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“Ugh, how do you get rid of mold in your bathroom?” Dick asks the second Jason picks up the phone.
“Hello to you too,” Jason tells him. Now that their relationship has reached a level slightly better than ‘tenuous’, Dick calls Jason almost once a week, mostly just to chatter at him as Jason grunts out a couple responses and mocks him viciously. Jason thought it was weird at first- it’s not like they had reached regular phone call status before he died- but as time has gone on Jason has put together a pattern of behavior.
“Hello, bonjour, caio, olá, now how do you get rid of mold in your bathroom?” Dick fires off some kind of spray bottle and then starts scrubbing industriously.
“You don’t,” Jason says comfortably. He’s sharpening his knives, having carved out time in his schedule around the time of day Dick usually calls, because when Dick calls him, he cleans his apartment. He’s not told Jason this, mind, but Jason has functioning ears and a functioning brain. He’s going to let Dick keep doing it. As someone who will have to clean the guy’s apartment if he kicks it, this is the best thing that could ever happen to Jason. He’s paying it forward to his future self for the low low price of letting Dick feel like he’s pulling one over on Jason by double-booking his brotherly bonding. “You move out.”
“I’m not moving out,” Dick says. “I’ve found the worlds only upstairs neighbor who doesn’t let elephants trample around their apartment at all hours. I’m keeping her. Surely you have mold tips.”
“Why, because I’m poor?” Jason snarks.
“Because you’re a clean freak,” Dick says, exasperated. Jason laughs. “Yeah, sure, because you’re poor, fine. I’m also poor, jackass, help a brother out with his damn mold problem.”
“I dunno know what to tell you,” he says, testing the edge on his thumbnail. Not quite to his standard yet. “I move out. I don’t fight mold anymore. I just leave. Same with mice, roaches, I’m not fucking dealing with that. I did my time living in deathtraps.”
Dick sighs. “Your last apartment was missing a load bearing wall.”
“And it didn’t have mold. You know how hard it is to find a place without mold in wet, dank ass Gotham?”
“Yeah, I do,” Dick says crabbily. “I don’t understand how you can be so blasé about potential structure collapse. A mouse can’t bury me alive.”
“And a building can’t give me hantavirus. Prion diseases are scary. So is pneumonia. Is it just your bathroom?”
Dick turns some water on- he’s cleaning his shower, from the sound of it. “So far,” he says. “It’s on the outside wall.”
Jason sighs, retests his edge, then puts it down and picks up another knife. “Then your bathroom fan probably doesn’t work good. Does your mirror get fogged up?”
Dick laughs. “Yeah, not that bad though. Just a little. I used to live in a place that was so shoddily ventilated that one time Deathstroke broke in and wrote a message on the mirror, and I almost couldn’t read it when I got out of the shower because it had dripped so bad.”
Jason puts his knife back down. “Excuse me.”
There’s a moment of silence. “Anyways!” Dick says, in that special tone of voice he uses when he realizes a joke is not as funny as he thought it was and has to save face, “Should I buy mold killer, or will bleach work?”
“Dick.”
“Or do I just kiss my security deposit goodbye and take out the drywall and start over?”
“Richard. Deathstroke broke into your fucking house?”
“That was a while ago,” Dick says, finally breaking. “It’s fine. No big deal. I had tried to tell him something, he wrote ‘message received’ on my mirror. And everything was fine.”
“He broke into your bathroom and threatened you in the shower?” Jason asks, staring at his phone in incredulous horror.
“Wrote a message on the mirror,” Dick sounds exasperated and not nearly as freaked out as he, by all rights, should be. “In the condensation, while I was in the shower. At least keep up if you’re going to freak out. It’s not that creepy.”
“A man old enough to be your father broke into your house just to write ‘message received’ on your bathroom mirror while you were showering,” Jason says frankly. “I’m not sure where you’re getting ‘not that creepy’. I think my creep meter has busted out the top from all the creep. And you need to fix your bathroom fan.”
“That was seven apartments ago. That building exploded.”
“You’ve yet to actually present me with any evidence he’s not a pervert, and you still have mold in your bathroom.”
