Bucky approaches slowly, boots crunching on the debris of the roof loudly and purposefully. He watches, but Jason never flinches, never acknowledges him. He doesn’t even shiver in the snowy air, despite the t-shirt and thin cotton sleep pants he’s wearing. Bucky steps beside him on the ledge, staring out into the murky, dirty air of Gotham. The sun set hours ago, but the moon and stars are hidden behind a veil of sewage and rot and despair.
Bucky crinkles his nose; half to try and keep it warm, half in vain attempt to block out the ever present smell of trash and blood. They stand there, side by side, watching a display of emergency lights accompanied by a soundtrack of screams and sirens, wrapped in the silent bubble of their own thoughts.
Jason finally turns towards him, sometime after Bucky has gone stiff with cold and stillness. “You don’t like heights,” he chides.
Bucky shrugs, “Like you well enough, I guess.”
Jason rolls his eyes, even as his ears go pink. Bucky holds his hand out and Jason takes it. He continues to watch the skyline, worrying his plump lip between his teeth until he splits open an old, poorly healed wound. The signal won’t come, hasn’t for weeks now. But just as Bucky checks his secret burner, Jason keeps checking the sky.
“Gotham isn’t all bad,” Jason says quietly. He finally pulls his gaze away from the skyline to turn it on Bucky. Teal eyes, rage-filled and intense, study him. “You could stay.”
”I never said it was bad,” Bucky snaps. “Stop implying I hate Gotham.”
Jason sneers. It’s so familiar, the most natural expression he owns. Makes him look younger, too, cuts off every extra year the rough living of Gotham has etched into his skin.
“Fix your face, and maybe I’ll believe you this time.”
”Fuck you.” Bucky releases Jason’s hand. He carefully steps back from the ledge and turns away, but he doesn’t leave. He never leaves. Hell, but he’s not sure he can leave, even with the ticket tucked into his back pocket.
“You could,” Jason offers casually. “You could fuck me right now, right here.” He steps down too, sliding up behind Bucky and wrapping his arms around his waist. Bucky instinctively covers Jason’s hands with his own, twisting their fingers together. He forgets, sometimes, how perfectly their hands link. He can never forget how warm Jason is at his back, how he’s the perfect height to hook his chin over Bucky’s shoulder and mouth at that tender spot where his jaw curves into his neck.
Jason shivers first, the sensation and the gust of hot breath over Bucky’s cheek making him tremble.
“You could fuck me on this roof, or take me inside, take me to bed,” Jason purrs it in his ear, his voices that ever conflicting mix of youth and contempt.
Bucky could. He could lean back, could turn and capture Jason’s mouth with his own. He could slide his hands under that thin shirt and across those firm muscles, nails scraping over the dusting of hair and the litany of scars.
If he doesn’t leave now, he’s not sure he ever will. Gotham was only ever supposed to be a way point; a place to rest, to gather intel. He wasn’t supposed to find this, find a place something like home. Jason never factored into the plans and the schematics.
“It’s late,” Jason hums, tongue broad and warm and wet where it scrapes along Bucky’s cheek. “It’s late, and no one else is up and no one is looking for you, for us.”
And that’s it, isn’t it? That’s the problem; the world got fucked up and turned around. Someone split it wide open and scraped the gooey bits out. Tossed it all in a blender and forgot to put the lid on. And now everyone’s all shook up and fucked about and there’s not enough motherfucking heroes in this universe to sort it all out.
Shit, but he fucking hates Steve sometimes. His ma always said you could only truly hate someone you deeply loved first, and while he still doesn’t believe her, he thinks maybe he gets it.
Because if it were anyone else, Bucky thinks he could give in. He could let Jason’s fingers keep dipping lower and lower and he could push him to his knees and take everything Jason’s trying to offer.
“Like you don’t still watch for Dick, for Tim every fucking hour,” Bucky bites cruely. The blow lands. Jason pulls his hands free and steps away. When Bucky turns, Jason is standing on the ledge again, eyes on the skyline. He looks like he’s about to leap, about to try and defy gravity itself.
“It’s too late to go back to sleep anyway,” Jason says quietly. “You should go. No point in hanging around.”
Bucky flinches, hands spasming towards Jason. It’s not how he wanted to go, how he wanted this to end. “I just have to find him,” he says desperately. “I have to know he’s okay, to see where he’s gone. I’ll come back.”
He will. He can. He’ll find Steve and fuck him up a little for disappearing again, and then he’ll come back here. Back to Jason and their bed and this weird as fuck life they’ve carved together. “I’ll even help you find them.”
“You shouldn’t,” Jason says callously. “In fact, don’t. You should leave and stay gone. It’s too late to come back.”
Bucky wants to argue that he hasn’t even left yet. Instead, he turns away once more. This time, the thudding of his boots makes him think of a death toll he heard several decades ago. Each thump the thud of a drum, the last heartbeat of some poor moron who couldn’t just accept what he had.
He’ll be back, he promises himself. He’ll fight anyone who tries to make him do otherwise. Jason included.
Because Bucky hasn’t had a home since his name was put in the hat for the draft. Jason is home. He makes sense and he fits. It doesn’t matter if they’re from different worlds, universes, backgrounds. It doesn’t matter if their jagged edges snag on each other. They built for one another and Bucky’ll defy existence itself if it tries to convince them otherwise.