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The fog that covers New York City on the morning of August 16, 2011 is exactly what Jason Todd wants to wake up to. He can appreciate other weather, of course. The beauty of a clear sky or a watercolor sunset are not lost on him. But he’s got Gotham in his bones, and nothing feels quite like home so much as a moody grey overcast sky. The light filtering across their studio apartment from the french balcony doors is cool and dim. It makes it feel earlier than it actually is, which prompts Jason to linger under warm covers for a few minutes longer than he usually allows himself.
The sleepy, soft, lingering kiss he gets from Roy is a pretty good incentive too.
“Happy birthday, Jaybird.” The redhead whispers, pulling back. “Stay put.” He slips out of their bed and into the kitchen. The scent of coffee soon fills the room.
Jason smiles sleepily, burrowing back into their blankets. It's gonna be a good day.
__________
Roy walks him to work. They hold hands. Jason keeps his face straight (ha) and pretends like there isn’t a part of his brain that's mentally jumping up and down and cheering that Roy Harper is holding his hand and he gets to keep him forever. They say goodbye in Federal Plaza. Jason has to school away the ghost of his smile in the crowded morning elevator.
__________
“You’re cheerful.” Peter remarks, passing his desk. “What did you do?”
“Really, Peter?” Jason slumps back in an excellent impression of a Victorian woman experiencing a bout of dramatic fainting. “After all we’ve been through?”
“You’re so full of it.” Diana snickers.
“Yup.” Jason pops the P, sitting back up. “Full of productivity.”
Jones raises an eyebrow. “Full of productivity? Where’d you pull that one from?”
“My quick wit, of course.”
“Isn’t that a Shakespearian euphemism?” Peter asks.
“I wasn’t going there,” Jason protests. “You’re the one that went there.”
“Well, we’re all going to the conference room now.” Peter herds them up the stairs. “We can figure out what Neal’s up to after the briefing.”
“Seriously, big day planned or what?” Jones nudges him as they sit and the other White Collar agents get settled. Jason can see the exact moment Diana realizes the significance of the day, as her expression goes from light teasing to a cat that’s found a dirty cereal bowl on the counter with milk still in the bottom.
“Oh it’s definitely a big day for Neal—” she starts. Jason kicks her under the table.
_________
“So what’s special about the car?” Jone’s cuts into Peter’s case overview. An expensive car driven off an auction lot, but not by the couple who had bought it.
“Did they want to steal that car in particular, or did they just want to steal an expensive car?” Jason wonders.
“There’s nothing particularly notable that I see, to be honest. 1984 Lincoln Town Car, no particular modifications…I’ll request a full vehicle history from the auction house, but I think we should ask the previous owner some questions about the car’s history. How hard would that thing be to hotwire?”
“Not hard. It’s a car from the 80’s.” Jason answers immediately.
“It’s not even that old of a car,” Jones remarks. “And it’s not like it's a rare model. It’s not even 30 years old.”
“Can you believe 1984 was 27 years ago, though? It’s been nearly three decades.” Diana adds lightly. She glances at him.
Jason nearly scowls.
“What a year that was,” Peter reminisces. “First woman in space, Reagan re-elected, and the longest game ever played in major league baseball.”
“Wasn’t there an Olympics?” Jones adds.
“Yeah,” Jason twirls his pen. “Mary Lou Retton won in gymnastics. I remember watching it on tv.”
“That was the last year we had winter and summer in the same year, I think.” Peter muses. “After that they switched winter to be the second year in between summer games.”
“Born in the USA, Ghostbusters, Karate Kid—what a year.” Jones says.
“Don’t forget Purple Rain,” Diana adds.
“You’re so full of it.” She whispers to him later. “You weren’t even born yet for the Summer Olympics.”
Jason skillfully ignores her.
_________
“When did you collect so many ties? There’s gotta be like, twenty-seven of them!”
“With this weather it looks more like March than the sixteenth of August.”
“Hey, wasn’t Satchmo born in the summer? When’s his birthday?”
“We’ve probably got about twenty-seven years worth of mugs built up in the break room.”
Diana is having her fun, but if she thinks she’s going to get Jason to crack, oh, she’s got another thing coming. Jason’s got multiple siblings. Diana’s an only child. She doesn’t stand a chance.