“I’m pretty sure he thinks of me as like a fourth kid,” Dick says. “He’s just sad and weird.”
“All of his other kids have died,” Jason stresses. “Because of him.”
“And he’s sad and weird,” Dick shrugs audibly. “He’s not going to kill me.”
“Dick, it sounds like he would be the number one suspect in your murder.”
“If Slade killed me it would be an accident, and he would show up at my funeral and cry the loudest. I’m not worried.”
“Why are you on a first name basis?” Jason thinks he can feel his braincells dying off in real time.
“Have I seriously not talked about this before?” Dick asks. “He’s just weird. Man, I guess he hasn’t been by since you started talking to me like a human being, I must’ve just not been thinking about him.”
Dick has been at the same apartment for the last three years, and Jason’s been ‘talking to him like a human being’ for the last seven months. “What do you mean, been by? In your city?” Dick doesn’t reply. “In your apartment?” Dick is silent. “Dick, you need to move.”
“No, it’s such a pain,” Dick whines, like dying by weird man sexmurder is somehow less painful than renting a U-Haul. “If I move he’ll come by for sure just to mate my socks, it’s his routine-,”
“He has a routine for breaking into your fucking house?” Jason’s about to hit a pitch heretofore thought of as impossible by his vocal cords.
“It’s not a big deal!” Jason hears a cupboard slam loudly. “He’s just passive aggressive. He’ll come by and do chores because he thinks I’m a slob and he wants to find and turn out any secret cubbies I’ve got hiding. He leaves stickynotes detailing my failings at being an adult. They’re kind of funny, actually, I think I still have a good chunk of them. I lost my oldest backlog when the apartment blew up. That last one, I mean, not the recent one that blew up.” Jason finds that he doesn’t actually have words for this. Dick prattles on for lack of response. “‘You need more in your fridge than pickled radishes’, ‘you can’t possibly need this many shoes’, ‘stop hanging your sweaters, you’re stretching out the shoulders’, ‘this isn’t real maple syrup’, I don’t even have that many shoes, and maple syrup is so expensive. I’m not going to spend thirty dollars for like, twelve ounces.”
“You need to tell Bruce,” Jason says, scarcely believing that these are actually the words coming out of his mouth. What has the world come to.
“Oh God, no,” Dick says. Something clatters in the background. “He literally would lock me up. I would never see sunlight again. It’s fine, Jason. Chill out. I’m a grown adult, it’s not like he’s bothering a teenager anymore. It’s enrichment for me. I get a little shot of adrenaline and a bug treasure hunt. Sometimes he even makes me coffee.”
“And you drink it?”
“Well, yeah. It’s my freaking coffee, I’m not going to waste it.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Jason decides aloud. “Next time I see that man, I’m gonna kill him.”
“No, Jason, do not,” Dick says in the same tone Jason uses to tell his dog not to chew on his boots. “Just chill out. It’s fine.”
“It is not fine -,” Jason stresses, and then Dick turns on his vacuum.
“What?” Dick half yells over the noise, deeply sarcastic. “I can’t hear you, sorry, I have to go,” and then hangs up on him.
Jason doesn’t forget that Deathstroke has a new spot in the top slot on his kill list, but he’s a busy man, and from his research the guy has been bouncing around Europe for the last year and a half. Jason’s not willing to leave his dog at a boarding facility- or worse, with his family- for however long it takes to track him down. She may never forgive him for the indignity. He resolves to handle it the next time he sees him, which could be anywhere from two weeks to two years from now. It’s pure coincidence that he glances out his window a few months later and sees a familiar shock of white hair passing under his window.
“Oh, shit,” he says out loud, and scrambles to find his nearest gun.
There’s only one bullet in it, but if he fusses around grabbing another one he’ll lose his opportunity. He throws on his nearest clothes to hand, stuffs a knife in his pants pocket just in case, and leaves Princess Monster Truck barking at the indignity of being left behind so close to walk-time as he scurries down the three flights of stairs.
