Let's Go On a Road Trip (JaySteph)

[shauds]

Title: Let’s go on a roadtrip
Fandom: DC Comics
Prompt: #023 Journey
Character/Pairing: Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown, JaySteph
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2332
Author's Notes/Disclaimer: Set in the Gotham City Garage verse, and also a fill for fluffbingo.
Summary: Maybe in the old world, they wouldn’t have had to drive for hours just to spend some time together, hell, if things in this world were just a little different, maybe they wouldn’t have had to drive five hours just to spend some time in together any way. But they don’t have that luxury here, maybe they can find it if they drive a little further.

“I have been foiled, the mighty Jason Todd, leader of the notorious and unstoppable Red Hood gang, brought down by the wily Spoiler of dissidents both far and wide. I can only but hope my fate is kinder than that of the Clue-Masters brought to their knees, eradicated years ago, that she will look upon me with a kindness even half equal to her beauty…”

“That you can be quiet so I can drive.” Stephanie kept her features carefully blank, knowing that the rearview mirror put them on full display for the passenger she had behind the clear barrier that separated the driver side of her ricochet from the cramped holding bay.

He grinned at her and pressed up against the barrier, squishing his nose almost flat against his face, it made his voice higher and nasally when he spoke again. “So authoritative, you’re already driving me out here to the middle of this barren wasteland,” when the whole word was a barren wasteland, didn’t that mean anywhere could be the middle? “What other horrors do you have planned for me, oh mighty goddess of the battlefield, come to claim my soul for the glorious afterlife.” That was a new one; he must have gotten into Mister Pennyworth’s books again.

Nothing in sight, but the endless sands and a smattering of rocks suitable for propping up a temporary shelter, lit up by the bright full moon. They hadn't seen so much as a speck of the lighting from Garden or any of the groups that made base around it. The ricochet came to a stop. “Oh no.” Steph said, making eye contact with her ‘prisoner’ for the first time through the mirror. “I forgot to refuel, and not I’m all outta gas.”

Jason let out an over the top gasp, slapping both hands over his gaping mouth. “Out here? Where neither of us can call in for backup and things could happen that no one would ever find out about? How are you going to handle this situation, my…”

“First.” Steph dropped he barrier with the flip of a switch and grabbed the lapels of his unbuttoned jacket in her hands. “I’m gonna make you stop talking.” She pulled him close, swallowing whatever response he’s been about to make by crashing her lips against his, there was only a second’s pause from him before his arms snaked around her waist and he pulled her in close.

***

A couple of hours later and Steph was rotating a couple of the meaty emergency rations over a low burning fire while Jason worked on tying down their shelter for the night. She watched him work, his jacket discarded off to the side so she got a good view of the muscles rippling under his shirt as she positioned big rocks to sandstorm-proof it. It was a lot of effort for just one night.

“You okay?” He asked, nudging a final rock into place, then turning to her with his hands planted on his hips.

“Sure.” Steph turned their dinner over the fire and looked up at him, offering up a smile.

“If you’re worried about it blowing off again, I made sure it won’t happen this time.” He patted the thick tarp of the tent and started towards her, clapping sand off his hands.

“It’s not that.” She scooted aside to allow him a spot by the fire.

“Ah, so not that, but there is something.” He dropped down and pulling Steph against his chest, rested his chin on the crown of her head. “You gonna tell me, or do I have to guess?”

“They’re gonna start getting suspicious,” she sighed and propped up the food, then reached back her arms and laced her fingers behind his neck. “Jason Todd and Stephanie Brown have been caught by, and escaped from each other way too many times, and it’s…” She turned her head into the crook of his shoulder, relaxed into the warmth seeping through his thin shirt. “No one is dumb enough to think the both of us are both dumb and smart enough for that.” If Steph was thinking logically, they had to be suspicious already, probably hadn’t moved against Steph already because her hacked ridealongs seemed to be working.

“Well I ate a weird plant the other day on a dare, so some of my guys would probably disagree with you on that.” Jason huffed, tightened his hold on her with one of the warm smiles he reserved just for her, and Steph remembered why it was she never wanted to think logically with him around.

“You’ve been doing that since I was still riding with my father, it’s what people have come to expect from you, but I am supposed to be the Wily Spoiler, okay, people expect more from me.”

“So we can go our separate ways, spend the rest of our days grieving for what could have been at the bottom of a bottle, wishing if only…”

Steph tugged his head down, further, drawing his attention to her bemused frown. “Really Jay?”

“Well that, or,” he twisted to clasp her face in his hands meet her eyes,” we let them come, a blaze of glory in each other’s arms is a good way to go huh, make out enemies weep for our love.” Yeah, he’d definitely been in the books again.

“You’d love that.” She rolled her eyes and pulled him down to press her lips against his in a quick kiss.

They’d had this conversation before. In the start it was Jason who’d kept bringing it up, offering Steph a place with the Hoods, away from the Garden, and Steph brushing aside his worries, because she wouldn’t leave her mom, it was one thing to leave the Garden, another to do it with the goal of joining a gang. The Gardeners had been very clear on what would happen to anyone Steph was close to if she defected. Now it was Steph who worried, and as much as it sucked being on the other side of it, even she was starting to get, while not exactly apathetic, it just didn’t hold the same weight anymore, not when they never felt safer than when they were alone together, and that? That was kind of scary. All it would take was one little mistake and…

Steph had barely pulled away from her kiss and Jason closed on for another, this one deep enough to necessitate Steph releasing her hold at the back of his neck to grip at his shoulders or risk losing her balance and falling into the sand.

