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Tim’s manhandled back onto the cold pavement, the buzz of screams and horrified murmurs melding between his ears, the churn of a sensationalised crowd muted beneath the grunt of Jason above him.
The man shifts, fingers sliding along Tim’s collarbone with swift, clinical movements, shucking his suit jacket off his left shoulder. It irritates his wound, makes the bleed flare with sharp pain as a groan rings up Tim’s throat.
“Ouch,” he mutters, and Jason gives him a strained chuckle for the effort. His lips twitch in a smile anyway, and Tim spends the next few minutes chasing back the blur to focus on the man.
He’s still wearing his domino, though the helmet is missing; a shift of Tim’s knee tells him it’s resting on the pavement behind where he’s kneeling, crouched over Tim’s prone form.
“Hold still,” Jason instructs, as if Tim were trying to go anywhere. He’s had enough holes punched in him to know when he’s not going to be mobile for at least a few hours. In the distance, he can hear the hum of approaching sirens.
“You were on the roof?” Tim asks when Jason rolls the jacket down to his elbow, brushing back the tear in his shirt sleeve to bare the wound. It’s bleeding sluggishly, bright red and violent, and Jason regards it with displeasure.
“Yeah, saw the van pull up back,” he grunts back, and begins pawing through the pouches on his belt. “Was just coming around to the front when I heard the gunfire.”
Tim sighs and leans back, brow scrunching when that ignites his side again. He focuses on breathing slow and even, until he can press back the discomfort enough to ask, “Everyone else get out okay?”
Jason barks a bitter laugh, something chastising in the eyes he keeps sweeping over Tim’s battered body. He manages to find what he was looking for, evidently, because he begins unspooling a strip of gauze in Tim’s peripheral as he casts his gaze back over the disassembled crowd. “They’re fine. It’s almost like some rich dumbass decided to offer himself up as the target for these wannabe kidnappers. Distract them from the Diamond District bozos by putting himself in front of the barrel.”
Tim’s lip quirks as he peels back his lashes, finding Jason’s pointed glare. “Just your regular heroic citizen, officer,” he slurs, and turns his gaze back up to the night sky. Heat ripples down his leftside ribs, flaring at the epicentre of his bicep when Jason turns the wound there into the dim lighting. “They get the kidnappers?”
“Bagged and tagged by the Original,” Jason confirms, upturning a packet of single serve disinfectant into Tim’s bullet wound. He hisses his displeasure, but Jason doesn’t seem particularly sympathetic. “You jumped in front of a gun,” he reminds the prone man, “you don’t get to complain about some light bruising.”
“I took a bullet,” Tim protests.
“Two,” Jason growls, and there’s a note of concern there that makes Tim’s lips curl in a grin.
Jason lifts the gauze to his teeth, tearing back the strip with rigorous, tight movements until he bends to cinch it around Tim’s bicep.
“That’s kind of hot,” Tim mumbles, and Jason looks at him incredulously, cinching a perfect knot. It makes Tim’s arm spike with agony, and then the pressure sets in and smooths it out to blessed numbness.
“You’re delirious,” Jason retorts with thin amusement. “How much blood did you lose?”
“Two bullets worth,” Tim slurs, and lifts his arm to give Jason better access to his ribs. The vigilante wastes no time in retrieving the gauze to wrap around his middle, bending over Tim’s chest to pass it behind his back. The sirens are getting closer.
Tim gives him a lazily grin as he adjusts the wrap over the wound, brow knitted in concentration where it hovers above Tim’s lips.
“Do I get a kiss?” he asks softly, quiet enough that any milling spectators won’t pick them up. Jason gives him a chastising look, and Tim returns it. “I took two bullets. I think that deserves at least two kisses.”
“I’ll let the paramedics know,” Jason scoffs, cinching the gauze off, pressed tight around his ribs.
“Hood,” Tim whines.
“Mister Drake,” Jason replies pointedly, and Tim resists the urge to pout, slumping back with a sigh. “I don’t kiss spectators. I’m married to Red Robin. What would the public think of my scandalously making out with my latest rescuee. At Wayne Gala, no less?”
“I’d be down for a threesome with Red Robin,” Tim chirps back, and that gets him a genuine, mirthful laugh this time. He smiles up as Jason sits back, packing up his medical supplies as the ambulance screeches to a halt on the pavement a few feet up from where Tim’s sprawled.
“I’ll be sure to broach the subject with him,” Jason retorts scathingly, and glances up when the paramedics come pouring out of the vehicle. In the midst of the commotion, he reaches down and squeezes Tim’s palm, tight and concerned as he adds lowly, hesitantly, “I’ll see you at home. Be safe.”
“That’s my line, Hood,” Tim replies as Jason pushes to his feet, but Jason’s smile is swallowed up by that impassive helmet as he lets the paramedics through. He doesn’t say anything more, but he thinks Jason reads the promise, the apology, - I love you - in his gaze as he fires a grapnel line and sweeps away from the crime scene.
