Bruce opens Jason's bedroom door, quieter than a ghost, and immediately has to duck under the alarm clock that comes flying for his head. “Calm down, Jason, it’s just me,” he says, and ducks again to avoid a book. This time it's clearly thrown with purpose, and isn't the reflex of a highly-trained vigilante caught unawares at 4 in the morning.
The book he catches out of the air, because Jason may be feeling a little petty, but once the pettiness has faded he’ll be irritated with himself for denting the corner of, ah, Salmon Fishing in Yemen, so save it Bruce must.
“Calm down,” he says again, even though this long after waking (what is it, 20 whole seconds?) it’s a certainty that Jason’s fully awake and fully conscious. “I apologise for breaking into your apartment. It was an emergency.”
Jason squints at him, sleep tousled and warm-looking in his pyjamas, hair in disarray, gun in hand. “The emergency better be you dying, B, or I’m gonna manifest destiny and make it happen.”
“Worse,” Bruce says grimly. “It’s Alfred.”
Jason’s face goes from mildly-irritated to cracked clean in half so quick that it hits almost like a physical force. Bruce runs over the last three lines in his head, and he winces so hard his neck seizes a little. “Stop,” he says to both Jason and himself. “It isn’t… that. I wouldn’t-, if it was, I would have…” He sighs; 4 AM is a little late, even for him. “It isn’t that,” he says lamely.
They’re both quiet for a hideously long moment, before Jason heaves a sigh heavy enough to rattle rafters if rafters were a feature in a sh*tty 1 bedroom apartment 3 feet away from the Narrows. “You’re such an idiot,” he says vehemently, but he gets to his feet, disappears his gun into a drawer, and brushes past Bruce to head towards his tiny little kitchen. “What the f*ck is going on?” he says, getting the electric kettle going.
Bruce limps after him, carefully resisting the urge to tug at his shirtsleeve awkwardly like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
(Or tinned peaches, oh. Bruce has been told that he had been a fiend for them, as a child, used to drive Alfred a little wild how a toddler that barely comes up to his knee had the coordination to steal a can of peaches from the pantry, and operate a can opener, all without slicing his chubby little fingers off on the jagged lid, or even giving himself tetanus.
Apparently he’d stopped altogether, after his parents, and some days he’ll think of tinned peaches and be amazed at how he’s less now than he was age 4.)
(It’s a strange time for strange reminiscences).
“I have a twisted ankle,” Bruce starts, because the scene unfortunately needs setting.
“Congrats,” Jason says, pulling out a tin of decaf, the devil’s sip. “Unless Alfred did the breaking, I don’t see your point.”
Bruce clears his throat. “We had a… disagreement, regarding my going out, tonight.” Maybe it had everything to do with the goddamned date and nothing to do with what definitely counts as a minor injury to the Bat, but Bruce doesn’t think he needs to be overemphasise the point. “I promised that it wouldn’t be a full patrol. Just some recon, and I would be in civilian disguise, and that I would not put myself at unnecessary risk.”
A boiling hot cup of uncaffeinated sludge gets put in front of him, and Bruce stifles a sigh as he warms his cold, cold fingers against it. Nothing like snow in late April to remind you that if there is a god, they most certainly hate Gotham. Jason’s uncharacteristically quiet, and Bruce has to wonder how well his half-deception is landing. Certainly, his disagreement with Alfred had been triggered by his decision to (“Recklessly, sir, this is reckless behaviour”) go out on this most unfortunate of anniversaries, but he can’t even be properly stoically sad because the night has gone so, so embarrassingly wrong.
He takes a sip and wishes he had just done his usual, gone into an alcoholic trance in the 36 hour period between the 26th and the 28th of April. Alfred says his mother used to tip a bit of whiskey into his milk when he fussed too harshly as a baby, and it’s poetic justice that it’s a technique that still works more often than not.
“I need your help,” he forces out, and it’s humiliating this pickle he’s gotten himself into, and it’s an unspeakable pleasure because it’s the 27th and here Jason is, whole and hearty and hale, not three feet away. “My Hyundai Elantra was just stolen.”
There’s absolute silence, and Jason’s poker face is far better than Bruce remembers, because there isn’t a twitch or tremble at all. Just a stony silence, until Jason frowns, opens his mouth that’s half in a scowl to say-
“Pegged you as a Honda kind of man, myself.”
