She'd thought there was something in the air. Gotham City, being Gotham City, that was well within the realms of possibility, but she'd checked and there'd been nothing but the usual smog that permeated the place.
No fear gas, or Joker venom, or poisonous spores being carried by the wind to explain why Stephanie felt as if some ghostly thing had taken a fork and twisted up her insides like spaghetti. Like there was a vice around her heart squeezing so tightly she was surprised she hadn't had a heart attack yet.
It was irrational, and stupid, and like she'd been encouraged when it came to irrational, stupid things, she did her best to ignore it all throughout the time she spent getting ready for patrol.
Paying anything less than her full attention on patrol was a sure way to get hurt, or killed, or worse. It should have been the perfect thing to pull her out of her head, get her focusing on the real world again.
Get her to stop thinking that the last time she'd felt that way she'd been standing on a rooftop watching the massacre of just about every notable crime boss in Gotham. All because she'd been stupid enough to think she'd known what she was doing.
The start of her patrol was offset by dread lodged deep in her bones, two hours in it had sunk into her molecules, sunk to the point she found herself curled up on a fire escape in the darkest alley she could find with her comms switched off so that no one saw 'Batgirl' having a fucking panic attack.
Moisture around her eyes made her cowl itch, the suit was constricting around her so tightly she couldn't breathe, and the bat on her chest might as well have been burning a brand into her flesh.
Going out on patrol had been a terrible idea. She was just begging to realize exactly how much of a terrible idea it had been when there was a scrape below her from something that 'should not' have gotten that close without her noticing.
"Batgirl?"
She spun to face the threat, a pair of gooperangs on hand.
"Oh, Baker?" She peered down at the man on the ground. "Whoa, what happened to your face?" She dropped down from her perch to get a better look at the Arkham guard, who was now prodding at the mottled purple and green bruise that was his face. "Aren't you supposed to be at work?"
"I-I quit, my j-job at Arkham." His finger poked at a particularly dark bruise and he winced, dropping the hand. "Could, couldn't stay on after wh-what they did to your… I'm sorry. If I, if I knew what… I would have told you…"
"Oh yeah?" Steph slowly, so he didn't think she was going to attack him or something, put away her gooperangs. She really hoped there weren't any tears on her cheeks. "Thanks for that, I guess. You, want me to deal with the guys who…" she waved her hand at his face, eyes drifting down to where the bruises disappeared into the fabric of his rain coat.
"No." He shook his head, a hand stopping just short at poking the bruising again. "It was worth… I mean. N-not everyone hated..." He sighed. "There were some of us, who, who appreciated what y-your brother was trying to do and… I couldn't say anything when I w-worked there, but now…" For the first time since the conversation started, he met her eyes. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the tunnels. Batgirl."
"Thanks Jeff, really." Steph wanted to say more, maybe about how Jason would have appreciated that, or that it wasn't Bakers fault they hadn't been on time, but she'd gotten tired of making up stories about Jason.
Lying to the bats everyday was enough, she didn't need to add some random civilian to the list. It didn't matter anyway.
A minute later, he was gone, and she was standing alone in the alley.
"Oracle?" She clicked on her comm and spoke before Bab's could berate her for turning the thing off in the first place. "I guess I'm not over that cold yet, I'm gonna head home." She sniffled and hoped it sounded like it 'was' because of a cold and not her messed up emotions.
Babs sighed, a warped static filled sound. 'Stay put, I'll send someone to escort you…'
"No I'm fine, don't wanna infect them." Steph forced a chuckle. "We're all understaffed as it is right? I'll be fine on my own."
The last thing she wanted to be was on her own.
O
O
O
There was some cartoon playing on Stephanie's laptop, perched precariously atop a stack of textbooks and an old rickety chair. Jason wasn't paying attention to either the muted sounds or colorful pictures.
He was listening to the rain pattering against the window. Only a light drizzle right then, but still seemingly ever present since it had started up what felt forever ago. She was next to him, her face gloomy as the weather outside, as it had been since he'd arrived after getting high pitched near inaudible call to come over. 'To catch up on some of the pop culture he'd missed.'
He missed the sunshine.
