AN: So, this story got dropped for a while, but the reviews pulled me back in, and I'm determined to finish what I started. So here's a new chapter, and I'm going to have weekly updates to keep me moving. I hope you enjoy!
Once Eerie had joined them, it didn't take long for the team to outline the game plan for that night: Eerie wanted to take a look at Georges's office to determine the parameters of another daytime stakeout. Jason still felt a little annoyed that she wouldn't let him just kill the guy already, but it was only for a moment. Besides, he had other things on his mind. He looked her over as she and Roy talked through improvements to the thermal mapping system they'd used at the police station; she was a little pale, but she handled her hangover with dignity.
She was definitely avoiding his eyes, though, which meant she hadn't been drunk enough to forget what had happened. Jason was fine with just never talking about it again and he really hoped she felt the same way.
It wasn't that he had anything against hooking up with her; the way his body had reacted the previous night definitely demonstrated that he found her attractive. But she'd said she didn't "do casual sex," and Jason wasn't sure what that meant but he guessed she wanted more than one fun night. And Jason hadn't done more than one fun night in a very long time. There had been that thing with the flight attendant, but it had really only illustrated that his life was too complicated for, well, anything.
Then he noticed Kori watching him watch Eerie and quickly scowled at his boots. The last thing he needed was Kori giving him another lecture about how humans should be more like Tamaraneans. He had tried the whole "follow your feelings" thing before and it had taken him to a bad place. He could at least admit to himself that his feelings weren't always great for following.
Eerie and Roy finished talking about whatever bullshit it was that needed discussing, and Roy looked over to Jason and said, "That sound good to you, Jay?"
Jason broke off his scowling and said, "Yeah, fine. Everything good to go, then?" Each member of the team nodded. "Good, we'll leave when it gets dark." He stalked toward the door. "I'm gonna take a shower."
The warm water relaxed his shoulder muscles a bit, but Jason couldn't shake the tighter-than-a-bowstring feeling. He let the water pour over his head and down his face as he leaned against the wall of the tiny stall. It was a little claustrophobic and Jason didn't usually stay very long, but today it offered a privacy that was unlikely to be disturbed by nosy or sexually aggressive teammates.
Jason snorted a little at the image of Roy bursting in, wanting Jason to either talk or fuck.
The room was still empty when Jason came out, and he rooted around in the various to-go containers until he found something appetizing. The headache he had woken up with had intensified during his hours with Roy and Kori, but the shower had eased it to a manageable level. Even better, he spied some painkillers in the pile of stuff surrounding Eerie's suitcase and helped himself to some, noticing exactly how many different bottles of pills she had scattered around. He checked the labels, filing the names away for future reference. Really, the panic attack last night shouldn't have surprised him; after all, it was her anxiety disorder that had outed her to Batman in the first place, and traveling often exacerbated anxiety.
Jason shook his head; he was playing nursemaid again.
There were still a few hours until nightfall. He paced around the room for a minute before digging a well-worn paperback of Moby Dick out of his bag and settling down with it. Crazy Captain Ahab had always reminded him of Bruce.
It hadn't taken Kairos more than an hour to get a feel for the vents in the municipal building and since she had Georges's address, she suggested they scope out his home while they were out. Red Hood, who was definitely avoiding her (and who could blame him), seemed to like the idea, so she and Arsenal were perched on the roof of a house across the street peering in the windows while Red Hood and Starfire scouted around.
There were plenty of lights still on in Georges home, but Kairos had yet to get eyes on the occupants. "I'm moving to the house on the left," she said quietly and Arsenal nodded his assent. Grappling hooks were next to useless in residential areas, so she climbed down, skirted through the shadows of the street lights, and climbed on top of the abode of Georges's closest neighbor, Arsenal behind her. From the side, she could see into what looked like an office, and after a few minutes, Georges came into the room with a tumbler of amber liquid and sat down at the desk.
Kairos settled in to pick through the threads. Georges had a lot of them, the most immediate of which was to his wife, who was in the nearby bedroom. It obviously wasn't a relationship with a whole lot of love on his part, but that wasn't necessarily surprising. She started looking at another thread, the one connected to the mayor, but she didn't sense any strong feelings there either. She started moving farther out, picking a thread, looking it over, then picking another one. She wasn't really sure how long she had been sitting there in silence when Arsenal said, "So you and Jason are totally not acting weird around each other."
"We're in the field," she answered without looking up.
Arsenal huffed. "Fine, you and Red Hood are totally not acting weird."
"We're both just focused on the job."
"Yeah, sure, nothing at all happened last night."
"I told you, I had a panic attack." Kairos was starting to get annoyed; Georges had almost finished his drink and could leave the office at any moment, and she still wasn't quite sure what was going on here.
"If it was just a panic attack, Red would be here keeping an eye on you instead of ordering me to do it. Both of you are avoiding being alone together like the plague."
"Arsenal, it's really hard to do my job when you're prying into my personal life." He went silent, but in a way that assured her that the conversation was not over. Meanwhile, Kairos had taken a look at a dozen different relationships, and Georges seemed to exhibit the same flat disregard in all of them. It was like he had no strong feelings about the people around him, even though to whom he was presumably close, like his wife. There wasn't even dislike, just an extreme disinterest. Kairos had seen this kind of the thing before in non-violent sociopaths, but they usually exhibited a few negative feelings about one relationship or another. This utter flatness was, well, weird.
