If someone could get Jason drunk enough, he was a veritable poet. A philosopher. An aesthete - all of the things he would deny even knowing the meanings of come morning. He quoted books he'd never read, cited theories he'd never studied, lamented the tragic opera deaths of heroines he'd never seen. But best of all, with the right blood alcohol content, Jason - whose name was synonymous with brutality, nihilism, destruction - Jason Todd became a creator. An artist in his own right. This was a side of himself he was vaguely aware of when sober, as though the halves of his personality were next-door neighbors destined to never meet; one worked all day, the other pulled the graveyard shifts, after all. Nevertheless, he made sure to never reveal that side to anyone close enough to know his name. That meant he did the majority of his drinking at pubs too small to blip a radar, on the other other side of Gotham, away from ever-wary Bruce and maternalistic Alfred and curious/impressionable/smart-ass little brothers.
He didn't account for curious/critical/smart-ass older brother, though.
So, there Jason was, quietly musing Oscar Wilde in a dim booth of The Sword and Scripture (and, yes, he was aware that that sounded like the set-up for a bad joke), when in walked Dick Grayson. For some reason, as he watched Dick scan the bar for him, his gaze was drawn to the other's perfectly mussed hair. And, for another reason (a deep-seated need to compare, most likely), he ran a hand through his own. He looked at a strand he'd pulled loose and was almost shocked to see it dyed a deep black in place of the coppery red from years ago. Then he remembered. And then he laughed.
The sound, he noticed absently, drew Dick towards him. He slid into the seat opposite him and rested his elbows lightly on the table. "Finally found you," he said brightly.
"Didn't know you were looking," he replied.
"So you just naturally slink away to the smallest corners of Gotham where no one would think to look for you?" Dick propped his head up with a hand and regarded Jason with a smirk.
"Yes, actually." He gulped down the last of his drink and signalled a server over.
"How'd you even get in here? Don't tell me you used a fake."
Jason snickered at the disapproval evident in Dick's tone. "Security's not the greatest in places like this." He nodded towards the door, to the exact place a bouncer would stand. "Besides, in a couple of years, this'll be perfectly legal, just the way you like it."
"Well, technically just one year." Jason gave him a blank look, so Dick continued, "Wait, you mean you don't even know what tonight is? Haven't you seen, I don't know, a calendar at all today?"
Jason whipped out his cell phone and checked the date. There were mere minutes left in August 15th. Well, damn. He rolled his eyes as he put the phone back in his pocket. "You know I don't care about stuff like that."
"Oh, no you don't. You get to pull that shit every other year, but not this time. This one's a milestone."
Jason waved him off. "What're you talking about? I'm not even legal yet, what kind of milestone is that?" He chuckled to himself at the approaching server who had apparently caught a part of what he had just admitted.
The server eyed him carefully as she flipped open her note pad. "What can I get for you fellas?"
Before Jason could order, Dick cut him off. "A bottle of your strongest and your favorite chasers. We're celebrating a special day." He gave her a warm smile, which she easily returned.
"Well, why didn't you say so earlier? I would've made you something nice," she said to Jason, hitting him playfully with the pad.
"Didn't want to make a fuss," Jason returned. "Guess this means we're putting everything on your tab," he said to Dick.
"Okay, but that means you're not getting the gift I picked out for you," he replied, then turned to hand a card to the server. "Go ahead."
"Sure thing," she said and bounced back to the bar.
Jason enjoyed the silence that settled on them before Dick could invariably ruin it because enjoying the words not spoken was one thing he could actually upstage him at. Right on cue:
"Weird name for a bar," Dick mumbled, pretending to speak rhetorically.
Jason grunted. "I like it. It's got alliteration, paradox, symbolism, the whole nine."
"Symbolism?" Dick laughed. "Sounds like they just picked it from a cheesy name generator."
"No, seriously," Jason insisted. He felt a rush from his head to his chest, and his heart hammered away at the opportunity to pick apart something so mundane like the name of an admittedly forgettable pub. "Listen. 'Sword' represents war, violence, that whole thing. And 'Scripture' - meaning the Bible - represents peace and harmony. Together, they mean a fight for peace. Or a crusade for justice." He gestured to himself, then to Dick, for emphasis.
Dick leaned in and scanned Jason's features. "What have you done with the real Jason Todd?" he demanded.
Jason grinned. "Lookin' at him."
The server returned with shot glasses, an unopened bottle of vodka, and a bowl of sour gummy candies. "I'll join you boys for shots before you go," she said with a wink to Jason. "Just say the word."