A distant rumble of thunder echoed somewhere in the grey mass of clouds, threatening the break of another storm, and she squirmed her way somehow closer to him, a hand snaking out to loosely grip the edge of his shirt.
The blanket she'd had thrown over her legs slipped down and his arm shot out to catch the edge of it before it could fall to the ground. Her apartment was cold enough as it was, and she'd just gotten over a cold, and he didn't want to be stuck dragging her back to a clinic if she developed something worse.
Unlike when he'd fist gotten a look at the scars littered across her legs, usually covered by long jeans or leggings, his breath didn't catch in his throat. Still, he tensed up enough to have her angling her face up at him; he looked pointedly at the singing trolls instead.
It didn't help him forget the purplish marks, smaller than he would have thought they'd have been, but placed to hurt, and more than could have ever been necessary. It didn't do anything to hide the raised marks he'd felt under his hands when she'd hugged him.
"What, you don't wanna rewatch any of these songs?" Her voice filled up the silence, drew him out of his thoughts.
"Not as catchy as the last one." He scooped up some of the popcorn from the bowl that had started out between them but migrated to his lap little by little, as she'd taken its place. "Kind of boring."
"Well I'm sorry Disney doesn't meet your minimum requirement of explosions per movie." She said with a yawn, stretching out her arms and legs leisurely. "We can watch the pirate ones later."
"Those explosions are a fucking joke; wooden barrels aint got the pressure for old timey gun powder to do that." Jason scoffed at the little spark of annoyance in her eyes. It might not have been very bright, but it was better than the blankness of before. "Sides, if I wanted an explosion I'd just blow up a meth lab. You got any idea how C4 I got laying around?"
"Oooooh, sorry mister demolitions expert," she waved her hands in front of them, "for offending your expert full expertise with my ignorant ignorance."
"I could teach you some stuff." Jason said, a grin forming on his face. "I got the perfect target for us to practice…"
"Jay, we're not blowing up a meth lab!" She crossed her arms and fixed him with a serious glower, the effect of which was somewhat ruined by how little of her face he could actually see with how close it was to his.
"You know you want to." Jason shoved another hand full of popcorn into his mouth, and if she whispered an affirmative under her breath, he pretended not to notice. He could blow it up on his own some other time. "Nothing else we can do in this weather."
"I'm pretty sure we offended some deity that night we went to the planetarium and didn't make any sacrifices." She chuckled, then sighed. "Bet it's flooded by now."
"You grab Tim and I'll get us a Lazarus pit for after." Jason smirked down at her affronted expression.
"We're not sacrificing one of my best friends Jason." She batted her fist sluggishly against his chest, nowhere near hard enough to hurt just as some more thunder rolled in the background. "Why don't we sacrifice one of 'your' friends?"
"Cause I don't feel like hauling you off this lumpy ass couch." He let himself relax a little into the thin cushions at his back. "Sides, we'd bring him back after."
She snorted and shifted so she was slumped against his chest and the conversation died down.
They stayed like that until the credits were rolling and his head was dropping slowly to the side, eyes sliding closed despite his halfhearted attempts to keep them open. Though he tried to keep his working hours in the daytime, the assassins he was tracking were mainly nocturnal, and his surveillance had him spending almost as much time awake at night as his work controlling the criminal elements once had.
Going by her deep breaths, he'd thought she was already asleep, but just as he was dropping into a light doze, the spoke again.
"What was it like?"
"What?" He mumbled back, very aware of the cool strands of hair brushing against his cheek.
"Dying?"
Jason stiffened, any traces of lethargy slipping from his body and vanishing without a trace.
"Fucking hell, you gotta ask the hard ones huh?" He caught the dark laughter before it could slip out, but he was sure some of it carried over to his voice anyway.
"Sorry." She whispered softly, her hold on his shirt tightening minutely. "I just. I thought I was gonna die, y'know. After, after 'he' had me. There was the heart monitor, and Bruce was there, but still, I could. All I could really hear was that damn drill and I was terrified that was the last thing I'd ever hear, and you're so, how're you so 'okay' with blowing things up and fire and everything after everything and I still can't stand the sight of a fucking power tool. Like, I could always tell myself it could have been worse, that's what Leslie always said, and I was so grateful, but it couldn't have been any worse for you, and you're always joking about it, like it's nothing."
