderbot. and jack's insistence at calling him as much.
he was being rude. jack knew his name, abel, in at least as much as he knew the warren and its front door was hardly his. no one, not even the rudest and most backwater critics had ever described jack as sensible, though, so he found little reason to start now. dogs and tricks and all that.
abel was ... somewhere doing something stupid that someone a million years ago thought would have been very smart. but that was none of his business.
jack, speaking of dogs, was straining against both tie and leash. sniffing around for something worth his while turned over nothing but empty dirt at this stale hour and so, forced by his own restlessness and inwardly turned spite, he rattled his own damn cigarette out of its crumpled back and retreated to his second favorite alley.
he should have known better.
he did, most of the time, except for when irritability got the better of him, which was at least twice as often. murderbot seemed to like taking a sledgehammer to those odds.
jesus fucking christ.
" — yeah. sure was."
jack very neatly did not look at the man on the ground, his caved in head, or the remains of his skin, skull, grey matter, and chunks of hair dripping steadily down the masonry. he didn't look at abel, either, not in the eyes or anywhere near his face, really. couldn't seem to make himself, no matter how quickly he sucked down the rest of his cigarette.
"he wasn't a —" no, actually. he didn't want to go down that particular line of questioning. he didn't want to go down any line, questioning or otherwise, unless it was the straight line back to his booth, a double, and a heavy head on his lumpy pillow. but they were a few too many pistons past that now and the vertigo of the half-gone smoke was warring with instinct and too many years of practice.
delaying both as best he could, which wasn't much to speak for in either direction, jack gestured loosely towards the mess, still not meeting either party, intact or otherwise.
"gonna clean up that mess you made, or is that an upgrade package the boss hasn't installed yet?"
[ INT . YOUR BIG BROTHERS APARTMENT . 03 : 43 . post potentially - but - hopefully - not - prophetic dream about your fathers' chickens coming home to roost . and something about an all consuming hellfire - like armageddon . ]
. . . so you have a weird dream , you break into your big brothers' apartment in the middle of the night . it's not like you haven't spoken in [ . . . ] years . who knows — the magister would say time is relative , neil would say it kinder .
sasha was seven once , eight , as all children have been , and she woke up screaming . it happened all the time , the waking up screaming . she never remembered those dreams , not in substance .
she remembers their wake : neil , or nadia , aidan . scared and brave , as all children have been . hushing , lulling her back , crawling under her blankets , tying a string to her ankle and telling jokes up at her until she came laughing back to earth . it hasn't happened in [ . . . ] years .
but it sure is fucking happening now . at least the exorcist show . tonight , she was in a bed , not hers , way downtown in some alphabet city walkup , so close to the highway you could spit in the east river . the barnard phd candidate and her crunchy duvet found the whole thing so un-chic .
maybe sasha would care , if she were an entirely different person . maybe . it's something to think about . what kind of person she could be , would've been . the magister would say that everyone is relative , discard the thought as a meaningless exercise in imagination . neil wouldn't .
she takes barnard girl's lizard . which maybe was un-chic , but the poor thing was dehydrated . desperate . looking up at her with a singularly piercing expression : that of a creature who would rather die than suffer a life in this cage a moment longer . it came with her happily , crawled up into her sleeve and nestled itself neatly into the hood of her sweater .
sasha , twenty eight according to the adoption papers , but looking worse for wear , all streaked mascara and sweatcurling frizz , sits flannel hiked to her knees on the edge of neil's shower . watching the water run down the drain . her and the lizard are splitting a banana . the lizards' being mashed on a plate balanced percarious on the edge of the tub .
somewhat unsurprising , neil did not have any live insects in his fridge . at least not where she'd have intuited a deli of live insects to be housed . maybe he's got an auxiliary fridge in his freaky secret lab he probably definitely has . who fucking knows , he's weird .
she's cooing at the lizard , spitballing name ideas , " aww , are you a susan ? " when neil comes home . reader please , if neil had been home , she'd never have scaled , picked , and wriggled through his fire escape undetected . let alone root around in his fridge and run the shower with the fan off long enough to rehydrate a lizard and slick the tile .
when the foot fall stops at the doorway , she doesn't find it necessary to turn around . sasha sniffs . swallows . adjusts the faucet , softens the rush of noise . " i had a bad fucking dream nathaniel . " and , afterthought , " you got mealworms ? "
it's almost funny, how quickly these things come back. and how they don't even the decency to do so piecemeal. neil's key is in the lock, turning with a stubbornness he cannot seem to outrun, not even here, when it assaults him: memory, sure. but also something worse.
there's a phenomenon he doesn't know the name for (they exist, occasionally — although, frustratingly, with apparently increasing frequency, inclusive to cases such as this) when a child, often undiagnosed or misidentified in some such way, learns to spell and read just fine, and yet in adulthood cannot kick away the alphabet crutch; they must, always, go down the alphabetical line to find the letter they're looking for, literacy be damned.
neil, diagnosed twelve different ways to sunday and mal-identified twice as harshly, can stand without the l-m-n-o-ps just fine. it's the other exercises he leans on — the, let's say, less conventional mnemonics he walks himself through daily.
the air is bad. sure — he knows that like kenny across the hall knows the letter g. but tell kenny to alphabetize his comic book collection and he's more than likely to start counting out a ... b ... f ... g ... h ... and so on. so the air is bad, and that's a given — writing on the wall; can't not read it in the same way neil can't not feel it — but it's the how and the where that puts neil back in the proverbial kindergarten counting lesson. appetizer comes before apprentice but after appeal.
so he walks it down the line: not bad in the way that makes his ears prickle, or that makes his stomach drop into his heels (no ticking time bomb or targeted gas leak). the taste is off, but not in a totally unpleasant way (there's somebody in here, familiar but distant). he runs his tongue along the back of his teeth to find the badness unexpectedly heavy and warm — wet? which is decidedly strange, but not enough to raise his pulse and crowd out the fine details.
let the record show nathaniel has recited the magister's alphabet in less than the time it takes for his door to swing shut behind him.
and to his horror: every letter he counts down is in it's proper place, all the way through s for sasha and t for teeth. as in where the bad air catches and who is pushing it into that particular shape. worse, he's found the source of the badness in the way one might find a hopscotch square on an unfamiliar sidewalk; not where you left it, years since you've touched it, and yet your foot lands right all the same. a horrible sort of trust fall, and yet equally familiar.
source of the bad air identified and keys still swinging in the doorknob hallway-side, neil does as he always has, where his family (citation not found) is concerned. he stands stalk-still in the doorway to his bathroom, aware but altogether unconcerned about the objective sideways tilt his life has taken in the last ninety minutes or so, if his estimation is right (it is), and targets the most direct if unimportant line of questioning.
"no. but i think my neighbor has a burgeoning roach infestation you're welcome to let green bean loose on."
slowly, neil's eyes drag from the rounded and too-black gaze of his moist houseguest to the back of sasha's head.
"you wanna talk about it? stolen greenbean over here. or the end of the world, whatever."