-
Jason isn’t sure that he’s actually awake, actually in his kitchen, and actually listening to Bruce talk about stolen sedans. He discreetly looks down at his feet, and yeah, he’s wearing his threadbare pair of Christmas-themed socks that are close to a decade old. It’s real and he’s awake, because when he’s asleep the dreams that come necessitate bare feet (good dreams that usually have him on the beach, getting the skin on the soles of his feet roasted off, a persistent callback to a beach trip Bruce had taken him on many, many years ago, a strange, glorious day where the sun had felt maybe 12 inches away from the crown of his head) or his green Robin boots (bad, terrible, no-good, awful dreams).
He looks down and his pair of snowflake-patterned socks with a hole by the right big toe stare back up at him, and Jason doesn’t know what the f*ck he’s meant to do with all of this. He’d planned to sleep as much of the 27th away, phone turned off, any indicator of the date torn away and set aside, because he’s got coping mechanisms that work, thanks.
He had been in the middle of a dream with boots on, though, when Bruce had come barging in. And after the split-second heart-cracking moment when he had thought that Alfred was, uhm, poorly, the night’s veered down an incomprehensible path, filled with things that don’t make sense.
Jason sips his terrible coffee, and leans back against the counter. “Go on, then, don’t be shy. What the f*ck happened?”
Bruce looks at him calculatingly, but the man’s ankle must be hurting something fierce and he must be high off his tit* on pain meds, because he doesn’t even try to hide how relieved he is that Jason’s going along with this.
(Whatever this is).
Bruce does a neat little ahem, because rich people manners dictate that a good phlegmy throat-clearing is simply not on, and launches into a spectacularly insane story about how he had been driving around in the night masquerading as an Uber driver before he’d pulled up behind one of the hundred thousand alleys that all connect to the Iceberg Lounge. It’s an all-hours kind of place, where mobsters are always being chauffeured in and out, while mobster henchmen are in need of Uber carpooling because they’re in a much, much lower tax bracket, so Bruce had had plenty of cover.
He had left his car, locked of course, to fix some bugs along one of the service entrances, but when he had returned to his Elantra, she had been nowhere to be found.
“I didn’t want to contact Alfred, wake him up just because of my misstep. Your home was closer, and…” Bruce takes a breath, then stares very intensely at his coffee. “I knew you would be here.”
Big guy doesn’t sound terribly confident about that, not really, but who could blame him? Especially tonight, of all nights, Christ. Jason doesn’t pick at it, doesn’t bring notice to it, mock Bruce for his weaknesses, point out that he could have gotten into any one of the dozens of cars by the lounge and gone home for the night. It’s not because he’s kind; he isn’t.
It’s because it’s easier to feel real and alive and present when Bruce is here, is here precisely and specifically because he wants to see that Jason is real and alive and present, and it’s more embarrassingly affirming than a thousand pairs of socks could be.
Not a chance in hell of him admitting to it, of course. And not a chance of him going to bed either, after this, but at least Bruce is inadvertently promising a very, very distracting night.
“Do you need a ride back, is that it?”
Bruce’s lips thin, and he opens his mouth before it snaps back shut with a click. You get used to silences around Bruce, the good kinds (his bizarre tendency to take a full two minutes before he can ever decide on an ice cream flavour) and the bad kinds (near everything else) both. This one’s closer to neutral than anything, though he’s clearly wrestling with something in his head.
Jason just keeps sipping his terrible coffee, bides his time. It always pays off; it’s always rum raisin.
“Would you like to come and steal my car back with me?” Bruce says at long last, trying the words out in his mouth.
Not the answer Jason was expecting, but certainly one he’s happy to do something about. He grins, too many teeth bared. “First smart thing you’ve done all night, big guy.”
-
On a bad ankle, tired and intrinsically sad, Bruce hadn’t had much more of an idea than check on Jason in that hazy moment where he realised he’d been robbed on the night leading up to the anniversary of the worst day of his life. As if a stolen Hyundai means that Jason will be stolen from him (again), as if it’s an omen to remind him of how he couldn’t keep yet another thing safe, as if history had wanted to repeat itself.
So he had gamely limped the 4 blocks it took to get here, driven by instinct on this dourest day just to see Jason for a little while, just to check.
