Chapter Text
The first thing Jason notices is the shoes: the boy is not wearing any.
“There are easier ways to die than freezing,” Jason says. He doesn't often engage with strangers on the street, but this guy looks like life chewed him up and spat him out and the slobber on him hasn't even dried yet.
Even in the watery light from a first-storey window, Jason can make out the fantastic purple shiner over his left eye, can read ‘Gotham’ on his hideous green T-shirt, too thin for autumn in the city. Despite his dazed expression and the slump of his shoulders, there is something coiled and hostile about him, like he'd tear out your throat with just his teeth if you gave him a quarter of a reason.
“Juvie?” Jason blurts without thinking, though he already knows. Stupid question. He crosses his arms to make up for his flush.
The boy wets his split lip. When he speaks his voice has a dry, cracked quality, the kind of voice you’d imagine sand to have. He could be dehydrated. Or he could have been crying for weeks. “Youth centre.”
Jason's heard the stories. He's seen the kids. Boys who stagger out with hollow faces, missing teeth and internal organs. Girls who enter alone and come out with a baby. Or two. It makes him see red, but mostly it makes him scared; it's one of his missions in life to avoid that place. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Escapee, huh? Don't worry, no one will look for you."
"You gonna get out of my way?" the boy says acidly. His fingers curl and uncurl. His knuckles are scabbed.
Jason, against all wisdom, against everything he knows, feels sorry for him. That's dangerous, around Crime Alley – pretty soon instead of feeling sorry you'd be feeling a bullet in your back.
But Jason can't leave some kid to die (even if that kid looks a bit older than him). That's exactly what he hates about cops, about politicians and bureaucrats: they'll serve the richest men in town, put glossy posters of Gotham's skyscrapers around the country, and sweep the poor off the streets the moment some big-name foreign celebrity comes to visit so they won't see the failures of government. "Got a home?" he says.
"Fuck off."
"Got family?" He has to make sure the guy doesn't have any concerned relatives who'll come looking for him and march Jason off to the police station once they do.
The boy shoves past him, jaw tight. Jason shoots out a hand to stop him, and the next instant finds himself on his back on the sidewalk, the wind knocked from his lungs, staring up at Gotham's polluted night sky. The boy is straddling him, pushing at his chest with one hand, the other raised and curled into a fist. "Do not touch me," he hisses, and there is an edge, a desperate kind of fear beneath the anger, that makes Jason's heart clench. He knows that tone. He knows that brand of fear. It's not hard to guess what was done to the boy.
He should probably apologise. “I got a place to crash,” his mouth decides to say.
Instead of breaking Jason's teeth, the boy furrows his brow – the most animated expression he has given yet. “What?” he whispers, finally. "What is wrong with you?"
Jason shrugs, and then winces a little. There are going to be bruises mottling his back tomorrow. "I can give you a list."
“Your folks won’t mind?”
Jason tries to keep his face blank, but he hates it when people ask him that. “Mom died last year. Don't know where my dad is. Doing time again, probably.”
The boy doesn’t say he’s sorry, doesn’t offer platitudes, just flicks his eyes away, as if in solemn acknowledgement, and then looks at Jason again. Somehow, that makes it easier; Jason can't stand crooning sympathies. They don't do anything but make you more miserable. "Why should I believe you?" the boy says. He doesn't sound curious – just tired.
"No good reason. The place is a dump and there's no fridge. But hey, you can stay here and live in a cardboard box if you like." That last part may be a little sharp, a little mean, but the kid's clearly never been on the streets before and needs to know what'll happen to him if he's alone.
The boy looks at him, still sitting casually atop Jason like the latter is his personal cushion. Jason is starting to grow uneasy under the weight of that unblinking gaze. He wonders if he shouldn't have offered to help.
At length the boy says, "Dick."
Jason blinks. "What?"
"My name. Dick."
Jason scrunches his nose. "Couldn't have gone with Richie?" Richard's a stupid, snooty name, the sort that will get you a knee to the balls around here, but Richie's okay. Dick, though. That's worse than Richard even if it isn't stuck up.
"My name is Dick." He is starting to sound peeved, a little frantic, and possibly like he's about to punch him.
Jason holds his hands up in a placating gesture. "Okay, fine, whatever. I'm Jason Peter Todd." He is proud of his name. Not because it sounds nice or has some deep meaning, but just because it's his. Jason Peter Todd is the one thing he truly possesses, the one thing he's made his own. "Let me up."
Dick gets off smoothly and offers a hand. His grip is like a manacle, and just as cold. His palms are hard as the underside of seashells.
"I ain't letting you stay for charity," Jason points out, as they begin to walk. They should get that out of the way pronto.
Dick scoffs. "I'd have gone nuts if you did. I'm used to work."
A grin peels across Jason's face. Between the both of them, they might get two square meals a day. "Ever used a lug wrench?" he says.
-end-