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Jason knew that the frigid concrete and rough brick wall were biting into his skin, and that curled in on himself so tightly would make it impossible to jump up and run from a threat. He couldn’t feel the pain from the brick and concrete, could barely even feel the cold, and it didn’t matter if he couldn’t get up because he was never going to do that again. Jason was dying, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He remembered, distantly, the story of the Little Match Girl. He’d always thought that the ending was too sad, her story too much like his own for him to be comfortable with it ending like that. A little girl, too scared to go home because her dad would beat her for failing him, dying alone in an alley. What he wouldn’t give for her magic matches, though. He wanted to be warm, even if it’s just for one more moment. Goddammit, he wanted to live.
A fresh blast of wind tore through the alley, bouncing between the walls and ramping up until it smashed into him so cold that he could actually feel it. Was that comforting? That he wasn’t so close to death that he could feel nothing, or was it torturous that the end evaded him still and life wanted to use him as a bitch a few more times before it cut him free?
What was he thinking about? He was….cold. Really cold, he knew that much, but everything else was getting blurry.
Jason shuddered with a restrained sob. How long would it take them to find his body? Snow was piling up slowly overtop of him, snow that likely wouldn’t melt till spring. In a back alley like that one, a small body covered in snow could easily be taken for a garbage bag. He probably wouldn’t even stink until the thaw, but then his corpse would bloat and rot and the alley cats and stray dogs would tear at his flesh like the turn of the seasons was a cosmic microwave.
There was the slightest of scuffs, but Jason couldn’t be bothered to look up. It could be trash blowing in the wind or it could be a human trafficker for all it mattered to him. For all it would matter in a few minutes.
Until a small voice squeaked, “Are you okay?”
Jason snorted again, the sound raspy in his dry throat, but didn’t look up. The kid sounded young and genuinely curious. Not a street kid, then, because a street kid wouldn’t have needed to ask such a stupid question.
What was he doing? There had been a thing. He couldn’t remember. He was cold.
Small feet clopped over to him. Jason saw snow boots in decent repair, which was the only reason he looked up. What fucking kid with shoes that expensive and well kept was going to be out in the heart of Gotham in the middle of the night?
Jason blinked heavily and lost focus. There was….he had been thinking a thing.
It was really cold. And dark. The shadows weren’t supposed to sway so much, weren’t supposed to swirl like a gentle whisper.
Huh?
There was a little kid wearing thick winter clothes and an expensive-ass camera around his neck jabbering about something, and it was such a bizarre setting that Jason knew he was dead. Maybe he was in Heaven with his mom. Or Hell. It looked like he was still in Gotham, so it must have been Hell. Dammit, that meant his dad was around there somewhere, didn’t it?
“You don’t look so great,” the kid said like that wasn’t fucking obvious.
Jason was sure, at least, that that was true, and he would have said something, maybe an extremely eloquent duh, but he was too cold. Too weak. He barely managed a flat glare before he forgot why he was mad at the kid.
The kid’s breath hitched and he tugged anxiously at that stupid camera strap before something seemed to come over him and his breath released in a white plume of mist.
“You need to come with me,” he said, his little brows knit together in determination.
“Ffffff—” A sharp shudder cut off his curse, but the intent was there, and Jason pulled his frozen features together for a threatening scowl. Couldn’t life tolerate him for just a few more minutes? Was that so much to ask?
The kid didn’t take any notice of Jason’s annoyance, just pulled off his camera, stuck it into a bag and—
When Jason was next aware, there was a pressure under his arm and another on his back, both propelling him forward. It was snowing, harder than before, and he didn’t know where he was. Everything was obscured by a thick freckling of snow, not covering anything, but making it all surreally unidentifiable.
Oh well. He was dying anyway. What did it matter?
He woke the next time with the unpleasant feeling of warmth and wetness of melted snow on his skin. He shifted in confusion, his head hitting something with a dispersed clunk. He groaned, turned his face into the scratchy material his head had been resting against until he could open one eye and see behind him.
He saw snow. He didn’t feel nearly as cold as he had been, though, and he couldn’t tell why until he realized that his own eye was looking back at him.
A window.
He was inside somewhere, looking out a window, but he couldn’t remember how, where, or why. After another dazed moment, he realized that he wasn’t just looking at his eye, he was also seeing the back of someone’s head.
He was leaning on someone’s shoulder.
Huh.
Jason blinked because his eyes were so dry after being cold so long, but then opening his eyes seemed like such a pain, so he didn’t.
When Jason woke up, for real, he knew something was wrong, and he hadn’t even opened his eyes yet. He was lying on something soft and dry instead of soggy cardboard, his clothes weren’t damp, and he was warm. Hell, his skin was hot, a sensation he hadn’t experienced since the end of summer, even though he still felt an internal chill.
