The House of Todd

Participants: Raven and Jason Todd
Open/Closed: Closed
Location(s): Jason and Raven's apartment, Blüdhaven
Time of Day: Morning
Weather: Torrential rain
Summary: Domestic bliss? ...

Violet eyes fluttered open. They fell immediately on a chiseled back that was to her, riddled and etched with scar tissue - some pink and raised, many more silvery and only noticeable as the light traced them. Raven shifted gently, rubbing her eyelids with the heels of her palms, and slowly let her vision settle on the exposed beams of the ceiling.

The apartment was in one of Blüdhaven's older buildings, reclaimed and repurposed for tenants; brick walls, lofty ceilings, mullioned glass windows of all different shades and ages from decades replacing bits at need. And, somehow, despite it housing two people who were used to keeping their surroundings remote, featureless, efficient and grey... It felt like a home. To Raven, at least.

Quietly, the empath slipped out from under the covers and pulled a tasseled, deep violet shawl around her shoulders to fend from the chill of the open air. Rain thudded on the roof overhead and lashed the windows, letting in only bleached, flat sunlight that filtered through the clouds. She spared one last look at Jason who, despite her best efforts, never failed to notice (no matter how deep a sleep he was in) when she left the bed.

Raven drifted out of the sliding doors to the bedroom, taking a step down into the living area, walking across it and taking a step up into the small wing of the apartment housing the kitchen. She wondered, while she filled the coffee maker and started it, if Jason would stay in bed long? They'd been out late the night before on Outsider business and had scraped together all of maybe four hours of sleep.

The young woman continued thinking in that slow, ponderous, content way that you do on quiet mornings in a quiet place with nothing immediately to do. She filled a watering can and began moving from one houseplant to the next of which there were... many. Once Raven finished, she poured herself a cup of coffee, drizzled some honey in it and went back to the living room. There, she pushed open one of the hinged windows, letting in the wet, cold smell of the falling rain.

She shivered in her shawl and, cupping the mug between both sets of black-painted fingers, took a grateful sip, staring out over the tumbled modernity of Blüdhaven.

Jason Todd

Consciousness broke instantly through the thick wall of sleep he’d previously been surrounded by. He wasn’t surprised, being a notoriously light sleeper. He was just relieved it wasn’t a nightmare that had woken him, even if a squinty look to the clock on his nightstand told him it was only a little over four hours since he and Raven had collapsed into bed. Speaking of: he turned, yawning and kicking at the covers to untangle his legs a bit, to find the other half of the bed empty. Well, that explained his waking.

He debated for a few moments, listening to the rain pour outside, staying in bed for a bit longer. He always tried to get a full eight hours—his success rate was rather low, but it was the attempt that counted. The bed, however, felt colder now. It was surprising to him, how quickly he’d acclimated to sharing a space—sharing a bed—with someone else. It was only her, though. Anyone else and the possibility wouldn’t have even entered his mind.

After another yawn, he threw off the covers and got out of bed. Running a hand through his hair in an attempt to smooth out the mess sleep had made of it, he made his way out of the bedroom. He successfully avoided one potted plant seated just by the doorframe that had been his toe’s arch nemesis for a few days now. His trajectory was initially going to take him to the kitchen, but he caught sight of Raven and changed course. She was standing by an open window, looking beautiful as ever.

When he reached her, the air from the window was cold against his skin, but he didn’t care. He slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her back against him. He trailed light kisses down her neck, before settling his face into the crook between her neck and shoulder.

“Morning” he mumbled, kinda wishing he could stay like that forever. He gave another kiss, before raising his head, eyeing her coffee, and impulsively—because it was the only way to surprise her most days—grabbing her mug and stepping quickly out of her reach. “Mm, coffee.” He laughed, eyes glinting mischievously, and took a sip before letting her snatch it back.

