Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

0. Mori

Gotham City Library, despite the building’s crumbling exterior and less than desirable location to anyone who grew up with a bit too much money in their pockets, is a refuge.

Jason had spent days getting lost between the rows of shelves, back when they looked taller than any skyscraper he could see in the distance. He’d lost hours tucked into one of the many nooks littered around the humble two stories, when his mom had needed him to get out of the house before things got rough. It was a place to get warm, during his winters on the streets, the librarians occasionally handing out small cups of hot chocolate to everyone who came through their doors.

Even now, at age nineteen and back from the dead, the mere act of crossing the threshold causes something in Jason to relax. The liminal, timeless feeling that the familiar architecture invites, the smell of paper pervading the air as he wanders, it all takes the tension from his shoulders and leeches it away, leaving him relaxed and in a pleasant mood for once.

Too big to fit into any of his old hiding spaces, Jason’s set up in a lumpy arm chair he’d sworn was eighty years old the first time he’d seen it, when he was five. There’s a boarded-up window next to him, December’s cool air seeping in through the imperfect cracks running through the plywood, and he has his leather jacket on to compensate for the chill. Currently, he’s trying to work his way through the long list of titles Alfred had written down for him – apparently, the old man had been keeping track of any new books released after he’d died, and written down the ones he thought Jason would have liked.

While Jason would love to park his ass in the library and re-read Jane Austin for the umpteenth time, he feels like he needs to branch out a little more. It’s been years. Things have changed since he’s left, from small things like the library’s upgraded computers, to bigger things like the added coffee shop tucked away on the second floor, where all of the beanbag chairs used to go to die. He can’t expect everything to have waited for him to regain his bearing before it smacks him in the face with a stark reminder of the time he’s missing – the world doesn’t work that way. He needs to roll with the punches before he’s swept away.

An easy way to start, is by checking off the books his grandfather had complied that’d reminded him of the scrappy kid he’d used to sit up with whenever he’d had nightmares and Bruce wasn’t around.

Some of the books listed are childish, firmly written for the teenager to young adult audience, since Alfred had been writing down book recs for that 15-year-old punk Jason used to be, but that doesn’t mean that they’re bad.

Taking a sip from the now lukewarm hot chocolate sitting next to him in a paper cup, he continues reading about Percy Jackson fighting for his life as he makes his way through a mall on the whims of the gods. It’s a good story so far – the characters are likeable, their motives and characterization stay consistent as the plot progresses, and it’s an interesting application of Greek mythology to modern media he hasn’t seen before.

Someone slams into the seat next to him, pulling him out of Percy’s interaction with Aphrodite.

The young woman who interrupted his reading has brightly colored hair, short braids ending at her chin and plastered to her forehead from the freezing rain outside. She’s panting for breath, but trying her hardest to look unaffected, shooting a frantic look over her sweater-clad shoulder before whipping around and hunching in on herself in an attempt to look smaller.

She looks like Jason had, whenever he’d run from Willis’s bad days, going to the only place the man wouldn’t think to look for him.

Jason starts to close his book, frowning at the lady, but she cuts him off before he can say anything.

Leaning towards him, she whispers frantically, “Please, you’ve gotta help me. Someone from one of my websites found my address and is stalking me – I tried to tell him I have a boyfriend but he refuses to believe me. He’s been following me around, I don’t want to be alone with him but he keeps pushing! I don’t know how long I can keep dodging him! Please, help!”

There’s a clatter of noise at the front of the library, someone stomping through the front doors, loudly calling out for “Nebula”.

Jason’s eyes harden.

He stands, reaching a hand out to his companion and ushering them deeper into the maze of shelves when she takes it.

They end up tucked away in the startling large art history section, away from any exterior walls or main aisles, squished together into an oversized beanbag some enterprising bastard had dragged down from the second floor and abandoned who knows how long ago.

Voice still low, the lady mutters, “If he asks, your name is Will, you work at the local mechanic shop, and we met when my bike broke down and you fixed it for me back in October. We’ve been on a couple of dates since. It was my idea to come to the library.”

Inclining his head slightly, Jason hands her one of the books he’d grabbed from his to-read stash. “This is the second book in the series, you introduced it to me and want to see my reactions as I read through it. I’m procrastinating, since I don’t think I’ll like the series that much, so I’m trying to distract you with other things. What am I supposed to call you, and kind of bike do you ride?”

With naked relief in her eyes, she takes the book, looking down at the cover and nodding. It’s a relatively popular series and she doesn’t look panicked at having her cover story be that she’s already read it, so that’s good.

“You can call me Mori. I’ve got a Monster 796 right now, but I’ve been looking to get a new bike for months now. Can I say you’re helping me choose between a Ninja 400 and a Tuono V4 1100?”

Pausing a second, Jason runs through his pretty extensive bike knowledge. He nods – he drives a Harley during the day, and his Red Hood bike isn’t quite a sports bike, not with all of the adjustments he’s made to it, but he’s tried his best to keep up with the sport bike scene ever since B had promised him he’d teach Jason how to drive the batbike, forever ago.

Mori beams at him. She looks exhausted, but hopeful.

Quickly delving into an in-depth analysis of the different pros and cons of the two bikes, “Will” and “Mori” continue their “date”.

Time flies by, Mori alternating between calming down due to the lack of any kind of confrontation and getting stressed out over the same thing. Jason gets it – anticipation is always a bitch to deal with.

After thirty-five minutes, they’ve settled on the Ninja 400 unless her side job manages to pull in a significantly increased paycheck (she’d had her eye on the Tuono V4 1100 Factory, which would cost almost as much as a single semester of the out-of-state college she’s attending). She’s even raising the book he’d given her pointedly, flipping her copy open to the table of contents before paging roughly half-way through the book to get to a specific chapter.

Putting up a token amount of resistance, Jason gives himself a minute to complain before cracking open his book again, picking up where he left off.

Sitting quietly next to a virtual stranger, on the lookout for a potentially violent stalker obsessed with his new reading buddy, he’s oddly relaxed. He hasn’t had the chance to just sit and read with anyone in forever… most of his friends aren’t really into literature like that, preferring movies or fighting over a good book. The last person he’d just co-existed with while tearing through a series had been Bruce.

(Or, maybe, Talia? Ducra, perhaps? It’s kind of fuzzy, but Jason doesn’t really think that the various manuals, dossiers, and occasional grimoire he’d had dumped in his lap counted for this.)

He manages to finish the book before anything happens, which is always nice. Sadly, since he’s signed himself up to play bodyguard, he’s not comfortable checking out the other three novels he’d planned on reading, too worried that he’ll get into a fight and end up damaging them. It’s happened before, and he’d felt absolutely terrible that he’d ruined the library’s poetry book with blood like that. Jason’ll just have to come back tomorrow to pick them up.

They manage another couple of minutes of small talk related to the series, but Jason can tell that the situation is wearing on Mori. Lightly slapping the tops of his legs, he stands, turning to offer her a hand up.

“Alright, well, I think that’s more than enough reading for one day. Mori, how ‘bout I walk you to your bike?”

Mori shoots him a shaky grin and nods, grabbing their books and stacking them in her arms. “Sounds like a plan to me, Will.”

Returning the books to their correct shelf takes no time at all, but as they wander into the more populated sections Jason can see the tension rising in Mori’s posture. Nudging her with a light elbow, Jason raises an eyebrow her way.

“If we see your stalker, I got us covered. You stick around long enough that he believes that we’re dating, then get the hell out of there. I can handle things from there.”

Mori frowns up at him, already more soft-hearted than most Gothamites. Jason must’ve really gotten into her good graces by not being a dick about her request for help earlier.

“You sure? No offense, Will, but I found you in the library. Just because you’re wearing a leather jacket doesn’t mean you won’t get your ass beat if this creep decides to throw down in public.”

Stifling a snort, Jason mimics flexing one arm, a confident smirk stealing over his face. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I can handle anything he throws my way.

Mori gives him a flat look, but doesn’t push. “I’ll start filming, if I see him. It won’t stop you from getting hurt, but at least you’ll have a face if you want to try and track him down later.”

Mori’s from the Narrows, or somewhere close to it. She’s got the same vocabulary and accent as Duke, and no one from that part of town would think twice about going to someone bigger to get revenge on a guy who beat the shit out of them, instead of to the cops.

Jason just smiles and nods, accepting her proposed plan of action.

Exiting into the foggy afternoon drizzle, they finally run into Mori’s stalker, screenname Rick988 – the guy’s decently fit, about 5’ 7’’, and spitting mad.

“You cheating bitch!” He screams, sprinting up to them from where he’d posted up next to the library doors, obviously waiting for Mori to exit. “You’re supposed to love me! Why are you talking to other men?!”

From the way she’d been acting all afternoon, Jason’d thought that he’d have to step in front of Mori, acting as a physical shield between her and the man who clearly scared the shit out of her to the point that she’d ask for a stranger’s help in Gotham. He’s proven wrong, though, as Mori starts shaking not from fear, but from rage, throwing herself into Rick’s personal bubble and shoving a finger into his face. “Fuck off with that bullshit, you asshole! I don’t even know you, and you think you can dictate how I should live my life? Get your head out of your ass before I shove my foot up it!”

Rick blinks, looking taken aback by her 180-degree personality shift. Jason settles onto his heels, raising his eyebrows and letting Mori control the narrative. It’s far from the first time he’s seen people snap from terrified to pissed. He’ll be here in case she gets in over her head and needs backup.

The thin crowd of ever-present pedestrians slows around them, nosy enough to be curious about today’s newest altercation.

“But I gave you so much –” Ricky tries, hurt tinting his voice. God, he sounds like such an entitled asshole.

“You and hundreds of other people! Just because you donated doesn’t mean we’re in a relationship! It doesn’t mean you know me!” Here, Mori gestures wildly to Jason. “I have a life offline! I have a boyfriend! I don’t need anyone coming out of nowhere and telling me what to do! The next time I see your face around here, I’m going to make sure you walk away with a black eye!”

Something ugly crosses Rick’s face. “You ugly bitch, you’re just mad that no one actually thinks you’re hot! I’m trying to be nice, here! I shouldn’t have even given you the time of day. Clearly you’re dumber than you look since you can’t see what a golden opportunity you’re wasting. Fucking –”

Mori slaps him, hard, the various rings decorating her hand leaving scratches on his cheek. The man jerks to the side, yelping at the blow.

“You bitch!” Clapping one hand to his injured cheek, Rick rears up, raising his other hand to try and grab at her sweater. Mori flinches back, her bravado disappearing as her stalker towers over her, and Jason steps in.

The crowd around them has grown, people actually stopping and taking out their cameras instead of rubbernecking for as long as possible. The good news is that, since he’s still legally dead, Jason can do pretty much whatever he wants, so long as it doesn’t garner too much attention. If he gets too crazy, Oracle will catch his screw up during her nightly internet scrubs and give him a ration of shit for it, but that won’t be necessary. Jason knows better than to pull out any bat-moves in public: that doesn’t mean he can’t fall back on the good ol’ street fighting tactics he’d learned from growing up in this shithole.

Grabbing the reaching hand, Jason twists until he hears a crack. Rick screams in pain, and he shoves the other man backwards, stepping into the space Mori had previously been in, filling the asshole’s field of view.

“I’m pretty sure Mori was clear about what she wanted, man,” Jason says, keeping his tone conversationally light. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

Rick tries to spit at him, but misses when Jason tilts his head to the side. “Fuck you, you goddamn cuck! Why should I care what a stupid ass beta like you –”

Jason punches Rick in the gut, stepping back as the man collapses to his knees and heaves onto the sidewalk. Pathetic, he hadn’t even broken any of his ribs.

He can hear the crowd gasp around him, but ignores the chatter. Behind him, he’s vaguely aware that Mori has stuck to her second plan of action, and is currently filming Rick’s beatdown. Crouching, he brings one hand up to pat the asshole’s injured cheek mockingly. “Now, how about you be a good boy and scamper back into whatever hole you crawled out of? Or do you want another souvenir?”

Rick scrambles backward, his eyes wide. “What the fuck, man! You’re a goddamn psycho!”

Scoffing, Jason stands, crossing his arms as he looks down on the sniveling piece of shit cowering in front of him.

“Now, that’s fucking rude. I’m more of a walk the walk kind of guy, unlike you. There’s no need to be an ass about it, we can’t all be weak as hell.”

Rolling his eyes, Jason turns around, putting his back towards Rick as he takes a step towards a stunned Mori.

Just as he’d planned, Rick scrambles to his feet, takes a pocket knife out and tries to stab him in the back. With a signature move any alley rat would recognize, Jason smacks the knife out of his weak grip with one hand and punches him in the face with the other. He takes a second to kick the knife into the crowd around them, out of Rick’s reach. “Where’re your fucking manners, asshole? If you’re gonna try and knife me, don’t do it with this many witnesses, you fucking dumbass. Get out of here before I give you another black eye.”

Rick staggers back, then turns and runs. Cheers erupt from around them, their audience appeased by the mostly bloodless violence and happy ending – Gothamites are weird like that. Jason watches him with narrowed eyes until he’s sure the bastard really is running off with his tail tucked between his legs.

Potential threat neutralized, Jason shrugs his shoulders to get rid of any lingering tension, and turns back to Mori for real this time, flashing her a disarming grin. “Told you I could handle myself.”

Mori blinks at him, then giggles, disbelief in her tone. “Holy shit, I guess you can! Never thought I’d see a nerd beat the crap out of someone so quickly.”

Jason sweeps his arms out to either side of his body, folding one in front of himself and bowing theatrically. “You’re welcome, I’ll be here all week. Now, for real this time, let’s get you to your bike. I’m sure you’d rather be at home than stuck out here getting stared at on the street.”

At the last bit of his statement, their congregation of onlookers start to dissipate, called out.

Mori huffs at him, but smiles. The relief in her eyes echoes the way she’d looked at Jason when she first found him tucked away between the library shelves. “Weirdly enough, I think you might be right about that. Let’s go, I parked over there.”

The two of them elbow their way out of the thinning crowd into the chilled wind that had previously been blocked by numerous gawking bodies, leaving the dying commotion behind them.

Once they get out of sight, Mori slows, moving to lean on a nearby wall before sliding down to sit on her butt. Jason sits next to her, giving her enough space so she doesn’t feel crowded.

“That was insane,” she gasps, her eyes wild, hands shaking as the clutch her phone close to her chest. An adrenaline crash, Jason’s guessing.

He hums softly, nodding. “It really was. I know they’re not worth shit, but it might be a good idea to look into getting a restraining order against that guy. His form was garbage, but he was one hundred percent willing to stab someone with that shitty knife.”

“Mm-hm,” Mori replies, still not focusing on anything.

“Hey, with the way today’s stunt was filmed, it might just go viral. Wonder if that’ll help bring in any revenue for your side hustle?” Jason says, keeping his voice soft and even, slipping into steady chatter about what she could do with the extra money, all of the biking equipment she could buy, ramping up the absurdity and saying that if it gets popular enough she might even be able to buy both bikes…

Slowly, Mori comes back to herself.

He keeps going until she lets out a large, gusting sigh. Finally allowing himself to pause, he tilts his head to look over at her. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I just ran a marathon, which is stupid,” she jokes, voice shaky as she looks up at him with wide eyes. “Holy shit, you almost got stabbed.”

Jason grins at her, keeping his face and posture relaxed. “Eh, just a perk of livin’ this close to the Alley. Don’t worry too much about it, he didn’t start swinging until provoked, and I knew what I could handle.”

“Fuck off,” Mori splutters, prying one hand off of her phone to wipe at her runny nose. Jason offers her a tissue, which she takes. “You did not plan on getting stabbed today, no way.”

“Pfft,” Jason blows air out of his cheeks derisively. “Of course I didn’t. I planned on getting not stabbed, and achieved that goal.”

“Ha!” Mori lets out an incredulous bark of laughter, her eyes losing some of their wildness. “You’re such an asshole. How did I not figure out you were an asshole before now?”

“Because you have good taste in books and bikes,” Jason promptly replies.

They sit together, Mori giggling quietly as they watch a steady trickle of pedestrians pass in front of their perch. After a couple of minutes, Mori shakes her head in one sharp movement, slapping lightly at her cheeks.

“Okay, I’m done now. Crisis over, I wanna go lay face down in my bed for the next forty-eight hours and not think about anything.” Pushing herself to her feet, she grabs at Jason’s elbow and tugs. “Come on, you asshole. Let’s go.”

The walk to her bike is short, after that. Her Monster is bright pink with Kirby decals plastered over every open surface – it’s well loved, for all that it’s far from a new bike.

Jason whistles in appreciation, and she beams with pride.

As she unlocks her helmet and gets ready to ride home, Jason clears his throat. “Hey, do you want my phone number? In case that guy tries to come back?”

Mori pauses, fumbling her chin strap. “Ah, I’m… I’m glad you helped me out and everything, but I’m actually a lesbian?”

Jason flushes, putting both hands up like that would stop her from getting the wrong idea she’d clearly already come to. “No, no! I’m not trying to hit on you, I just know that guys like him don’t really like being told no, especially if he can get any kind of access to you online. I just don’t want to find out you got stabbed because he decided to come back.”

Blinking earnestly, Jason tries to will her to see that he’s really not trying to be weird about this. He knows what that kind of attachment does to stalkers, and he knows the statistics. It would suck if his temporary reading buddy gets knifed in an alley because she thinks Jason can’t keep it in his pants.

Eventually, Mori nods, finishing the adjustments for her helmet before digging into her pocket and handing him her phone. “Alright, but only because you didn’t try anything while we were in the library. I really am gay as hell, so you don’t have a chance.”

Taking her phone with a laugh, Jason taps in his number quickly before giving it back. He’ll leave it up to her to text him first, in case she changes her mind about wanting him to have her contact info. “Noted. If you think Mr. Shitty Knifing etiquette is ever creeping where he shouldn’t be, give me a text. Just, make sure you say who you are, first, so I know what I’m walking into?”

Mori raises an eyebrow at that, snorting when she sees the “Will” [book emoji] [bike emoji] [knife emoji] he’d put down as his contact info name. “You go out saving enough people you need to know which one’s calling you for a second favor?”

Shaking his head, Jason scoffs. “Something like that. Hey, get home safe. Good luck with your Ninja.”

Pocketing her phone, Mori snaps her visor down and brings her bike to life. She gives him a peace sign before she peels out into traffic, leaving Jason to stand alone on a damp sidewalk, surrounded by strangers.

Weirdly enough, he doesn’t feel as lonely as he usually does. It’s been an interesting day, but it was nice enough. He’d gotten to finish one of the books on Alfred’s list, he’d had a great discussion about bikes, and he’d even gotten to punch someone.

Maybe he really should get out more often. Books aren’t the only thing he can use to catch up with the real world, after all.

#OnlyInGotham will you see a man verbally destroy another dude over failing to properly knife him #we stan a legend #simp gets destroyed by random emo dude

REPLY: bro is that NebulaCloud? she looks so cute in person!!

REPLY: WTF, why didn’t anyone call the cops???

REPLY: REPLY: Dude, it’s gotham. Also, the guy’s got Hood’s skunk stripe – they’ve gotta be close to Crime Alley. Ain’t no cop gonna show their face anywhere even CLOSE to Crime Alley. Idiot.

REPLY: isn’t that RH’s boyfriend?? I swear that’s the same guy who helped me with my English assignment last week

REPLY: REPLY: *comment deleted*

Chapter Text

1. Emily A.H. (AKA Entitled Asshole)

It had been a mistake, letting Barbie find his Full Hearts account.

Sure, he’d gotten to watch hours of prime blackmail material on Dick and Bruce, (and even some of the replacement and the Demon Brat after), but that still didn’t make the overwhelming embarrassment he’d felt once he realized she’d seen his profile go away.

At fifteen, Jason had been mostly preoccupied with fucking acing his classes so he could rub it in the faces of those entitled little shits - that a street rat was so much better than them, could study and be smart like anyone else. Since so much of his free time had been taken up by Robin, he’d never really gotten into dating. Hell, he hadn’t even felt attracted to any of the rich assholes he’d gone to school with, even though it seemed like everyone else was looking for excuses to shove their tongues down each other’s throats or paw at their partner awkwardly while being in fucking public.

Then he’d been dead, then brain dead, then focused on learning how to be an assassin, then focused on revenge, then focused on keeping his criminal empire running even though he’s technically a vigilante again…

He’s been busy, is all. Last week, his run-in with Mori had gotten him thinking: he really only has, like, four friends who aren’t part of the whole weird bat dynamic, and zero friends who weren’t caught up in the hero-ing gig. It’d been nice to just sit and chill with someone normal, reading books and talking bikes with nothing else hanging over their heads (expect for her crazy stalker, but it was fine. Jason’d handled it).

He can’t exactly put out a craig’s list ad for a friend - he’d feel too much like the Replacement if he stooped that low, so his next thought had been dating. People went to bookstores and libraries on dates, right? Or, like, to concerts and shit?

Jason would be able to catch up on a lot of the things he’s missed, if he goes on a couple of dates.

Plus, he’d hopefully get a friend or two out of the experience, even if he doesn’t find a partner – Gotham’s big enough, if he just sticks to it, he’s gotta find at least a couple of people who aren’t crazy.

At least, that’s what he’d been thinking when he made his Full Hearts profile.  

Since then, he’s gotten a decent number of matches, but a majority of them had been from people looking for one night stands, which Jason was NOT in the market for. A few other hits had been bots, trying to scam non-existent passcodes from him.

Even before Babs’ little shaming session, he’d been debating deleting the app entirely. He’d given himself two more days with it – if Fuller Hearts can’t get him a decent enough match within that timeframe, he’ll get rid of it and beg Babs to delete all traces of his ill-thought-out foray into electronic dating from the internet.

A mere ten hours from his self-imposed deadline, he gets a new message from someone who just matched with him.

Emily A.H. is twenty-two, likes Poe, absolutely despises most modern authors, and can actually keep up with Jason when he starts ranting about the Bard’s less known works and how they’ve been tragically shit on by modern teaching standards and the whims of current popular themes. It’s amazing – they get into debates over who’s got the right opinion on the dumbest topics. The chick never gets caught up on Jason’s habit of cursing liberally when aggravated, and she’s got a quirky habit of responding in kind when Jason manages to get her really going on a topic she’s passionate about.

The girl is normal, doesn’t know Jason as that one kid who died and came back fucked up, and isn’t just trying to use him for something. It’s wild. Jason’s actually excited when a week and a half of in-app chatting (no matter how well things are going, there’s no way he’ll hand out one of his phone numbers that easily. Burner phones don’t grow on trees, after all) turns into potential dinner plans, and eventually into finalized dinner plans.

They get a reservation at the Italian place in midtown, nice enough that Jason wears his dark jeans and red button down instead of his usual t-shirt and cargo pants combo, but not quite pompous enough that he gets the stink-eye for his hair.

The trend of dying a streak of hair white his Alley kids had started was as touching as it was nerve-wracking – he has a built-in excuse if he ever gets caught taking off his helmet, now, to explain why Jason Todd has the same quirky hair as the Red Hood, but it also clearly marks the people he counts as his , which puts a target on their backs.

At the start, only the other inhabitants of Crime Alley knew what the streak meant, but over the years it’s caught on as a trend. He’s seen some absolutely vicious smack downs on people who think it’ll be cool to copy the style without actually earning it. By this point, pretty much all of Gotham knows where you came from or who you’re loyal to if they see the distinctive white streak in people’s hair.

The weather’s turned even crappier in the last week, frozen rain turning into non-stop sleet, and Jason has to wipe his feet viciously at the  restaurant’s welcome mat in order to not fucking squeak every time he takes a step. He’s well aware that he looks like a lunatic doing so, but the wait staff are kind enough to not say anything until he finishes eliminating any trace of moisture hiding in the bottom of his boots.

A young ginger kid smiles professionally at Jason, eyes barely even flickering over his hair and visible scars. “Welcome to Rico’s, do you have a reservation?” 

Jason grins back, giddy. “Yeah, I’ve got a table for two listed under JT?”

The idea of getting to talk to Emily in person, to argue over whether or not everything modern is trash or if there are a couple gems that have been produced has him damn near vibrating with anticipation. He can’t wait.

The kid checks his list, and nods. “Of course. Please follow your waiter, she’ll take you to your table.”

Jason turns his grin to the tired teenager with brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail at the crown of her head. The girl blinks back at him blankly before her Customer Service smile twitches into something a tiny bit more real. “Right this way, sir.”

Following his escort, Jason winds through the tables as they approach a smaller booth towards the back of the restaurant, scoping out the different dishes he can see on the way. He’s known this place existed, it’d been around since before he was born and it felt like everyone knew about Rico’s, but you had to have money to eat there. He’s got no idea what’s good and what’s overpriced garbage.

Draping his water-proof riding jacket over the back of his chair, Jason settles in and pulls out his phone to shoot off a quick update to his date. Ha, how strange! Jason Todd, going on a date. He can’t believe it.

JT: I’m at the restaurant – I’ll hold our table until you get here.

