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The music coming from the pub is so loud that it’s almost deafening, and the bright colored lights flashing in time with the beats make it even more difficult to have a clear view of who is inside. So it’s only by sheer luck that Dick spots the kid among the faceless crowd, leaning in a corner, a beer in hands, the hood pulled over his eyes leaving only the profile of his face uncovered, but it's still enough for Dick to recognize him. He freezes.
The bust is just about to begin: the other policemen are ready to break-in, weapons in hand, their commander has the walkie-talkie raised to his mouth to give the order, and for the briefest moment Dick’s ashamed to admit that he actually considers doing nothing about it.
After all, he owes this kid nothing, and sure as hell he owes nothing to Bruce.
Worst of all, he allows himself to bask in the idea of calling Wayne Manor to ask for Mr. Wayne himself to come and pick up his new pupil at the Blüdhaven police station. Even indulges into the selfish fantasy of being the one to welcome Bruce in, make him sit at his desk to list him all the wrongdoings of his unruly kid. It would feel like a retribution, and a nice one too. But it would also be petty, and unfair, and definitely something Alfred would frown upon.
So he runs inside along with his colleagues, badge in one hand and the unloaded gun in the other, and cuts through the now screaming crowd in the most harmless way possible to get right to the kid. It’s not easy, and he manages to catch him by the scruff of his neck just one moment before Jason can climb the pub’s wall and get to the open window above their heads.
Dick brings him back to the ground with little kindness, shaking him enough to make him lose his balance and throw off the punch that, predictably, Jason tries to land on him.
“Don’t even”, he chides with a snarl, and after a quick glance around he tosses the kid into an empty room, away from the ruined disco party behind them. They don’t have that much time, and Dick doesn’t want to have to explain to another officer why he’s hiding what they would see as nothing more than a possible suspect.
“Get off me!”, Jason shouts out, falling on his butt with no grace whatsoever. The beer bottle crashes to the ground, pieces of glass flying all over.
“Shut up!”, Dick snarls, closing the door behind them with a loud thud. “You better have a very good reason to be here, or I swear to god I’ll call B and-”
He cuts himself off when Jason rolls on his side, bounces back up on his feet and into a fighting stance, making his hood slide backwards and exposing his face. The neon lights shine on his swollen skin, and Dick takes in the yellow bruises, the split lip and the black eye all in one single look.
“What the hell happened to you?”, he asks, taken aback.
Jason looks at him with eyes made of glass, but after a moment the fog seems to clear out, and the kid tilts his head to the side and relaxes his shoulders.
“Oh, it’s you”, he says, and Dick can’t tell if there’s relief or disappointment in his voice.
On the other side of the wall the yelling gets louder, more violent as the thugs hidden in the crowd begin to react. The first gunshot echoes high above the music and Dick's muscles stretch under the adrenaline rush. He should be out there doing his job, not here in this room taking care of one of Bruce's pet projects.
He swallows a lump of anger and takes a step towards Jason, raising an uncertain hand. He doesn’t even know what to do with it, if he wants to put it on the kid’s shoulder in some kind of reassurance, or just grab him to prevent another escape attempt.
But Jason pulls himself back before he has time to make a decision, slipping away from his reach.
“Hands off, man!”, he hisses, making a show of dusting off his jacket. He looks as angry as Dick feels, and that’s not going to help anything, he expects.
“What happened to your face?”, Dick asks again. “Did you get hurt on patrol?”
Jason rolls his eyes at him with nothing less than contempt.
“I don't get hurt on patrol”, he sneers, lifting up his chin.
What an insufferable brat, Dick thinks.
“For that to be true you’d have to be a nice, good little soldier who always does what the boss says”, he answers in a scoff. “And somehow I doubt that’s the case, since you were out there drinking beer and not paying attention to your surrounding.”
He’d like to say he doesn’t enjoy watching the kid’s face turn into a beet red under the scolding Dick just delivered. He does feel guilty about it, though, because the flushed cheeks only make the bruises more evident.
“Answer me”, he says, more gently this time, before Jason gets a chance to turn his embarrassment into anger. “Who did that to you?”
It’s the wrong question. Jason’s shoulders slump down and the kid looks away for a moment before catching himself. He snaps on attention almost immediately after realizing what he was doing, straightening his back again. Dick watches the kid shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket and gather the most casual grin he can pull given the circumstances, and he almost can hear in his head the sound of Bruce’s voice lecturing about deception and never giving your real feelings away in a fight.
“Would you believe I fell down the stairs?”, Jason asks, and his smile is wide and bright and it pulls at Dick’s heartstrings.
“No, I wouldn’t”, he answers, but before he can add anything to that there's a furious knock at the door and Dick turns around, considering what to do. He doesn’t want to deal with this, but there’s no way he can not deal with this. He sighs.
“Take the window and wait for me in the next alley. I’ll be out in half an hour top”, he says, turning back to Jason, who’s looking at him with an almost funny mix of anxiety and fake arrogance.
“I don’t-”, the kid starts protesting, but Dick raises one finger to stop him right away.
“If you’re not there when I get out, I’m going to call Bruce”, he warns him. “And don’t waste your breath trying to convince me he knows about you being in the middle of a drug ring, kiddo.”
Jason looks positively ruffled at those words.
“Don’t call me a kid”, he grumbles.
“Don’t make my night even more difficult than it currently is”, Dick retorts. “Now shoo. I need to take care of the bad guys you were cahooting with.”
