Chapter Text
It’s amazing what you can bribe a university student into minding with the wave of a crisp fifty dollar note. Jason had slammed his red helmet down onto the half-catatonic student’s anatomy textbook, startling them into as near to full alertness as one could get with intense caffeine withdrawal in their system.
“Fifty to watch the helmet,” he offers in a sharp, hurried bark, holding their frown through the white-out lenses of his domino. When they open their mouth to protest, he sweetens the deal with, “I’ll buy you two textbooks of your choice as well, just name them.”
A slow blink that seems to take eons when measured against the risen hairs on Jason’s neck and the impatient thrum of his pulse in his ears. “Introduction to Molecular Cell Biology and Neuroanatomy in Clinical Context,” they rattle off, and Jason slaps the dollar bill onto the table as he vaults it, sprinting through the library.
When he crosses into the actual gallery of the library, he slows to a casual walk and shucks his domino between two empty aisles, yanking up the hood of his sweatshirt. He counts his breaths in time with his carefully measured steps, until his lungs have settled and the flush of exertion has drained from his face. Then he adjusts his leather jacket, tugs the hood down a little further to cover his face, and slides a beaten copy of Foucault's The Order of Things under his arm as he emerges into the main thoroughfare of Gotham U’s campus library.
He folds himself into a pocket between two chattering groups of students who look about his age. Lets his bootsteps match their pace as he casts a surreptitious gaze around for his pursuers. Jason had managed to lose them between the coffee shop and the quad, shimmying into the library bathrooms through an open window to a lot less surprise than he’d expected. The only other person present when he’d hit the tiles had taken a sweeping glance and grunted a salutation, turning back to brushing their teeth in the pockmarked mirror.
Jason didn’t really have time to spare for questioning why someone was beginning their morning routine at 1pm on a Thursday, but he’d seen weirder. He hadn’t even really intended on ending up on campus; Gotham University happened to be a neat stepping stone between the two parks Jason had been sprinting through, trying to outrun a pack of mobsters who had crashed his safehouse.
He was rarely this disorganised. But he’d been pulling double shifts ever since an up-and-coming mob family had decided that dealing to students in daylight hours was an acceptable alternative to braving the Bats at night. Honestly, if anything, this was Bruce’s fault, for not shutting down their operation sooner. But apparently the Bat had bigger fish to fry, so once again Jason was left to pick up the threads of societal decency.
Jason shoulders through the library doors, peeling away from the mass of students headed for the cafeteria once he’s certain he’s shaken his tail. He makes a beeline for the nearest campus carpark, jamming his hands into the pocket of his hoodie.
He keeps his head down, stealing clandestine glances into the dashes of the cars he passes, in the guise of looking for his own. When he spots two leather-jacket-clad grunts surveying the rows of cars from the front of a nearby building, Jason turns down the nearest aisle and assesses his choices. There’s a small red hatchback that looks pre-2001 on his right, or a silver sedan with some over-expensive rims that Jason would have jacked in a heartbeat twelve years ago.
He picks the hatchback, mostly because its sun-spotted roof looks less conspicuous, and Jason doesn’t really want to battle the sedan’s obnoxious alarm system while ducking the gazes of two mafia grunts.
So Jason angles his hips back against the driver’s side door, jeans snagging on the lip of the window as he pulls his cell out and pretends to scroll through his texts. When the grunts descend from their vantage point into the sea of cars, Jason wrenches his elbow back and shatters the window.
No alarm, he notes as he slides a hand in and fumbles for the door latch. Must be some faulty electrical wiring. He makes a mental reminder to take a look under the hood when he finishes burglarizing this poor student’s ride. Maybe he can return it with some slight improvements to make up for the B&E. Then he shrugs into the seat and flicks the book onto the passenger seat.
The car is objectively filthy, empty coffee cups and crumpled chip packets strewn through the interior. Jason pauses to sweep a hand across the old seat cover, pushing an armful of candy wrappers and crumbs into the passenger seat footwell. Then he leans down to yank the flimsy plastic cover off the steering column, fingers finding the wires by rote.
All it takes is a quick glide of his blade over the copper and rubber casing, and then Jason can twist and scrape the wires together. The car purrs to life beneath him, juddering as he slides his seatbelt on and yanks the gearshift into drive.
He peels out of the lot at a respectable twenty miles per hour, holding his breath as he rolls past the searching grunts and onto the main road. It’s not until Gotham U has faded in his rearview mirror that Jason exhales a shuddering breath.
