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Once post-mission debrief was over, Jaime made a beeline towards the zetas. Jason followed behind with a slight hesitancy to his step, and Jaime reluctantly steered towards a private meeting area. Once the door was locked, he turned around. Jaime clenched his fists, Khaji's blades between his knuckles popping out again on instinct before they were put away. He had enough restraint to not hiss, but it was a near thing. Blood rushed through his ears.
Jason tried putting a hand on his shoulder, and he shoved him off. He didn't know when he became that angry, when he lost his cool. Didn't remember. He didn't even want this conversation, just wanted to leave. He just wanted Jason's words about him while they were off-world to stop repeating in his head. He wanted them to stop twisting and turning into something he couldn't recognize.
"Don't." He said quietly, cold lacing over his tongue. "Did- did you ever care?" He asked. Jaime stared him down. Wild and cornered and hoping. Hoping.
Jason just gave him a guilty look. His helmet was in his hands. Jaime's own face was too bare. Too exposed. Khaji crept in to fill the space, starting from the eyes.
"I didn't mean it, I just had to cover for us-"
Jaime cut him off. He didn't have enough time for this. No one had enough time for this. He had to get back home, check in with his family, study for the Bar. The mission was over. He had to clock out.
This was a job, Jaime reasoned, and he wasn't about to do overtime.
He was tripping over himself, he knew. He couldn't stand it. Bumbling idiot.
"Jason, I know when you're lying. It comes with the territory of having an alien fused to you." He shook his head. It was a sort of betrayal, resting deep in his gut. "You meant it. You didn't lie. You couldn't lie, could you? You meant it when you said that I was a fling, that I didn't matter. Nobody special." He repeated softly.
Jaime took a step back. Jason took two forwards.
"I'm skilled enough to fool Clark, it's not a reflection on you." He protested.
The ever-present rage within him intertwined with Khaji's warnings, overtaking both of them.
Jaime let out a slow breath. He needed to fly. He needed to run. Run far away from here. Far away from that green stare.
"Does Clark have a built-in algorithm?" He got out through gritted teeth. "Has he seen you bare and at your worst and when you're on top of the world? How about when there's blood on your teeth and fury in your bones and fear in your heart? Has he seen all that as well?" He pressed. "He couldn't have, right?"
Jason stepped forward again, his hands raised as though in surrender. His helmet discarded to the floor.
"Jai, please-" Jason's voice wavered slightly, gave way. Green met gold. Sad intensity versus sad intensity.
"'Jai,' nothing!"
—and then everything came crashing down.
-
What felt like only months, but were years after Jaime moved to Houston and had settled into working at Flins & Flores, there was a knock at the door to the offices. A familiar knock, no matter how much he tried to forget. Jaime adjusted his tie out of habit.
No one should've been there. It was past operating hours. He was just about to leave.
Against his better judgment as well as Khaji's alarm, he opened it.
Jason, dressed in his usual brown leather jacket and combat boots, met him at the entrance. He still smelled the same, Khaji noted, smoke and ash and metal. He at least had on a nicer shirt than his usual.
Jaime put on the face he used for clients. He was sure Jason saw through it, from the way the man's face grew from stoic to saddened.
"Welcome to Flins & Flores. I'm Jaime Reyes, one of the lawyers here. How can I help you?"
Jason took some files out of his jacket, busying himself with looking through the pages instead of looking Jaime in the eye. "Jayden Peters." He lied. He continued, quieter. "I need your help on behalf of The Justice League of America."
Jaime's eye twitched.
Seriously? It didn't seem he was lying about that. It wouldn't make sense. Just– Him? How could he be the only person available and qualified?
He led them wordlessly through the tight hallway to his office. His footsteps were silent, quick. No click-clack of his dress shoes against linoleum like he would force with anyone else. Jason's boots were just as quiet.
He leaned against his desk once they got there. Jason shut the door behind them.
"Jay," he sighed, long-suffering and familiar and it was like they were five years younger. Five years stupider. Just being heroes and goofing off and getting in trouble. Forgetting himself, forgetting the present. "What the fuck?"
Jaime took the files anyways as he spoke, flipping through them.
"I'm sorry for coming to you like this." Jason said, leaning against the closed door. Genuinely apologetic. "I know it's—"
"Stop, let me do my job." He ordered with a raised hand, glaring at the old contracts and the recent legal documents. Scanning. Searching. Giving his aid was a given. A non-negotiable. "The government is questioning the legality of Teen Titans and Young Justice as youth hero groups after the fact? What the hell? They've been around for ages. We were part of those teams once upon a time. We were allowed as a junior sect of JLA." He muttered.
Jason groaned. "I know, right? Stupid as fuck. They profited off us covert units."
"Shut up." Jaime shushed him once again, turning around to lay out the various permission contracts that the U.S. government wanted to make void. His desk became covered in them. It made zero sense. Did Tim's team do something? Scratch that, it was probably Damian's team. Whatever it was, what warranted this? He hadn't been east-side or west-side enough to keep track in years, too focused on balancing his studies and then his career with local hero work. The official notice wasn't giving him much in reality, as wordy as it is and with how many specialty-specific phrases and terms he couldn't place.