In theory, upon clapping eyes on Jason, it should have been enough. Limp back down the 5 flights of stairs, call for a cab, head home, call it a night, get started on a bottle of scotch (or three), wake up on the change of the calendar date, and then it’s a whole other 364 days before he’s stricken again.
Jason offering him a ride home, even, had been well beyond expectations. But the prospect of calling it a night on this night had felt unbearable, a thousand times worse than the throbbing ache of his ankle, and his mouth had run away before his brain had come fully online. It’s the decaf.
(It’s the grief).
A slip of the tongue, Jason’s cheerful acceptance, and instead of blackout drunkenness he finds himself riding pillion on Jason’s souped-up motorbike, wearing the only helmet available despite his aggressive, vehement protest. The compromise had been Bruce in a motorcycle helmet, Jason in his Red Hood, and what a sight they make zooming down the quiet streets of Gotham, but Bruce is far, far too tired and far, far too glad to kick up a fuss.
His phone’s in Jason’s hand, the blinking dot of the Elantra looking like she’s comfortably parked in front of a 7/11 not all that far away from the Lounge. “Prob’ly gone to get some salsa and chips after jacking a nice car that'll be easy to resell,” Jason shouts over the vrrrrooom of the racing engine, with the calm confidence of a man who has stolen an easily resellable car (or, ah, tyres instead) and then treated himself to some cheap and cheerful junkfood after. “Listen, I need you to not be all I Am Vengeance I Am The Night about this, okay? It’s not a cute look for the Red Hood to be helping some dork get his car back from some street rats, but I also can’t be having poor f*ckin’ Uber drivers get robbed when they go off to take a leak, or something. Just be cool, I’ll do the talking.”
Without the cowl, Bruce doesn’t think he cuts a particularly vengeful figure, but he nods. “I appreciate that this is your territory, Red Hood.”
“Damn straight,” Jason says, sounding more entertained than anything else. It’s a short, short ride to get to the 7/11, and even before they pull up in the parking lot Bruce spots his off-white car.
She looks in much the same condition, an older model from 2005, artful dent in the front-left bumper, precision scraping on the passenger side door, a series of 6 stickers from various national parks to imply I am an outdoorsy person but also this car has been driven round the country so much her transmission’s probably f*cked. It’s one of Bruce’s more favoured undercover cars. He feels wonderfully average when he’s in it, just a man with a bad haircut who had a life-changing experience at the Grand Canyon once but is content with keeping it to himself.
He thinks he’s looking at it a little too longingly, but the helmet visor means no one can see his eyes, so it’s fine. No need for Jason to know that on top of everything else, Bruce also on occasion enjoys cosplaying the most sublimely plain man on Earth.
Jason pulls up right by the car, kicking up the kickstand smoothly. “This her, then?”
“Yes,” Bruce says in a very even, deeply regular voice.
“Ah, sh*t,” someone says, in a markedly more frantic voice.
It’s. It’s a child, looking startled from his seat on the bonnet, smouldering cigarette tucked behind his ear. “Ah, sh*t,” the child says again, the bag of Cheetos clenched terrifyingly tight in his fist.
“Language,” Bruce says distantly, because the boy looks nothing like Jason, is blond and gangly and 16, thereabouts, all limbs and freckled and too skinny by half, but Bruce should have remembered how he responds to children stealing his motor vehicles for the purposes of keeping themselves going. He’s gritting his teeth so tight he feels like he’s slicing through enamel like soft butter.
“Language,” Jason says mockingly, though it likely seems horrific coming from the still steel of Red Hood’s mask. “Kid, don’t, like, piss yourself or anything. Did you jack this car ‘round by the Lounge?”
The boy looks like he won’t be able to obey that order, even if he juts his bottom lip out and puffs his chest up like he’s trying to scare off the competition. “So? What if I did?” he growls out, lips orange with cheese dust, whole frame trembling. “And I’m not admittin’ to nothin’. Maybe this is my car. You don’t know!”
Jason’s laughing, climbing off his bike but keeping plenty of distance. The clerk inside the 7/11 is looking out at them, but having perceived that they aren’t an armed threat, she seems content to just take a quick picture of them and then go back to the textbook she’s got in her hand. Bruce feels like an awkward passer-by, wishes he had a textbook too, but instead he has to bear witness to the world’s least aggressive confrontation.
