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There is an ache. Beneath his skin, in the tender parts where sinew ties bone to muscle. There is an ache, in the backs of his thighs, in the inside of his knees, across his shoulders, and persistently echoing in his knuckles. There is an ache, ever present, that the Pit left in him.
He’s not entirely sure if it will ever leave, if he’ll ever truly be free of the constant pain and bone deep weariness. He feels it, in the way his ribs constrict when he laughs, in the tightness of his palm curled around a gun, the distant throb of his skull fit snugly within his helmet. It hides in his hamstrings, his triceps. It hides behind his teeth, in the way he grinds his jaw when he sleeps. He feels it through his stretches, the flexes of muscle across a body he is slowly growing accustomed to, slowly becoming familiar. Muscle and scar tissue and still healing wounds bound tight against a man straining for relief.
Some days the ache is soft, like a whisper of a thought in the back of his mind. It’s hardly there, nothing to pay attention to. On others it tears like a fire under his skin, and he feels like he’s coming apart from the inside out. As if he could heal it, as if he could tear this ever present feeling from his worn out being.
But Jason suits up anyway, swings a leg over his bike and heads out onto the inky black streets of Gotham, still searching for another fight.
Their bodies press in the darkest time before night becomes morning. Tim’s breath ghosts over Jason’s collarbone, wraps itself around his neck and feels like a chokehold. The feel of skin on skin is almost too much in the spaces between where their suits scrape against each other. He almost feels like drowning, gasping for air against Tim’s soft lips and wiry frame.
Jason’s fingers scrabble for purchase in his thick gloves, wrapping Tim’s cape around his fist in a tight hold, the feel of Tim’s fingers under the latches of his bulletproof chest piece pushing to the front of his thoughts.
There’s a desperate quality about the way they touch, the way they fight and bleed. A deliberate thought to the way they dance on Gotham’s streets, the way they circle each other, their feints and lunges, their parries and defenses. Tim’s fingers catch on a latch, working cleverly to bypass the security, and Jason steps back. Tim’s eyes are wide and blue and guileless, and Jason wipes his spit from his mouth with the back of his hand before reaching for his helmet and taking off at a dead sprint.
He always remembers to wrap his hands before he heads out for a night on patrol. He wraps between his fingers deliberately, across his knuckles, around the delicate bones of his wrists. Over scarred and smoothed skin, lines bright white as they criss cross and swirl.
Jason always remembers a knife in his left boot and a gun on his right thigh. An extra magazine pressed against his left hip. A mangled batarang hidden against his left thigh. Another gun pressed in the space beside his ribcage, bracketing his breaths in and out. A grappler strapped to his right side after one too many comments from Tim about watching him fall dramatically off roofs, custom and red enough to match his helmet (Christmas had been a dramatic affair).
His boots are worn and comfortable after years of wear. His jacket has so many pockets sewn into the lining that Jason swears sometimes he loses things inside it. He presses the helmet down against his scalp, feels the press of sweat slick hair against his forehead, watches as the lights flicker across his vision as the screen boots to life. The gloves are next– soft and heavy leather, delicate enough to feel the latch of his safety but thick enough that he can never quite feel the flush that crests across the bridge of Tim’s nose when he catches him in the space between when patrol becomes morning and bruises his lips with the helmet off. His helmet, red and molded perfectly to the shape of his skull, always waits until the moment he’s ready to go out into the world. Until he’s ready to be Red Hood again, and tuck Jason away until morning.
He and Bruce don’t talk. Jason can’t remember the last time he heard the perfectly cultured voice of Bruce Wanye, and not the harsh growl of Batman across from him. He doesn’t remember the way Bruce’s eyes looked first thing in the morning, crinkled over the inhale of a cup of coffee, without the shadow of the cowl looming over them. Doesn’t recall the feel of Bruce’s arms wrapping around him in a hug, or the careful way Bruce’s hands would tuck him in when he fell asleep staying up late to watch cartoons in the sitting room.
