---- From chapter 41 ----

T: Dickie how do i please him
D: wear a long-ass sweater and only a long-ass sweater

---- 

"Son of a fucking fuck," Tim's voice swore over the comms, "that hurts like a motherbitch."

"Who the fuck taught you that kind of language?" Jason replied, pausing to listen to Tim jump back into the fray. It was quiet on Jason's end of town,

"You wanna lecture me about language? Let's see you get shot next time!" Tim bit back. Jason heard him take a deep breath.

His heart had been pounding before, steadily from the exertion of moving from roof to roof, but now it jerked and hammered in his chest uncomfortably. He didn't like patrolling separately from Tim for obvious reasons, but The Batman pulled his magic teleporting act any time Jason got within 100 meters of Tim outside the Manor where they could be supervised. Apparently dying and becoming an anti-hero slash murderer was cause for parental intervention.

"You good, princess?" He called into the comms, listening to Tim finish the fight he was in the middle of. That was the problem with getting shot. Not only did it hurt like a son of a bitch, but unlike with being stabbed or punched, the enemy wasn't close enough to immediately retaliate.

"Fine, stop nagging," Tim grunted back distractedly. Whereas before he was laser-focused, Jason knew from experience that now his brain flooded with chemicals and leaked through to his mouth, tasting something terrible. Adrenaline was the enemy in a fight; it was draining.

"I'm not nagging," Jason hung a left turn on the next roof, inching a little closer to Tim's position by the docks. He could see the murky water, cutting the dark horizon clean off, but there was no way to tell exactly where Tim was amongst the shipping crates and docked oil tankers.

"Aww," Tim cooed, like some kind of fucking hen, "you care about me."

"I do not," Jason replied immediately. He wished vaguely that there were more Tim's around. Enough that he could have one here to push over- or maybe kiss- but also on patrol, and maybe working, so that his Tim could stop thinking about all that shit and relax. Wouldn't all their lives be so much easier if putting on a mask split you in two?

Jason rolled his eyes as Tim singsonged "yes you do" over their secure line and wondered what a group of him would be called. An embarrassment, most likely. An embarrassment of Timmy Wayne's, all running around making messes of things and drinking all the coffee in the world.

"No I don't. Go to hell," Jason growled back, settling on the lowest landing of the fire escape of the Batburger closest to the docks. He pulled his helmet off and tucked it under his arm, nearly missing Tim's reply as he switched to an earpiece and vaulted over the railing, the distance to the ground few enough feet that he didn't have to bother tucking or rolling.

"But I'm so pretty?"

"Yeah, well, your pretty face is going to hell."

Jason rolled his eyes at Tim's stifled laugh as he zipped up his leather jacket and pushed through the glass door and into the fast-food restaurant for some overpriced costume-freak themed burgers. He got Tim a coffee too, because despite the fact they both despised the larger parts of each other's personality, and sometimes Jason couldn't stand to be around Tim for more than twenty seconds without shutting him the hell up, falling in love, unfortunately, remained in the little things.

By the time he made his way back to the fire escape, a paper bag with Bruce's creative logo on the front in one hand and struggling to undo his zipper with the other, Tim was waiting for him. The cowl of what was once Jason's costume pooled around his neck like a hood, his long legs folded under him as he balanced incomprehensibly on the railing. A white bandage stood out where it wrapped around his arm a few times, blood just visible on the cusp of it. There was a pink Hello Kitty bandage high on his cheek from his last patrol when he got nicked with a blade.

Jason tugged on it ruthlessly as he handed over Tim's coffee and burger- with just ketchup, the freak- nearly wobbling Tim off balance. Tim cupped the coffee close to his chest while he caught his balance, flashing Jason an expression caught between fuck you and I love you.

He mumbled one of the two, but Jason didn't catch it. He had been having a hard time catching Tim's half-mumbles since he came back. His hearing was shot as if he had survived the explosion that killed him. It was physiological, of course, the pit had undone all the damage to his body collected over the years; healed scars he didn't even remember getting, saved his lungs from their cancerous ridden future. His mind remembered though, and his newly healthy lungs didn't even flinch when he pumped them up with smoke.

Jason redressed the wound while Tim ate, properly this time, tight enough that it would actually do something to stave off the blood flow. Tim was having no trouble moving, bitching about Jason's prodding, so Jason could tell it was just a graze, something that would heal within the week.

"Idiot." Jason rested his chin on Tim's shoulders, accepting the bite of Tim's hamburger offer to him, only to screw up his face at the taste of the toppingless mix of meat and bread and trade it in for his own burger. Almost cold by now, but he finished it in a few bites so it didn't matter.

Tim licked a dollop of ketchup off the corner of his mouth, glancing at Jason with half-lidded eyes. Jason ignored his attempts at seduction, annoyed that Tim was not only stupid enough to get shot but didn't even bother bandaging it properly.

Tim pouted, displeased at being ignored and because his arm had started to hurt, and he leaned back against Jason's chest, Jason's arms boxing him in by gripping the railing.

"Don't be like that Jay," Tim whined, nuzzling into Jason's throat as if he could be so easily distracted, "I knew you'd take care of me."

"So you got fucking shot?"

"It's not like it was on purpose!"

Jason was unmoved by Tim's protest; he knew for a fact Tim was all-around shit at taking care of himself.

Jason was about to say as much when Tim's comm crackled between them, Barbara's voice, not quite Batman but close enough: "Red Robin, you missed your check-in. Return to base or I'll send Nightwing to your location," she said it like a threat and they both winced at the idea of having to deal with Dickie. Whether he knew it or not, he got all Big-Brothery when he was worried and it was annoying.

