Chapter Text
He doesn’t knock because he knows he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t use the door because he never has. He slides open the unlocked window because it’s how he always gets in and out. Jason has commented on this before, this casual lack of security, but Kyle laughs it off. Fucking lantern rings.
Kyle is lounging on his couch, watching Jason slowly step down from the window sill like it’s some kind of performance done especially for him. A line of tension instantly forms between them, and they wait for the other to make the first move. Jason closes the window. Kyle stands.
It’s only when Jason starts pulling off his gloves that Kyle closes the gap in three long strides, roughly grabbing at Jason’s jacket to bring him closer. For a few tense seconds, no words, no touches, only breaths, are exchanged. Jason’s eyes dart across every freckle and pore on Kyle’s face. Kyle’s remain intensely fixed on Jason’s mouth.
Jason smirks, millimeters away. He palms Kyle’s erection and squeezes. “Someone’s excited.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Kyle groans into Jason’s hand and doesn’t let another word out of either of their mouths before he’s sucking at Jason’s lip, crowding him back into the window.
It’s just like him to be so insatiable, and Jason jumps at the challenge. Grabbing a fistful of his hair, Jason yanks Kyle’s head away, flipping them around to press Kyle against the window as Jason mouths unkindly at his jaw. Kyle’s hands roam aimlessly across Jason’s chest, his stomach, finding their way beneath his shirt to grope anywhere he can.
Kyle keeps tugging at Jason’s jacket and Jason shoves him away long enough to take it off, immediately at each other again once the pile of leather is on the floor. Kyle tries to reposition them, pushing against Jason’s bracketing shoulders, but Jason slams him against the window, keeping him there as he continues to ravage at Kyle’s fragile neck. He bites warningly when Kyle pushes at him again, hard enough to leave puckering indents of his teeth, but Kyle only shoves back harder, hand snaking down to twist at Jason’s groin.
Jason hisses at the pain, biting down meanly on Kyle’s shoulder, and they stand there at an impasse, their breaths loud and heavy.
“Let go,” Kyle whispers, digging his thumb into the seam of Jason’s pants, “and I’ll let go.”
In response, Jason tongues at the hot spot he’s created, causing Kyle to shiver. Finally, he does let go, releasing his teeth from their hold and sucking mercilessly to create what’s going to be a terrible bruise. Keeping to the terms, Kyle releases his tight grip on Jason’s groin, instead rubbing at it with his palm in a way that he knows will make Jason pliable like putty.
Grabbing Jason’s jaw, Kyle refocuses his efforts back to their mouths, one hand under Jason’s shirt and the other on his cock. Sliding one leg between Jason’s, Kyle slowly backs them away from the window, one step at a time. Jason allows this, mildly biting at Kyle’s tongue as they make their way into the bedroom. He could walk backwards blindfolded into this room and still know exactly where everything is. It’s a strange feeling, to know this. He’s not sure exactly what feeling it is.
They break away from each other to breathe and take off their clothes, eye contact violent and promising.
“You’re nippy tonight,” Kyle comments, eyes roving lazily over the hair traveling down Jason’s navel. “I think Freud might have something to say about that.”
“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” Jason gripes, taking off his belt.
“No.” Kyle smirks as he sits on the bed to stare, loving the way Jason’s ears still turn red after all this time. “Never.”
Jason turns to face Kyle, stepping out of his pants. His eyebrows come down in a devilish looking smile, and Kyle feels his heart jump.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to make you.”
Several Break-Ins Later
The sketch is rough and just pencil. A ‘thumbnail’ (Kyle told him a lot of art terms when they first met, thinking that Jason might glean some kind of interest in it. He didn’t. He hasn’t.). The sketch isn’t unusual, Kyle’s home is littered with forgotten pieces and random bits of charcoal and paint brushes. But when Jason looks down at it, the textured gray paper, lines undecided but somehow sure, blending and hatching done with practice, he feels like an arctic wave has just crashed over his head.
Because the subject isn’t the typical stranger Kyle admires from his balcony. It isn’t one of the pigeons or mourning doves on his window. It’s not even the fucking plant in his kitchen, a favorite and frequent muse.
It’s him. It’s Jason, on that page. Jason Todd, scowls and scars and all. Him, sketched out and blended.
At first, Jason feels like he’s not quite sure if it even is him. He sees the similarity, the family-likeness of he and his pencil twin, but there’s a… brevity there. A lightness. Something that tinges on— not him. A different version of him.