He doesn’t remember being so small that Bruce would carry him in his arms up to the bedroom that always felt too cavernous, too luxurious, and press his small frame against the sheets, tucking the sheets just so under the shallow dip of his chin. He doesn’t remember the magic Robin brought him, the feeling of invincibility swinging from rooftop to rooftop, head out the window and smile brilliant as they whipped through Gotham in the batmobile.
Too much time has been lost between then and now, and the Pit took too much. No one ever talks about the price of immortality, but Jason thinks it may be this: the moments too precious to bear, stripped from his skull, for a chance of everlasting life.
Dick finds him one night, helmet off and feet dangling above a neon sign advertising a local camera shop (Jason makes a note to bring Tim by in the daylight hours). They don’t spar, Jason’s too worn out for that, but they talk. Dick weaves stories of the mansion life-- though he doesn’t live there anymore himself. Talks about Babs and Roy and Kori, chides Jason for leaving hickies so obvious and pronounced on Tim’s neck every time Tim tells him he’s going home for a visit.
Jason tells him about his time in Russia, the way Talia looks when she’s particularly annoyed with him, and the sting of the Pit that still rings in his knees on bad nights. They talk until Jason’s hoarse, voice unused to being loud for so long, forming its way through sentences and paragraphs. They talk until Gotham is lit a brilliant dawn-orange, dripping golden sundrops across rooftops and the time for masks and costumes is shuffled away until night settles in again.
When they stand, Dick hugs Jason so hard, it pushes the breath from his lungs and presses the chest plate uncomfortably against the skin of his abdomen. Dick leaves him with a pat on the back and Jason’s throat feels painfully tight.
Tim surprises him in the library on a sunny afternoon where Jason is determined to hide between the stacks no matter how much Babs threatens him.
“Are you hiding?” He asks from the next stack over, through a gap in the books. His voice is definitely amused, even though Jason can’t see the look on his face to confirm it.
“Maybe,” Jason responds, ducking around the corner to meet Tim face to face.
Tim smiles up at him, hair falling out of his face as he tips his head back for a kiss. “Come outside, it’s beautiful out today.”
Jason grimances thinking of all the books left to shelve on his cart, and Tim reads his mind, looking over his shoulder to the massive pile left. “I’ll even help you put your precious books away so we can play hooky responsibly.”
Jason bites back a smile. “Doesn’t someone at Wayne Tech need you for something right now?” he grouses.
“Nope,” Tim says, popping the ‘p’. “I’m free as a bird for the rest of the afternoon.”
Jason rolls his eyes at the almost pun, and begins putting books away in the gap where Tim’s face had been.
“I’ll take that as a ‘Whatever, Replacement, just put away the books already.’” Tim responds before reaching for the next book on the pile.
Jason wonders if he’s irreparably damaged from the Pit, from the explosion. Wonders if he’ll ever process things like a normal adult, sleep through the night without a nightmare waking him up in a cold sweat. Hopes for a moment of silence from the cacophony of his mind, the constant negative self talk that he berates himself with in the times when Tim isn’t around to talk over him.
He thinks he’s getting better, thinks the ache bothers him less, the voices less loud. He tries meditating in the quiet moments, clearing his thoughts and silencing the steam of inadequacies. He tries being less edges and more smooth curves. Tries arguing less and listening more. He reads, like he always does, reads and reads and fills up his apartment with so many books Tim is constantly tripping over them. Tries to do better, be better. Tries to be less angry.
He tries.
There’s moments where Jason really feels like he’s flying again, really soaring across Gotham’s rooftops. When he plays tag with Stephanie on slow nights, or chases Cass around just to irritate her. The rush he feels as he swings from perch to perch, and the drop in his stomach when he shoots the grappler mid-air and prays for a moment that it will catch. The crunch of gravel under his boots as he races from edge to edge and then flings himself off with wild abandon-- the type of thing that would get so perfectly under Tim’s skin, his absolute lack of regard for living.
Nothing feels quite as good as flying, and Jason thought he had lost that. What a beautiful thing to be proven wrong. What a delight to be able to soar again.
He doesn’t think the feeling will ever grow old-- why else would Bruce still do it?
