Fic: The Sound of Solace; Tim Drake (Red Robin II)/Jaime Reyes (Blue Bettle III); R; Part 4/6
Title: The Sound Of Solace
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Part: 4/6
Pairing: Tim Drake (Red Robin II)/Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle III)
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, violence later
Disclaimer: Not mine, everyone is more than legal
Word Count: 2,000 words
Author's Notes: We interrupt your regularly scheduled Jewel of Sakar for something that has a happy ending. Fourth of six vignettes about Tim and Jaime. Written for prompt #8: pulse for my Tim/Jaime claim on dcu_freeforall.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
The darkened warehouse was absolutely silent around him. Not even the skittering of rats’ feet on the dirty, trash strewn floor broke though the quiet. Jaime had been in this filthy place, watching, waiting and evading attack for what felt like hours and the rats had been long since scared away.
He silently commanded the scarab to switch his goggles back to night vision as he scanned the room one more time for any sign of movement. The only light in the whole building filtered in through dust covered windows, dim moonlight made even dimmer by the filth it fought to penetrate.
Jaime was on edge, each muscle tensed as every sense focused on his target, hiding in the shadows of a burnt out building, waiting for Jaime to drop his guard.
But he wouldn’t. Not this time.
He refused to lose again.
Not again.
He squinted though the night vision goggles as he scanned the room again, as he had countless times before. He slowed his search this time, made it more careful and deliberate as he examined each corner, each crate, each pillar that threw shadows across the vast emptiness of the warehouse floor.
Jaime was nearly startled out of his suit when he heard a small hiss. He spun around to face the direction from where it originated. As he turned, he caught sight of a small glowing object rapidly descending towards the floor before a bright light erupted and blinded him.
Without any real conscious thought Jaime felt his arm morph into a blaster gun. He did have the forethought to lessen the strength of the blast, lowering it to stun level. The blast came out of his arm a bright blue color that further blinded him as he aimed for his target.
In the proceeding silence he heard the slight scuff as a pair of feet hit the warehouse floor. Jaime blinked his eyes open to see the figure run off on a slightly shifting diagonal line. When Jaime spun around to follow his progress, he was hit in the face with a large puff of smoke.
He breathed in two lung-fulls of the stuff before the scarab could react. He was already well in the throes of a coughing fit by the time the suit morphed and a filter was added to his mask.
Jaime’s feet hit the ground hard as he landed and he felt the shock to his knee joints. He probably would have winced if his whole body wasn’t already shaking with the spasms from his coughing fit. He doubled over, waving his arms to dissipate the smoke as he tried to get it all out of his lungs.
He was just about to blink his eyes open to see if he could spot a silhouette through the smoke when he felt something pinch him in the back of the neck. A jolt went through him in the next instant and his body shook. He felt the scarab buzz silent and his suit began to retract around him.
Jaime was gasping and wheezing on the filthy warehouse floor.
“I wondered if that would work,” Tim said contemplatively as he approached Jaime’s hunched figure.
Tim’s hand flicked down to his belt and a few lanterns came on around the room. The light from them was dim but Jaime’s eyes were finally adjusting back to the gloom.
“What’d you do?” Jaime gasped and blinked at Tim, still working to further clear his vision. Tears streamed down his face from the smoke and his lungs still felt tight.
“Overloaded the scarab’s censors,” Tim replied casually and offered Jaime a sip from his water bottle. Jaime drank it, determined to keep any hint of gratitude undetectable. In his opinion, the smoke bomb had been a bit much. Especially on top of the flash bomb. He never used his full blasters on Tim. It seemed slightly unfair that Tim would unload his arsenal on Jaime during a training simulation.
Jaime tried to glare at Tim through his tear filled eyes but clearly the effect was limited. There was still a small smile around Tim’s mouth and Jaime felt something in his belly lurch at the sight of it, despite himself. He quickly scrambled to his feet, hoping the strain on his muscles the abrupt movement caused would disguise the sensation in his gut.
He had been feeling that sensation quite a bit over the past few weeks. He knew what it was. He had felt it before and it hadn’t really taken Jaime all that long to identify it.
