#jtsse 2018

[redrobinfection]

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

JayTim | Complicated Relationship | Angst | Betrayal | UST | One-Sided Attraction | 5.4K (below read more link) | Read on Ao3

AN: This fic is a gift to @chibinightowl for the 2018 JayTim Secret Santa Exchange. It represents a small portion of a much larger AU developed for the prompt "Pirate Captain Jason and Privateer Captain Tim chasing each other around ocean and ending up marooned together"… maybe someday chibi_nightowl and I will share the rest with everyone else ;)

---

A stiff wind beats against their ship, sending chilly spray up over the bow and into the faces of his haggard crew. Captain Timothy Drake bears the sharp gust and biting spray with grim equanimity.

"Captain, please! This is our thirtieth watch since we began this hellish grind and if we stay on this heading, we'll run right into those storms brewing right o'er the horizon. Let us break off and seek calmer seas."

Stephanie's - his navigator - words roar around him like the sea, but he doesn't yield anymore to her than he does to the roughening surf. He knows a storm is brewing - he can smell it, feel it even - but he doesn't care. His eyes are fixed on a hazy smudge on the horizon, his target of nearly eight days now, and he'll be damned if he lets it go. Not now. Not after so long…

"Cassie, please, you know I speak sense! Help, me convince him!"

Tim feels a light touch on his arm and turns to his first mate, the fierce Cassandra Sandsmark, who is peering into his face with equal parts concern and steely resolve.

"Tim, I agree with Stephanie on this. Our crew is lagging, the winds are rising, and if we don't turn back soon we'll likely be caught out in this storm. We weren't equipped for a jaunt much longer than a few days and we aren't rigged for open water. We've given those pirates a good run of it, but time and fortune are against us now. We need to turn back."

He frowns. "Re-rig the ship and begin tying down loose articles, but we won't turn back until they do. We'll smash these bastards between our hull and the storm if we have to. Those are your orders," he reiterates firmly, eyeing both of them sternly. Cassie tsks in exasperation and Steph scrubs her hands through her hair with a sound of frustration. Conner Kent and Bartholomew Allen, two more of his trusted lieutenants look up from across the ship in concern and curiosity.

"Captain, really, the crew is-

"These seas will tear us to flots-

"Enough!" Tim cuts across them, tearing his eyes away from his target to stare them down. "I hear your concerns and, as always, I appreciate your candor, but my decision stands. Maintain visual contact and move to intercept at best possible speed."

Cassie and Steph share a look, but in the end, they are still his best and truest. They salute him crisply for the whole crew to see. "Aye, Captain!" Cassie immediately turns to the crew and begins issuing orders to adjust the rigging, but Steph hangs back.

"If I may speak freely-" Steph begins in a low voice.

"I doubt you'd hold back even if I asked," Tim replies drily.

"-and as your friend," she continues, her acknowledging grin still tinged with worry, "the crew would feel a whole lot better about this rough haul if we knew what was so important about this one measly ship." She sighs and tilts her head back, rolling one shoulder. "Every person on this ship trusts you with their life and would follow you into hell itself, but it's not often you to lead us on in the dark. The crew is antsy, tired, confused, unmotivated..."

Tim opens his mouth but Steph presses on, turning to fix him with the full force of her icy blue stare. "They see a fire in your eyes and wait for you to light it in their hearts, but instead you keep your reasons to yourself and lead us on this wild goose chase, into a storm, in open water, and all for what?"

"Steph-"

"Hell, even I'm feeling a touch flighty, not knowing if you'll sacrifice us to Davy Jones just to catch a single ship and ne'er e’en tell us what's worth more'n our lives to-"

"Steph!" Tim finally bellows, shaking his head and turning her away from the crew. She colors but holds his gaze. He sighs and leans in.

"The man on that boat wearing the captain's tricorner, he's the reason I came to Bristol," Tim tells her quietly. Steph's eyes widen.

"Wait. He's the one that…"

"Aye, the very one."

Steph covers her mouth with one hand and stares over Tim's shoulder toward the ship in the distance. "No… are you sure?"

"Completely. And even if I wasn't, that ship flies known pirate colors; as privateers in service of the crown, we'd chase them down for entering crown territory in any case. But…" he trails off and his eyes harden. "I'm sure, Steph."