He’s internally debating whether he needs to disinfect the car for fingerprints (he’s wearing gloves, but getting complacent about stray skin and hair follicles leads to the GCPD snooping around in cold cases) when some asshole cuts him off, and Jason wrenches the steering wheel aside to avoid a collision. The hatchback’s wheels screech, and he would have slammed a shoulder into the window with the force of it, if the glass had been intact. Jason swears and lays on the horn, because not exhibiting road rage in Gotham is more of a tell than drawing the attention in the first place. Jason doesn’t think there’s any mafioso tailing him still, but he won’t feel safe until he’s kicking back a beer on his couch in the Bowery.
Something groans groggily from the backseat, and Jason stiffens, gaze flickering to the rearview mirror.
The bundle of quilts on the back seat shifts and reconstitutes itself into a humanoid form, and Jason stares and grips the steering wheel, foot inching for the accelerator.
“Hey, dude, what the hell?” the sleep-strained voice filters through from his unintended passenger and probable hijacking victim.
Then the blankets shift to reveal pitch-black hair, mussed and cowlicked, but nonetheless reaching down to the teen’s shoulders. His Gotham U sweatshirt hangs off one narrow shoulder, several sizes too big, but even in the broken midday light, Jason can make out the faint white of scar tissue on his exposed skin.
A palm lifts to burrow into an eye socket, pinched beneath a frowning brow, and then those blue eyes blink blearily out at him, widening.
“Jason?!” Tim bleats, and then focuses on something just past the windscreen. “Fuck! Truck!”
Jason spins back around fast enough to discern the rapidly looming tailgate of a stationary moving van, and he jams both boots on the brake, skidding them to a sharp halt with a foot to spare. It’s nearly a full minute before Jason’s heart calms enough that he can look into the rearview mirror again.
Tim looks pale, meeting Jason’s gaze as he shucks the blankets and shimmies through the divide into the passenger seat. Jason stares as he manoeuvres around the trash, inspecting the book Jason had stolen. “Some light reading?” he asks with an arched brow.
Jason snatches it from him and tosses it onto the back seats, then he doubles down with his glower. “What the hell are you doing here, replacement?”
Tim looks coolly unimpressed. “I study h- Where are we?”
“Not Gotham U,” Jason supplies. “What are you doing sleeping in the back of some trashed out hatchback? I thought you owned a Ferrari, rich boy.”
“I do own a Ferrari,” Tim replies blandly, and watches as Jason creeps forward to follow the truck’s progress, locked in Gotham’s downtown traffic. “Hatchback is less conspicuous for a postgrad.”
“Wait, you’re genuinely studying? Since when?”
Tim shrugs. “A lot of investors like to see a Wayne Enterprises CEO with an MBA. Wanted to make sure I at least humoured them before laughing them out the door.”
Jason barks a laugh that’s a tad too high-pitched to be genuine. His pulse still feels too frantic in his veins. “So you’re slumming it with the regular folk. Still doesn’t explain why you’re camping out in this shitbox.”
“I sleep wherever and whenever I can squeeze it in,” Tim answers, eyeing him suspiciously. Jason’s hands tighten on the wheel. “Better question: why are you hijacking a broke student’s car?”
“You’re hardly broke,” Jason retorts, sidestepping that question.
Tim follows. “I work hard to maintain my broke-bespoke lifestyle. I thought you were past jacking cars.”
Jason shoots him a glare, which Tim blinks owlishly at and doesn’t back down from. Finally, Jason looks away. “I had some mafioso on my ass. For the record, it was a coincidence, jacking your car.”
Tim looks vaguely horrified. “You were going to jack a broke student’s wheels?”
Jason glares at the windshield. “I was planning on returning it. You need to fix your alarm, by the way,” he adds on second thought.
“There isn’t an alarm.”
“I know,” Jason replies, and gestures vaguely to the shattered window. “Noticed that pretty early on. Why doesn’t your car have a working alarm?”
Tim shrugs. “I disabled it.”
Exasperation laces through Jason. “Why?”
He’s offered an incredulous look from the passenger seat. “Because I’m a vigilante. I figured I’d be able to handle anyone who tried to steal my shitty car. And if they managed to steal it without me noticing, they probably need it more than I do anyway. Besides, I kept setting the damn alarm off at godawful hours of the morning when I forgot my keys. Campus security threatened to have me escorted off the premises. So I shut it off.”
“That’s the dumbest logic I’ve ever heard. And you didn’t even wake up until I nearly smeared us across the road. At which point was I supposed to fight you for ownership of this shitty red hatchback?”
