Christmas Bonus - Chapter One (Jason)
Summary: Jason and Tim unexpectedly spend the Christmas holidays together and find that they have more in common than either expected. Third part of the 'Life Down on the Farm' series.
By the time that Jason reached the little farm that he had last seen Tim at, it was so late that it was nearly early. The weather was bitter cold, his breath fogging in front of his face as he pulled his motorcycle helmet off. His fingers were numb, even with the thick leather gloves he was wearing. Little fluffy flakes of snow had started floating down from the thick low cloud cover just as Jason had started to rumble slowly up the rutted dirt driveway to Tim's little farm house. Outside, the smell of wood smoke was thick in the air, a cheery little column of it marking out the top of the stone chimney to join the gray clouds crowding close to the ground and obscuring the coldly twinkling stars above.
As Jason dismounted his bike and pulled off his helmet, he regarded the ridiculously quaint picture it made. An old stone farmhouse squatting on the side of a rolling hillside framed by a red barn, bare fruit trees and a quiet empty field with soft fluffy gray clouds disgorging even fluffier light snowfall. It was like a picturesque old Christmas card and Jason was having a hard time reconciling it with being the home of Tim Drake: hacker, vigilante and youngest CEO of a fortune five hundred company in history.
Already tired from the long drive, Jason blew a curl of hair off his forehead and turned around to unpack the box of cookies from his saddlebag. Hopefully they were still intact after all the bouncing he had done up and down hills to get there.
The old wood of the front porch creaked under Jason's boots. He raised his fist to knock on the front door before he could talk himself out of it. From behind the door, Jason heard some thumps and fumbling. A warm firelight orange stained the thin white curtains in the front windows. The curtains were twitched aside by pale thin fingers and a single dark blue eye peered out at him. Jason peered back impassively for a pregnant second. Then, the curtain twitched shut, and no more sounds came from the other side.
Jason fully expected Tim to ignore him and was already trying to psych himself up for what was promising to be a long, cold drive back to Gotham in snowy weather when the sounds of the door unlatching from the other side reached him. Before he could do more than raise his eyebrows in surprise, the door was swinging inward to reveal a Timothy Drake that Jason didn't recognize.
When he had last seen Tim over a year ago, he had looked like a ghost of the boy he presented to the rest of the world. The Tim that was regarding him suspiciously from the doorway (and hiding a small knife in the palm of his left hand very well, but not well enough for Jason to miss it) looked like a completely different person.
His hair was longer, long enough to be gathered into a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck. The longer pieces of hair around his face made him look softer and kinder, even though his face was still angular and narrow. Speaking of his face, that had filled out a lot too. It had never occurred to Jason that Tim's razor sharp cheekbones and chin might have been owed more to malnutrition than good genetics, but Tim's fuller face made Jason re-evaluate that. Even his skin looked different, no longer ghostly pale white, his skin had a shade of brown to it where he got the most sun and little moles had popped up on his face and the backs of the hands that Jason could see.
Everything about him looked healthier, more solid. His shoulders were wider, his body language more relaxed, he even looked like he had grown an inch or so since Jason had last seen him.
Jason didn't realize his mouth was hanging open until Tim scoffed and put his knife away with an eye roll. Jason closed his mouth with a click of his teeth.
"Jason. What are you doing here?" Tim asked suspiciously. His voice sounding husky, like he had been sleeping. Maybe he had been. Jason had lost track of the time, but it was probably late.
After a pause that probably went on too long, Jason belatedly held up the baker's box and rattled them unwisely to demonstrate their contents. "Alfred sent me," he explained.
At that, Tim's eyebrows made for his hairline. But, after a moment of thought, he stepped aside and gestured Jason inside.
The inside of the farmhouse was a bit less quaint than the outside. Inside, it became a more apparent that an unsupervised teenager was the owner in residence.
