Everything awakened
by Te
February 16, 2008
Disclaimers: No one and nothing here is mine.
Spoilers/Timeline: No real spoilers, takes place in a nebulous
'now.'
Summary: They hold nothing of each other.
Ratings Note/Warnings: Sexual content which dovetails with
the content some readers may find disturbing.
Author's Note: Sequel to Sport us while we may, taking place
a day or two after it ended. Will not make sense without the
other.
Acknowledgments: To Mildred and Pixie for audiencing and
encouragement.
Jason wakes up reaching for the nine millimeter and listening with everything he is for the sound he can't quite remember.
He knows it was a sound -- nothing else brings him awake like that -- and, once he verifies that he's alone, he sits up and turns his attention to the monitors. Nothing, nothing, nothing -- and a hawk tearing a pigeon into presumably tasty strips *right* on one of the carefully placed motion sensors.
Jason snorts to himself and watches a little more nature in action before laying back down. He doesn't put the gun down immediately -- his hand just *wants* to be holding it right now -- but he relaxes.
Takes a moment to get his internal clock clear with the rest of the world... it's a good two hours before he'd planned to be awake.
There are things he could be doing -- it's been a good few days since he'd done anything more serious, training-wise, than work his katas, but he knows his body needs to recharge.
When he was younger --
When he was younger, there were some nights he didn't even remember coming home, didn't remember parking the bike or even the last few miles of the ride back from the city --
("You're an adolescent, Jason. Your body will *take* the rest it needs whether you want it to or not.")
How many times had he heard that and blown it off? Most of the time, back then, it had seemed like the only times when Bruce had something *interesting* to say were the times when he called Jason 'Jay.' Now, of course...
Of course it was the other way around, entirely. Jason scrubs at his face with his free hand, wiping grit from his eyes and scratching his palm with his stubble.
Bruce.
Right now he's going over the night's reports, making his lists and checking them twice, thinking about a hundred different things, all of them some variety of *important* -- Jason isn't stupid enough to discount the man entirely. He's kept Gotham from falling into its own smoking crater more times than Jason has... years.
He's Batman. But --
He could be doing other things, right now. He could be... with Tim.
Bruce hadn't had to teach him how to think in three dimensions, but he'd refined the hell out of those particular thought *processes*. Jason can, easily, craft an image of Tim in his mind. His height, the length of bone in his thighs which suggests he'll grow a little more -- if he lives.
The Tim in his mind holds his staff at the ready, and tries to hide a knife -- no, a shuriken -- between the fingers of his other hand. It's not hard to guess what some part of his brain is trying to tell him: Two weapons, two modes of thought.
It doesn't take much effort to add the duller gleam of blood to the shuriken's shine, to make the Tim dance the thing over his fingers and smile --
That smile.
*That* smile has probably given Bruce a whole new set of nightmares, a whole different collection of lists to check, precautions to *take*...
Does he still lecture? Bruce had stopped trying with *him* by the time he was fourteen, but Tim's not really like *him* --
Not that way. Not.
Tim would listen, if he did. He might not agree --
And Jason realizes, with a sharpness he could really do without at this hour, that he really doesn't want to give Bruce the chance to *try*. Jason shakes his head and smiles in the darkness. He'd invited Tim here, but he can't *make* the kid walk out on everything he knows, everything he's built his life around.
It's not like he'd managed to get out from under Bruce the first time he started thinking about other things, other *ways*. And when he *had* left...
All Bruce had had to do was follow. *Find* him and promise --
Jason lets the smile fade from his face and breathes through it. That's all done, every last bit of it, and just because a part of him always wants to protest...
It doesn't change one thing -- including the fact that another part of him always breathes a little easier at the loss. He doesn't have anything to build himself around, now, but himself. The way it always should have been.
By that reasoning, playing things -- playing *it* -- like he's just fine that Tim-Tim-Timmy runs right home at dawn is absolutely the way to go. One way or another, Tim has to make his own choices. And --
He'd given Jason his boot-knife back after the run-in with Ivy, holding it out without a word, without a thought about what the knife had done in either Jason's hand or his own.
Jason, for his part, had given Tim the batarang Tim had buried so far into Shaheed Benjamin's shoulder that the man would be accidentally dropping things for the rest of his miserable little life.
