randofics-blog

[randofics-blog]

fight through it (that’s what Dick always says)

After only three days in the tower with Dick, Rachel, and Gar, Jason wakes up around 2 a.m. with a tearing scream that doesn’t quite make it up his throat. It comes out as a grunt, and he shoots forward, chest heaving through the adrenaline of his dream—a repeat from his vision when he was possessed… a repeat of when he shot Dick.

 His lungs are quaking in his chest, and he coughs, hoping to ease the pressure, but to his disdain, the pressure only builds. He moves one fist to his mouth, coughing into it as he swings his legs slowly over the bed. It takes a few moments until he can breathe normally, but each breath brings with it a n uncomfortable tingling, hinting off that there’s more to come—that his lungs aren’t working at full capacity.

 “Shake it off,” he mutters to himself as he gets to his feet. The second his feet take on his weight, his head throbs, leaving his vision swimming. He brings one hand to his forehead with a muted groan, taking quiet note to the heat that coats his palm.

 “Are you fucking kidding me?” He sucks in a shaking breath, coughing weakly as his vision clears. He shuffles to his bathroom, thankful for the private space, and splashes cool water on his face. It feels like ice, but it wakes him up, clears his mind. He grips the edges of the sink, taking in his poor complexion—his pale skin has taken on a ghostly shade except for his cheeks. His cheeks are splashed in red.

 “I’m Robin,” he grumbles under his breath as he pulls his mirror back, looking through his medicine cabinet to find a thermometer. “I don’t get sick.” He drops onto the edge of the bathtub as he pops the electric thermometer into his mouth and waits, wondering briefly why the tower isn’t supplied with better medicinal technology, something that would give him his answer in two seconds, not two minutes.

 When the thermometer beeps, he wraps fingers around it, hesitating for a few seconds before taking it out and running tired eyes across the “101.8” flashing back at him. “Bullshit,” he mutters despite the few coughs that slip past his lips. He slams the thermometer down, slips his tennis shoes on, and leaves toward the training room.

 Dick always says they need to be ready to fight no matter what state they are in. Jason snags a blindfold, tying it behind his head with shaking hands. He walks toward the wooden staffs with ease and snags one, testing the weight as he walks toward the center of the mat. No sight and a slight fever—not the best combination for training, but the added addition of a pesky cold only helps practice what Dick constantly roams around preaching.

 He inhales, ignoring the burning in his lungs, and exhales, clearing his mind and centering his focus, and then he swings.

 He’s not sure how long he spends swinging his staff around blindly, but after a long while, he freezes when he hears soft footsteps pad into the room. Gar, he thinks. Dick wouldn’t have let himself be heard, and Rachel’s far too loud. He waits with bated breath, allowing his ears to see for him. He hears a staff being lifted, feels the brief blow of wind that comes from a staff being spun. Show off, he thinks—definitely Gar.

When the first swing comes, he easily raises his staff to stop it, and his muscles tremble against the force of the swing. Not Gar, he thinks—no, a swing like that can only be Dick, which means Dick wanted him to hear—wanted to throw him off, to make him think it was someone else. Smart.

Jason rolls his shoulders, ignoring the dull throb that seems to cling to his bones, and bends his knees a couple of times, prepping for a rare but real training session.

 Dick swings again, and Jason moves with Dick’s movements, blocking, clashing, swinging, over and over, and over. Time feels as if it stops, yet Jason’s muscles remind him how long the two have been going. He’s winded, his lungs are trembling within his chest, and he’s drenched in sweat. He takes a brief note of his condition, focusing on the hammering throb in his head, and his focus slips just long enough for Dick to get a swing in at his side.

 The pain is instant, a burning burst across his side, and he drops to one knee, staff falling to the floor as he abandons it to rip his blindfold away from his eyes. “What the fuck, Dick?” He coughs harshly, one arm curling around his side.

 “You lost focus.”

 Jason’s heard that one before. “Yeah, but,” he spits out in between coughs, “that hit could have broken a rib.” His lungs are bursting, and he’s annoyed when he can’t quite catch his breath.

 “Jay, are you okay?”

 If Jason could breathe, he would gripe about how much Dick sounds like Bruce. ‘Jay’ is a Bruce thing, not a Dick thing. However, he’s genuinely struggling to suck in air against quaking lungs. “Fan-fucking-tastic,” he sputters out. His face is growing hotter by the second, and his vision begins to swim like earlier. Only this time, he can’t blink away the cloudiness—it only grows. He can faintly make out Dick dropping his staff, can see Dick’s mouth moving, but his ears are ringing far too loud to hear anything, and he gives into his protesting body just as his eyes roll back.

 *****

 “—son? Jason, open your eyes.”

 “Bruce,” Jason mutters, eyelids fluttering open to see Dick staring down at him with one hand cupped to his cheek.

 “Sorry to disappoint,” Dick says, tone coated in worry. “You’re burning up.”