Jason swore under his breath and hesitantly wrapped an arm around her shaking shoulders, almost pulled her closer to him as though that would erase what had happened to her. He wanted to kick himself for half the jokes he'd made, even if she'd shown no signs of them bothering her before. More than that, he wanted to dump Roman Sionis in a fucking Lazarus pit so he could kill him few more times. Maybe send Catwoman some diamonds for kicking the bastard out of a window.
"Dying's not so bad." He whispered into her hair, coming back had been the part that fucked him up, the itching he could sometimes still feel at his throat, but he wasn't about to bring that up. "Being dead was, I don't remember much, but it wasn't so bad, really could have been worse. Got me to stop smoking at least. Wasn't the bomb that finished the job you know?" He swallowed down the bile that tried to rise up when he forced himself to remember. "Was the smoke after, maybe the fire, could hear him digging through the rubble, calling for me."
His hold on her tightened further, pulled her close enough that she was almost on his lap. "Know how you feel though." He licked his lips, hating how dry they felt. "I got a teacher after, explosives, taught me to more than make things go boom. Learned how to take 'em apart faster 'n you can blink. Practiced and practiced till I could disarm anything in my sleep, till I could promise myself it wouldn't happen again." He shrugged and let her go. "Till it was… fun."
"t's called immersion therapy I think. Leslie wanted me to try it 'n Africa." She hummed and he disentangled her hands from the very creased fabric at his chest so he could stand up.
"Get dressed; I'll be back for ya in a couple minutes." He said as he made for the door.
"Huh, why?" she asked straightening up and dropping her blanket to the ground.
"Immersion therapy." He searched her eyes for any resistance, but they lit up with understanding and she nodded. He opened the door just as the thunder outside saw fit to increase its volume. "Then we're having us a damn picnic." He added, in defiance of the approaching storm.
O
O
O
Jason came back in a very normal looking green car, tarps, planks and various other things spread over the back seats. She wasn't sure she wanted to ask where he'd gotten it, but she figured if it was stolen, it would have maybe been a little fancier and she didn't have to worry about it.
When she found a battered, heavily noted copy of some Russian book under her seat, she worried even less and instead started messing with the radio once she'd found the sub-total of two CDs both contained mostly songs that were probably all older than they were.
She took some time to tease him about his old man music and he was appropriately affronted, glaring at her over his dark sunglasses – darker than you'd ever really need in Gotham, much less when it was cloudy enough to feel like twilight. She didn't say anything about the glasses aloud though, or the heavy looking leather jacket, or the jeans that were maybe a little tighter than how he usually wore them. It was doubtful he'd appreciate her staring at his thighs.
It wasn't long before they were making a stop at a grocery store for the pre-packaged goodness that would be their lunch later in the day. Steph took longer than she should have deciding between jelly or chocolate filled marshmallows, cream or custard donuts; just about everything they got really. Jason didn't rush her or even hint at her to go faster, to stop stalling though he must have known that's what she was doing, not until they were staring at the cartons at the checkout counter. Then he couldn't wait to get out of there.
Not an hour later they were back at the broken down planetarium, having scaled the fence again, this time in the light rain and laden down with multiple bags that made Steph very glad for her vigilante training. Whoever said it was only useful for the nightlife?
The place was just as decrepit as it had been before, with its broken wall, overgrown greenery and of course the hole in the ceiling. Only now it had been flooded as well. There would be no laying in the grass this time around.
The first thing they did was get one of the tarps over the roof to block out the rain. Jason finished tying the thing down while Steph carried their snacks to the projection room, which was far enough from the openings that it was still dry and. It was also a lot cleaner than Steph would have thought it would be.
"Sunshine." Jason called from the where he stood at the broken down wall.
She didn't have to look to see what he was doing, having already lined up the planks, more than had been in the car, along the gaping hole in the wall. He didn't look worried, resting against a non-collapsed portion of the wall, waiting for her to approach with a pretzel stick between his teeth.
It was easier to focus on that, she thought, than the cordless power drill in his hand.