Naomi people watches as a hobby, which is only weird if you tell people it’s your hobby. It’s a nice distraction from doing homework, and she needs the window for light and airflow because her Dad refuses to turn on so much as a lamp until it’s literally too dark to see in the apartment, and it’s devastatingly hot without an AC or a fan. She’s seen a lot of shit out there, only some of it interesting- lots of deals, some more subtle than others, a couple arrests, Homeless Frank throwing litter back into passing cars and running off before they could get out and confront him about it. Once, she saw Kyle in the alleyway across the street with a girl who was definitely not his girlfriend Francesca- that had been a drama bombshell that she and her friends talked about for weeks. She’d gotten to watch Francesca confront Kyle about the rumor in the middle of the lunch room and hit him in the face with her tray until the SRO guys dragged them apart. Sloppy Joe meat and mushy green beans had gone everywhere. It was great.
Naomi doesn’t like Francesca; she and her stupid friends squat in the bathroom on the second floor every fifth period, huffing their vapes until the whole bathroom smells like someone drowned a strawberry in a public pool and relentlessly mocking everyone who walks in to use the space for its intended purposes. Naomi had to start going in fourth, which sucked. She didn’t actually have to pee by then and Biology was like, actually fun, while History was exclusively about the revolutionary war, and had been since she was in elementary school. But she hated Kyle more. She’d lived across the street from him her whole life, and he always sucked, wolf whistling, trying to slap ass when any girl under the age of 20 walked by. She shared a class with him in middle school too, where he would snap her bra straps or try to unclip it through her shirt, and called her and her friend Kayla dykes whenever they talked to each other in front of him. So it all evened out in the end.
Naomi stares at her worksheet- 11: George Washington accepted to become King of the United States. A: True. B: False- and imagines beating her head against her desk until she’s dumb enough to not think it’s a massive waste of her time. She looks out the window.
A huge white guy is walking down the street. Weird clothes- a big canvas jacket, tough pants like the ones Sonja’s wannabe army brother always wears, big black shoes, even though it’s June and baking hot out. His face is tough and scarred, and he’s got an eyepatch over one eye. It’s too hot and early out for most people, but a couple folks smoking on front stoops or walking by also look him over, some staring for a long time and others turning away and pretending to be busy. Homeless Frank tries to meld into the side of a building. Nobody says anything to the guy though, and he turns the corner and walks down onto Victory Avenue unbothered. She turns back to her homework.
She’s at 24: What political party did George Washington belong to? A- Democratic-Republican, B- None, C- Federalist-Democratic, when she hears a door bang open out on the street and looks up.
Another huge guy is jogging down the front steps of the apartment building on the corner of Victory, Latino, or maybe just Italian. He’s dressed like shit, like he just threw whatever on to be clothed in public: chunky neon Osiris sneakers that she hasn’t seen since she was, like, in kindergarten, and have not gotten any less fugly in the intervening years, grey sweatpants stuffed lumpily into socks that come up to his mid-calves, an unzipped red hoodie with no shirt on underneath. He’s also holding a pistol in one hand, the other in his pocket.
She watches him scan down Hemlock Avenue. He’s built as hell, with shoulders and arms like bowling balls stuffed into sausage casing, and even from her second floor perch she can see scars cutting through his chest hair and scratching up his face. He scans down Victory, spots the weird white guy, and swings his gun up. Naomi rolls her eyes. She has also seen lots of posturing out the window. Everyone knows pistols can’t shoot that far and actually hit anything. The guy is like, a block and a half away. Mark from two floors up has a gun and taught her how to stand and aim, and she’s seen people shoot before besides, in real life and in movies. He hasn’t even taken his other hand out of his pocket. He looks stupid.
“Wilson!” Red hoodie barks, echoing off of the buildings, and the guy turns around. The pistol makes a loud, sharp crack, and suddenly the guy’s head is red splatter on the sidewalk, his body on the ground.
Naomi stares, somewhat blankly at red hoodie guy, who stares at the corpse. Several people look comically between the two of them and then decide it’s time to go back inside. Homeless Frank starts grabbing up his things to hustle out of there.
