@doubleredweek
Day 5:
“Jason Todd? Really?”
-
Roy watched his computer boot up with barely concealed contempt. He logged in and, with great dread, watched his emails populate. After the numbers kept running, Roy stepped away, pouring the imported office coffee at the communal pot into his mug. He went through the motions of pouring creamer and half a pack of sugar. He lingered, pretending that he needed the extra time to stir it, if only not to look at his computer for another few seconds.
With a resigned sigh, Roy sat heavily down in his office chair and looked at his emails. He made to scroll down to the bottom, but stopped when he recognized what sat at the most recent of his emails.
At the top, one name looked back at him menacingly. Todd, Jason. His mortal enemy, the bane of his existence, the plague haunting the floor below him in the next department. Roy let his cursor hover over the email, stealing himself and clicked on it.
Good Morning Mr. Harper,
Per my last email -
Roy already didn’t want to continue reading. He took a hasty sip of his coffee, savoring the way it burned the roof of his mouth. He read through the email, once, twice, and finished his coffee to resist the impulsive urge to type back what he really meant to say. It would be so easy. Fuck you, have a nice day had such a nice ring to it.
Roy looked down at his mug instead. He traced his thumb over it, praying for strength.
Good Morning, Mr. Todd,
Yada, yada, words and barely concealed contempt worded as politely as he could, Roy gave it a cursory look over. The dates provided, the timeline they were currently working with, the constraints. When he was satisfied, he clicked down to the end of the email, hoping it would be seen merely as a typo.
Should you need anything else from me, Please don’t. Hesitate to email me.
Yours truly,
Roy Harper,
Assistant.
Roy rolled around in his seat, breathing through his nose to rifle through the stack of papers he needed to sort through. He’d organized it by most upcoming due date, each one looked upon with exasperation for the long day he was going to be putting in. It was a good thing he had been off the week prior to celebrate his friend’s wedding. He needed all the strength he could get.
A ding sounded behind him. When he swiveled around to look, a new email had popped up.
From: Todd, Jason
The end of his email was highlighted and screenshot.
A second email came in right after, just as subtly scathing as the initial one.
Ha!
-
Goddamn Jason Todd.
The cubicle across from Roy sat empty. It had sat empty for a good two months before Roy himself had become employed at Wayne Enterprises. It had belonged to one of Wayne’s sons, Jason Wayne, who had had a falling out with his brother and father and demoted himself to the floor below. No one wanted to outright say what had happened, mostly out of fear of incurring the wrath of Wayne’s youngest son should he hear. Roy had garnered enough bits and pieces from the talk around it to get the picture, though.
It had seemed to be a falling out of some kind. Wayne and his second eldest boy were close to blows in his office, and nothing but the thick glass of Wayne’s office barely muffled the shouting match inside. It ended with a powerful slam of Wayne’s office door. Then Jason Wayne taking everything he could carry by hand and announcing loudly that he “refused to fucking be here anymore”.
There was a layer of dust on Jason’s cubicle. Roy had noticed it every time he passed by. Everything apparently had been left as it had been that day. No one dared to pilfer supplies from his desk, much less acknowledge it past some weird memento of his being there. It was downright odd if Roy was honest. They treated him like a living ghost, and not some guy who had probably just gone downstairs. The Waynes seemed dramatic like that.
Though, it didn’t really explain the lone empty office tightly shut at the rear of the office, either. Jason Wayne may have been a ghost story, but no one dared mention the office at the back. A half broken name plate with only Harvey on it was left behind. Roy let it go. He had enough Jasons to deal with as it was.
-
So it had gone like thisL
Roy had been through hell and back, and knew the unique flavor of every god awful pit down in Satan’s asscrack himself.
It tasted pretty much like how everything else that had come at him did. The taste of his own blood from when he’d chewed the inside of his cheek too hard, trying and failing in his arguments with his father. The taste of his ex’s kiss, pulling away from him, from the train wreck that followed them at every turn. The hot burn of his addictions, sliding through his blood, bubbling under his skin in the endless humming nights.