She didn't remember taking it from him, or moving to stand in front of the planks, but she the cold, hard plastic of the drill had already turned warm in her hands. There were already marks, little dots painted onto the wall where she was supposed to drill.
She pressed the drill bit against the mark, she knew enough about how the things worked to do that much, it took her a few minutes to gather the courage to do more than stare. She pressed, the trigger eventually, but froze up as soon as the high-pitched whirring sound, softer, but so much like the one she'd heard those days.
Instinctively she braced herself for pain, despite the fact that she was holding the thing, she was holding the drill and she wasn't going to turn it on herself. They'd talked about it; it was supposed to be easy. It felt like she was choking, and it shouldn't have, she was supposed to be over it already.
Suddenly there was something in her mouth and a presence behind her, she didn't spin around, or scream, but she did drop the drill.
There wasn't even time for her to feel relieved at not hearing the sound again when Jason reached around her to grab the tool before it could hit the ground.
"Not like that." He bit off the pretzel stick in his mouth and put another in hers, shaking his head in exasperation that would have almost seemed real if not for the deep line between his scrunched up brows. It had been a while since she'd seen that. "Both hands Sunshine." He gently pressed the drill into her hands, the tough leather at the cuffs of his jacket brushing her skin even through the thinner fabric of her sweater.
She almost tossed the thing away from her again, but his hands were covering hers, rough and calloused, but warm. Despite the chilly weather, all of him was still so warm.
"Breath a little, huh." He said a confident smirk on his face. She looked back at the wall, turned away from the wall before she had to know for sure whether it was genine. When she pressed herself a little more against him, he rested his chin against her head.
One, two, three deep breaths later, she pushed down on the trigger again. Jason was muttering in her ear. Nonsense strings of words that didn't really mean anything, maybe something about a book he'd read once, it didn't matter. The constant stream of words grounded her, reminded her that she wasn't strung up alone somewhere. Jason would have broken free of Black Mask, wouldn't he? He'd toyed with the crime lord for months when he'd come back to Gotham.
Steph had laughed at some of the audio logs Bruce had recovered of Jason's phone calls to the man.
The drill bit hit the wall. Steph didn't let go of the trigger. She felt the resistance, heard the increase of sound. The air smelled more strongly of dust, not blood, little particles were flung away from the wall as she drilled through the wood, through the wall.
Jason slipped past her, tightened a bolt with a tool that was significantly quieter than the drill, and she moved on to the next mark. Then the next, then the next, until there was a neat barricade over the hole and the wind couldn't touch them anymore.
"I feel like we're in a zombie game." Steph said looking at her handiwork, 'Her' handiwork, as she very carefully set the drill on one of the ruined chairs. "Let the hoards come," she narrowed her eyes, "we're ready for them."
Jason snorted and pulled the last bolt tight. "Lookit you, a regular Claire Redfeild." He stretched his arms out and wiggled his fingers. "Too bad you trapped yourself inside with the zombie." He slowly started shuffling towards her.
Steph laughed as she ducked under his arms to wrap her arms around his waist. With her face pressed into his chest, it was way easier to pretend she didn't notice when her chuckles switched to sobs.
"This isn't how you deal with zombies." One of Jason's hands rested at the back of her head, his own moving closer to her neck. "Ima bite you."
"Don't you dare." She warned, nudging his jacket aside so she could worm her head under the warm fabric. "Thanks Jay."
"When you don't expect iiiit." He whispered, pulling the jacket open so he could wrap it around her.
O
O
O
They laid down a blanket on the dry side of the planetarium, and Jason switched on the projector, which was thankfully still in working order. There was no view of the true sky past their stars, not like the last time, and the rain had gotten heavier while they were boarding the place up, so it lacked the quiet, but at least this time, there was no chance of the downpour chasing them off.
There was enough in the bags that they could feasibly spend the whole day there if nothing came up that required them to leave, but they weren't done with everything they'd come to do first.
Stephanie was the one who'd bought them, chosen the brand and skull covered lighter they'd brought along.
Just like when he'd been a kid, he slipped the cigarette between his lips clicked the lighter, brought up the flame. That's where it stopped though.
