Work Text:
In the grand scheme of things, Oz lying about his birthday was unimportant. He no longer remembered why he had to lie about it—and certainly everyone remembered him as having been born thirteen years prior and not eleven and a half, and he was very close to forgetting this fact too—but he knew he had to, and it was important that he kept doing it, even though sometimes it was inconvenient, like when people told him to “act his age” and that age was a year and a half younger than everyone thought he was. Oz did not like being thought of as immature. It had not yet occurred to him that passing for a good year and a half older than he really was made him quite mature; currently, the only thing running through his head was how fast he’d have to go to outrun poor Raven, whose hat he and Alice had just stolen, and how annoying it was that he would be told to act his age again when that wasn’t his age, and so this was (probably) an entirely fine and normal thing to do.
The hat was one of the few possessions Raven had from his original time, and the one he valued most out of all of them. His suit jacket, blouse, and pants he kept in his closet and didn’t mind if you stole for dress-up, and his wallet had been confiscated by Break within six hours of his landing in their time, a solid month ago now, but the hat he treasured and wore everywhere except when he knew he was picking a fight.
So Oz and Alice had stolen it. This wasn’t as bad or impulsive of an idea as it sounded: it was actually really well-thought out, with a good logical base. A couple weeks ago, Raven had saved Oz’s life, and then flipped his absolute shit, and then comforted Oz even though it really hadn’t been Oz’s place to cry over any of it, since he’d meant to die since before even becoming a superhero, and ever since that day things had shifted. Oz snuck out to Raven’s apartment, for one, and Alice stayed with him more often than not, for two, and Raven seemed to accept and care about them, for three. This should not have been possible. Even Uncle Oscar only cared about Oz because he was lying about everything (even though, as time slipped past, Oz forgot more and more which were the lies and which were the truths), and so Raven was either crazy or he was lying—but Raven couldn’t lie. He was absolutely terrible at it. Oz had only ever met one person worse at lying than Raven, and that was Gil, who only had the one flaw (being bad at lying) and so threw everything he had into being just the worst liar imaginable.
So Raven really did care, and that begged the question of how much, and so Oz was experimenting. He’d found out that Raven cared about Oz more than he cared about clean floors, and bedtimes, and the majority of his apparel; Raven cared about Oz more than he cared about his own health and more than he cared about Alice and more than he cared about the law. All of these were things that Oz was fairly certain Raven cared more about than his hat (though Alice was steadily making her way up there), so now Oz was going to be testing to see if Raven cared more about Oz, or his hat. Aice, who loved tormenting Raven and already fully believed he valued her and Oz higher than anyone or anything else in this time, was just along for the ride.
At the moment, this “ride” was really more a mad dash across the rooftops of the city, Raven hot on their heels. He had been buying food for himself and Alice—Raven had not yet realized that, trapped in the past as he was, he never got hungry, did not need to eat, his body trapped in stasis as it was the moment he’d been thrown backwards—when Oz had swooped down and snatched the hat from his head, and he’d yelled in surprise and immediately hurled himself after Oz, and Alice who had joined him when she’d noticed the theft.
Raven was not very good at traversing the rooftops. That required slightly more command of his powers than he currently had, and so he relied more on physical prowess than his command of flames and the fiery wings that often surrounded him when he thought Oz in mortal peril. This slowed him down when he really needed to get to the rooftops quick—for instance, when little criminals had stolen his precious, precious hat and were currently playing catch with it as he scaled the nearest building furiously.
Oz had been considerate enough to wait until Raven had reached the roof, panting, to hit him with a sunny grin and a, “Catch us if you can!” before grabbing the hat out of the air and tearing across the rooftop, tossing it to Alice whenever Raven got close enough to make a grab for it. Alice was laughing, clearly delighted with this new way to torment their pet grown-up, and Oz, under the guise of keeping an eye on Raven to make sure he didn’t get too close as they ran, watched him carefully for his reaction. How worried was he about his hat? Did it reach the amount of worry he’d exhibited over Oz, in the fights after Oz almost died? Did the trust they shared as superhero partners mean that Raven did not believe that Oz would truly hurt his hat, and so was less worried about it than he would have been if, say, an enemy had stolen it? Should Oz hurt the hat to test that theory?