EAH: K

EAH: I’m almost there

Setting his phone down, Jason tries to calm down. He pulls out the two books he’d brought as discussion points-slash-gifts and lays them on the table – the Hunger Games and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Emily adores Harry Potter and despises the Hunger Games, while Jason’s pretty neutral on both franchises, but is more than willing to play devil’s advocate if it means they’ll have fun on their date.  

After lining the books up perfectly in front of Emily’s as of now empty chair, he leans back and opens up the menu, looking through his options and comparing them to the intel he’d gathered on the walk over.

A couple of minutes go by, and a different waitress stops by, just as young and tired, but with a face full of freckles framed by short black hair. “Are you ready to order?”

Smiling, since he can’t seem to do anything else, he shakes his head. “Not yet, sorry. My date’s on her way, it should only be a couple of minutes before she gets here.”

The waitress laughs quietly at him, tone bright. “Alright, then. I’ll bring you out some water while you wait. I hope she gets here soon!”  

Jason beams. His face hurts at the unfamiliar sensation, but it’s worth it. “Me too!”

The girl brings out a pitcher of ice water and fills up Jason’s glass, scooting off with a backwards glance as she makes her way over to another waiter and whispers in his ear, the two of them stealing looks back at Jason afterwards.

He isn’t too worried: Jason knows what malicious rumors look like, and he knows what silly, happy rumors look like. Right now, the wait staff at Rico’s are acting like his goons do, whenever they think they’ve caught Jason (as Jason, not the Red Hood) coming out of places he really shouldn’t have been. The most his goons do is gossip about his non-existent lovelife with himself, and he’s pretty sure that these kids are discussing something pretty similar.

Fuller Hearts dings with a message notification, and Jason glances down.

EAH: I’m here, I don’t see you

Frowning, Jason looks up, but can’t see Emily over by the front desk. He replies.

JT: I’m in the back right corner, over by the big ass fern.

EAH: Fuck off

JT: What?

Jason blinks. No, really. What? Where did that come from?

EAH: Should have known you’d be a huge slut

EAH: I’m not going to waste my precious time with someone who can’t even wait until after the first date to try and fuck other girls

EAH: God you’re all the same

EAH: You just wanted me to be your sugar mommy

He’s lost. Where is this coming from, really? He hasn’t even seen her yet, and she’s pulled a goddamn uno reverse card on his ass, for some reason. Did he do something wrong?

JT: I don’t know what you’re talking about – I haven’t flirted with anyone since we matched. What did I do that made you think I was seeing other people?

EAH: Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about

EAH: I saw you try to put the moves on that asian girl while you were waiting for me

EAH: Fucking ho

EAH: Can’t believe I trusted you to keep it in your pants

EAH: You’re not even that good looking

EAH: I just wanted to give the poor guy with a fucked up face a chance

Well, that’s just uncalled for. What the fuck went wrong? Where the hell was she pulling all of this crap from, and how the hell did Jason not pick up on it before now?

JT: The only people I talked to were the wait staff. I wasn’t flirting, I told her that I was waiting for you when she asked if I was ready to order.

JT: Why are you acting like this?

EAH: Whatever, slut

EAH: You blew your only chance at pulling anyone decent

EAH: Go back to fucking the poor whores back in Crime Alley

EAH: I bet your dick is small, anyways

EAH: Never message me again

EAH: No one will ever put up with your stupid ass and you’ll come crying back to me

EAH: And I’ll tell you to get lost

EAH: You’re not worth my time

The messages come in, rapid fire. Emily fluctuates between putting Jason down, and repeating how much he’s fucked things up by losing her, getting worse as she goes. After a certain point, Jason puts down his phone and puts his head into his hands, ignoring the angry vibrations coming from the app.

What the hell.  

Did this really just happen? Is Jason’s first match on the dating app, his first date with anyone ever, really turn out to be a fucking psycho? Like, those are some straight up rogue-levels of insane leaps of logic.

Staring at his blurry palms, Jason almost doesn’t look up when there’s movement by his table.

He’s still trained, and too many people would be disappointed in him if he let himself get assassinated that easily, so he forces himself to look up, expression blank.

The waitress is back, concern written over her face. “Hey, are you alright? Did something happen?”

Helplessly, Jason shrugs. “I have no idea?” He gestures to the still vibrating phone, opened up to the deluge of hate spilling from Emily’s messages. “I thought things were going well, but then she did this?”

The waitress leans forward, wincing at the vitrol filling the screen before scrolling up to see the start of their interaction. As she reads, a frown grows on her face. Once she gets to the end, she looks Jason directly in the eye and shakes her head. “You dodged a bullet. She sounds crazy as hell, dude.”  

Lost, Jason looks back at the books he’d brought. “But, she never acted like this before. Did I do something to set this off?”  

Putting one hand on her hip, the waitress wiggles the phone at him. “No, you didn’t do anything. If it wasn’t today, she would have blown up on you later, over literally nothing, just like she’s doing right now.”

Glancing back, he searches the girl’s face for any trace of insincerity. “You really think so? I didn’t screw something up to make her mad?”

Leaning forward, the girl scrolls through the messages before landing on one and tapping it with her nail. “My dude, she called you a poor gold digger because she saw you literally talking to me, your waiter. She’s a bigot and an asshole, and you shouldn’t waste your time on her.”

Jason stares at the message. It’s nothing new, nothing he hasn’t heard before. Hell, the old bastards at Bruce’s galas had been more creative about their insults than Emily’s being, which is kind of insulting in itself since she’s the one who boasted about being so well read.

He wants to be angry about it, but instead he just feels stunned. It’s a shock. This is his first date ever, and he didn’t even make it to seeing the other person before everything went sideways.

He can feel his eyes start to prickle, which is dumb. He’s been through way worse than this before.

The waitress panics. “Whoa, are you okay?!”

“This was supposed to be my first date,” Jason says, quietly. Normally, he hates letting anyone know he has feelings, but right now he just wants to disappear. “Am I really so unlovable I can’t even find someone through fucking dating apps?”  

“No no no, that bitch is just a psycho!” The waitress says, waiving her hands like she wants to pat Jason on the shoulder. She pauses. “Shit, forget that I called your crazy not-date a bitch.”

Jason huffs out a watery laugh at that. “My delicate ears,” he deadpans, but turns back to putting his head in his hands.

The waitress hesitates for a second, but eventually leaves him alone after giving him a tentative pat on the shoulder.

Muffled sounds of customers dining float around him, going in one ear and out the other. He’s checked out, retreating from everything for a minute until it all feels less overwhelming. Obviously, he can defend himself if necessary, but short of fucking Bane or someone breaking down the wall and starting a rampage, he’s not gonna move. Hell, Ivy could take over the large fern half blocking Jason’s sight line to the front door and use it to start eating guests, and he’d probably let her.

Jason exists, letting the world turn around him, unconnected from it all until a small hand nudges his shoulder. Only sheer apathy saves the idiot brave enough to poke him from getting thrown across the room. Blinking slowly back to himself, Jason turns.  

It’s the waitress, flanked by the waiter she’d been talking to earlier and first girl who showed him to his seat. The kid nudges something on the table closer to him before sliding into the seat across from him, leaving the other two to hover at the end of the table.

“Forget about her, dude. She’s terrible.”

Jason blinks at her again, confused. What’s she doing? Are all girls this confusing? He distinctly remembers Barbra’s motivations being much clearer than this, once he’d found out what exactly would set her off. Cass and Steph, too, aren’t anywhere near this confusing. Nor are Aunt Kate or Auntie D.

Ponytail waitress gives him a sad smile. “It’s not ice cream, but you can still eat your feelings. We’re all too young to get you alcohol, so this is the best you’re gonna get.”

The unknown waiter nods, agreeing. “Yeah, ice cream totally helps. Don’t listen to all of that ‘men don’t have feelings’ crap. Getting dumped like this sucks, no matter what. Especially over something so dumb. Go crazy dude.”

The table finally comes into focus, the picture registering with Jason’s brain. There’s a cup in front of him that’s been absolutely stuffed with yellow gelato.

“It’s mango,” Freckles says, looking nervous. Probably because Jason’s being fucking weird.

Shaking himself lightly, Jason mumbles, “Emily hates mango,” still staring.  

Something in him snaps, and he scowls. “Fuck Emily.” He reaches out, grabbing the spoon Freckles holds out to him, and digs in with vicious abandon.

His fucking cheer team beams, clearly relieved that Jason’s stopped malfunctioning as a human being.

The waiter bows out, going back to his job now that he doesn’t have to convince Jason he’s not too manly to cry into a bowl of ice cream or something, Ponytail following suit with a thumbs up sent his way.  

Freckles stays as he angrily eats through the, frankly delicious, gelato. She scrolls through Jason’s previous conversations with Emily, pointing out all of the red flags he’d apparently fucking missed. Jason commits them all to memory, swearing to do his best to give the time of day to anyone who even comes close to tripping the same kind of alarms Emily did.

 After they finish tearing every interaction apart, they sit together in silence for a minute, staring at the phone between them.  

“Hey, do you want these books?” Jason asks. He’s already read both, and honestly? He doesn’t want to hang on to either of the copies for longer than he absolutely has to. If he was less conscientious of just how hard it is for some people to get books, he’d burn the fucking things.

Freckles looks up at him in surprise. “…I guess my cousin has been talking about getting his daughter started on Harry Potter young, if you’re offering? I don’t think he’d appreciate me trying to make him give her the Hunger Games, though.”  

Jason snorts, snagging the unwanted book. “Thanks. I’ll drop this one off at the shelter on my way home, then.”  

Freckles squints at him before shaking her head. She’s been doing that a lot, tonight. “You’re a good dude, dude. She’s crazy for not seeing it.”

Jason flushes, waving her off. “Get outta here with that. Tonight was unfortunate.” Pausing, Jason glances off to the side, tracking the other two as they cover Freckles’ tables. “Thank you. You didn’t need to sit here and help me work through my fucking feelings crisis, but you did it anyways.”

It’s Freckles’ turn to blush, this time. She sticks her tongue out at him. “This crap happens. You looked so happy, earlier, and she just crushed that. We’d have to be heartless to ignore that.”

Crossing his arms in playful reprimand, Jason tilts his head. “Nah, you’d be practical. It really means a lot to me that you didn’t just do the easy thing – tonight would have been fucking garbage, otherwise.”  

Freckles grins at him. “Anything for tips!”

  She freezes, then slaps a hand to her forehead. “Shit, you’re not one of us. That was a joke.”

Jason laughs, for real, at her dismay. “I’d figured. How much do I owe you for the gelato?”

Freckles glares at him. “That’s on the house, man. If Entitled Asshole had registered her card with us, I’d say it’s on her, but we weren’t that lucky.”

“Entitled Asshole?” Jason asks, arcing a brow at the nickname.

Shrugging, Freckles jabs a finger in the phone’s direction, showing a grayed-out screen, the words “CONTACT BLOCKED” displayed predominantly on the dull pixels. “Her, E whatever. Her initials are E. A. H.”

  Jason barks out another laugh. “Fair enough. Hey, don’t let me keep you from work any longer than I already have.” Pushing back from his seat, he stands up and swings his jacket over his shoulders. He fishes out his wallet, despite Freckles’ protests, slapping down five dollars for the gelato, and a crisp fifty for each of his three stooges. That done, he takes advantage of the reboot Freckles looks like she’s going through and ruffles her hair, taking joy from the incredulous shock on her face as he slips past her. “Seriously, though. Thank you.”

…

Jason may not go back to Rico’s, but if he ends up ordering take out from the restaurant from time to time, leaving behind hefty tips with every order, then that’s between him and whoever the hell he’s feeding during the evening’s meetings.

#OnlyInGotham does Big Rico’s, the bane of my fucking existance, become THE Red Hood’s favorite restaurant

REPLY: I hated that place so much I joined a fucking gang to get out

REPLY: (Allegedly)

REPLY: and what do I find out one day while we’re rolling into a meeting with the bossman? That he’s brought food!

REPLY: and is it that good shit his boyfriend makes? The spicy rice, maybe? Or carne asada? 

REPLY: no, its fucking RICOS. I HATE IT HERE.

REPLY: REPLY: Wait, Hood gets his goons food?

REPLY: REPLY: Where exactly did you say your meeting was, again?

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: fuck off, pig

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: fuck off, pig

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: fuck off, pig 

Chapter Text

2. Freddie B. (AKA Fuck Boy)

It takes him some time to trust himself to get back into Full Hearts, but eventually he gets over the enormous flop that was Emily. Jason knows all about things not going right on the first take. Hell, he’s living proof that you won’t necessarily get it right even on your second go-around, but he’s not a goddamn quitter.

He hasn’t even gotten to experience any new shit, the gelato at Rico’s non-withstanding.

He refuses to give up until he either finally meets someone cool, or until he’s had his fill of experiencing the new changes the world’s gone through while he was otherwise occupied. 

December is in full swing at this point: they’d had snow two days ago, and it’s been cold enough that some of that shit managed to stick around and turn into disgusting gray sludge. Already not a great start.

Jason’s never really been a big fan of winter. Anyone who thought that the snow that occasionally blankets their little corner of hell is “fluffy” or “joyous” is full of crap and doesn’t know how fucking hard it is to keep warm when everything’s fucking soaked by frozen white bullshit.

Where’s your giving spirit, young man? They never brought you up right over there, did they? What’s ol’ Brucie teaching his charity cases, these days?  

Yeah, nah. Jason’s had more than enough “holiday cheer” for both of his lifetimes, thanks. Apparently, Fuller Hearts never got that memo, though, since everything’s decked out in electronic holly and fucking mistletoe.

Frankly, he would be more excited to see a missile toad than that fucking hell plant. He’s been burned far too many times by Dick’s liberal use of it, back when he’d been with the Titans. It had been the only time Jason had asked for something for Christmas, and that something had been brain bleach. Like always, Bruce had disappointed him. (They did spend the rest of the afternoon commiserating, though, sharing latkes as they bemoaned all the times B’s oldest had brought over various paramours and gotten too caught up in the “romance” to forget to take it somewhere private.)

Usually, it would be fine. He’d get the hell out of dodge, away from the annoying memories plaguing his brain, good and bad. A mission with the Outlaws, tracking down an international smuggling ring, running down some leads for Talia when he isn’t pissed at her… he knows how to keep himself busy.

Right now, though, it seems as though his pool of distractions has tragically been leeched dry while he was busy being pissed about terrible decorating decisions. There’s nothing for him to do.

That’s one of the main reasons he goes back to that damn app. It’s been over a year since he re-entered society, so to speak, and he’s barely made a dent in catching up with all the crap he’s missed. The app is supposed to help with that: the number of shitty dates he has to power through to get there doesn’t matter, if he can use it to knock out a of couple birds with one stone. If he just gets lucky, he’ll find 1) a friend 2) someone to hang out with that’s not connected to his night job 3) a fucking tour-guide of sorts for what the hell happened while he’d been indisposed.

It takes longer for a suitable match to pop up, now that he knows to run any potential candidate’s comments through Freckles’ “Creep Filter”, but eventually he does manage to find one.

Freddie B. is also nineteen, conventionally attractive, and likes to talk about shooting. It’d been a bit of a misstep on Jason’s end when he’d assumed that meant shooting guns, but he knows enough about photography from hanging around Timbit that he can hold his own in their conversations. Freddie’s a little conceited, something he’d managed to pick up even without Freckles’ handy metric, but only some of his messages had tipped off the warnings he’s on the lookout for. Not too many, however, which is the only reason Jason’s still talking to him.

The guy’s kind of a huge flirt, and has taken over the more active role in their conversations. While he’s not always comfortable with the over-the-top messages Freddie occasionally sends him, Jason supposes that it’s nice to not have to always try and think of a way to keep things rolling. It would be nicer to talk about a book or two now and then, though. Still, they’ve been meshing well enough over chat that he’s willing to give the whole in-person meet up a shot.

Jason’s not sure it’ll go well, but he’s already agreed to see the guy and he can’t back out now. 

Unfortunately, the place Freddie picked out for their first date is a bar, and not even a good one. Well, most of the bars in Gotham are shit, especially considering the ones they’d have to go to to get served alcohol, but still. Every time Jason’s been in a bar, it’s been for business – even back when he used to wear the green panties. He’s not too keen on drinking, not when Willis had been such a piss poor drunk, not when he’s secretly terrified of what he could do to the people around him when his inhibitions drop, not when all of the alcohol he’s had up until now has tasted like shit. Pair that with the fact that he knows the bar Freddie’s chosen is a combo bar and nightclub, and he can already feel a headache pounding behind his temples.

A chime goes off, pulling his attention away from catastrophizing about the next couple of hours of his life: an alarm on his phone, telling him he’s got thirty minutes to get his ass moving.

Sighing, Jason turns the alarm off, leaning back into his couch and draping an arm over his eyes. God, this shit had better be worth it. Everyone seems to be so enamored with dating, there’s gotta be something about it that makes up for how fucking inconvenient it is. 

Shaking himself, Jason lets his arm flop down the back of his couch, staring out at the rest of his apartment as he debates whether or not it’s worth the flack he’ll get from his siblings if he bails. They don’t know about his profile, or about his date, but he just knows that this would somehow get back to them if he chickens out. Probably because Barbie would put it into one of those terrifying “For Posterity” folders she has, ready to be pulled out when she needs to hold something over his head. 

Dreading the next couple of hours, Jason finds his attention wandering, eyes roaming over his beat-up safehouse turned apartment.

A thin red area carpet, lovingly worn and only sporting a minimum number of holes and burn patches, covers up his chipped tile flooring. The coffee table is well loved, rings from various mugs of tea left unattended too long soaked into its grain, books stacked high with the occasional culinary magazine separating different series piled in the same leaning tower. 

Further away, he can feel his overflowing bookcase calling his name: the lumpy armchair he’d pushed close to the window while still being out of its line of sight looks unfairly inviting, covered in the blankets he seems to be collecting. A purple fuzzy monstrosity Steph had picked up from Costo for ten bucks acts as a base layer, buried under the child-sized green lantern blanket he brings out whenever B’s around, the paper thin Red Hood knock-off blanket Roy’d tossed in his face, laughing the whole time, the hand-made explosion of color Dick and Cass had thrown together, the threadbare Wonder Woman blanket B’d gotten him when he first moved into the manor that always mysteriously shows up in whichever location he turns into his main base of operations… 

A strong gust of wind rattles the glass of his neighboring apartment’s windows, and Jason shivers, curling his sock-clad feet on the frigid floor beneath him.

It’s quiet, in his apartment. He doesn’t like putting on music or the TV when he can avoid it – excess noise can cover up any foreign sounds assassins or idiot mobsters make when they try to sneak up and kill you. Jason’s security is good, but there’s no way he won’t supplement that with a healthy dose of paranoia.

Sometimes, he wishes he was less paranoid. At times like this, everything feels simultaneously too large and too small, the walls closing in while he feels as though he’s trapped inside an echoing mausoleum so cavernous, he can’t see the edges. 

Another alarm goes off, and Jason blinks. Looking down, he curses: he’d just spent fifteen minutes staring at a fucking chair. Shit date or not, he needs to get out of his apartment before he goes crazy. The busted ankle he got two days ago puts a damper on any kind of patrols he’d potentially go on, and RQ, the fucking shark he’s got running his Red Hood ops while he’s busy with other crap, has threatened to set the street kids on him if she sees him so much as step foot in one of their warehouses before he’s healed. It was a mistake to tell Leslie to put her down as his emergency contact, in case Alfred can’t make it. 

Heaving out a disgusted sigh, Jason drags himself to his feet. Fine. Fine, he’ll go, meet with Freddie, see if they “vibe” well enough that Jason’s willing to stay longer than the cursory 30 minutes he’d planned on just to be polite. There’s no way in hell he’s dressing up, though. Not in club clothes, not in “date appropriate” clothes. If Freddie wanted to see him in anything other than a black sweatshirt, grease-stained cargo pants, and sturdy combat boots (not steel-toed, since Leslie had given him a look when he’d moved to put his work boots on to leave her office, and say what you want to about him, but Jason knows when he’s being warned against doing something stupid. He usually doesn’t listen, but he still recognizes the message when he gets it), then it sucks to be him.

Shuffling off to his bedroom, Jason slowly pulls on the baggiest sweatshirt he owns, straps on a couple of deceptively sturdy knives, that sick taser he “stole” from Harper last week, a gun with real bullets since only Red Hood would have access to the rubber ones, and a good ol’ fashioned pair of brass knuckles. More of a bruiser-type set than he usually goes for nowadays, but he’s going out as JT, Crime Alley native, not Jason Todd, not Red Hood. 

It'll take him a good ten minutes to get to the bar, and he’s already wasted enough time. 

The stiff leather of his riding jacket helps a bit, familiar and protective. The ride over helps even more, letting him clear his head enough to give the date a chance. It’s not Freddie’s fault Jason’s having a shit week, and there’s no reason for him to try and sabotage their date before it even starts.

He has a flash of doubt as he passes the bar in question on his search to find a decent parking spot that won’t get his shit jacked. The bar is already packed, the line to get in stretching down the side of the building. Tonight’s bouncer is easily bought, Jason knows, but it’s annoying to have to go through any form of security just to go on a date. 

No, bad. Jason’s gonna give this thing a decent shot.

Parking a short walk away, he pulls out his phone to shoot off a quick message letting Freddie know he’s almost there, bar the line he’ll have to wait in. Freddie shoots him back a thumbs up, a short promise that Jason won’t have to wait too long since he knows the manager, a tongue emoji, an eggplant emoji, and a winking emoji. Squinting at the chat, Jason tries to figure out what the hell that means, but gives up pretty quickly.

Amora, owner and manager of Club Bar, (a creative name it is not, but it lets you know what you’re signing up for at least), is a straight up bitch, but she’s decently clean for someone who knows about the underage drinking and the drug deals that tend to go down on her property. She’d agreed easily enough to keep an eye out for the normal dealers trying to sell shit to anyone under 18, and Jason’s mostly left her to do her own thing. It’s a bit weird that Freddie supposedly knows her, since she keeps to herself and focuses on keeping her books straight, but whatever. He’ll deal with it later, if he has to.

Making his way over to the back of the line, Jason eyes the people in front of him. Despite the below freezing temperatures, there’s a lot of skin on display. More than half of the waiting partiers have been obviously pre-gaming, hanging off of each other and laughing as they sway. Jason would feel overdressed, if it weren’t for a smaller but not inconsequential number of other people he sees wearing a sensible number of layers.

He can also see three drug deals going down from his shit vantage point, but only one of them is one of his guys – he’ll talk to Howard, his training guy, about re-assessing just how good their dealers’ situational awareness and decision-making skills are once he doesn’t have to worry about RQ chewing his ass out for working while injured.

Casting his gaze out past the brick and neon building, Jason takes a second to take in Gotham in all her glory. Spending most of your time running around the crumbling streets, swinging from gargoyle to gargoyle, doesn’t mean you get the time to pause and just take in what it all looks like from the ground up. The skyline is dimly lit by light pollution, throwing up suggestive shadows hinting at the skyscrapers in the distance, not quite solid enough to be sure just how real they are. His breath puffs out in front of him in white clouds, dissipating into nothingness just as quickly. It’s slightly warmer, this close to so many other people, but he can feel the chill nipping at his nose, at his ears.

Before he can get too lost in his head, he spots a figure emerging from the club’s front door. Platinum blond hair shines under neon lights, attached to a grinning figure on the shorter side who’s dressed in a sequined rainbow crop top and leather pants so tight they could be painted on. Logically, Jason can recognize Freddie from the numerous photos attached to his FH profile, but he’s distracted.

Jason would bet both Jane and Elizabeth, his two favorite guns, that Dick owns the exact same crop top.

He’s seen Dick do insidious things in that crop top. It had been one of the major reoccurring villains in his commiseration session with B, once upon a time.

Struck by terrible war flashbacks, Jason dazedly tracks Freddie’s bobbing form as he skips down the line, looking. Looking for him, he realizes.

Pushing back his hood, Jason takes a half-step away from the line, raising a hand to draw attention to himself, and calls out a greeting.

“Hey, Freddie!”

Freddie perks up, locking onto Jason immediately and running over. A short look of disappointment flashes in his brown eyes as he takes in Jason’s not exactly club-appropriate attire, but he covers it up with a smile. 

“JT! Come on, come on, lets get inside!” There’s a wicked gleam in his date’s eye, smirking at Jason as he reaches out to tug him away from the line, and Jason can feel himself mirroring it subconsciously. 

Seeing Jason play along, Freddie laughs as they jog back to the roped-off entrance. He blows a kiss to the bouncer, who lets them in with little more than a sideways glance at Jason, and then they’re inside.

The music is so loud he can feel it in his chest. Responding automatically to the decibels present, the specialized earpiece he wears pretty much everywhere kicks in, muffling any potentially harmful noises while still allowing him to hear normal conversation and other sounds. There are people everywhere, pressing in from every direction. Freddie plasters himself against Jason’s side, grabbing onto his arm and tugging him deeper into the room and over to where the bar is.