“I could go a few rounds now,” Tim mutters darkly, right as a spray of bullets opens up the back windscreen.
Jason moves instinctively, throwing out a hand to wrap around Tim’s neck and shove him down. Tim squirms out of his grip as Jason throws the car into reverse and jams his foot down on the gas. The car flies backwards, slamming into a nondescript tan-brown sedan with two infuriated grunts inside.
“Fuck,” Jason spits, shifting the gears and peeling up onto the (thankfully) empty sidewalk. Tim’s hands leap to the door handle and the dash respectively, bracing as the car bucks against the gutter.
“Do these guys know you’re-?”
“Can we please ask the questions later?” Jason growls, manoeuvring around a fire hydrant as he cuts back onto an emptier lane. The tan sedan rears up in the mirror a second later, and Jason can physically feel how tight the muscles in his shoulders are wound.
Tim glances into the side mirror, blanching at the rate at which the grunts are closing the distance. Then his hand shoots out, fumbling for the stereo’s volume knob. Jason spares the barest half-second to glance down at him incredulously.
“Replacement, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Thought it might lighten the mood,” he grunts between gritted teeth, and flicks to a classic rock station. The wavering notes of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ grind through the speakers, filling the small space with an unrepentant drum synth. Tim pauses for a beat, and then spins the dial to near-full volume.
Jason laughs shrilly, cutting through a stop sign in a streak of red and praying they don’t end up smears on the pavement. The thought of them flying through the bloody, shattering windshield has Jason’s arm snapping out to tug Tim’s seatbelt across his waist. Tim gets the message, fumbling to secure his belt, unwilling to compromise on his stiff brace against the dashboard.
“Two hundred degrees!” Tim bellows without warning, startling Jason, “That’s why they call me-”
“Mister Fahrenheit!” Jason replies after a split, stunned second. He drills them around a corner, rubber burning as he jams the pedal to the floor and shifts gears. “I’m travelling at the-”
“Speed of light!” Tim shrieks, wincing as they mount the curb briefly.
“I wanna make a super-”
“-sonic man-”
“-outta you!”
A sign offering twenty-four hour parking for the low, low price of thirty-five dollars a day rears up on Jason’s left, and he squeals past a cruising SUV to cut into the parking garage at full speed. Tim screams freely as they cascade down the ramp, and his hand flashes out to snap the headlights’ stalk on in time for Jason to dodge a pedestrian.
“On a collision course,” Freddie croons through the speakers as Jason flings them into another storey, “I am a satellite. I’m outta control-”
“Park!” Tim yelps, thrusting an outstretched finger towards a neat spot nestled between two obnoxiously large SUVs. Jason yanks the steering wheel aside to pull them in, brakes squealing, and stalls the ignition.
The headlights blink out, the upbeat pulse of music snapping off to leave them in cloying silence. They both duck down in their seats, hearts thrumming a frantic bruise as the purr of an engine rolls towards them, waxing and then waning as it crawls past.
In the quiet that follows, Jason can feel the laboured rise and fall of his own chest, hear the unsteady ricochet of Tim’s own breathing next to his. Jason’s not sure how long they crouch in the footwells, staring wide-eyed across the short distance at each other, but Jason has a front row seat when Tim’s features pinch, laughter bubbling up through his lips.
He claps a hand over his mouth almost immediately, tears springing to his eyes as he laughs silently, shoulders jerking. Jason’s not sure why, but the mirth breaches up through him too, and then he’s guffawing alongside the teenager, clutching his ribs.
“Did- did we just have a high speed chase to Freddie freakin’ Mercury?” Tim bleats once he’s got himself marginally more under control.
“That’s some quality bonding right there, replacement,” Jason chortles in response, blinking up through bleary eyes. He can feel the grin that splits his features, threatening to tear his lips with its brightness. “Bruce would be proud.”
“Soulmate-level shit,” Tim concurs. “Dick will be jealous.”
“Over what? The high speed chase, the Queen duet, or the fact that we’re obviously destined soulmates?”
Tim snorts. “Take your pick.”
Jason sighs, letting the pressure ease off his ribs as he exhales the last of his gripping mirth. “Sorry for kidnapping you, Timbers.”
“Sorry for only being able to offer you a shit ride.”
“Next time we go for the Ducati, alright?”
“Absolutely. Matte red?”
Jason rolls his head until he can meet Tim’s grin with one of his own. “As if there’s a better colour. Would you have it any other way, soulmate?”