He couldn't bring himself to pull the smoke into his lungs. Oh, if the teachers who'd caught him smoking at school could see him now. Stephanie was rifling through the bags, digging up the bags of marshmallows.
He forced himself to suck on the bud of the cigarette, get the thing lit at least, but it refused, and after a while he'd charred too much of the smoke for it to be anywhere near, well, smokeable. He tossed it away in disgust and fished another out of the pack.
"This is why parents told their kids not to hang out with me in highschool." Stephanie took the smoke away from him and waved her hand expectantly for the lighter. "We'd have been so cool together."
"You think I was Mister Popular?" He huffed, watched her glossy lips pucker around the bud as she lit the cigarette, the flame of the lighter flickering against the projected stars passing across her face.
He hadn't even noticed she'd been wearing lip-gloss when he'd picked her up. The detail caught him oddly off guard, more so even than the stream of smoke passing from between those lips. Did she always wear lip-gloss?
"I did, till I heard you go on for hours about Hamlet. Now I'm thinking you probably got bullied."
She blew the smoke away from them and handed the cig back to him. Jason tried to pretend he had a good reason to be smoking, that he had to do it, and he could do anything he needed to do. It made it easy to breath in the smoke.
Harder was holding it deeply enough to count without coughing, trying to expel it before it reached his lungs. Images of red sparks in the dark, and air burning all along his skin invading his mind. Struggling to breathe while she cried softly somewhere out of his sight. Hot smoke invading his lungs every time he tried…
Stephanie tugged on his hand, bringing it closer to her mouth so she could take another pull of the smoke.
Jason watched her, almost captivated, watched the little bit of red light up, burn away more of the paper, shrink the size of the cigarette. Her hand was still around his wrist when he brought it up to his own lips.
"The only kids who did that, called me a square, nobody fucking talks like that anymore." He rolled his eyes, watching the smoke curl up and into the ceiling It had been a while since he 'd thought about school, waking up every morning to the breakfast spread from his alley kid dreams and climbing in the pine scented car with the essay he knew he was going to ace ready in his bag. "They were the squares." He took another pull of the and forcefully stamped down on his panic. "Wanted to join stage crew, but Bruce wouldn't let me."
"Yeah, I'm definitely a bad influence." She said, brining the bud to her lips again. She puffed out a ring of smoke and passed it back with a warning look. "Talia'd better not be banging down my door after this for corrupting her precious baby."
Jason laughed then, the sound both rougher and higher than it usually was. He thought it was better he didn't mention that Talia 'had' warned him off spending time with her, better not to give Stephanie any more fuel for that fire. He breathed in more smoke deeper than before, he watched the red burn higher, almost finished, then blew the smoke at her.
"Jason." She waved it away from her hurriedly. "I can't smell like smoke! Do you know what they'd do to me?"
"Tell your mother you're hanging out with a bad influence?" He asked raising both eyebrows with a grin.
"Funny." She breathed in another deep pull of the smoke, this time tilting her head up and letting the smoke escape her mouth in its own instead of blowing it out right away.
Jason watched her for a few seconds, wondered about it his head rested against his raised knees, the cig dangling loosely from his fingertips.
"What?" She asked, breathing out the rest of the smoke and cocking her head at him.
Jason shook his head, turning it aside to hide his grin and breathe in the last of the tobacco. The giddiness slowly warming his insides didn't negate the burn of the smoke, but maybe it decreased the shaking of his hands when he finally put the cig out and tossed it aside to nestle in the damp grass far away from them.
He shoved a marshmallow in his mouth right after, welcoming the sweetness that covered over the sickening taste of the smoke.
There was some clinking and he looked up again to see Stephanie using the lighter to pop the caps of the bottles they'd almost needed his fake I.D to buy like they actually thought he was a damned kid.
"Now that's over, we can indulge in deviant behavior we actually enjoy." She said nodding her head sagely as she handed passed him a beer. "Just one for you though, cause I can't handle the stress of stealing another car."
"Stop acting like I dragged you there." Jason sipped his beer and leaned back.
"You literally did." She deadpanned. "Right out of the bar, 'and' you stole my last drink."
"Only halfway, you chose to come along for the rest."
