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OUTRUN YOUR SKIN for Jori by Slipstream-chan
-------------------------------------- Sometimes Bart wishes that he hadn't decided to grow up. Yeah, he knows that according to J. M. Barrie, "all children, except one, grow up," but until the point when a double-barrel worth of buckshot had ripped through his knee he had been doing a pretty damn good job at being a toddler. Being Impulse had been so much simpler, so much easier, while Kid Flash has all these responsibilities, knows all these things that Impulse doesn't. You read the library and you find out how things really work, and then there's no mystery in life anymore. Like toast. Bart didn't used to know how toast was made. Another thing he found in the library was a collection of Calvin and Hobbes books, and in one strip the pair had wondered at the mystery of the silver box that ate plain bread and spit out burnt, crispy bread in its place. That's how Bart used to think, before he knew how things worked. And now he does, and it takes away some of the magic that everything used to hold. Maybe that's why the thing with Tim, whatever it is, is so appealing. Bart doesn't know the how or why it works at all, he just knows that it does. And the little bits that he thinks he understands, those have a magic of their own, because he figured them out all by himself, without any help from a book. Well, that's a lie. He probably couldn't have figured it out without the relative three weeks he spent reading up on psychological theory. You need to have a solid background in psychoanalysis if you're going to spend any amount of time with Tim. His relationship with Tim used to be simple, too. Tim was Robin, and Robin was like a little, more colorful version of Batman. Bart was afraid of Batman. He didn't think Batman liked him very much (hadn't he given him the name 'Impulse' as a warning to Wally?). So Tim was Robin first, a teammate second, and a leader third. He told Bart to do things and Bart did them. Simple. It took a long time for them to be friends. Oh sure, they'd been friends on the surface, friends in the most basic of senses, but for a long time there were things that Robin just wouldn't trust any of them with. His face, for one, and his name. And then just him, and Bart didn't realize this until after he had gotten to know Tim, but there's a difference, you see, between the two. Tim and Robin. Robin and Tim. To really be Tim's friend, to really gain that level of trust, you have to be able to understand the differences and similarities between the two, where they begin and end and overlap and sometimes just don't even exist, and it wasn't like they all don't want to gain that level of friendship, it's just that they can't or won't put in the time to do the background research, the mandatory reading. Bart has done a lot of reading. He feels kind of bad for how long it took him to even begin to understand Tim on anything more than the most basic "good guy, bad guy" levels (and even that had gone for a loop after the whole thing with Batman's plans on how to take them all down had leaked out), because Tim understands them all so well. As leader, he'd always known what to say or do, how to manipulate them, how to console them, how to manage things for the best, even when it was hard. He still knows how to do all that, though he seems more reluctant to do so, making the instances where he does decide to join the human race even more memorable. Like this, Bart's first Christmas after he got kneecapped and went on his mad reading spree. The year before, as Impulse, he'd truly believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. Now he doesn't. He wants to, but how can he? The whole reason he read the San Francisco Public Library in the first place was to become a better, more rational hero. And believing in fairytales doesn't generally lead to such high logical thinking. He'd revealed this to Tim (or Robin, he still has trouble differentiating the two sometimes) one night when they'd both been too awake to sleep at three in the morning and so were chilling in one of the smaller parlors watching old ALF reruns on Nick at Nite. "I'm afraid," he'd said as they went into a commercial break, "That I've found out too much, that one day I'll become disenchanted because I find out all these things that I've come to believe, all these things, these morals, these ideas, that I've used as a basis for Kid Flash, will turn out to be wrong, or worse, not exist at all." Tim (Robin) had taken a long swig of his Zesti (his favorite, though he switches to some God-awful cheap grape stuff when he's trying to cut back on caffine) and stared off in some distant corner. "Well," he'd finally said after a long moment. "I'm not supposed to exist, either. Yet here I sit. Pass the popcorn." And the he'd smiled at him, and Bart had gotten it, gotten what he'd been trying to say. And Bart lives now knowing that whatever else happens, Tim, Urban Legend Jr. or no, is and always will be real. (He