Dick poured them each a shot before saying, "So, do you get any wiser the more you drink?"
Jason clinked glasses with him. "Guess we'll find out." And they downed their shots, immediately reaching for a candy to chase the burn. Jason's pulse quickened, and he focused on regulating his breathing as he chewed the gummy. "How'd you find me, anyway?" he asked after a while.
"Surveillance footage," Dick replied nonchalantly. Jason gave him a look. "What? I was desperate. You're really good at disappearing when you want to."
"Not good enough, apparently," he huffed, thinking back to haphazard encounters in Gotham and Blüdhaven alike.
"I guess not." Dick poured another pair of shots for the both of them. "Tell me, O Jason the Wise, what other nuggets of knowledge have you got?"
They toasted and drank again as Jason racked his brain for some erudite ramblings. It became easier as the alcohol hit his bloodstream, whispering sweet-nothings to his mind as it pulsed through his neurons. He stroked his chin, and Dick leaned in fractionally.
"Since we're on the subject of the Bible anyway," he began, "did you know that we're sitting at table thirty-four?" He raised his eyebrows, half-expecting the number to mean something to his brother on its own. It didn't. He sighed. "In the book of Genesis, Abraham's son is named after the thirty-fourth mention of his own name. Isaac." He popped another gummy into his mouth and thought out his words as he chewed. "I feel for Isaac, you know?" he said around the sour. "I mean, God told Abraham to kill the kid to prove his loyalty. Imagine how scared the poor kid was when he saw his own father brandishing that knife, how betrayed he must've felt by his own deity - and his own flesh and blood. Lucky for Isaac, God had seen enough and called off the whole affair."
Dick cocked his head to the side. "And you can relate?" he asked. Jason's eyes flashed angrily for a brief moment at his brother's inability to connect the dots.
"Of course I can," he spat. He paused to think of a way to make him understand. "Imagine...think of God in this story as Gotham. Fitting, ain't it? I'm Isaac in this scenario, and my father was forced to choose between us: Gotham or his own kid? And my father chose Gotham." This time, Jason poured the shots, his hands less steady then Dick's. He paused as he brought his glass to his lips. "Maybe it's better to think of God as dogma," he said. "You know, The Code? Never kill, never use guns, work from the shadows, et cetera, et cetera."
They drank again, and this time Dick forewent the chaser. "He wasn't the one who killed you, though," he said softly.
"Not directly," Jason said, "but he didn't avenge me. It was almost the same thing. He didn't avenge me because The Code, the dogma, his - our - God demanded otherwise."
"So, if you're sitting in front of me right now, that means we were forgiven, right? According to the story, at least."
Jason smirked. "Depends on how much you like my company."
Dick patted Jason's wrist with one hand while glancing at the watch on the other. "Thirty minutes to midnight," he declared. "So, tell me," he said when he looked up again, "what were you laughing about when I came in?"
"Oscar Wilde and my hair," Jason said. He ate another gummy, wondering somewhere in the back of his mind how many he'd have to consume to soak up all the alcohol in his system. (He settled on an astronomically high number.)
"Your hair?"
"Yeah, I kind of miss the red. I guess Lazarus liked the new look better."
"Why did you used to dye it, anyway?"
Jason glanced over to Dick and decided that he wasn't quite drunk enough to tell him about the whole emulate-your-heroes thing, so he went with logic instead. "Don't tell Roy I said this, but a ginger superhero stands out too much." He hesitated before adding, "Especially when the previous Robin was...well."
Dick pondered his words and reached for a gummy. "What about Wilde, then?"
"You ever read Dorian Gray?" Jason began.
Dick rolled his eyes. "Of course. Typical Gotham Academy canon."
"Well, Wilde always said that he thought of himself as Basil Hallward - the artist," Jason continued, "but that the world saw him as Lord Henry Wotton - the corruptor." He ate yet another gummy. "Usually, people say that Henry was the villain, while Basil represented salvation. Evil versus good. Hedonism versus morality. Consumption versus creation. I was just thinking they were kind of the same thing. Or, at least, along the same continuum."
Dick nodded his understanding. "Your tongue is blue," he remarked.
Jason smiled. "So it is."
