title: constellations
summary: he was just a mark. a pathetically easy mark. you could almost always find one at this time of night on a saturday, if you peered into enough back alleys. —jayroy, drabble. jayroy week 2017.
word count: ~720
cw: underage drinking, drug abuse
prompt: day 1—first meetings
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The boy was drunk alright. Stone-cold-fucking wasted for all to smell, and apparently making a bed out the back of the bar—his arm was slung across his eyes like a dramatic mockery as he reclined among the boxes with only a draped leather jacket to warm him, and if Jason were him, he'd thank whatever god he believed in that it was barely October and Gotham had yet to settle into the more bitter end of its winter weather. Jason had borne the brunt of enough icy nights to know, awoken trembling and sniffling with wind-bitten fingers.
This boy seemed headed for a similar waking (or worse) if he wasn't found soon, though. He could only have been a few years older than Jason himself, with a scatter of freckles just about visible in the spare light to knock even more years off the look of him. Not that that had any bearing on anything. It didn't. He was just a mark. A pathetically easy mark. You could almost always find one at this time of night on a Saturday, if you peered into enough back alleys.
Jason rarely found them so young, though. He hesitated; the dim din of heavy music barely masked the cacophony of the crowd inside. He wondered if the boy had friends in there. He wondered if they'd noticed the boy was gone. He wondered if they cared enough to look. If the boy had found himself in this spot, he doubted it.
Jason swore softly. It doesn't matter. If he had the time and luxury to babysit anyone else, let alone an alkie, he wouldn't be here, would he?
Take the money. Take the jacket. Go buy mom something nice.
Swallowing his apprehension, Jason knelt at the boy's side. High cheekbones, brown skin, maybe a little Native American. It was hard to tell, but his hair might have been red, burnished bronze in the sickly city light; as Jason dug into his jacket pocket, he spied a band T-shirt underneath. No one he'd heard of. Maybe a local band. Judging by the battered drumstick tucked into the jacket lining, maybe he was the local band. That wasn't all hidden in his jacket, either—Jason's calloused fingers brushed a sleek phone, and a heavy wallet fell into Jason's palm, the leather old and tarnished. His thumb traced something embellished into the corner. Frowning, Jason pulled it out and turned it over in his palm. Initials—R.W.H. A keepsake?
Jason lingered on it for a moment. Usually, he'd swipe the entire wallet. They'd make a few dollars even after the money ran out. But this felt wrong, somehow. It's too battered to make a profit, he told himself as he opened the thing and fished out a handful of notes (more than he'd been expecting, maybe even enough for a few weeks), steadfastly avoiding the boy's ID (never good to attach a name to a mark, if it even was his real name in a bar like this). He caught sight of a few numbers though (shit, more than a few), scrawled onto the torn corners of paper napkins and accented with kisses.
"Good luck with that," Jason muttered as he pocketed the change.
The boy twitched. Jason froze. He murmured softly—but only rolled over onto his side, eyes cracking open but far too dazed for even a vague semblance of awareness. He gazed past as if Jason were invisible, or too insignificant to draw attention. Jason might have relaxed, then, if that weren't the moment he spotted the track marks. The length of cloth. The used needle.
Oh. Something snagged in his throat. He's one of those.
Alcohol, needles and dive bars. Either he was desperate or really fucking stupid.
His stomach lurched; Jason looked away from the needle, though it was no use, really. There'd only be more of it at home. He was almost done here, anyway. No point lingering. Not even for a scruffy, pretty boy with an evident death wish, strung out beneath a starless sky.
"Keep the jacket," Jason said, as if it made a difference. As if the boy weren't on cloud-fucking-nine right now. Jason almost envied him as he turned away and darted into the shadows, leaving the poor bastard to the mercy of the city.
Plenty more where he came from.
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