The walls in the hallway were bare and looked to be in the process of being repaired. Bits of old wallpaper still clung to the plaster here and there in the corners. The hardwood stairs and banister looked like they were in the middle of being sanded to remove a really hideous paint in the color of turquoise and stained back to their original color. There was no furniture to be seen in the hall either, no tables or rugs or anything to make the place more homey.
Jason glanced into the front room where a wood stove was crackling merrily away and found what looked to be Tim's nest. There was a foam mattress with a fitted sheet over it thrown on the floor in front of the stove. It was piled up with tatty handmade blankets and quilts that looked like they would have been at home at a thrift store or church sale. In a halo around the mattress was a detritus of battered paperback books, snacks and a small flat screen TV balanced on top of a milk box and connected to what looked like a GameCube.
A real honest to god GameCube. With only one controller.
"You've been playing games?" Jason asked slowly as he followed Tim down the hall into a small retro kitchen. The linoleum on the floor looked straight out of the 1970s.
"What?" Tim asked, distracted as he was looking around the kitchen for plates and cups. He glanced over at Jason and saw that he was still looking back toward the front room. "Oh, you mean video games? Yeah, I found a copy of Wind Waker in town that I've been playing through."
"Why a GameCube?" Jason asked. It was an old console, even when he was a kid. Though, come to think of it, Jason was only two years older than Tim, so it wasn't like he was from a whole different generation. Jason had played a few GameCube games when he was a kid, because his neighbors had one that they were willing to share with everyone. There had been three boys in that apartment and only one game, Super Smash Bros Melee, but that was more than enough to entertain pretty much all the kids in their whole apartment building.
"I don't know," Tim said with a shrug. He had returned to the table with two chipped coffee mugs and mismatching small plates in his hand and put them on either side of the small table set up in his kitchen. Jason obligingly set the box of cookies down between the two place settings. "I used to play video games a lot, you know, before..."
He trailed off, a strange expression crossing his face as Jason watched him.
"Before Robin?" Jason suggested, grimacing at the thought. Tim hadn't grown up like him, tough as leather and always keeping an eye out for the next hit. Jason could imagine a Tim before Robin, an overly intelligent upper middle class kid that probably went to special STEM classes over the summer and enjoyed the newest of whatever was popular with kids every Christmas. And, he could imagine how everything probably changed for him when he became Robin.
There was a time when Jason wouldn't have given a shit about Timothy Fucking Drake and him having give up his cute little hobbies in order to become a nighttime vigilante. Jason never had any of those things to give up in the first place. If being Robin was hard, so was everything else in his life up to that point. He had no perspective to see the difference between his life before Robin and his life after, only the ways that Wayne money and the excitement of Robin and the differences he could make had improved him and his life.
But, a little time and age had blunted a lot of his resentment of Tim. Was it sadder that Tim had once known innocence and comfort and then decided to give it up for the sake of someone else? Or, was it sadder that Jason had never known that innocence and comfort in the first place? Jason supposed they were both equally sad in their own way.
"Yeah, before Robin," Tim said with a strained smile. "Do you want coffee or tea or something? I think I have eggnog too?"
"You like eggnog?" Jason asked, cautiously pulling out the chair at the table farthest from Tim and sitting down. Tim hadn't actually invited him to sit, but he assumed he hadn't set two places at the table just for aesthetics.
"I don't think I've ever had it. I saw it at the store next to the orange juice and I thought, you know, why not?" Tim explained, pulling a plastic jug full of thick yellowish beige liquid out and shaking it at Jason. The viscosity was the exact opposite of appealing.
"God, that stuff's awful," Jason laughed, awash with his own memories of choking eggnog down the whole month of January after his Mom filled the fridge with it. The sales were too good to pass up, but the weird egg/milk/cinnamon mixture would forever be associated with the after Christmas season for him.
Jason picked up the mug that Tim had sat out for him. It was pink with a big fat cartoon cat wearing a party hat and holding a cupcake on it. He held it out to Tim with a lopsided grin.
"Might as well have some. 'Tis the season or whatever," Jason said.
