Chapter 4
Jason hurled himself over the side of the bed and threw up on the floor. “Fuck,” he screamed even as his fingers scrabbled at the back of his head to feel for the bullet wound. The fighting in the hallway stopped. It must’ve been a bullet, right? That was a gunshot and that meant there was a bullet and Jason died. Jason fucking died and he didn’t even see it coming. Maybe it was better that way, but Jason didn’t think he’d be waking up again if he actually died. He frowned and smoothed his hand over the back of his head. He woke up again.
New plan. Clean this up? Did he need to clean this up? The alarm clock was back on the bedstand. Maybe it didn’t matter if he cleaned it up. But he imagined waking up tomorrow and accidentally stepping in it before shaking his head. He needed to clean this up. Jason frowned as he set himself to it. Did they remember or was the archer just that much of an asshole? Where had this guy even fucking come from? It wasn’t exactly like Gotham was overrun with archers, even as weird as it was, and Jason was pretty damn sure he would’ve heard of a guy with a metal arm running around. So they were probably new. Jason would look into them and the magician.
This was probably the magician’s fault. This was probably just magic bullshit, but if there was a chance at least the archer remembered… Jason considered the rage on the other guy’s face when he’d shot at the archer and then thought about what it’d take for him to shoot someone in the back of the head. On the one hand. He’d done it. He’d do it again. On the other hand… He wasn’t actually enough of a betting man to lay down money, but he would’ve put his on the guy with the arm remembering too. If either of them actually did remember.
Jason scowled again and went to take a shower. If he was going to spend his entire morning researching, he wasn’t going to smell like this while he did it.
Three hours later, Jason was scowling again. The motherfucking Avengers. He’d shot two of the Avengers on the Repeating Day From Hell. Well, maybe he wouldn’t do that again today. At a guess, they weren’t doing anything that he should actually be shooting them for and he’d already pissed them off enough for them to decide to get the drop on him when he showed up last time. Assuming that was planned instead of something that just sort of worked out. Based on the wave though…. Yeah, they remembered.
Maybe he’d leave the rooftop to them and try to get the magician before he even got there. It couldn’t be that hard to figure out where he was now, if he knew where he’d been, right? And if he could find him, then maybe he could convince him that it’d be nice to move on and see what tomorrow held. If the magician was cooperative enough, maybe it wouldn’t even hold very many broken bones.
It was a good plan, if Jason said so himself.
So maybe it shouldn’t have been that surprising when it turned out the Avengers, Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier- and holy shit, he’d shot the goddamn Winter Soldier-, also turned up to the party. Jason knew the huff sounded bitchy as soon as he did it, but he could’ve done without Hawkeye laughing at it even as the Winter Soldier threw himself at Jason.
Jason grunted with the impact and threw his own punch toward the guy’s core. “Listen, I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he snarled as he tried to put a little space between them.
“I haven’t been getting off at all. There has been a distinct lack of getting off,” came from the side where the archer, Barton, was watching as Jason tried to dance back and keep himself from becoming a smear on Barnes’ metal fist. Jason snorted a laugh despite himself, and wasn’t that a trip to hear come through the voice modulator? He watched as Barnes lifted the corner of an eyebrow, shrugged a little, and tipped his head towards Barton. The muzzle made it hard to tell, but Jason got the feeling that Barnes was smiling too.
“Sounds like a personal problem,” Jason teased even as a part of him acknowledged that he hadn’t exactly been making time for him to jerk himself off either. He’d been distracted by this whole mess, he decided as he dodged a kick from one of Barnes’ heavy boots, which wasn’t very good self-care, if he was being honest. It was important to take care of his needs, if he wanted to be someone who still was able to have needs in his future. Or something like that. He hadn’t really listened to all of what Stephanie was saying about self-care, but that may have been because she sounded like a TikTok while she was saying it.
“I mean. Not entirely personal,” Barton said with a motion towards Barnes. It took Jason a moment, but he raised his eyebrows to look between them and then grinned.
“Well… I can see why that might put you out of sorts,” he agreed, letting himself take a long look over Barnes. Barnes paused while he did so and Jason felt his stomach clench a little in excitement when he realized that Barnes was looking back. He glanced towards Barton and gave him a slow, obvious once-over. “You know, I think the world might be worse for your lack of orgasms. You should make it a priority to fix that.” Jason took a moment to appreciate the way the voice modulator kept him from sounding too desperately thirsty, though he also suspected that it came through well enough based on Barton’s answering grin.
Jason brought his attention back to Barnes as the man started to stalk forward. He thought, well, he hoped…
A blast and a roar of fire. Everything went dark.