“Are they shooting again?” her Dad calls. Sirens have already started up.
“Um, I don’t know,” Naomi calls back. Red hoodie bobs his head in a nod, satisfied that the corpse is indeed a corpse. He finally takes his other hand out of his pocket and flips it off. His shoes aren’t even tied. He turns around and goes back in his building. “…I think it’s just a one-off.”
A minute later the guy comes back out, this time with his shoes tied, hoodie zipped, and sans-gun, but with the addition of a fanny pack and a dog under his arm. She recognizes him, suddenly- she just had never seen him in so few clothes, or without the dog. He’s usually bundled up like it’s October no matter the actual weather, so she had assumed he was fat underneath, not built like a tank, and he wears a mask all the time like her Auntie Katie with the immune disorder. He’s quiet. Gives Homeless Frank money a lot, but otherwise tries not to talk to anybody through combination of being huge and his forcefield of awkward shyness. She could recognize the dog in her sleep, because the thing is a fucking orange rat-mop with buggy eyes and a hot pink kevlar vest covered in spikes and it hates her. The stupid cops that hang out four blocks away on Rosebud just to bust people for jaywalking pull up by the corpse, and the guy doesn’t bother looking over, just puts his dog on the ground and crosses the street. He even starts walking towards them, turquoise leash in one hand and phone in the other, texting.
Naomi considers the evidence. Weird white guy in military clothes. Anyone wearing big jacket in June is probably trying to hide a weapon. Her freak neighbor who gets all shy when anybody looks at him too hard blowing his head off from two states over like it’s no big deal.
She decides that she’s stupid enough to have been doing and enjoying this homework, and hasn’t seen anything.
Princess Monster Truck is still crying at the door when he gets back up. “You’re fine, honey,” he tells her, putting the gun and knife on the counter and picking up his treat bag, her coyote vest, and the leash. She tries to climb him while he clips on the bag, wiggles unhelpfully with excitement as he puts her vest on her, trying to lick his face, and he can feel her little tail losing its mind all the way down the stairs and onto the street. The stupid cops from Rosebud Ave are already there, which may be the fastest they’ve ever moved in their lives. Jason puts Princess Monster Truck down and starts on their usual loop. He doesn’t like having such a predictable pattern- regular walks and a stable loop is all but begging for someone to track him down- but Princess Monster Truck is a creature of habit, and gets nervous when he changes it up too much. Additionally, anybody who tries to kill him when he’s with his dog will get an express pass to an entirely new circle of hell. They’re welcome to try it. He should text Rose.
Jason: Hey.
I may have just aerosolized your dad’s brain. Sorry. He was being a freak to my brother.
He chews the inside of his cheek. Rose probably won’t care. But he maybe should have asked first, or at least informed. He did have three months to do so. In apology, he adds:
Jason: I made gumbo last night. Do you want any?
“Hey!” an officer yells at him. “You!” Very creative. Jason stares at his phone for another five seconds before deigning to look up at the guy. “Did you see anybody around here with a gun?”
“No,” Jason replies, and keeps walking.
“Hey, we need to talk to you, you can’t-,”
“I’m walking my dog, do you mind?” he asks. “I just got out of my house.”
The officer has crossed the street now, the other one radioing in for the coroner and CSI. Good luck to them. “Did you hear any gunshots within the last five minutes?” Princess Monster Truck whines and paws to be picked up, uncomfortable with the suddenness of his approach. Jason bends down and scoops her up.
“I don’t know,” Jason says, annoyed, his shoulders creeping up by his ears on their own accord. “I was inside, Princess Monster Truck was barking her head off because it’s time for her walk. I couldn’t hear anything. You’re freaking my dog out.” He unzips his treat bag with the hand not holding Princess Monster Truck and feeds her a little piece of dried chicken heart, as a reward for not yodeling her head off in alarm.
“Do you know any white men with white hair? 6’5”, 200 pounds?”
Deathstroke weighs much more than that. He’s kind of embarrassed at this cops estimation skills. Jason weighs more than that. “I don’t.” His phone buzzes in his pocket. “Can I go? My dog’s gonna pee on me.”