They hold nothing of each other. Nothing...
Jason swallows back the sigh and touches the mark on his throat. Tim had broken the skin in one place, and it's already scabbed over. As to the rest -- a bruise spreading beyond the circumference of Tim's mouth, more like a stain than anything else. It will heal quickly -- he always heals quickly, whether or not he scars -- and then it will be gone.
The question -- is whether or not Tim would want to renew it. If he feels the same pull, the same *drive* -- no.
He does. He does and Jason *knows* it, and he can't help hating the parts of him which had tried so *damned* hard not to know anything of the kind. Hungry. The better part of four years with Bruce, Dick as his big brother, Babs loving him enough to put *out* --
Jason is quite all right with the fact that he's never getting over *that* --
He's *still* hungry. Missing something dark and important, and maybe hating *himself* for that. Good little boys take what they're given and shut the hell up. Tim -- isn't a good little boy.
("Jason, I... I love saying your name. I love it. I love --")
Jason closes his eyes and catches himself shaking his head against the feel of himself -- wanting.
Anger is easier, anger for the kid, the fucking *amateur* who just wouldn't stop playing it like they were --
("Brother.")
Jason brings the gun to his face, inhales oil and grits his teeth for the feel of cool metal against his face --
Jason slips the gun beneath the other pillow and doesn't laugh. The sound of it here --
Tim had laughed, begged, shouted, wailed -- *begged*.
With the scent of the gun oil high and sharp in his nose, Jason can't smell Tim on his sheets. He can't --
He turns over and buries his face in the pillow. His own cheap shampoo, his own sweat -- something sweeter. Tim absolutely conditions that thin, fine hair and probably doesn't feel the least bit gay about it.
Tim's sweat is harder to find, but when Jason flips the pillow over -- there. Just a little less *something* than his own, and it's hard not to stick his tongue out for it, not to lick the hollow of Tim's throat, push his arms up and shove his face *in* for more --
Hungry, and a part of him only wants to know *why*, to understand what had *possibly* possessed him to let Tim walk right back out of here again without so much as a boot knife of his own.
*Bruce* never made mistakes like that.
Jason swallows back another laugh and bites his own lip hard, thinking about Tim's blushes, about the way...
Tim had been planning on telling him about the Magical Mystery Tour he was on, right here in this bed. Jason hadn't let him, and then... and then. He doesn't really know what Tim is going to look like now that he's got all of his fear back. Everything -- nearly everything he's craving right now and he can't lie, not to himself --
Nearly everything had happened *because* Crane took the kid's fear away and left him with nothing but those fucked-up little drives, that hunger Tim doesn't really know, yet, how to feed.
*Nearly*.
There'd been that kiss, and the way Tim had bent over backwards to keep Jason from mixing it up with Cassandra fucking Cain, who looks just as much like Batgirl as Tim looks like Robin.
Bruce -- what was he thinking? Did he know what he had? *Could* he know?
When he thinks about what *he* could do with someone like Cain, and, yes, with someone like *Tim* --
Jason pushes his face into the pillow and breathes *deep*. Tim can't deny what they'd done, what *he'd* done. What he'd wanted and what he'd taken --
("I'll pay for this.")
Jason hears himself growl and turns over onto his back again, arching against the relative coolness on this side of the bed, thinking about...
Some morning. Any morning, some morning *soon* --
Tim would like it if Jason tied him to the bed. He'd get off on it whether or *not* it was his kink, because he'd see *Jason* getting off on it and that's just how minds like theirs *work* --
Some morning. Just -- to keep him here, open one of the blacked-out windows to let in the Gotham stink, the shouts and calls of day-people, the rumble of buses and taxis and all the cars the rich fucks -- and poor fucks -- can't live without for one reason or another --
Open the place up and let it cover the sounds they made, let it be a part of what they did, make themselves just another part of the city.
Jason will suck every bite mark Bruce has left on Tim's body and maybe a few of *Clark's*, too. He'll kiss and lick, bite and *suck*, all the way down, down, down --
And Jason's hit, hard and brutally, by the memory of kneeling over Tim's narrow chest, pushing himself in to Tim's mouth, that *mouth* --
Jason arches again and grips himself hard. Tim on his knees and Tim on his back, and they'd never managed to get him on his belly, on his hands and knees, but Tim wants that. Tim --
Once, Jason had gone to that brownstone Tim used to live in with his civilian family. He'd carefully avoided all the little cameras and traps, knowing exactly where Bruce would've put them, knowing deep down that Tim wouldn't ever have *moved* them --
Oh, but would he? Now? Had he ever?