Frantically, he tried to scramble for the memories of what had happened to him, but all he had were snippets of delirium. He’d been cold, he remembered, and sure he was going to die, but that just summed up the last month and a half of his existence, ever since the first snow.
The only conclusion he could come to was that he’d been trafficked.
Jason’s heart hammered and he had to bite his lip to keep from crying. No, he was brave, he wasn’t going to fall apart. It didn’t matter how many kids he’d known who’d been hurt in ways unimaginable at the hands of pimps and family members, how helpless they’d been in the face of a terrifyingly strong adult, he was going to escape.
Jason’s eyes flew open and he shot up, which was a mistake. His head spun so fast that he slumped forward, his forehead hitting his knees. Or the rough area around where he was pretty sure his knees were, because his face was buried in the soft fabric of a thick blanket.
What the hell had happened?
He slowly, slowly, sat up and looked around.
What the hell had happened?
The room was dark, lit by a roaring fire in an actual real life fire pit, the buttons on several electric space heaters all pointed directly at him, and the festive lights on an extravagantly decorated Christmas tree. Still, even without much light, Jason could tell that he wasn’t anywhere near Crime Alley anymore. The slight, but expensive décor he could see looked like a house clipped straight from one of those home improvement magazines his mom would sometimes pick up to read while they were in line at the grocery store, but never buy because everything in them would cost a million dollars to do.
He’d been sold to or picked up by some rich freak with a thing for kids, then, but he hadn’t been restrained. The asshole probably thought that Jason would just take whatever was coming to him rather than go back into the blizzard he could see was still going on through the large bay window in the corner.
But hadn’t there been a kid? Jason massaged his head and tried to remember. Yeah, he remembered a kid. Another victim, forced to pick up fresh meat?
It didn’t matter. Jason was getting out of there while he had the chance.
He pushed back the blanket—blankets, because he’d had at least five piled on top of him—and swung his legs over the side of the pristine white couch. Moving so quickly made him dizzy, but he had to go. On the count of three, he stood, placing all his concentration on balance.
“Wait!” A small voice called out, breaking Jason’s concentration and sending him crashing to the ground. He fell only a couple feet from the edge of the fire, close enough that one of his hand slapped painfully against the brick hearth.
There was a small clatter, then little hands were wrapping around one of his arms and pulling him back toward the couch. He tried to pull away, but he didn’t have enough strength to fight as he was lifted back up onto his seat and lain back.
“You can’t be moving around like that,” the boy rushed, panic and frustration making a high pitched voice even higher as he grabbed the blankets and pulled them back up to Jason’s chin.
“Why?” Jason snarled as fiercely as he could, but being swaddled by a little kid really wasn’t helping his image. “Your boss gonna fuck me harder if I fight?”
The boy froze and looked at Jason in confusion. Ooh, he was good, but Jason was better. He wasn’t buying the clueless suburbs kid act for a minute.
“No, because you have hypothermia, and if your blood is too cold in your heart too fast, you’ll die,” the kid said flatly, “and then I’ll have to tell my mom and dad why there’s a dead body in our living room.”
….Maybe Jason was buying the clueless suburbs kid act.
“Where am I?” Jason muttered.
“You’re in Bristol. You were really cold, so I brought you here to warm up,” the kid said, then a smile lit up his face like something had just occurred to him. “I have hot chocolate! Wait here!”
It wasn’t like that was going to be an option for Jason, and the kid only moved a few feet away before he returned, carefully eyeing the tops of two steaming mugs. Jason’s frozen innards whined for him to snatch the mugs and guzzle them both, but he didn’t. He just watched as the kid sat down cross-legged in front of him and raised the mugs.
“Batman or Wonder Woman?” he asked brightly.
Jason squinted at him for a moment before mumbling, “Wonder Woman.”
If there was poison in one of them, whoever had poisoned it had likely bet on Jason picking the Batman one since that was more manly, but even though Jason did like Batman well enough—he’d thrown Jason’s dad in jail once—he had nothing on Wonder Woman.
The kid passed him the royal blue mug with the red and gold insignia like it was nothing, which either meant that both mugs were poison or they both weren’t poisoned, in which case it wouldn’t matter if Jason picked one or the other, or that Jason had been played and they’d expected him to pick the less obvious mug.
Still, he fumbled a hand free from the folds of blankets and accepted the mug, but just held it out and watched as the kid took a long sip of his own hot chocolate before Jason passed his mug back.
“You test it,” Jason ordered.