Hurting the hat sounded really nice, actually. Unlike clean floors, bedtimes, the rest of Raven’s clothing, the law, Raven’s health, and Alice, Oz could feasibly destroy the hat and it could not ever be replaced. If the hat was gone, there would no longer be any question of whether Raven preferred the hat to Oz—he would have to like Oz better. There wouldn’t be any hat from Raven’s past to compete with.
—Compete with. Was Oz competing with the hat for Raven’s affections? Was Oz jealous of a hat ? Sure, Oz was replaceable and the hat wasn’t, but—but really ? A piece of clothing ? That was so stupid of him. Obviously Raven would choose the hat. If he didn’t know that was true, deep down, then he never would have seen the hat as a threat at all.
His steps slowed with the realization just enough for Raven to grab him by the shoulder; Oz tried to throw the hat towards Alice as he yanked away, but he was a little too late, a little too slow, and a second later both he and the hat were pitching off the roof and hurtling down towards the alleyway below.
Alice screamed; Oz was too shocked to make any sort of sound at all, grabbing for the hat before summoning his chains to secure it to the wall close to Raven’s reach. He was going to be little boy jelly soon enough, and he didn’t want Raven to have to bother with cleaning Oz’s gore off of his hat. Maybe Raven would even be glad that the last thing Oz did was save it—
Chains materialized around Oz’s chest and he swung into the side of the building, hard, before he was yanked up and able to scrabble onto the roof where Alice was still screaming, blood coming out of her nose and her ears as she focused on maintaining the chains until Oz was back on the roof and yanking his powers away from her. Alice could use Oz’s power for a short amount of time—they’d discovered this soon after they met, to disastrous results—but it was always terribly taxing on her.
“Sorry, Alice,” Oz said as his friend hurled herself into his arms, still screaming, now into his shoulder. He hugged her tightly—she was shaking, and beginning to cry in between her screams, and Oz’s heart was still beating a mile a minute from when he thought he was going to die and then really lose to Raven’s hat once and for all—well, maybe saving the hat earned him some brownie points with Raven—what if Raven worrying about him last time had been a fluke and he wouldn’t care this time, or what if he was mad at Oz for endangering his precious hat, or—
Oz and Alice were swept, suddenly, into a massive hug, and Oz felt rather than saw Raven press his face into his hair, kiss the top of his head, and say, “Never ever scare me like that ever again.”
“I saved your hat,” Oz said, and then he burst into tears. Raven held him and Alice tighter, and Oz noticed after a few moments that Raven was shaking too, and then that Raven was sobbing as though his heart would break, clutching Oz and Alice as tightly as he could as they all cried.
“Never,” said Raven hoarsely, pulling back after Oz and Alice had mostly calmed down, “ever do something that dangerous again, do you understand? You could have died!”
“Usually running on the roofs is fine,” said Oz.
“Usually you use your own chains to catch you instead of Raven’s stupid hat!” Alice shouted.
“Yeah, well, Raven likes his stupid hat better than he likes stupid me so of course I had to save it!”
“You aren’t stupid and that isn’t true,” said Raven, pulling Oz back into a tight hug. “I love my hat, it’s my favorite possession, but you’re—one of my favorite people, which means I love you more than I love my hat. Okay?”
Oz, shocked, burst right back into tears.
Once everyone had calmed down, of course, they had to get to the hat, which was wrapped up in chains about halfway down one of the buildings. This would have been hard enough under normal circumstances, but Alice was all tired out from using Oz’s powers, and Raven refused point-blank to allow Oz anywhere within five feet of the roof’s edge, so he was straining to reach the hat without falling to his grievous injury (because Raven could not die, stranded as he was in another time) and not letting either Oz or Alice help him at all.
“You’re thirteen, Oz,” said Raven. “And Alice can’t be more than twelve—”
“‘m ten, actually,” Alice yawned. “We just like saying I’m twelve ‘cause it makes more sense.”
Raven swore at the top of his lungs for a solid half of a minute, and then made Oz and Alice swear to never repeat any of that, and actually to forget he’d ever said it, before diving back down after his stupid, beloved hat. Oz and Alice, who were little hellions, immediately started repeating the curse words in order to properly commit them to memory, though under their breath so that Raven couldn't hear.
And of course, as soon as Raven got his hat back on his head, Oz and Alice snuck up behind him and snatched it away, to restart the rooftop game of keep-away and hopefully give it a more fun ending this time.