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It’d been a bad night…
…A bad day…
…A bad week...
…A bad month...
…Truth be told, it’d been a bad life.
He’d thought things were starting to look up. Especially after two months ago, when he had confessed to Dick that he held a spark for him. Saying those three little words had been hard. He’d been cursing himself the entire time he said them. It wasn’t a good idea for him to say them. Saying them left him vulnerable, especially since Dick hadn’t said them back.
He’d joked with the blue bird for a while after those words were said. He even went as far as having a couple beers with the man. He hadn’t stayed the night. Though he’d be a liar if he said he hadn’t thought about it. His priority, at the time, had been Dick; making sure Dick was okay and that he wouldn’t bolt as soon as Jason left.
Jason had felt like he’d diffused the situation enough that it was safe for him to leave Dick alone that night, but he still kept watch. He’d never admit it, but he’d stood guard over Dick’s apartment the entire night and only left when he saw the golden boy leave the apartment dressed in his police uniform.
He made a point of accidentally running into Nightwing while on patrol the next night, and of accidentally forgetting that he’d made plans to meet up with Roy and Kori for a beer at his place. The duo hadn’t been pleased when he didn’t return to his apartment until the next morning. They hadn’t been shocked either when Jason told them that the reason he hadn’t been there was because he was checking in on Nightwing.
“He took a bullet to the shoulder,” Jason had stated. “I just wanted to make sure a damn chunk of metal didn’t kill him before I could.”
Dick really had taken a bullet and it really had pierced his shoulder in a bad way. Not that there was really any good way for a bullet to piece a person. Jason just made sure to leave out the part about finding Batman and Robin already at Dick’s when he got there….and the part about him stalking the older bird from the roof top of the next building over. They also didn’t need to know that Jason had bugged the place and had heard Damian and Bruce deliver a tag-team lecture to Dick about his ‘reckless’ behavior that night. And they most certainly didn’t need to know that while he’d been keeping an eye on Dick, and watching the other man hide his hurt at his mentor’s lecture behind a mask of indifference, that Jason had been having less than brotherly thoughts about him and how he really, really, really wanted to say those three words again.
Bruce and Damian hadn’t seen the hurt that fell over Dick’s features when they left. They hadn’t seen him curl up in a ball on his couch and fall asleep without even turning his living room light off. They didn’t know about the tears or the way Dick woke up at precisely five in the morning screaming in Romani. They also didn’t know that he hadn’t fallen asleep after that and had instead guzzled coffee until it was time for him to put on his GCPD uniform and leave for his day job. No. They didn’t know anything. And Kori and Roy didn’t need to know anything either.
Jason’s friends could busy themselves while he found a way to fix the broken bird.
He would fix him. He promised himself he would. Which was why a week after saying those words he’d shown up unannounced for some bonding time at Dick’s.
For the last two months he’d been regularly visiting the older Robin. Not every day, of course. He didn’t want to come off as being too clingy. Every third or fourth night, though, he’d race to Dick’s after patrol and throw himself on the older man’s couch. Sometimes he was even nice enough to provide the beer instead of expecting Dick to have some. Though, by this point Dick kept his fridge regularly stocked with the stuff.
He’d thought everything had been going fine.
He’d even made a point of being less lethal in his tactics since Dick was always in more of a mood to chat with him if he hadn’t just seen the Red Hood blow the head off some low life thug. He’d actually, consciously, put an effort into changing his lifestyle for Dick in an attempt to lessen the other man’s stress.
Dick needed someone he could feel safe with right now and Jason was okay with being that person. More than okay. Especially when he got to sit next to the star of all his teenage wet dreams and talk to him for hours on end. God, he was becoming so pathetic.
So pathetic…and he was strangely okay with that. He could do all that sappy sentimental crap if it made Dick happy.
He’d thought he was making ground with Dick. He thought that maybe he had a chance with the other man. Maybe. A little bit. A tiny, speck of a bit. He couldn’t really be imagining the way Dick’s blue eyes lit up when he saw Jason, could he? He knew he had a good imagination but he didn’t think it was so good that it could create the way light danced off the varying hues of blue in Dick’s eyes. Surly he hadn’t imagined that.
That’s why he’d made a plan to confess his feelings to Dick once more. He’d bought flowers (Cliché) and climbed the metal stairs outside of Dick’s window (Even more cliché) in the rain (now he was just becoming a sappy chick flick). He’d knocked on the glass but the greeting he’d gotten was less than satisfactory.
“Now’s not a good time, Jay,” Dick had said. He’d positioned his body so he was blocking most of the window, making it impossible for Jason to enter without using force.