Tim returned his grin, if a little less enthusiastically, and poured Jason a generous serving of grocery store eggnog. Then, he poured a much less generous helping into his own mug (this one was a Campbell's soup mug with a pair of red-headed kids drinking soup on the side) and took the seat across from Jason at the table. He popped the lid off the box of cookies and smiled, the first genuine smile Jason had seen since he opened the door.
He took a deep breath in. "God, Alfred's cookies. Nothing quite measures up."
"Ain't that God's own truth," Jason sighed in commiseration.
It hit him suddenly that Tim was probably the only other Bat who would know the feeling of searching all over for any cookie that might come close to how good Alfred's tasted. Jason had tried bakeries all over the world after he came back to life, but none of them were ever quite right. He wondered if Tim had ever gone through the same thing.
Tim started handing out cookies, starting with giving himself easily twice as many as Jason, but Jason wasn't going to begrudge him that. He probably deserved more than a little revenge from Tim, and taking Alfred's cookies was vicious, but likely well deserved.
"So, I guess you're not just here to deliver cookies," Tim sighed. "So, what is it? The world is going to end if I don't come back and solve a math equation? Has my evil self from the future shown up, and I have to deal with him? Or, what, does Bruce need me to talk him down from a cliff or something?" Tim asked all of this as casually as if he were asking about the weather, but there was an edge of resentment that even his carefully crafted bland expression couldn't disguise.
"Jeez, you really don't think much of us, huh?" Jason asked with a raised eyebrow. He took a sip of the eggnog, and somehow it was exactly as nasty as he remembered. He drank some more.
"Is it really undeserved?" Tim asked blankly. He took a sip of his eggnog too and let his facade of disinterest crack as he wrinkled his nose in disgust at the taste.
"No, I guess not," Jason replied mildly. He dipped one of the cookies in the eggnog. That was a real improvement. Jason committed to dipping the rest of his cookies in the eggnog.
"So, why are you really here?" Tim asked again with a sharp look that was much more reminiscent of the Red Robin Jason knew, the only version of Tim he had ever really known.
"Alfred asked me to come. Just to check up on you and, you know. Offer you some company. It is almost Christmas and all that. Nobody else knows I'm out here," Jason said awkwardly, his eyes mostly on his plate. He had said as much to Alfred, but he still thought that he was the worst choice to come check on Tim. As much baggage as the rest of them had, they at least hadn't attempted to murder him at one point. Except maybe Damian, but nobody was suggesting that Damian come out to the middle of nowhere to talk to Tim. It was hard to even fathom the level of disaster that would have been.
Tim continued to stare at Jason with those piercing eyes. They had the uncanny ability to make you feel like he was seeing every hidden bit of you that you most wanted to remain unseen. Jason struggled not to fidget.
"That's really all. Everyone is really worried about you!" Jason blurted out. "I think I was just volunteered because I'm the person with the least recent beef with you and therefore the most likely to be let in. Plus, I'm one of the few people who knows where you are," Jason finished with a mumble.
"What the hell does that mean?" Tim asked, looking sincerely confused about his last statement. "How are you the only person who knows where I am?"
"Not the only one, just, uh. Just one of two. Babs being the other of the two," Jason fumbled out.
Tim's face did something complicated, like he was torn between going into hysterical laughter or overwrought sobs. Jason briefly panicked. He supposed that did sound bad without context, but he had no idea what he was going to do if Tim started crying. Or laughing. Any reaction was terrifying at that moment.
"You leaving totally threw everyone for a loop, okay?" Jason said, leaning forward and putting his forearms on the rickety table. He leaned down to try and catch Tim's unfocused eyes as they stared somewhere into the middle distance. "Bruce especially basically came apart at the seams. It was pretty fucking brutal, actually," Jason said with a nervous chuckle.
"That wasn't my intention-" Tim started to protest, his eyes getting wetter.
