Work Text:
i need a favor.
Jason texts back right away. Go fuck yourself.
i’ll pay you.
Go fuck yourself.
i can get cass off your back for a couple of weeks.
Sorry, Jason’s away from the phone right now. His auto-message is: Go fuck yourself.
it’ll drive bruce insane.
Pause. Reluctant intrigue.
i’m guessing you’re thinking about it.
Just spit it out.
wanna partner up on a case?
Partner up? Tim knows that Babs is the go-between when they need to share case data between Hood and the Bats. If you want info, just ask Red.
no. i need a partner.
Dickhead.
busy.
I was calling you a dickhead. What’s the case?
[...] [...] [...]
You suck at spitting it out.
i’m more of a swallower. and speaking of which. it’s a gay club thing. yes it’s an actual case, and i could really use someone there to watch my back.
Jason pauses, his thumbs hovering over the touchpad keyboard. The wheels turn, and turn, but he still doesn’t get it.
Why will this drive Bruce insane?
[...] [...] [...]
Tim.
because i tried running this op already. and i fucked it up. and got the shit kicked out of me.
[...] [...] Are you benched?
technically no. but he pulled me off the case.
So who’s working it now?
nobody, and if you don’t help me solve it, another’s body’s gonna drop in less than a week.
That gets Jason’s attention. It seems like Tim really has done all of the investigation legwork, and just needs someone there to improve his chances of actually catching his man.
So to speak.
When do you want to meet?
“You look nice,” Tim says when he arrives, a few buildings and an empty lot away from the warehouse in the Bowery where bass is pumping so hard it feels like an earthquake.
Jason takes a long drag on his cigarette and then drops it to the alley floor and crushes it beneath his boot. Then he turns, shoves his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, and raises an eyebrow, looking Tim up and down. “You look… ready to party.”
Actually, Tim looks like crap. His outfit seems fine for dancing - red crop top and spandex shorts, a long-sleeved black fishnet shirt over both, and sneakers with heels so thick they’re practically platforms - but makeup doesn’t seem to have quite disguised his split lip and bruised cheekbone, and it only seems to have enhanced the dark circles under his eyes.
“Also,” Jason adds, maybe to change the subject, “I thought you said this was a gay club ? This is clearly a warehouse rave.” He’s never been to one before - not a lot of high-level mob activity happening at any event with a DJ, and even in his infrequent downtime since his resurrection, he tends to spend more time in quiet hole-in-the-wall bars or alone in various safehouses than at anything that might be considered a party - but he knows the difference between a sports bar for gay guys and an underground jungle scene acting as a front for illicit drugs. At least... he thinks he does. It’s not like it really matters, but he can’t pass up a chance to needle Tim for inaccuracy.
Tim’s mouth quirks down. “The previous attacks were in locations that were more legitimate , but people are starting to notice and be more careful, so I think my guy is digging for a less risk-averse crowd.”
Jason nods, understanding less risk-averse crowd to mean more vulnerable victim pool . He touches the grip of the pistol tucked under his jacket, secure in its holster along his ribcage, and is comforted by its solidity. “So we don’t have a visual profile for your guy, and he’s been forced to change his hunting grounds. What about his M.O. can we predict and identify?”
“Well, if he gets me alone in a bathroom, he’ll offer me ecstasy, and then he’ll try to rape and kill me,” Tim explains patiently.
The wheels trip and stutter. Tim didn’t even bother with a hypothetical victim stand-in.
Jason jerks his chin at Tim’s bruised face. “He the one who wrecked your shit last time you tried this op?”
Tim shrugs.
“So how come you don’t have a visual profile to give me?”
Tim shrugs again. “GHB,” he says airily, like it doesn’t really matter. “Can’t remember.”
Jason feels like the bottom dropped out of his stomach. That’s the answer he was hoping not to get.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks quietly, with paragraphs of meaning behind it.
Tim looks away, folding his arms across his chest like he’s cold.
“I just don’t want it to happen anymore,” he says to the alley wall instead of to Jason. “I don’t want it to happen to anybody ever again. And if we don’t stop this guy it’ll keep happening.”
Jason tastes the words arresting him won’t change what he did to you in his mouth. Swallows them.
He samples I won’t let it happen again instead. Swallows that one too.
“Okay,” he says instead, simply. “Let’s go.”
Babs’ patented in-ear communicators provide noise-canceling as addition to transmitting and receiving, so Jason isn’t as uncomfortable as he thought he would be, but he’s still not having a blast on his own. He’s swaying to the electronic beat and nursing some kind of neon-blue drink in a jar, trying to look like he belongs, but his head is somewhere else.