The Jason on the page is scowling, and there’s a fresh scratch on his forehead that the real Jason remembers getting two weeks ago. The scab is gone now and there’s only a faint pinkish line left. He saw Kyle just moments after he got the scratch, a thing he hadn’t noticed until Kyle had asked what had happened. The creep either had a good memory (He did.) or he conjured up Jason’s exact image from that day with that damn ring of his. Both are weird, but Jason doesn’t think he minds either.
Still, though, the sketched Jason is different from the real Jason. He can’t put his finger on what exactly it is that strikes him as… off. The planes of his face are shaded so that some invisible light source hits every angle, a kind of roughened gauntness that’s not unappealing. His hair is a dark mess, but Jason can count the strands. Even his eyelashes are given their own lines, thickened strokes that make the uncolored irises of his eyes stand out all the more. It’s like this 2D version of himself is staring right at him. Seeing him.
And it hits Jason, all at once, what it is that unnerves him so. Because it’s not that Kyle drew Jason and painstakingly added insignificant details like strands of hair and fresh wounds. It’s that Kyle drew Jason looking at Kyle. The moment they locked eyes. The moment, just literal moments, before they were at each other, that colossal constantly burning thing inside of them ripping at each other’s throats and throwing them into the bedroom Jason saw more than his own.
Kyle drew Jason wanting him.
The realization of this is so forceful, Jason turns away, his eyes squeezing shut. The noise of his breaths is loud and echo-y in his head, and Jason feels like he’s choking with it. He feels the fibers of his muscles shaking, lightning twinges all over that run a course directly into his stomach, a mass that burns like tar.
It’s not anger (It really isn’t.). But it is something deeply close to revulsion. And Jason finds he can’t even command his hands to reach out and destroy the sketch. He’s frozen in place, every muscle rigid, every nerve ending wriggling like a loose electrical wire, and Kyle’s modest apartment begins to shrink around him.
Because it’s not just the wanting in his eyes– in the drawing’s eyes. It’s the something else that rests just below it. Dripping and rabid. A tightness in his ribs. Feverish and sick with it. Kyle saw something that night. Something that probably buried itself in Kyle’s skin too.
And he wanted to keep it.
Opening his eyes, Jason wars with his body. His lungs are still too hasty, and he can feel the blood in his veins buzzing like wasps. The problem isn’t his body, though. It’s the proximity. The location. It’s too early morning, and the sun hasn’t even begun to rise yet, but Jason feels electrically, consciously, alive. It’s a disturbing feeling. Self-awareness pricks at the hair on his body, the kind of static that comes just before a lightning strike. He needs to leave.
Looking down, Jason flexes his bare feet, the heat of his skin sweaty and uncomfortable on the wood floor. His boots are in the bedroom, the last place he wants to go. Fuck it. It wouldn’t be the first or last time he travels barefoot. Every step feels like a tremor, but Jason ignores it, grabbing at his keys. They’re lying next to the small plant, it’s green leaves a little droopy but vibrant. The disgust that hits him nearly punches the breath out of his chest, and Jason reaches out and crushes the stems in his hand. He rips at it, coming away with a handful of fibers and pulpy leaves, and Jason throws them to the ground, grinding at them with his heel.
It’s not enough, so he rips at the plant again, yanking to pull out the roots and smearing those on the ground, too. Dirt is everywhere, and he’s made a mess of the kitchen tile, but the tremors haven’t stopped. He picks up the pot.
“Jason?”
It smashes against the wall, the clay loud and shatteringly real, and Jason breathes harshly out of his mouth as he stares at the shocked expression on Kyle’s face. The man reaches up to his bleeding ear, touching at it lightly as the red runs down the side of his jaw.
“What the fuck?” Kyle yells, dark eyes eerily bright, like a cat’s. “Why the fuck did you do that?”
Jason says nothing, hand still outstretched with a phantom pot ready to throw. Kyle isn’t wearing a shirt, just his boxers, and even in the dim light, Jason can see the marks he left on him. The disgust rises again. What the fuck is he doing here? Why is he here?
“You scared the shit out of me,” Kyle snaps, still rubbing in a kind of awed shock at his ear. “I didn’t realize you had a vendetta against my peperomia. Christ.”
Finally, Jason lowers his arm. He steps out of the kitchen, and he can tell Kyle is expecting him to come closer, but Jason doesn’t. He doesn’t hug the wall, but it’s a close thing as he strides towards the door, keys gripped tightly in his palm. He’s practically vibrating with tension, and as he reaches for the doorknob, he chants as loudly in his head as he can for Kyle to keep his mouth shut.