The bar itself is only slightly less crowded, by virtue of needing a semi-orderly line to ensure a fight doesn’t break out over something as juvenile as cutting in front of the wrong person. Freddie squeezes at Jason’s arm as they take their place at the back of the line, and he has to fight the urge to shrug the shorter man off.

Grinning up at him, Freddie drags his hand over Jason’s bicep. “Come on, man, you know it’s too hot in here for that sweatshirt. Show a little skin!”

All of his weapons are stashed in such a way that they won’t be visible if he takes off his jacket, and it is pretty warm in the club, so Jason rolls his eyes and acquiesces.

“You’re gonna have to release my arm before I can do that, pretty boy.”

Freddie blushes deep enough Jason can see it through the glitter dusted over his cheeks, but lets go easily enough. Shucking his sweatshirt over his head, Jason curses under his breath as his t-shirt decides that it wants to come along for a ride, reaching an arm down to try and not flash his chest (and the heat he’s packing) to the entire club. Blindly, he bumps into Freddie’s hands that are also reaching for his shirt – he twists backwards slightly, and fixes his situation.

Finally freed from his cotton prison, Jason shakes his head to try and get a handle on how his wardrobe malfunction had fucked up his hair, tying the offending article of clothing around his waist.

Freddie pouts at him, but slides right back into his personal bubble like he was invited. “Aw, I wanted to see what I’m working with, here.” He reaches out, poking at Jason’s stomach. “What is that, a six pack? An eight pack?”

Jason laughs uncomfortably, grabbing the wandering hand and pulling it away from him. “Only people trying to sell you shit have eight packs, Freddie.”

His date flutters his eyes at Jason. “Are you gonna try and sell me anything?”

Ah, is that the headache he had earlier, back again with a vengence? What a coincidence. “No, I’m not.”

Freddie shrugs, changing topics quickly enough that Jason’s starting to think that he should have asked if Jason was trying to sell him anything else . “Can you lift me?” 

Taken off-guard, Jason looks around, trying to figure out how this came up. “What, right now? Sure, but why?”

Freddie’s all smiles again, as easy as that. He jumps into Jason, who catches him easily. Freddie wraps his legs around Jason’s waist before he can shift the man onto hip, the way he normally carries his siblings and street kids. The result is… different from how it usually feels to play pack-horse for the little shits that cling to him whenever they’re too lazy or injured to walk on their own. 

“Hey, there?” Jason says awkwardly, Freddie’s face suddenly much closer than it was a second ago.

Freddie’s pupils are huge, blown disproportionately wide. He’s definitely gotten into some of the good shit. “Oh yeah, this is definitely gonna work,” he breathes, staring intensely, not blinking. 

Fumbling for something to say, Jason casts a frantic eye around them for a new topic of conversation. Freddie had been flirty over the messaging app, but he’d always backed off whenever Jason hadn’t reciprocated. That is not what’s happening right now, and Jason’s very uncomfortable.

Distraction, distraction…

Five more drug deals happening in various sections of the club, two couples straight-up fucking on the dance floor as the people around them cheer drunkenly, Dick dressed up in his terrible recon disguise (that fucking crop top, Jason’s gonna have goddamn nightmares) staring at him with fascination and concern coloring his posture, a bouncer breaking up a catfight over by the bathroom…

Wait, Dick’s what? On Jason’s second take, Dick holds his hand up to his ear, miming a phone, frown straight up worried. Jason goes to shake his head, but –

Oh shit, that’s a mouth getting very uncomfortably close to his own face. Acting quickly, Jason wraps an arm around Freddie’s middle, using the lack of tension in the man’s body to detach his legs and heft him up even further, grabbing him single-handedly and raising him until he’s basically sitting on Jason’s shoulder.

Freddie squeaks, and Jason panics. “Looked like you were trying to get a little higher, there, so I figured I’d give you a hand.” Oh god, was that a fucking Robin pun? Kill him now, he’s turning into Dick: that was terrible .

Freddie all but shrieks in delight, drawing a good number of eyes their way.

Self-conscious in a way he’s usually not, Jason bounces him once in forewarning before pulling him down and setting his feet back on the ground. Freddie reaches out to grab Jason by the shoulders, probably just to steady himself.

The line in front of them had cleared out while they’d been distracted, so Jason moves them forward. He tilts his head to look down at Freddie, currently telling the bartender to put two tequila shots on his tab. “You sure you’re good to drink right now?” 

He gets a dismissive tongue stuck out in his direction, metallic piercing catching the light as it wavers out in the open for longer than seems necessary. “Uh, duh? I’m here for a good time, not a long time. What do you want after your shot?”

Jason hadn’t realized one of those shots was for him. Well, that’s going right onto the floor as soon as Freddie gets distracted enough to stop ogling him. “I don’t know –”

Freddie smacks Jason’s chest. “Come on, man! You’re big enough that you can handle a couple of drinks!”

Shifting, Jason holds up his hands. “Yeah, but I also have to drive back home.”

Freddie’s grin turns absolutely filthy as he plasters himself against Jason’s front. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’ve got plenty of space back at mine.”

Okay, no. This turned from “chat politely and see if this won’t be as bad as you think it’ll be” to “make sure this guy isn’t going to OD in front of me” to “I am ditching him as soon as possible” real fast.

This isn’t the right time to fight it, though so he lets his smile go flat and signals to the bartender, holding his fingers up in a V. “I’ll have whatever you’ve got that’s mixed with enough sugar I can’t taste the alcohol.”

The bartender’s eyebrows shoot upwards, but something seems to click when she takes in his uncomfortable posture and the intoxicated man attached to him. She nods, turning around and grabbing various syrups and a can of club soda, mixing everything together under Jason’s watchful eye. Not a single drop of alcohol makes its way into Jason’s drink, and he hands her two twenties for that and her silence.

Freddie giggles, wiggling uncomfortably as Jason grabs his expensive fruit punch. “I took you for more of, like, a whisky kinda guy! Since you’re all… rugged.”

“Nah, I hate the taste of most of this shit,” Jason says, praying that Freddie doesn’t push the issue. “Makes me wanna throw up – had a bad experience with this crap a couple years ago, y’know.”

Freddie nods, but pushes a shot glass in Jason’s free hand anyways. That done, he next tries to drag them over to the undulating mass that makes up the dance floor, which is not a position he wants to be in right now. Shrugging internally, Jason chugs his punch, draining it and leaving the glass on a table as they pass by, juggling the shot into the hand farther away from Freddie afterwards. If he pours it out onto the floor while passing it behind the touchy man’s back, then whoops. What a shame.

Jason mimes slamming the shot, really selling the act by making a face of disgust afterwards. Pretending he needs a second, Jason puts a hand on Freddie’s shoulder, widening the gap between them to the point that he can’t feel how… excited the shorter man is right now.

He stumbles to a stop, moving to clutch his stomach, one hand coming up to his mouth like he’s about to be sick. Freddie lets go pretty quickly, not wanting to be in the splash zone.

“Shit.” Shooting an apologetic look at his date, Jason grins weakly. “Sorry, don’t think that one agreed with me either. I gotta make a pit stop, real quick.”

With that, Jason turns and starts staggering through the crowd, intent on getting lost in the crush and ditching this whole mess. He doesn’t want to be pawed at, he doesn’t want to drink, and he definitely doesn’t want to be here whenever the bullshit Dick’s here for pops off. People part for him, once they see how green he looks, but…

He can hear Freddie following after him. Smothering a grimace, he readjusts his plan. Actually heading towards the bathroom now, he thinks. Jason can throw up on command if needed, a handy trick he learned back on the streets, but he’d rather not go that far if he doesn’t have to. 

Maybe Freddie’s squeamish enough that he’ll let Jason go in alone, and he can slip out from there. It’s not like the guy would really notice how long it didn’t take him, since he’s as high as a kite right now.

Freddie wedges in under his shoulder, propping Jason up and turning his trudge to the bathroom into a three-legged race. He doesn’t let go when they get to the sticky door, and follows him into one of two disgusting stalls.

Fuck.

Jason doesn’t really want to sit on the toilet, but he also doesn’t want to stay standing if it means he’s got a handful of horny date rubbing up against him. The bathroom’s otherwise empty, the window’s high on the wall but large enough that Jason won’t have to shimmy out of it like a worm once he makes his escape. He can see straight through to the next stall via a conveniently placed hole, and there’s a plethora of substances liberally coating almost every surface in sight. 

Sighing, Jason turns slightly. “Hey, do you mind giving me some space so I can…”

Freddie frowns at him, sticking his lip out dramatically. “But I wanna help you!”

“I’d really like it if I could have some privacy –”

“Don’t worry, we all throw up sometimes,” Freddie blinks up at him, looking coked out of his mind. “Here, I can help!”

Shifting, Freddie positions himself behind Jason, moving his hands so that they’re clasped over his diaphragm.

Distantly, he hears a small explosion go off relatively close by, screams following the sound.

Jason’s not in the mood to play along any more.

Bringing his hands down sharply, he breaks Freddie’s grip, stepping out of the stall and spinning to face him. “I said no, asshole.” 

“But it’ll make you feel better,” Freddie breathes, trying to sway closer, not seeming to register that Jason looks perfectly fine now.

Grabbing Harper’s taser, he reaches out a hand to keep distance between them, pointing the two prongs at Freddie’s chest. “Absolutely not. You touch me again, and you’re going on the floor.”

Freddie honest to god moans at that, pushing himself into Jason’s hand. “Ooh, yes daddy. I’ve never played with electricity before, please be gentle with me~” 

Jason tases him.

Freddie hits the ground at the same time Harley fucking Quinn kicks down the bathroom door, wielding a bedazzled baseball bat only slightly splattered with blood in one hand and a couple explosive disks in the other.

“Hands in the air, this izza kidnap – oh, ya already got ‘im?”

Jason gives in, and hides his face in his hands. 

“Harley, what the fuck.” 

Harley beams, shoving the explosives into her pocket ( somehow – those shorts are tiny) and bat into her loose belt as she skips over to him, squeezing in a cartwheel right at the end to land on Freddie’s unconscious body. Jason’s pretty sure he hears a crack, but it’s probably just his imagination. It’s rather loud in the club, after all.

Cocking her hip, Harley cups her chin in one hand, scanning him for injuries. “Well, you look like you handled yourself well enough, but…”

“I just want to go home, Auntie H,” Jason interrupts. This evening has been too fucking long. He’ll take rattling windows and lonely silence over this bullshit any day of the week. Fuck, this went horribly.

Making a sympathetic sound, Harley nods, not reaching out to pat him on the head like she usually would. It’s a small thing, but he finds himself unbelievably grateful for it. “I get that, hun, but I need ta know if this piece of shit needs any extra love taps before I go play with ‘Wing.”

“It’s… No. I don’t think he would have, done, y’know…”

Harley waits, staring at him. Her laser-focused attention is different, though. Doesn’t make him want to tear his skin off.

“He’s high as fuck, Harls. He always backed off, before. I think it was just a bad night.”

She slowly moves her hand raised hand to rest on her other hip, stern. “Honey. Ya know what consent is. He knows what consent is. If I was you, and you was one of your pretty gals, what would ya do in this situation?”

“Cut his dick off,” Jason replies immediately, the answer automatic. He flinches. “Nothing –”

“Ah, ah.” Harley frowns at him, crossing her arms. “None of that, now. We know what you’d do. Batsy and the crew would probably just beat the shit outta him, but what am I gonna do?”

Jason sighs. “I don’t know, Harley. What are you gonna do?”

“I thiiiiiink,” Harley says, swaying from side to side as she decides. Coming to a stop, she jumps and does a high flip off of Freddie’s body to land on solid ground. “I think imma get you to your brother, hon. This is my monthly crime night, but I can still play like a bat if I wanna.”

As if summoned by unnecessary acrobatics, Dick bursts through what used to be a door, frantically scanning the room until he sees Jason. He’s still dressed in that terrible outfit.

“Jay!”

Grimacing, Jason grabs the sweatshirt from his waist and throws it at his brother. “I don’t wanna see your gross ass crop top right now, Dickface.”

Dick’s face falls, but he puts the oversized hoodie on anyways. That done, he turns and realizes they have company. “Oh, hey Harley!”

Harley waves at him energetically, as if he didn’t drive her here, sticking around to play damage control/act as a restraining force if she gets too out of hand.

His gaze goes lower, and sharpens once he sees Freddie. His voice is freezing when he next speaks. “Did he – ”

Flipping into a handstand, Harley walks between the two boys. “Hey! I think it’s past time Big Bird gets Little Bird home!”

Dick glares at Harley, which Jason was not expecting. “Harley…”

Looking up at them, Harley’s expression softens into something less crazed. “Auntie Harls’ got this, Rob. Imma take care of this here piece of shit, you go take care of your brother.”

That’s touching and all, but Jason’s so fucking tired. “You two do whatever the hell you want. I’m fucking leaving.”

Ignoring the cheery goodbye from Harley, Jason hoists himself out of the bathroom window with little fanfare, leaving the shitshow behind him.

“Little Wing!” Dick calls out, landing behind Jason as he’s trying to go the fuck home.

Whirling around, Jason snarls. “What? What the fuck could you possibly want right now, that can’t fucking wait until later? Until I’ve gone fucking home ?”

Dick pauses, hanging back. His expression is still serious, but not aggressive. Jason doesn’t normally see him like this, and it rankles to not know exactly what’s going through his mind. Dick holds his hands up, moving to stand beside Jason, who eyes him warily. Dick gestures them forward, and Jason starts walking again.

“Nothing. There’s nothing I need to know until you get back home. Do you want me to come with?”

“Fuck off,” Jason mutters, turning to glare at the ground passing under their feet. Dick waits him out, because he knows that’s not a no. “Whatever, Dickhead. Like I could stop you if you really wanted to fucking break into my place.”

Dick’s stare feels like a physical weight on the side of his face. “I’m going to need a clear yes or no on this one, Jason. If you say you don’t want me there, I won’t be there.”

Jason scrunches up his face at that. He hates actually telling people what he wants. Usually, it just ends with shit getting thrown back in his face or held over his head as leverage. But, with how serious Dick is being, he doesn’t think he can squirm his way out of this.

“Sure, fine. Come over. If you want. It’s not like you wouldn’t anyways.” 

“Jason.” Dick stops, Jason getting a couple steps away before he realizes Dick’s not just slowing down. “If you don’t want me to come, I won’t.”

Jason takes a second to actually look at Dick. There’s something in his eyes that screams out in hurt, internal or external, Jason doesn’t know. This is personal for him. 

This has happened to him.

Not necessarily the same situation, not necessarily the same ending, but something close enough that it’s triggered Dick, bad .

Fuck not letting people what he wants, he’s not about to let his brother get stuck in his head because Jason won’t stop being a cagey little shit. “Yes. I want you to come over, Big Bird. Shit’s too quiet, right now, and I don’t wanna have to worry about fuck-all if I put on some music. You can stand guard.”

Dick nods at him, deadly serious.

“Do you want me to ride with you, or do you want me to come in as a civilian after you get home?”

Jason doesn’t think he wants anyone to put their hands on him for a solid month . If someone tried to ride behind him on his bike, he’d probably punch them.

“Come in as a civilian, as a bird, whatever. Just so long as I don’t have to see that fucking shirt.”

Blinking and losing some of his deadly focus, Dick looks down at the hoodie he’s absolutely swimming in. He recovers quickly, quirking a wry smile. “Okay. I’ll see you in a bit, Little Wing.”

“Whatever.” Jason waves him off, continuing on to his bike alone. It’s cold, but even with goosebumps spreading up his arms, he’s glad for the stark reminder that he’s not in that shitty club, in that shitty bathroom.

The ride home is a blur, and he collapses onto the same couch he’d been on what feels like hours ago. Eventually, there’s a tap at his window, then silence. A second tap.

What the hell is Dick waiting for? Does Jason need to engrave his invitation in gold and hand it to him like he just won a tour of Jason’s goddamn chocolate factory?

Shoving himself roughly to his feet, Jason stomps over, glaring at Dick’s blank face hidden behind armored glass.

Apparently, the answer is yes. Dick only comes inside after Jason grumpily safes all of his traps and unlatches the window, gesturing impatiently at his older brother to stop letting all the heat out and get his ass inside.

Dick looks small, Jason thinks, still swamped in Jason’s hoodie, his fluffy hair poofed into a curly halo around his head.

The fucker scoots around him, fidgeting with the pillows on the sofa and the blankets on the armchair before flitting off to root through Jason’s kitchen for some fucking reason. He pops his head out after a second, staring soulfully into Jason’s confused face. “I brought B’s old sweats, if you wanna change.”

“Fuck off, why the hell would I want to wear Bruce’s shit?” Jason sneers, ignoring the fact that the hoodie he’d given Dick was B’s ancient Gotham University sweatshirt. Sue him, it’s not his fault Bruce owns the softest clothes. He holds out an expectant hand, and Dick grabs something from under Jason’s hoodie to throw at him. Jason retreats into his room to change.

Dick might be a garbage older brother sometimes, but even he’s bound to get things right every once in a while. Padding back out to the living room, dressed in baggy sweats and another stupidly soft sweatshirt, hood up and the strings pulled tight enough that his field of vision is narrowed into a dumb little circle, Jason feels like he’s slowly sinking back into his skin.

Dick’s set himself up on the arm of the couch, perched like he doesn’t understand what joint pain is, or cushions. The book stacks on the coffee table have been shifted to make room for a small army of sealed water bottles and soup crackers, which Jason thankfully won’t be needing. He holds up Jason’s favorite blanket, and Jason snatches it immediately. 

Cocooning himself in stylized Wonder Woman symbols, Jason makes grabby hands at the ugly crochet blanket, wrapping that around himself in a second layer before he collapses onto the couch next to Dick. 

“You should grab a blanket for yourself, Alfie would have my ass if you caught a cold at my house.” Jason grouses after a moment of silence.

Wordlessly, Dick complies, draping the green lantern blanket over his shoulders, leaving Steph’s purple monster spread out over the back of the couch. Slowly, Jason scoots closer, only stopping when his blanket armor bumps up against Dick’s. They aren’t touching, so he doesn’t feel like he has to claw at his skin off, but Dick is a solid, breathing warmth that’s steady at his side. He’s not freaking out, he’s not asking Jason to do jack shit. It’s nice.

The apartment feels a little less trapped, with someone else next to him. He’s a little chilly, though, so he wiggles an arm free, dragging Steph’s mass of fuzz over the two of them. There. Much better.

Sighing, Jason lets his eyes slide halfway shut, content to drift.

Staring out at the bookshelf, a thought eventually breaks through the fog in his head. Jason curses. “I forgot about the fucking music.”

Chuckling softly, Dick shifts slightly, pausing when Jason tenses. “What did you want to listen to?” 

Lifting his feet off of the ground and curling them into his chest, Jason grumbles. “Jazz. But, like, the soft shit. I’ve got a cassette somewhere around here I usually play.”

“A cassette? Jason, how old are you, exactly? Because sometimes you say shit that makes me think you’re in your fifties.”

“Shut up, dick,” Jason groans.

Ignoring him, Dick taps away at his phone before speaking again. “I’ve got a livestream of Rainy Day Jazz, which shouldn’t have any commercials or interruptions.”

“Whatever.”

The gentle sound of jazz fills the apartment seconds later.

Older brother at his side, surrounded by warm, scratchy pressure, music playing softly in the background, Jason falls asleep.

#OnlyInGotham does @Harly Quinn try to rob a bar only to get side tracked into using a dude she’s beat the shit out of to teach a bunch of drunk ass clubbies a lesson on consent

REPLY: istg that guy must’ve pissed her off real bad, she’s usually not that cartoonishly violent anymore???

REPLY: But was it a good lecture?

REPLY: REPLY: Surprisingly, yes. She kept asking him things and puppeterring his unconscious body to make him agree with her, then looked at us to say that he didn’t actually agree/say yes, he was coerced and unable to consent

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Sometimes I forget she’s actually been to college lol

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Excuse you, she’s a fucking doctor you ignoramus

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Bro, chill. She’s already got a girlfriend, she’s not gonna fuck you

Chapter Text

3. A (AKA Actually not a Terrible Human Being)

It takes even longer to find someone Jason’s willing to talk to, now that he’s dropping anyone who’s overly flirtatious over text. He’d added the tag “NOT Down to Clown” to his profile, which is objectively hilarious to him, particularly because Harley’s the asshole who keeps pestering him about not giving up on “ True Love or whatever your big ol’ heart has ya looking for, hun ”, but also has the added benefit of getting rid of most of the people just looking to bang.

Haha, bang.

It’s also possible that Jason might be concussed, which is the only reason he’s curled into one of the oversized lounge chairs his younger goons have commandeered for what they call this particular money laundering front’s “break room”. Mask free, Jason runs a hand through his wet hair, shivering as water slides down the back of his neck, then flinching as he jabs at the brand new gash he’d gotten courtesy of one of Black Mask’s idiots.

The screens in both his helmet and his mask just made his headache worse, so he’d called it a night and went back to the nearest base to shower and change. Instead of walking the easy mile and a half home, he’d been hit by a bad wave of nausea, which leaves him here, looking like a pill-bug in his baggy sweats and the black quilt someone’s grandma had made after her godson told her about how the lighter ones kept getting stained.

A TV flashes in the corner of the darkened room, muted as soon as Jason had found the right button on the remote, and he can smell stale smoke seeping out of the wallpaper. Below, the Chinese restaurant he’s “sponsoring” starts their morning prep, pans clattering as Mandarin weaves in and out of hearing range, depending on how loud they’re shouting.

Swiping mindlessly through potential matches, Jason snickers at a particularly vitriol-filled lambasting of the imitation crab’s entire bloodline.

God, how many of these people have managed to catch a fish in Gotham that’s not mutated as hell? Why does Fuller Hearts’ algorithm think that Jason would want to chat with someone whose profile picture is of them holding up an obviously fake fish?

He squints. This is the exact same bass the last person had. In fact, Jason’s pretty sure that, whoever Aria is, she’d left Mike’s (the last guy Jason’d seen with a fish pic) much pudgier hand holding up the line, joined awkwardly to the rest of her forearm. Their skintones aren’t even close to matching. 

Instead of rejecting, Jason clicks on the profile.

“A. Not really into people. Or gender. Would love a burger, tho. Check out my sister’s insta: @metoropoliscouldnever”

Looks decent enough.

Turning his admittedly fuzzy attention back to the picture, he swipes to the next in their gallery. He’s treated to Tim-levels of meme – A is decked out in a neon-red rebreather, crouched next to someone slumped up against the side of a building, giving the camera a thumbs up as they drape a shirt over their unconscious helper. The sleeper’s got the front patch of hair dyed a dizzying riot of colors, streaks of dye covering their forehead. The shirt reads: “HAIR SO BAD, IT SCARES AWAY SCARECROW”, then “1-800-I-AM-AN-IDIOT” written in smaller letters where people normally put contact information. Vengeance against someone who hasn’t “earned” the right to wear Hood’s white steak, he’s guessing.

The next picture is obviously photoshopped: A, dressed in ratty shorts and a t-shirt, balanced on the lid of a trashcan, superimposed over a curling wave tinted the color of Gotham’s harbor. Killer Croc’s added in as a watermark, one claw reaching up towards where A’s toes are hanging over the side of their “surfboard.” They’re wearing a shirt that says, “DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE WATER, HANG ELEVEN!” Bringing his phone closer to his face, Jason confirms that an extra toe has, in fact, been edited onto the endangered foot. Belatedly, he also notices that the shirt they’re wearing has the same picture on it, which hurts his head to think about.

Then, a picture of them bracketed by Signal and Bluebird, a giant grin on their face as they point enthusiastically at the people obviously arresting them. Duke’s holding up a shirt that says “LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL” superimposed over a bright yellow Thomas the Tank Engine. Harper’s actually wearing hers, proudly displaying “THE SHOCKER”, under a cartoon hand colored to look like her gloves making a crude gesture. At the bottom of the picture, Block lettering states “Couldn’t think of anything funny, but these guys were cool”.

After that, hilariously, is a picture of A flipping off a blurry smear of black flashing under one of Gotham’s rare working streetlights. The back of their shirt says, “BATMAN WISHES HE WAS HALF THE MOTH MOTHMAN IS”, with red eyes glaring out from behind the text.

Jason giggles.

He’ll check out their sister’s social media – it looks like another one of those “Metropolis fucking sucks” accounts, but with the way all of A’s stuff has been tongue-in-cheek, he’d bet a whole cookie that there’s more to it than that. Maybe he can send it to Damian, watch the chaos happen when the little brat eventually brings it up to ask Jon to clarify something on it. Or maybe he should show Timmy: he knows that the Replacement’s always down to fuck with Conner.

“What’cha lookin’ at, Number 2?”

Jason glares up at the interruption, but pauses before doing anything else. Bee, one of his newer bruisers, tends to be pretty sensitive about that kind of thing. Instead of chewing her out, he gives her a hard side-eye. “None’a’ya business.”

Bee frowns at him, putting her hands on her hips. “Well, that’s rude. Was just try’na be nice, Dos.” 

