happy birthday
Title: happy birthday
Author:gogogadget slash
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Bruce/Jason
Rating: PG-13
Warning: none
Summary: On nights when things get really bad, Jason goes to what he's sure people called a 'happy place'. Which just so happened to be his sixth birthday
A/N: this is for my 100_tales prompt 'birthday' it succeeds what's in a name an au hooker!jason fic I wrote for my au_bingo table. People seemed to like it so I figured I continue, enjoy!

Jason thinks it's ironic that the same day he escapes is also the very same day he was taken. He also thinks that irony is one cruel son of a bitch because this day happens to be his birthday. Though he's stopped celebrating it a long time ago, the day has lost all meaning to him, he can't help but think that maybe it means something. But then Jason was never really one for any of that fate or destiny crap, so maybe this is more like a coincidence.

On nights when things get really bad, Jason goes to what he's sure people called a 'happy place'. Which just so happened to be his sixth birthday. It's hot outside and his mom lets him play with sparklers, his cake is chocolate and when he blows on the candles he gets icing all over his chin. His mom laughs and Jason's pretty sure he laughed to.

He doesn't try to think of what happens after that, preferring to stay on the lighter happier side of that memory. But even now, he can remember the yelling, angry bad words that his mother says are ugly and he should never say them. Jason's crying because it knows it must be his fault.

He was born, as his mother put it, special. His father hated whenever he showed how special he was and Jason doesn't mean to do it but it happens anyway, he's never been great at controlling it. He swears it was an accident but his father doesn't seem to care.

Jason shakes his head slightly as though this would dispel the bad memory and focuses instead on the strips of white disappearing and reappearing on the gravel under the car. He's anxious excited and happy all at the same time, and he works hard to conceal it all. He's not sure whether or not he can trust Bruce, but he figures anything is better than going back.

Somehow Jason thinks that it doesn't matter how he stoic he makes his features Bruce can probably tell exactly what Jason's feeling which doesn't help his emotional state at all. Now there are tears streaming down Jason's cheeks and he's shaking with the effort to reign in his sobs. It makes Jason mad that he succumbs to his tears, in front of Bruce no less, which only seems to fuel his desire to completely breakdown, needless to say this doesn't help his situation at all.

It takes Jason longer than he would have liked to realize that they've stopped driving and that Bruce his holding him but Jason isn't really focused on anything except the whirlwind that was going on in is his head and behind his chest.

"Hey birthday Jay!" she chuckles slightly wiping icing from under the small boy's chin.

Jason cries harder.