#dont ask jason where he gets the money from sometimes questions are better left unanswered

[necro-maxing]

Something so satisfying about the idea of Jason moving out of Gotham and moving in with Kyle in NY after all the drifting from place to place, self-discovery, and the death of his best friend. (Oh lord here we go, Jay's gonna write a half-baked fic again):

It's a shitty apartment, but Kyle offers up what little space he has to give Jason a home, because God knows the man needs a place to call home now. The closest thing he had to call home in a person is dead, or a family that doesn't even really see him as a person half the time so much as a problem to be fixed or contained; Kyle doesn't expect to take that place or be anything excessively important, but he does have a couch and a few extra cups of instant noodles he can share.

And then Jason lives there. He's been there for a month, and Kyle is noticing changes. Jason isn't anything like what Kyle expected when he first met him years ago; he calm, he's quiet, he's smart. He's multidimensional, and that never really rang true until Kyle noticed Jason seemed comfortable enough to let his guard down.

Kyle also notices other changes. Such as a lack of being hounded about rent by the landlord, an increase in actual food in the apartment, and a stack of books that used to occupy the floor on an actual bookshelf. He debates asking a lot of the time, but he never finds the right way. Instead, he leaves it alone for a year.

The year rounds out. Kyle finally asks, because his entire apartment doesn't look half as bad as it did when Jason moved in. He finds Jason in the kitchen, cooking, and the whole place smells like Kyle's childhood. Spices that make his nose tickle and his mouth water fill the air, and he finds Jason leaned against the counter, scrolling through his phone with one hand and stirring the pot on the stove with the other. He's humming, a tune Kyle can't place but recognizes, somehow.

"Hey, Jay?" Kyle starts, eyeing his roommate as Jason looks up and, be still his beating heart, smiles at him.

"Oh, hey." Jason says, putting his phone down on the counter. He's giving Kyle his full attention, a gesture he usually reserves for important conversation. "I would've texted you about dinner, but y'know. I kinda just started."

"Nah, that's fine." Kyle says, waving off the statement. "I did want to talk to you, though. About uh... the apartment?" He doesn't miss the way Jason's shoulders tense, the way his jaw sets. He curses himself as he realizes how that must have sounded, knowing Jason must be expecting the worst now.

"Sure. Let me just-" Jason says, turning to knock the heat on the stove top down to low. Kyle watches him, the way his fingers just slightly falter with the knob. He's nervous.

"Its nothing bad, Jay." Kyle says quickly, and almost as if he's said some magic word, Jason visibly relaxes. His hand draws back from the stove dial slowly, and he turns to look at Kyle. "Its just... have you been paying the backrent? And... all the furniture and the food- Jay, I can't afford to pay you back."

"Whoa, whoa, slow your roll, bud! Who said anything about paying me back?" Jason asks, furrowing his eyebrows as he leans back against the counter. "Dude, you're letting me live here, and between your day job and running around doing... whatever it is Lanterns do, I don't know your life, you don't exactly make the big bucks. The least I can do is help you keep your shithole in your hands. And respectfully, after week three, if I had to eat one more cup of shrimp-flavored noodles, I was gonna murder you in your sleep."

"Jason." Kyle sighs, tucking his hands in his pockets as he eyes the floor. "Thanks, man. I've been stressing out for a year now about where in God's name I was gonna find the means to pay you back for this."

"And now you can rest easy, dreamboat. Now, do you or do you not want me to finish dinner before the game? I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you bitch about missing anything again." Jason warns, lifting the spoon out of the pot to wave at Kyle in a mock-threat.

"Right, right. Let the chef work his magic, and we all go to ved happy." Kyle laughs, holds up his hands defensively as he moves to leave the kitchen area. He pauses then, leaning into the room again to eye Jason. "Oh, and Jay?"

"Hm?" Jason doesn't look up, eyes focused on his methodical stirring. Kyle grins to himself, deciding that if Jason is so comfortable with him as to call him fucking dreamboat directly to his face, he may as well enjoy it.

"You make a great housewife, sweetheart." He ducks just as a knife flies into the wallpaper beside his head, laughing as he scrambles away from the kitchen as a flurry of yelling in the heaviest Gotham accent he's ever heard barrels out the door after him.

"I'm so poisoning your food, Rayner!"