The guy lets him, after another look at Princess Monster Truck that clearly cements Jason as a non gun owner. He seems pretty frazzled. Probably saw all the guns under Deathstroke’s coat and thinks it’s a mob thing. Always wigs them out. Jason pulls his phone out again as he walks away.
Rose: damn i know you feel bad you never offer me food. yeah sure i love gumbo. are you going to do your weird homecook postmates thing where you drop shit off but dont let me see you or can i come over
Jason: If I’m not in jail, sure. If I’m in jail it’ll be in the fridge.
Rose: yayy!!
we can watch a movie
Jason: Rose I’m not fucking watching the facebook movie with you I mean it
Rose: boooooooooo
can we fuck
Jason considers the state of his libido for a moment, and then the state of his workload.
Jason: If I’m not in jail, sure.
Rose: YES
He’s just completed his and Princess Monster Truck’s loop around the block- there’s more cop cars now, crawling all over the place like roaches under a kitchen sink- when his phone buzzes again, a number he doesn’t recognize.
Hey. This is Joseph Wilson.
Rose gave me your number.
👍
LMK if you need bail.
He texts back a thumbs up of his own, considers offering gumbo as well, considers how badly Rose will react to her brother being at her hookup, and leaves it at that. People have come out of their apartments by now, drawn out either by the chance to rubberneck a crime scene or by the cops, and they’re clustered around the tape. He catches snatches of conversation as he walks by.
“I dunno, man, I was in the bathroom.” He’s pretty sure that’s Rory from a few buildings down, and absolutely sure that he was on the street and saw Jason make the shot. A few more excuses flit through- working on my homework, sorry, not by the window, sorry, in the bathroom, no sir, I was starting dinner, sorry, in the bathroom. It’s practically democracy. Rory waves at him. He waves back.
Jason does not go to jail. There’s no cameras on his street, and everyone apparently figured whatever Jason and Deathstroke had going on was not something they wanted to be involved in, because nobody snitched. The previous owner of that gun is buried in a ditch in Russia, so good luck to the ballistics team.
Peace, however, is too good to last. Deathstroke dying on his street is far too much of a coincidence for his family to ignore. Dick texts him, once.
Dick: Jason are you fucking kidding me
Fuck you dude
That was not okay
I’m not bailing you out when shit hits the fan && go to hell
Jason types up a “Who give a shit” in response, going so far as to select the confetti effect to play when it’s opened, but stops himself from sending it at the last moment. When it comes to fighting with Dick, the winning stratagem is ignoring his silent treatment until Dick decides he’s punished you enough. When Dick calls him 3-8 months from now they’ll both act like it never happened, Dick will feel better and think he’s extracted some great evil vengeance while enacting exactly zero change upon Jason’s life. A relatively painless process, all told. It’s probably Jason’s favorite way to experience someone being mad at him.
He gets a call from Bruce a few days later, which is Jason’s least favorite way to experience someone being mad at him.
“Jason,” Bruce starts, tense with anger and already lecturing. Jason as a rule does not listen to people tell him off on a phone line he pays for, so usually this would be grounds for not answering in the first place, or for hanging up now. However-
“This is not my fault, also, he deserved it,” Jason tells him. He has spike strips to throw under the wheels of this particular bus.
“Nobody deserves to die. There are always other options-,”
“He was showing up to Dick’s apartment to perv on him in the shower!” Jason cries.
“What.”
“Why are you mad? This is like the Captain Nazi incident! You cannot tell me that you actually give a shit, I know you hated him. You’re just mad to be mad.”
“When did this happen.”
“How should I know?” Jason bitches. “That’s the part of the story where he hung up on me and I decided to take care of it. Call Dick if you don’t believe me.”
From the sound of it, Bruce is already making it a conference call. Very exciting. The line connects with a click and Dick’s concerned, “Hello?”
“Dick. Deathstroke -,”
“Jason you fucking snitch!” Dick starts swearing immediately. “I told you that in confidence-,”
“No you did not! You accidentally dropped the pervert bomb and then did the opposite of damage control, it was like if the bomb squad showed up to the party with other, different bombs -,”
“I told you it was fine! I said not to worry about it!”
