Look, people like them don't get to be old, right? (You could argue they /didn't/, ha, if you stop the clock at the first time either of them kicked the bucket) Look, Rod doesn't have Feelings except sideways, except with blood in his teeth. There's obnoxious tooting from a party horn pulled out of his jacket after a fight and a knife slipped into Jason's (It says Knife To Meet You on the blade, because he thinks he's funny and Jay has bad taste, obviously) and post-crime pancake to celebrate being unkillable one more year.
Mortality is a funny thing.
Comes crashing down as a mountain on your back or sweeps you up in the sky on wings.
--Adrenaline rush, probably. Vigilantism like a religious experience, a fight like a high you can't catch. You can't get caught up in it, Robin, someone could get hurt--
(Sometimes he doesn't remember what he started the fight about, what crime, what sin was being committed that he had to interfere for-- it'll come back to him, feeling the bruises spread across his knuckles.)
He's self aware enough to know this means he can't walk away. Won't ever walk away. He'll be buried, again. Closed casket, again.
But it isn't today, and it isn't in the dingy little iHop (Bat-hop?) they've posted up in.
He carves their initials into the table while the waitstaff isn't looking-- it isn't what the knife is for, he'll have to resharpen it later-- then stashes it securely in one of his many thigh pockets.
"Think it got the point across?" He's grinning, emboldened, no eggshells or capes to tread on, "Not much of an artist, but I thought I could take a stab at it, you know?"
("-- thanks," Jason does not say, "This is the best birthday I've had in years.")
"You think you can handle this for another year? I hear I keep people on edge," he says instead, electing to steal half of Rod's pancake.