“I wasn’t cahooting with anyone!”, Jason yells, looking beyond offended. Again, Dick feels the urge to grin at him, maybe even pat his head, like you do with children and cute dogs. It’s weird to have such conflicted feelings, like annoyance and something that could be almost affection, for the same person.
“Out of here, kiddo. Before I change my mind and haul your ass to jail.”
He wouldn’t do that under any circumstance, but by the panicked look on Jason’s face, the kid doesn’t know it.
Good, Dick thinks with a tinge of enjoyment.
He waits for Jason to start climbing again, then opens the door on the mess that’s still raging on the dance floor.
“Clear!”, he shouts to no-one, before throwing himself back into the crowd.
*
Despite his threats, Dick doesn't really expect to find Jason still waiting for him when he finally manages to get away from the scene.
He's almost startled when he finds the kid perched on an upturned garbage can, hands still hidden in his pockets, hood once again lowered over his eyes to hide his face. He looks unnervingly small like this, and Dick forces himself to remember that Jason’s only fourteen. He’s young. Not as young as Dick used to be when he first donned the yellow cape, but still too young to be out and about on his own.
Anger and annoyance shrink without permission into feelings closer to nostalgia and remorse. Dick feels the need to shake his head to clear his thought once again.
“So”, he says tentatively, mimicking the kid’s posture by shoving his fists into his jeans’ pockets.
“Did you call Bruce?”, Jason blurts out, looking at him with wide eyes full of concern and resignation, like a man who fears to be handed over to his executioner any moment now.
Dick didn’t expect the threat to be so effective, to be honest. When he was Jason’s age things like this were almost an everyday occurrence.
“Of course not”, he reassures him. “But I should. I know you feel ready to do things on your own, but you aren’t yet. And coming to Blüdhaven to do the solo Robin thing instead of staying in Gotham may sound smarter to you but I don’t-”
“I’m not doing any solo Robin thing”, Jason interrupts him, scowling and kicking his feet.
Dick blinks and pauses in his lecture.
“...What?”, he asks. “Then what the heck were you doing in there?”
He tries to meet the kid's eyes, looking for an answer he knows it’s not going to be given out loud. He just doesn’t understand. Jason has no business being here, in one of the pubs only known to Blüdhaven’s lowlife, if he isn’t on a stakeout as Robin.
Again his gaze lingers on the kid’s bruises and the way he’s now biting his lips, waiting for another chastisement. Dick should really call Alfred. Let him deal with this, whatever this is. He’s in no mood to tangle with whatever Gotham mess the kid’s bringing to his door.
He pinches his nose with two fingers, then crosses his arms over his chest.
“Alright, then just tell me this one thing”, he proposes, and Jason looks up, a vague halo of hope in his posture. “Does this have anything to do with Bruce?”
Jason hesitates, then shakes his head no.
Of course not, Dick mentally sighs.
“C’mon, my apartment’s not far”, he offers eventually. He starts walking and doesn't turn back to check if the kid’s following him or not.
*
“Stay still”, Dick says, tinkering with a pair of tweezers.
“You’re hurting me!”, Jason bellows, trying to wiggle his hand out of Dick’s grasp. Dick’s not having any of that and blocks him by his wrist none too tendery.
“You’re hurting yourself”, he points out, swabbing the cut with a gentler touch. “I need to get all the glass out.”
Jason huffs and by the corner of his eye Dick can see him glancing around his bathroom, trying to distract himself. Funny he should be so squeamish.
“I’m almost done”, he offers with half a smile.
He works in silence for a few minutes, removing shards and the last blood clots, then bandaging the kid’s hand, paying particular attention to his bruised knuckles. He hasn’t asked any more questions about the injuries or the reason why the kid was in a place where he absolutely should not have been, but he can tell a trouble when it’s sitting on the edge of his own bathtub.
“There”, he says, awkwardingly releasing the kid’s hand.
He wonders what he should do about the whole situation now. Calling Alfred still sounds like the most sensible thing to do, but that would mean having a conversation about this, getting involved. And getting involved in Gotham’s drama is exactly what Dick’s trying to avoid. This is something for Bruce to worry about, he tells to himself.
“I have a couch.”
Jason stops fiddling with the loose threads of Dick’s bandage and gives him a questioning look.
“A couch?”, he asks.
“Yes. For you to sleep into”, Dick clarifies. “Tomorrow I have an early shift, I can give you a ride to the bus station first thing in the morning, and you can go back home.”
“Oh. Okay”, Jason says, sounding oddly polite when he adds: “Thank you.”
It feels like he wants to say something else, and Dick waits, uncertain about what he could do or say to make him feel more welcomed. It should be simple, he knows. It’s obvious by the way Jason’s been acting all night - the initial anger at being caught quickly turned into grumpy acceptance, the fact that he waited for Dick and followed him to his apartment, that he let him bandage him up without too much fuss - all of this speaks of a need for acceptance, for someone to talk to, someone that can understand him and his peculiar life. He looks like he needs a friend. A brother.
And it would be so simple indeed. The words are already burning on the tip of Dick’s tongue: you can talk to me. We’re family, you and I. That would be enough, Dick’s sure of it.
And yet those words die prematurely on his lips. He can’t talk about family. Not with Bruce’s new son. It’s too difficult, too complicated to explain it to someone so green.
There will be time, Dick thinks. Eventually, he’ll understand.
He smiles, then pats the kid over his head, hastily withdrawing his hand when Jason tries to slap it. Dick laughs.
“Good night, kiddo. See you in the morning”, he says before walking out of the bathroom without looking back.