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“You only do it like that if you don’t have the equipment to do it properly,” Tim snipes.
“And you only say that if you’re a spoiled little rich kid who buys everything because you don’t know how to make it yourself,” Roy growls.
“Oh my god, that’s enough,” Jason moans into the kitchen tabletop. His and Roy's cribbage game is scattered beyond salvage, but that doesn't mean he should have to resign himself to this.
“He started it-“
“And I’m finishing it. Jesus Christ.” Jason snaps his fingers and points at Tim. “Be nice,” he orders.
Tim glowers.
Jason glares. “I mean it, Red. You’re the one who dropped in unannounced. Arsenal was actually invited. So either apologize for arguing about the most boring shit I’ve ever heard in my life, or tell him somethin’ nice.”
Tim looks at Roy like he’s never seen anything less nice in his life, and this is a life which includes regular exposure to Harvey Dent. “…I find the energy of your photons appealing,” he mutters, finally.
“…Am I being insulted right now?”
“He likes your new uniform,” Jason says helpfully. “He thinks the color’s snazzy. And he’s not tryin’ to put you down or anythin’, he just raised himself a Vulcan.”
“I know what he meant,” Roy says sulkily. “I studied physics too, yanno.”
Tim sticks out his tongue.
“Oh, for-“ Jason throws up his hands. “Red, you just lost yourself dessert.” When Tim bolts upright, mouth already open to whine, Jason holds up a hand to forestall him. “No. If you wanna earn it back, you’re gonna be nice, and polite, and if you can’t say anythin’ friendly to Arsenal, you’re not gonna say anythin’ at all. Got it?”
Tim purses his lips, but he slinks back into his chair, back straight and hands folded primly in front of him. “Sorry, Hood.” He bows his head regally to Roy. “I did not intend for you to infer a slight against your intellect. Your prowess with physics is well known.”
Jason can’t suppress a shudder of disgust. Looks like Tim’s decided to take ‘polite’ to the whole nine yards that his asshole parents drilled into him. Well, could be worse, right?
Roy’s eyes are wide. “Pod person,” he whispers. He turns to Jason. “Hood, he’s a pod person!” And he lunges, arms out, tackling Tim to the floor of the kitchenette and crushing the startled kid under his bulk with an alarming crunching sound.
Jason stares. “Arsenal, you just lost yourself dessert and there’s no earning it back,” he says, blinking and numb. “Uh. Red, you okay?”
There’s a muffled squeak of assent.
“You sure? What was the…crunch?”
A moment of aggressive wriggling, where Roy swears and tries to lock down all his limbs and finds that Tim’s just a bundle of twigs and poky joints, then Tim pops his head out from under Roy’s armpit. Jason winces in sympathy. He’s been there. “I had a bag of cheese puffs in the pocket of my hoodie,” Tim wheezes. “I think they’re dust.”
Oh. Oh. The treachery. All sympathy flees in a flash. “You,” Jason hisses, taking a heavy treading step forward, and Roy, sensing the danger, scrambles off Tim and back until he tangles up with the chair legs. “You dare bring that filth into my house?”
“Some-body’s in trou-ble,” Roy sing-songs under his breath, cackling.
Tim doesn’t even have the good grace to pretend to look ashamed of himself. “I was hungry on the way here,” he defends. “I wasn’t going to eat them here, duh. But what was I supposed to do, leave them out in your hallway until I go? The rats would steal them.”
“Good! They’re only fit for rats! Do you even know what’s in that shit?” Jason swoops down and yanks the crumpled bag from Tim’s pocket, easily evading the kid’s snatching hands. “Look at this crap! It’s all chemicals and synthetic flavorings. Look at this, Tim! Look at this line, after all the eighteen-syllable preservative compounds that you’re killing your organs with. ‘Artificial cheese-type flavoring!’ It’s not even real artificial cheese, Tim!”
Tim slowly picks himself up from the floor, eyes narrow and wary. Roy, at a glance, looks just the same. Jason realizes that he’s breathing heavily. His feet are set wide and his knees are bent. If the maker of this affront to real food were standing in the room with him now, he’s all set up to clean clock ‘em.
