a few paragraphs from a few weeks ago. jason and tim's first interaction after titan's tower
bone cold muzzle stuck unflinchingly in the soft spot under Tim's chin -- he feels his throat click under the pressure, front against back, feels the wasp-crawl of adrenaline up from his core go fizzling at his bent-back ratcheted nape. This: familiar, workplace hazard. But this: the Red Hood's un-unflinch, nigh imperceptible jerk of his head, adjustment of weight, if still looming. Not familiar. A reflexive gun-draw, then, but more compelling is the immediate withdraw. The polymer only brushes Tim's voice box when he swallows, swallowing spit and bitter, boring, thought-flattening fear, the kind one can never quite acclimatize to -- constriction of muscle and tendon right there in the -- mechanically, truly -- unflinching path of the bullet.
Turns out eye contact through two sets of whiteout lenses is still eye contact, still awkward, to Tim, who: juts out his neck, bare, knob of cartilage clipping muzzle, and hot heavy beat of blood betraying him, maybe, if Jason would rather Robin be cool calm collected here, with a gun at his throat, but Tim just doesn't give a shit what Jason would rather. And: can't tell, anyway, which is probably the point of the helmet.
So, Tim says: "Do you mind?"
And almost, almost, for the space between heartbeats, Tim convinces himself the coil of Jason's shoulders means he going to back up, back off, back that gun into its holster, and let them talk nice and simple and civil, but Robin doesn’t have that kind of luck; a shift in Jason's posture, yes, but only preceding a cold con-trail of the muzzle down Tim's carotid artery that makes him roll his eyes behind the domino. Stupid Tim. Naïve -- but Jason is too, to think he could knock the title of Robin out of him like a tooth, those months ago at the Tower, to think a threat so basic as a loaded gun will make Tim change his mind now.