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Jason throws his sparse belongings onto the chair, slumping down on the hardwood floor wearily. The abandoned little warehouse he’d found about a year ago and used a few days every month was now filled with little odds and ends and the bare essentials he required. He hadn’t found enough money to buy bedding, resigning himself to few nights huddled on the floor with newspapers once again. His torn and ratty jeans and sweatshirt had been picked up from some thrift shop with the change he’d scrounged up from the gutters.
However, the warehouse had enough odds and ends and discarded knickknacks that Jason is confident enough to probably put something together temporarily. He sighs, scrubbing a hand across his face when he hears a shift and a creak. Stiffening, Jason allows a hand to slowly fall to the butt of his gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. A souvenir from a thug who’d picked the wrong guy to hassle. He hears a second creak, a muffled curse, and the sound of metal upon metal.
Curiously enough, Jason traces the sounds to the far dark corner of the warehouse. Jason soundlessly gets to his feet, making his way to the dusty corner. A sudden spark erupts in the semidarkness. Jason freezes. A soft yelp breaks the silence.
“…Is someone there?” he calls tentatively into the dark, hand falling away from his weapon. There’s a sudden sharp clang. Jason makes out the abruptly terrific flurry of movement in the corner; he’s startled someone. Another spark, another cry, and then lights flicker on in the building.
You have got to be kidding me. Jason crosses the room easily, opening the circuit box tucked away behind a shelf. His eyes widens as a tiny sharp gust of wind bats his nose.
A diminutive fae that Jason could probably easily cup in his hands freezes in terror at the sight of Jason. The fairy has a healthy shock of hair with colors to match his red-orange monarch wings that flap frantically. His wings are tangled in the wires and circuitry, and Jason’s appearance only serves to encourage him to thrash harder.
“Hey! Stop that!” snaps Jason, immediately regretting it. The fae flinches back in fear, and Jason realizes too late his voice sounds like thunder to the fae in such close quarters like this. Another spark, and Jason cringes as it singes the tips of the fae’s wings.
“Wait, stop moving, let me get you out – ow!” Jason retracts his fingers. “Bloody hell, you bit me! Sonuvabitch!” he says incredulously.
“Don’t touch me, human!” shouts the panicked fae, further ensnaring himself in the wires.
“I only want to help you,” says Jason, lowering his voice and holding his palm out placatingly. “You’re hurt, and you’re going to hurt yourself more thrashing like that. Your wings are damaged. Please.”
The fae glares at him suspiciously, slowly halting his movements. “Why should I trust you?”
“I could just leave you there to untangle yourself,” replies Jason pointedly, crossing his arms. “Or I can untangle you and then get a look at those wings.”
The fae glances about the warehouse for potential escape exits, but finds none. His face scrunches up in surrender. “No funny business, human,” he growls. “Or I’ll bite you again.”
“Yeah, yeah,” grumbles Jason. Moving slowly, so that the fae could see what he was doing, he gently reaches out. Jason carefully detangles the wires and avoids touching the damaged wings. “Seriously, what are you even doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Found this place a couple nights ago; it’s mine,” mutters the fae petulantly as he ducked his head for Jason to lift a wire above it.
“Uh huh. I use this a few days every month.” Jason rolls his eyes. “You’re a tinker fairy, aren’t you?” His eyes take in the smear of grease on one of the fae’s cheeks and the dirty fingers helping him unknot another wire.
Roy glares at him cagily. “For a human you don’t seem surprised fae exist,” he hedges. “You somebody I should know or be worried about?”
“This is Gotham,” Jason glibly responds, avoiding the question. “I’ve seen weirder things than mini humans. By the way, I’m Jason. What about you?”
“Roy Harper, fae prince of Starling Kingdom.” Roy scrubs at the grease smear, only succeeding in making it worse.
“Not something you should be telling a human you just met,” notes Jason, raising an eyebrow as he finishes freeing Roy. He hides his surprise at Roy’s introduction. “But if you’re from Starling, why’re you here?”
“None of your business,” mutters Roy sourly, looking away. Jason shrugs but doesn’t push it. He has his own secrets to keep.
“Fair enough.” Roy’s wings spread before Jason can stop him, attempting an escape. His wings flutter rapidly, but falter under his weight and Jason catches him in his cupped palms.
“I said I’m not going to hurt you,” repeats Jason, walking over to the table in the center of the warehouse and setting the fae down on its surface. “You’re free to go as you please, but with your wings in that condition I doubt you’ll be flying anywhere for the time being.” Jason looks for where he stashed the first aid kit the last time he was here, digging it out from the bottom shelf. Walking back, he notes Roy’s sulky expression and the way he curls up in himself, chin tucked over the curve of his knees.