The two poured a few more rounds of shots, and the rest of the night passed in a warm blur. Jason recalled Dick singing a lot, acting as his literal muse for more profound ramblings, much to the delight of the bartenders and other patrons. The server from earlier drank with them for a bit while Dick wooed her with impromptu poetry infused with movie lines and Jason charmed her by guessing her aspirations. She left them each with a phone-number-on-arm and a heavy insinuation that three's company was welcome in her sheets. Jason had blushed, but Dick (having at some point moved to sit beside him) merely clapped him on the back and insisted they follow up on her offer.
Dick had also convinced the pub to countdown to midnight with them. At first, Jason was mortified, but as the final minute hit and the place erupted into drunken shouts of numbers, he felt something fuzzy in the pit of his stomach. He smiled and egged the crowd on until his chest was thrumming with their cheers. When they got to the final ten seconds, he peered over to Dick, who was practically buzzing with excitement, and couldn't for the life of him remember why he dreaded celebrating his birthday.
"Three! Two! One! Zero! Happy birthday!" Dick said, somehow managing to be heard over the others. He gathered Jason into a strong side hug and tousled his hair.
A bartender brought over a pitcher of beer and slammed it down in front of Jason. "On the house," the man declared. "Now chug!"
Jason and Dick left The Sword and Scripture arm-in-arm, leaning generously on each other for support (although Jason would later swear that he was practically dragging Dick along). Neither came even close to considering driving back, and Jason refused to take a cab on what promised to be such a nice night. Dick acquiesced to walking the hour and forty minutes back because it meant he could continue singing in between coming up with horrible jokes that Jason just couldn't seem to not laugh at in his state.
How they managed to stumble into the manor without waking anyone/hurting themselves/alerting the security systems was anyone's guess. Once in the foyer, Jason disentangled himself from Dick in favor of the bannister of the staircase, preparing to climb up to his bedroom. His stomach vetoed the idea.
"Guess I'm sleeping in the living room," he said with a sigh of defeat. He turned to grab Dick's elbow. "But I'm making you suffer with me."
Dick laughed. "Wouldn't have it any other way. As long as I get the big couch," he added.
Jason scowled. "But I'm taller."
"But I'm older."
"Exactly! You've had more opportunities to sleep on the big couch than I did." He tried guiding Dick over to one of the smaller couches, but he refused to budge.
"I treated you to drinks," he argued.
"I didn't ask you to. Besides, it's my birthday!"
They glowered at each other for a few tense moments. Jason weighed the possibility of pinning his brother to one of the couches and catapulting over to the big one before Dick could claim it for himself, but the mental replay sent ripples of nausea through him.
"We'll just have to share it," Dick decided.
Jason's eyes widened. "What? It's barely large enough for one of us, we can't fit two!"
"But at this rate we're never gonna get any sleep."
"How about this. I'll wait for you to fall asleep on the big couch and then move you to another one?"
Dick laughed. "I'll just wake up and kick your ass."
Jason rolled his eyes. "Fine! We'll share."
It certainly wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant, either. They had tried lying counter-parallel at first, but when Jason finally got fed up with being kicked in the head (which was impressive, considering their height difference), he maneuvered himself so that they were facing the same direction. Jason did his damnedest then to not pay attention to how close they were, and he managed to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Jason awoke shortly to the gentle clinking of glass on glass. He opened his eyes, immediately wincing at the bright sunlight filtering through the windows, to see the source of the sound. Alfred was hunched over the other side of the coffee table, placing two cups and a pitcher of water in front of him. He righted himself and set down a couple of packets. "For the headache," he said softly when he caught Jason's eye.
Jason nodded and ever-so-slowly sat up, noticing as he did so that he and Dick had been covered with a quilt at some point in the night. Alfred poured Jason a glass, all the while giving Jason a pitying look. He made sure Jason swallowed the aspirin pills within one of the packets before leaving him to stretch out the aches in his joints. opened one of the packets. Despite Jason's carefulness, though, the movement jostled his brother awake, and soon he was on the receiving end of an icy blue glare.
"I coulda slept another four hours," Dick muttered, his words half muffled by the arm of the couch. He let out a tiny yawn (which Jason did not find cute, actually) before sitting up, too. After downing the other aspirin-and-water combo, he glanced over at Jason and smirked. "Not the first time I woke up with a redhead wrapped around me," he said smugly.
Jason furiously fought down the blush that crept to his face and punched Dick in the arm. "Shut up," he said tersely. "'sides, I'm not a redhead anymore."
"Aw, I thought you'd appreciate the reference. Didn't you say you missed your old hair?"