Steph's gaze hardens as well and a spark of something fierce and wild - the very spark that caught his eye back when he first put together his privateer crew back in Bristol - lights up her eyes. "In that case we'll have to prepare a proper 'thank you' for him, eh?" Steph cracks her knuckles and grins savagely. Tim shakes his head fondly. "May I share this news with the crew?" she asks him beseechingly. "They'll be wanting to share their 'thanks' with this bastard as well, I'd imagine."

Tim hesitates, but nods stiffly. "Aye, but keep it brief. They don't need my whole bloody life story, Stephanie."

"Aye, Captain," she replies with a jaunty salute that barely disguises the rage behind her eyes as she turns to the crew and begins to walk the length of the ship, calling out in a loud voice, "Okay, listen up you sorry lot, we've got a grand personage on that boat up ahead-"

Heads come up and eyes turn toward her while Tim does his best to tune out her voice. He turns his gaze back to the ship in the distance.

"-that very cur that once tried his damnedest to betray and murder our esteemed captain-"

A distant part of him can feel his crew's eyes on him, but his mind is elsewhere, imagining a face, imagining the look on it when they overtake that ship, board it, then sink it to the depths.

"-one Jason bloody Todd, scourge of the Caribbean, and foulest among pirates! I expect you all to give him your 'warmest regards'-"

Murmurs rise among the crew, heads nodding. Cassie looks surprised and furious, but she turns her fury toward the horizon. In the background, Conner's face takes on a dark cast and Bart cracks his knuckles with a wicked grin.

"-so what say you, crew of the Red Robin? You ready to catch this sonofabitch and send his sorry excuse of a ship down to the murky deep?"

"Aye!"

Tim smiles grimly into the biting wind and imagines the face of one Jason Peter Todd in the moment he gets his long-overdue comeuppance.

"All hands on deck for best available speed and make preparations to board!"

"Aye!"

He smiles and looks in grim satisfaction to the storm ahead.

~*~

"Jason? Jason! Damn you to the depths, Jason Todd! Listen to me when I talk!"

Jason nods absently, his eyes fixed on a slip of a ship far off to their stern. "I hear you, Roy…"

"But you don't listen!" Roy bites back, stepping between Jason and his view of the tailing ship. Roy frowns. "All you want to do is stare dreamily back at that damned ship and mutter to yourself. You're lucky Kori has her wits about her or they would have caught us naught but five minutes out of port."

"I can't believe it, Roy, it's him, it's really him..."

Roy, his third-in-command, rolls his eyes. "You keep saying that, but who is 'him'? Who is on that ship that has you so moony you would've about thrown yourself under their keel if we hadn't hauled you away?"

Jason scowls and rips his eyes away from the horizon. "It's him, Roy. The one I thought I’d…"

"Is that supposed to mean something to- OH," Roy's eyes widen as he remembers a drunken confession Jason made to him over too many brandies all those months ago back when Jason first brought their crew together.

"He's the one you killed while hopped up on Joker's Breath? Back when you tried to take the Batfang out from under ol' Bluebird?"

Jason winces, but nods. "Aye. Him. Tim."

"Tim, huh?" Roy looks uncertain. "Are you sure? You only got a glimpse of him before they raised the alarm and Kori sped us away, thank God in heaven for the good head on her shoulders."

Jason nods and turns his gaze back to the distant ship. "I'd know that face anywhere, Roy. It's him."

Roy rolls his eyes again. "Okay… well, I guess you didn't kill him after all, but considering the fuss he's put up trying to run us down, I can't imagine he's all too happy over the attempt."

"I don't care," Jason says. "He's alive. I could sing, Roy. My God, he's alive…" He runs his hands through his hair for the hundredth time, teasing it into wild, unkempt spikes.

"Yes," Roy responds flatly. "Actually, it's been eight days, Jason, how has this not sunk in yet?"

"He's really alive…"

Roy closes his eyes and tips his head back, groaning. He crosses himself. "God in heaven, preserve us…"

"Save some of those prayers for the hours to come, Roy Harper. We'll be needing them once this storm breaks," First Mate Kori Anders tells him as she approaches from behind.

"They must be suicidal following us into this storm," Roy comments wryly.

"A trait we clearly share, since we're headed into it ourselves!" their helmswoman Artemis calls back over her shoulder.

"Aye, but you'd have thought they'd've turned back by now," Roy muses, rubbing his chin. “It was a mad plan, but it should’ve worked a charm...”