The kid frowned in confusion. “Why? I didn’t burn it.”
“You made it?” Jason snorted and tried to sit up. This was a lie, there were traffickers in the next room, and the little kid, maybe eight or nine, was trying to roofie him.
The kid took the mug from him, set it on the floor, then helped Jason into a sitting position against the arm of the couch and a pile of pillows.
“I did,” the kid protested, but he took a long sip from Jason’s mug before he passed it back. “See? It tastes fine.”
“It’s not the taste I’m worried about,” Jason scoffed, considering a moment before he decided that the hot chocolate was probably not drugged.
“Then what?”
“Drugs.”
The kid’s eyes widened. “I don’t do drugs.”
Something about that startled bunny expression made Jason chuckled into the rim of the mug despite himself. He took a sip, and wow, that was the best hot chocolate he’d ever had. He’d been expecting just that powdery watery stuff his mom used to make when if she could afford to splurge at Christmas time. He’d liked that fine, but this was so sweet and creamy and hot that it was almost too much.
“This is actually good,” Jason said in surprise. “You mom made it?”
“I said I made it,” the kid grumbled, taking another sip from his own.
Jason rolled his eyes and curled his hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep in through his hands. “My mom wouldn’ta let me touch her stove.” When she was alive. When she wasn’t high.
The kid rolled his eyes right back. “My mom’s on a business trip in Chile.”
Jason frowned. “What?”
“My parents are in Chile until February on a business trip,” the kid clarified, the continued proudly, “I made this myself. I found the recipe on YouTube.”
“Then who’s here with you?” Jason asked, sharper than he intended to, but what the hell? Was this some new prostitution recruitment tactic? Except maybe the hypothermia had just screwed over his ability to tell when people were lying, but the kid looked really serious.
“No one. I’m nine, I don’t need anyone to take care of me during the week, and the housekeeper comes on Sunday afternoons,” the kid informed him. “She’s out of town until January, though, what with the holidays.”
Was that just a thing Bristol kids did? Because that sounded shitty. Even the crappy parents who slapped their kids around in the Alley would have thought leaving their kid completely alone until March was a dick move.
He could have been lying, but…actually, that would track with what Jason could remember and what was going on. The kid had been alone in the alley, alone in the bus too as far as Jason could recall. It would explain why he was on a couch in a baking hot room, drinking unspiked hot chocolate and staring at the most ridiculous nine-year-old he’d ever met. All that could be explained by the kid having lots of money but no supervision.
“Why did you bring me here?” Jason asked at last, less aggressive and more curious this time.
The kid shrugged. “You were cold.”
“You could have taken me to a hospital.” Jason would have run before they could call the social workers, but the kid could have done that.
Something like guilt flitted across the kid’s face, and Jason was a split second from dumping the mug on his head and breaking for the door before the traffickers waiting outside could realize that the kid had given the game away and rush in to grab Jason, but then Tim dropped his head and started picking at the hem of his sleeve.
“I dunno. I just kind of figured that if you wanted a foster home, you’d have gone to one, but you didn’t, so maybe you’d like to stay here instead.” The kid took a deep breath and looked up. “I have lots of food, and there are a bunch of guestrooms. And, well, my dad gave me a credit card that can pay for lots of stuff if you want it, and it’s warm here, it’s just…a bit lonely. Sometimes. And it’s Christmas, and it would suck to be al—to die at Christmas, so you should at least stay for now.”
Jason just stared at him for a long moment. There was a fog of nothingness going through his head at the moment. Just blank what the fuck playing on repeat.
The kid must have seen something startling in his eyes, because he yelped and rushed to say, “If you want to leave, I’ll buy you a bus ticket back to the city in the morning, but the buses don’t run this late, and there might be too much snow on the ground. I swear I’m sorry!”
Jason threw his head back with a sigh. “I can’t believe this. I got kidnapped by a gremlin who wants a roommate for Christmas.”
“Um…yes?” the kid squeaked, like he hadn’t been expecting Jason to see his second motive for bringing Jason to his house and not a hospital. “….So?”
Jason should leave. He had no reason to be there, no reason to risk…what? A lonely little kid wouldn’t be much danger if he was telling the truth, and Jason was pretty sure that he was. And if he was telling the truth, then that meant free food and a warm bed all for himself until March. Not to mention the fact that he wouldn’t have to keep an ear out for thieves and kidnappers like he did on the street. Well, kidnappers older than ten, at least. And…maybe he was a bit lonely too.
Jason sighed again, then looked up. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. “What’s your name?”
The kid was picking at his sleeve again and not meeting Jason’s eye. “T-Tim. Tim Drake.”
“I’m Jason. Your new roommate.”