Jason rolls his eyes, then curses, dropping his phone to clutch at his head. Grumbling through the pain, he grits out, “ I wasn’t tryn’a be nice.”

Bee drops down next to his chair, hands stretched out in worry. “Whoa there, Dos, you don’t look too good. You okay?” 

“Fucking Mask. Fucking concussion,” Jason spits, tugging his dark cotton hood lower over his eyes in an attempt to block out the minuscule amount of light coming from the abandoned TV. 

Bee rears back, looking alarmed. “Hood gave you a concussion?!” 

What? “No, did it to myself,” Jason grits out. How the hell had she gotten Hood from Mask? 

Relaxing, Bee winks at him. “Oh, you gave yourself a concussion on Hood’s mask. Kinky.” She pauses. “Wait, no, that still sucks. Are you two still good? Do you need somethin’?”

Turning partially away, Jason dramatically huffs. “For you to shut the fuck up. What do you mean, are me and Hood still good?”

Bee fidgets. “Well… Y’know…” 

Jason flaps a hand at her, too tired to care about what she’s worried about now. Bee’s likely to assume all kinds of interpersonal drama surrounding the people she works with, when she gets bored enough. He’s pretty sure she’s treating life like it’s her own personal sitcom. “We’re fine. He had to skip out early tonight, but he’ll be back on schedule tomorrow. Don’t worry about it.” 

Bee looks put out at his answer. “That’s not…”

Jason stares at her, purposefully misunderstanding her leading statement. 

Clicking her tongue, Bee looks off to the side in disappointment. 

Hah, he’s still got it, even when concussed as hell.

Bee bends down further, grabbing Jason’s phone off of the ground. Carefully not looking at it, she hands it back to him.

Ah, these kids are too good. Jason would’ve straight up stolen that phone AND held the info he’d found out as blackmail. There’s a reason he only uses Bee as muscle in his nicer places. 

He takes the phone, flipping it around and showing it to her. “Tryin’ to find someone who doesn’t fucking suck.”

Bee’s eyes widen.

“But you said – holy shit, that’s my sibling!”

Blinking, Jason tilts the screen back so he can check what’s on it. It’s still proudly displaying A’s flagrant disrespect for B-man’s lack of mothy-ness.

“No shit?”

Bee grins, pulling out her own phone and pulling up Instagram. “Yeah! They model all of my graphic tees for me. They’ve been selling okay, and it’s been enough to help deal with the winter gas bill. I’d be lost without them!” 

Jason didn’t know that Bee sold shirts as a side gig. “You still got any Mothman shirts left? My brother’s boyfriend would shit himself if he saw one, and I still haven’t gotten him any gifts for Hanukkah yet.”

Quickly scrolling down, Bee shoves a sparkly QR code under his nose. “Of course I do! Here’s the link to where you can place an order.”

Jason scans it for later. Score, he can probably find at least one gift for everyone on here.

“Soooo,” Bee says, rocking back on her heels.

Raising an eyebrow at her, Jason stays silent. 

“How’d ya find A?”

“On an App,” Jason sniffs. Dick may say that Jason gets childish when he’s concussed, but no one asked the king of phallic imagery for his medical opinion.

“Come on, Dos,” Bee groans. “Why’d you click on them?”

Shoving the phone her way again, Jason swipes back to the first image. “Honestly, it was the terribly photoshopped fish that drew me in.”

Glancing down at said photo, Bee makes a disgusted noise. “ Ugh . They know I hate that photo, that’s from when I first started editing. I swear they’re doing this on purpose.”

Jason grins at that. Now there’s a tone he can recognize. “They your older sibling?”

Bee throws her hands up in the air. “By a day! They act like they know so much more than me ‘cause their ma went an’ had a baby a little quicker than my ma.”

He gets a glare in return for his rude sniggering. “Fuck off. You’re an older brother, ain’t’cha? I can smell that stink on ya from a mile away, Dos, you rat bastard.”

Jason laughs, then cuts himself off to clutch at his head. “HA, fuck. Oldest of the middle, more like.”

Bee doesn’t let up in her dirty look. “Still sounds like an older brother ta me.”

Helpless, Jason shrugs. She can think whatever the fuck she wants – Jason’s gonna pass out for a hot minute to sleep off his concussion.

“You should message them,” Bee says, rudely.

Can’t she just glare in silence?

Jason’s head hurts.

He swipes at his screen blindly in the hopes that it would get her to shut up.

“Hey, ya really look like shit, 2. Are you…”

Jason turns over with a huff, burying himself into the gap between quilt and cushion, curling into a tighter ball.

“… Doc Thompson’ll be here in…”

Darkness.

…

The holiday season is over, finally. Now everything’s just cold and gray, instead of cold and gray with a side of forced cheer. 

It’s taking Jason a couple of days to get used to the upgraded thermal armor someone had given him (it had to have been B. There’d been too many trackers Jason had had to rip out of the damn things to have been from anyone else), but the added warmth is worth it .

Bee’s shirts had been a huge hit, even if Jason had gotten slugged in the shoulder for some of his gift choices. Hell, he’d even gotten B to wear a Mothman shirt. More importantly, he’d gotten photographic evidence of B wearing the shirt, which had coincidentally been one of Tim’s later gifts. He’d ended up printing it out on a glossy A0 poster and framing it. Tim had laughed so hard he choked.

He's warming up in his apartment, cup of hot tea cradled in his hands, when his phone vibrates with a notification he hasn’t worried about it a while.

Weird, Full Hearts only sends notifications if he gets a message from someone he’s matched with. Far as Jason remembers, he’d blocked all of the people he’d had the misfortune of communing with ever since the club disaster. 

Standing, he shuffles over to the counter. He’d plugged his phone in next to the kettle so he could finish up coordinating the last bits of tonight’s operation while he waited for his water to hit the perfect temperature.

Jabbing at the dark screen, he scrunches his face up in confusion when he sees the “FH: 3 Messages From A”

Who?

A… A, wasn’t that Bee’s t-shirt model? The older sibling?

Crap, Jason matched with one of his employee’s siblings. This is immediately super weird. Grimacing, he opens the notification, intending to block them and wash his hands of the whole thing.

Before he can, though, his eyes catch on the actual messages themselves.

A: I’m not gonna suck your dick just bc you bought like $500 of shirts from my sis. Shit came in clutch but I don’t know you like that

A: Might just ask you for some lunch for getting the bat to wear one, tho

A: You’d be paying, since you clearly got the money for it

Jason is rather proud of how he’d guilted Bruce into wearing that masterpiece.

JT: Is this flirting or a thank you?

Immediately, he gets a reply.

A: Neither, it’s an interrogation.

A: How the fuck did you get him to stay corporeal long enough to take that

A: How did you set it up so that he’d manifest wearing the shirt

A: Can I get some of those cookies Bee’s been up my fucking ass about non-stop, so I can hold one over her head and laugh at how short she is

A: Will you buy me an extra box of jokerized fries so I can take them home to eat later

A: The list continues.

Snorting, Jason leans against the counter and sips at his tea. He should have pegged them for a conspiracy theorist, honestly. Too many of their pictures were about Mothman for that to not be a strong possibility.

JT: Fuck it, why not. Can’t promise to give out any trade secrets, but a key component of the summoning ritual I used may or may not include the cookies you’ve heard so much about.

JT: Do you prefer cinnamon or butterscotch?

A: Was that a fucking undertale reference

JT: I don’t know, was it?

A: Bee’s right, you are an asshole

A: Meet me at the Batburger on 5th street, 6 PM

JT: I’ll see you there.

Flicking his phone off, Jason returns to his comfy spot at the table, shoving his nose back into the steam wafting up from his mug.

Wait, shit. Did Jason just sign himself up for another date?

…

Come 6PM, Jason looks more like a walking ball of fabric than a person. If pressed, he’d blame the fact that January gets fucking cold , but in reality, he wants as many layers of protection as he can possibly stand, in case A turns out to be crazy.

He highly doubts it – they seem to be just as uninterested as he is in anything even remotely physical. Doesn’t mean he isn’t going to cover up like a single glimpse of skin might invite the devil into an upstanding citizen’s mind, or whatever. 

There’s a tight feeling of dread building in his stomach as he walks into the Batburger, cookie tin in one hand, Harper’s trusty taser in the other, tucked under three layers of sweatshirts. 

He spots A easily – they’re over by the register, staring up at the menu cautiously, towering over everyone else around them. At a glance, Jason would put them at 6’ 5’’. He’s reluctantly impressed.

Sliding up next to his… date? Maybe date, Jason clears his throat.

Tilting their head in his direction, A’s eyes don’t leave the menu. “I’ve already ordered something, but since you’re here I can order some more without making Signal mad. Oh, I put my first two burgers on your tab.”

Jason snorts, glancing over at a disgruntled employee wearing a Signal costume that’s even made up of mostly the right parts. Those are definitely Damian’s gloves, though, and the dude keeps knocking the spikes into the cups next to his register whenever he forgets that he’s wearing them.

“I didn’t realize Batburger had a tab system,” he says, voice dry.

Heaving a sigh, A shakes their head in mock disappointment. “Neither did they. That’s probably why Signal’s so twitchy.” 

“Well, we can’t have that. Don’t want you to get arrested again, after all.”

“They let me off with a warning!” A complains, but Jason’s already moving towards the counter.

True to A’s description, the kid taking his orders squints at him like Jason’s about to ask him for something off of the nonexistent secret menu. 

Instead of being a little shit, Jason takes the high-road.

“A double batburger with jokerized fries and a medium drink, plus whatever they put on their ‘tab’.”

A rolls their eyes as the kid starts punching prompts into the register. “ Your tab, you mean. He’s also gonna pay for an extra Garden Ivy and jokerized fries.”

Jason pays and grabs his drink cup without commenting.

They fill up at the drinks station and reclaim the booth A’s apparently commandeered. There are two trays pushed off to the side, next to clearly homemade leftover containers.

A smirks at him. “So kind of you to pay for my meals.” 

Cocky bastard. Jason laughs, handing over the tin of cookies once it looks like A’s debating offering their hand for Jason to shake.

They look at it quizzically. “I just wear Bee’s shirts, I don’t make them. I definitely don’t sew them.”

“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t ask you to sew anything, A,” Jason says, smile growing wicked on his face.

A narrows their eyes at him. “You tellin’ me this ain’t full of thimbles and little stuffed tomatoes poked to hell with needles?”

Gesturing to the innocuous tin, Jason just replies, “Why don’t you open it and see for yourself?”

“…it’s not fear gas or some shit, right? Bee said you weren’t a psycho.”

Yeah, A’s definitely from his part of town. Reaching forward, Jason snags the tin, dragging it back halfway across the table before taking off the lid and pushing it back at A. 

Their eyes widen. “Holy shit, I’ve never seen cookies in one of these things before. Wait, are these…?”

“The famous Butts cookies people whisper about in the streets? Yes, yes they are.”

A’s face lights up, the schemes they’re cooking up plain to see in their mischievous expression. Jason almost feels bad for Bee. “Oh, hell yes.”

After a pause where A’s clearly planning out their sister’s torment, Jason and A manage to strike up a decently normal conversation focused on Bee’s creative process (she sits straight up in bed at ungodly hours, scrambling for the pad of paper she keeps next to her for just this occasion, muttering to herself about whatever muse visited her in a dream. Hours later, in the morning, she’d look at the pad and cry since she’s got awful vision without her reading glasses and it’s all just squiggles. Rinse and repeat until she actually manages to decode her raved hieroglyphs), how they’d started modelling for her (Bee had been into crochet years ago, and they didn’t have enough money for fancy tools, so she’d used A like a blocking board), and why they were on FH if they didn’t actually want to date anyone.

A gives him a long look at that, as if calling him a hypocrite, but eventually shrugs. “’S free marketing, babey. We don’t gotta pay to advertise it anywhere, but people still see it and reach out because they think it’s funny. I’ve got accounts on, like, all of these fucking dating things.”

Nodding, Jason concedes the point. “Smart.”

He also has to dodge questions about whether or not he’s dating Hood, if he and Hood are in an open relationship, whether or not Hood actually had a face under his helmet, and whether or not Hood’s able to phase his food through said helmet when he needs to eat. Every time he turns around, it seems like there’s three more crazy theories about him, Jason swears. 

He’s half tempted to plant the seed that he’s a zombie, but he’s also actually slightly scared with how far down the rabbit hole some of the more dedicated theorists would take that. He’s already got half of his family psychoanalyzing him at any given time, he doesn’t need Tim’s damn boyfriend to add gas to the flames with his wildly off track yet insanely specific rants that have more truth than anyone’s comfortable with.

“Number 38! Double Batburger, Garden Ivy, two fries!” 

“Look at that, it’s food time. I’ll grab our shit,” Jason says, standing quickly to get away from A’s promised interrogation.

“Coward!” A throws out after him, but looks perfectly content to stay seated in the booth.

Grabbing their greasy food, Jason drops it on the table with a little dramatic flourish. “Dinner is served.”

A snorts. “My hero,” they drawl sarcastically.

Things quiet down as they dig into their food. Jason’s decently hungry, and the fries really are better with a little bit of flavor on them, despite Bruce’s murder face every time he hears the phrase “jokerized”. For all of the food they’d ordered before Jason got here, A’s scarfing down their salad, too busy eating to throw questions at him.

Nothing good can last, though. As they get close to finishing, A’s eyes keep tracking back to Jason’s face, following something with a burning intensity.

Jason’s already been played like this before, and he doesn’t want to let it go on longer than it needs to.

“Do I have shit on my face or somethin’, A? Quit fuckin’ staring.”

A snaps their head to the side so quickly, their dangling earrings clack into each other. They look back a second later, cautious. “Nah, that’s not it. How’d you get it so white?”

“’Scuse me?” Jason asks. Sure, he’s a bit pale because it’s been a minute since he’s taken a mission outside of Gotham’s perpetually overcast skies, but this has gotta be the first time anyone’s asked him how he looks so white.

A grimaces, realizing what they just asked, and shakes their head. Pointing one hand at their bangs, they clarify, “Your stripe. How’d you get it so white? I can’t get anything that pure, even with the good bleach.”

Oh. “You do hair?”

A shrugs. “When we’ve got money for dye and a blow-dryer. I’m pretty decent at it, even though I shaved off half of mine.” Running a hand over the fuzz of their undercut, the look like they regret bringing the topic up at all.

Jason softens. “It’s natural.”

“Fuck off,” A says, disbelieving. “You tellin’ me Hood’s boy just happens to have a skunk stripe in just the right place, and it’s natural ?”

Self-conscious, Jason brings a hand up to pat at his white streak. “What fuckin’ skunk stripe. It looks cool.”

A scoffs. “Is that what Hood tells you?”

They freeze, eyes going wide.

“Wait…”

Jason stares at A warily. He’s not too worried, the whole white streak trend had really done a lot to muddy the waters for him, and he doesn’t think Bee’s fucking sibling is gonna be the one to crack that case wide open. Still, they’re a conspiracy nut, so whatever they’re thinking is probably gonna be at least a little crazy.

“Did Hood copy you ? Are you the OG skunk? Mr. Emo himself?”

Jason can’t help it. “It’s not emo!” 

A gives him a look that screams “Doubt”.

Huffing, he turns away, shoving the rest of his fries in his mouth to avoid saying anything else he knows he’ll regret. 

“… Can I dye it?”

Raising an eyebrow, Jason swallows hard to clear his throat. “What, you don’t think I earned this shit?”

A narrows their eyes at him. “You said it was natural.”

Grinning, Jason lets his expression turn sharp enough to unsettle. “I did.”

A shudders at that, but ignores the way Jason’s fucking with them with admirable disregard, getting back on track. “Nah. I was thinking more about how fucking clear colors would come out if I got my hands on something that light.”

Jason twitches at the phrasing, still antsy over the idea of people “getting their hands on him”. He’s fine beating the shit out of someone, but he’d almost punched Doc when she helped him sit up after he busted his ribs two weeks ago. Dick’d reassured him that the feeling goes away, but that it takes time. Jason knows this. It’s not the first time he’s had to deal with it, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“It doesn’t take color.”

“Bullshit it don’t take color.” 

Jason sneers, hackles rising. “It. Doesn’t. Take. Color. Nothing fuckin’ sticks.”

A backs off, scootching back in their seat and raising their hands in surrender. “Okay, man. If you didn’t wanna talk about dying your hair, just tell me to fuck off. No need to try an’ tear my head off.” 

Jason glares at them, but settles down a bit. Taking a breath, he grabs his drink, poking at the sadly deflated paper straw. After a couple seconds, he relents. “It really doesn’t take color – shit fades in goddamn hours.” 

Incredulous, A frowns. “ Hours ?”

Nodding, Jason runs his fingers through the patch. “I once used up an entire box of black dye on it. Let that shit sit for fifty minutes, just to be sure. When I woke up six hours later, it was white again.”

A whistles. “Damn. ‘S a shame – I’ve got no clue who the hell you’d have to piss off that’d do that to ‘ya, but I know I don’t wanna meet them.”

Taking in their hair, a steady gradient of bright orange to deep purple with a single shock of white cutting their bangs in half, Jason can understand why. A probably won’t come close enough to a Pit to ever have to worry about getting dunked, but death comes for everyone eventually. He’s not sure which gave him his new fashion statement, so he stays quiet, letting A draw their own conclusions.

Caught up in the haze of imagining a world without being able to dye their hair, A takes a bit to snap back to reality.

Side eyeing him, this time A chews over what they’ve got running through their head before opening their mouth.

“So. You know why I made my profile, but you never told me why you made yours.”

Grimacing, Jason crosses his arms and looks off to the side.

“You and Hood hitting a rough patch?” 

Unable to stop himself, Jason scoffs. “That’s not it. I just… don’t have too many friends outside of the business. Wanted to get out a bit, try new things, meet new people.”

Shaking their head, A leans forward to drop their forehead onto the table. “I just got so many mixed signals from that, and I know you’re doing it on purpose.”

Unrepentant, Jason shrugs.

“Y’know there are apps to find friends on, right? You don’t have’ta be on a dating app t’do that. There’s a lot less horny people over there. Or, like, a good chunk of ‘em are still horny as fuck, but they hide it better. It’s all that repression they’ve got going on.” 

Jason shudders. Ugh, he’s got more than enough repression in his life. “Hard pass.”

A considers him, cheek still smushed dangerously close to a glob of ketchup. “So, if you’re not tryin’a find yourself a new sugar daddy, are you running an op for him?”

Tilting his head in interest, Jason shrugs, noncommittal, letting A get their theory rolling.

“I mean, it’s obvious Hood helped write your profile, Bee told me that. Plus, some of your pictures can’t have been taken by someone normal: for fucks sake, you’ve got a picture of you sitting on the side of a building with that other dude that was taken from an areal perspective!”

“Coulda been someone on a nearby roof,” Jason says, just to see them twitch. “If they zoomed in well enough.”

“Bullshit,” A insists, drawing angles only they can see on the table in front of them. “The perspective’s all wrong.”

 “Or maybe I used a drone?”

 A opens their mouth to debate that, but pauses, eyes narrowing. They can’t say that it’s impossible. Frankly, it’s more likely to be the right answer than “he had Red Hood swoop by and snap a picture midair”. It’s also true – Barbie had spied him and Roy chilling on a rooftop, and tried to get some blackmail on them. Jason’d spotted her surveillance drone in time to wave at it, ruining her chance at holding the instance over his head, but it’d made for a decent enough picture, once she’d sent it to him after cleaning it up and scrubbing it of any incriminating information.

Huffing, annoyed, A moves on. “Whatever. Since Hood’s gotta be helping you with this, what’s your goal? Is it a sting operation? Are you hunting down pedophile rings and human traffickers?”

Jason blinked. “Do a lot of those kinds of people hang out on these apps?”

A looks at him like he’s just announced he’d just found a good home after going to CPS for the first time. Oh, this is one of those things Jason’s missed out on, isn’t it.

“Honestly, this really was just a way for me to meet some new people, talk to someone who doesn’t only think about punching things because they have daddy issues. Now, though, I feel like it can definitely be more.”

The two of them fall silent, observing each other in the dingy booths of Batburger. The scent of frying oil lays heavy in the air. Jason’s finally starting to sweat from wearing layer after layer, and A taps their fingers rhythmically against the tabletop.

Low chatter surrounds them, falling into the background.

Nodding sharply, A sits up again, moving to one side of their booth seat, gesturing for Jason to join them. “There’s a couple things that give away the creeps, usually.” 

Jason stands, walking around the table and joining A on their side, leaving a good sized gap between them. “Yeah, I know a few of them, but I feel like a good half of the conversations I have go over my head sometimes, so I know I’m missing a lot.”

A pulls up their Fuller Heats app, navigating to the chat function and scrolling through the conversations they’ve had with previous matches. Stopping on one, they point at it. “Here, tell me what’s wrong with this one.”

 Glancing at it, Jason curls his lip. “It’s a bot.”

A backs out of the chat and moves on to the next. “And this one?”

“They’re pushy, not gonna take no for an answer,” Jason growls out, reading through the messages.

“Among other things,” A says. “What else?”

Frowning, Jason re-reads it. “They’re focusing on your age, appearance, and ethnicity. That location is pretty much deserted in the evenings. It’s a lure.”

A swipes to another conversation. Jason narrows his eyes. “The same thing, but they’re going for a different angle.”

 The next message. 

“They’ve got a crew, at least two other people. They want you to bring in more than one person, so they have less work to do.”

They just keep getting worse.

Jason’s cold by the time they reach the history limit of A’s messages. With steel in his voice, he asks, “And this is just one app?”

Mouth tight, A nods. “Some of them are worse than others. FH’s pretty middle of the road, from what I’ve seen.”

Baring his teeth, Jason hums in thought. Tim’s good with tech and is pretty much jacked the fuck in with all of the latest social developments, courtesy of his position as the brain behind Brucie Wayne’s business. He’s been in a relationship for a while, though, and doesn’t have any reason to go poking into this on his own. Same with Barbra – she’s got enough on her plate already to be scouring dating sites on the off chance they catch a predator. 

His eyes dart up to his companion, who flinches at the intensity, but doesn’t back down.

A’s known about this shit for a while, and because of that, can easily identify trends and signs Jason might otherwise miss.

Snarl closing into a tight smile, Jason tilts his head to the side. “Say, A. How would you feel about doing a little consulting? You can pick your hours, barring emergencies, and you’d get paid decently.”

A stares at him, then curses. “This is a job offer.”

“It can be,” Jason inclines his head, “but you don’t have to say yes. You’ve already helped a lot by bringing this up at all.”

“Fuuuuck,” A grumbles, dragging their hands over their face. “I haven’t done any gang shit since middle school, man. I dunno if I wanna go back to that crap, even if it’s to put some pieces of shit in the ground.”

“It’ll be more on the other side of things, actually.” Jason keeps eye contact. “Hood loves his people, but not a lot of them are technologically gifted enough to do the kind of legwork this will require.”

Jerking upright, A stares at him, mouth hanging open. “What.”

They look flabbergasted. They look hopeful, like they’re made of string spun so tight it’s seconds away from snapping. They’ll go for it, Jason can tell. He just needs to give them time.

Closing his eyes, Jason moves to exit the booth and stands. Over his shoulder, he throws his parting spiel.

“Ask Bee about the different deals Hood’s got. Let her know if any of them sound like something you’d be willing to do, or if any of them need to be adjusted before you’d be willing to think about it. You don’t have to say yes. I won’t do anything to you or your sister if you decide it’s not worth the risk.”

The wind is cold on his face as he exits the grease trap, providing stark relief against the building heat trapped in the layers he’s wearing. His eyes adjusting to the evening gloom, Jason moves deeper into the night, sinking into the shadows as he slips around the people loitering on the sidewalks. He’s got places to be, people to see. It’s going to be a busy night.

#OnlyInGotham do you watch something you thought was a date turn into an offer to join the mob

REPLY: the dude was hot, tho, so I’d probably join if he asked me

REPLY: date looked SHOOK by the end

REPLY: they were cute, tho

REPLY: Say, where did you say this happened again? What did the hot guy look like?

REPLY: REPLY: Fuck off, narc

REPLY: REPLY: Fuck off, pig

REPLY: REPLY: Fuck off, pig

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: No seriously, I just wanna make sure I saw the same thing. For real. Come on, man, do me a solid, why don’t you

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: It was on the corner of Nunya and FuKoff St. The guy looked like your mom last night, after I finished banging her

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Now that was just uncalled for. My mom’s dead, by the way.

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: I know. Digging her up was the hardest part.

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Dude, too far.

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Yeah, realized that as soon as I hit enter. My bad. You’re still a piece of shit, tho

Chapter Text

4. Darling D. (AKA Double Dumbass)

This time, Jason doesn’t wait any longer than he needs to before logging back onto Fuller Hearts.

How long he needs is six days: four for A to decide they want to take Jason up on his offer, and two more after that for them to team up with an eager Oracle to dig up enough evidence on a handful of circles likely to go for “JT”s type.