"Never underestimate the lengths to which a pirate - former or otherwise - will go to set to rights a wrong committed against them," Kori comments blithely, pulling out her looking glass. She sighs after a moment and turns to Jason.

"Captain, there is nothing for it. We cannot outrun them and we are vastly outgunned. We must come about and bring the fight to them, on our own terms."

Jason nods. "No more running. I need to see him, one more time..."

Roy makes a sound of disgust as Kori frowns in confusion. "You're missing the point, Captain Todd. We're not planning to turn around to kiss your lover on the cheek. That man is after our blood; we need to make a stand, draw first blood and drive them off," he reminds him.

Jason finally turns his full attention on Roy, a blotchy flush rising on his cheeks. "He was not my lover, not after… No, we don't take the offensive today." Roy begins to interrupt him, but Jason persists, eyes taking on a grim cast.

"He's not after our blood, he's after mine," Jason tells them firmly. "I'll… I will speak with him. We will work this out." Kori and Roy raise their eyebrows, but wisely told their tongues. "We will defend ourselves, but we will not draw first blood. That is an order. Is that understood?"

Roy and Kori stiffen under his unyielding stare, their doubt and uncertainty yielding to trust borne of long partnership and camaraderie. "Aye, Captain."

"Come about! One-eighty to stern. Ready the sweeps and prepare arms! We fight to defend only, by strict order of the captain himself! Prepare for hard sprint at the word!" Kori orders the crew in a booming voice. Jason turns back to staring across the waves toward their shadow. Roy scrubs a hand across his face in exhaustion then hurries to help the crew prepare their vessel for the rough stretch ahead. Artemis and the rest of the crew of the Red Hood look around at each other uneasily, but comply without hesitation.

"Aye!"

~*~

"Tim, I'm so relieved you're alive! I don't even have the words to express how glad-"

"Save your breath, Jason!" Tim yells back hoarsely, fighting to be heard over the howl of wind and rain and pounding seas around them. He strikes out at Jason wildly, recklessly, forcing Jason closer to the edge of the steeply rolling deck.

They slide around on the slick planks and tumble over loose detritus in a frenzied dance, Tim striking out violently while Jason attempts to talk him down from his rage. Around them the crews mirror their fight, Tim's crew attacking with a vengeance while Jason's fight just to hold them at bay. Truthfully, it was all they could manage in any case, outnumbered as they were by Tim's privateers.

Kori's plan to turn back fast and hard and surprise Tim's crew worked a charm. They'd been taken off-guard so badly when the Red Hood had suddenly appeared out of nowhere on leeward side that they'd hadn't the time to run out their long guns and had instead begun immediate boarding, just as Jason and Kori had hoped. Unfortunately, the storm that had been brewing around them also arrived to the fight not long after they, and now it tossed their ships around like toys, threatening to take them both to the crushing deep for their troubles.

"Tim, I'm so, so sorry! I never meant-" Jason bellows over the wind, dodging another wide swing of Tim's staff.

"Shut up! Shut up and fight me, you arsehole! I don't want to hear your false apologies!" Tim howls back, launching himself heedlessly across the deck of his ship to strike again. "You. Tried. To. KILL! ME!" he pants out, his face livid in the sporadic flashes of lightning. "You. Ungrateful. Hog-brained. Ill-begotten. Betraying. Piece of filth! Fight back, you spavined cur! FIGHT MEEEEE!"

Jason lets Tim dart in close and rap him smartly across his side, but the younger pulls his blow almost immediately, looking all the more enraged for Jason having allowed the hit. Jason shakes his head, sending rain and seawater flying from his sodden hair. "I killed you, Tim, I watched you die and I'll never forgive myself! Never! I'm sorry, so sor-"

"LIAR!"

They both stagger as the ships lurch, and a sudden cry of fear rising from many mouths turns their heads to stare in horror at the massive swell rumbling toward the linked ships. Calls from both crews to pull back gangplanks, cut loose, and brace for impact are faint under the roar of the sea, but there is no way they can be ready in time.

Jason sees his chance and scrambles across a plank just before two of his crew push it off their rail, safely alighting on the deck of his own boat. He hears a cry and turns, eyes widening in horror as he watches Tim go down with the plank, eyes fixed on Jason's, one a hand still reaching out as if to snag his coattails and drag him down with him. He watches in slow motion as the back end of the plank rises while the other drops, striking Tim hard on the back of his head. Cries of alarm rise from some of Tim's crew as their captain goes limp and plummets like a stone into the inky surf. Jason moves without thinking, the roar of the sea and the screams of their crews dropping away as his world narrows down to a single point: Tim.