"Hey, hey! I don't blame you at all! Honestly, I'm both impressed and depressed that you hung on as long as you did," Jason interrupted him to say. "After you disappeared, Bruce insisted that you had been kidnapped and lead everyone else on a wild goose chase trying to find your kidnapper. Except for me and Babs-"
"The only people who would openly defy him," Tim finished Jason's thought a lot differently than Jason would have, but that was basically the gist of it. Plus, he looked a lot more even tempered at having put some pieces together, so Jason wasn't about to split hairs over it.
"Right," Jason said uncertainly. "So, she and I sort of independently tracked you down and told the others what really happened. That you ran away?" Jason asked, looking at Tim for confirmation and continuing once he got a dazed nod from him. "Once they realized what happened, they decided to respect your wishes and leave you alone. But, that doesn't mean that they don't still care about you and worry about you, kid."
Tim looked dazed by the news. After a moment of both of them just breathing and Tim staring down at his empty plate, Jason leaned up out of his chair to put a few more cookies on his plate. When Tim didn't react, Jason nudged his plate closer until he finally picked up a cookie and took a bite.
"Things have been really different, since you left. I guess me being here is probably a big indication of that," Jason said wryly.
"Why?" Tim croaked, still looking down at his plate.
"Why?" Jason repeated, confused.
"Why is that an indication that things are different?" Tim asked.
Jason was momentarily stumped by that question. There were a million reasons, most of them related to how much his relationship with the bats had changed in the last year. They all crowded to the front of his mind at once, but he had to pick just ones, so...
"Well. Alfred is talking to me now, for one," Jason explained, still sounding befuddled. He gestured to the box of cookies between them to illustrate his point.
At that, Tim's face and eyebrows both came up. He regarded Jason with surprise. "Alfred wasn't talking to you?"
That only made things more confusing for Jason. "I mean. Yeah? None of you talk to me."
Tim frowned and opened his mouth to reply, but then paused. He frowned a little more, but it looked more frustrated than indignant.
"I talk to you," he grumbled.
"Red Robin talks to Red Hood sometimes. And, honestly, he's probably the most civil out of all of you. Or, he was until this past year, I guess," Jason said wryly. It was still wild to think about all the bats that were tangled up in his life lately, both in and out of the mask.
Tim frowned some more, and Jason frowned back. He took the opportunity to grab another cookie, dunking it in his eggnog, which was steadily getting more lumpy as more cookies lost bits and pieces to the drink.
Finally looking away, Tim admitted, "I thought Alfred *did* talk to you. I just figured he probably did it surreptitiously. In order to avoid a fight with Bruce."
"Well," Jason said awkwardly around a mouthful of cookie. "You thought wrong. I haven't talked to Alfred at all until tonight."
Tim went to take another drink of eggnog, wrinkled his nose at the taste, and then sat it back down with an angry click.
"I'm making coffee," he declared. "That stuff is foul."
Jason cackled fondly and knocked back the rest of his, half congealed cookie bits and all. It really was such a strange texture and flavor. He still couldn't turn his nose up at it, though. It tasted too much like old memories.
Holding out his own mug, Jason tried to put on his most charming grin, but he suspected it probably held too many teeth to look properly appealing. "Can I get a cup too?" he asked.
Tim seemed startled at the question, his eyebrows raising, before he shook his head and took Jason's mug with a belated, "Oh, yeah. Of course. Sorry. I've been living alone too long."
"No worries, kid. I'm not judging your etiquette," Jason chuckled, leaning back in his chair.
Jason looked up at the crackled plaster of Tim's kitchen ceiling and listened to the sounds of him filling up the drip coffee maker with water and slotting the empty carafe onto the hot plate. The visit was honestly going a lot better than he expected. It was a little weird to think that Tim, probably one of the smartest bats around, hadn't noticed how isolated Jason was. But, honestly, Jason preferred to know that Tim barely gave him any thought at all, compared to his fear that Tim was constantly haunted by the thought of him.
In no time at all, the coffee machine was gurgling away, filling the small kitchen with the rich smell of coffee.