Raven was distantly aware of Jason stirring in the next room. But only distantly. The longer she spent around him, the less pronounced and obvious his emotions were to her empathic awareness. They were still there, just a constant. Becoming as consistent and effortless as her own heartbeat in her ears. Raven had never had someone's emotions blend so seamlessly - so comfortingly - into her empathy. Even teammates she'd had for years hadn't reached such a level of familiarity.

Jason moved through the apartment with wraith-like stealth that'd been tempered in him from a young age, then honed to habitual, instinctive perfection by the dark knight. For as mute as his footfalls, even bogged down by sleepiness, were, Raven would've felt his eyes on her, empathy or no. Suddenly, the heat from his bare torso suffused her shawl. Arms as riddled with faint scars as Jason's back snared her, pulling them together.

Raven exhaled softly and contently at the contact. Her head lolled to the side when Jason started his lazy line of kisses on her neck, exposing more of it obligingly to him. He came to rest, laying his face against her neck and shoulder. "Morning," she echoed, reaching up one hand to run the backs of her fingers against his faintly stubbled cheek.

Something bloomed in Jason's emotions, and suddenly they were a foot apart, her coffee mug in his hands, coming to his lips, that smirked devilishly. Raven's widened eyes drooped to half-lidded, dry resignation. Despite the scorn she tried to lace in that look, her own lips betrayed her, turning faintly up at one corner in bemusement. Jason tried to let her take it back, but she shook her head solemnly. "Nope. You can refill it now."

Raven tried not to look too smug, watching Jason move to the kitchen. "And don't forget the honey," she called in the loudest her voice ever got - which was about parallel to most people's normal speaking volume. Raven paused a beat, thinking of all the household chores she could technically tackle. She and Jason were both tidy, orderly people, though and picked up after themselves, so most of those "chores" were just typical upkeep.

Just then a cool, wet breeze trickled over her from the window, and doing anything physical was brushed from her mind with it. Instead, Raven moved to a small cabinet, made from a strange, bruised, purplish wood; carved like garlands of hyacinth-studded, thorny vines with strange symbols chiseled in lines and shapes along it. From inside, Raven extracted a roll of cloth, bloated and lumpy from what was wrapped inside it.

She placed it on the coffee table and lowered down, curling her legs under her in a meditative stance. Looking up, she smiled thoughtfully at Jason, who reemerged from the kitchen.

Jason Todd

He grumbled exaggeratedly to himself as he made his way to the kitchen, doing it for entertainment rather than actual irritation. He did as told, though, dutifully refilling the mug and adding the correct amount of honey, while making a mental note that they were running low and would probably need to make a trip to the grocery store soon. He had some coupons that were going to expire soon, anyway, that he wanted to make some use of.

It was stupidly domestic and honestly even he was surprised at how easily he’d settled into it. He’d never actually experienced it before. The closest was probably his time at the manor, but that had still been unconventional in several aspects. He’d tried of course during his solo time, but there hadn’t been much point in making a life in random safehouses scattered around the globe that he was constantly bouncing back and forth from.

Raven was giving him a thoughtful look as he returned from the kitchen and he raised a single eyebrow in question. She had… something in front of her—probably something magic related—and he eyed it only somewhat suspiciously as he set the mug down in front of her. Content, though, to let her have her mystery should she want it, he didn’t ask.

Instead, he made a brief detour to the coat rack to grab a black hoodie and slip that on against the chill in the air. He then thumped a fist against the wall and a hidden compartment opened with a click. Jason grabbed the weaponry he used last night and the cleaning supplies he’d stashed there before closing the compartment.

He returned to the coffee table then, taking a seat on the couch. He laid out his bundle, decided to start by cleaning the blood off his dagger.

“Marge invited me to her book club again this Wednesday” he said, remembering his encounter a few days ago with the elderly neighbor who lived on the ground floor and made her living baking special brownies. Jason had already politely declined or accepted and quietly tossed out, several offers of the baked good. He could only imagine how many offers he would’ve been made if she or any of the other tenants knew he was the one who’d bought the place and stopped charging rent. “Apparently they’re reading the zombie version of Pride and Prejudice and would ‘love’ to know my thoughts.” He huffed, amused.