There was the near silence of wayward radio-waves for a moment, then Barbara added, "You too, Red Hood. Over."

Jason cursed, while Tim lifted a hand to his comm to respond, "Roger, Batgirl. Red Hood and I are en route, ETA 22 minutes. Over and out."

There was a click as Tim ended the transmission, and then stood on the thin metal railings and stretched his hands above his head, arching his back until it cracked before grapple-hooking himself unto the adjacent roof.

Jason pulled his helmet back on and followed, dropping their paper bag in an open dumpster as he flew over the alleyway, giving chase to Tim's retreating and caped form.

----

Needless to say, Jason's mood did not improve with time. Even when it was confirmed by Alfred Tim didn't need stitches, the fact that Tim had gotten shot and Jason had been unable to do anything but listen lingered, growing hotter over time, like a kettle on an open flame until he was ready to scream. The flames licked at the fresh, gaping wounds of his death, reminding him what it was like to wake up in his grave.

Tim pouted and complained about Jason's bad mood, but he didn't apologize and drank his insipid coffee loudly whenever Jason insisted on changing the bandages. By the time the injury was nearly healed- only hurting when Tim, or more likely Jason prodded at it- he had resorted to the underhanded tactics of theft and seduction to earn Jason's forgiveness.

When holding Jason's bread box for ransom still didn't work, messages to the group chat made Jason's phone buzz.

T: Dickie how do i please him
D: wear a long-ass sweater and only a long-ass sweater

Jason closed his eyes against the images Dickie's suggestion conjured in his mind. No way Tim would stoop so low as to do that. Not while Jason was all the way in Star city.

Around him, his small room in Roy's apartment sat in chaos. In the city's bleeding lighting, the insomnia was almost palpable. The whole room seemed to shout "JASON CAN'T SLEEP," the words pouring out of the open books spread open on the floor he had started and never finished, squeezing out between the layers of fabric that made up the random stack of clothing that he decided to fold at four am, two nights ago. His bed lacked any pillows at all and the sheets were a mess beyond salvation from his tossing and turning. His insomnia was worse than Tim's at this point; he was an unconscious man, stumbling around the city and trying to save it, eternally almost finished Crime and Punishment.

He had just resolved that Tim wouldn't take Dickie's suggestion seriously- Tim didn't even own any long sweaters- when his phone buzzed again, this time with a private message from Tim.

Against his better judgement, he opened it, getting up to close his bedroom door while he did.

The first thing that struck him about the photograph was the angle. Tim's entire body was in frame, his legs folded under him, one hand resting on the mattress between his spread knees while the other rested on the juncture of his neck, his fingers parted slightly to show a fading hickey Jason had left days before they started fighting. The pose was carefully held, meaning Tim had premeditated all this- probably used a tripod and one of his good cameras to take the picture, even.

The next thing Jason realized about the picture, clutching his phone and sinking onto his own mattress as he studied it like archaeologists would a freshly uncovered Egyptian tomb, was how pale Tim was. The sweater he was wearing- cable knit, Italian-blend wool, tonal stitching- was black, so his complexion seemed almost colourless in comparison, nearly as white as his bedsheets. If not for the red and green on the sleeves, Jason would have wondered if the picture wasn't in black and white.

The sweater itself was part of Gucci's permanent collection; Gucci was a brand rarely supported with Wayne money, as Dickie had a strange affinity for Ermenegildo Zegna pieces and Tim usually leaned towards Tom Ford's designs, but Jason couldn't deny that Tim looked good, wrapped in such an expensive brand.

His face is slightly tinged pink, his gaze cast to the side so that his bangs fell just over his eyes. He must have felt embarrassed taking the picture, and Jason could almost imagine Tim's thought process, reasoning with himself "I feel stupid... but what is life if not a series of vignettes glued together with stardust in an amazing and stupid way? The only thing about Life that isn't stupid is the ending" in that strangely poetic way he thinks about things.

The sweater slips off one of his shoulders and stops just above his knees, bruised dark shades of purple, and his pale legs went on for miles, like the long stretches of white sand on islands in Fiji. The ones with cannibals. Something about the way the light falls, it's shape dictated by the palm of Tim's hand makes the whole picture sorta pretty. Tim is a great photographer, and Jason thinks, maybe, if he hadn't died, if Tim hadn't forced his way into a mask, that's what he would have become.

Jason looks at the picture as a whole again, this time thinking about Tim and the careful process he underwent to take it. Tim rarely photographed people, usually only taking candid pictures around the manor, much preferring the carefully and subtle changing city skyline, and Tim never photographed himself.

Jason didn't realize how long he'd been staring at the picture until his screen lit up with Tim's number, buzzing softly in his hands until he picked up the call.

"Hey," Jason said.

"Uh, Hi."

"I'm still pissed," Jason noted. Not necessarily true; he understood they held a dangerous pastime, Tim was doing his job, Jason wasn't mad at him for getting shot, he was mad there was nothing he could have done about it. Mad at the world, but not at Tim.

Tim rolled his eyes from the other end of the call, Jason could tell, "What is it that you're pissed at? The guy who fired the gun? Or maybe the person who built the gun? Or is it the gun itself?"

Jason huffed, annoyed that Tim was right- and he knew it, too, silent self-satisfaction leaking from his side of the call- and opted to change the subject, deepening his tone to something playful, "Nice picture, by the way. Lucky I wasn't in public."

Tim laughed again, softer but more real this time, "Yeah?"

Jason grinned,  "Yeah."

He could hear Tim's breath catch, his lithe body shivering like a moon on the water as he spoke into the phone, "Want another one?"