It was, to put it simply, a crush. A small, tiny, insignificant, little crush.
On Tim.
That was all. Jaime was man enough to admit it, to himself anyway. He hadn’t actually gone so far as to admit it to anyone else.
He had absolutely no idea what his mother and father would say. They would probably just give him that ‘teenagers were never this confusing when we we young’ look, hand him a sandwich and leave the room. As neither of these things would actually get Jaime anywhere, except possibly the sandwich and only if he was hungry at the time. So, Jaime hadn’t bothered to mention it to them.
Paco and Brenda would grin at him. Smugly. Then they would look at each other and grin some more. Evilly this time. Then Jaime would find pictures of Tim’s face pasted on some terrible wedding dress pictures in his locker when he least expected it. It had happened before. He did not need it to happen again.
He couldn’t tell Milagro, either. She would just sing that ‘Jaime and Tim sitting in a tree’ song and Jaime’s erotic imagination didn’t, actually, need any more help. Especially not from his little sister.
Ew.
Jaime also couldn’t tell the Titans, any of them, because it was Tim. The only members of the Titans that didn’t want to kill Tim seemed to want to bone him and even those two categories overlapped sometimes. He wasn’t quite sure how Tim managed to pull that off. It was mildly impressive.
So, Jaime was left to keep his own council and hope fervently that Tim didn’t catch on. Which was unlikely, what with the guy being a detective and all.
Jaime tended to be the kind of guy who admired people from afar. It was so much easier to like a person who either didn’t know you existed or didn’t care. Jaime hadn’t had a crush, a real crush, a true crush, a crush on a person he actually knew, in quite some time. Mostly, Jaime lusted after movie stars and girls he knew he could never get. This was fine with Jaime. The unattainable ones were the best because the pressure was off.
Jaime sure as hell didn’t expect either Tim or Megan Fox to ask him to the prom or beg to meet his parents. In point of fact, Jaime was pretty sure that the terms ‘prom’ and ‘Family Dinner’ were in neither of their lexicons.
While Jaime wouldn’t mind a make out session with either, or both, of them, he really wasn’t one to risk the rejection.
All of that aside, Jaime wasn’t even sure where, exactly, Tim stood on the whole ‘liking boys’ issue. For that matter, Jaime wasn’t even sure where he stood.
During a drunken conversation with Paco a few years ago, the two of them had determined that Paco’s man-crush on Bruce Willis was not, in fact, gay. Paco was manly, Bruce Willis was manly, so Paco’s crush on Bruce Willis was manly and therefore not at all gay.
Jaime had gone through most of puberty with that mentality whenever he started to feel an attraction to another man. However, it wasn’t too long ago that Jaime started see that their drunk logic had a few key flaws to it. This realization, however, didn’t detract from the fact that their drunk-logic had, and still did, made him feel a bit better about his sexuality.
Yeah, he had crushes on dudes, but they were manly crushes. There was nothing at all wrong with manly crushes.
At least, Jaime didn’t think so. Jaime was pretty sure Tim would agree but Jaime wasn’t positive how Tim would feel about the concept being applied to him.
So, Jaime was left with stinging eyes, butterflies in his stomach and a lot of questions he wasn’t sure he wanted answers to roiling around in his head.
“When do you think he’ll come back online? The scarab, I mean?” Jaime asked, brushing off his jeans and feeling very glad that he had worn shoes today and not flip flops that afternoon.
“Probably in a few minutes or so,” Tim answered. “The jolt I gave it was a light one. I doubt it’ll be down for very long. In the meantime, let’s do some simple combat training. You’re getting better at tracking and ambushing your opponent, but you need to work on what to do with them once you’ve flushed them out.”
Jaime nodded as Tim took the water bottle back from Jaime and pressed his lips to the rim. Jaime suppressed a shiver as the words ‘indirect kiss’ flashed across his mind’s eye. It was something Milagro would giggle about with her friends, not something a eighteen year old would get all wound up about.
