#its not slowburn but their relationship progression is slow af

[cheswirls]

early op/dc au fic plot points

in honor of finding my notes finally after five months have passed since writing them and after i just wrote out a huge block of what happens during part one of the fic relying entirely on memory and wit alone, here are some freebie things-that-will-definitely-happen (and just random Things to throw in between) to think over while i'm trying to get back into writing this fic

also tagging @kiteou who created jason/sabo and 100% inspired this verse (please look at their ship art it's all so impeccably goooood)

sabo wears make-up to cover his scar when he goes crime fighting and chooses to hunt criminals in a distant district of gotham to avoid being recognized since he doesn't wear a mask

though he doesn't weak a mask, he does adorn a large tophat with a wide brim and uses the shade to conceal his face from view; when he runs into jason and snarls about a hero not posibly wearing a fucking full-face helmet mask, jason argues back about protecting his identity and accuses sabo of being a hypocrite since his hat also hides his face

jason quotes old literature sabo has never heard of when he's trying to make the most of a situation (so rarely) and sabo scribbles illegible-chicken-scratch words in tattered notebooks when he needs to vent about Life in general (it's maybe his goal at some point to create an autobiography of life in gotham and how much It Sucks, Bad���)

sabo using a metal pipe as his choice weapon reminds jason of damian (he's in his bo staff days) in kind of a fond but wary way - this does not last; at some point the pipe scraping against concrete or brick sets jason off, triggering something in his subconsciousness bad enough to make him lose focus in a fight, and it gets to the point where he tells sabo they can't fight together anymore if he's gonna continue to use the pipe as a weapon

ace and sabo are 19 in the beginning because it takes place in fall, and jason is newly 20 - because of this, sabo is 5'9 and ace 6'0 but sabo wears platform and heeled (the heel is inside so it's not visible) boots when he plays vigilante so he's taller than jason by a couple inches; at some point when ace meets jason he implicates sabo's true height and sabo shouts at him (shut the fuck up, ace!) before ace can finish; even later on, sabo ends up at jason's apartment and when his shoes come off, he stands shorter than jason, much to jason's surprise; sabo admits gruffly that being over six foot makes a person more intimidating, which is his goal at night when facing off with criminals, but also insists that he's still growing (which he is, and eventually he doesn't need the boots to stand at 6'2 properly); even though ace is (barely) taller than sabo (just like he's barely older than sabo), he's still shorter than jason, which rubs him the wrong way (and sets off the comment about sabo's alleged height)

while ace is just trying to survive in gotham, owing nothing to the city that's chewed them both up in childhood and spit them back out again in adolescence, sabo chooses vigilantism in a bid to 'just do what's right, or at least try to'

^ going with this, ace and sabo both have awakened meta-genes that grant them fire powers; ace got his first and is proficient in using his powers - in contrast, sabo develops his after his accident that leaves a portion of his upper body scarred, and refuses to train or even try and control/subdue his powers at all due to his intense fear of fire; this causes daily strife because ace should be able to coach sabo through developing (or at the very least, getting under control) his powers so they don't cause accidents all the time, being the more experienced and honed of the two, but because he's never willing to overstep and always afraid of reigniting sabo's trauma, he never pushes sabo toward what should be the reasonable solution

aaaaaaaa smth smth jason being more experienced in relationships but none of them ever going well, versus sabo who's never been in love and doesn't know how to act, doesn't know how to be vulnerable in front of another person (who's not ace, but even then) or what's considered normal for their relationship status, and eventually having to tell all of this to jason to dispel some worries threatening to make him sick; jason tries his best to insist that sabo doesn't need to act a specific or certain way and that they were going to figure this out together and find what worked for them; in the beginning their "romantic" relationship is super dysfunctional and not much different from their status before when they were just friends, but it slowly becomes more functional when they start to clue in to what they and each other want out of this

i CANNOT find my notes which makes me sick (< actually i did!!! not long after i wrote this which makes me SO mad in hindsight) but in this verse jason runs around with roy harper and artemis crock, who are roughly the same age as him and sabo but have the dynamic they do in earth-16 when they're (sibling) in-laws, meaning, they get along like a tight pair and often will team up to lovingly tease jason whenever the opportunity present itself; when they're introduced to sabo, the initial reaction is them recounting ('oh so this is the boy you're always mentioning') various things jason has said about him and then low-key embarrassing the both of them with their teasing, so it takes a bit for sabo to warm up to them

after sabo is burned by a lighter and his make-up runs, jason believes his old face scars to be part of the fresh injury and rushes sabo to leslie's clinic to get seen; sabo is bandaged up and none of the staff ask questions about the vigilantism that would (tie him w illegal activity) but in the beginning when someone asks sabo a basic question in regards to the injury, sabo clams up; jason has to snap at him that (leslie) was a doctor and not the fucking cops, so would sabo please put an ounce of trust in someone for once and let them take care of him; sabo relents and lets himself be treated

when he arrives home with his eye covered, ace is shocked because sabo never lets anyone but ace bandage him up; ace asks what (the fuck) happened and sabo clams up, flinches back when ace tries to reach for the wrap, and snaps at him to leave it because an actual medical professional treated him for once; ace says smth like 'but you always let me patch you up' and sabo appeases him by saying he can redress the wound later when it needed changing, but right now, he wants it left alone; later ace gets to see the damage and immediately realizes sabo got burned which terrifies him, putting sabo's shying away from him earlier into a new light, and ace takes on a new perspective when he helps sabo tend to the injury in order to frighten sabo as little as possible

sabo lives with ace and rouge until zero year, when their apartment floods and rouge gets sick and eventually dies in the hospital without proper medical care; without rouge, neither of them go back to the house in coventry and instead spend most of the remainder of zero year in a church - despite spending a good portion of their upbringing from that point on around clergymen, sabo refuses to believe in a god that would let him and ace to suffer through life to the extent that they had, and when ace curses 'god damn' or 'oh god' sabo isn't even willing to humor it, always blunting insisting 'there is no god' that ace in turn always counters with 'it's an expression, sabo, it doesn't have to mean anything'

aaaaaaaand since i've been sitting on this intro for a good six months now here's a small actual written pv :)

(if tumblr blurs the ss just click on it and it'll clear up)