“I’d love anything I did with you.” He said, his lips brushing her ear and making a shiver run down from her neck to the end of her spine. He pulled away and grinned. “But I’ll admit, I’d love it more if we could do it without all this.” He waved out his hand in a motion that encompassed the whole of the barren wastelands likely beyond.

“Yeah.” Steph turned to poke at the food over the fire; just a couple minutes and it would be ready to eat. “Maybe we can convince that Garage to let us make out under one of their bar tables, tell them the long drive makes you cranky.”

Jason chuckled, as he lifted Steph’s hand to stroke his rough thumb across her calloused palm. “Yeah,” he brought it near his lips, but suddenly stopped short, a glint in his eye he only got when he was thinking of doing something really, really, stupid. The last time she’d seen it had less than two weeks before he’d sprayed her with knockout gas and she’d woken with defective ridealongs. “Or…”

“Or what?” Steph stretched out a finger of the hand he held to poke his nose, she loved the way it scrunched up whenever she did that.

“Or we take an even longer drive.” He brushed his lips against her hand, and released it. “A road trip.”

“A what?” Steph brought the hand chest and raised both eyebrows at him.

“It’s a really long drive.”

“I know what a road trip is Jason.” For obvious reasons, no one was stupid enough to take them, but Steph had grown up on literature that banned in the Garden. “I mean why, and to where, just, why?”

”Why not, and the where doesn’t matter.” He moved away from her so there was enough room for him to turn his body to better face her as he talked.“We can just…” he sliced his hand through the air, “go, drive, see what’s out there, no one has to know.”

“Jay, I’m scheduled to be back tomorrow, they’ll send someone after me if they think I up and defected with Garden property.

“You said yourself, you ran out of fuel, maybe there was a sandstorm and you wandered into the Canyons of Clay.” He was smiling, counting something on his fingers in unintelligible murmurs.

Steph wasn’t smiling; there was something too hot, so hot it was sickening, building in the pit of her stomach. It told her that leaving the Garden was an impossibility, if they were already suspicious of Steph, they would never believe it. But. There was a ‘but’, in that Steph’s journey had been meant to take her by the Canyons. Because that would make any checker-uppers pause before considering the checking up on her. Because the Canyons had always been especially touchy about having Gardeners going near them, so touchy it bordered in outright hatred – if something like that could feel those kinds of emotions.

She wasn’t afraid because it was an impossibility, but because there was a chance it could work, because that meant there was hope, and Steph had forgotten about hope when she’d been taken to the Garden, and it was one of those things she hadn't gotten around to relearning yet.

He was still counting, Steph grabbed his hands to stop it and his eyes snapped up to her. “And what about the Hoods, the leader can’t just up and leave.”

“That’s what makes it work, we both drop off, and the Garden’s got no reason to doubt. The guys know I’ve gotten outta worse things, they’ll know I’m fine, and Roy’s better at the day to day leader-ish stuff anyway.” He smile turned a little self-depreciating. “Only reasons they trust me more’s I’ve been with them since I was a kid, he’ll keep em straight if… till, I mean, until I get back.”

It could have worked, dump the tracer in the Canyon’s they wouldn’t bother looking for bodies, and if they searched the gangs, and found neither of them. And, Steph’s mom, as much as she loved her, Crystals ridealongs had only ever been in perfect condition, if Steph just disappeared – aside from those who only really knew her as Spoiler – no one in the Garden was going to miss her all that much.

“How long?” She ran her hands up his forearms. How long would it take for them to stop looking for her, how long could they spend, far from everything they both knew, out where there might have been nothing but sand and mutated Clayface-like things going on until forever for all they knew?

“Long as we can.” He buried both hands in her hair, gently cupping the back of her skull and bringing his lips close to hers. “Long as we need to. It’ll work; go on a road trip with me Sunshine. Please.”

His eyes were bright and earnest, confident as he always was. He believed it would work. Steph believed it could work. It wasn’t impossible, and both of them had pulled off things everyone else had said were beyond impossible.

“If we can find the ruins of that Disneyland place.”

He started, cocked his head at her, either not believing that he’d heard her answer, correctly or giving her a chance to rescind it if she wasn’t sure. Steph just grinned and pulled him on for another kiss, to take in more of his warmth when it ended and almost crushed her in a hug to the tune of the excited laughter that shook his body.

“Yeah, we’re gonna find Disneyland.” He leaned his face into the crook of her neck, his nighttime stubble tickling at her skin. “And our accomplishment will be legend; no one will want to stay in the Garden after we tell them.”

“Our reign shall be just but fair.” Steph nodded and pressed a series of soft kisses along his jaw line.

“Brainwash them with those movies the old people talk about and…” He pulled away from her quickly, and Steph made her disappointment known in the pout she gave him. “Do you smell smoke?”

She did, and it was coming from... she scrambled away from rushing to turn back to the fire. “The food!” She snatched the scorched sticks from the fire, the charred remains of what was supposed to have been the bulk of their dinner sending tendrils of sad, dark smoke up into the heavens as Jason and Stephanie looked on mournfully for a few moments of eternity.

“You know what.” Steph said eventually, and held one of the sticks out to him. “I’m starved, and you eat weird plants, you can handle some burnt meat.”

“I ate one weird plant.” He said, and Steph sent him a flat look. “Fine two, maybe three, but not more than six, depending how you look at it.” He blew over his charcoal on a stick, dispelling some of the smoke before taking a small bite. “It’s not too bad.” He shrugged.

“I don’t wanna know how you look at it.” Steph rolled her eyes and settled against him again, her back pressed against his chest, and he wrapped his free arm around her. She took a small bite, careful not to burn her mouth. No, the food wasn’t bad, but then, she could love anything she did with him.