wonders, quietly, to himself, when other people think he's busy not thinking, how many other people base their lives around this fact. Greta, for sure, and he's beginning to think Kon, as well…) They'd just been chilling that night, hanging out, the way normal guys do. They do that a lot, as much as possible. Tim's a pretty cool guy, and all that computer knowledge and hacker mystique is just a cover up for a gamer geek who's insanely good at role-playing games. He makes a good video game partner. They just sit on the couch and mash buttons, and for once Bart doesn't win all the time. It took Bart a while to realize that he's a break for Tim, a de-stresser. He's so used to being the cause of stress that it'd strange at first. He thinks he used to be that for Tim, but where most people would roll their eyes or curse or hit their head repeatedly against some hard surface at the things he does or says, Tim just kind of goes with it, smiles and relaxes and folds his hands like he wants to do something else with them but can't, like pet him the way Kon sometimes does. Tim needs something simple. Bart needs something complex. It works. They're running away when they're together, which is funny because they're not running at all. In fact, Bart never does as much not-running as he does when he's with Tim. In a meeting talking tactics or trying to kill each other's virtual self, being with Tim is about being in control of his impulses, of proving that he's learning to think before he acts. And he is getting better at it, he is. He only has to do a few hundred laps around the Tower whenever the pace of the action gets too close to normal. Tim is very good at running away. He'd said so, once, when they'd all gone
out camping just like when they were Bart had called Tim on it later, asked him to explain what he'd meant by it. Tim had been quiet for a while, staring off into the distance like he was trying to organize his thoughts or think of what, exactly, he could or should say to Bart, and then he'd started talking about his dad and Batman and all the times he'd run away from them both and from Gotham, literally and figuratively, and even the one time he'd run away to Gotham, back when it was in No Man's Land. "You know what the hardest part about running away is?" He'd said. (Bart was proud of himself for recognizing it as a rhetorical question and kept quiet.) "It's the coming back, and having to admit to yourself and others that you did run away. Because sometimes you can tell yourself that you did it for a good reason, but you can't tell the person you were running away from that reason, and sometimes your reason really does suck, and you were being selfish and immature. That's hard to admit." "And sometimes," Bart had added. "There's just no reason at all, and even you don't know what your doing." Tim had glanced over sharply. They'd been on top of the Tower, and the wind was whipping at his cape, making it snap. The lenses of his mask had been up, so Bart hadn't been able to read his eyes, and for a moment he'd thought he'd said the wrong thing. But then he'd nodded like he'd understood what was and wasn't being said, and they'd gone back to watching the sun set over the bay. Tim is very good at running away, and Bart is very good at running. It was inevitable that their two forces would some day join together. There are locaters inside their Titans communicators , so when his buzzes with the "pick up" code it takes him literally thirty-two seconds to find Tim (he could have done it in twenty-six, but he had to stop and feed Dox before he left the house). He's in Bludhaven, which is weird, on top of one of the towers fronting the nicer part of the river. The river leads to a bay, and the bay feeds the Atlantic, and Bart, being an Alabama boy from the future transplanted to Denver, briefly wonders what it's like to live so close to the grey ocean. Then he wonders at how thin Tim looks in his plain clothes, and how his eyes are as tight as his grip on his mangy army-green tote bag. "Tim…" he says, meaning to ask what's wrong, but suddenly he can't talk because the dark-haired boy's mouth is in the way. The kiss is warm and a little awkward, but nice. Strong. Comfortable. Desperate. It isn't very sexual, but Bart likes it all the more. It isn't the kind of kiss you get swept up in. It's the kind of kiss that asks you to sweep it up. He feels bad breaking it, but he's heard the message underneath (he's already running, Tim in his arms, and God that makes the kiss even so much better) and he needs a little clarification. "Where?" He finally manages to ask. "Where do you want me to go?" Tim shuts his eyes and licks his teeth, breathes in and out deeply. "Nowhere," he admits eventually. "Anywhere. Just…pick someplace it takes a long time to run to, okay?" Bart nods. He can do that. He'll always do whatever Tim tells him to do. Simplicity now, complexity later. It's the nature of running away. He changes course and heads for the Pacific. -fin
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