“Uh. Hood?” Roy says tentatively, climbing to his feet and edging just a little in front of Tim. The sight of his best friend feeling like he has to protect his brother from him only makes Jason more irate. “Maybe you wanna…put the bag down?”
“I don’t want to put the bag down! I want Tim to stop poisoning himself with toxic crap!”
“Okay! Okay!” Roy puts his hands up defensively, placatingly. “He’s gonna stop. He’s learned his lesson. He’s never, ever gonna touch another nasty cheese puff in his life, right, Red?” Roy doesn’t move to give Jason a clearer line to Tim, but turns his head enough to raise a pointed eyebrow at the kid, who’s edged closer to Roy’s back.
Tim nods vigorously. “Yup. I promise. No more cheese puffs, or energy drinks, or…uh…ramen, or Oreos, or….anything else that didn’t come out of the ground. Okay?”
“Overdoing it,” Roy mutters.
“I mean,” Tim babbles quickly, and Jason can see the pull at the front of Roy’s shirt that means Tim’s clutching on to a fistful of it at his back. “Nothing that doesn’t have recognizable ingredients of unadulterated, single-origin foods. And I’ll learn to cook.”
The bag of cheese puffs is crumpled to a tiny ball in Jason’s clenched fist. The faint strain in the muscles of his arm, along with the minute relaxation of Tim swearing to eat like a real human, is just enough to bring him a little clarity.
“I’m in pit rage,” he breathes.
“Oh yeah,” Roy agrees sympathetically. “Big time, buddy. Eyes like Harry Potter and veins popping out all over your forehead. You gonna try and shank one of us if I get the kid outta here?”
Tim, predictably, pipes up. “I don’t want to-“
“Tim, you’re leaving,” Jason orders. He feels the buzz under his skin, now, the sick roiling in his veins, the heavy feeling in his head that isn’t quite a fog or a headache but sure as hell won’t go away with a couple of Tylenol. “Holy shit. I can’t believe I got triggered into a pit rage by some goddamn junk food.”
“I’m sorry,” Tim says miserably. Roy still has the kid mostly hidden behind his broad back as he shuffles slowly in reverse towards the apartment door, but the archer looks calmer now that he knows the situation- they’ve been here before, the two of them and Kori. They know the drill. There's a routine.
But Jason’s reacted worse to Tim than just about anybody else in past pit rages, and even though he’s not feeling the slightest inclination to hurt his brother now- even though he knows that Tim is his brother now- they’re not taking any chances with Ra’s’ crazy juice.
“Roy.” Jason squeezes his eyes shut and breathes his parasympathetic activation patterns, easing his blood pressure down. Tim needs reassurance, but he’s afraid the right words won’t come out just now, and Tim deserves better than that.
“Not your fault, baby Red,” Roy says quickly, and Jason has enough wherewithal to thank every small god that Roy’s put aside his childish pettiness to be as soothing as he would be to his own daughter. “Hood just really hates processed food, I guess. That’s his own earth-mama freakishness, nothing to do with you. And I guess he feels like you kinda self-harm by eating it, which is a valid world-view, but it’s also not his right to tell you what you can and can’t eat, with me? So he can hate your cheese puffs all he wants, and you can give him orange smokin’ tires and make his exhaust smell like cheese to make up for this tomorrow.”
Oh, crap. Why did he ever let these two spend time together? This is not what he needs right now. An oily hissing slinks through Jason’s brain, showing him visions of Roy tugging Tim away, Roy leading Tim into his lab, Roy handing Tim a detonator-
Tim, god help them all, sounds considering. “Can I?”
“Sure," Roy says easily. "Don’t even have to buy ‘em. I got a formula, works way better than those Japanese drifter tires.” Jason presses his hands to his face, trying to will down the flush burning up his throat, but it’s no good. He can feel his heart rate rising. “And you know how to add scents to fuel, right?”
“No?”
“Oh, man. Padawan, I take you on as your master-“
Jason snaps. “ROY!”
“Shit. Tim, run!”