Chapter Text
Jason Todd does not have a death wish.
No, really.
Been there, done that.
None of the pain, the screaming, the guilt, the grief, none of that mess is welcome within his soul once again. Death has taken so much from him, filled so much of Jason already, there is no space left for more. There is no room left for joy. For happiness. For hope. Carving, digging, scratching out new spaces, in the in-between places, had been, and still is, a grueling endeavour Jason had to make himself sign up for. Otherwise, what was the point? Why come back, why live, for that? That joke of an existence?
It’s hardly been easy, making that decision. And yet, it is easier than breathing.
Hey, he is breathing.
Little things, right?
Future looms over Jason - the weight of uncertainty becoming a comfort that settles on Jason like a hand-woven blanket. Panels of a quilt Jason must sew together, extend each year, each month, each day until possibility stretches in front of him far greater than he knows what to do with.
That’s ok. That’s the fun part.
Death is not welcome in each stitch. Death does not have permission to claim another square, to encroach upon the edges, bleeding into the fabric until it’s soaked, drenched, rotting down to the core. Jason does not wish to run out of the thread carefully spun from his soul. Or, even worse, have that thread be cut short.
Jason has a tomorrow. He wants to have a tomorrow. He wants to say no more to Death.
Can he, though?
Does he even have that choice?
Yes. Yes, of course he does.
That is important.
It’s important that you remember that.
Remember that.
Jason Todd does not want to die.
Everything that happens, happens.
Everything that has happened, has happened.
Everything that will- well, you get the idea.
Jason isn’t so sure he does.
The first time Jason notices something is wrong with Dick, he knows no one else has caught it either. That isn’t to say that Jason knows Dick Grayson. He doesn’t know that asshole’s coffee order (no coffee. Tea. A London Fog, with oat milk and extra shot of vanilla syrup), if he prefers window or aisle seats (window, so he can touch the clouds. In a way), who called him ‘Dick’ instead of ‘Richard’ first (one of the other kids in the circus, the teen daughter of one of the clowns, her rainbow ringlets bouncing as she asked him if Dick knew what that word meant), and if Dick knows what if feels like to die.
(Unknown.)
More, what happens is less a glitch in the Matrix than it is a momentary lapse in the familiar.
“Could you pass me a napkin, please, Yason?”
Yason.
Not Jason. Soft ‘j’, instead of a hard ‘j’.
Weird.
But there are too many other voices to make a proper distinction. Drunks, designated drivers, and those somewhere in between, fill the basement bar tucked away in downtown Bludhaven. Their cacophony rises into some mashed together harmonious excitement, arms punching the air in victory at replays of the net rippling as a puck ricochets into it. Glasses clink against the bar top and other bottles, nowhere near a version of rhythm. Shouts and laughter are as low as the crowd settles into, TVs all around moving back to the live footage.
Dick has also leaned in close, his cologne tickling at Jason’s nose, trying to actually have a chance at Jason hearing him. Turned away from Donna and Roy at his other side, who would have otherwise definitely taken note of the weirdness from Dick.
They were the ones who know Dick from top to bottom, and inside out. (Literally? Are those side glances Roy sends Dick from concern, or from memories past? Those long looks, traveling all along Dick’s body, so intense that Jason’s knuckles creak at the sheer audacity Roy has at being so- is able to be so- so blatant. The scrape across Jason’s hand burns with every flex as Dick doesn’t even bother to respond in any which way. Every time.)
Sandalwood overcomes stale beer and salty peanuts as Dick smiles at Jason, crumpled napkins in his hand.
“Thanks, Jay!”
That’s when the second weird thing happens. Dick raises his other (empty) hand across the bar top, long fingers stretching above the dark wood, only to hover directly over Jason’s bare forearm, sleeves of his red hoodie pushed up to Jason’s elbows.
And then Dick freezes.
If Jason wasn’t staring intently at that almost grasp, that suspending touch that he can’t decide should exist or not-
For a second it does.
It doesn’t make sense. Because Jason doesn’t see Dick touch him. He shouldn’t feel calloused fingertips brush along his skin. His hair shouldn’t rise, before or after, the muscle tensing.
A warm palm presses down.
Jason’s skin says.
His mind disagrees, Dick turning back to Donna nudging him, her hair getting pushed over her shoulder by that same hand that was supposed to be touching Jason.
What the fuck.
“Hey,” Jason leans up from his seat, waving at one of the bartenders on the side decidedly away from his… companions. He gets a nod of acknowledgement, the bartender finishing up one more order before sliding down to Jason’s spot. “’Nother pint, from the tap. Pale ale.” He quickly chugs the last inch of beer, slapping the empty glass onto the bar.
“Got it.”
Golden liquid pours into a new glass. Jason watches, eyes tracing the hazy swirls of the foam and bubbles and beer mixing. A waterfall from a bronze spout, gushing, flowing, filling. The steady grasp, easy muscle memory bringing glass to tap to table. For a while, the drink remains cloudy, sitting in front of Jason. Absentmindedly he gestures to the others, letting the bartender know to put it on the group’s tab for the night. He’s tripping, falling into the amber, ground disappearing from under his feet, ass un-planting from the barstool, floating into… something. There’s no thing as ‘distinction’, just Jason’s mind and a vast nebula closing in on him, opening up in front of him, he’s flying through the pillows of dust and gravity is pulling him, dragging Jason closer, closer, consuming him, taking him to inevitability, hey is that a little re-
“Hey, Jason, you there?”