He dives headfirst into the gulf between their ships and lets the current take him. He searches wildly in the pitch black with his rapidly numbing limbs and nearly gasps in relief when his legs strike a large mass. He twists and turns, finally snagging an arm just before a wave flips them head-over-heels. He tugs the body close, wraps all four of his limbs around it while praying that it is, in fact, Tim, and waits for a lull.

His lungs are burning by the time he finds a chance to rise, slinging one arm around Tim while he uses the other to scrabble for the surface. They reach air just in time for him to suck in a quick breath before another wave pushes them down once more. A bolt of lightning illuminates a piece of flotsam that washes over them and Jason seizes it, hauling the body up and onto it in the next lull. Another flash reveals Tim's slack face and their two boats disappearing into the storm.

Not ideal, but he'll take any good fortune he can get along with the bad. There was no way their boats would be able to get to them in these rolling seas, anyway. They would all have to ride this out and see where they end up in the morning.

Jason turns Tim onto his side and thumps between his shoulder blades, breathing a shaky sigh of relief when he feels coughing. He climbs up beside Tim, throws an arm and leg over him, and braces himself to hang on for the both of them, for as long as it takes, until they ride out this storm.

~*~

Tim wakes slowly, the smell of wood smoke registering first, then the unpleasant, sticky-gritty feeling of taking an unplanned bath in seawater…

His eyes snap open and he lurches upright with a strangled gasp that dissolves into coughing. His throat feels awful and it stands to reason he might have swallowed a good portion of that seawater he bathed in, but he's currently coming up blank on why or how that might have occurred. That's fine; he's woken up this way more than once in his time as a pirate, and then later, as a privateer. One of many workplace hazards. It'll all come back to him eventually. Or it won't and he'll make due anyway. He always does.

A small sound draws his eyes across the fire to the sight of a man and in an instant it all comes back to him with a burning fury. "YOU!" he bellows, throwing himself at the man, at Jason Todd, nearly setting himself on fire in the process. Jason has the good grace to look guilty before surprise overtakes his features, but Tim is livid at the other things he sees there. Happiness. Affection. Lov-

"Tim! Easy! Take it easy, pajarito! You took a rough tumble and breathed no small amount of seawater before I fished you out last night!" he has the temerity to plead. Tim fumes.

"How dare you! You don't get to call me that anymore, you bloody mutineer!" he wheezes hoarsely, aiming a punch straight for that smug, handsome face that has the gall to look pained at the accusations.

The infuriating man catches his fist in a firm grip, but his shoulders wilt. "No, I don't suppose I do, at that. Tim, I'm so sor-"

"No!" Tim screams, ripping his fist away and launching himself at Jason anew. They tumble back into the sand and Tim rains open handed blows against Jason's ribs, causing him to grunt involuntarily. "I don't care how sorry you are! I don't want to hear it! That doesn't excuse you for conspiring against my friend - your own brother! That doesn't erase the damage you did to him! To us! And I absolutely refuse to let you weasel your way out of this after you stabbed me square in the chest and left me for dead!"

Jason bucks his hips and rolls them, pinning Tim's legs with his weight and pinning each hand with one of his own. Tim wriggles and fights like a man possessed, but Jason holds firm, staring down at Tim with that stupid, pretty, mournful face of his.

"I know I hurt y-

"You were my friend, Jason! My brother! More than a brother!" Tim howls, drowning out that bloody voice. He can't stand it, can't stand to hear it again after all these months, that same voice he hears in his dreams sometimes, whispering friendly quips and sweet nothings before it morphs into the low growl he heard just before he took a knife to a rib, lucky that he took it to a rib and not between them. "You were the closest thing I had to love and you tossed it all away like rubbish! And for what? For some new 'friends' of yours?"

"Tim, I-"

"I hate you! I despise you, and I will take you down for what you did, even if I have to come back from the dead to- hmmnf!"

Jason leans forward and shuts him up with a rough kiss, something so familiar and yet so strange after all that's happened. Tim lets himself go limp and kisses back after a moment, seeing an opportunity. He tells himself he doesn't enjoy the contact - that Jason is as striking as ever, but he doesn't want any part of that anymore - and that he's only letting his body fall back into this familiar rhythm in order to play along, but it messes with his head, nonetheless. Jason pulls back after a moment and stares down at Tim with an expression that is a vision of relief and guilt and joy all rolled into one. He’s beautiful, as always, but Tim isn't falling for that pretty face anymore. Never again, he swears.

