AN: This is for JayTim week 2016, day three- suit & tie
Jason came back from the war hurt and broken, but when he sang he was, for that short time, whole. Comfortable. On stage he was himself again, because on stage he knew who that was. Every night when he grabbed the microphone he took back the pieces of himself that had been lost, taken, shot at and frozen and starved. When he sang he called back those pieces from where they'd been left, far away, across an ocean and still not far enough. He drew them in, let the music fit them into place, and then showed the crowd how beautiful he could be again, with the holes filled and cracks sewn shut. He was something worth the crowds he drew in.
(He was worth it, their attention, their admiration. But not because we was whole. He wasn't.)
On a narrow stage in a tiny bar off a back alley on the edge of Gotham City, Jason Todd sang.
And Timothy Drake watched.
He watched as he played the piano, providing the foundation on which Jason rebuilt himself. Tim saw the transformation, the pain falling away, down his shoulders and through his fingertips, into the microphone and out into the air, and finally, finally gone.
(It went into the people as they listened. The pain was why the people listened. It became beautiful and intoxicating, Jason's struggles and horrors.)
Other clubs had elegant women singing of found love and lost love, of walks in the moonlight and walks they would never take again. Women with magnolias pinned into their hair, dresses that sparkled, draped over satin heels. Jason wasn't like those women; he didn't sing about the same things even when he said the same words, wasn't drawing in crowds by way of refined grace.
(But at times he would move as they did. A sway, the curve of his spine, the tease of his hip. Caressing the piano with lingering fingers. Tim's piano.)
His dark suit had seen better days but was well tended, well loved.
(Like Tim's piano.)
The two of them shared that space, a worn but polished stage of dark wood and satisfaction. Small, with a limited area for Jason to move around the baby grand. Just the two of them, no need for the horns or drums found in other lounges. Tim and Jason were enough with each other.
(Jason was enough alone. But he and Tim were good together.)
Late at night after the club closed they played together. Dick would still be behind the bar cleaning up, Mr. Wayne in his office going over the books. And Tim and Jason shared the bench, side by side, their fingers dancing along the keys. They made things then, sweet and sorrowful songs. Playful and angry. Intimate conversations spoken through the black and ivory. And Jason let himself be broken, the music, his and Tim's, filling in the emptiness with a warmth he hadn't felt in years.
"The sun didn't come out much," he said once.
"It doesn't come out much here, either," Tim answered, fingers grazing lazily alongside Jason's.
"True." But it was different, over there. While Jason couldn't explain why that was the case, Tim seemed to understand. And they kept on playing and that's all Jason ever said about it all.
(The emptiness was always there, the holes and cracks never filled. Tim saw it all and it was beautiful, the parts of himself Jason tried to hide from the world. From himself.)