“With- uhhh- without the scarab?” Jaime stammered and Tim eyed him over the rim of the bottle. He nodded, swallowed three more mouthfuls and recapped the bottle.
“Yes, if I can disable it, so can an opponent. We need to work on your unarmed combat techniques,” Tim answered.
This, Jaime reflected, was going to end badly.
And it did.
Twenty minutes later, the scarab came back online and asked him what the hell had happened to him.
“Foes?” it asked him in what he could have sworn was a concerned tone of voice.
“No, just Tim,” Jaime answered mentally, trying hard to get his breathing and heart rate under control.
Tim was standing about four feet from Jaime, his face combat-impassive. They had been grappling pretty intently for the last twenty minutes but he hadn’t even broken a sweat. The only indication he gave that he was in the middle of a fight was a slight furrow to his brows.
“Maybe you should try some endurance exercises,” he suggested to Jaime. “Just to build up your stamina.”
Jaime was vaguely insulted. The increased heart rate and panting wasn’t entirely due to the grappling. Tim’s lean body, the feel of his breath gusting out across Jaime’s bare skin, his long fingers and the sharp jut of his hipbone against Jaime’s side also had a lot to do with it. Not that Jaime could point this out to Tim.
Jaime had excellent stamina. He was almost sure of it.
“Uh-“ Jaime began, trying to come up with some constructive to say. He was rescued from coming up with some inane response by a low beep.
Tim’s brow furrowed further and he reached for something tucked into one of the pouches on his belt that was hidden by his cape. He pulled out a cell phone and glared at the screen before looking back up at Jaime.
“I’ve got to go. Call me later. We’ll finish up what’s left on your training schedule,” Tim said, then he was out the door.
He was nowhere to be seen when Jaime slipped out of the building and kicked off into the air, and Jaime had looked.
By the time he was in the air, his breathing hadn’t slowed and his blood still felt like it was on fire. Jaime landed in a deserted copse of trees just a few miles from the warehouse and jerked off twice before he calmed down enough to fly home.
This crushing on a real person thing was complicated.
A/N: Tim/Megan Fox/Jaime = OTP
Part V
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Part: 4/6
Pairing: Tim Drake (Red Robin II)/Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle III)
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, violence later
Disclaimer: Not mine, everyone is more than legal
Word Count: 2,000 words
Author's Notes: We interrupt your regularly scheduled Jewel of Sakar for something that has a happy ending. Fourth of six vignettes about Tim and Jaime. Written for prompt #8: pulse for my Tim/Jaime claim on dcu_freeforall.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
The darkened warehouse was absolutely silent around him. Not even the skittering of rats’ feet on the dirty, trash strewn floor broke though the quiet. Jaime had been in this filthy place, watching, waiting and evading attack for what felt like hours and the rats had been long since scared away.
He silently commanded the scarab to switch his goggles back to night vision as he scanned the room one more time for any sign of movement. The only light in the whole building filtered in through dust covered windows, dim moonlight made even dimmer by the filth it fought to penetrate.
Jaime was on edge, each muscle tensed as every sense focused on his target, hiding in the shadows of a burnt out building, waiting for Jaime to drop his guard.
But he wouldn’t. Not this time.
He refused to lose again.
Not again.
He squinted though the night vision goggles as he scanned the room again, as he had countless times before. He slowed his search this time, made it more careful and deliberate as he examined each corner, each crate, each pillar that threw shadows across the vast emptiness of the warehouse floor.
Jaime was nearly startled out of his suit when he heard a small hiss. He spun around to face the direction from where it originated. As he turned, he caught sight of a small glowing object rapidly descending towards the floor before a bright light erupted and blinded him.
Without any real conscious thought Jaime felt his arm morph into a blaster gun. He did have the forethought to lessen the strength of the blast, lowering it to stun level. The blast came out of his arm a bright blue color that further blinded him as he aimed for his target.
In the proceeding silence he heard the slight scuff as a pair of feet hit the warehouse floor. Jaime blinked his eyes open to see the figure run off on a slightly shifting diagonal line. When Jaime spun around to follow his progress, he was hit in the face with a large puff of smoke.