"You've already come back from the dead, Tim," Jason tells him softly, easing up on his hands, then lifting one of his own to trace the line of Tim's face. "We both have, and I would gladly die aga-"

Tim uses that chance to flip them and summarily strikes Jason in the temple with his fist, dropping the man instantly. He scrambles off of him and drops back into the sand with a grunt. After a moment to catch his breath, he slowly begins taking in the island around them, studying the trees and the sand and the curve of the beach around them.

It looks... small. Intimate, even. No chance of him disappearing to some secluded corner and pretending he hasn’t just been marooned on an island with the one person he currently hates most in this world. After a moment he tilts his head back and releases a wheezy sigh.

"Well, fuck."

~*~

Jason groans, then attempts to bat away the scratchy object repeatedly nudging his cheek. All he wants to do is roll over and sleep off the awful pounding in his head. He shouldn't have let Roy talk him into having so much of that damn rum, he thinks hazily.

"Wake up, you lunk," a voice off to his right says, the scratchy object nudging with greater insistence.

"Lemme alone, Roy…" Jason begins to grumble until the tone and pitch of that voice registers and he snaps awake. "Tim!"

Tim Drake sits back on his heels with an sullen glare, but proffers a roughly cut half of a coconut that Jason accepts with shaky hands. There is coconut water in the cleaned out shell and suddenly Jason's thirst hits him hard and fast much like the wave that knocked them from their ships did hours ago. His memory of the last day and a half trickles back to him as he gulps down the sweet water gratefully.

"I still can't believe it's really you," Jason admits hoarsely once he catches his breath again.

"Well, it is, and I can't believe you thought it was a good idea to snog me into submission after everything you've already done," Tim replies, pinning him with a sharp look. Jason winces, and sets the coconut down in the sand.

"I'm sorry-"

"I swear, if I hear you say the word sorry one more time…" Tim growls, rolling his eyes in irritation. He sighs, then moves to put the campfire between them. Jason watches him warily. Tim glances over at him then rolls his eyes again.

"Relax, I'm not going to attack you again. For now," he adds with a slit-eyed glare. "I'm still upset with you and no amount of 'sorry's or 'I feel terribly about it' is going to change that, but we can't afford to be fighting each other right now." He gestures to the island around them. "I scouted out our new refuge. We could probably subsist here for weeks, if not months, but it’s a small island and we're all each other has on this sad little spit of land, so, for the time being I propose a truce."

"I agree, heartily," Jason says, clenching his hands together and twisting them, "but I can't live with myself if I don't at least try to amend for some fraction of-"

Tim shakes his head wearily. "I don't want to hear any of it, so don't waste your breath." He gives Jason with a searching look. "Words are cheap, Jason. If you want to prove to me how sorry you are for what you've done, then allow me to take you in to the proper authorities to pay for your crimes."

Jason opens his mouth, but Tim presses on, leaning in intimidatingly. "And know this, Jason Peter Todd: our truce lasts as long as we inhabit this island. As soon as we step off of it, I will spare no expense to bring you to justice. I'll chase you to world's end if need be. I swear on it."

Jason nods, feeling the burden of their shared past weighing heavily on him as replies. "I will."

Tim tilts his head in confusion. "What?"

"I accept your offer of escort to the ruling authorities of any port of your choosing, and I will readily give myself over to suffer whatever punishment they decree in the name of justice," Jason tells him, leaning in to meet Tim stare for stare. "I will never forgive myself for what I did to you - and to Dick - but if it puts your soul at ease, then I will gladly welcome whatever punishment is due to me under the eyes of the law."

Tim stares. "Jason… you'll hang for piracy," he states plainly.

"If that makes amends to you, even in the smallest bit, then I'll go to the gallows gladly," Jason replies, just as plainly.

Tim's eyes widen and his face pales under a slight flush of sunburn. He takes a moment to collect himself and Jason welcomes it, taking the opportunity to drink in the sight of Tim like a man dying of thirst.