Turns out, Babs had known conceptually about the shit that goes down on some dating apps, but like everyone not directly involved with an issue, she had underestimated just how deep it ran. After working together with A and applying their info nets to her pre-scheduled sweeps, the red head had been seething at the appalling number of crimes she’d missed, cloaked by flirtatious words and vapid conversations.

She’d been more than willing to work with Jason’s guys on this.

As a favor to her, Hood won’t be going for kill shots. On the ones in Gotham, at least. If he happens to catch them outside the limits of their little corner of hell, they’re fair game. After all, the only time Hood’s ever been recorded as acting outside of his normal stomping grounds is… well, when he fucked with Timmy, then when he fucked with Dick in Bludhaven, or when he fucked with Dick in New York, the occasionally rampage through Star City when Roy needs someone to fuck with Queen… maybe he’s been more active than he’d thought outside of Gotham. Oh well, no one’s caught on to his less-advertised outings. None of those kills were marked towards the infamous drug lord. Hell, most of them are still filed as missing persons cases.

Talia’s usually cool nowadays, but god does she work Jason hard. At the very least, she knows his limits well. He’s never been handed a hit on anyone he wouldn’t have taken out on his own, even after he does his own in-depth research to ensure the validity of her information. Her misstep with sending him after Tim, Pit-mad and all but frothing at the mouth with a thirst for blood, left him rightfully wary of anything she hands him.

Babs will know if the rest of the international rings they’ve found evidence of go up in flames after Jason gets involved, but she’s also ruthless enough to not rat him out unless he goes too far. She’s cool like that, now that they’ve worked their issues out. 

Chilled air rushes past Jason as he lounges in the hard park bench he’d commandeered as soon as he’d gotten to Robinson Park, ruffling his poofed up curls.

He’s been putting off getting his hair cut, torn between wanting to shave it all off himself, and wanting a decent cut while he still can’t stomach the thought of letting anyone even remotely close enough to touch his head. Or, like, him in general. No one who Jason can stand the idea of having that close to him is competent at cutting hair, so he’s got about a month’s worth of growth to shove into his helmet every night. It’s long enough to curl again, tickling at his ears, the nape of his neck, at his fucking forehead.

A glared at him when he mentioned shaving his head, but had backed up their “Don’t you dare mess up that beautiful disaster” with a compelling argument that it’ll help him look like a more attractive target. “The fluff softens your jawline and hides some of your scars, Dos. Plus, with whatever magic you’re pulling to get that tan, you check enough of these asshole’s boxes that they’ll be more likely to overlook the muscles and height.”

Despite not being as great at the technological aspect as one would assume from someone helping in an official capacity, A’s a fucking genius when it comes to social engineering. After a couple of tweaks to Jason’s profile, some new photos taken by Bee’s not-so-professional hand, a filter or two, the change had been nigh instantaneous.

Suddenly, Jason’s attracting a very different kind of attention from his Fuller Hearts hopefuls. Tonight’s catch is Darling D, a goth chick with a friend she’s very interested in seeing if Jason will get along with. She’s five foot nothing, with a head full of dark, cropped hair in her pictures. She wears enough makeup that it covers up the natural contours of her face, but she’s got a distinctive scar running up the back of her right hand that Jason can use to get a positive ID if they need it.

With a purposefully unimposing physical stature, she’s acting as a lure to trick him into lowering his guard. 

Jason himself has swapped over to present himself as someone obviously faking more experience than they actually have, a hint of innocence under a veneer of false confidence.

He’s too old for some of the worse groups, but they’ll work something out for that. Jason’s not planning on letting them keep getting away with this shit, not now that he knows about it.

Fuck what anyone says, he doesn’t have a bleeding heart. He’s trying to make sure his territory isn’t getting infiltrated by scumbags that prey on people just trying to fit in, or worse. It’s practical.

Theatrically slumping into the back of the bench, JT lets his oversized hoodie squish out behind him, drowning the bulk of his shoulders and arms in folded fabric. He takes out his phone, poking at the screen balefully before giving up and making a game out of flipping it into the air and catching it without shattering the fragile glass.

DD’s people have been set up for ten minutes at this point, and the girl herself is five minutes late to their “date”. Jason’s people have been waiting for hours, but things with this much planning behind them tend to take time and effort to coordinate. None of them had to dress up like a freshman trying to get into his first frat party, so Jason ignores all of the complaining he can hear over the comms.

It’s risky, meeting here: not many people are brave enough to try and seek shelter in Ivy’s domain, even if she’s currently on a vacation to fuck shit up over in the Amazon with her Girlfriend. With the Amazons? Something about reliving her bachelorette party, but with less guilt? Whatever, it just means that there are slightly less homicidal plants that want to eat him around tonight. Most of the general populous doesn’t know that, so the rare green corner of the city is as deserted as it normally is during prime rogue hours. 

Another minute ticks by, and JT sighs loudly. Looking around while using his phone’s flashlight to misdirect any onlooker’s attention, he stands.

Before he can take a step towards the park entrance to leave after having been stood up, DD decides to enter the scene. “JT!” 

He visibly jerks at the ‘unexpected’ call, spinning around and taking a second to pinpoint where the voice came from. 

The woman smiles at him, one hand lifted in a high wave. She’s wearing so much black she almost blends into the shadows around her. As she makes her way towards him, she looks around obviously, movements pointed.

“Where’s your friend? You said she’d be here.” Darling asks, her voice filled with insincere concern.

“Stevie said that she was runnin’ a little late – homework kicked her ass, apparently,” JT laughs, scrubbing a hand awkwardly through his hair, ruffling it further. “Sorry ‘bout that. I told her, you gotta show up early. Something’s gonna pop up, you gotta be ready. But does she ever listen? Nah, not to me.”

“Aww, I’ll listen to you,” Darling shoots him a look that is, frankly, patronizing. “Just like you’ll listen to me, right?”

“Sure!” JT jumps to reply, sounding eager and nervous. Jason’s got this acting thing nailed. If he ever wants to retire from being a crime lord, he’ll just go and be an actor.

Hah, everyone who’d called him a class act would be eating their words, if he did that.

Wait, no. That’s a terrible pun. Dick’s shit taste in humor is infectious, Jason swears.

Focus, Jason. Tiny goth who thinks they’re death’s emissary or some shit, backed by traffickers of multiple flavors. Steph waiting in the wings to play her part as organ-donor #37. Cass waiting even higher in the wings to rain vengeance down on those not worthy, or something.

Right now, his job is to stall until they’re sure there are no stragglers they haven’t accounted for, planning on joining the ambush late. 

“Hey, where’s your friend?” JT turns the question back on her, shuffling his feet as though nervous. “Didn’t you say he was… interested?” 

“Of course, he’s still interested,” Darling assures him, distracted. “He’s very interested in getting to know you better. Your friend, she’s got brown hair, right? White, average height?”

JT hums, nervously searching around him for his buddy. 

Stevie does, in fact, have brown hair. Steph had dressed up as Hermione for Halloween, and had proudly stated that it just made sense to “reduce, reuse, recycle that shit”. Wearing one of Jason’s rattier sweaters so big it tends to slip off her shoulder and a pair of old yoga pants, she looks tired and small.

She’s also trudging down the barely lit walkway, barely visible through the night’s gloom, a short but beefy looking man next to her: all five of their guests are in place.

Now, they play their parts, waiting for the perfect moment to take these fuckers out.

DD, turning to see what Jason’s obviously squinting at, laughs. “There she is. A little late, but we’ve still got plenty of time. Lee, bring her over here!”

The guy behind Stevie slings his hand over Stevie’s shoulder, widening his stride and dragging her slightly behind him. Jason can hear her complaining shout of “Hey!” loud and clear, but her escort doesn’t seem to register anything.

Song Lee had gone missing a year ago, last seen heading towards the abandoned factory over in the Diamond District by his friends. He’d claimed that he had a date. Since going missing, he’s gained an unnatural amount of muscle, and looks like he’s on so many drugs he can barely function. 

He’s one of the lucky ones: the rest of Silver Circle’s victims had been sold, whole or in pieces, to the highest bidder. 

Once they’re close enough to brush shoulders with JT and Darling, Lee lurches to a stop, a ruffled Stevie stumbling under his arm. 

“What the hell, dude? You could have just said I was being slow. Fuck, my neck’s already sore, and you just made it worse,” Stevie complains, trying unsuccessfully to shrug off Lee’s arm.

JT flinches, shooting Darling a panicked smile as he shuffles over and leans down to angrily whisper loudly at his friend, “Stevie, do not blow this for us. Do you know how hard I had to work to get them to say yes to this?”

Groaning, Stevie gives up escaping her flesh prison and shoves a hand in JT’s face. “Man, after that essay, I couldn’t care less. I just want to crash, I’m so tired.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Darling simpers, the hand over her mouth doing nothing to cover up the derisive curl of her lips. “Don’t worry, we won’t take up too much of your time. Besides, I’m sure it’ll be fine if JT and I have fun while you take a minute and rest .” 

Jason internally gags as JT spins back to Darling, a flush burning across his cheeks.

The snicker his partner in crime sends him is all Steph, the little shit. She knows that he hates this. “Sure, just don’t get arrested again. Remember last time, Jay? I swear, the only reason that cop let you go was because you started crying on him.” 

Fuck off, Stephanie fucking Brown.

Dick had been rude as fuck, pulling Jason over for a busted taillight off all things. Jason may or may not have practiced his acting skills by crying a little, acting like it was the end of the world that his older brother had stopped him to notify him of the issue. Big Bird had frozen instantly at the sight of his younger brother in tears, and Jason had used his distraction to jump back on his bike and get the fuck back on with his night, flipping him and his asshole partner off as he sped away.

There’s no reason for her to try to diss him like this. She must still be annoyed that he didn’t save her any Butts cookies from last week’s batch.

Darling steps in close, reaching up to grab the neckline of his hoodie. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about the police when you’re with me. I’ll take care of you.” Glancing away from JT’s face, she jerks her head at Lee. “Why don’t you drive her home?”

Lee nods stiffly, the words taking a second to register. God, Jason hopes that the detox regimens he’s been working on can help the poor kid. He starts dragging Steph back the same way they came, having gotten the approval from little miss crazy bitch that they’d be taking her in as one of their “merchandise”. 

“Ugh,” Stevie complains, trudging behind her captor, still under his arm. “You assholes dragged me all the way out here, just to tell me to fuck off? I hope you get stage fright, you dick.”

JT huffs at that, crossing his arms as he watches his friend disappear from sight. 

Steph’ll have him incapacitated in ten seconds, restrained in fifteen. After that, she’ll be joining Cass as Jason’s backup in case DD’s goons are smarter than their track records suggest. 

“Now,” Darling purrs, staring into Jason’s face with eyes glazed over with excitement. “Let’s get to know each other. Do you have family here? Friends, other than Stevie?” 

“Oh, you know, not really. I’ve been busy, though! I’ll make tons of friends once I finish the next semester, I swear. It’s just, there’s been a lot going on for me after my grandmother passed away.”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Darling breathes. “How did she die?”

“A sudden heart attack.” JT shakes his head. Damn, this chick really has a hard on for death. Jason doesn’t know why – she doesn’t even feel like she’s died once, so it’s not like they’ve met. Still, it means he can fuck with her a bit while he waits for her to make her move, the final nail in her coffin. “The doctors told us that it was painless for her, at least. I can’t say the same for the other people in the car, however.”

“Oh!” Darling gasps in delight. “Was she driving? How many died? Did she hit anyone while it happened?”

Internally, Jason pouts over the fact that his tried-and-true dark humor hadn’t even garnered a horrified reaction from anyone. Even over the comms, Cass just tuts disappointedly at him. Steph’s a little busy putting a bow on her attacker to comment. 

Externally, he shoots a startled look at Darling. “No, I don’t think so? I try not to think about it too much, honestly.” 

“Why not?” Darling asks. “It’s fascinating, though. Death.”

Fascinating, horrible, like watching an exploding building. Death is cold, it’s absolute, it’s peaceful. There’s no reason to seek it out, it’ll come for you eventually. Jason may kill people, but that’s not because he has a hard-on for death. He takes out the trash, a little sooner than naturally scheduled, but not to the point that it harms the delicate balance.

Jason’s heard more than enough lectures on Death and All That Ends from Ducra. He doesn’t need Abby’s evil twin to completely bastardize the old crone’s teachings right in front of him.

Shrugging, Jason makes a so-so motion with his hand. “Eh, I guess.”

Darling looks surprised that he would disagree with her. “You don’t think it’s a terrible mistress? Cruel and cold, ravaging the strong, leaving those left behind devastated?” 

“Nah,” Jason says, cocking his head to the side to track the badly hidden goons approaching them. Only three, which is insulting. Honestly, even with all of the extra work he’s put into making himself look less intimidating, he’d have thought his height alone would have netted him five guys. “Once you’re down, death’s more peaceful, than anything. It’s waking up that’s cruel.”  He won’t touch the last part of her statement. He doesn’t like thinking about that part of it, not now that the hissing green of the Pit is nothing but a blurred memory of rage and hurt. 

Scrunching up her nose, Darling looks insulted. “Did you just compare dying to sleeping?!” 

JT looks down at her, startled by the change in her tone. He blinks innocently, earnest confusion on his face. 

Darling steps back, shoving at his chest. Huffing, she crosses her arms. “I think I like you better with your mouth shut. Boys!” 

At her call, three men come crashing through the undergrowth towards them. Smoothly grabbing his trusty taser (after using it twice, it’s yours. Harper can go find another one, Lavenza belongs to him. He’s emotionally attached, at this point), he gets one on the ground in a twitching pile of limbs in seconds. Dropping the taser, he shakes the hand he’d keep hidden in an overly long sleeve free of its cover, using his brass knuckles to knock a second goon out with a slug across the face, followed by a vicious uppercut to the chest.

The last goon doesn’t take the hint, even as DD screams in outrage.

Trying to grab Jason from behind doesn’t end well for him – Jason elbows him in the solar plexus, stomps on his instep, elbows him in the nose, and finishes it off with a solid final elbow to the groin.

Groaning in pain, the goon topples easily when Jason takes advantage of the way he’s bent over to knock him unconscious.

Dusting his hands off, Jason looks over to where D-for-Dumbass had been standing, uselessly watching her easy pick-up fall to pieces around her. His ‘date’ is down for the count, knocked unconscious by Cass, who’s currently rifling through her pockets, pulling out two burner phones. 

Over comms, Babs asks, “JT, was that –” 

Grinning, Jason bends down and starts zip-tying his wannabe attackers. “It was a good movie – Narrows’ got good taste.”

Oracle snorts. “I’d have to agree with you there. His blog is proof enough that his taste is definitely better than yours, obviously.” 

“What’s wrong with my taste in movies?!” Jason grumbles, glaring at Cass as she shoots him a pitying look. That cowl may cover her whole face, but he can tell .

“Alley, you literally only watch period romances. The ONE movie you had in your Netflix ‘Previously Watched’ that wasn’t remotely related to Jane Austin or Shakespear was Shawn of the Dead,” Steph moans over comms, full of judgement as she casts stones from within her glass house. “How did you even find Shawn of the Dead?!” 

“Your favorite movie is Encanto. You don’t get to judge me. I don’t have to tell you shit,” Jason retorts.

“First of all, my favorite movie is Treasure Planet, you uncultured swine – Encanto is my second favorite. Second of all, you guys are gonna have to drag those suckers over to me. Ivy may be out partying it up with Harley right now, but she’ll know if I even think of driving a car into her park. She just started tolerating me and BB, and I will not jeopardize that for a couple of dirtbags.”

Hefting Double Dumbass over her shoulder, Cass steps over to grab one of Jason’s goons by the collar of his jacket and starts dragging him behind her. To Jason, she says, “My favorite is Lilo and Stitch.”

Lilo and Stitch used to be Jason’s favorite movie, too. Now, if he had to watch it, he thinks it might give him hives. Or, like, a panic attack. There are far too many emotions packed into that animated package for him to fight with on family movie night. 

Distracting himself by snatching up the last two guys, Jason clears his throat. “’S a good movie, too.” 

Cass tips her head at him in acknowledgement. Steph whines over the line, “Why is Lilo and Stitch fine, but liking Encanto means my opinions are trash?!”

“Because it’s new Disney, East End!” Jason drawls.

“Just because you haven’t seen it yet, doesn’t mean it’s bad,” Babs chimes in, betrayal at its finest. “Lin Manuel Miranda wrote the songs, you know.”

Blinking, Jason tries to remember why that name sounds familiar. He thinks it may be on the smaller list of plays Alfred had written out for him to watch, along with the books he’s been working through. He hums, noncommittal.

Steph gasps at his lack of recognition. “You’ve never seen Hamilton?! I thought you were a theater nerd!”

“I’ve been busy!” Jason snaps, ruffled.

“Too busy for musicals?” Babs asks, amusement plain to hear in her voice. “Who are you and what have you done with JT?”

Before he can get legitimately hurt by that, Cass hums. “We watch, next movie night. Together.”

Jason snaps his mouth shut, retort cut off. After a second, he sighs, put upon. “Only if I’m not too busy.”

Cass turns towards him, bouncing slightly. The motion jostles her burdens, but she looks too happy to care. “I’ll take care of it.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jason imagines just what she could mean by that. “Well, that’s terrifying. East End.”

Steph waves as they emerge from the tree line, the back of a sketchy van propped wide open for them. 

Throwing his two goons into the back next to a similarly hog-tied Lee, he turns to Steph. “You’ve got the smelling salts?”

She tosses him a vial as Cass places the last of their guests into the back of their own stereotypical kidnapping van. They hadn’t even splurged and gotten the kind with benches in the back – shit was bare as hell, disregarding the stains, gruesomely labeled coolers, and plastic sheeting. It’s kind of depressing.

Not as depressing as his and Cass’s ensuing interrogation. They’d been working for the Silver Circle for four years, now, a well-oiled team, and they’ve picked up just under fifty people up from Gotham alone. They don’t have any contact with the other teams SC’s using to procure their victims, but DD’s got more than enough numbers on her burner phones to give them a solid place to start.

Afterwards, Jason hops out of the back with Lee thrown over his shoulder. Tossing a farewell wave to Cass and a middle finger to Steph, he heads over to a nearby alley. A’s waiting for him with a van already idling, nervous over their first real mission but determined to see the direct result of their actions. 

His poor accomplice jumps when Jason knocks on the window, but obediently rolls the glass down.

“Are they dead?”

“Lee needs a solid year or so of therapy and treatment, so I’m gonna drop him off with Harley’s little experimental clinic. The rest of them were small fry – only one of them had any good info. They’ll be in a holding cell come morning, then actual jail in a couple of months.” Jason says, slinging Lee into the backseat, double checking his restraints before slipping into the passenger seat. “The rest of them? It depends on where they are when Hood finds them.”

“Good,” A spits, vicious.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” 

A curses as Oracle’s voice comes over Red Hood’s frequency on their comms, swerving dangerously as they try to pull onto the road. “What the fuck, O, gimme some warning!”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Babs’ modulated voice laughs. “You two can relax, honestly. I’m just invested in JT’s Fuller Hearts adventures, at this point.” 

Jason groans, avoiding A’s incredulous look. “Keep your eyes on the road, idiot. O, I thought you weren’t gonna give me shit about this.” 

“I wasn’t, but then things kept… happening,” Babs says, treading the line between saying enough Jason won’t be able to pretend to misunderstand her without giving away his identity. “I just wanted to check in.”

Jason crosses his arms, embarrassed. The whole thing was embarrassing. God, whoever made the app should be shot. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” 

“Were they really all that bad?” 

“Well, he did meet me,” A says a beat before Jason deadpans, “I’m literally using the damn app to catfish trafficking rings.”

Unwilling to let their falsely FH-positive statement stand, Jason adds on, “A, you only used me to get food from someone you knew probably wouldn’t stab you.”

Completely unashamed, A shrugs. “It worked, didn’t it? We’re still hanging out, that’s basically like staying friends after not dating.”

“We’re working together,” Jason deadpans.

“You’re allowed to have work friends, JT,” Babs chimes in, criminally amused.

“Fuck off,” Jason grumbles.

“Holy shit, he didn’t deny it,” A breathes under their breath. “What the crap? Did we just become best friends?”

“Congrats, JT, on making a mostly normal friend. A, welcome to the club,” Babs’ modulated voice crackles ominously. “I’ll even send you a welcome gift.”

A sinking feeling hits Jason suddenly. What does Babs have on him now? Why is she so willing to share it? “O…” he growls out, warning.

“A welcome gift?” A asks, wary. “What d’you want in return? I’m not doin’ any more vigilante shit than what I’ve already agreed to. Hood’ll back me up if you try an’ change our deal.”

“Free of charge for you, A. It’s more of a thank you for bringing these rings to our attention. And JT, stop sweating the little things. This is for your benefit, to help your image, so to speak.”

“Fuck no, I don’t want you touching my image,” Jason yelps. 

“Dos, you already got the kids hanging off you whenever you visit Hood’s shelters. All of us street rats love you. You literally volunteer at the library to read and do those finger puppet shows.”

“That’s just with the public. O’s gonna mess with my street cred in the Red Hood gang,” Jason gripes.

Shaking their head, A taps the wheel with their painted fingernails. “You taught Bee Spanish so she could talk to her grandma, you tutor and babysit Hood’s guys’ kids if they need help. Hell, Dos, you bought me food and gave me a job because my sister asked you to.”

“I didn’t do it for her!” Jason blusters. He really can’t dispute anything else, though. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Double-dumbass it’d been a busy year for him. 

“I know,” A says, tone smug, like Jason just proved their point for them. 

“That’s why I can’t really do any damage to your ‘street cred’ that you haven’t already done yourself, JT,” Babs pipes up. “They know you’re physically incapable of not helping people. That’s not new.” 

Dragging a hand down his face in resignation, Jason sighs. “What are you planning on doing to my image, then, oh all-knowing eye in the sky?”

“I’m going to give them something they can laugh at, but think about whenever they start wondering whether or not you can handle yourself in a fight.”

Shaking his head, Jason resigns himself to having to deal with the fallout of Barbie’s latest scheme. There’s no stopping her once she convinces herself that whatever she’s doing will help someone out, so he’s not even going to try.

“Fine, whatever. A, I don’t want to know what O sends you. Keep that shit on lock-down, if you know what’s good for you.” 

A hums cheerfully. “No promises, Dos. It might be for your benefit, but if Oracle’s that confident in their gift, I’m sure it’ll help out my rep too. I’m not about to sit on something that’ll help me avoid all of the dick-waving contests gangs get into whenever someone new comes in.” 

Jason squints at them. “But you’re not in the gang? Your contract was very clear about that.”

He gets a baleful look for that. “Just because I’m not doesn’t mean I don’t talk to people who are, especially since my sister’s part of it.”

Still confused, Jason tries again. “But why would that affect you now ?. She’s been a part of the gang for a year, now.”

A rolls their eyes. “It’s different because now I’m involved. I have contact with you, with the bossman, and kinda with the guys who run around in fursuits trying to arrest us every other week. I was never a part of it, before. Not like I am now.”

Jason sits up at that, turning to look at A, searching for any trace of distress or anger. “Shit, that’s not what was supposed to happen. You need me to talk to them, tell them to back off?” 

Waving a hand at him, A smirks. “Nah, I can handle myself. Plus, I’ve got Oracle’s gift on my side: with how effective they think it’ll be, it should be able to keep me plenty safe from any dumb ego-fighting.”

Babs’ filtered laughter covers the sound of Jason’s defeated groan.

This is what he gets for trying to be nice.

Why does Jason only hang out with assholes, again?

… 

Oh yeah, because the last idea he had to meet new people had ended up with him signing up for fucking Fuller Hearts.

Dammit .

#OnlyInGotham are the rogues this cute!! May or may not have seen something that was PROBABLY a Hood bust. Don’t know if it was RH, but his hair was SO FLUFFY

REPLY: Girl you’re gonna get SHOT

REPLY: REPLY: It’d be worth it, tho

REPLY: Might’ve been JT – he’s been pretty busy, lately? Hope he’s doing alright, the kids miss him

REPLY: Pics or it didn’t happen

REPLY: REPLY: wym, pics. are you, like, blind? they’re literally right there

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: WAHT THE FCUK, WHERE DID THEY GOOOOO

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: @/Oracle, PLEASE I NEED THEM!! HE WAS SO CUTEEEEEEE

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: RIIIIIIP, dude!

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: they deleted the ones in my saved photos, too :(

Chapter Text

5. Carter N. (AKA Conspiracy Nut)

Jason’s set up in a cozy nook at his favorite coffee shop in Gotham. Café Libra’s relatively new, and set up in Bristol of all places, but other than the location and occasional clientele, Jason can’t find anything bad about it.

They have a wonderful selection of teas, their baristas actually know what temperature each type is supposed to be steeped in and for how long. Their hot chocolate, while not as good as Alfred’s, is an acceptable substitute.

