Work Text:
Tucked away in his apartment deep in Crime Alley, Jason slumped on the couch. Still in the compression wear beneath the Red Hood suit, the telltale helmet perched idly on the side table. He sat with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
Behind him was a glass of half-drained whiskey, sitting on the counter, looking pale and stark under the too-bright kitchen light.
He'd drawn the blue curtains behind him to cover the window. Some nights, he left them open, his window to the city of Gotham and his brothers, when he crept through it and onto the fire escape, stealing away into the night with a helmet colored red and the solid, reassuring weight of gunmetal strapped to his hips.
Some nights, he left the curtains open for his brothers and sister, an open invitation he had never formally issued. He liked to think it meant something, even inside his own head.
But tonight there was no tentative hope or want coloring the blood-streaked walls in his head. Something else lay like a buried secret, shoved beneath splintering floorboards, and with every blurred pulse of the whiskey through his veins he felt himself slipping. Felt the tug-lines that held him together becoming unmoored.
He thought the alcohol would help. It hadn’t.
Whiskey wasn’t his drink of choice. Didn’t usually keep it on hand on principle. But tonight it felt like the only thing left to do. The only way left to commiserate with someone who was already gone.
It was both an honor and betrayal to his memory.
Jason jerked a shaky hand through his hair and stood, needing to move. He strode forward and downed the rest with trembling hands, breaths slipping out a little faster.
The implosion had started in the bathroom following patrol. Cold water running over bruised hands from a rusty tap that he never quite got around to fixing. Shaking fingers gripping the porcelain edges of the standalone sink. An uncomfortable prickling had been thrumming under his skin during tonight's whole patrol. All night, really. Even before he donned his gear.
No one, not even him, had noticed the wave of something harsh and buried slipping loose, howling under his skin and demanding to be heard.
So what if tonight he’d punched a little harder? If his threats were harsher and quicker to result in violence?
The Red Hood was vicious. A threat. Someone to fear.
He’d designed him that way, and even he hadn’t noticed the frayed edges until he was back home, white-knuckled hands gripping the sink. And his eyes had flicked to the mirror.
Jason’s bathroom mirror was plain and thin, with chrome-washed edges and a raised lip above the sink. It fixed directly to the wall, no cabinet hiding beneath. No easy way to cut a hole in the sheetrock behind it to stash illicit documents or back-up weaponry. His mirror was plain. Not incredibly useful, but it served its purpose, reflecting what it saw when Jason dared to look.
His breaths had stuttered in his chest and fingers stilled their assault on the porcelain sink. That sinking feeling swam beneath his worn-thin skin.
Jason stood, lips parted and hair hanging loose over his brow, sticking to the nape of his neck. Sharp features brittle with anger and something that he knew would hurt a hell of a lot more when he finally let himself feel it. His expression surprised him. He thought of himself as strong, because he was. He considered himself formidable, because that’s what he had chosen to become. He still, despite his best efforts to breathe around it, thought of himself as deeply angry.
But his own blue-green eyes stared back at him and saw none of those things. And he realized, all at once, in a sickening and hollow lurch, what had been prickling under his skin all night. What had been creeping up on him for weeks, begging to be let free.
His best friend was gone. And he was alone.
His fist broke through the mirror and into the drywall behind it. Glass plinked into the sink and the off-white tile at his feet. Blood welled up from his hands and dripped down his fingers, his chest heaving. He’d never particularly liked that mirror, anyway.
The mirror went first. Punching something felt real for the first time in weeks. So he did it again, glass digging into his knuckles. The sting was something else he could focus on. And again, his chest starting to heave. He swept his belongings from the counter, clattering to the floor.
Damage kept feeling like something other than that walled-off ache in his chest, so he kept doing it. The silence in his head ringing louder than anything he could break.
His hands gripped a kitchen chair, the cheap wood splintering against the floor until they both lay in pieces around him.
Dishes followed, exploding in a spray of porcelain against the wall. One at first, and then as many as he could grab until the only things left in his kitchen were the thousand little broken pieces on the floor.
Wounded knuckles met drywall. Punching a hole deep enough that the neighbors would think he was disturbed. Kitchen knives sank where they hit plaster, thrown back to back by expert hands. Damage. As much as he could get his hands on. Finally, the whip of a paring knife as it sank into the drywall in his living room.
Jason stood in the center of his own implosion, hands finally stilling at his sides, his breaths loud again in the quiet. A hollow ache the only thing left.
He stepped over broken pieces of his kitchen chairs, porcelain scraping the tile as he knocked a spare piece with his foot. He grabbed his leather jacket from the entryway, throwing it over his shoulder and twisting the handle to the front door. The door swung open and closed behind him with a soft click.
It had taken very little effort to find an open liquor store, even at this time of night. A too-bright ding of a bell as he stepped inside. The cashier took one look at Jason’s bloody knuckles, his raised brow, and checked him out without a word.
When Jason got back, he took in the destruction and looked away.
Instead, he had poured one glass, then another. Moving from the kitchen to the couch, elbows on his knees. Finally, he sank down to the floor, drinking sour whiskey until his head hurt.
Had let the pounding in his head fade to a swirling discomfort, sitting on the cold floor with his back against his living room wall, facing the blue-curtained window, surrounded by the aftermath of that thing inside his chest.