He breathed in two lung-fulls of the stuff before the scarab could react. He was already well in the throes of a coughing fit by the time the suit morphed and a filter was added to his mask.
Jaime’s feet hit the ground hard as he landed and he felt the shock to his knee joints. He probably would have winced if his whole body wasn’t already shaking with the spasms from his coughing fit. He doubled over, waving his arms to dissipate the smoke as he tried to get it all out of his lungs.
He was just about to blink his eyes open to see if he could spot a silhouette through the smoke when he felt something pinch him in the back of the neck. A jolt went through him in the next instant and his body shook. He felt the scarab buzz silent and his suit began to retract around him.
Jaime was gasping and wheezing on the filthy warehouse floor.
“I wondered if that would work,” Tim said contemplatively as he approached Jaime’s hunched figure.
Tim’s hand flicked down to his belt and a few lanterns came on around the room. The light from them was dim but Jaime’s eyes were finally adjusting back to the gloom.
“What’d you do?” Jaime gasped and blinked at Tim, still working to further clear his vision. Tears streamed down his face from the smoke and his lungs still felt tight.
“Overloaded the scarab’s censors,” Tim replied casually and offered Jaime a sip from his water bottle. Jaime drank it, determined to keep any hint of gratitude undetectable. In his opinion, the smoke bomb had been a bit much. Especially on top of the flash bomb. He never used his full blasters on Tim. It seemed slightly unfair that Tim would unload his arsenal on Jaime during a training simulation.
Jaime tried to glare at Tim through his tear filled eyes but clearly the effect was limited. There was still a small smile around Tim’s mouth and Jaime felt something in his belly lurch at the sight of it, despite himself. He quickly scrambled to his feet, hoping the strain on his muscles the abrupt movement caused would disguise the sensation in his gut.
He had been feeling that sensation quite a bit over the past few weeks. He knew what it was. He had felt it before and it hadn’t really taken Jaime all that long to identify it.
It was, to put it simply, a crush. A small, tiny, insignificant, little crush.
On Tim.
That was all. Jaime was man enough to admit it, to himself anyway. He hadn’t actually gone so far as to admit it to anyone else.
He had absolutely no idea what his mother and father would say. They would probably just give him that ‘teenagers were never this confusing when we we young’ look, hand him a sandwich and leave the room. As neither of these things would actually get Jaime anywhere, except possibly the sandwich and only if he was hungry at the time. So, Jaime hadn’t bothered to mention it to them.
Paco and Brenda would grin at him. Smugly. Then they would look at each other and grin some more. Evilly this time. Then Jaime would find pictures of Tim’s face pasted on some terrible wedding dress pictures in his locker when he least expected it. It had happened before. He did not need it to happen again.
He couldn’t tell Milagro, either. She would just sing that ‘Jaime and Tim sitting in a tree’ song and Jaime’s erotic imagination didn’t, actually, need any more help. Especially not from his little sister.
Ew.
Jaime also couldn’t tell the Titans, any of them, because it was Tim. The only members of the Titans that didn’t want to kill Tim seemed to want to bone him and even those two categories overlapped sometimes. He wasn’t quite sure how Tim managed to pull that off. It was mildly impressive.
So, Jaime was left to keep his own council and hope fervently that Tim didn’t catch on. Which was unlikely, what with the guy being a detective and all.
Jaime tended to be the kind of guy who admired people from afar. It was so much easier to like a person who either didn’t know you existed or didn’t care. Jaime hadn’t had a crush, a real crush, a true crush, a crush on a person he actually knew, in quite some time. Mostly, Jaime lusted after movie stars and girls he knew he could never get. This was fine with Jaime. The unattainable ones were the best because the pressure was off.
Jaime sure as hell didn’t expect either Tim or Megan Fox to ask him to the prom or beg to meet his parents. In point of fact, Jaime was pretty sure that the terms ‘prom’ and ‘Family Dinner’ were in neither of their lexicons.