“Don’t need help from a human,” Roy pouts.
Jason is tempted to just toss the first aid kit to Roy, but then Roy’s wings flutter, catching the light with its browned singed tips, and Jason can’t bring himself to do it.
“You’re a fae,” he snorts. “Take better care of your wings so that no one else has to. Doesn’t bad shit happen when you don’t?” He ignores Roy’s protests, searching for injuries and grabbing a water bottle and a cloth.
“Yeah, yeah.” Roy waves an indifferent hand. “Whatever. I’ve heard it all.” Jason shakes his head in annoyance.
“I don’t have running water here, so I’m going to pour some water over your wings from the bottle. Don’t they burn or hurt?”
“Not really. Not at the tips, at any rate. Feeling there’s been gone for awhile now.” Roy shrugs nonchalantly. He tosses his shirt on the table, stepping onto the small dish Jason managed to procure a few seconds ago.
“That attitude of yours is going to land yourself in shit one day,” drawls Jason, pouring water in as constant a trickle as he could manage. Roy shivers at the feeling of the water trickling down, wings fluttering and spraying droplets every which way. He scoops some water in his tiny palms to get at the grease stain, and Jason points out a smudge crossing the bridge of his nose. When Jason finishes, Roy steps out of the dish, shivering a bit in the cold air of the warehouse. He towels off with the cloth Jason offers him, putting his shirt back on when he finishes. Jason gingerly helps him with the wing slits despite Roy’s protests.
“Hey, thanks for doing this, man,” Roy offers hesitantly. “And I’m sorry for biting you earlier.”
“It’s fine. I startled you.” Roy cracks a small grin and properly looks at Jason for the first time.
“You’re not so scary after all, are you?” Roy manages to flutter up to Jason’s shoulder, perching there cheerfully. He feels Jason grunt under his feet as he nestles into the soft fabric of the sweatshirt.
“I’m a veritable saint; I’ve no clue what you’re talking about.” retorts Jason. He glanced down sideways to look at Roy properly. “And when did you get so chummy, o noble prince?”
“Since I smelled food in your pocket.” Roy grins sheepishly up at Jason, who only shakes his head exasperatedly.
“It’s cold by now.” Jason takes out a hamburger still wrapped in its packaging. Roy stares at it eagerly.
“Never had one of these before,” he admits, surveying the food that’s at least two times bigger than him and salivating. Jason gives him a small grin.
“It’s a pity your first time eating one is rock cold then.” They don’t really have utensils, so Jason plucks small pieces of bread and lettuce and tomatoes and cheese-and-barbecue sauce-coated-meat to hand to Roy. They finish the meal together in companionable silence and chewing. When they’re done Roy points down to Jason’s waist.
“What’s that thing down there I saw when you turned around?” he asks.
Jason’s confused for a second. “Oh. It’s a gun. A weapon.” He takes it out to show Roy. Roy runs a small hand over the glossy shine appreciatively.
“How does it work?”
“Basically, you’d pull the trigger like this and then a bullet will come out of the chamber at a speed fast enough to embed itself in someone.” He distantly wonders if it’s a bad thing to tell a tinker fae how to use a gun, but he’s already flung caution to the wind and there’s no going back.
“Can you show me?” Jason shakes his head. “Nuh uh. It makes a really loud bang when it goes off and I don’t want to attract any attention or put holes somewhere. But I can disassemble it for you; show you all the bits.” Of course, the tinker fairy’s eyes light up, and Jason spends a solid two hours showing Roy all the different parts and Roy playing with the bullets.
Jason has a bottle of apple cider, and he hunts around and manages to procure a thimble from somewhere in the warehouse. Jason chugs from the bottle, and Roy drinks it down like shots. They swap little bits of stories; they omit bits that are too personal and hit too close to home, but little yarns and soundbites of their lives that make the other laugh and grin and take a swill of cider.
By the time they finish, Roy yawns and stretches, wings fluttering sleepily when he sets the thimble aside.
“Hey, if it’s okay with you, do you mind if I stay the night?” he asks, gazing up at Jason.
Jason chews his lip. Normally, he’d be cool with it, but… “Sure, but if you can move your wings, I’ll need you out before dawn,” he offers. Roy smiles at that.
“Sure thing. I just need a warm place to crash. Faerie wings aren’t that fragile. I’ll be good to go in a few hours.” Jason settles into a little nook of the warehouse, back resting against the corner as he gets himself comfortable. Roy raises a skeptical eyebrow at the sight.