Dick Grayson’s hand is on Jason’s forearm.
In the exact place Jason had felt it earlier.
Dropping his gaze down, Jason can see it- corporeal, real, there- right where he expects it, knows it to be.
Wha- “What?”
Glasses clink together next to Jason, bar patrons ‘cheers’ing to some mundane, inane accomplishment or another. The pale ale he ordered sits in front of him, still full and ready to consume. His eyes skip over the pint, not wishing, or not being able, to latch onto it again. Falling back into the nebulous expanse of forever he was stuck in, time not existing-
Damnit!
“Hah,” Dick’s fingers slip along Jason’s arm as they begin to retreat, a tingling sensation streaking across Jason’s skin. “I think you might’ve had one too many. How you holdin’ up?”
“Fuckin’ fantastic.” Jason shifts his arm, pushing Dick’s hand completely off. Dick doesn’t bother to react, taking the sign to cut the physical contact correctly.
Jason’s stomach burns, it claws him from the inside out, his ribs aching as they pulse inwards. He picks up the pint, taking a big gulp. And a second. It goes down hard. Like a skipping rock, smooth and round and perfect for creating ripples as it bounces off each surface until the water claims another victim, the weight sinking to the bottom, bubbles escaping like a last gasp. Settling, far below, the last fingerprints it’ll ever know washing away within moments, subject to the wills and whims of the currents. Except, the rock lodges itself halfway down Jason’s esophagus. Unwilling to travel any further, like it’s supposed to.
He speaks around the lump.
“You finishing up soon? I want to get the fuck outta here.”
“Jeeze,” Dick says, looking at Jason’s shoulder like he wants to wrap an arm around the hulking muscles. He decidedly decides against it. “When’s the last time you went out? Took the mask off, the both of them.”
Raising his eyebrow, Jason has to turn in his seat to face Dick more fully. A second eyebrow joins the first.
“You? You’re the one telling me to drop my mask? Am I in crazy town? Insane valley? Hypocrite island?”
Unbelievable.
“He’s got a point, Dick.” Donna’s hand nestles into the crook of Dick’s elbow, soft, somehow. She peeks her head around Dick to glance at Jason directly. Unspoken exasperation and understanding grates against Jason’s already jumpy nerves. “Leave the kid alone.”
Her tone, the phrase itself, is too reminiscent of a time buried under dirt that can never escape the force of a human hand and the need of a strained heart.
Thanks, but no thanks.
“Wally isn’t even back yet. At least wait to toast a mission well done before you-” Dick pauses. Opens his mouth then closes it again. Glances upwards, finding nothing like strength, but maybe witnesses something a little closer to it. Something none of them discover as Roy breaks in, stretching over to pluck the drink from Dick’s hard grip and taking a long sip. (Blatant, blatant, blatant.)
“Gonna scare him away, Rob. If he wants to go, let him.”
If. Roy is placing an awful lot on a supposed uncertainty.
Lips part. Two blue eyes latch onto Jason. Two more. Then, slowly, two more.
The weight of expectation feels immediately overwhelming and viciously familiar in the seams where Jason’s skin was stitched together once and over again. Expectation is a funny way of saying ‘future disappointment’, Jason thinks.
“Jason-”
Ask him to stay. Ask him to finish his drink and start a new one. Make it sound like you want it, like you couldn’t get it off your tongue fast enough.
(You do. You wish it as much as he wishes it for you. Neither of you know what fulfilled wishes feel like. Nor will you, this time.)
Yet another hand appears upon Dick. Donna hasn’t released him, and Roy’s touch whispers along Dick’s knuckles, the glass stolen earlier having long been replaced, lazily lingering.
Two blue gazes turn to the shock of red hair, smiles cultivated from immeasurable histories, a welcome that is necessarily overtly sincere. Some goodbyes don’t end in helloes, after all.
One gaze knows the second it moves away, so will Jason.
It moves anyways.
Jason leaves behind a half-empty glass, the golden amber crystal clear and destined to stay level until a swift, practiced grip disturbs it, cutting off the bartender’s query.
“No, I’m drinking it.”
The beer tastes sour in Dick’s mouth. Tepid, with weak bubbles. Behind and around Dick, the voices of his friends are just as warm (thick, cloying-) as their constant touch (-holding him down, keeping him here-). Exhaustion half-quelled by relief, queries half-spoken of missing friends, comments half-heard in distracted minds. Dick reaches the end of the beer, his vision blurring as he sets the glass down. Maybe he’s had a few too many. That could explain the unsteadiness in Dick’s feet, even though he is sitting down. (Where could he go?)
Dick’s eye catches onto the sleeve of his black sweater. On it, a singular red thread lays, unattached to anything else.
A quick glance is not needed, Dick already knows no one around him is wearing red.
There was someone earlier, however.
Hmm.
Must’ve come from Jason.