Nights spent sweating his heart out as tremors wracked his body, but the promise of the sunrise hours away kept him going. Then it was Jade, too, sitting with him in darkened rooms. Even if they couldn’t be together like they had before, she’d sit with her milky green nails tapping along his chest. It kept him grounded through the night.
But in the end Jade had always left. He’d lamented to his friend Dick about it, cuddled together like the good bros they were on Dick’s lumpy couch.
“I just need a new start,” Roy had said. “A new fucking avenue.”
Dick had hummed, reaching over him to dig his hands in his pretzel bag. He let Roy rant and rave for the better part of an hour before he’d wondered out loud.
“I know a place that’s hiring, actually. But it’s back in Gotham.”
Roy resisted the urge to shudder. Gotham, the asscrack of the world. Dick sometimes joked about it, but joking about one’s hometown, and ragging on a place you had passed through now and again weren’t the same. Roy wanted to be picky, but thought better of it. It was on the up and up these days, though.
“I can put in a good word for you. If you wanted.”
And Roy, a little too full of pretzels and ice cream, and stuffy to high hell as he was cradled in his best friend’s arms, had agreed. He’d pointed to a stack of recent resumes when Dick had asked and dropped asleep.
Then, a week later, a fucking letter from Wayne Enterprises had arrived, telling him when his first day would commence.
-
Analise looked over their shared cubicle wall at the sound of Roy’s furious clicking.
“Todd again?” She dropped a doggy bag of chocolates she had gotten for him from a baby shower she invited herself into two floors up.
Roy didn’t look up from his screen. “Yup.”
“Did he - ?”
“Yup.”
“Jesus Christ, Harper. You need to let it go .”
And let his mortal enemy win? Not likely.
-
Roy’s introduction to one Jason Todd had gone like this:
He’d been fresh and reluctant the Monday of his first day. Friendly faces greeted him at his designated floor, walking him along rows of cubicles and surprisingly not-dead faces. Friendly nods greeted him as he passed by, and awkwardly Roy had waved in kind. All the while his would-be manager was prattling on about his duties and who would be helping him along on the ropes. She ran through introducing to his closest neighbors, before leaving him in their clutches and speeding off.
All in all, it was - pretty good. Wayne clearly took care of his workers. Which was to say, he was an anomaly in the world of business. The work content aside, his coworkers seemed more or less fine.
“Could be worse,” Analise had said. “Could be working at Sionis’ place in the Bowery. Coffee’s not only shit, but the workplace is too. That’s what my friend told me, and she hates coffee.”
So Roy had buckled down and learned all he could. He detailed all the little quirks needed, all the signature blocks to make his emails easier, the tricks of the trade. And it had been fine. Doable.
Then he’d gotten an email from one Todd, Jason and did his best to answer. Only, the subsequent reply had come back far less pleasant than before. And then the next, and the next. And frankly, Roy was beginning to realize why no one liked office jobs.
It was the emails. All the goddamn emails, all the time. Something about emails drove a man to madness; drove him to the worst point of his natural self. Roy was beginning to understand. He kind of wanted to curse Dick.
-
After a while, eating at his cubicle was just a lesson in slowly slipping sanity. It wasn’t that Roy disliked his coworkers, but he wasn’t the type to want to use his one hour to chit-chat more than he needed to. So, after glaring back at his screen for a good two minutes, Roy had gotten up and headed for the elevator. Two floors up was a terrace that jutted out of the Wayne Enterprises building. From there, Roy could see the spanning bridges in Gotham, and the way the sunlight hit the city but never fully illuminated it. Even the sun was slightly allergic to Gotham.
Still, the terrace was peaceful. The black and chrome of the building gave way to flourishing plants. Bamboo stalking away from the double, automated doors; potted plants, and a small deck; a few wooden benches dotting all over. A few other people were seated outside, but everyone spaced out in a way that let Roy know he wasn’t the only one with the same idea. Roy swerved towards a shaded corner. A bench peeked out from an alcove of bamboo stalks, like a secret alcove. Roy shouldered in and plopped down, exhaling with relief. There was a crick between his shoulder blades that was finally beginning to loosen. He sipped his water, letting the cool air pass by him. Just when he was about to dig into his sad, chicken sandwich, a guy came around the corner and stopped when he saw Roy.