"Cause I was drunk and you were being adorable." She shook her head, and then peered down the neck of her bottle before taking a drink. "Guess it's a good thing we only bought the two. Kinda like giggly drunk you though."
"I was literally a crime lord." Jason objected and shuffled to make more room for himself.
"Was." Stephanie emphasized, wagging a finger and catching him just as he was about to lay back and tilted him so his head wound up pillowed on her folded legs instead of the blanket. He was too surprised to put up any kind of resistance. Then her hand was buried in his hair and he decided he'd rather not move, he blamed it on the nicotine making him lightheaded.
"My best friend 'was' also literally the head of the league of assassins for a while you know." She took another sip of her drink then rested it against the marshmallows to dig through the rest of the food in the packages and set out the pack of pretzel sticks he'd already opened.
"Yeah, the 'one who is all'." Jason couldn't help but shake his head at the overdramatic moniker that had been applied to the girl who regularly asked him to explain memes even he didn't understand. "I saw her a couple times when I was laid up after…" He cut himself off, fingers trailing over the scar at his throat. He noticed the sudden sharpness in her eyes and quickly moved his hand and downed some more beer.
Thankfully, she didn't ask him to explain, and he was unbelievably grateful. There'd been enough of remembering for one day. Right then he just wanted to live in present, pretend he'd just snuck in somewhere he shouldn't have been to share a smoke and have a drink and just hang out with a girl he liked.
He wanted to watch the stars dance across Stephanie's face while her hand raked thought his hair, and enjoy the light scrape of her nails against his scalp while she chattered on about her classes and whatever other inane things came up.
"I've just discovered the true victim of all this rain." She said, with a pout her head leaning incredibly close to his, close enough that he was hit again with the smell of the smoke on her breath, along with alcohol and sweetness of the chocolate in the marshmallows and the vanilla that always clung to her.
"Yeah?" He forced the word out, blinking up at her his eyes widening when one of her hands brushed across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.
"It's taken your freckles form us." She sobbed a hand to her mouth while her other arm curled around his head and she laid her cheek against his forehead.
Jason groaned and ate another marshmallow. "So sad." He rolled his eyes.
"You would have sucked in theater, such a bad actor." She pulled back just enough to glare at him with star covered eyes and glossy lips she struggles to keep turned downwards. Close enough that he could have just reached up and…
Jason pressed a marshmallow into her mouth and laughed at her offended shout.
It felt so natural, so, so 'normal', and he hadn't felt that way in such a long time. It wouldn't last forever, it couldn't, and he knew that, but still, he was determined to enjoy it for as long as it did.
O
O
O
Jason didn't pretend to feel anything for the drug dealers being pulled off the streets to be made into lab rats for the new poison they were all peddling. Sure, he hated that they were being used to further the commonality of the thing he'd been dosed with when good old Doctor Arkham had tried making him 'let go' of his delusions via spilling everything he knew about the Bats flying around Gotham, but personally, he felt nothing.
They'd brought it on themselves after all, and if a lot of the ones who gone missing were also those he'd squeezed for information well, he was sure their bosses were keeping them more comfortable than Jason would have under the circumstances.
So when he tracked down what he was fairly certain would end up being the another 'laboratory', he wasn't as prepared as he would have been otherwise. Still relaxed, his mind held up on the hours spent at the planetarium that day, on Stephanie, Jason didn't notice anything odd about the sniffling until the door was already open.
He'd been ready for a room full of doped up drug dealers.
Those, those weren't drug dealers.
O
O
O
Steph was still grinning when she got back to her apartment, the tension she'd been feeling earlier in that day all the previous night barely even a flicker on the edge of her thoughts. It was still raining outside, still cold and damp, but she still felt warm when she thought of Jason, the way he'd looked at her, for just a few seconds when she'd been angles away.
It made her wonder if maybe, there was even the smallest chance he could have thought of her the way she thought of him, even a little.
Nothing had changed, not really, but everything felt a little better anyway.
She shook her head as she shut her door and leaned against it, pressing the back of a hand to her feverish head. She really was acting like a lovesick little girl wasn't she? When was the last time she'd even thought about things like that?
Her cellphone had died not long after they'd gotten to the planetarium, and Jason was supposed to text her if he found anything case related during his investigations, she had to charge it.