“Look, kid,” Jason is saying. “It’s beyond my non-existent paycheque to hound every carjack. Half the time at least I’m pro stealing cars, but this one belongs to my friend.”
“Oh, oh,” the boy pipes up, voice high and cracked in teenaged rebellion, “so it’s okay if I don’t have a car, because your friend’s more important. Oh, I see how it is. Red Hood champion of the people my ass.”
Jason seems to be stifling another laugh, but Bruce is genuinely stricken by what is clearly a case of double-standards. He himself turns a blind eye to most petty crime, anything that isn’t armed or hurtful is fair game in a city predominantly underwritten by the benevolent, deep-pocketed Wayne Insurance, but….
It’s his Elantra, with her 6 stickers. There’s backstory, even, which child he would’ve taken to which park, and there’s a stack of napkins from fast-food joints he fastidiously keeps in the glovebox because part of the story of the him that drives this car is that he has an excellent relationship with all his kids. All of them are living! But almost all are living away from home, and when he’s feeling a little lonely he’ll pull through a drive through because he remembers that Tim’s go-to is a plain chicken sandwich, hold the pickle.
Jason’s too busy dealing with the boy’s philosophical question to notice Bruce’s torment, happily. “I get your point, kid, I promise you I do, but my friend’s a mopey kinda guy, and he’s really gonna get mopey if he loses his dinky little car today. It’s a timing thing, it’s.” Jason pauses, and god, he’s trying to be delicate, he’s trying to be delicate about his death because Bruce’s here, god, god.
“It’s a sad anniversary for him, all right? How about you give him his keys back, I’ll treat you to some bacon and pancakes, and afterwards we’ll go ‘round the financial district and I’ll show you how to boost a Porsche.”
The boy doesn’t seem appeased, and why would he? What type of life results in an underweight 16-year-old stealing a car at 4 o’clock in the morning? Bruce’s first impulse, confronted with this, is to offer everything, even if today should be a clear, clear reminder why Bruce shouldn’t. But he doesn’t know how to stop this basest instinct. He’ll start slow, verify if the boy’s got parents who could do with some assistance, and failing that, he’ll-
It’s like Jason can read the thoughts in his head, because as he’s bartering with the boy he comes to stand fully in front of Bruce, breaking line of sight, and it’s… unclear, who he’s trying to protect from whom.
“What do you say, kid?” Jason asks.
The boy’s bristling, and he’s holding his bag of chips like a different boy might hold a tyre iron, but he’s not lunged at them yet. “I don’t trust you.”
“That’s generally a good idea, but kid, believe me, today’s not the day to be a cranky car thief.” Jason pats himself down, finds his wallet. “I’ve got, like, 50 bucks on me. That, breakfast, and a professional carjacking tutorial’s surely better than a sh*tty old 2nd-hand car, right?”
“Sports cars are harder to fence,” Bruce hears the boy say, and it’s hard to argue against cold, hard facts when all that’s holding him to his Elantra is several years of pretty good memories and a handful of bits and bobs. Jason’s making an effort to be equitable, to be fiercely kind in a way that’s very Jason, but if Bruce doesn’t step up today, when will he ever (redeem himself)?
He taps Jason on the shoulder. “Red Hood, it’s fine. Let him have the car. Young man, I don’t know what your living situation is like, but….” He wrestles with his breast pocket, pulls out Cynthia over in HR (New Acquisitions)’s business card. “If you or your parents or anyone need some type of employment or education support, she’ll get you set up.”
Cynthia in HR (New Acquisitions) is a Gotham Saint, just about, a terrifying 6 foot tall Haitian-American who has single-handedly established a system to embed anyone aged 16 and up into some sort of WE-funded or WE-adjacent support. She plans to meet the needs of the entirety of Gotham before she hits 45, she says, at which point she’ll presumably officially be canonised by the Catholic Church, or at least by the Archbishop of Gotham, whose sister it’s been said Cynthia saved from being run over by a drunk driver.
Crime’s gone down a little, quality of living has gone up a lot during Batman’s tenure. Bruce is still trying to figure out what proportion of that can directly be traced to little business cards handed out that lead to WE HR (New Acquisitions).
The boy doesn’t look like he trusts Bruce very much either, but he does accept the little gold-edged black card, even if he doesn’t relinquish his bag of chips or the car keys. “What’s your deal?” he asks sharply, shrinking away from their hulking figures. “How come you’re friends with Red Hood?”