He can’t stop thinking about the way Tim said he’ll try to rape and kill me , like it was just a fact of the case, like it didn’t matter. Can’t stop thinking about the bruises under Tim’s eyes. Wonders if he’d find bruises on the rest of Tim’s body if he had bothered to look.
“He’s here,” is all the warning he gets before he hears the crack of metal hitting bone and bone hitting ceramic over the earpiece. He’s shoving through the crowd, barrelling toward the bathroom where he watched Tim disappear not two minutes ago, unafraid of mowing down anyone in his way.
The other part of their killer’s M.O. - the part that didn’t click into place until just now - is that he works fast . He has to, if he’s going to lure, trap, rape, and kill someone in a public bathroom before a witness walks in. So by the time Jason bursts through the door, he’s already on his way out the window, and Tim is on the floor of the bathroom, blown pupils fixed on the ceiling as short, shallow breaths hiss through his teeth and between his bluish lips.
Jason doesn’t hesitate. He pulls the gun out of the holster under his jacket and points, pulls the trigger once, twice, three times. Blood sprays across the ceramic tiles and the window snaps shut as the killer’s body falls limp and slips slowly to the floor.
He takes just enough time for a double-tap - Tim probably won’t recognize the gory mess of the killer's face at this point, even if the haze of two consecutive overdoses and one probable traumatic rape cleared enough for him to remember an image of his attacker - and jam the bathroom door handle with the trash can before leaning over Tim and pulling out the narcan.
Slipping his palm under the base of Tim’s skull and tipping his head back slightly, Jason administers the naloxone via one nostril, then the other after about ninety seconds. Tim’s breathing starts to deepen after another sixty or so, and Jason maneuvers him over onto his side.
When Tim starts to come back to awareness, he moves slowly to wrap his arms around himself, shuddering. And then he croaks, “Is he dead?”
“Yeah,” Jason says, taking off his jacket and draping it over Tim. “C’mon. We gotta go.”
“I don’t think I can keep Cass off your back about this.”
“Don’t worry about Cass. The deal was to drive Bruce insane. Pretty sure we’ve met that goal without even trying.”
“He never used morphine before.”
“Changed his hunting patterns. Like we talked about. Can you walk?”
Jason’s safehouse is closer than the Batcave, and he’s pretty sure he has everything that even Bruce could possibly have when it comes to overdose treatment. Which is how Tim ends up in his bed, wrapped in multiple blankets, propped up on a pillow and face streaked with eyeliner and glitter as Jason continues to monitor in case he needs another dose of naloxone.
Jason doesn’t want to ask, but his wheels are turning restlessly, and the only way to settle them is to confirm what he already knows. “You weren’t on the case when you were attacked the first time.”
Tim shrugs, looking vaguely in Jason’s direction but not at Jason, and talks to the pillow. “I didn’t even know there was a case. Didn’t put the disappearances together until I was trying to figure out who got me high and tried to strangle me in a club bathroom.”
Still turning. There’s more to say. “He didn’t force you the first time. To take the drugs.”
“Why bother?” Tim answers frankly. “It’s a lot easier to overpower someone after they’ve willingly roofied themselves.”
He’s not meeting Jason’s eyes, and Jason takes that as permission to let the conversation lapse for a few minutes while he struggles to swallow down the bitterness threatening to rise like vomit in his esophagus.
It’s hard not to say what did you think would happen? But as acerbic and spiteful as Jason can get, and as haunted as he is by the memory of his mother’s slack, blue-lipped face, nothing that Tim has ever done - no matter how hurtful, no matter how stupid - means that he deserved what happened to him.
What Jason does allow himself to say is, “Don’t go alone. Not ever again.” He pauses, then adds, “You need someone to watch your back.”
Tim squeezes his eyes tightly shut, his lips thinning like he’s trying to hold something back. Then he exhales and just says, “Okay.”
Sameness has a savour for you. Even the sting
When someone flinches at ‘I love you’
Is not unwelcome, like the ulcer on your tongue
Whetted on the ridges of a tooth.
And when he slams you hard against the frame,
The pore-ticked sallow bruise seems truer
Than the speed, the spasm, with which you came.
So nothing happens. No matter what you try,
The huge lost innocence at which you aimed
Recedes like long perspectives, like the sky
Square at the end of Fifth whitening at dawn
Unseen, as you watch the unlit cabs go by…
~ You, Very Young, in New York
by Hannah Sullivan