Georges did leave the room as soon as he finished his drink. Kairos stood up, feeling a little stiff, and said, "I think I'm done here." Arsenal radioed to Red Hood to let him know they were moving back to the hotel while Red and Starfire continued to look around; Kairos would return to the municipal building shortly before sunrise. Instead of going to her room, though, Kairos claimed a place in the shadows on the hotel roof and watched the city not-so-far beneath her. Since sundown in Cherbourg was currently around 10 pm, there wasn't a lot of activity after dark apart from a couple of small bars downtown. Kairos watched the occasional passerby, seeing their feelings about spouses and lovers and friends and family members. She more than anyone knew how weird and complicated relationships could be, and she didn't even want to imagine what her connections to Jason and his team looked like.
Jason. They would have to talk sometime about what had happened. Or not. At the very least they had to start genuinely acting like it hadn't happened so that Roy would get of her back. Her feelings were complicated. There was a certain degree of just plain physical lust; Jason was a handsome and well-built man and she hadn't been with anyone for a while. But another big part of the attraction was that Jason made decisions and did things, and as someone who agonized over every choice, assuming that each one was going to ruin her life, Kairos was strongly drawn to that. Sometimes the decisions he made were perhaps not the best ones, but he made them because he cared deeply about making the world a less shitty place. And his confession regarding the Robins the previous evening had indicated that he knew some of his choices weren't great. And, if she were really honest with herself, she kind of liked the idea of the pissed look on Bruce's face if he knew she had drunkenly kissed his wayward son.
She snorted derisively at herself. That kind of thinking probably indicated that it might be time to consider pulling a Nightwing, setting up in a different city, or maybe working for the League full-time.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Damien: I demand to know how much longer your truancy will continue.
What a Damien way to say he missed her. Kairos sighed, remembering why leaving Wayne Manor permanently would have to wait. Dunno, she typed. We're almost done in France, but after that, who knows? Everything okay?
Damien replied almost immediately. Of course everything is fine, apart from my tutor suddenly disappearing for an indeterminate length of time with no regard for my education.
We both know you could just as well tutor yourself, she wrote back.
I have read The Rhetoric of Motives twice now and I still think this Kenneth Burke is an idiot! I don't understand why you find him of so much value.
Kairos was really quite touched, despite the fact that the kid was bad-mouthing one of the preeminent rhetoric scholars of the 20th century. The fact that he hadn't given up on Burke entirely meant that he valued her opinion enough to entertain the possibility that he might be missing something. We can hash it out when I get back, she typed. Maybe I can come home for a few days next week.
No, she couldn't pull a Nightwing just yet.
With a sharp clattering, there was suddenly a pizza box beside her. A moment later, there was also a bottle of soda and a handful of napkins. "Thought you might be hungry," said Red Hood as he sat down on the other side of the pizza. He had taken off his helmet but left the domino mask, and was quickly shoving a piece of pizza covered in perhaps four different kind of meats into his mouth. Kairos looked tentatively in the box; she wasn't a strict vegetarian by any means but even just looking at that much meat made her feel queasy. Red Hood must have noticed. "I wasn't sure what you liked, " he said, "so I got half with rabbit food just to be safe." Sure enough, half the pizza was covered with spinach and bell peppers, and she eagerly took a slice.
For a long time they sat eating in a slightly awkward silence. The pizza was honestly a little weird; the sauce seemed kinda sweet and the cheese was extra pungent, but Kairos didn't complain. Eventually, when she was sipping on the soda, she said, "Look, I'm really sorry about last night."
"You already said that," Red Hood answered, "and I already told you not to worry about."
Technically when she had said she was sorry, he had only told her not to worry about the panic attack, but if he wanted to continue not naming what had happened, she didn't mind. There was another awkward silence before Kairos blurted out, "Roy won't get off my back so we seriously have to start acting like nothing happened."
"I got us a pizza, didn't I?" he said. "That's prett normal, isn't it?"
It was pretty normal, and Kairos didn't really have anything else to say. The silence dragged on. Kairos settled back to look at the stars, trying to fake a nonchalance she didn't feel. She suddenly wished she wasn't still in her suit; her hands were sweating in her gloves and it was starting to itch. She could think of about eight different things she wanted to say, but couldn't work up the nerve to say any of them, not even to ask about what he and Starfire had found during their scouting. Red Hood finally broke the silence. "You do hungover pretty well. If I hadn't been the one drinking with you I never would have guessed."
"I got a lot of practice in my grad school days," she answered, still trying to feign the nonchalance. "After you teach a class hungover a couple of times, you get good at dealing."
"I'm just glad you're not a puker."
"Nah, the thing that gets me is the joint aches. On bad mornings, I look like an old lady."
Red Hood let out a short bark of laughter, and Kairos relaxed a teeny bit. "You gonna try to get some sleep before you head out?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Slept too much of the day already."
"Then you wanna go down to the docks?"
"The docks?"
"Yeah, isn't this place supposed to have, like, the second largest artificial harbor in the world or something? It must have some docks. Maybe we can stop a mugging or something."
"You want to stop a mugging?"
"I dunno," he answered, standing up and putting on his helmet. "I just want to be moving."
His itchiness was contagious, and Kairos followed him into the night.