Jason squeezes his eyes shut, strokes and builds, in his mind, the image of that good-boy bedroom full of good-boy accessories, all the trappings of a normal life, of the lie which had made him *hate* --
No, just Tim. Just --
Tim, on his bed, on his stomach with his hands shoved under the pillows, sleeping hard with just the faintest frown showing on his forehead as his eyes moved rapidly behind the lids.
Thin skin and no visible scars. Not then.
That's how Tim sleeps, and maybe that's how he's sleeping right *now*, claiming a corner of Bruce's big, big bed and dreaming of --
Of --
Would he ever call Jason's name if Bruce fucked him *just* the right way? The wrong way?
Jason can *hear* him, calling out over and over, begging --
God, *begging* --
And Jason's right back here, right... Tim next to him, touching him like he can't decide whether to do it lightly or try for a bruise *every* time, touching his scars like he wants the story behind every last one of them --
Tim's mouth on him, Tim's hands -- Tim's hands are the most scarred part of his body. He's been using them hard for years, forcing them to do things designed for much *larger* hands --
Jason could suck them into his mouth, breathe on the palms until Tim curls his hands into fists Jason can *bite* --
They'd both learned knife-fighting from the same place, and Jason hadn't picked up much more from the League. Some time they could spar with *just* knives, and Tim can show him everything he's afraid to use on the streets, everything Bruce had told him, over and over, was too much.
He has a knife-fighter's *body*, and now Jason has Tim spinning through his mind even as the ghost of him teases his nose, begs --
He'd look *good* with a few more scars. Maybe something for that pretty little face, something *else* to separate him from Bruce.
They'd make up some perfectly reasonable story about an accident with an epee or possibly even a mugging, but it would be there, every time Tim smiled, every time he didn't --
Jason strokes himself harder, faster, thinks about holding Tim's head still, leaning in to breathe on the new cut, lick it while Tim shivers for him, shakes and maybe thinks about leaving that kind of mark on all the assholes they have to deal with, night after night.
A new kind of trademark for a new kind of -- Robin.
And it wouldn't be itself if that wasn't a part of it, if that red, gold, and green *bastard* didn't have a piece of them both, if it couldn't worm its way between and change things, *make* things --
Jason promises himself never to call Tim Robin while they're fucking --
And then he realizes that he'd do *just* that if it made things hotter, filled that damned *hole* for --
One of them.
Both of them --
Pain, and Jason realizes that he's pressing on the mark Tim had given him, practically clawing at it as he jerks himself hard, so --
Tim's hands on him, stroking and squeezing, *touching* --
Jason had *asked* him to, needed it that badly --
He needs a hand on his *sac*, but the mark feels so good, so much, so *close* to what he wants -- Tim pressed against him and moving, taking what he wants, taking what he needs, taking both of them until Jason has to just --
Just --
It's all breaking up in his head now, sensations fading to the real, to the fact of himself alone in this bed, the images in his head offering only flashes, *teases* --
He wants --
Jason hears himself growl and shoves his other hand down, works his sac hard and tries to just get there, get himself out of this *need*, just for a minute or two --
His heel skids on the comforter --
He's banging his head back against the pillow --
The morning street sounds are starting to get *insistent* --
Jason gasps, and gets another hint of Tim, another brush of him painting itself inside him --
He comes, panting and moaning low in his throat, riding that fantastic-awful shudder rocking through him until it's gone and he can breathe again, if not think.
After a moment, he moves to wipe his hand on the sheets -- stops. He doesn't want to have to change these, just yet. He doesn't --
"Ah, *fuck*," Jason says, and this time he lets himself laugh, if quietly.
He --
He *is* going to let Tim come on his own time and of his own *mind*. There's nothing making that anything *but* the right way to handle things. But.
Gotham belongs to him, too.
Anything can happen.
("You *owe* me.")
And -- heh. He has promises to keep.
end.
.With fear and sweetness.
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