“Where are you going?”
Wishful thinking. When has the bastard ever shut up?
“You’re not going anywhere. Not until you clean this shit up and apologize to me.”
Jason ignores him, opening the door and beginning to step out of it, until he’s forcefully yanked back, the door almost slamming on his fingers. He crashes to the floor, the residuals of green light wrapped around his waist.
“I told you, you’re not leaving.” Kyle steps right up to him, a millimeter away from flattening Jason’s pinky. A drop of blood lands on his bicep. “You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” Jason growls, rising slowly. He feels like he’s on fire. “Do that again and see what happens.”
Kyle raises an eyebrow, a disbelieving smirk on his face as he tilts his chin down toward his chest. “I already know.”
Jason’s face heats, an embarrassment that’s brittle and sharp. The evidence is there. And Kyle knows it. Kyle drew it.
A hazy orange light begins to creep into the apartment. Outside, there’s the sound of traffic and stray dogs and people waking up. The darkness is still there, wine dark like the ocean the Greeks sailed on, and Jason stiffens his shoulders. He tucks himself close.
He doesn’t want to, but he does, and turns his back on the other man. He walks towards the door again, each step naked and exposed, and he can hear that damn smirk on Kyle’s face. He’s reaching for the door handle when that green light snakes around his waist again. The hold is gentle this time, almost tender, and the heat of it hovers closely to his skin. Almost like a human hand.
Jason stops and says nothing. He’s furious. He’s trembling.
“Come on, big boy,” Kyle says, somehow jovial and light despite the blood on his face. On the floor. “You can’t leave now. The party just started.”
Jason grits his teeth. When he doesn’t move, the light tugs at him, pressing into his stomach.
“What do you want from me?” Jason hisses. He releases the door knob to grip at the impossible rope at his waist, winding it around his knuckles as he turns.
“To clean up the mess you made,” Kyle says. There’s a weight in his words, something a little heated, and Jason knows what he really means. “And to apologize to me. I’ll accept a simple ‘sorry’, but…” The rope dissolves and Kyle steps closer. Their noses almost touch. “I’d prefer it on your knees.”
Their breathing mingle, hot and rapid, and Jason forces himself to focus on the deer brown eyes. But that focus catches the way those same eyes flicker down to Jason’s mouth, lingering there, flickering to catch every movement therein. When he licks his lips, Jason watches as Kyle’s pupils expand, hungry and yearning, and suddenly, Jason realizes it’s not just him.
He’s not the only one wanting.
Heart in his stomach, Jason swallows, the trembling in his muscles almost painful now. The action, though, entices Kyle, and the man leans forward, a whisper away from Jason’s lips.
“Say it,” Kyle says, pupils blown and unfocused. His top lip brushes against Jason’s. “Say it.”
He’s tempted. The bulge in his pants wants him to, but the burning in his head tells him no. Jason can feel himself approaching something colossal, something with a countdown in glowing red numbers, and it makes him want to lash out and run and hurt something. So he does.
His hand shoots up, and his fingers find their way into Kyle’s mouth. His fingernails scrape against teeth and tongue, Kyle’s eyes wide and awake now, and Jason grips at the inside of the man’s cheek. He wrenches his fingers down, yanking the man’s head to the side, and throws him into the wall, the impact jolting Kyle’s jaw, forcing his teeth to clamp down on Jason’s fingers.
Jason jerks them out of Kyle’s mouth, shaking drool and blood off his skin, and Kyle stares at him in shock. His lip has busted and saliva and blood trickle down his chin. He seems to think for a moment, tongue moving around his mouth, before he spits something out onto the floor, a disgusted sneer following it.
It’s one of Jason’s fingernails, ripped off and bloody, and Jason glances at his hand again, noting the bitten off skin and the empty space on his ring finger where a nail should have been. He shakes his hand again, flicking off more blood and spittle, and sees some of it land on Kyle’s cheek. It’s not an unusual sight, and Jason acknowledges that he’s still aroused. Looking down, he sees that Kyle’s boxers are in a similar state.
They stare at each other. The sound of their breathing fills Kyle’s apartment as the sun begins to rise over the city. The entire space is bathed in red light.
“Don’t,” Jason says. He works his jaw, drinking in Kyle’s disheveled form: the bruises, the marks, every bite and hold. “Just don’t.”
Kyle looks at him for a long time, those smart eyes of his dancing over every detail Jason’s face can give him. Finally, he looks away, back thumping into the wall. “Fine.”
Fine.
Jason shuts the door behind him.