Your Familiar Comforts.
Title: Your Familiar Comforts.
Fandom: DC
Pairing: Bruce/Jason.
Rating: PG at the most.
Summary: It's Bruce's birthday. Jason celebrates. All blame/credit goes to katarik for inspiring me over IM, and also for providing me with the poem that the title came from.
Your Familiar Comforts.
It is Bruce's birthday today. Bruce celebrates during the day, receives the appropriate gifts, and spends time with his extended family. Birthdays are days of joy and celebration, when Bruce can take a break from all his hard, tiring partying and revelry, marking the occasion with an even grander party than usual!
Of course, Batman can't take a night off. Criminals don't celebrate Bruce Wayne's birthday by dropping tools for the night.
But to run into Red Hood, on tonight of all nights...
Batman drops down to the ground, and looms in the mouth of the alleyway. Red Hood has his back to Batman, and is holding someone off the ground. Probably a criminal. Maybe a member of the Red Hood’s own organization - he’s said to be tough on discipline.
“Put him down.” It comes out in Batvoice. Robin would have done what Batman said straight away, if it was said in that voice.
Red Hood isn’t Robin, but he obeys anyway. He drops the man to the ground, and the fact that he doesn’t get so much as a kick tells Batman that the man is already unconscious. Not dead, because he’d recognize that, but not in any condition to be a threat either.
The subtle shifts of Red Hood’s body indicate he’s about to move; Batman readies himself to fight.
But instead of attacking, Red Hood takes his helmet off, and turns around. The white lenses of his mask have been tapped down, and when the blue brilliance of his eyes are exposed like that, Batman cannot think of him as anything except Jason. Jay, Jason, Robin II with Robin-blue eyes.
The sight of Jason’s unshielded eyes is his first gift to Bruce.
Jason’s grin is the second.
Bruce has missed that grin. It’s reflected in the gun that Jason is holding, it curves like the blade of Jason’s knife. Bruce has seen that grin in a thousand dreams, and in ten thousand nightmares. It mocks him with ‘did you miss me? and it challenges with ‘what are you going to do now?’. It’s mostly unanswered questions, but it’s also the curve of Gotham’s dark streets, and the way that yellowed streetlight has to bend to get around the corners. Stephanie wore that smile, but she’s left him just like Jason did.
“What, no cake?” Jason asks, and Bruce is so tempted to watch his mouth instead of his hands.
“Criminals don’t get cake.” Bruce says, as much to remind himself that this is not his Jay (not really) as to make Jason back off.
Jason’s smile is now a smirk, and the smirk is more familiar to Bruce than the grin. “Do they get kisses?”
That’s warning enough that Bruce could have stopped Jason from kissing him, if he’d wanted to. Even without the warning, he could have stopped Jason, if he’d wanted to.
If he’d wanted to.
But he has missed Jason’s kisses more than his grin, and it’s his birthday and though Batman is not self-indulgent (he turned down Neron), he can allow himself this, at least. This much and no more. One kiss. One birthday kiss. A little space of time to have Jason pressed up against him, smelling of grime and gunsmoke and Gotham, to have Jason’s mouth pressed bruisingly-hard against him, familiar but more adult than he remembers.
Jason backs off, finally, and the flare of his nostrils shows he’s breathing hard. He grasps the gun (Batman hadn’t even feared being shot when Jason had kissed him), and lets the bullets fall out. It’s a symbolic gesture, they both know that Jason has more guns on him, more bullets, but it indicates that tonight, at least, nobody will die by Red Hood’s hand.
Trouble comes in threes, and so does good chance, but there have been four Robins and so Bruce gets four gifts from Jason.
Jason turns and disappears into the shadows. He doesn’t bother with any parting remarks; his kiss was more effective than any one-liner could have been.
Around Bruce’s feet, the bullets clink against each other like so many dirty pearls.
~Fin.~.
Fandom: DC
Pairing: Bruce/Jason.
Rating: PG at the most.
Summary: It's Bruce's birthday. Jason celebrates. All blame/credit goes to katarik for inspiring me over IM, and also for providing me with the poem that the title came from.
Your Familiar Comforts.
It is Bruce's birthday today. Bruce celebrates during the day, receives the appropriate gifts, and spends time with his extended family. Birthdays are days of joy and celebration, when Bruce can take a break from all his hard, tiring partying and revelry, marking the occasion with an even grander party than usual!
Of course, Batman can't take a night off. Criminals don't celebrate Bruce Wayne's birthday by dropping tools for the night.
But to run into Red Hood, on tonight of all nights...
Batman drops down to the ground, and looms in the mouth of the alleyway. Red Hood has his back to Batman, and is holding someone off the ground. Probably a criminal. Maybe a member of the Red Hood’s own organization - he’s said to be tough on discipline.
“Put him down.” It comes out in Batvoice. Robin would have done what Batman said straight away, if it was said in that voice.
Red Hood isn’t Robin, but he obeys anyway. He drops the man to the ground, and the fact that he doesn’t get so much as a kick tells Batman that the man is already unconscious. Not dead, because he’d recognize that, but not in any condition to be a threat either.
The subtle shifts of Red Hood’s body indicate he’s about to move; Batman readies himself to fight.
But instead of attacking, Red Hood takes his helmet off, and turns around. The white lenses of his mask have been tapped down, and when the blue brilliance of his eyes are exposed like that, Batman cannot think of him as anything except Jason. Jay, Jason, Robin II with Robin-blue eyes.
The sight of Jason’s unshielded eyes is his first gift to Bruce.
Jason’s grin is the second.
Bruce has missed that grin. It’s reflected in the gun that Jason is holding, it curves like the blade of Jason’s knife. Bruce has seen that grin in a thousand dreams, and in ten thousand nightmares. It mocks him with ‘did you miss me? and it challenges with ‘what are you going to do now?’. It’s mostly unanswered questions, but it’s also the curve of Gotham’s dark streets, and the way that yellowed streetlight has to bend to get around the corners. Stephanie wore that smile, but she’s left him just like Jason did.
“What, no cake?” Jason asks, and Bruce is so tempted to watch his mouth instead of his hands.
“Criminals don’t get cake.” Bruce says, as much to remind himself that this is not his Jay (not really) as to make Jason back off.
Jason’s smile is now a smirk, and the smirk is more familiar to Bruce than the grin. “Do they get kisses?”
That’s warning enough that Bruce could have stopped Jason from kissing him, if he’d wanted to. Even without the warning, he could have stopped Jason, if he’d wanted to.
If he’d wanted to.
But he has missed Jason’s kisses more than his grin, and it’s his birthday and though Batman is not self-indulgent (he turned down Neron), he can allow himself this, at least. This much and no more. One kiss. One birthday kiss. A little space of time to have Jason pressed up against him, smelling of grime and gunsmoke and Gotham, to have Jason’s mouth pressed bruisingly-hard against him, familiar but more adult than he remembers.
Jason backs off, finally, and the flare of his nostrils shows he’s breathing hard. He grasps the gun (Batman hadn’t even feared being shot when Jason had kissed him), and lets the bullets fall out. It’s a symbolic gesture, they both know that Jason has more guns on him, more bullets, but it indicates that tonight, at least, nobody will die by Red Hood’s hand.
Trouble comes in threes, and so does good chance, but there have been four Robins and so Bruce gets four gifts from Jason.
Jason turns and disappears into the shadows. He doesn’t bother with any parting remarks; his kiss was more effective than any one-liner could have been.
Around Bruce’s feet, the bullets clink against each other like so many dirty pearls.
~Fin.~.