Bruce doesn’t think twice, doesn’t seem capable of thinking twice today. “A long, long time ago, he tried to steal the tyres from my car. I have-, ah, no, we have been trying to look after each other ever since. I apologise for hunting you down, please help yourself to my car. I promise I’m usually much better at being stolen from. It’s just been a day,” he says, lamely, trying to massage his forehead but only meeting helmet. “Can I get my stuff out of it first before you take off?”
They’re at a little stand-off, the three of them, the 7/11 cashier idly watching them as she slurps a slurpee. The boy’s nerve breaks first, thankfully, and he throws the keys right at Bruce’s head before going to hide behind Jason’s back.
“Good choice,” Bruce tells him gravely, and goes round to the boot to grab his surveillance kit, distantly wondering how removable bumper stickers are.
-
Jason supposes that he should take it as a win that no one’s been hurt, the car’s fine, and Bruce somehow has gotten through this without cracking right down the middle and offering to adopt yet another child he’s not very well-equipped to handle.
Speaking of children…. Jason looks over his shoulder, where the boy’s wondrously staring at Bruce peeling off a ‘Arches National Park’ vinyl sticker with the sh*tty knife they give you when you get the pancake set at McDonald’s. “Real talk, kid, is this more a side income sort of thing, or are you in real trouble?”
The boy looks at him, and makes a face. “Wasn’t even gonna sell it,” he mutters, aggrieved. “My sister’s startin’ community college in fall, but it’s like an hour and a half away if she takes the tram. I’ve been stealing car parts and selling ‘em for years, so I know all the ones she can afford to think ‘bout buying are clunkers. This one looks like a clunker, but she’s a dream under the hood.” He sighs gustily. “Smoother ‘n butter. Was gonna get my friend to do a Facebook Marketplace thing for it, so’s Sammy can get a real nice real plain car for real cheap and Anton gets a bit of money too, everyone’s happy.”
Christ, the entire ecosystem of people struggling, and them struggling some more to help each other out. Jason remembers that tenuous network of holding on to each other to just barely keep their heads above water, and despite himself, he’d forgotten, a little, how desperate and difficult and kind it could be.
To be reminded today of all days is a doozy. “If you tell my friend over there that you’re stealing the car so’s your sister can go to school, he'll probably be real stoic, but I promise you inside that man’ll be weeping tears of joy.” Jason resists the urge to ruffle the boy’s hair, because he’s too young to be bringing this much Dad Energy to this moment. “No one’s got their eye on you? You been selling the parts somewhere safe?”
He nods, looking a little irritated. “I’m not a noob. It’s just that this is my first time stealing a whole car, is all.”
“Yeah, and kid you gotta be a little smarter with sh*t like this. Lots of cars nowadays have GPS trackers, and it can be hard to spot ‘em. Keep to stealing parts, all right? Don’t wanna get your sister all sad ‘cos you got sent to juvie for stealing a tagged Subaru.” Jason pats himself down, and is glad to find an old paper napkin and a pen in his jacket pocket. “Here,” he says, quickly scribbling the number to one of his burner phones down. “Big guy over there already gave you a card, but this one’s a direct line to me. Stay smart, stay safe, and if you can’t do neither, time to call big brother.” Jason laughs, pleased with himself. “That even rhymed.”
“You’re so lame,” the boy says, though he sounds more impressed than offended. “But thanks, I guess.” He studiously avoids eye contact, staticky and embarrassed, glad even, possibly. “You maybe are a champion of the people. A little.”
Jason feels well within his place to flick the boy on the forehead. “Jesus, wouldn’t have killed you to stop at ‘thanks’, kid.” But he’s more amused than anything else, and the boy has clearly gotten over his deathly fear if he’s feeling bold enough to tease the Red Hood. “Everyone’s gotta do their part and try to look after each other. Bats and birds infest the whole damn city, and even when we f*ck up or just can’t do enough, you gotta admit, we at least sure are trying.”
They drop into a bit of a lull, watching Bruce engineer a way to fit $50,000 worth of surveillance equipment into an errant shoebox. There’s also a stack of tissues in there, and the curled-up stickers, an incomprehensible mishmash of nonsensical things, but from the sliver of his eyes visible through the visor, it’s clear that Bruce is relieved.