 “Am I?” Jason feigns ignorance as he pushes up into a sitting position despite Dick’s hand on his shoulder.

 “You’re shit at lying, Jason.” Dick says, and he’s giving Jason the look—the one Jason hates because unlike Bruce’s cold, distant eyes, Dick’s are warm, worried, clear.

 “If you knew you were sick, what the hell were you doing training?” Dick stays close as Jason tries to stand, but Jason’s legs, weakened, shake too hard, and he falls back down to one knee. “Easy, Jay.”

 “Don’t call me that,” Jason bites out, pushing against Dick with a shaking hand as he once again tries to get to his feet. His legs hold his weight this time, but his head is spinning, and he’s worried that he won’t make it back to his room without passing out again.

 “Let me help,” Dick says, but Jason waves him off, taking one unsteady step toward the exit.

 He sways, and Dick’s at his side in seconds, snaking one arm around his waist.

 “Fine, I won’t ask this time,” Dick gripes.

 “Fuck off, Dick,” Jason mutters, but he’s too weak to push Dick away. “Why do you care anyway?”

 “Because I’m not Bruce,” Dick growls out, and Jason wouldn’t be able to find a response to that even if he were at full health.

 Instead, he keeps quiet, allowing Dick to guide him through the tower back to his room. He coughs quietly the whole way, not wishing to wake Gar and Rachel, but when he’s deposited onto his bed, he curls onto his side, coughing harshly, loudly, until Dick’s nudging him up with a glass of water and some pills.

 “You can’t train when you’re sick, Jason.”

 “I was following your orders.” He knocks back the two pills, chasing them down with cool water.

 “What are you talking about?”

 “You have to be ready to fight at any given moment,” Jason parrots Dick’s words back to him, mocking Dick’s voice the best he can manage against a burning throat.

 “Not when you’re running a fucking fever, Jason—I could have killed you.”

 “Yeah, thanks for the fucking bruised rib by the way.”

 “That was your fault.” Dick disappears into the bathroom, and Jason silently obliges when Dick waves the abandoned thermometer in front of his face.

 “Let’s see how much the 101.8 went up.”

 Jason drapes an arm across his eyes—he forgot the stupid device records the last three temperatures. He ignores the thermometer when it beeps, only allowing Dick to take it back before he rolls over, burying his burning face against a pillow as he blindly grabs around to pull his blankets up over him.

 “102.7 now—that’s not good, Jason.” Dick grabs Jason’s blankets and tugs them over his trembling frame.

 “It’s just a cold,” Jason mumbles into his pillow.

 “I’m not so sure about that,” Dick says, voice low. He eases himself down gently onto the edge of Jason’s bed. “It may be the flu.”

 “That’s dumb,” Jason coughs out. “I’m fucking Robin.”

 “Your point?” Dick questions, ignoring the weak smack from Jason. “Stay and rest. I’ll check on you later.” He gets to his feet and starts toward the door, already mentally mapping out how he will go about asking Bruce how to tend to a sick Jason, but he pauses when Jason grunts out his name.

 “Dick, don’t tell Rachel and Gar about this.”

 “They already know,” Dick admits, waving away Jason’s glare. “They came when they heard me shout. I told them to go back to their rooms—I figured you wouldn’t want them to see you like this.”

 “Fuck,” Jason groans out. “Thanks, I guess.”

 “Yeah,” Dick turns away to leave. “Get some rest.”

 It doesn’t take Jason long, and when he drifts off, he drifts off to mentally planning out a list of lies he can say to Rachel and Gar so that no one thinks he’s weak.

[randofics-blog]

27 years but who’s counting? one

It’s late when Richie stumbles into a local New York drugstore with a bloody nose and a swelling hand. He gets some weary side-eyed glances from an elderly couple, and because he looks like he just staggered away from a bar fight, he plays the part and leans toward them with a lazy smirk.

 “You should see the other guy,” he mutters to the couple, laughing hollowly under his breath when they shuffle away from him with as much haste as their fossils for bones can take them. He almost wishes his improvised story was true—that he decked some douche in a bar after a drunken shouting “my dick is bigger than your dick” match, but reality can never hold a candle to the scenarios he lies through with ease.

 No, reality is tripping down four steps backstage after a show thanks to seven shots of whiskey that can’t seem to burn away the nerves that twist in his stomach. His face collided with the metal railing, and his hand twisted against his weight when he tried and failed to not completely eat the ground.

 No one saw, a small blessing he supposes, and his Uber driver chose to only shoot him a disapproving look as he rattled off the address to the small hole-in-the-wall pharmacy that stays open later than most.

 He scans name-brand pain killers until he spots the off-brand Ibuprofen he’s grown accustomed to—the only one that can touch his hangovers, and he snags it with his good hand, cradling his other to his chest as he walks toward the register.

 “I don’t understand why you’re being so difficult!”