Jason slot against his side, still taller, still a furnace. Jaime was torn between leaning into him and stepping aside.
"I'll shut up once I give you the debrief." Jason shot back, leaning over and pointing at a line, grazing his arm in the process. Even through two layers of material, his nerves were on fire. Jaime's fingers on the table twitched. Jason's eyes darted to the movement, and he made haste to put space between them. "Sorry." He murmured.
Jaime huffed. He turned his head away, his thoughts rushing with the task at hand. "Debrief. Now. Make it quick. I need something to tell my boss, too. I don't typically work with administrative law."
Jason hummed. "Mt. Justice and Titans Tower are subject to being seized and decommissioned." He said.
Jaime blinked at him, turning back around. "You know—?"
Jason grinned sheepishly at him, as if paying attention to what concentration Jaime was in was something as simple as what his favorite color was. As if Jaime wasn't a specialty-hopper. As if they hadn't been without contact for five years. "You're on the website under the property management specialty. Had to do my research."
A damning flush rose to his face that Khaji had to combat. Jaime's eye twitched and he sighed. "Right, so officially, I'm handling the housing and main training facilities of the youth teams." He brought the necessary documents closer to himself, scanning them. "Continue."
And Jason did. A report or debrief was natural. Natural to give, natural to receive.
Jaime listened and jotted down key notes, mostly just fixating on specific points that could be turned against them.
"B's handling the rest of the lawyers, but bases are especially sensitive, even if one of them is more public than the other." Jason summed up. "So... your name came up." He shrugged helplessly.
Jaime nodded. "...and you became the messenger." He finished after a moment. He took a breath and regathered all of the given material. The urge to be sentimental, to give into familiarity, threatened to choke him. He rushed his next words out before the reckless idea of inviting the man to dinner took precedence. "I won't keep you any longer. I'm sure you have important things to tend to, Jason."
Jason's green eyes bore into brown, genuine and soft. A hand grasped his wrist, a barely there weight. Slight.
"I have a clear schedule."
Lie.
Jaime's eyelid twitched, and he turned away from Jason, gently twisting his wrist out from Jason's grip. He barely had to twitch before Jason pulled back.
"Your breath smells like snake oil, Hood." He murmured, clenching his fingers around the files. He evens out the short edge on the table with a soft tap-tap-tap. His smile is wry. "I'm not giving old fantasies more time than they should have. I can't. Go. It's a long drive back and it's already late enough as it is."
Jason swallowed. "What I mean, is that I want to make time." He forced out, strangled. Foolhardy. Honest. "I mean that my schedule is flexible, since I'm strong enough to bend it. I mean that I want to do what I can while I'm here, be it to help you with this case or help us."
Jaime glanced back. He stared at Jason's face. At Jason's near-pained expression.
There was another life, before. Another dream. Another world.
One so close to what he could have had.
He hoped. He shouldn't hope. Hope got him nowhere without action.
Jaime shut his eyes, steeling himself. He failed. "Damn you." He mumbled. A laugh bubbled out of him, sharp and bitter and everything he shouldn't be. "Mierda. Jason, there is no us."
"Then just this case." Jason stated. It was quiet. A soft thing. Accepting. "Just this time. We work as a team, finish the job, and then I never bother you again."
Before Jaime was really thinking about it, he was drafting up the terms on a scrap piece of paper. Another scrap was his updated information, just to be sure. His number. The address to his apartment. Yet another scrap was a copy of the tiny contract. All in blue.
"Make any changes here and now, and we'll sign together." He told him, sliding it over alongside a spare pen. Red. A holdover from when they were still together. "Don't make me regret this, Jay."
Jason held the slips like they were salvation incarnate. As if Jaime were Mother Mary and had handed over her son, her lamb of God. A slaughter to be.
"I won't." He swore, his eyes sparking with the very same hope that Jaime didn't want to feel. That match, this fire that they shared in youth. This urge that drew them together. A life that went awry just because of a truth. "Thank you, Jai."
And the church bells still rang in the life that had been avoided. The life that had been brushed aside. Maybe. In his heart. In his Amá's hopes. In Nana's prayers.
He shouldn't listen to Milagro's old fairy tales.
It was a blur, and then he was staring down at the signatures they saved for each other.
Jai and Jay.
Blue and red ink.
Cursive and neatened scrawl. Each curve and placement just how he remembered.
Jaime huffed, folding up his copy.
"Tex-Mex, then?" He offered tentatively, finally tucking the files into his briefcase. He walked over to the door, opening it. "I don't know about you, but I'm going to go at this with a clear head in the morning. I'll set up a bed for you in my home office."
Jason chuckled. "Sound's great." He agreed. "Thank you."
Falling into step with each other was as easy as breathing. As easy as something slotting into place.
Natural, even after all this time.
Something he didn't think he'd be able to have again.
Reckless. Horribly reckless.
He couldn't help but revel in it regardless.