Halfway across the room she noticed a clinking sound coming from the darker depths of her apartment. Steph froze where she stood, angled her head in the direction of the sound.
Her security had still been in place when she'd come home, a run of the mill burglar, hell, most not run of the mill burglars would have had a hard time getting past that without leaving some trace beyond. Very few of those who could would have been there for just a friendly visit.
Stephanie let out a very loud, very deliberate yawn and carried on through her tiny kitchen towards her tiny living room. If she could just get to her bedroom and the panic button installed there. Pretend she hadn't noticed the intruder and he might not try anything right away.
A lamp clicked in and Stephanie jumped, hands already flying to the nearest throwable object before she even saw who it was.
"Tim!" Stephanie yelled at the boy sitting on her couch, munching on the stale popcorn she and Jason had abandoned that morning, a beat-up backpack occupying the seat next to him. "What are you doing creeping around like that, oh my god do you want me to die?" Her hand clutched at her chest and her rapidly beating heart. "What the hell?!"
"Sorry." Tim shrugged, studying a piece of popcorn he had pinched between two fingers. "Tried calling but…" he pulled out his cellphone and pressed the call button, letting her recorded voicemail spill out of the speakers.
"Oh right." Steph shook her head and let out a relived sigh. "Didn't have a charger." She waved her dead cellphone at him and crossed past to her bedroom where she could get her hands on said charger.
"You look nice." Tim said, his arms folded over the back of her sofa as he watched her through the still open door, he picked a short strand of hair off the fabric nest to his elbow and flicked it away. "You have a date or something?"
"No." Stephanie finally plugged her phone in. It blew up with a flood of missed calls and texts as soon as she plugged it in. "Just studying with a friend. Year round classes, 'not' one of my better ideas." She tried to look apologetic when she turned back to him, tried to ignore the return of the dread festering in her gut.
"Speaking of your classes." Tim stood up, lifting his bag and unzipping it as he came to her room and Stephanie felt herself fighting the urge to shrink away. It was just Tim, it was ridiculous to be afraid of him. "You never came back to fetch your homework." He handed her the stack of papers with an easy smile.
"Oh, right," Steph cleared her throat and claimed the stack of papers, surprised by the tiny amount of resistance she got before he let go of them. "Uh, thanks."
"Also, I read through some of Jason's books." Tim pulled the thick covered volume out of his bag as well and dropped to sit on the edge of her bed.
"Yeah?" She set, carefully setting her homework besides them keeping her eyes on it and not him.
"You were right the 'notes' are…" He smirked sharply, the action reminding her more of a cat baring its teeth, "heh, cute."
"That's nice I guess." She swallowed, her tongue feeling thick and heavy in her mouth as she watched him page though the book. "You coulda told me later tonight you know, didn't have to go all intense stalker on me."
Tim hummed, his thumb flipping through the book, his eyes however, stayed fixed on her. Hard, questioning, she saw that look a lot, just never directed at her. After a while Tim let out a sight, a tired, resigned sound that was somehow worse that any amount of shouting could have been.
"You're really going to make me say it, aren't you?" He asked, setting down the open book besides her homework. The blocky handwritten notes stood out starkly against the neater rows of letters they'd been lined up against.
No no no no no no no…
Steph wasn't sure if she voiced the words the horror that came with it being laid out before her aloud, but the way Tim looked at her, she might as well have.
Tim's voce was cold when he spoke, none of the friendliness or even frustration she was accustomed to hearing from him over the years.
"Where is he Stephanie?"
O
O
O
It was carnage. They'd use that word when they found out. Jason thought as the green at the corners of his vision faded. Efficient, quick, messy carnage. A dozen bullets for a dozen heads.
There was something caught in his throat, there had to be, because he'd known it wouldn't last, had known since he'd left the clinic that day. It was why he'd run away from the sleeping girl as soon as he'd felt his hand reaching for the strands of sunshine bouncing off her hair.
He known, and been ready for it when he'd gone back, he'd been ready for it, should have been…
His cellphone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket, pressed it against his ear as he stepped over the pool of blood already congealing on the dusty blue carpet.
It didn't matter, it was over and he still had work to do.