 Richie arches one brow and spares a half-glance toward the pharmacy as he waits his turn to check out.

 “Sir, we close at ten on Saturdays.”

 “I know that—you think I don’t know that? It’s on the sign! However, I called you earlier and told you I was coming in for a refill!”

 “And I told you on the phone that we close at ten on Saturdays.”

 “I was at work!”

 “Sir—”

 Normally, Richie stays out of squabbles such as this one because he can’t muster up enough energy to care, but his head is throbbing from the alcohol and the whole face to metal banister ordeal, so he turns on his heel and sucks in a breath, prepared to shut this asshole up, but his eyes meet dark eyes with tired, worried creases, and his chest swells until it’s tight, restricted.

 “Eddie..?”

Eddie opens and closes his mouth silently, over and over as if the right words to say are almost there but can’t quite catch to his tongue, and Richie takes a step forward, abandoning his place in line.

 “Eddie… is that you?”

 “Richie?”

                                                                                                              Richie can’t believe that after God knows how many years apart with no contact, Eddie Fucking Kaspbrak can squeeze the breath out of his lungs with a single whisper of his name. “Holy shit,” he gasps out because his brain is currently functioning at low capacity.

 “Holy shit is right!” Eddie begins, voice growing in volume. “The first time I see you in 27 years, and you’re covered in blood!” In seconds, Eddie closes the remaining distance between the two and curls warm fingers around Richie’s jaw to inspect the mess of a nose from different angles.

 “What the hell happened? Jesus, Richie, look at your hand.” Eddie prods at Richie’s swollen wrist lightly, lips pulling into a frown when Richie winces. “You’re a mess right now. This could be broken, same with your nose. You should be in a hospital right now!”

 Richie can only blink owlishly at Eddie’s frantic words spilling from his tongue, and the only singular thought his malfunctioning brain can hone in on as Eddie drags him out of the store is 27 years.

 Eddie’s been keeping count for 27 years.

 *****

 “Ow, Dr. K, Jesus, be fucking gentle,” Richie curses out through clenched teeth. He’s on a bench outside the drugstore, and Eddie’s crouched in front of him, wedged easily between his legs to dab at his bloody nose with supplies from a first aid kid stowed away in a car that looks way too big and way too expensive for Eddie Fucking Kaspbrak.

 “Dr. K,” Eddie mutters along a sigh as he wipes blood gently away from Richie’s face. “I’m surprised you didn’t use the accent.”

 “Ah, well, I left all my wit on the ground when I forgot how to walk down some steps.” Richie’s heart stutters in his chest when Eddie pushes his glasses up into his hair to inspect the bruising around the bridge of his nose.

 “You fell?” Eddie frowns, and Richie hates it—he never wants to see the painted look of concern on Eddie’s face. “Richie, this could seriously be broken.”

 “Well maybe it will finally fix some of this ugly I’ve been sporting since popping out of the womb.” He means to jest—to lighten the mood, anything to melt that frown off Eddie’s face, but his tone, though light, lacks the usual heart and ease, and Eddie, ever the astute, catches on.

 Eddie freezes, hand hovering just inches from Richie’s face. “Richie, you aren’t ugly. You’re unique.”

 Richie laughs at this, a meaningful laugh that loosens some of the tightness in his chest, and he keeps laughing, even as he winces from the burning pain that shoots across his nose.

 “Come back to my place.”

 In just seconds, the tightness is back full force, feeling as if large, slender fingers are gripping at Richie’s lungs and squeezing.

 “My wife is away for the week with our neighbor’s housekeeper, so…”

 Richie doesn’t hear the rest. His heart deflates back to the size it’s been since the first day he met Eddie Kaspbrak, and he lets out a quiet sigh. “Wife, huh? Who’s the unlucky lady?”

 And just like that, his brief moment of repeated heartbreak is erased behind poor jokes and an easy half-smile, but Eddie doesn’t react with a sense of rage Richie is expecting. Instead, Eddie’s eyes cast down, and his shoulders slump forward.

 “Yeah, it’s… uh… it’s complicated.”

 There’s a color of finality in Eddie’s tone that all but screams at Richie to not press forward, so instead, he tilts his head, a silent invite for Eddie to make the next move.

 “Just… don’t worry about that and come over. Please? I want to properly treat your nose and hand, and you will need to be monitored for a concussion.”

 Richie tucks Eddie’s wife away into a mental box labeled “to be revisited at a more appropriate time,” and he rolls his eyes as Eddie prattles on about how Richie could potentially die if he sleeps alone while he’s injured.

 “You know,” Richie interrupts when Eddie pulls him to his feet. “There are other ways to get a person in bed with you—”

 “Richie Tozier, you are absolutely insufferable!”

 Despite the pain rooted deep within him, Richie laughs, and for the first time, he feels how he felt 27 years ago back in Derry, Maine.