He narrowed his eyes, “What are you doing here?”
Roy raised a brow. “Sitting.”
“Yeah, in my spot.”
Roy shot a long look down at the bench, which stretched farther than Roy thought possible, which meant neither would knock elbows if they shared. “There’s still room?”
The man scowled, glaring at Roy. Tense seconds passed by, in which Roy bit into his sandwich, undeterred. “Problem?” Roy asked around a mouthful.
“Heathen,” the man said, strangely similar to Wayne’s youngest son, Damian. He scrunched his nose almost the same, but he said it in a far softer whisper. The man sat at the far end of the bench, and took out his own lunch to eat. Awkwardly they ate, both overly aware of the other and trying to ignore it. The whole hour passed like that until Roy couldn’t take it anymore and left. He didn’t even bother to say goodbye, unsure if it would be worth the effort.
Despite the unfriendly welcome, Roy had gone back to the alcove the next day. The first twenty minutes went the same as the first time. Roy was eating alone, enjoying his solitude, only to be interrupted by a great scowl rounding the corner. And he’d done it the next day, and the next. Until the man had looked down one day, spotted the logo on Roy’s socks and looked at him so suddenly, Roy thought he’d have whiplash. He pointed at Roy’s socks, scowling. A typical expression for him, but one that seemed far more indignant than usual.
“The Star City Stars,” the man said with contempt. “Really?”
“Did you expect me to be a Knights fan?” Roy replied, halfway to serious. He may not be a Star City boy much these days, but he wasn’t going to tolerate this bad-mouthing. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he still had the original cap Oliver had bought him as a kid hanging in his room. “Yes the fucking Star City stars.”
“Ugh, I knew there was something wrong with you.”
“What? You a Knights fan?” Silence. Roy’s mind was boggled.of-fucking-course he was a Knights fan. “You are ? God. No wonder you’ve got a stick up your ass.”
“First of all -”
“The Knights suck? Yeah, I agree.”
“You don’t have all the fucking facts.”
“What facts?”
Then the man ran into some spiel or other that had Roy waving a hand dismissively. They got heated a few times, took a break to sip water and trade lunches, before launching back into it.
The man appeared to run out of facts, none of which was a good arguing point for the Gotham Knights. He sputtered around each and every one of Roy’s criticisms, and the two did battle over each player and play and the latest games that had gone down. Roy had to admit to being impressed. No one who didn’t really love the Knights defended them the way he did.
“Dude, even Wayne’s getting floppy on supporting them now, and they say he rebuilt them that stadium.”
“Wayne’s a tool,” The man said. “And you can tell him I said that.”
Roy guffawed, falling sideways into the other man who began to laugh back. The two of them like dumb, unruly idiots, laughing disembodied from their hide-away. Roy left lunch lighter than he’d been in a while. Not even Todd’s emails could weigh him down.
-
From: Todd, Jason
Re: Re: Re:
Dear Mr. Harper,
Following up on this previous email chain,
And if the insult of having to see this man’s name wasn’t enough, Todd’s signature had changed. Below it, at the very bottom it said Go Knights! Roy felt justified in his hatred.
-
So maybe going to work sucked less now. Maybe, even through the dread work of emails, and biweekly meetings, and the endless stacks of paper on paper, or the drone of the printer, Roy was happy. He could hate the annoying way the office printer shuffled the mass of papers a little less. He could even get less testy the way people milled around the coffee pot these days, holding up the line to chit chat while Roy prepared for virtual war.
Their mild, subtle antagonism had morphed into a budding friendship that Roy hadn’t realized he’d needed so badly. It wasn’t that his friends weren’t great. If he needed them, they’d come. But they were moving on with their lives. Wally had gotten married. Donna and Kory were on their way to getting married, if they could give their careers a pause one of these days. Vic was collabing with his dad these days, and pretty hush hush about their latest projects, but his smile spoke volumes. Even Dick was losing the stone set of his shoulders these days. Roy felt left behind some days, and it was hard to say it out loud without feeling like he’d crack his belly open in the process.