“I don’t like this.” Jason’s blindfolded, sitting comfortably in the passenger seat of Tim’s car, cruising toward some unknown destination.
“You don’t have to like it, you just have to not fight me on it,” Tim responds, amusement clear in his voice.
Jason sighs heavily but sinks back into the plush seat.
Tim had shown up at his apartment, tackled him with the barest hint of warning, blindfolded him, and led him out to the car in a flurry of movement. Jason knows he’s been getting better because his first instinct wasn’t to choke Tim, or lash out with his right hook-- he simply let it happen, let Tim feel like he had won a fight of theirs for once (though he only loses because Jason fights dirty). He knows he’s getting better because the thought of being blindfolded and led to some unknown destination merely makes him mildly uncomfortable, rather than sending him into a full on panic attack and rage. He knows he’s growing because it’s Tim: he would trust Tim with his life, there wasn’t anything Tim would ever do to hurt him.
But damn if he didn’t want to know where they were going.
“You aren’t even going to give me a hint, Replacement?” Jason asks, turning his face towards where he assumes Tim’s body is seated; the blindfold too thick to let any light through.
Tim doesn’t quite giggle but it’s a near thing. “Nope, you’ll find out when we get there.”
Jason huffs and starts thinking of possibilities. Definitely something to do with Dick, otherwise Tim would have just asked-- maybe even Damian, though Jason can’t recall the last time he had seen the kid out of costume.
“Am I going to see Dickie there?” Jason tips his head back, trying to push the knot of the blindfold far enough up so that he can see underneath it.
“Stop that!” Tim smacks him gently on the arm as an admonishment. “You’ll see when we get there! We’re not so far anyway, just trust me.”
Jason rolls his eyes-- though Tim can’t see, he probably expected it-- and goes still in the seat.
When the car pulls up across a gravel driveway, Jason’s curiosity piques and he can’t help but reach for the blindfold.
“Ugh, you’re so impatient. Fine, take it off.” Tim responds, turning off the car and undoing his seatbelt.
Jason pushes off the blindfold to a spectacular view of the Manor entombed in ivy, fluttering in the soft August breeze.
His mouth goes dry.
Tim gets out of the car and walks towards the passenger door, opening it and holding his hand out for Jason to take. “C’mon Jase, it’s a surprise. You don’t want to be late.” Tim says softly.
Jason takes his hand mutely and lets Tim lead him around the side of the mansion to the gardens in the back. When they reach the gardens, Jason sees everything has been decorated for a party-- white wicker lawn chairs, folding tables topped with food and a cake, glasses of champagne and pitchers of water sprinkled throughout.
Jason takes a step back right into Tim’s waiting palm. Tim’s arm encircles his waist, and Jason can see the family start to filter in from the house, loudly chattering into the backyard.
Steph and Cass are holding bags of chips and talking about something between themselves. Dick is trying to swing Damian by the arms, but Damian has gotten too tall at this point to swing anymore, so he gives up and hauls the younger boy over his shoulder. Duke is laughing loudly at the outrage on Damian’s face as Dick hauls him fireman style out to where the party is set up. Alfred is dressed down in a sweater and khakis and trails after the group of them, a small smile on his face.
Jason takes the scene in with a lump in his throat that he can’t seem to swallow around.
“Happy Birthday Jase,” Tim says, just loud enough for Jason to hear. “We wanted to make it special.”
Jason doesn’t cry anymore, doesn’t remember the last time his first reaction was his eyes stinging and the slip of salt down his face. He squeezes his eyes shut anyway, another sensation lost to the Pit, and tries to press down the slight feeling of disappointment that still emanates from his stomach.
“Jason?” Bruce’s voice still rings clear as a bell over the slight din, even after all the years apart.
Jason opens his eyes.
“Happy birthday, son. Won’t you come join us?” Bruce asks, standing closer to Jason than he has in years.
Jason stares for a minute. Stares and thinks that maybe, despite everything the Pit took from him, there are some things that he can take back. Some things he can have again. Some things that were worth the fight to get them back.
Jason nods mutely, and Bruce reaches for him.