“Your friend’s kinda weird. Not, like, bad weird,” the boy says, watching Bruce shut the driver’s side door daintily with his foot. “But definitely weird weird.”
“Buddy,” Jason says, looking away from Bruce for a second to startle at how the sky’s gone pink and threatening to hit them all with a finer morning of the 27th than any of them deserve, “no arguments there.”
-
Bruce isn’t sure how he finds himself as the one being treated to pancakes. It’s just past 5 in the morning, the sky starting to turn the watery yellow of a Gotham morning about to be choked by smog, and they’re sat in a little booth by the window of a rundown diner manned by an older woman who did not seem at all concerned by the appearance of tall, frightful men in the flesh.
“Got your coffee, honey,” she says mildly, pouring a mug out for Bruce and his bad wig. “Get you that cup of chamomile in a sec,” she tells Jason and his bare face, and she’s off, and it’s just them and her and the gently snoring man in the other corner of the diner, an entire universe unto itself.
Bruce doesn’t know what to do, what to say, just holds his mug and reminds himself not to jog his leg because it’ll make his box of belongings jangle. “How…. are you?” he tries, even though he’d struggle to find a worse day to ask it, surely.
Jason, thankfully, looks more amused than offended by his discomfort. It’d been a turning point in their relationship, for him to tell Jason in scotch-slurred words over the phone just how constantly, constantly out of depth he feels, how unforgivable he is but how he wants to be forgiven anyways, how he’d used up all the luck in this life and the next (and the next and the next) to’ve gotten Jason back, and did you know, a weak man only grows weaker in the presence of a miracle?
(Because he doesn’t know when the glory and the light will end).
That had been last year’s… anniversary, which was why the plan this year had been to get black-out drunk and then lock himself in a Faraday cage, and instead here they are.
Jason stares at him, looking electric in the fluorescent light, and Bruce feels like he can barely stay sane.
“What’s the deal with the stickers?” Jason asks instead of answering. “Seemed almost a bigger priority than the car.”
Instinctively Bruce throws an arm over his little box, palm pressed to Arches. “It’s part of the cover story,” he hedges, though he knows he’s not getting away with it.
“Uh huh, sure. And what story is that?”
Bruce doesn’t want to say, of course. Isn’t anywhere near drunk enough to be making admittances of this order, but also can’t make himself lie today. Not to Jason, because what if that’s what makes the miracle break?
He keeps his eye on his little box of things.
“The story is that, the me that drives the car is a large fan of national parks. I like to go to them alone, but I take my kids there too, every once in a while. There’s a sticker for where this me would’ve taken each of you.” Bruce laughs, and hopes it sounds regular. “It’s a pretty bad cover story, given how much I prefer the city to nature. It just…. It was a story that grew on me. And it wasn’t one I wanted to let go of, today.”
Jason goes quiet except to say a polite “Thank you, ma’am,” when his tea comes, and Bruce reminds himself that this has already been a better anniversary than most. Not only is Jason alive, he’s been able to be in his company for hours. Lucky, lucky man. He just wishes he knew when his luck would run out.
“Which one’s mine?”
Bruce blinks. “Ah. Saguaro. You used to be fascinated by cacti, when you were smaller. I would’ve wanted to take you there.”
“And which one’s yours?”
He doesn’t understand the question. “Why would I have one?”
It’s the wrong answer, because Jason’s face twists something awful. “We a happy family, in this story of yours? All your kids are big and grown, and we’re… we’re close?”
“Yes.” Bruce clears his throat. “In the story.”
“Then there’s not a chance in hell your adult ass kids wouldn’t have taken you to parks too, go out and do things together again.” Jason sounds determined, almost sounds mad. “Jesus f*cking Christ, even in your idealised cover story you make yourself be alone, Bruce, and I didn’t even die and f*ck things up in this one!”
“Forgive me,” rockets out of Bruce, because he’ll do anything (almost anything) to not upset Jason today, and he’s barely holding on to himself. “None of you ‘f*ck things up for me’, none of you have to please me, none of you owe me anything, not even in my head. It felt… self-congratulatory, to stick a sticker on and pretend it was from one of you, to look at it and think this is my right.”
Jason looks like he’s trying to hold himself back from exploding clean out of his skin. “You’re such a weirdo,” he says, and he says it like he’s in mourning, before looking away from Bruce and pulling his phone out.