He really could, because his lunch buddy was going to be there. He’d looked forward to their inevitable tangle over hometown sports teams, or the plotlines of the latest movies. He’d told the guy who he’d been near Olympic level in archery growing up, earning an impressed brow raise in return. The guy then shot back that he’d been big on cars since he was a kid. His dad had always loved cars, and when he could, he’d buy him a toy car of his favorite models and they’d collect them together. Roy hadn’t been able to stop feeling a little hot under the collar hearing him rattle off about it.
This guy felt different. He’d snagged him on his own. After burning what felt like everything years before, this was refreshing. It felt like stepping forward.
And he was cute, so bonus.
After a few more weeks, the guy had taken to bringing enough lunch to share. Something about being offended by Roy’s sad sandwiches. And god could he cook. He could rival any food truck on the corner, Roy thought. As a show of gratitude he’d bought a box of mini donuts. The powdered sugar kind that the guy had let slip he’d been rather fond. So they sat one lunch break together, getting sugar and crumbs all over the place, and snarking about the latest installment of movies to hit the theaters.
Roy looked over, listening to his buddy gesticulate and felt his eyes narrow down at the corner of his mouth. A bit of powder was there. Roy’s fingers twitched. The guy paused.
‘What?”
Roy pointed to his own mouth, “You got a little -”
“Here?” The guy swiped at the wrong place. Roy shook his head. “Here, right?” Still not right. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth and still missed.
Roy shook his head, reached forward, and stopped. They glanced at each other, and the man nodded. Roy wiped it away, swiping a little too close to the man’s lower lip before grunting that it was gone. Everything felt like a thunderstorm between them, suddenly. The swirl of something electrifying the sliver of space they’d started to delete as time had passed by.
The man glanced down at Roy’s lips and back again. “Hey, man. Thanks for...”
“Yeah,” Roy said, voice rough. “Yeah, ‘course.”
Roy licked his lips; the guy tracked the movement. “Do you -”
The guy’s phone rang. His face soured. “Those idiots .” He was halfway to storming away before he doubled back. “Hey. See you Monday.” was all he said, and he was gone.
Roy nearly forgot to exhale.
-
“What are you so happy about?” Dick asked, amused. Saturday met Roy in Bludhaven, eating Italian takeout with Dick at his little table. They ate out of each other’s boxes like old times. “I thought work was killing you.”
It was especially considering his enemy was at the top of the email chains, but he couldn’t help the way he’d been floating on cloud nine. There was no way that almost-kiss between him and his lunch buddy was an accident. He’d seen the way the other man’s eyes had flitted to his lips. And the sour expression that came over his face when his manager had called and begged him to get back because of some emergency.
“I’m seeing someone,” Roy said. Half-truth. He saw the guy every work day.
Dick raised a brow. “You are? You never said.”
“It’s new. Really new. We’re still defining what we want.” Half-lie. He was just sure the guy wanted a kiss. What came after was anyone’s guess.
“Sooooo. Where’d you meet, what are they like, what’s their name? You can’t just drop this on me!”
“At work. He’s a little shit, but I’m into it. And his name is -” Roy drew a blank. His name was?
Dick’s expression grew shit-eating. “Roy Harper -”
“Don’t even say it.”
He hadn’t asked for the guy’s name the whole time they’d been hanging out. Shit.
-
When Monday rolled around, it met Roy bouncing his knee at his desk. Occasionally he wiggled it too high and it hit the hardwood, making him hiss as he kept scrolling. His eyes tracked the slow changing digits on the computer’s clock. All the while he was dragging himself through his daily workload, overly eager for the promise of lunch. When it finally came, Roy hadn’t even let his computer finish loading before he was up and gone to his lunch spot.
The guy faintly smiled at him, dropping the twin tupperware meant for Roy in the usual place between them. Roy cracked it open, happy to see stirfry inside.
“You know, we’ve been sitting here for months now and I don’t even know your name,” Roy thought out loud. “I’m Roy.”
“Jason,” The man said. Then he did a double take. “Roy? Like Roy Harper ? From Floor E?”
“Yeah, that’s - wait. Wait, a fucking minute,” Roy didn’t mean to sound so pissed off when he said it. Jason’s brows raised at the tone. “Jason Todd? Really?The guy who won’t stop blowing up my emails?”
