#*mydc

“You– ” Kyle cut himself off with a grunt and a kick to the gravel. A couple of stones rolled away from them, and he racked two hands through his hair, tugged on the strands before letting them fall by his side. “I don’t understand you.”

With another push, Jason ended up on his haunches, hip throbbing and shoulder screaming at him. He clenched his teeth and focused on his breathing, let the pain come through him and ride the wave. He made it out of the factory in mostly one piece, only slightly worse for wear but that was expected, it’s Kyle’s construct slamming him through the wall that got him down and stunted him. The scuffle that followed did not help.

“No one asked you to.” Jason risked an eye open when the rolling waves of pain settled some and his stomach stopped cramping, only to be greeted by Kyle crouching near him. A good pace away, safe from any fists, but closer than he would have liked.

“Why? Why did you do that?”

“It was the only way.” Jason wiped his chin with the back of his sleeve, flinched when the cuff caught on something there, most likely a cut.

“It was not.” And Kyle was right, there were other ways to stop that maniac from blowing up the city, and with it their ticket into the next world.

“It was the fastest then. The easiest. The most effective. Take your pick.” He shrugged, dismissing him.

Silence followed, and Jason ignored Kyle’s gaze on him. Since meeting him, this was the first time Kyle appeared calm, or at least level-headed. Maybe it was the week-long nonstop chase across time and space, this universe and its unnerving lack of respective selves and how it all seemed much more peaceful than their own earth (Donna had headed on wordlessly, only her eyes betrayed her thoughts, Kyle cracked empty jokes while toeing around the subjects and Jason, well.) Or maybe it was just the elbow he took to the head.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Kyle spoke in the deafening silence that followed any detonation. Jason threw him a glare, wishing for nothing more than quiet and space from others, but Kyle ignored it like always. “You seem so hell-bent on fighting, on hitting first and always hitting back, on getting this done and doing the most.”

“I do hope we’re all on the same page, then," he bit back.

“And yet, you sure act like you’d rather die.”

Jason stilled. His eyes found Kyle, who looked– He looked not sad, but a near thing. There was a twist in his eyebrows, a shine in his eyes that Jason did not like.

“What is it to you,” he snarled.

“You are alive when you should not be,” Kyle said, and Jason only narrowly avoided flinching at his words. “And yet, despite the gift that it is, you spend your time running around with a target strapped to your head, undertaking suicidal plans and gambling with your life like a desperate man.” Jason felt every hit of his words, spoken so calmly and yet thrown like sharp arrows. He had never seen him like that before, all their spats outspoken and violent. He was not ready to face mind games with this nerd, and he now pays the price as his lungs locked up and dread pooled in his guts. “Why?”

“You don’t know anything.” Jason felt his mouth move, but his tongue was lead, ears filled with cotton as a shaky hand wound tight around his knife, the one tucked by his hip. The weight of the grip filled his hand but did not ground him.

“You want to die so bad, and yet you fight like a stray cat that clings to his shitty, miserable life. I don’t understand you, Jason Todd.”

And as taught by his short and yet longer-than-expected life, Jason struck back in kind.

“Just because you can’t save the people you love doesn’t mean you have to act like a saviour to the rest of the world.” He stared down Kyle who flinched. Good. “Maybe if you weren’t such a bad son, the world would be free of your pathetic attempts at heroism.” He saw the instant Kyle flipped, when the arrogant pity in his eyes turned cold and hard, and Jason grinned. “Keep your hands to yourself, and maybe you’ll get to keep ’em.” He pushed himself to his feet, finally felt his lungs fill with air when he got to tower over Kyle who sat crouched in his spot.

“You’re an asshole, Jason.” He said, and Jason scoffed, climbed down the rumbles and back toward the rest of their band.

“If only a certain someone had remembered to work on this assignment in time.” She ran her hand from his shoulder to the middle of his back, fingertips playing with the hem of his shirt. She didn’t listen to his mumbled answer, only bent down to press a kiss at the top of his spine, right over the last bump before his neck, nosed at his hair and pressed a second one just an inch to the side.