While Jaime wouldn’t mind a make out session with either, or both, of them, he really wasn’t one to risk the rejection.
All of that aside, Jaime wasn’t even sure where, exactly, Tim stood on the whole ‘liking boys’ issue. For that matter, Jaime wasn’t even sure where he stood.
During a drunken conversation with Paco a few years ago, the two of them had determined that Paco’s man-crush on Bruce Willis was not, in fact, gay. Paco was manly, Bruce Willis was manly, so Paco’s crush on Bruce Willis was manly and therefore not at all gay.
Jaime had gone through most of puberty with that mentality whenever he started to feel an attraction to another man. However, it wasn’t too long ago that Jaime started see that their drunk logic had a few key flaws to it. This realization, however, didn’t detract from the fact that their drunk-logic had, and still did, made him feel a bit better about his sexuality.
Yeah, he had crushes on dudes, but they were manly crushes. There was nothing at all wrong with manly crushes.
At least, Jaime didn’t think so. Jaime was pretty sure Tim would agree but Jaime wasn’t positive how Tim would feel about the concept being applied to him.
So, Jaime was left with stinging eyes, butterflies in his stomach and a lot of questions he wasn’t sure he wanted answers to roiling around in his head.
“When do you think he’ll come back online? The scarab, I mean?” Jaime asked, brushing off his jeans and feeling very glad that he had worn shoes today and not flip flops that afternoon.
“Probably in a few minutes or so,” Tim answered. “The jolt I gave it was a light one. I doubt it’ll be down for very long. In the meantime, let’s do some simple combat training. You’re getting better at tracking and ambushing your opponent, but you need to work on what to do with them once you’ve flushed them out.”
Jaime nodded as Tim took the water bottle back from Jaime and pressed his lips to the rim. Jaime suppressed a shiver as the words ‘indirect kiss’ flashed across his mind’s eye. It was something Milagro would giggle about with her friends, not something a eighteen year old would get all wound up about.
“With- uhhh- without the scarab?” Jaime stammered and Tim eyed him over the rim of the bottle. He nodded, swallowed three more mouthfuls and recapped the bottle.
“Yes, if I can disable it, so can an opponent. We need to work on your unarmed combat techniques,” Tim answered.
This, Jaime reflected, was going to end badly.
And it did.
Twenty minutes later, the scarab came back online and asked him what the hell had happened to him.
“Foes?” it asked him in what he could have sworn was a concerned tone of voice.
“No, just Tim,” Jaime answered mentally, trying hard to get his breathing and heart rate under control.
Tim was standing about four feet from Jaime, his face combat-impassive. They had been grappling pretty intently for the last twenty minutes but he hadn’t even broken a sweat. The only indication he gave that he was in the middle of a fight was a slight furrow to his brows.
“Maybe you should try some endurance exercises,” he suggested to Jaime. “Just to build up your stamina.”
Jaime was vaguely insulted. The increased heart rate and panting wasn’t entirely due to the grappling. Tim’s lean body, the feel of his breath gusting out across Jaime’s bare skin, his long fingers and the sharp jut of his hipbone against Jaime’s side also had a lot to do with it. Not that Jaime could point this out to Tim.
Jaime had excellent stamina. He was almost sure of it.
“Uh-“ Jaime began, trying to come up with some constructive to say. He was rescued from coming up with some inane response by a low beep.
Tim’s brow furrowed further and he reached for something tucked into one of the pouches on his belt that was hidden by his cape. He pulled out a cell phone and glared at the screen before looking back up at Jaime.
“I’ve got to go. Call me later. We’ll finish up what’s left on your training schedule,” Tim said, then he was out the door.
He was nowhere to be seen when Jaime slipped out of the building and kicked off into the air, and Jaime had looked.
By the time he was in the air, his breathing hadn’t slowed and his blood still felt like it was on fire. Jaime landed in a deserted copse of trees just a few miles from the warehouse and jerked off twice before he calmed down enough to fly home.
This crushing on a real person thing was complicated.
A/N: Tim/Megan Fox/Jaime = OTP
Part V