Jason grinned, all teeth, a little mean, a little feral. It was strangely attractive. Roy couldn’t even question himself on that thought, he’d always had a type. Jason laughed to himself, having come to some conclusion.
“Holy shit, this whole time?” Jason said, not really talking to Roy. He almost looked sheepish, if he wasn’t also leering. “I thought you were Tim at first.”
“Tim,” Roy repeated. “Tim who? Tim Jeffries? Tim Russell or -” Roy paused. ‘“Tim Wayne ?”
Jason’s grin grew larger. “The one and the same.” Then a little accusingly, “You didn’t change the signature block till two months ago. He got stuck with my old job till you got hired.”
“Why would you - hang on. Hold on.” Roy’s brain was booting into overdrive. “ You’re the other Wayne kid. God I hate this place. ”
So many of the people at their job shared first names that Roy had never bothered to connect the dots. There were two Anna’s on his floor alone. Anna B. and Anna R. Anna R eventually told everyone to call her by her middle name. Lucius Fox also had a son named Tim who went by Jace. Roy hadn’t bothered to keep track. He was, funny enough, the only Roy in the whole building.
Jason’s grin turned swiftly into a scowl. He picked at the fabric on his trousers, his gleeful mood forgotten. “Yeah, that one.” He yanked the string.
“Wait. Shit. You’re Dick’s brother.” Roy thunked his head back against the bamboo. “That asshole .”
“He never told you?”
“He kind of always skirts around it. Doesn’t talk about his dad because he doesn’t want to talk to him. Mentions his brothers, but you guys don’t exactly have unique names.”
“He doesn’t have any photos up?” Jason asked, incredulous. “He loves photos.”
“He moved recently. There was a leak in his building with the pipes in the walls. Mold, everywhere. He still hasn’t unpacked anything.”
“Typical Dick.” He said his brother’s name like a fond insult. “If you knew Bruce, you’d be pissed, too.”
Roy didn’t say that he was often pissed on Dick’s behalf in the years they’d known each other. He could tell underneath that Dick’s father had meant well, mostly, but the overbearing attitude, and control freakism weren’t the way to go. It only drove Dick to more recklessness than consideration, at times. It was something Roy could relate to. Great, self-important men who could tell the woes of the downtrodden, but suddenly had seaweed in their ears where their sons were concerned. Worse yet, Roy thought bitterly, was the inability to admit when they were wrong.
He was still on the outs with his own father-figure. A few of their sporadic texts here and there were frosty and formal at best. On the hard nights, when Roy was nursing his loneliness close, he’d stare at his phone, willing Oliver to call. Just to say hey, just to say anything. Then he’d call Dick or Donna or Kory instead and ask them to just be on the other end of the line until he fell asleep. Hell, even Jade would do it, from where she was.
Jason fiddled with his fingers and frowned.
“Bruce is - he’s good, okay, but he’s unbearable. At least if I live with my other dad he lets me be a fucking adult.” Jason rolled his eyes.
“Other dad,” Roy repeated. Right, the other dad. The childhood sweetheart Wayne had eloped with a few years back and that the tabloids loved speculating on their separation.
Dick had stated it with such a matter-of-fact tone, like he’d read it off somewhere. He’d already been on the worst out and outs with Wayne as far as Roy could remember. He’d been hurt when it seemed his father had more than moved on from him. Then they’d laid together on the apartment rooftop, wondering what it meant to be the chosen eldest, the doomed high pillar. Roy didn’t go back home after that. Roy stumbled hard not long after, and the rest was history.
“I mean, that’s just how Bruce is. He can’t stand not being in control. It’s why Harvey quit, too.” Jason snorted. “But Bruce is a sentimental weirdo and keeps his office there like Harvey’s coming back.”
Kind of like Jason’s desk on Roy’s floor, dusty but enshrined. Yikes, Roy thought. Jason seemed to be on a roll though, and Roy had to wonder if he’d been dying to say all of this. He felt like a gossipy bitch in the best way. This was why Analise and Sarah Q. were always bent together by the mail room these days. Roy could see the appeal even if it would have killed him in any other situation.