“I’ve really been trying to prioritize sleep lately, I swear it’s making me feel ten years younger.”
He’s gotta hand it to her, though. She’s honestly getting pretty creative.
_________
“Got lunch plans yet?” Diana asks, stopping by his desk in the early afternoon.
“No, why?” Jason pauses his writing.
“Come on, I know a good place.” She offers. It’s not far. The overcast sky has brought with it a cold front that provides blessed relief from the typical heat of New York City in August. The meals are even approaching a reasonable price, which is a rare find in this part of the city, especially for an Italian place.
“It’s my treat,” Diana offers when they’ve finished. “Given the day and all.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he replies. “Today’s date is entirely insignificant.”
“Oh,” she smirks, “well in that case…” Jason reaches for the cheque.
“Ha!” His lunch companion crows triumphantly and snatches it back out of his hand. “Good try. But I already paid when I went to the ladies’. Come on, we’ve got to head back to the office.”
She keeps her smug airs the rest of the day.
__________
“I’ve always found it ironic how even with everything Orson Wells wrote, nothing could predict what actually happened in 1984.”
“1984 was written by George Orwell, not Orson Wells.”
__________
“Hey,” she catches his arm as he heads out for the evening, and wishes him a quiet “happy birthday.”
He smiles. “Thanks, Di.”
__________
Roy is waiting in the plaza outside when Jason steps out into the evening air.
“Hey,”
“Hey,”
Two blocks away from Federal Plaza, Roy takes his hand. They wander towards home until the archer takes them on an unexpected turn.
“Where are we going?”
“Oh, you know. Somewhere.”
“What are you up to?”
“I’ve never been up to a single thing in my life.” Roy denies, and refuses to answer any other questions until they slow their pace in front of a small book shop. “Happy birthday,” Roy wishes him, and holds open the door.
“I’ve been meaning to stop in here for the last two years,” Jason tells him over an hour later. Roy’s been following him around and through the shelves of the Drama Bookshop. “I just never made it. You know they created In The Heights in this place's basement?”
“It’s a good thing you never made it in here before,” Roy teases, “you never would have left.” He dodges the hand Jason swats at him. They finally exit with Jason’s prizes after another forty-eight minutes.
The stairs up to their studio at June’s creak as always. It’s a familiar sound. Somehow in the time that it takes Jason to remove his suit jacket, Roy already has a hot baking dish on the table.
Jason frowns. “How did you do that?”
“Oven timer.”
“You can’t use the oven timer!” He protests as Roy serves shepherd’s pie onto plates he must’ve set before meeting Jason at work. “You’ll burn June’s house down!”
“The oven timer is fine! I fixed it, it works, nobody’s house is burning down. Sit down, would you?”
Jason sits. He takes one bite and—
“Alfred made this.”
“You really can tell, huh?” Roy laughs. “Yeah, he sent it up when I asked what we should have for your birthday.”
Jason swallows around the lump that’s appeared in his throat. “Yeah?”
“The whole family was gonna try and come up, but then things happened in Gotham—”
“—What happened in Gotham?” Jason cuts him off.
“It’s handled. Don’t worry about it. Just Gotham being Gotham, somebody tried to hold a factory floor hostage but the workers ended up—anyways, the others meant to come but they couldn’t make it. We were thinking maybe there’ll be time on the weekend for a proper party. That sound alright?”
August sixteen often passes without much fanfare, for Jason. He’ll wish himself a happy birthday and maybe treat himself to something special and various people will send well wishes. Before he ended up with Lian, his cover was so much tighter. Too many visits would have been suspicious. His birthday isn’t that important.
But today—today Roy made him coffee in bed, and met him after work and took him to a bookshop he’s been wanting to visit for years and set the table before he left so it would be ready when they got home. Alfred made him something comforting, something Jason loves, rather than something fancy.
Diana remembered a date that she heard once, randomly, in a dark hospital room when both of them were far from being in their best states, and took him out for lunch.
He hasn’t felt this thought of since before he went to New York. He doesn’t even need a party. This is the first time anyone has done anything for his birthday in two years.
“Yeah,” he smiles, and takes another bite of shepherd's pie. It's been a good day. “Yeah, that sounds alright.”
Twenty-six kind of sucked, to be honest. Twenty-seven is already promising to be so much better.