Jason gave him a quizzical look before the memory came thundering back to him. "Yeah," he said slowly and looked away. His eyes widened at the wall as he realized with startling clarity that Dick remembered his drunken musings - musings that were incidentally never meant to see the light of day. "Remembered that, did you?" he said, hoping Dick would take the bait and rattle off the rest of what he recalled Jason saying while they were in the relative privacy of the living room.
"Let's see," Dick began, leaning back, "there was Oscar Wilde and Biblical analysis. Oh, and you tried to pick up the server with Shakespeare and Sappho."
"Todd knows Shakespeare?" came Damian's voice from behind the couch. Jason and Dick whipped around and watched the kid make his way to the couch opposite them. He eyed the shared blanket but went back to his earlier train of thought. "I didn't think you read, especially classic literature."
Jason was torn between defending his literary prowess and staunchly denying the claims to begin with when Dick continued.
"Why would you quote Sappho for pick-up lines, anyway?" he asked thoughtfully. "Wasn't she a lesbian?"
"Well, she was from Lesbos, if that's what you're asking," Tim said from the foyer entrance. He walked in and hopped onto the arm of the couch Damian was sprawled across. "Who was quoting Sappho, now?"
"Todd," Damian replied. "He's some sort of scholar, apparently. He knows Shakespeare, too." The two younger boys exchanged a glance before falling into a fit of laughter.
"You're telling me Jason's just a walking encyclopedia for dead writers?" Tim asked between breaths. Jason clenched a fist and opened his mouth with a denial already equipped.
"More like a car you have to pour liquor into instead of gas," Dick said. He patted Jason on the shoulder, and it took all of the latter's will to not grab him and toss him across the room.
"Whatever! So I'm a philosophical drunk, who cares?" He crossed his arms petulantly and glared at the grandfather clock in the corner.
"Aww, we've gone and hurt his feelings," Damian said. "Guess it's time to cheer him up." He reached behind him and pulled out a box from some mystical hiding place that was wrapped in sparkling gold paper. He set it on the table and pushed it across.
Tim followed suit and deposited a flat, thin, red-wrapped gift onto the table, as well. "Open mine first," he said eagerly.
Jason was taken aback. He had been all but ready to stomp off to his room and spend his birthday drowned in music pumping from his surround-sound stereo until it was an acceptable time to go out for booze again. He had at least been expecting the others to honor his annual tradition of not-making-a-big-fucking-deal-out-of-this-arbitrary-day, but he supposed that that had gone out the window the moment Dick had stepped foot inside The Sword and Scripture. So he reached out tentatively to Tim's gift. He unwrapped it and grinned.
"It's -"
"It's a Malkontent vinyl!" Tim said, cutting him off. "Limited edition copy of their third LP, before the re-release."
Jason turned a lopsided grin to him. "We're totally listening to this later," he said, and Tim nodded enthusiastically.
"Okay, my turn now," Damian said, and Jason chuckled. He set aside the album and grabbed the gold-covered gift, suppressing the urge to listen for ticking sounds. He raised an eyebrow when he saw the wooden box but widened his eyes when he saw what was inside.
"These are the kunai I wanted," he said, shocked. He looked up at Damian. "How in the hell did you manage to get these?" he asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to know the whole answer.
"It was a simple enough task for Damian Wayne," the kid said with a scowl.
"Bruce bought 'em," Dick whispered behind his hand, and while that made more sense, Jason still couldn't fathom how Damian persuaded his father to buy them in the first place.
"Use them well," Damian added more softly.
"Dude, I'm gonna go put these in my belt right now," Jason said, and he stood up to do just that.
"Oh, no you don't," Dick said, standing and latching onto Jason's arm. "I have to give you my gift."
Jason eyed him warily. "I thought getting me to recite Shelley under the influence was your gift," he grumbled. He ignored Tim's and Damian's subsequent snickers.
Dick waved him off. "Just come on already." And he led Jason upstairs and to his room. Leaning against Dick's bed was a tall, thin package wrapped in red-and-gold striped wrapping paper - Jason was beginning to see a theme here - with a gigantic bow stuck on the front, just off-center. "Given last night's conversation," Dick started, "I think this is especially appropriate." He let go of Jason's arm and gestured to the present. "Have at it."
Jason set down his other two gifts and attacked the third. He didn't have to tear away much of the wrapping paper to see that it was a portrait, and his curiosity egged him on. Soon, he was holding up a framed painting of a man embracing what looked like his son. In the corner was the name Pompeo Batoni, and Jason gave the image a crooked, knowing smile.
"For the record," Dick said over Jason's shoulder, "I like this story better."