“What do you mean, Dickie boy? I brought beer and a crappy horror movie.”
“Yeah, uh, not tonight. Some other time.”
Jason had hesitated. He hadn’t really brought beer but he was clutching the bouquet of rose he’d brought behind his back. He’d planned to surprise Dick with the roses once he was inside the apartment. Instead he was still standing on the metal staircase with rain pelting down on him and the flowers still hidden behind his back while Dick acted weird.
Dick had never denied Jason entrance into his apartment before. Never. Not even when Jason had been trying to kill him every other week. Big bird had always welcomed him with open arms and a ready first aid kit. So why was he trying to push Jason away now?
“Look, Jay, I’m sorry. Really, we can do the movie and booze tomorrow night. I just….”
“Richard?” a sickeningly sweet voice purred from behind the Bat’s first protégé.
“Who is that?” Jason practically growled.
“No one, just a friend,” Dick had been more than defensive and Jason wasn’t going to swallow his lies. He forcefully pushed his way inside and dropped the bouquet of roses when a women with golden curls and long legs entered the living room from the hall, dressed only in one of Dick’s dress shirts. She had half the buttons on the shirt undone and Jason caught a good glance at part of her cleavage before he realized that he should probably not be staring like an idiot at Slade-fucking-Wilson’s daughter.
He’d known that Rose and Dick were friends. Hell, Dick had even hand a hand in training the woman. He’d even known that the two of them had a fling for a while. What he hadn’t known was that said fling had apparently never ended.
Jason felt his fists clench and his skin began to tingle. He was sure that the Lazarus green in his teal eyes was starting to become more dominant. His fingers itched for a trigger. His mouth went dry and his shoulders slack. At first he was shocked, then he was turning to look at Dick and angrily spitting, “What the hell is she doing here?”
Dick rubbed at the back of his neck and his eyes shifted to the floor. “I think that’s kind of obvious, Jay.”
Jason didn’t wait around for anything further explanation. He felt all emotion drain from himself as he glanced back at Rose and then down at the bouquet he’d bought for Dick. Guess he really had imagined that light in Dick’s eyes.
He didn’t bother to step over the roses when he left. He walked over them. Trampling them beneath his boots. He didn’t even bother to wave good bye or say anything else as he escorted himself out through the same window he’d come in from. This is why he didn’t do that sappy sentimental crap. Because saying things like, “I love you,” got you no where but left alone and vulnerable. He’d been a fool to hope.
This is why he never allowed himself to hope. Hope was a false lie. People who allowed themselves to hope were setting themselves up for failure. Something would always go wrong to destroy everything he hoped for. Something always went wrong.
He wasn’t just having a bad night, or a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month. He really was having a bad life. As if fate hadn’t thought it cruel enough to kill him and then bring him back from the dead, it had to go and screw up his second life too. It wasn’t fair.
‘Life’s a bitch,’ Jason thought to himself as he climbed down the metal staircase and headed towards where he’d hidden his bike in the next ally over, ‘and so should you be.’
If Dick Grayson wanted to waste his time fucking Rose Wilson, then let him. Jason had better things to do than cater to the golden boy’s wishes. He’s had better things to do for two months. Did the older bird realize how many rapists and drug dealers he’d missed out on killing in the past two months? Did he realize how many cases he’d sent to Tim because he ‘had an important meeting’ or ‘wasn’t feeling well enough for patrol’? Of course he didn’t.
Well, if Dick Grayson could just leave him in the rain for some blond tramp then Jason sure as hell wasn’t going to wait around any longer for him. He had better things to do, after all. Better things and a trigger happy finger.
He called up Roy on his comm and asked –more like demanded –to know if there was any trouble brewing in the Bowery that night. Roy told him about a drug bust he was planning to do and Jason was headed straight there.
It’d been a quick job. Too quick.
The thugs hadn’t seen the Red’s coming. Between arrows and bullets they’d never had a chance. Especially since Jason hadn’t been in the mood to give them a chance.
The Red Hood and the Red Arrow continued on like that for a couple weeks before Jason started to become so violent that Roy was starting to seriously worry about him. Jason did nothing but spend his nights murdering thugs and his days cleaning guns. He’d started to fall into bed around five in the morning with a beer in his hands and waking up with a massive hangover. Roy tried talking to him but Jason didn’t want to hear any of it. Jason even stopped answering his phone. Even for Dick.
After the twelfth time Dick called Roy had come home to find Jason stuffing his phone down their garbage disposal.
It eventually got so bad that Roy had to call for back up.