"What happened tonight? That you got to talk to Alfred?" Tim asked awkwardly, leaning back against the beat up kitchen counter and fidgeting with the end of his flannel button down. It looked like the kind of shirt that would have been more at home on Clark Kent than Tim Drake, but Tim was pulling it off better than Jason would have expected.
"The first annual bat Christmas party," Jason said with a laugh. "Babs set it up in the clock tower. All the Gotham vigilantes, plus most of Dick's generation of Titans and almost half the Justice League, were in attendance, it seemed like."
Tim's eyebrows were practically off his face by the time Jason stopped talking. "And, Bruce went for that?" he asked incredulously.
"That's the best part," Jason said with a mischievous grin, "He wasn't invited!"
"What!" Tim squawked. Then, after a pause, burst out with a laugh that looked like it even surprised him.
"Oh yeah," Jason said with relish. "He's been persona non grata for a while. Babs has basically been running the ship by herself since you left."
Tim laughed again, sounding nervous. "Uh, why-" he cleared his throat and quickly turned to start pouring the coffee into new mugs. "How did that happen?"
"It started with him going no contact with everyone after the fiasco with your search. I mean, he might have run into Kate a few times, but it sounded like that didn't go over well," Jason explained, accepting his new drink from Tim.
"Didn't go well?" Tim prompted, digging in the fridge and coming back with creamer and a glass canister full of sugar.
"As in, I'm pretty sure she punched his dick in. But I wasn't really in the fold yet at that point, so I only heard bits and pieces," Jason said as he poured cream into his coffee.
Tim snorted so hard Jason was briefly afraid that he would choke. But, he got himself under control and assumed his previous seat across from Jason.
For a while they both silently fixed their coffees the way they liked them and sorted out some more cookies from the box to each of their plates. The box was getting dangerously empty by that point.
"It wasn't because of me, was it?" Tim asked nervously.
"Hm?" Jason grunted, his mouth still full of cookie. He had already lost the thread of what they had been talking about before.
"Bruce getting the cold shoulder. They're not doing it because I left, and they blame him, are they?" Tim asked while frowning down at his plate.
Jason swallowed what was in his mouth and chewed on his words for a moment. Because it was, and it wasn't, was the problem. Tim hadn't really caused Bruce to stop talking to them, but him leaving was the catalyst that started it all.
"Nah," Jason finally sighed, thoughts sorted. "Bruce did it to himself. Even after he fumbled the search for you, he could have come back and been in the group. But, his pride won't let him admit he's wrong, and the others aren't going to let him forget it, so," Jason shrugged. "I guess he just does his own thing by himself now."
They were silent again for a little while. Tim's expression made it plain that he was going over what Jason had said with a fine tooth comb, rotating it in his head and looking at it from all angles to make sure it made sense. And, based on his face, whatever he was seeing didn't make him very happy.
After a while, Tim said quietly, "Is it stupid that I feel guilty anyway?"
Jason sighed. "No. Of course not," he grunted. "But, it's still not your fault, okay?"
Tim looked up at Jason doubtfully. "You're being awfully nice about all this," he said.
Jason shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Speaking of that. There's something else that I've been thinking about. Something that I've been meaning to say, but I never thought I'd get the chance again."
Tim looked wary and leaned back in his chair. His right hand drifted below the tabletop, likely toward a concealed weapon, but Jason made a concerted effort not to track his movements. It was a fair enough response, considering their past.
Tim opened his mouth to say something, but before he could Jason charged onward. "I owe you an apology. For what I did. When we first met. It was beyond awful of me. You don't have to forgive me, but I think it's the least I can do. I'm sorry," Jason said, getting a little choked up at the end.
Apologizing had been impulsive of him, but it was sincere too. It wasn't like Jason had never thought about it before, but he had thought he would never get a chance. Apologizing to Red Robin had always felt impossible. Tim worked hard to put up a barrier of professionalism between them when they worked together as Red Robin and Red Hood. Then, Tim was gone and unlikely to come back and Jason figured there was no point thinking about it anymore. He had missed his chance.