“Alex…” She guessed the tone was intended to carry a warning, but all she heard was frustration. Time to give him a lesson in planning and prioritizing his schedule.

He wore one of his damned t-shirts, the one two sizes too big that he swore are more comfortable, sadly hiding away all of his body away from her sight. Still, she’s not one to be easily discouraged, and so she got a hand inside the sleeve closest to her, pushed it up as she felt up his arm and settled her palm around his shoulder, gently squeezing the muscle there as she laid more kisses up his neck, placing the last one just shy of his hair.

“Alex, come on,” and that was a whine bleeding through his voice, right at the last lull. “I have to work.”

“I’m not stopping you,” she murmured and found the bolt of his jaw with her lips, kissing at the tender, warm skin there and worked her way down his neck, her second hand joining on the other shoulder and gently massaging them, feeling the muscles underneath. She would have felt shallow if the hours Kyle spent feeling up her backside didn’t line up with the time she spent on his own, the memory enough to prompt a blush up her cheeks, she felt them heat up but couldn’t bring herself to care.

“You know what you’re doing.” He sounded short of breath, and one look was enough to see his flustered expression, a flush brushed over his features and licking his lips nervously, failing miserably at focusing on his drawing.

“I’m not doing anything,” Alex smirked and found his ear once more to give a gentle bite on the lobe, using the distraction to pull her chest flush with his back. She dragged her hands out of his sleeves to rest them over his chest, using the leverage on his collarbones to press her breasts to his back, and bit her lip at the stutter in his voice. Satisfaction curled up in her guts, heavy and warm, when graphite stopped scrapping over paper. Still. “Keep working, you have a deadline.”

“You are a menace,” he bit out, just as Alex tugged on his collar to reveal more of his shoulder, placing a delicate kiss over the sun-kissed skin, a second and a third, until rough cotton met with her lips.

He hummed an empty acknowledgment and dragged his lips an inch up her shoulder, chin catching on the strap of her top, the absence of a bra underneath did not go unnoticed when he walked inside the room, and neither did it now. He kissed a slow line up into the back of her ear, listened as her breath caught on the gentle nip, nearly sucked a love bite high up her neck before she shrugged and nudged him off.

“Kyle.” Her tone was more severe this time, harsher, but there was a familiar breathlessness lying right underneath. Kyle was greeted by a furious flush when he looked up, pink staining the apples of her cheeks and the top of her ears painted red. She looked gorgeous, half her face hidden away from him as he sat behind her hip and still her presence was as alluring as it always was, irresistible.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathed out, watched as the blush deepened and stained the back of her neck. Or what he could see of it. He wanted to see more, he needed to, he-

Without thinking two fingers brushed beneath her ear and gently pushed her hair out of the way, revealing the expanse of her neck and the flush spreading all over it. He draped the hair over her other shoulder, repeated the motion with great care until all the stray hair had been tucked away. Shivers ran down her arms when he followed her spine down with a finger on each side, a slow stroke until the back of her top stopped him.

“Kyle, I have to work,” Alex told him, turned to glare at him but the blush persisted, smeared over her nose too now. “Stop that.”

“Make me,” he grined, couldn’t help the stutter in his breath when Alex rolled her eyes and huffed, that annoyed but not really huff he only ever heard when she was looking at him. He loved it. He loved her. “You don’t want me to,” he murmured in her ear, glanced down to her neck, a shade of pink that looked downright delicious brushed over her skin, and kissed it.

“You’re not being cute, you know,” she said, feigning boredom but Kyle felt the way she swayed into him, a there-and-gone gesture. She shifted in her seat, readjusting herself on the sofa cushion, pressing closer to Kyle’s knee, a searing point of contact.

“I know,” he kissed down her spine, one palm wrapped around her shoulder, smiled at the silky glide of her hair against his knuckles, the other hand resting over her ribs, rubbing his thumb over the smooth fabric of her top, baby blue and not nearly as soft as her skin.