The suspicious look from Jason at the bundle on the coffee table took Raven momentarily off guard. She put things together in a beat, though. Jason was about as interested in the mystic arts as Raven was in firearm maintenance, but much, much more leery. Raven thought that that cautiousness was very wise of Jason.

Rather than explain what she was doing or try at all whatsoever to soothe Jason's wary curiosity, Raven smirked in a decidedly worrying way. Jason dropped off her mug and moved on, for the moment. Raven gently eased a coaster under the thing, slid it to the side in a very precise, particular way, then unrolled the cloth bundle.

Smaller drawstring bags of components, hunks of odd stones, strange sigils inscribed on odd talismans of papyrus and more lay before her, somehow arranged totally orderly despite having just been rolled up in a velvety cloth. Jason returned as Raven was picking a select few elements, seemingly at random, from the arsenal.

He dropped down on the couch beside her, one knee brushing her shoulder, and dropped his own workload on the free half of the coffee table. "Hmm," Raven hummed to the comment about Marge. She kept a half-interested look about her until the name of the book came up, whereupon she froze and slowly turned to look at Jason over one shoulder. "I would pay money to see that," she said, and she was one-hundred percent serious.

"Are you going to go?" Raven asked, smiling in faint teasing while she pinched a powdered substance from one of the small drawstring pouches.

Jason Todd

He chuckled at Raven’s response. He smirked, shrugged, and worked on a particularly stubborn blood spot on the dagger. “Don’t get your wallet out yet.” The blood spot finally gave way and the dagger was clean. He set that aside and began disassembling one of the three handguns he’d used last night. “I have to stakeout that club on the corner of Fifth and Monroe that day. Get an idea of the guard rotation.” The place, per Jason’s intel, was just a stop along the way for a chain of illegally obtained artifacts. Not as big a priority, of course, as human trafficking and drugs and weapons, but it was still an asshole thing that annoyed the hell out of him. He didn’t have any plans to go after the whole chain—he’d rather just pass along the intel to the FBI or someone with more time on their hands—but he still didn’t want that stupid crap in the city. Plus, maybe he also just wanted to be a pain in their ass.

His gaze dropped down to the rubber bullets he’d dumped out of this gun’s cartridge. Three, all that was left of what he’d taken with him last night. He thought of the supply he knew he had and decided to he needed to procure some more. Heh. Honey and rubber bullets, quite the grocery list.

“Anything needing your attention on the West Coast?” he asked, genuinely curious, but also wanting to know her schedule. He wasn’t opposed to her connections in the west, not at all. Though his opinion on some of her friends depended on his mood, he knew how much they meant to her. He also knew what it was like to not really… have any. And he of course didn’t want that for her. He also would be the last person to begrudge her her independence. That being said, the apartment sure did feel empty as hell without her.

Raven's focus was on her task while Jason popped her and Marge's bubble. She extracted a shallow earthenware dish from a pocket on the interior of the velvet cloth and a thin, vaguely spoon-like instrument made of glass or crystal. Raven cast the pinch of powder still between her fingers into the air and immediately gestured at it. The filtering dust gathered together in a peculiar shape, shimmered, then neatly dropped into the dish.

"I can tell her you have work," she offered absently, watching the powder glimmering where it lay. Raven flicked a black-painted nail against a chunk of peculiar stone off to the side. Sparks flew from it, and with a casual backhand wave, one of those sparks stayed alight, floated through the air and then dove into the powder. Colors changed like lightning inside a thunderhead.

Raven leaned back, grabbed her cup and brought it to her lips. She leaned sideways, resting her head against Jason's thigh. "Nothing planned, at least. I need to refresh the Tower's enchantments tomorrow, but for today? You're stuck with me." The dish gave a flash of light. Raven plucked the narrow, clear utensil from before and stirred it. "Now. I need one of your helmets."

Jason Todd