But now he was sitting here in some weird time and place where Tim was a farmer and Jason was just his least favorite brother coming to deliver Christmas cookies from their shared grandfather figure. And, Tim had been nice to him. And, he had shared the cookies and gave Jason nasty eggnog. It didn't feel like he was going to get much more of an opportunity than that.
But, that didn't mean that his apology was going to be accepted.
"Jason," Tim sighed, sounding exasperated beyond words. "That's ancient history."
Before Jason could get a handle on it, his temper flared. "What the fuck? How is it 'ancient history'? It was only five years ago!"
"Five years ago is ancient history for us!" Tim yelled back. Jason had a clear enough head to notice that Tim no longer looked wary or scared, but he wasn't sure if pissed off and tired was much better. "Back in Gotham, more shit would happen to me in a month than would happen to other people their whole lives!" Tim spat.
Jason's mouth was open to retort, but he didn't really have anything to say to that.
Grumbling, he finally shouted, "So, what? I shouldn't apologize because you've already forgotten about it?"
"No! You still kicked my ass for no fucking reason! You should definitely apologize!" Tim shouted back.
"Then, what the fuck are we yelling about!" Jason shouted back, pulling on his hair in frustration.
"I don't know!" Tim yelled, running a frazzled hand through his own long hair, pulling his hair loose from its messy ponytail. "I don't know," he repeated in a tired whisper.
"Well," Jason grunted, quickly ashamed that he had started yelling. "I'm sorry, anyway. Really sorry. For what it's worth."
"Thanks," Tim sighed. "I don't know why I- Ugh, never mind," he sighed again and started drinking from his coffee, likely for an excuse to stop talking.
After a long awkward pause, Tim surprised Jason by being the first to talk. "You know, Dick has a theory. That the Lazarus Pit made you crazy. That was why you did all that crazy stuff when you first came back..." Tim trailed off, obviously looking to Jason to either confirm or deny this theory.
Jason sighed heavily and tried to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. "It doesn't actually work like that, you know?"
"First-hand accounts of the Lazarus Pit are sparse and some wildly contradict each other, so it's actually pretty hard to know how they work," Tim replied dryly.
"In that case, I'll tell you personally that the Lazarus Pit did not make me 'crazy'," Jason said with disdain, making the air quotes around crazy with his fingers and everything. "At least, no more crazy than any reasonable person who was just raised from the dead would be," he grumbled.
"So. Still crazy. Just not like magical crazy," Tim said with a little curl to the corner of his mouth.
"Yes. Correct," Jason agreed with a sniff.
"That lines up with my theory, then," Tim said with a secretive smile.
"Oh yeah? And what's that?" Jason asked, knowing he was walking into a trap, but feeling like the kid was probably owed it.
"That you just came out the womb already cracked," Tim said with a snort. "After all, who else would put on a Robin suit to beat up a teenager."
"Oh my god!" Jason groaned in pain and put his head down on the table as the memories overwhelmed him with embarrassment. He knew he was walking into a trap, sure, but he didn't think it was going to be so incredibly painful as that particular memory.
"A nearly grown man showed up at my kid's clubhouse dressed in a racy Halloween costume, nude legs from hip to ankle," Tim continued smugly.
"God, please kill me," Jason begged whatever deity was listening.
"You even had the flasher coat and everything," Tim said in an impressed tone.
"I want to die," Jason told the tabletop.
"Where did you get that thing anyway? I know they don't sell them in adult sizes," Tim asked.
Jason tried to resist answering, but the same voice that had been dogging him to apologize whispered that it was his fair comeuppance.
"I had to order it from a specialty store," Jason groaned.
"Like... Like a sex store?" Tim asked gleefully.
"... yeah," Jason moaned.
"Holy shit. Oh my god. That is excellent," Tim crowed.
But, at least, it sounded like Jason had been forgiven.