“Humans are so weird.” He nimbly hops into the crook of Jason’s sweatshirt, snuggling into the folds and arranging himself so that he’s resting on Jason’s chest and can feel the thrum of his heartbeat.
“Human hearts are seriously damn loud. Jesus.”
“Oh my god, Harper.” Jason rolls his eyes again. “Sleep on my shoulder then or in my hood.”
“Your shoulder’s too bony, and if I sleep in your hood you might forget I’m there.”
“Not likely. Good night, Harper.”
“Night Jason.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Harper is rudely awoken by his makeshift bed being pulled out from under him. He jolts awake, letting out a surprised yelp as he suddenly lands on the floor still cushioned by Jason’s sweatshirt. Bewildered, it takes him a second to register his surroundings and that Jason’s gone. Weak light filters in through a crack in the wall and Roy realizes it’s past dawn.
“Jason?” he calls out, more than a little bemused and terrified for his friend. Humans didn’t just disappear and leave their clothes and friends behind, did they? Roy stumbles out of the sweatshirt’s collar, until he can make out movement behind him. He turns around, staring at something his size thrashing around frantically, swallowed beneath the sweatshirt’s folds.
“Don’t worry! I’m fine!” That’s definitely Jason’s voice coming from the thing tenting the pooled up sweatshirt. “Just go!”
“Jason, what the hell happened to you –“ Some small memory resurfaces of his father figure telling him of cursed fae, those who were shunned and fled to the human world during nights when the moon was full. Could Jason be one? Was this why? The warehouse was scantily stocked with nothing of Jason’s personal belongings, and Jason had said he only used it a few days a month.
“Just go, idiot!” Jason’s voice is desperately pleading. Roy hesitates, but he remembers Jason’s deft fingers helping him when he’d been panicked, and that’s all he needs to wriggle under the cloth to help Jason.
He lifts up the fabric almost like a makeshift tent to tunnel beneath, raising it as high as he can so that he can properly see Jason now that his eyes have readjusted to the darkness.
His breath is ripped away from his chest in that single moment when he catches sight of Jason. There’s a single jagged, raised-ridged scar running down the right side of his back vertically, an unspoken story that speaks of a thousand different hurts. A story unlike the ones Jason had told him just hours ago over cider and companionship.
It’s not what hurts the most to Roy, whose heart is a few times too big and feels too much for his faerie size. The cruelest wound is the tattered, shredded, lone wing flapping uncontrollably on Jason’s left, spiky serrated lettering written in knife slashes to deal pain and humiliation, carved in ways that can never heal.
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
Unspeakable rage bubbles up in Roy’s chest, emotions that he can’t even begin to describe, to put word to. He knows who Jason is now. The son of Gotham’s Bat-King, the one slain by the Mad King Joker in retaliation – no, for jest. Robin’s wings then had been powerful and strong, wings of bright red and green and gold, wings great enough generate gusts with enough force to push fae back.
Jason panics further when he feels the distribution of the sweatshirt’s weight shift and he whirls around and scrambles backwards, trying to hide the substance of his shame, his hurt, his anger, and everything he is.
“You didn’t – you saw – oh god, you saw, didn’t you?” he gets out, breath shaky and petrified. His secret is just as bared as all of him for Roy to see, to judge.
Roy doesn’t think, just acts. He scrambles the rest of the way, ignoring how his wings catch under the sweatshirt. He crawls over to Jason who is backpedaling away like a crab until Roy launches forward and wraps his arms around him and squeezes.
“Jason, shh, it’s okay,” Roy pleads, clinging onto him for dear life. If he had known Jason for more than a few hours, he might have given him a quick peck on the forehead, offered more than mere words of comfort.
“It’s not,” cries Jason, a strangled noise dying in his throat. “It never will be.”
“It will be,” commands Roy sternly, brooking no words of protest. He vows this to himself. “Jason, look at me.” Jason gradually stills his moments, loath to meet Roy’s eyes. His wing flutters tensely.
“There, that isn’t so bad, is it?” asks Roy, offering a trademark lopsided smile. Jason scowls a bit, eyes flicking away, but Roy makes a sound of annoyance to direct Jason’s gaze back to him.
“It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” says Roy simply, drawing Jason's body closer to his, a gentle hand running along the dip of his spine comfortingly. Roy doesn’t really know the full story behind Gotham’s fae, but he’s heard enough tales to be able to piece together what he thinks is the truth. He simply holds Jason in his arms, allowing Jason to hide his face in the crook of his shoulder. In the confines of Jason’s sweatshirt tenting around their crouched figures, Roy holds Gotham’s fallen son, the dawn’s light unavoidable and inevitable.