“And I said to move before he killed you!”
“He was not going to kill me, he’s just lonely and weird-!”
“Dick,” Bruce cuts in loudly. “Did Slade Wilson ever, at any point in time, enter your apartment. As in the place where you sleep.”
Dick is perfectly silent.
“Did Slade Wilson at any point,” Bruce pauses for a moment, clearly attempting to find words that aren’t ‘perv on you in the shower.’ “Enter private areas of your home without your knowledge or consent.” The line doesn’t do anything so crass as crackle, but the vacuum of silence is almost worse.
“Richard please say something,” Bruce says.
“He’s not gonna say sike, Bruce,” Jason tells him. “He told me he fucking breaks in to menace him every time he moves and leaves notes everywhere. He wrote ‘message received’ in big ass letters on his bathroom mirror while Dick was showering-,”
“He does not menace me,” Dick snaps. “I refuse to be menaced by some shitty old man, I have not been menaced by him since I was fifteen and Kory told him to kill himself, I just don’t like how I lose half of my socks for three weeks every time I move because he reorganizes my closet-,”
“Fifteen?” Bruce says. Jason has never heard this tone of voice from him before.
“He hasn’t been creepy creepy since I stopped being a teenager,” Dick says, making it worse. “Just annoying. Folding my clothes is nothing, he doesn’t, he’s stopped, he hasn’t,” Dick stammers for a couple more seconds before spitting out, “he stopped trying to make me his. His… buddy -”
“Buddy?” Jason breaks in, incredulous. “His buddy? His buddy in crime?”
“-Since I did it and unionized against him with his daughter,” Dick continues.
“You joined him?” Bruce is shrill.
“I didn’t kill anyone!” Dick cries. “Nothing even happened except for Rose realizing he sucked! These days he almost exclusively comes by to tell me when he’s going to kill someone in my city -,”
“Well now he’s not going to do that ever again,” Jason says.
“- Which is a respect thing because I- I- when- because I’m Joey’s friend, and is not a big deal and I would rather him tell me and be able to stop it rather than just have it happen and find out after the fact!”
Bruce seems to be stunned into silence.
“Nobody’s going to ask me, so just so you know, I was almost 200 meters away and smoked him with one bullet from a Glock 20,” Jason tells them. “I thought I might have to go cut his head off, because, enhanced, but I popped him right between the eyes with a hollow point. It was very impressive and I did it for you, for free, and you’re welcome.”
“Jason, Slade has children. Do they even know what you did?” Dick snaps, like he can get out from under the bus if he just drags Jason down there with him.
“Rose does not give a shit,” Jason says, because Dick is wrong and Jason's now the one driving it. “And Joey got my number from her just to send me a thumbs up and offer me bail if I got arrested. Which I didn’t.”
Dick sucks his teeth. “Right. Okay.”
“We can get an ouija board and call up whatshisface if you want, but I’m pretty sure he’s too busy being dead to have an opinion on the matter. Dead people don’t have opinions on things, I’m kind of an authority on the subject.”
Bruce seems to have finished whatever spiritual journey he’d embarked on. “Dick, how old were you when this started?”
“I don’t remember,” Dick says primly, meaning that if he answers Bruce might actually throw up. “It wasn’t a big enough deal to make an impact. I’m an adult now and you do not need to be involved in my life in such a fashion.”
“Why,” Bruce says, slowly, “Did you not tell me. Your guardian. That you, a fifteen year old boy, were being approached by a man in his fifties who wanted you to do illegal things that you did not want to do with him?”
Dick makes a noise like a pug trying to run and breathe at the same time. “Because we weren’t speaking, Bruce!” he shouts. “You had kicked me out!”
This, Jason decides, is his cue to leave. “You’re very welcome for my services,” Jason says as Bruce gears up some kind of response that he is completely uninterested in. “I’m a problem solver.”
“Jason, go fuck yourself,” Dick says, and Jason laughs and hangs up.