Even with his head swirling, knuckles hastily wrapped, and his lips twisted, he was still a Bat when he wanted to be. At the faintest scrape from the fire escape, Jason had a blade clutched tightly in one hand. He tensed, prepared to move quickly if he needed to.
But the soft scrape of the window lifted, revealing a familiar figure. A man in black kevlar weave with a bright blue bird splashed across his chest and arms, his blue domino lifting from beneath sleek black hair as Nightwing stepped inside with infuriatingly fluid grace. Letting in the bitter Gotham air.
“Hood?" He called. "Oracle noticed you cut patrol short. Came to make sure you weren’t bleeding out on the floor.” He called, tensing minutely as he took in the destruction. Broken chairs, cracked drywall, the glint of knives buried in plaster. The smell of whiskey on the air.
His shoulders eased when his eyes caught sight of Jason sitting against the wall, eyes flicking back and forth, before settling on the slouched figure.
“Hey, Jay.” He said, and when he spoke, he didn’t sound like Nightwing. He sounded like Jason’s big brother.
Jason didn’t bother answering. Didn’t want Dick to ask if he was okay, or how he was doing. The state of his apartment made that answer pretty fucking obvious, anyway.
Instead, he fixed his gaze firmly on the ground, grip tightening on the half-empty bottle of whiskey at his side. Dick had come to check on him. He’d see the mess. He’d leave. Then Jason could fall apart in peace.
But Dick didn’t approach. Didn’t comment.
Jason frowned at the flutter of his curtains. Meant to provide the illusion of peace from nosy bats. A thin attempt at some kind of decor. Nightwing’s arrival left them parted down the middle, bitter Gotham air wafting in.
After a moment, Dick's quiet, deliberate steps moved moved towards the wreckage. Jason heard the scrape of a chair leg being shifted out of the kitchen walkway. The soft grunt as a knife was worked free from the wall. Porcelain pieces being picked up and set on the counter as he moved across the apartment.
Dick’s footsteps reached the bathroom and went silent. Jason closed his eyes, tried not to wince as Dick cursed quietly.
The next sip of whiskey burned, his lips curling at the taste.
In the quiet, early hours of the night, Dick came back, quiet on his feet.
Jason didn’t bother opening his eyes at first. Didn't want to see whatever stupid expression was on his brother's face. Dick slid down along the wall beside him, arms resting over his knees, fingers wrapped around one loose wrist in front of him as he stared through the open window.
Dick sat with Jason on his living room floor and said quietly, "Jay, your hands are bleeding."
"S' fine." Jason grunted, voice hoarse. "I wrapped them."
"Jay-"
"Leave it." Jason snapped, then sighed and ran a hand over his face.
The answering silence was calm, but Dick's words hung on the air, ringing in Jason's ears until he felt something crack inside his chest, and he needed to fill it with something else.
Jason’s voice rasped. “I’m not exactly great to be around right now, Dickhead.”
He felt Dick’s eyes fall on him. He’d expected judgement. Or resignation. Or vain attempts at comfort.
But Dick met his gaze and said, his eyes annoyingly blue without the domino, “There’s nothing you can say. Nothing you can do, that will make me not want to be here."
Jason leaned his head back against the wall, staring at the once-unblemished white plaster of his ceiling. The crown molding on the edges, something he’d appreciated when he’d been looking for a place. He was pretty sure that chip in the plaster by the ceiling fan hadn’t been there before tonight, but he didn’t know which method of destruction had made it.
Without lifting his head, he moved his arm, offering the bottle.
Dick took it, fingers warm even with the window open and the faint chill of Gotham seeping in. Jason turned to watch as Dick took a sip and winced, looking down in disgust at the taste.
"Jesus, Jason. Where'd you get this stuff?"
Jason’s lips twitched. He’d grabbed the cheapest, worst whiskey he’d been able to find. He’d wanted to hate drinking it, after all. Had wanted to hate himself a little, too.
Usually, when he felt like this, he’d call his best friend.
Red hair, an annoyingly smug and self-satisfied grin on his face. Even when they were fighting side by side. Always at Jason's back in a red suit, that damned baseball cap, and an explosive twang of arrows as they fought back against whatever threat they'd jumped in the middle of.
And through the blood, sweat, and the too-often feeling of might-not-make-it-out-alive, he'd hear a ringing laugh behind him, alive and high on the adrenaline of a good fight. And something in Jason's chest had always eased.
He hadn't felt that feeling in weeks. Longer. And he wouldn't, not anymore.
Instead, he had a half-empty bottle of whiskey while Nightwing sat beside him in quiet company. Giving him room to breathe, but not letting him do it alone. He knew Dick's limbs housed his own rage, knew that his lighthearted laughter and witty quips were weapons the same way his escrima sticks were. That despite his ready-grin, Dick knew what it was like to bear the weight of losing people.
Tonight, Jason was all out of rage. Whatever that left hurt deeper than the whiskey or bloody fists could reach.
Maybe, in the morning, he'd shove it beneath the floorboards once more. For now, he let the curtains blur and the ache in his chest rest heavy.
In the soft, quiet hours of the darkness that came before another day, Dick sat with Jason on his living room floor and told him softly, “I miss him, too."