“They’re really fucking annoying.”
“Must run in the family,” Roy said, grinning. Jason knocked their shoulders together, trying to hide his own smile.
“Shut up, Harper.” He didn’t move away from Roy, though. If anything, he moved closer.
“Make me.”
“Pursuant to our last conversation,” Jason said, grinning wider, “I’m not your goddamn manager. It’s not my job to make you do anything.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you. You wouldn’t be up my ass if you didn’t think you could.” Roy laid his hand on the bench, a hair’s breadth away from Jason’s. How funny it felt for two grown men to be so shy like this; hiding away like wily teenagers in their first romance. It was exhilarating .
Jason’s eyes sparkled, and smirking so wide his cheeks dimpled. “So I don’t have to hesitate, then? If I need anything else?”
“Nah, I think I can make this one exception.”
Jason gripped the fabric of Roy’s trousers. Then he pushed forward and met Roy halfway into a kiss.
And, Roy had done what he'd been dreaming about since he first started a WE. He shut Jason up.
Roy took him by the hands, curling his fingers towards his calloused palms and slotted their thighs together. He licked into his mouth, tasting powdered sugar from the stash of donuts he kept in supply for his guy. The moan of defeat he was met with would stay with him forever. Roy didn’t know how long they sat their trading kisses like fools, but his timer had gone off, and he’d never hated the chime more than that moment.
-
In the end, Jason had left Wayne Enterprises completely. Roy did, too, not long after. They were still a ways from moving in together, but it was a near enough thing. Jason’s things were more often than not floating around his apartment. Jason wasn’t much for personalizing the places he stayed. To have him leaving books and knick-knacks on Roy’s shelf spoke volumes. He was dropping hints that his lease was up soon and he'd need somewhere to go pretty soon, all the while he folded his and Roy's laundry while Roy scrubbed the pots. Roy hummed, wondering when he might casually drop the question they'd both wanted Roy to ask.
And maybe, after he'd gotten Jason under him like usual for the night, licking the cooling sweat from his neck, he would say, "Move in with me." And Jason would agree with biting kiss.
So they weren’t office people. That much was certain. Instead they’d knocked their heads together and brainstormed something else. One weekend helping to rebuilding old apartment for the Gotham homeless led to Roy getting an electrician’s license, and Jason bothering Harvey to help him register their business. The idea was to eliminate homelessness area by area, and yank Wayne Foundation funding by the balls.
So they’d gone back to the place Harvey had run Willis Todd over in an unfortunate accident, before he’d panicked and taken a young Jason back to a young Bruce Wayne, and set to work. Park Row needed care. Bruce shelled out money to them annually, and nothing ever seemed to change. It wasn’t with a careless heart he’d done it, but it needed a special hand that he didn’t have.
There was no job too small for them. No one left without if they had anything to say about it. They sweated in the summer to run air conditioning through old buildings. They shivered in winter to fix furnaces that had long since burned out. Roofs, walls, sinks - they did it all.
There were still emails to be sent. Goddamn emails. But Jason had cowed Harvey into doing that. If only with the promise that he could personally bother Bruce about grants for the apartment buildings they were renovating, and the children’s clinic in need of funding. And maybe, if Jason had edited one of Harvey’s emails to say they needed to better discuss things in person, well who could say.
All that mattered was that Roy could pull Jason aside, and kiss him stupid in some rundown flat, that completely violated a lot of housing codes; laugh with him every night for dinner; and roll over next to him if he really had something to say.
And not once did it require a goddamn email.
-
AN:
The idea started as a joke because I despite my own work emails. And I wanted to "vent". Then I kind of just kept coming back to the idea and really liked it. I almost didn't finish this one tbh. I'd like to improve and I don't always see myself as having been doing so, so i hope this one is okay.
One of these days i'll properly rewrite it, I think. One day I'll actually sit down and edit.
I find myself struggling with getting their characters right, but I'd like to and hope I'm getting there little by little.
Also, i couldn't help myself. DC reuse names so often that i found myself making a minor joke about it.
also, also, don't fraternize at work.