But above everything else, the little café is covered from floor to ceiling in books. Wooden shelves overflowing with books are built into the walls, short tables piled with books are stationed next to comfortable arm chairs and padded window seats, bookended centerpieces present at all of their tables, and the counter. The counter has an organizational chart that’s always wrong, since so many people come in to pick up a book, only to eventually move to a different seat and dislocate their reading material from its place in the system. It denotes authors, genres, titles, books on order, release dates for popular series, and recommendations. There’s a rotating crew of three people who work the register, along with the sixty-year-old woman who owns the shop, and they all have wildly different taste in literature. Ramya, a graduating senior who chews gum non-stop, only recommends sci-fi and action. Xander, a quiet man in his thirties who always wears sweater vests with funky patterns no matter what weather Gotham decides to spit out at her citizens, is into true crime and cheap thriller novels, with the occasional comedy thrown in for flavor. Monique, a fashion queen with enough hair to rival Kori and the confidence to match, always tries to get people to read a confusing combination of non-fiction war novels and xanxia-type novels, half of which she’d just printed off from whatever translation website she’d found and hand-bound herself. Jason’s always been most partial to June’s picks, the elderly woman always having a Classic set aside for him when he comes in, mixed in with the occasional light tale of enchantment and adventure whenever she accuses Jason of being too sad.

Tim, of all of his siblings, had taken him to the café for the first time. They’d been coordinating a large-scale take-down of several mob families together, and after a month of nonstop work both of them had been exhausted. The day before the last bust was scheduled to take place, Tim had stood up, declared his absolutely dire need for coffee that wasn’t the shit Jason kept in his safehouse (which was bullcrap, since Jason only buys the same brand of coffee he knows Tim buys for himself, since he’s considerate like that), and dragged them outside. The ensuing trek through Gotham’s morning foot traffic had been comedic, Tim having closed his eyes and apparently followed the scent of caffeine he’s able to pick up on blocks from any relevant establishments, but eventually they’d stopped in front of a modern-looking store front. Jason had rolled his eyes at the kid’s expensive and boring taste, but he had promptly eaten his words when they walked in.

It had taken Tim a good five minutes to pry Jason away from the shelves nearest the door, but he gave up once Jason got distracted yet again at the register. The brat had ordered for both of them and sat down, leaving Jason standing at the counter to gawk like an idiot at the recommended lists for an additional ten minutes. Joke’s on him, though, since June had taken notice and they quickly built up a rapport after talking for long enough that Tim’d stomped over and shoved a warm mug of tea in his hands, forcing him to take a sip as they debated the various tones present in The Great Gatsby.

Jason’s not dumb enough to let himself fall into a pattern, of course, but he visits Café Libra with such regularity that it’s a close thing.

Currently, he’s curled up with a copy Beowulf, brushing up on his Old English and laughing at some of the mistakes the publication made on the opposite page when translating it into modern language. He’d met with Alfred yesterday, and is now craving the black tea he can still taste on his tongue if he thinks hard enough about the quiet tranquility of their weekly catch-up session.

He's ridiculously comfortable, almost to a dangerous degree. Snowmelt drips down the windowpane, fogged up by the warm interior. Steam curls up from Jason’s bright yellow mug, patterned with horrific images styled to look like ancient wallpaper designs. June has a wicked sense of humor – most of the mugs she gives her regulars have any manner of visual puns or references on them.

Soft music spills over the quiet chatter coming from a couple in the shop’s corner, drowning out the infrequent flip of pages being turned.

This is much better than what Jason had been doing four hours ago, and he’s almost ready to forgive A for putting him up to this.

All of the dates Jason goes on, now, are designed to lure out and decimate the remaining predators creeping on Gotham via the sad, desperate people low enough to use Fuller Hearts.

“Jason, that was you, like, two months ago.” Whatever, East End. Who even asked you.

“Not all dating apps are terrible fronts for human trafficking, Jason.” Sounds fake, Barbie.

“Jaylad?” Nope, fuck off Bruce.

“Wait, is that what you were doing when me and Harley…” It’s ‘Harley and I’, Dick, jesus fuck.

“Mean.” If people weren’t so stupid, Jason wouldn’t have to so mean. Change has to start somewhere, Cass, and he’s not gonna blink first.

“Keep your wild-ass dating disasters the hell away from me, you asshole, I don’t want your bad luck to fuck with the good thing I have going on with Bernard,” Honestly insulting that you think Jason would ever fuck with that, Tim. The two of you are fucking adorable, and it’s funny as hell to watch you freak the hell out over trying to hold his hand.

“People find joy from exploring different avenues in life, Master Jason.” Sure Alfie, but Jason’s not gonna respect them for choosing stupid avenues.

“Nah, all the people on those apps are kinda whack.” Thank you, Narrows. Once again, it falls to Duke to be the only reasonable person he’s talked to about this.

Jason is more than happy to continue this trend, having completely abandoned the idea of finding someone cool to hang out with who’s UNRELATED to all of the bat bullshit he has to deal with, but no, A just had to poke at him about finding one of their friends on the app.

A’s been a huge help in helping Jason figure some things out, and the asshole knows that Jason is as interested in dating as they are. They still insisted that he meet with Carter, one of their buddies from the fucking Gotham Conspiracy Boards reddit, when the man’s profile had managed to fight its way through the flood of bots and predators flocking to Jason’s account.

Carter N is twenty-four, ex-military, and almost as enamored with the gym as he is with conspiracies. All of his profile pictures had been posed in front of various cork boards absolutely covered in printed pictures, sticky notes, and red string. More impressively, none of the boards had been repeats.

Jason’s convinced that the only reason they both matched was because A bullied them into it – he hasn’t been playing easy to get, only interacting with some of the guy’s theories, feeding him bullshit before occasionally pulling the rug out from under Carter’s feet with mean amusement during their rare chats.

Carter’s been clearly using Jason as a sounding board, displaying little to no interest in someone so much younger than him. So, he isn’t too terrible, Jason guesses.

It never would have evolved past a relatively harmless pastime of being an asshole online for Jason, if A hadn’t decided they weren’t satisfied with the current situation. Enacting a cunning twelve-step plan, they had guilted and threatened their way into being the unwilling pair’s very much unwanted wingman.

There must be something there, something Jason hasn’t quite picked up on that Carter’s got hidden away that will make the date they’d both grudgingly agreed to go on so entertaining to A.

One of Jason’s conditions was that it had to take place at Café Libra – if he has to spend time with someone, then goddamn is he going to be comfortable for it. Neither of them are interested, and Carter can find something to entertain himself with if he gets too bored – Jason doesn’t plan on putting down his book for anything short of a robbery. He may have agreed to A’s conditions (the tall shit had threatened to sic the kids on him, armed with highlighters and a target drawn on his white streak), but like hell will he treat this like an actual date.

The bell above the door chimes softly as a new customer walks in, and Jason only has a few more seconds with his silent roast of Tolkien’s translation (he’d gotten a large amount of it correct, but god, when he gets it wrong, he gets it wrong) before someone clears their throat.

Heaving out a sigh, Jason drags his gaze up from his book. Carter is tapping his foot in front of his chair, hands shoved into his pants pockets, a resigned look on his face. He’s wearing a batman t-shirt, the symbol clearly recognizable even mostly covered by the bright red, yellow, and green jacket he’s wearing.

Oh, hell no.

“JT?” Carter asks.

Jason can tell that he has something he’s dying to talk about. If he had to guess, it has something to do with the line in Jason’s original bio that roasted Batman.

“Carter,” he replies, drily. He doesn’t offer a handshake, and Carter doesn’t look like he wants one.

“So,” Carter starts. Oh fuck, this is gonna be annoying. Of course A would find a way to fuck with him without even being present. Giving that person power over Jason’s social life was a terrible decision, even if they’ve been doing an amazing job at churching up Red Hood’s strict reputation as the head of Social Engineering, in addition to their position as a Vigilante Light ™. They hadn’t even asked – Jason had just shown up to a meeting one day to find out that RQ had handed a phone to A and told them to go wild with the RHOfficial account he hadn’t even known existed. A’s been an absolute menace ever since, claiming the need to make up for three years of lost networking slash reputation building.

Whatever, Jason’s just glad he doesn’t have to pose for any dumb pictures as Red Hood or JT. He can take the increased teasing that comes with A feeling safe and comfortable in their position in Jason’s crew despite all of their original reservations.

He is NOT glad that he has to deal with someone who looks like a walking advertisement for Batman and fucking Robin right here, in his favorite café. This is ridiculous, he’s basically being attacked right now.

Jason raises an eyebrow, face stone as he watches a muscle jump in Carter’s jaw.

The man firms his stance, moving to cross his arms across his chest. “So, what exactly did you mean when you said that Batman isn’t Gotham’s greatest superhero? And which top ten listing were you referring to?”

Here we go. Snapping his book shut, Jason uncurls, sticking his legs out straight before crossing one over the other, leaning back while tilting his chin up condescendingly. “I mean, the Bat’s not even a real superhero. Haven’t you seen his official Justice League file? He’s a fucking vigilante, and a piss poor one at that.”

Carter makes an offended noise as his probable favorite hero is insulted. “Hey, it’s just hard for him to always know where to materialize! He’s trying his best!”

Scoffing Jason shakes his head. “His best is crap. Honestly, we’d be better off if Mothman was Gotham’s so-called hero. You can quote me on that.”

Narrowing his eyes, Carter frowns. “This is why you’re friends with A, isn’t it? It’s not because of their harbor/Robin theory, it’s because of their freaking Mothman fetish.”

Jason makes a disgusted face. “Ugh, don’t call it that. I can tell you, it certainly wasn’t their interesting choice in favorite heroes. Also, what are you, ten? Weren’t you in the military? Why the hell didn’t you just say ‘fucking’?”

Carter shifts in place at that, skittering his attention off to the side awkwardly. “I was a glorified secretary, we weren’t really allowed to curse. It doesn’t matter, you’re dodging the rest of my question.”

“Which question?” Jason drawls, sarcastic. “Sorry, I tend to not listen when people ask me stupid shit.”

“Which top ten list did you mean, when you said Batman wasn’t even in the top ten?”

Staring at the man, Jason starts to wonder whether or not his barber had shaved off a couple of brain cells while giving him that buzz cut. “The top ten vigilantes in Gotham. What other list would I be talking about?”

Forgetting to look like Jason’s just insulted his family’s banana bread recipe, Carter grins, grabbing for his phone. “I’m so glad you asked. Here, there are a couple presentation’s I’ve got saved from last week’s meeting. First, there’s the ‘Gotham’s Top 10 Broodiest Personalities”, then “Top 10 Most Likely to be an Alien in Disguise (NOT Including Clark Kent, Stop Bugging that Poor Man)”, or even “Top 10 Celebrity Look-alikes”, or…”

Jason watches on in awe as Carter shifts into an infodump, speeding through months of faulty research and self-fulfilling logic as he regales him with all of the different lists Bruce’s fursona has made it onto.

Carter pauses, looking around until he spots the satirically labeled “Alternative Theories” section June had added as a tongue in cheek joke with Jason after he’d mentioned his brother’s boyfriend’s penchant for conspiracy theories and just how seriously he takes his research. Lighting up, he reaches down to grab Jason’s arm. “Come on! It looks like they’ve actually got a decent selection for us to go through, for once. I’ll help fill you in on some of the critical background information you’re missing.”

Slapping the hand away, Jason stands up on his own, tucking Beowulf into his side as he picks up his Yellow-Wallpapered mug. “Fine, let’s take a look, then.”

Hell, it might be slightly funny to see the look of devastation on his face in person when Jason crushes his fallacies just as ruthlessly as he’s done over their sporadic FH messages.

Carter bounces across the store once he makes sure that Jason’s not just going to bail on him, far too much cheer exuding from his overly-muscled frame. He leads them unerringly to the newer shelves, taking a book on the properties of vampires and how modern technological advancements have served to further cloak their presence from the rest of the world. Shockingly enough, that book is even mostly true – Jason has no idea who June sources her books from, and at this point he’s slightly afraid to ask.

More important than the book, though, is the couple Jason’s been ignoring for the last half hour, settled at a table not far from Carter’s enthusiastic gesticulations.

Tim, dressed as a civilian, is glaring at him with murder in his eyes. Tim’s boyfriend, sitting across from the kid, is also staring at Jason, mouth agape.

Huh.

Wonder if that’ll lead to anything? Eh, the Replacement can probably handle it.

Tuning back in, he focuses on Carter, who’s pulled out four more paperbacks with terribly photoshopped covers. “And of course he can go out in daylight, but since it would reveal the telling birthmark, he has to –”

A gasp sounds from behind Jason. “Are you really trying to use the birthmark theory? On him?”

Bernard stands, incredulous. Ignoring the Replacement’s frantic pleas to leave it alone, he rolls up the sleeves of his dress shirt, walking towards them like he’s gearing up for a fight.

Oh, Tim just put his head in his hands. Looks like Bernard does this pretty often. Jason wonders if the typical occurrence is the willingness to debate conspiracy theories in public, or his willingness to throw down to prove his point.

“What do you mean by that?” Jason asks, curious. It looked like the kid recognizes him, at least slightly. He’s interested in seeing what he’s cooked up in the last five second’s that’s settled the confusion in his eyes.

Bernard spins towards him, then gestures to Jason as a whole. “You! You know, a Reverent, back from the grave for revenge, probably over a perceived failure on your adopted father’s part, but potentially for something your older brother did or failed to do, too. You’re bigger, stronger, and angrier, but still definitely Jason Todd.”

Um.

Jason stares at the blond, eyes wide. “Huh. Never heard that one before.”

“Bernard!” Tim hisses, half lunging out of his seat to try and get between him and Jason. 

“Bernard D?” Carter asks, drawing attention away from where Jason’s reeling at how close Bernard’s shot in the dark had been. He’s joked about how Tim’s boy would come up with some outrageous truth through completely unfounded leaps in logic, but he didn’t think he’d see the day it would actually happen. This kid doesn’t even know him, what the hell?!

Carter looks like he’s just seen a movie star, awe in his voice.

Bernard tenses, shuffling back a step towards Tim even as he crosses his arms and frowns up at Jason’s “date”. “Who’s asking?”

“B.D., from ‘Gotham Unsolved’?” Carter asks again, bouncing on his toes.

The blond’s guard drops slightly, but he still looks cautious. “Maybe. Why do you want to know?”

“Oh my god, how did you get your slide transitions to work so perfectly with your content?” Carter breathes, his words rushing. “I swear, I’ve worked in PowerPoint for seven years, and I have no idea how to do half of the stuff you do whenever you present during our monthly meetings!”

“You’re a part of ‘Gotham’s Not-so-Underground’? Bernard asks, losing the rest of his suspicious posture. “You like my presentations?”

“Like them?!” Carter exclaims, incredulous. “They’re amazing! Even when I feel like some of the evidence doesn’t really fit, you’re always so logical that I can see how you got to your point. And your Q&A sessions are amazing! You’re so professional!”

“Oh, well…” Bernard grins at that, putting his hands on his hips, puffing his chest out proudly. “That’s because I ask Tim to look through everything I put together first. He’s great when it comes to anticipating questions other people will have, and helps me figure out the best way to say what I want to say!”

Carter peers at Tim curiously. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a “Tim” on the board discussions before. Is he…”

Shaking his head, Bernard beams at his boyfriend. “No. He’s so supportive, though. He made a custom vampire bat transition animation for me, when I put together the class on the Cheese Wheel Society.”

“The same one you used on your top ten hottest vigilantes listing?”

Both Jason and Tim balk at that, backing up as the two conspiracy theorists delve deeper into discussing Nightwing’s ass versus Batman’s ass versus Red Hood’s thighs versus…

The brothers look at each other, pale.

“Do you want to…” Tim starts, trailing off as Bernard pulls out his phone, waving it around in his defense of claiming that Batman has to be only the third most popular choice for the Justice League’s “fuck or die” consent list.

Again, he’s spot on in his assessment. Jason hates that he knows how many people are willing to bang Bruce, even while knowing about his crippling inability to do anything right, and he hates knowing the names of all of the people he’s had to look in the face, had to sometimes even work with, who’ve made that particular shit life choice.

“I think I pulled out a copy of The Hobbit when I picked up Beowulf. Why don’t you go wait by the drink station while I go grab it? We can keep an eye on them from over by the milk steamer,” Jason suggests, shuffling backwards as Carter calls Red Robin ‘flatter than a plank of wood’. Judging by the suggestive smirk curling at Bernard’s lips, he doesn’t want to stick around to hear his answer to that particular accusation.

“Yep!” Tim squeaks, turning tail and hustling off towards the center of the shop.

Jason follows, trying to block out the conversation behind him.

He scoops up the books he’d set aside earlier, depositing them on the high-rise bartop hiding the various coffee machines June’s kids always complain about. They land next to Tim’s elbow, the younger lounging backwards on the counter as he keeps an eye out for any sign of trouble involving his boyfriend.

Ramya slides a tall cup to Tim, who takes it in one hand, bringing it under his nose to inhale the smell of his beloved caffeine before taking a sip. Slowly, he drags the top book towards him, opening it single-handedly but not really reading.

Jason, because he’s not dumb, pulls out one of the nearby stools shoved under the coffee bar and sits down before returning to his snickering.

“Are all of your dates like that?” Tim asks quietly.

Jason raises an eyebrow, tilting his head to take in the sight of Carter and Bernard sitting down at the larger table, books spread out between them, notebooks and highlighters stacking up as though appearing from thin air. Snorting, he rolls his eyes. “Honestly? Not really. This is pretty tame, for me.”

Tim shoots him a judgmental look. “What made you want to give someone who dresses like that,” he gestures as Carter shrugs out of his Robin-themed jacket, displaying the back of his batman t-shirt, covered in hilariously incorrect versions of the batsymbol, “a chance?”

Clicking his tongue, Jason screws up his tongue. “I was blackmailed into it.”

Tim looks even more unimpressed. “He has blackmail on you?”

“Fuck no, who do you take me for? The Black Mask? Nah, it was one of my crew: threatened to set the kids on me if I didn’t agree to meet up with their friend. Now that I’ve met him, I know that asshole only pushed so hard for it because they knew he’d piss me off.”

Tim laughs, quiet but real. “Yeah, that sounds like someone you’d be friends with. How do these things usually go for you, then?”

Shrugging, Jason looks away. “Honestly, they started out pretty terrible. They’re better now, though. I brought in my person and Babs – we’re going through and shaking out all of the trafficking rings that have been trying to poach from Gotham for the last couple of years.”

Pity curls in Tim’s face, his mouth set in a concerned tilt as he takes another swig of coffee to give himself time to think. “Jason…”

“What?” Jason snaps, not in the mood for pity.

“Jason, that’s work. You’re not going on dates, you’re playing bait.”

“So?” Jason asks grumpily. “It’s still better than the shit dates I had before I decided to misuse the app for good.”

The gentle chatter of the café murmurs around the two men, the scent of roasting coffee overpowering this close to the grinder. It’s started raining outside, soft patters of water rolling down the windows and leaving streaks in their wake.

The leather of Jason’s barstool squeaks as he moves to find a more comfortable position.

Tim just looks so damned worried. “You’d rather be on a job than on a date?”

“Of course I would, have you seen the people available in Gotham? Hell, people in general?” Jason retorts, gesturing around them. At least half of the people in the room have had personal encounters with one or more of the bats, for mostly minor offenses. A third of them are so obviously assholes Jason can practically see it ooze out of their pores. The last chunk is a rag-tag group, all with their own host of red flags proudly on display.

“But…” Tim trails off. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Jason confirms, nodding firmly. “Shit was getting tedious. I thought that I’d be able to meet some cool people a little less absorbed in this shit, but the only one I found that was remotely tolerable set me up on this migraine trip, so.”

His younger brother squints at him, but accepts his answer. “Okay, if you’re fine with it.”

They settle, Tim abandoning his book to cradle his mug decorated by a toasting Edgar Allen Poe, the words “Poe some sugar on me” bolded on the side, leaning into Jason’s personal space as the elder turns his attention back to Tolkien’s translated Old English. Occasionally a stray gasp of exaggerated offense or a happy laugh breaks the comfortable truce, Bernard and Carter having fun discussing their theories with a like-minded individual without fear of reprisal.

The weather is terrible outside, a damp cold that seeps into the bones and leaves those affected aching and chilled, but inside it’s warm. The feeling spreads through Jason’s chest, and he closes his eyes briefly, content.

#OnlyInGotham will I meet THE Bernard Dowd, King of PowerPoint, Master of Conspiracy and Research after getting set up on a joke date with the Wraith of Jason Todd

REPLY: What the hell are you talking about, dude? Jason Todd’s dead

REPLY: REPLY: He’s a conspiracy nut, my guy. He’s a few chuckles short of a full on clown

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Dang, what the heck did I do to you to deserve that?

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: You made fun of a tragedy that fucking broke both Bruce Wayne and the rest of us poor pieces of shit who finally thought we were gonna see one of our own grow up without becoming a statistic

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Who gave you the right to pretend like it’s okay to joke about going on a shitty date of all things with Jason Todd’s ghost?

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: I’m not messing around, look

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Wait, where’s the picture? I swear I uploaded it

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: What an asshole.

Chapter Text

+1.1 Aaron (AKA Adorable)

“What, and you just blocked them after they said something stupid?” Tim asks, disbelief coloring his voice.

“Keep the comms–” Bruce tries to butt in, only to get steamrollered by his kids.

“No!” Dick cries out as Barbra tsks, “Let RR speak, B. I want to see where this goes.”

“Yes?” Jason confirms, confused. What’s the big deal about not talking to people you don’t want to talk to? “Why are you all acting like this is crazy news?”

“I’m just shocked, is all,” Tim says, voice suspiciously nonchalant. “You’ll give random strangers the courtesy of letting them know you’ve blocked them, but when you’re mad at your family, you decide to ghost us instead.”

Dead. Silence.

Jason’s almost impressed – he has to try to get that level of tangible horror after the shock of the first couple death jokes wore off.

“Tim, why would you –” Bruce calls over comms, voice cracking.

“No names on comms,” Dick says, sounding shell-shocked.

“What?!” Tim cries out. “ After he got back, I mean! Hood, you were alive for like two years before you let us know you were here!”

Muttering under his breath, Tim continues, “Even after that, you ghosted us again for a bit…”

Jason rolls his eyes so hard it actually hurts. “I didn’t ghost you that time, I had to heal from getting my throat slit.”

Tim sasses back, immediately, with the worst retort ever. “ I didn’t avoid everyone when I was recovering from getting my throat slit.”

“Yes, you did,” Dick rebukes, sounding like he’d rather be talking about literally anything else. 

“I’m sorry, son, but you really did,” Bruce confirms stiffly.

“Shit,” Tim curses.

Jason smirks, but before he can make fun of the Replacement, a small voice calls out.

“Mister Hood!”

Switching gears, Jason comms in. “Something popped up, I’m going to go radio silent for a bit. Make sure you give the Replacement crap for me.”

After being nice and warning the others before going dark, Jason cuts his mic and jumps down to the rusted fire escape one building over.

A small head of dark curls jerks back as he lands, not expecting him to actually respond. Within seconds, the kid recovers, hopping up and down in excitement. “Mister Hood! You came back!”

“Of course I came back, Aaron,” Jason says, softening his voice as best as he can through the helmet. “How are you and your mom doing after the move?”

Aaron and Ambar had been one of seventeen families living in a shithole apartment that caught fire under suspicious circumstances last week. Jason’s goons are all trained to act as fire-fighters, a stipulation he’d added as soon as he had the means to give them the necessary training, so they’d been dispatched to help make sure nothing else caught on fire while a team ran search and rescue for anyone potentially trapped. Jason had gotten little Aaron and his mom out personally, and the boy clearly has not forgotten it. He’d clung onto Jason’s shoulder through the entire ride to a temporary shelter he’d set up in case this very situation went down, and had cried when his mom had to peel him off of Jason’s scorched leather jacket.

Now, the kid’s looking up at him with a smile full of gaps, baby teeth falling out faster than he can re-grow them, not a trace of that terrified boy left.

“Mama’s doing good!” Aaron chirps, reaching out to tug on Jason’s sleeve as he bounces in place. “She found a new boss who isn’t mad at her all the time, and gets to come home when I’m awake now!”

Jason smiles, safely hidden behind red metal. “That’s good to hear. What’d you need me for?”

Aaron fidgets, looking down in embarrassment. “Well – well, you see, Mister Hood,” he starts, tugging more insistently at Jason. Gathering his courage, he looks up, face determined. “Mama says that when you love someone and trust them, you gotta date them. So, you gotta go on a date with me.”

Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, whatever you do don’t laugh. The kid will definitely cry if you laugh at him.

“Aaron, when your mama told you that, I don’t think she had me in mind,” Jason tries, to no avail. 

Aaron shakes his head, stubborn. “No. She said I gotta find someone I like and trust. I like you. And you saved us.”

Jason can’t help it. He lets out a chuckle as he reaches out to ruffle the kid’s hair. “Well, then. I’m honored that you hold me in such high regard. Does your mama know about your current quest to win my heart?”

Caught, Aaron shyly shakes his head. Jason pokes his nose.