On one particularly rainy night, nearly a month after Jason’s run in with Rose and Dick, Jason freaked out on patrol. He’d gone crazy on one of the Scarecrow’s goons and Roy had tried to pull him off the poor guy. Red Arrow had ended up sprawled on the ground and the last thing he saw before Jason took off on his bike was how Lazarus green his eyes were.
Jason had gotten pretty good at fighting off the effects of the pit and he would usually isolate himself if he felt like he couldn’t control them. Yet, he’d been undergoing the pit’s effects since he saw Rose in Dick’s shirt.
Roy hadn’t known who to call after Jason took off. It was clear after two days that Jason had no plans of returning to their shared apartment anytime soon. So, Red Arrow resorted to calling the only person he thought Jason might listen to.
And that’s how Jason found himself backed into a corner. Literally.
He’d been in the middle of an interrogation when Nightwing had crashed his party. Glass had shattered everywhere from the window the blue and black hero had burst through. He didn’t even have time to blink before Grayson had his escrima sticks out and was fending off attacks. Jason hadn’t realized at the time that it had been him delivering the attacks. Not until a shot was heard and his attention was snapped away from his once hero and to the man he’d been previously interrogating.
The man had gotten a hold of the gun Jason had dropped when Dick had come in through the window. The shot he’d fired had missed both hero and anti-hero, lucky for them. Unlucky for him, though because he immediately had the attention of both of them. It was with practiced precision that Jason and Dick managed to apprehend and knock out the man. Jason had planned to shoot the man in the head at the end of his interrogation but he still hadn’t gotten the information he needed. So, he settled for punching Dick in the face.
Dick took the hit but stopped the second.
“Jason, stop it!” the older bird demanded, twisting the younger’s arms behind his back and pinning him to the floor.
“Fuck you!” Jason spat as he used his weight to flip Dick off him. Dick might have been older than him but Jason was stronger.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dick demanded to know as he lay on the floor.
Jason was kind of disappointed that Dick didn’t try to strike again. The older man just laid there on the dirty floor, his blue eyes hidden behind his domino mask, and his escrima sticks laying off to either side of him. He was panting slightly and Jason wanted to slap himself for noticing a cut on his right arm. He knew he should do something. He knew he should help Dick up and maybe even find a first aid kit to clean that cut, but he couldn’t. He was paralyzed.
Jason had been numb since finding Rose with Dick. He’d shut out everyone and shut off his emotions. He returned himself to the kid that had freshly risen from the pit. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but it also wasn’t entirely his fault. He turned into a monster when he shut down. When he let himself become numb he became dangerous. He didn’t care about anyone or anything besides whatever mission he’d chosen to pursue. If anyone did get in his way he counted them as necessary casualties.
But now it was Dick in his way and even though he was numb he couldn’t bring himself to aim for the bastard’s head. He took a step back when Dick slowly rose to his feet.
Grayson kept his arms spread wide and his hands palm up as he slowly approached the now shaking Jason.
“Roy said you were in trouble. Are you alright?” Dick asked in a voice he might have used to comfort a scared child.
“You need to leave,” Jason answered shortly as the hand that was holding his gun began to violently shake. He didn’t even remember picking the gun up from where he was sure it’d fallen when he and Dick had sedated his prisoner.
Dick shook his head and moved even closer to Jason, who took a step back with every step Dick made towards him. Dick stopped advancing when he realized Jason had unintentionally cornered himself. He knew that if he pressed Jason further, with his back to wall juncture, he’d be perceived as a threat.
“Jason, I want to help. Just tell me what’s wrong? What triggered this?”
Jason let out an insane cackle. “You really don’t want to know, Dickiebird.”
“I really do,” Dick tried to press without pressing too hard.
“It was you. You and your girlfriend,” Jason spat the last word like it was bile in his mouth.
“My girl…” Dick trailed off as realization dawned on him. He took another tentative step forward as he said, “Jason, Rose isn’t my girlfriend. She just….”
“Get away from me!” Jason’s gun was now raised.
Jason’s hand was still shaking and Dick knew it was a bad idea to provoke a shaky gunman. But he also knew that he needed to explain things to Jason. He needed to tell him what had happened after the young boy had left his apartment that night. Yet, he needed to calm Jason down first. Nothing he said would have any affect if Jason was hell bent on keeping him away from him. First thing he had to do was get Jason calmed down and out of the corner. So he took a step back and asked, “Why?”
“Because,” Jason began and Dick didn’t like the empty look in his green eyes or the way his gun hand suddenly stopped shaking, “I go numb before I go nuclear and right now I can’t feel a thing.”
Dick opened his mouth to respond but the only sound that came out was a scream as Jason’s finger pulled the trigger.