Bruce winces. That’s the end of that, then. Hardly his idea of a good time, being flayed open like this, but here they both still are, so it could be worse. It has been worse.
It’s the morning of the 27th and he’s eating pancakes his son is treating him to. Arguably, it could hardly be better.
-
Jason would never pretend he’s a paragon of mental health, or anything. He knows his methods to approximate wellbeing are unorthodox, often highly criminal, but he’d like to think that at the end of the day, he knows how to take care of himself. When to push himself (to wash dishes that have been languishing in the sink for 2.5 days), when not (April 27ths for the rest of forevers).
The whole dead-back-to-life thing was a mess that he’s still resolutely not looking too hard at, but in a general sort of way, he’s all right. He’s learned how to be all right, and he’ll learn how to get better too. It’s a process, is grieving and recovering and living, and Jason knows himself well enough to know he’ll get to where he's going eventually.
Drunken sad calls at 3 AM are one thing; functioning alcoholism isn’t great but it still functions. Bruce and his stickers and his cover story fantasy, though, Jesus. It’s a whole other order of things.
It’s sad, gently resigned stagnation. It’s a sticker your kid might’ve insisted on at age 13, maybe, and then nothing past that. It’s a uniform entombed in glass, and it’s one thing if Bruce is just punishing himself, because he’s earned that.
It’s another if Bruce is still there, in that warehouse with a body in his hands, and maybe Bruce doesn’t fear dreams where he’s in uniform because maybe he just never has dreams where he isn’t.
Jason can feel his eyes burn, and he wants to scream at Bruce, yell and ask how are you worse at this than me? How are you suffering more than me, how is that even fair, you caused this!
But that way ruin lies, that’s where quicksand gets you and you give the future away because you think you don’t, f*ck, don’t have the right to it.
So he takes his phone out instead of shouting, and sends a text to Alfred instead.
Kidnapping B for the day. Want anything from Virginia?
Asparagus are in season, I believe. Do take care, both of you, and I shall see you at dinner.
That done, he checks a map, does some mental calculation, and puts his phone away.
It’s like the boy and his sister and his friend, like the distribution chain working to get a Hyundai to where she needs to be; it’s struggling people struggling to help someone struggle less.
“Get up,” he tells a morose Bruce who’s just poking bits of soggy pancake around his plate. “This isn’t ideal, because I know you and I know you’d lose your f*cking mind if I took you to some fossil beds, but beggars can’t be choosers on the East Coast. Shenandoah and her Blue Ridge Mountains are like 4 hours away from here, 2.5 with us on the bike, and we’re gonna go and enjoy the f*cking splendour of nature, or whatever, and then I’m gonna buy you a sticker. Do you understand me, Bruce?”
They’ve got eyes on each other, and it feels heavy and it feels good.
“We’re gonna go to a national park right now, and I’m gonna help you start a collection again, and it’s gonna be a real one this time.”
It’s probably going to be cold, it might rain, hell, the gift shop might not even be open this early in the season. But Jason’s going to get them there, they can get rain ponchos from a 7/11 on the way if it becomes necessary, and they’ll just break into the gift shop if it comes to it.
He stands up and drops his 50 dollar note for Mary-Anne, and inside his head half-remembered lines to Country Road are playing up. Time for some healing, because the best time for it is the worst time for it. He watches realisation spread across Bruce’s face, watches delicate, tentative hope sink into the corners of his eyes, and watches the slow rise of a slower smile.
“Let’s go.”
-
Five and a half hours later, Alfred gets sent a picture of Bruce and Jason looking a little dazed and a lot radiant, soaking wet in the terrible, cheap plastic raincoats that are the purview of gas stations everywhere. Jason is hunched over and he looks like he’s mid-sneeze, which makes sense given the boy’s allergies and the field of wildflowers at their feet. Bruce looks mildly concussed, listing to one side with half his weight on Jason, his bad ankle looking twice the size of his good ankle. It looks like tail-end of the storm, there are water droplets on the lens, and it’s unimaginable who they could possibly have convinced to take a picture of them in that environment, even more unimaginable why they wouldn’t have asked for another retake, except maybe they had looked at it and saw themselves looking happy too, and that had been enough.
Alfred takes a long, long moment looking at it with his chronically dry eyes and his unbearably tight throat, before putting his phone away.
He has a lavish, loving dinner to prepare.