“That’s alright. How about I give her a call and let her know that you’re sweeping me off my feet for the next hour or so? Does that sound good to you?”

“Noooo!” Aaron whines, stomping his foot. “She’s gonna wanna supervise, if you do that!”

“She’s just trying to keep you safe, Aaron,” Jason explains. “No phone call means no date – them’s the rules. You don’t want her to come home to find you gone, bud. She would miss you so much that she’d cry when you got back.”

Pausing at that, Aaron considers Jason’s words. “…I don’t want Mama to cry,” he concedes eventually. “You can let her know we’re gonna go on a date, Mister Hood.”

Jason ruffles his hair again, making the kid swat at his hand in annoyance. “Thanks. I’ll give her a ring. You go and put your shoes and jacket on, okay? Let’s get out of this apartment for a minute.”

“Okay!” Aaron yells, overly excited for someone so small who’s still awake at eight PM. He lets Jason go and rockets back through the window, into his room.

Chuckling, Jason takes out his Red Hood – Sustainment phone, kept in a separate pocket from his Red Hood – Fuck Shit Up phone and his Red Hood – Outside Contacts phone. Scrolling through the recent additions to his contacts, he finds the grouping affected by the fire, and Ambar’s name soon after.

What follows is a slightly panicked, then very exasperated conversation with Ambar, fresh off of her shift at Sal’s repair shop – she’s more than pretty enough to lull anyone unlucky enough to “break down” in Crime Alley into a false sense of security, and more than ruthless enough to swindle them out of a good portion of their money to fix whatever the scavengers had jacked. In the end, she agrees to meet them at the corner store about a block away from Sal’s in five minutes, and thanks Jason for indulging her son.

That done, Jason turns his attention back to the kid scrambling through the window, jacket on but not zipped up, and his shoes on the right feet, but untied. Kneeling down, he fixes the jacket first, since it’s cold outside, and then Aaron’s shoes. Once the kid’s all set, Jason pulls back, but stays crouched so he’s on the same level as him.

“Your mama’s gonna meet us over at the market, and we’ll all go shopping together. How’s that sound?”

Aaron makes a face. “Shopping? I thought we were gonna go out and punch some guys.”

Jason shakes his head, biting his lip to keep from laughing again. “Maybe later. For now, I want to get in touch with my inner Jersey girl.”

Squinting at him, Aaron frowns. “You’re not a girl, are you? I don’t wanna date any girls, they have cooties.”

“Nope!” Jason says brightly. God, this kid is hilarious. He’d rather date a crime lord three times his age than a girl. What a riot, Ambar’s really got her hands full keeping him out of trouble, huh. “It’s just a saying. No cooties here, I promise.”

Still eyeing him suspiciously, Aaron eventually accepts Jason for his word and reaches out for the hand he’s extended.

Grabbing the kid in a firm grip, he moves to the edge of the fire escape. The last time he’d swung with Aaron, the kid had loved every second of it, but Jason knows better than to jump without warning passengers.

“We’re gonna swing on over, but I need you to help point me in the right direction, alright, Aaron?”

“Yes!” Aaron exclaims, latching onto Jason’s jacket, glee filling his tone.

The boy whoops as Jason leaps into the night, doing more excited shrieking than directing, but it’s worth it if the kid’s having fun. A couple of minutes later, the two touch down next to a waiting Ambar.

Ambar’s clothes are practical, a large sweater swallowing her frame and concealing any potential weapons (or lack thereof), her warm brown hair pulled back into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, and an unimpressed look on her face that’s stern enough to scare off most of the opportunists.

She levels that look on Jason as he approaches, and he has the sense to be slightly abashed. “Sorry to make you wait,” he says instead of apologizing for rappelling around Gotham like a madman with her son.

“As you should be,” she replies, dry as sand. “I’m sure you had nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon than go shopping with people you’ve barely even met.”

Shrugging, Jason sets Aaron down on his feet, hovering until he’s sure that the kid’s wobbling legs don’t give out.

“Mama! Mama, I’m gonna date Mister Hood!” Aaron cries out, absurdly proud of himself.

Ambar sighs, but doesn’t crush his dreams.  “Well, if you’re absolutely certain, then let’s see how good he is at providing for a family.” She reaches down to take Aaron’s hand in hers, sweeping into the store. Over her shoulder, she tosses Jason a look. “I hope you know that you’re paying for this.”

Jason nods, following after her, giving a short wave to the cashier who’d started to stand when he caught sight of Jason in full gear entering his store. “Of course. I didn’t tell Aaron this, but I’ll even cook something for you two, if you’re willing to let me stick around that long.”

Ambar assesses him, then turns her attention to grabbing a basket and starting on making her way through the aisles. “Hm. Well, you’re the one paying for electricity in that building, so knock yourself out.”

Shooting her a two fingered salute, Jason picks up a basket for himself, following the mother and son as they flit from product to product, mostly on Aaron’s whim. He throws various non-perishable goods into his own basket, nodding or giving advice whenever Aaron runs over to him to ask if the orange he picked out looks good, or if he should get chips or a can of almonds.

At the end of their little excursion, Jason pays in cash and grabs most of the bags, leaving the small produce bag containing three oranges for Aaron and a reusable bag filled with the most expensive items with Ambar as a show of good faith. The kid chatters the whole time, who’s friendly in school, which teachers he doesn’t like, and how good he’s gotten in his art class now that P.R. Elementary has enough paint and paper for all of the grades to use.

Jason pauses to drop off his own bags with the homeless shelter they pass on their walk back, jogging to catch up with his team for the night who hadn’t stopped walking when Jason had – smart, if they’re trying to avoid getting mugged.

The rest of the night goes smoothly, the trio making it back to Ambar and Aaron’s apartment without any complications. Jason executes dinner prep under Ambar’s watchful eye, and the food itself is served just as Aaron starts drooping in his chair.

Jason doesn’t bother making himself a plate, instead playing the role of waiter as he ensures mom and kid have enough food and water before he returns to the kitchen to clean the dishes he’s used. By this point, Aaron’s so sleepy he’s clearly forgotten all about what was supposed to be his date with one of Gotham’s infamous crime lords.

Ambar puts him to bed as Jason clears the table, packaging up any leftovers for them to eat later.

When she comes back, she leans against the doorframe, arms crossed as she considers the man who invaded her apartment for the evening.

Jason tilts his head in return, waiting for her to make the first move. She’s been cool so far, but he’s not about to push someone who’s had quite a few shocks dropped on them in the last two months, especially since he’d feel terrible if he has to knock her out for trying to protect her kid from someone she perceives as a threat.

Eventually, though, she shakes her head, snorting. “You’re something else, Red. Next time, bring your boyfriend. If you can cook this well, I wanna know how good he is.”

“I’m not sure he’s got the free time, but I’ll let JT know to be on the lookout for you two if he’s got any extra shit left over from feeding the brats,” Jason allows with a smirk. “I’m sure that you want to see him because of his cooking, and not because it’ll dissuade Aaron from his goal of dating the Red Hood.”

Ambar shrugs. “You don’t seem like the type to be that kind of person, and I’ve heard some shit about what you do to assholes who are, but a little bit of insurance is always nice where I can get it. I may not be able to beat you, but I can try my hardest to get Aaron out of his hero worship phase.”

“Fair enough,” Jason pushes away from the counter. “JT’ll let him down easy if they meet, and I’ll keep myself scarce until he’s a little more settled and not grabbing onto the first familiar face he sees.”

“Red,” Ambar calls out, stopping Jason from opening the window to climb out. “I never said you needed to do that. So long as you don’t put any weird ideas in his head, I don’t mind if you come around from time to time. It’ll keep him out of trouble, if nothing else.”

That’s unexpected. Jason’s not used to inspiring that level of trust in people he’s had so little interaction with, not since he’d been Robin. Stunned, he gapes at Ambar for a moment before pulling himself together. “Ah, well. We’ll see. I’ll see you around, Ambar. Let me know if you run into any trouble.”

Jason books it out of the apartment, but not fast enough to miss her amused chuckle of, “definitely a bat, with social skills that bad.”

Face burning, Jason resigns himself to not turning his comms on until a month from now – Barbie no doubt has multiple backups of the video of him going shopping in full Red Hood regalia, bending to the whims of a child and his mom. He knows that he’ll have to deal with RQ and A when he gets back to debrief with his goons (and really, he doesn’t know why they chose that word as an alternative to “underlings” or “employees” or even “guys”. They’re weird as hell, but he appreciates them). He’s going to take his embarrassment one stage at a time, thanks, and since he’s apparently really good at ghosting his family, they can deal with him going dark for a couple days in the hopes of this blowing over.

 If anyone tries to get on his ass about it, he’ll just blame Tim for being insensitive. Hell, he might do that anyways, the chaos it’ll create will be glorious.

#OnlyInGotham will you see someone infamous for CUTTING OFF EIGHT HEADS AND SHOVING THEM IN A DUFFLE BAG buying groceries for a mom and her kid. Shit was adorable, the kid kept going back to Hood for approval whenever he grabbed anything, and the dude was just so patient

REPLY: Need me a man like that

REPLY: REPLY: A crime lord???

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: if that’s what it takes, lol

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Where did you say this was, again? And when did the Red Hood stop by? Do you know who the family was?

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: *how many times do we gotta teach you this lesson, old man GIF*

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: man, does that ever actually work? Fuck off, narc

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: fuck off, pig

Chapter Text

+1.2 Abasi R. (AKA Arch Rival)

Start of year meetings are always something of a drag, in Jason’s limited experience. 

Bruce hadn’t really dragged him to any way back when, but he’d been able to see just how frustrated and tired the endless bureaucracy had made the man. Now that he’s running his own organization, he can confirm that they do, in fact, suck ass. Most of the information his various branch heads are covering is just a repeat of what they agreed on during their end-of-year meeting from last month, but since people tend to try and get greedy if given any kind of wiggle room (especially in Jason’s line of work), a repetitive meeting to ensure no one sneaks in an extra cut here or there for their section is, sadly, necessary.

The only good thing is that enough of the major players hate the paperwork and administrative side of things just as much as he does, to the point that the backstabbing and power grabs are kept brief for the sake of getting the hell out of here.

A handy trick of getting the right people to show up, and to leave when Jason wants them to, is to bring a limited number of baked goods to the meeting. Today, he’d waltzed into the (only slightly overprotected, to his anti-bat standards) meeting room carrying two plates of freshly made macaroons. The good kind, that he’d dipped in chocolate. None of the major players were allergic to coconut, and the one asshole who doesn’t like anything “island flavored” is going to get what’s coming to him sooner rather than later, so Jason doesn’t really care about catering to his whims. It’s amusing, watching a whole spectrum of hardened criminals strut into a room like they own it, only to come to a full stop, hope and joy flashing across their face at the sight of the two large plates covered in seran wrap sitting on the metal table in the middle of the room. From there, word tends to spread quickly that “JT made goodies, come quick before the assholes in Intel and Enforcement eat everything”, and just like that, Jason doesn’t have to deal with idiotic posturing from people who think they can show off their importance by forcing everything to come to a halt because they aren’t present. Similarly, after all of the treats are gone, no one really wants to linger. It’s perfect.

Amusingly, even the notoriously uptight RQ sweeps in to steal a fresh macaroon from the plate right in front of Jason. She’s usually so strict when it comes to health that it’s a bit of a shock to see her eating something other than the normal organic, vegan fare she generally brings with her in case she gets hungry.

Because of the helmet, Jason can’t really participate, but he doesn’t mind. It’s not like he didn’t taste test the batch before deeming them acceptable, and there’s no way in hell he’d expose his face to a majority of the people in this room. There are good people in his gang, criminals he’d trust with more than just his life, but that designation does not extend to everyone he has on his payroll. Plus, it would ruin the whole JT/Red Hood narrative they’ve been writing in their heads for the past three years, and that would just be rude.

Things are progressing as expected, and the hour and a half mark comes up with minimal bloodshed. Most of the meeting’s itinerary has been crossed off, and there’s only one matter left on the table to discuss before everyone can go back to their own individual operations, when it happens.

Jason’s Fuck Shit Up phone pings with a notification.

In itself, it’s a reason for concern. There are very few reasons that phone would ever go off – if aliens invade, if Black Mask tries to make a power move to take back all the shit Jason’s stolen from him, if Batman goes off the rails… For every conceivable explanation, there should be plenty of warning signs he would have picked up on at least a day or two prior to shit going south.

The second issue, is that it comes in as a text. Half of the contingencies Jason’s got planned would come in as a call, and the other half have been set up to ping through a specific messaging app. Seconds ago, a normal ass text interrupted his meeting.

Tilting his head at RQ, he stands and moves to the back of the room, putting himself against a wall to ensure no one can read over his shoulder. Before pulling up the message, he double checks the area for any surveillance that might record what he’s been sent. Once the coast is clear, he flips the phone open (A had been absolutely disgusted to find out that Jason managed to track down and use one of the last flip-phones in existence to use for this. Tough shit, they’re lucky Jason didn’t go with his gut and get a classic Nokia brick, for sheer durability) and checks the message.

Blinking, he re-reads it. Letting out a sigh of disgust, he closes his eyes, reaching up to pinch between his brows to relieve the oncoming headache, only to run into his helmet. Jason takes a second to breathe through the massive amounts of annoyance coursing through him.

A second later, his personal phone vibrates. This had better be about…

Clenching his teeth on a growl, Jason swaps hands and whips out the other device, opening up the new message. It’s from Damian. Well, that confirms it, but doesn’t help at all. Lovely. Back to breathing exercises it is.

Once he knows he won’t punch his goons in the face for existing while saying stupid shit in Jason’s presence, he snaps the phone shut, shoving it in his pants pocket with prejudice. Smoothly, he returns to the meeting table, aware that everyone’s eyes have been on him the whole time.

“Are you staring because you’ve finally stopped fighting like immature children over who gets the laundromat on 7th street?” Jason asks, pointedly.

“Ah, well…” Jones, the head of Distribution, flubs the softball Jason’s passed him.

He’s so not in the mood for this. The whole meeting has been going on for an hour too long. “Tell you what. J, the only way your guys are going to get that place is if you use it as a hub for aid and hunger relief only . Otherwise, it goes to Sustainment.”

Madison brightens visibly at his ultimatum, shooting a smug grin over at Jones.

“But, sir, we’d be able to secure the market –” Jones argues, face pinched.

“We would, and it would expand our clientele up until we have a bad winter, and everyone you’ve got hooked fucking dies because they didn’t have food or warm clothes,” Jason drawls. He hates that he has to put it like this for these fuckers, to talk like the people who need help are nothing more than statistics they just haven’t gotten hooked on a product yet, but there’s no other way to talk to some of these assholes. Madison knows what he’s getting at, but Jones wouldn’t know altruism if it broke his nose and shoved him in a jail cell.

The asshole looks like he still wants to argue, so he goes in for the kill. “Unless you’d rather go for a collaboration? It’d be interesting to see your departments work together, I think there’s a lot of potential for us there. Of course, you’d be subjected to regular checks from the Quality and Compliance teams, not to mention RQ herself since this could be an amazing step forward for us.”

Jones looks like he just swallowed a lemon. “I’ll… think on it.”

Tilting his head to an unnatural angle, Jason’s agreement comes out flat through his voice modulator. “You do that. Hey, why don’t you have the last macaroon?”

“Ah, I don’t know, boss – you know we always save the last one for you…” Frantic, Jones looks around the room for an escape. You wouldn’t be in this predicament if you just admitted you didn’t like coconut, you ass. (Or, you know, if you were less of a terrible person who physically cannot care about the people around you.)

RQ glares at Jones from her spot next to him, crossing her arms. “JT worked hard on them, and you know how much he likes hearing our feedback. Hood can get more when he goes home. Take it, it’s been a long meeting.”

Gritting his teeth, Jones pastes the fakest smile Jason’s seen in a while on his face, reaching out mechanically and grabbing the plate Madison oh-so-graciously slides over to him, an angelic look on her face. Picking it up with the tips of his fingers, like the coconut’s going to contaminate him through skin contact, he manages a stiff, “Of course. Thank you.”

Clapping his hands, Jason turns to address the rest of the room. “Now that that’s settled, it’s about time all of you got the fuck out of here. Leave in small groups no larger than four, no less than two. Don’t fucking linger unless it’s to discuss something with myself or RQ. You’ll get any relevant notes and agreements within twelve hours. Leave.”

Slowly, the meeting room empties. Before Jones can swan out flanked by the heads of Procurement and Ammunition, Jason calls out one last parting shot. “J, don’t forget to let me know how you like the macaroon – it’s a new recipe.”

Jones nods stiffly as Gabe and Xie snicker at his misfortune. He knows that the sweet is going to get thrown into the trash the second Jones can do so without getting crap for it, but the torment present on his face is worth it.

“So,” RQ says, once they finish doing their last sweep of the room for any potential bugs or sabotage devices left behind by disgruntled employees. She pins Jason with a no-nonsense look that he sees in his nightmares. “You want to tell me what the text was about, boss? Are we looking at a salt and burn type situation, or just bricking the phone and re-setting for a new number?”

Jason sighs loudly, dropping his head into both of his hands. “The second one. I would say don’t bother, but I don’t trust the asshole to not set up a couple of annoying contingencies to kick in after I put him down.”

RQ raises an eyebrow at him, leaning against the table now that she doesn’t have to project a tireless, hard-as-nails persona. “You know them well enough to identify them from one text, but you’re not worried and haven’t killed them yet?”

“Ugh,” Jason groans. “I trained with him a couple of years ago and ended up not cleaning up as well as I should have. There’s no way in hell he found that number on his own, he’s not that smart – I’ll call the person who probably gave him my contact info, find out why she’d drop this shit on my lap like this.”

Staring at him, RQ looks like she’s torn between enjoyment at Jason’s obvious annoyance, and irritation at needing to re-set a ridiculous number of contingency plans just because of his unresolved drama.

“I’ll take care of it within the week,” Jason says. “If it makes you feel any better, he should be the only one left alive who would try something like this.”

Essence wouldn’t bother to use a phone to fuck up his day, and none of the other trainees he’d known personally had ever made it past Jason’s “graduation”. Really, Abasi’s survival should be attributed to unfortunate timing more than anything else.

“How ominous,” RQ deadpans. “Make sure you’re right. I don’t want to have to do this again just because your past decided to come knocking.”

Jason can’t remember everything from his time as Talia’s pet assassin, and he’s not sure he wants to. Hedging his bets, he shakes his head. “I can’t promise that, but I will go on a quick sweep to check on any potential loose ends. I’ll be busy for the next couple of months getting that out of the way, but you know how to reach me.”

Rolling her eyes, RQ flaps a hand at him. “Sure, boss. If you’re not back in time for the first quarterly progress check, I’m tracking down Red Robin and sending him after you.”

“Why Red Robin?” Jason asks, taken aback.

“Because Robin would probably stab me if I asked him to do something for me, Nightwing’s too much of a goodie-two-shoes to not try and arrest me unless it was a matter of your life or death, and you’re too close with Signal and Spoiler. No way in fuck am I talking to a full-blown bat. But Red Robin, oh he definitely would help me track your ass down if he knows that it means you’ll have to sit through hours of meetings and paperwork,” RQ sums up her reasoning neatly. Her no-nonsense attitude and ability to par things down to the bare bones have helped out Jason’s operation greatly, but they also mean she’s blunt as hell.

“Why do you know him well enough to say that so confidently,” Jason grumbles petulantly.

“Who do you think tracked you down last year?” She asks mildly.

What the fuck, last year he’d still been estranged from his family? Tim was literally still recovering from that time Jason slit his goddamn throat. Why would he track Jason down for one of his goons and not tattle on him to the Bat?!

Oh wait, Tim’s a contrary little shit. B probably pissed him off, and he hadn’t wanted to share any intel with the ass until he apologized.

Sighing both at Tim’s lack of sense and RQ’s hardass methods of ensuring everyone does their goddamn job, Jason concedes. “Sure. Great. Use the little coffee gremlin against me while I try to ensure our operation doesn’t get crashed by insane ninja, that’s totally fair.”

“Sounds to me like that wouldn’t be a problem if you hadn’t decided to train with insane ninja,” RQ says, giving zero fucks about talking back to her allegedly ninja-trained boss.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” Jason argues, the words falling on deaf ears as RQ starts shutting off lights and securing the doors. Really, he didn’t want to get picked up by Bruce’s ex’s cult, it just kind of happened. He kind of did mean to get picked up by the subsequent death cult, but that’s a completely different matter and one that RQ will never find out about, if he can help it. “Whatever, I’ll be there.”

…

Later in the evening, when he’s back in his apartment, a mug of steaming tea in one hand and his phone in the other, Jason grimaces.

Damian’s warning of “Mother has been exceedingly annoyed, recently. I expect she’ll contact you soon,” was appreciated, for all that it was useless. At least the little brat decided that he liked Jason enough to try and give him something of a heads up when it came to Talia’s moods. He still has to deal with the fallout, though, which is already proving to be a pain in the ass.

Looking at the now-defunct flip phone, Jason can feel his temper rising. The last message is still on the screen, a date and time set for a week from now, coordinates Jason doesn’t even need to plug into his phone to know where they’ll lead, and a kiss emoji followed by a knife emoji, signed off by an “Abasi R”.

Abasi had been the other pupil of a teacher Talia had thrown him at during the beginning of his training sessions who Jason only remembers as “Dr. Strangelove”. He knows there’s no way in hell that was the guy’s actual name, or even his code name, but his brain had been especially fuzzy back then, and the guy was supposed to teach him the “art of assassination through seduction” or some shit. The idiot had taken on two students in the hopes that it would inspire some sense of rivalry between them – he’d been spot on for Abasi, but unfortunately for both men, Jason was too focused on kicking Batman’s ass to care about anything other than completing his training as quickly as possible.

It had fucked with Dr. Strangelove’s plans, majorly, and Jason had ended up killing him pretty quickly. Not so quickly that he hadn’t had time to enlighten both of his pupils on their final graduation test – they were to seduce each other to the point that one would be so lost in the art of “Amor” he couldn’t stop the killing blow he knows is coming. It was unnecessary bullshit, Jason’s not the type to bat his eyelashes at someone and stab them in the back while they’re distracted by his pretty (ha-ha) face. He’s convinced that Talia only sent him to Paris to train with the not-so-good Doctor because he pissed her off when he managed to stab Deathstroke while the old creep taught him how to snipe. Sure, it’d been an expensive bill, but the weirdo kept talking about Dick in ways that made him, even as dead-set on revenge as he’d been, see green. He deserved it, and Jason even managed to escape alive, so he’s not sure why Talia took the whole thing so badly. Whatever.

Anyways, Abasi’s one-sided rivalry he’d developed during their training had transformed into a full on obsession, according to the intel Jason’d gathered the last time he was on that side of the globe. He’d managed to make a name for himself in the civilian world as Egypt’s most eligible bachelor, really throwing himself into the whole “sex appeal ken doll” thing, but had been so laughably bad at everything else Jason had written him off as a threat. Silly him, apparently.

Glaring, Jason calls the heart of the issue as he starts to methodically dismantle the ex-emergency notification phone piece by piece.

Talia picks up on the second ring. “I was expecting a call earlier than this.”

Snorting, Jason replies, “Then you shouldn’t have sent A after me, T. I got the message an hour ago.”

Talia clicks her tongue in disgust. Judging by how much disdain is in that sound, Jason’s willing to bet she’d given Abasi more than enough information to do far more than send a text a while ago, and she’s disappointed in the results.

“Don’t bother being disappointed, he’s always been lackluster in anything that didn’t have to do with his dick. Why, T. Why the hell did you send him my way?” Jason’s trying to figure out what the hell Talia’s angle has been on this ever since he remembered who the hell Abasi was.

“I heard from my Beloved that you were embarking on a search for a paramour,” Talia says, silkily. There’s judgement there, but he can tell that it’s because she thinks he went to B instead of her with his foray into setting up his love life.

“What the fuck, I didn’t want the asshole to know, let alone for him to snitch to anyone,” Jason snarls, hands tightening on the delicate screwdriver he’s wielding. “This is exactly why I never tell him shit – fucker doesn’t know when to mind his own damn business.”

“Do not speak in such a manner unbecoming of your station, Habibi,” Talia reprimands him, annoyed.

“Of course,” He replies, automatically. Privately, he thinks it’s bullshit: the only “station” he has in the Al Ghul family is that of her hidden dagger, but sure. Jason can mind his fucking language.

“I heard that you were looking for someone, and I would have sent you one of your fellow recruits since I know you don’t suffer fools, but…” she trails off, more amused now.

“But I killed most of them,” Jason finishes for her. “They were barely even skilled enough to hold a dagger, T, and more than half of them had a grudge against D for being better after two years of training than they were with eight. I did you a favor.”

“You did,” Talia agrees. Never a good sign. “And I sent over your little… rival , in the hopes that you’ll do me another favor.”

Jason blanks at that. “What?” Talia never asks him to kill someone, she hands him orders and then acts all offended when he double checks her info to make sure the asshole deserves it. Also, how the hell did Abasi manage to make such a nuisance of himself that he’s managed to get Talia, Daughter of the Demon’s Head, pissed enough to call a hit on him?!