Words are cheap, as Tim says, but Jason knows to the depths of his soul that he would go to the gallows happily just so long as Tim's face is his last sight on earth. After too many months of dreams, nay, nightmares that begin with kissing Tim and end with a knife lodged in Tim's chest, there is nothing more beautiful to Jason than the sight of Tim alive and well. Every moment he stares, even the moments of baleful glares and raised voices, feel like rain on parched earth, a balm for his burned and battered soul. He'll take soul-searing fire all day, any day over the horror and betrayal he sees in Tim's pretty ocean-blue eyes every night.

Eventually, Tim clears his throat, studying his woven fingers intently. "Honestly, I didn't think you'd… in all my dreams of this day, I'd pictured confronting you, imagined hauling you away, sometimes imagined keelhauling you or locking you away in my brig to rot, but... I don't think I've ever imagined you actually going to the noose." He glances up, showing Jason his first glimpse vulnerability in what feels like lifetimes. "If you did, I think I'd lose a part of myself on that noose…"

He trails off, deflates with a sigh, then scoots around the campfire until they're sitting roughly side by side. Jason could reach out a hand and touch his arm - he wants to, desperately, if only to confirm Tim’s real and this isn't just another dream - but he holds himself back.

"Explain."

Jason tilts his head and raises a brow in confusion.

"Explain to me what happened," Tim clarifies. "All these months, I've nursed my wounds and my wounded pride, but what really rankled most was never understanding why." The pain and betrayal Jason recalls in his dreams every night shines in Tim's eyes now, and he can't stand to see it, but he refuses to tear his eyes away, punishing himself with the sight of it.

"Why did you turn on Dick?” Tim demands. “Why did you stab me in the chest for something as silly as a Captain's mantle? What did those strange new friends of yours offer you to convince you to betray everything you'd worked for your entire life?"

Jason shakes his head. "They didn't offer; they poisoned," he corrected in a low voice. He plucks a long palm frond from their meager fire and stirs the glowing coals, picking his words wisely.

"Joker's Breath" - Tim's eyes widen in horrified understanding - "was what they offered, and I was fool enough to give in to their wheedling the second night after you'd left to scout ahead. One time was all it took to snag me in their web. By the time you came back…" Jason trails off, shaking his head and refusing to continue. It didn't matter why he did it, it only mattered that he did and he regretted every bit of it with every ounce of his soul.

"Explain," Tim demands again, eyes shining like blue steel in the firelight.

"All that matters is that I was a blasted, naïve fool for letting that riffraff pressure me into taking their poison, and then for letting it consume my every thought thereafter until Dick threw me into the brig to sweat it out," Jason tells him. "Everything that followed that moment of weakness was entirely my fault, and I will never forgive myself for a single bit of it. Never."

Tim lets out a long breath before he speaks again, slowly, as if he is choosing his words very deliberately. "Whether you forgive yourself is your affair, but if I am ever to forgive you - and a large part of me sorely wants to, if only for the benefit of my own peace and sanity - then I need to understand what happened."

He leans in close, catching Jason's gaze. "I need to hear your side of this. You may be surprised to hear it, but I, well…" - a blush darkens the redness in his cheeks and he fidgets but holds Jason's gaze doggedly - "As much as I was infuriated and confused and hurt by what happened that day, I still missed you."

Jason blinks in surprise and Tim nods to himself. "I still love you, despite it all,” Tim admits, “and not understanding how you could do this to me - to all of us - has made that love nothing but a terrible ache in my soul."

"You.. I…" Jason swallows, struggling. "I did all those terrible things and still you have it within you to love me?" he gasps incredulously.

"Yes, but love is funny, Jason. Never doubt for a moment that I also hate you just as much," Tim informs him bluntly. He narrows his eyes and points a finger into Jason's face threateningly. "I wasn't kidding about despising you. I despise what you did and I despise you…"

Jason gapes, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

"…but I can't stop loving who you were - who you may still be, somewhere deep down in that muddied soul of yours - and that is just the way it is," Tim concludes with a nod of finality.

Jason closes his mouth and lets out a long breath of his own. "So… you really want to hear my side of things? You're sure?"

The tension drains out of Tim's shoulders and he rolls them once before shooting him the ghost of a grin Jason knows all too well. "Please," he asks, his gentle tone at odds with the challenge in his expression, playfully daring Jason to defy him and see what happens. A marriage of steel and grace, Tim's hallmark style.

As if Jason would ever dare to defy this man's wishes. He scrubs a hand through his salt-sticky hair and drops the tension from his own shoulders, settling himself down before the long, anxious tale ahead. "Well, going back to where it all started, not long after you left on that ill-fated scouting trip…"