There’s a rustling noise over the call, like she’s crumpling something in her hands. “He managed to finally connect the dots between the League’s rumored red ninja with the fellow pupil he’d trained with under his master. Since he’s learned that, he has been acting as an absolute nuisance for my people, disrupting missions in an attempt to ascertain your whereabouts.”

“Wait, he’s actually been able to crash League missions?” Jason interrupts, incredulous.

Talia hums, displeased. “His social network is unfortunately adept at tracking down individuals from very little information. The operatives that didn’t need to be terminated were immediately given remedial training.”

Oh shit, that’s gotta suck. Jason’s only tangentially been exposed to the craziness that is modern internet culture, including the obsessed fans who are more than willing to dox a random person in the hopes that their idol might even momentarily acknowledge them. Looks like Abasi’s learned to utilize more than just his own strengths, which is progress, even if it’s come years too late in the game to be useful.

“After the latest incident, I got ahold of the… enamored young man. Since you just so happened to be in the market for a partner, it seemed easiest to kill two birds with one stone.”

“T, tell me you didn’t.” Jason would rather gouge out his eyes with rusty spoons than have anyone think that he could ever be attracted to Abasi. The man’s got a traditionally good-looking physique, but he’s a complete moron.

It had been a chore to partner with him during training – the man had been insufferable, always trying to flaunt everything he had to be viewed as “superior” to Jason. Every day, he’d gone on and on about being the better lover out of the two of them, the ultimate lover. Jason had just been there to check a box, fill the role asked of him. The fucking drama alone would have been more than enough to sign his death warrant, back in the day, but things are different now. Even with the way he’s been fucking with T’s missions, Jason’s not sure he’s got the moral grounds to actually kill him for being a nuisance.

“T –”

“Jason, I know just how much he annoyed you. He’s been absolutely unbearable since he’s caught onto a scrap of news regarding your continued existence, and he will only get worse. This will take care of a good number of issues before they come to roost,” Talia sighs, anticipating Jason’s hold-up. “You’re stressed, I know. Your experience with dating must have been nothing short of disastrous, and you require a healthy outlet for that.”

“What, did B tell you that, too?” Jason asks, bitter.

“No, Jason. I know you,” Talia says firmly. “You are not the type for casual love.”

Rolling his eyes, Jason tries to ignore how her affirmation does make him feel better. Talia knew right away that this would be a shitshow, before Jason did, even, and doesn’t think it’s because there’s something wrong with him. She makes it sound so reasonable that everything he’s tried has failed, like there’s still hope that he’ll find what he’s looking for.

“Additionally,” Talia continues, breaking through a rare moment of introspection, “he has been branching out into the realm of creating and distributing pornography, to continue his… quest. This includes media depicting his fans.”

Weird, but not illegal.

“He said, and I quote, “Age is not a discriminating factor”, when I asked him how he monitored who sent him the material he works with.” Disgust drips from her voice – at the start, she’d been more neutral to the worse evils of the world, content with the knowledge that they’d all die someday, and it would be sooner than they’d bargained for if circumstances allowed for it. Now, after having to sit through the innumerous rants and lectures Jason’s opined on to anyone willing to listen on the topic of rapists and child molesters, she’s changed. Damian can and no doubt will claim a decent amount of credit for her shift, but Jason doesn’t care as long as it means she’s got something of a grudge against the same people Jason does, and is more than willing to point him in their direction when it helps both of them out.

Talia’s habit of extensive planning and behind-the-scenes maneuvering has an added benefit of making it so that her hit list aligns nearly perfectly with Jason’s shit list.

“You always give me the strangest presents, T,” Jason drawls. He regrets not taking him out earlier, especially now that he knows the asshole’s done damage that can’t be reversed, but he’s about to fix that issue. “Still would have been nice to get a heads up.”

“I would never get you something so unsatisfactory as this to celebrate your continued existence,” Talia reprimands, annoyed by the insinuation. “It is insulting that you think I would not only gift you something so low quality, but that I would also do so months away from your actual birthday.”

Jason laughs. “Alright, my bad, T. Didn’t mean to diss your present-giving skills.”

Sniffing, Talia accepts his concession. “Hm. Ensure that you clean up this mess in a timely manner, please. Seeing his name appear on mission reports is becoming quite tedious.”

“I’m still going to do the same research as always, T,” Jason warns, “but I’ll have everything wrapped up by the end of the week.”

“I appreciate it, Habibi,” Talia sighs warmly. “Be sure to let me know once you do find your match, will you? I want to meet whoever you deem worthy of taking up that precious space in your heart.”

Flushing, Jason fumbles a screw, watching in mortification as it rolls off of the table and onto the floor. Somehow, he manages to pull himself together to respond. “We’ll see, T. I’ll update you once I’m done.”

Talia cuts the call after that, never one for goodbyes.

Embarrassed, Jason puts down the half-deconstructed phone and buries his head in the table. Argh, why does T always switch back and forth between crazy bitch and one of the best mother-figures he’s had?! God, she’s even worse than Selina these days.

Giving up on any kind of fine-tuned projects for the time being, Jason wraps the bits and pieces he’s been messing with in multiple layers of tin foil before chucking the ball into an empty corner of the kitchen. He’ll finish dismantling that later.

With one distraction removed, Jason pulls out his laptop and starts cracking open research he would really rather not be doing – he hates it when they involve minors in the sex industry. Talia’s only given him bad information once, but that had almost cost the Replacement his life. No matter how much he trusts her to have his best interests in heart now, there’s no way in hell he’s not going to put together his own dossier on Abasi before he allows himself to play judge, jury, and executioner.

…

Egypt is bright and lively despite the lower temperatures, people going through their daily lives as normal. There’s good food, ample opportunities to check on some of his more lucrative trade routes, and an overwhelming sense of relief.

Abasi, for all that he was less of a threat than a pissed off Kiteman, seemed to induce stress in Jason to a completely unwarranted degree. Talia was right, this whole trip was strangely cathartic.

He’s spent three days in the sun, scoping out Abasi’s (honestly insulting) traps and snares for him, gathering intel on his target’s movements and habits (which haven’t really changed in three years), and setting up a series of events to bring his world crashing down around him.

First, the news that he’d been making porn on the side went public – not a huge issue, especially if Abasi had the good sense to lean into it, incorporate it into his signature “charm”, but he didn’t. Instead, the man panicked, pacing back and forth in his flat as he called every person he’s got to help save his ass.

Next, evidence of the underage photos, complete with witness statements and accounts of just how much harm the celebrity had caused dozens of families. A short pause to let the allegations sink in, and then Jason escalated to releasing information on the adult videos the man had filmed with said underaged parties.

Most people stopped picking up Abasi’s increasingly frantic phone calls, once that got out.

In the span of twelve hours, Jason systematically destroyed his career, social standing, and life. It’s nothing other scumbags haven’t come back from before, but with him? Oh, Abasi’s always been built like a house of cards. Jason just had to blow hard enough, and everything would come crumbling down. He’d been so obsessed with Jason, with the narrative of finally claiming his rightful place as their creep of a teacher’s rightful successor, that he forgot that Jason was never one to play along.

Abasi was so focused on creating the perfect circumstances for how he would “seduce” his once fellow trainee, that he failed to realize Jason doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the skills they’d learned together. The most he’d ever used them for is to identify whenever someone tries to use those skills on him – he was never going to bend to Abasi’s rules, show up at the coordinates specified for a nice date and a knife in the back.

No, instead he shows up at Abasi’s flat as the man’s curled into a corner, rocking as he tries to figure his way out of what must feel like an impossible situation. He doesn’t need seduction, he doesn’t even need force. Jason offers him a way out.

It’s not flashy, not a Red Hood kill. No, the kill is quiet, expertly enacted, and air-tight. Just like Talia taught him.

A large portion of Egypt’s younger and middle-aged women are devastated by the loss of a once beloved figure, but Jason feels just fine. They’ll get over it, find a new target of obsession eventually.

On his way to the airport, he calls up Talia.

“Habibi,” she greets warmly. “I saw the news.”

“You’re welcome,” Jason snorts. “Never do that again. If you want me to get rid of someone for you, just ask me next time?”

Talia hums, noncommittal. “We’ll see. In the meantime, be sure to alert me once you find the complement to your heart.”

“…” Shifting, Jason shuffles his feet as he pauses to take in the bustling crowd around him. Laughter rings in the air, shouts both friendly and annoyed, muffled music belting out from a speaker held by a group of teenagers trudging down the side street to his left. “You really think I’ll find someone? I’m not exactly looking anymore, T.”

“Of course, you’ll find someone,” Talia says, absolutely certain. “Whether it’s romantic like what I feel for my Beloved, or familial like what I feel for you and Damian, you will find your mark and perform adequately. You always have – this will not be the arena in which you are defeated.”

Altogether more combat-coded than Jason was hoping for regarding a love-centered pep-talk, but that’s Talia for you. Easily one of Jason’s top two mom-figures, even with all the added craziness they’d run into a couple years ago.

Resuming his trek, Jason smiles. “Thanks, T. I’ll let you know when I find my ‘mark’.”

The sun is annoyingly bright, Jason has eight more countries he has to check in on to make sure that the possibility of something similar happening is thoroughly stomped out, and he has a deadline of a month and a half to do it all in.

He’s always liked to be busy.

#OnlyInGotham does RH’s boyfriend have some insane beef with Egypt’s infamous playboy?? The news broke this morning of the guy’s passing, and Other #2 walked into the morning meeting with a truckful of goodie bags to celebrate? She said that they’re from JT. What HAPPENED there??

REPLY: Wait, Abasi’s dead??? Oh no, my nana’s gonna be DEVISTATED!!

REPLY: REPLY: Just don’t tell her about all of the extra rumors that popped up right before it happened, that’s some nasty stuff

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: I’m honestly wondering if some of them have to be true? The amount of evidence was crazy, and he did un-alive himself for a reason. Plus, JT doesn’t celebrate death like that unless he’s got a REASON

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: and y’all KNOW who his boyfriend is.

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: yo, wait, are you saying RH offed this random model dude???

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: nah, just that he’s probably the kinda guy who would have gotten fucking gone if he ever stepped foot in Gotham. RH and JT are good to us like that.

Chapter Text

+1.3 Roy Harper

Star City is annoyingly bright, for this time of year. The sky should be gray and overcast, threatening freezing rain and misery, but instead the sun is stabbing Jason directly in the eye, not a cloud in sight. Ugh, he has no idea how Roy can stand this after a long patrol: Jason’s not so isolated that he can’t handle the light, but he needs more prep than just, hey I woke up this morning and there that bastard was, all cheery and bright and crap. He swears, the shit he does for Roy.

It's late afternoon, the worst star in Star City finally lowering from its zenith, and Jason has fully exercised his right as a guest to stand authoritatively in the middle of the kitchen and “supervise” as Roy and Lian put together lunch. It’s been a couple of days since he’s had the chance to talk in person with his friend, so he’s been filling the little family in on the latest drama – after all, the least his friend can do is listen to the latest shitshow to come from Fuller Hearts.

Everything’s mostly done, and Roy, the lazy bastard, has situated himself at the table with a bowl full of cut fruit as he waits for Jason and Lian to finish with the sandwiches.

“And then, the jerk starts trying to flirt with me! Right after she completely ignored the person who was actually supposed to be her date! Who even does that?!” 

Jason waves his hands emphatically, looking over to Roy to make sure his friend is still following the messy tale.

Roy, one elbow propped up on the table and his chin resting in his hands, smiles back at Jason, amused.  “I mean, weren’t you there to kick her butt anyways? Wasn’t it good that she was paying more attention to you than to the potential victim?”

Jason huffs, turning back to the counter to help Lian neatly cut the crust off of her bread slices. “I mean, sure, but it was still such a dick – uh, douche move.”

Lian side-eyes him for the slip-up, but lets the matter go as she goes back to glaring at the masterpiece coming to life under her hands. A plain ham and cheese sandwich will never be the same, after the world is introduced to her culinary genius, he’s been assured.

“Mm-hm,” Roy hums, tossing Jason a package of pre-sliced cheese he’d nabbed from the fridge and hidden, because he thinks it’s funny to watch Jason panic over leaving food out. “And does this make her better or worse than the weird death-obsession lady you took down last month?”

“Oh, worse, one hundred percent. She was bigoted and outright delusional, but this lady was just being rude on purpose because she felt like the world was supposed to bend to her every whim. A-hole didn’t even have an insanity plea to excuse her behavior,” Jason replies, automatically, placing a slice in Lian’s demanding hand.

Roy’s been something of a safe-harbor for him, throughout the whole shit-show his dating career has been. He’s been supportive, sending encouragement over texts when Jason was freaking out in the start, then hilarious, once Jason had decided that his time was much better spent punching criminals and tracking down their bosses to shoot. He only judges Jason for the small stuff, like how he used a move from Miss Congeniality to take out one of the goons attacking him, or how he only ever seems to warrant a max of four people when he goes out catfishing traffickers. It’s a relief.

Lian showed up halfway through their second rant-slash-burger grab, and has become a staple ever since. She’s hilarious, rolling her eyes and calling everyone dumb. It makes up for the way Roy elbows him when he forgets to try and censor himself around the kid.

Speaking of the little munchkin, she finally puts the finishing touches on her masterpiece and declares it ready for the table.

“What about the rest of the sandwiches, sweetie?” Roy asks without even looking over.

She glances at her personal plate, stacked tall with toasted bread, cooked ham, mayo, egg, and slathered in butter, then at the two other plates, still empty, and shrugs. “If you want food, you can make it yourself, dad.”

Jason snorts as Roy groans.

“Really? You’re not even gonna make Jay something, since he’s a guest?”

Lian turns to look Jason up and down critically. “Is he, though? Anyways, he’s here to see you, so you should be the one making his food. I’m ready to eat, when you stop being lazy.”

With that declared, she grabs her plate and hops down from the chair she’d been using to reach the counter, plodding over to the table and sitting. Expectantly, she stares out at the two of them, judging them for making her wait to eat.

“Jesus,” Roy laughs under his breath as he pushes out of his seat to whack Jason for laughing at him.

Retaliating, Jason tosses the bag of white bread at Roy’s head, flashing a shit-eating grin at him. “Hey, I’m your guest. Make me food.”

“You’re a menace, is what you are,” Roy complains, but grabs four slices anyways. In short order, two (far less impressive) sandwiches are plated up and brought over to the table.

Lian tries to re-arrange her food to hide the massive bite she’d taken during the minute and a half they’d spent putting together their portions, looking innocent.

Jason reaches over to ruffle her hair, shaking his head. “Nice try, squirt, but maybe leave the top piece alone to try and cover up the fact that any of the middle is missing next time.”

Roy groans loudly. “Stop teaching my daughter how to be sneaky, she doesn’t need any extra help!”

Holding his hands up, Jason puts on his own innocent look. “Hey, I’m just trying to help her out, encourage her in her interests.”

Pointing his sandwich at Jason, Roy frowns in mock disappointment. “You’re a bad influence, is what you are.”

Jason leans over and takes a bite out of said sandwich, relishing in Roy’s offended cries and Lian’s delighted laughter.

Things settle down after that, Roy and Lian eating their food as Jason launches back into his impassioned tale of the assholes and idiocy plaguing the dating world.

Eventually, while Jason’s cooling down and eating some of the lunch they’d made together, Roy speaks up.

“Jason, how many times have you been over to visit me and Lian?”

“Like, at least once a week by this point. Why?” Jason’s suspicious. What does that have to do with literally anything he just said?

“And what have we been doing whenever you come over?” Roy asks, weirdly amused and patient.

“We get food, sit down, and talk. Last week we went out to watch that new action movie Lian wanted to see, and before that we had a Disney marathon.”

Nodding, Roy keeps giving him that look .

Jason breaks. “What, Roy? Clearly, you think I’m missing something. You gonna enlighten me any time soon, or are you just gonna keep sitting there like a smug asshole?”

Lian giggles.

“Butthole,” Jason corrects, tone unrepentant. “Don’t call anyone an asshole unless they really deserve it, sweetie.”

“You know, most people would consider most of those things dates.”

Jason blue-screens.

Frowning, Roy sits up. “Unless you didn’t? They don’t have to be if you don’t want them to be, I just figured…”

Holding up a finger, Jason puts his head in his hands.

“Jay…?” Roy trails off, sharing a worried glance with Lian over his head.

“Are you telling me,” Jason starts, voice strained, “that I’ve been dealing with this bullshit app when I could have just talked to you and avoided all of this crap ?!”

Relived, Roy laughs, Lian joining in at the amount of trouble Jason’s caused for himself. “Well, I like to think that I know you better than that, Jay. It sounds like, at the start, you really didn’t know what you were looking for. It’s a lot better to figure that garbage out for yourself. It’s not really something someone else can tell you.” 

“You just want a friend, dummy!” Lian says, her underlying tone conveying just how dumb she thinks Jason is being right now. “You have me and dad for the whole family thing. You just wanted more regular friends!”

Jason turns his head to face her, contemplative. “You might be right, shortstack.”

Sticking out her tongue in a display of maturity, Lian crosses her arms. “Of course I’m right. Daddy says that all of the bats are dumb as heck about feelings, so obviously you weren’t gonna be smart about it.”

“Oh, Roy said that, did he?” Jason asks, sliding his gaze over to the suddenly nervous redhead.

“So, have you made any more friends? Jay, come on, you know I’m just joking! Mostly.”

Rolling his eyes, Jason lets it go. “What do you mean, more friends? Outside of you, Kori, and, like, two other people, I don’t have friends.”

Leaning back, Roy picks up a nearby pen and starts doodling absolutely terrible stick figures on one of the clean disposable napkins littering his kitchen table. “You’ve got those two kids, right? Signal and Spoiler?”

“They’re bats, they don’t count,” Jason shakes his head.

“What about Bluebird?” Roy tries, scribbling away. “I know you like her enough to steal her toys, if nothing else.”

“Used to be a bat, kinda. Still doesn’t count.”

“How about that mean lady you work with?” Lian pipes up, poking at her dad to draw said mean lady they’ve only ever heard of through Jason’s rants.

Screwing up his face, Jason tilts his head. “You mean RQ? Nah, she’s my right hand. I’d trust her not to screw me over, but the day I go to her for friendly advice is the day she slaps me around the head and tells me to pull myself together.”

Lian pouts, but Roy just continues drawing all of Jason’s supposed friends. “What about that new kid you got? The one with the meme shirts?”

Roy had gotten one with a picture of Huntress glaring out, arms crossed. A stylized arrow was pasted about her head, captioned with “Point me in the direction of the fucks I give.” The back of the shirt has the skull and crossbones on it, a cartoon arrow sticking out of the skull. Under it, it says “Oh wait, I don’t have any”. Lian had gotten one of what’s probably supposed to be Oracle, a green face made up to look like the Wizard of Oz, with the words “I say I don’t know, but trust me – I be knowing” written in a fancy banner over top of the graphic. They’d both been hits.

“Their sister’s the one who makes the shirts, they just advertise,” Jason automatically corrects. “And no, they literally work for me. All of the people you’ve mentioned have been connected to my night job, and therefore don’t count.”

“What about your granddad?” Lian whines. “You can be friends with your family.”

“Alfie – yeah, you got me there. But I can’t always go and see him whenever I feel like it, he’s a busy guy. Keeping B alive is a full-time job, and he never really appreciates it when I offer suggestions on how to make his life easier in that regard.”

“Probably because you keep telling him to let B eat shit whenever he fucks up,” Roy mutters under his breath, like Lian won’t be able to hear him curse even though she’s just across the table from him.

He’s not wrong. Alfie doesn’t appreciate his backseat driving, but is more receptive to Jason’s less-than-altruistic suggestions from time to time. Probably whenever B’s being a real pain in the ass.

“WELL,” Roy says loudly, drawing a stereotypical old lady holding a book. “What about that bookstore owner? July, or something?”

“June? She’s like, sixty, and only talks to me because we have similar taste in books,” Jason says, confused.

“Friendships have been built on less,” Roy points out, “ and you guys literally hold a two-person book club every week to discuss the books you recommend each other. Most store owners don’t do that, in my experience.”

Jason shrugs, uncomfortable.

“And how about that one girl, from the library?” Roy presses.

“Barbie?” Jason asks. He thought that he’d already made it clear that bat or bat-adjacent acquaintances, no matter how friendly, don’t count.

Roy flinches, as if expecting the other redhead to chew him out for even hearing that nickname said out loud. “No, I mean the one with the bike. The girl who started all of this?” 

Oh! “Mori’s more focused on getting her doctorate than making friends, especially with the random guy she found in the shitty library,” Jason hedges. They’d been texting occasionally, the student getting over her worry that Jason would try and hit on her about a week after their encounter. It’s been nice, discussing riding tricks and a couple of scientific articles she sends over so they can laugh at how fucking wild some astronomers are, when they think no one outside of their career field will read their shit. Still, Jason would hesitate to call them friends.

“Don’t call you favorite library shitty,” Roy says, using his chiding voice like he’s telling Lian to stop trying to squeeze out half of the toothpaste tube onto her brush. Jason feels his ears heat up in embarrassment – Roy only ever really pulls out that voice when he thinks Jason’s being obtuse about something, but only because he doesn’t know any better. “It sounds like you two are pretty much friends to me.”

“… Maybe.” Jason hedges. “We sometimes send each other videos of cool bike tricks we want to try out, and then the inevitable wipe-out videos that follow once we start actually practicing. Or, like, pictures of idiots doing stupid things when we want to laugh at other people.”

Lian nods solemnly and declares, “Friends.”

Jason crosses his arms, sighing. Can’t beat that logic, he guesses. “Fine, I’ve got one friend –”

“Two, unless you really wanna leave June out of the friendzone like that,” Roy chimes in, smug.

“Okay! Two friends. That’s not really a normal number, though. I think.” Glaring off to the side, Jason shoves the last bite of his semi-forgotten sandwich into his mouth to give him a reason to stop talking.

“Eh, I guess it depends,” Roy hedges, seesawing his hand back and forth. “For Dick? No, it’s not normal. But for the rest of us antisocial buttheads? Two’s a lot!”

“Don’t feel like a lot,” Jason grumbles under his breath.

Roy, of course, catches it. “That just means you’re social, in your own weird, only talk about books and stuff way.”

Lian nods. “I’m good, since I got Dad and Jen and you. But since you’re you, you need more people to keep you not-sad.”

“Well shit, I can’t argue with that,” Jason says, smiling over at the little trouble-maker. Lian grins back, knowing with absolute certainty that her word is law in Roy’s house. “How do you think I should go about making more friends, then?” 

“Just say hi! Don’t be all grumpy and quiet!” Lian says, like it’s obvious.

“From what I can tell, the way you’ve made friends so far is just by doing the things you would normally do – stuff you actually like,” Roy chimes in. “Maybe take the time to look around while you’re out during normal hours, see if there’s someone cool you might think would be okay to know, or maybe don’t just glare at anyone who tries to start a conversation with you.”

Biting his lip, Jason pokes at the crumbs on his plate. “I didn’t even find the coffee shop on my own, though. Fucking Tim brought me there.”

“Then hang out with your family more!” Roy says, exasperated. “I’m certain, and you can’t tell me otherwise or else I’ll tell Dick to call Alfred on you, that they’d love to at least see you every once in a while. They know you better than the random people you meet off of the street, and even if they take you to someplace that’s terrible, you can just get back at them during your next prank war. Problem solved.”

“Hrgh.”

Standing, Jason grabs his and Lian’s empty plates to bring to the kitchen sink.

“If you stopped being such a stubborn asshole about it, you’d find more friends!” Roy calls from the other room.

“Asshole!” Lian sings out, delighted.

“Wait, no honey, don’t call people that,” Roy backpedals.

Grabbing the dish soap and sponge, Jason scrubs at the plates, running them under water until they sparkle. Roy… Roy isn’t wrong.

There are very few people Jason actually feels safe around, and Roy is one of them. They’d known each other existed as kids, but he’d been real chill about the whole “I’m back from the dead and I kill people now” thing. They’ve both helped each other out of some terrible situations, seen each other through the bad and the ugly, and now? Now, Jason feels… comfortable, around Roy and Lian. Nothing’s a fight, nothing’s a pissing match or a guessing game. Sure, they tick each other off sometimes, but it never gets out of control, and they usually resolve their shit pretty quickly.

If Jason had to picture himself spending the rest of his life with another person, he wouldn’t be able to do it. If you told him to picture spending the rest of his life with Roy, that’s a different story.

He’s not sure what it means.

It’s… nice. Roy’s not gonna push him for an answer until he knows that Jason already has one and just isn’t sharing. He’s got time to figure things out.

Maybe he can talk to Roy about getting a couple of the things on his list crossed off, since they’re kind of dating? Maybe? Or, like, they could be?

As for the whole friends thing… Well, he’ll see how that goes. Jason concedes that maybe his kind of siblings would have a better lay of the land for what’s new and good around Gotham, outside of Crime Alley. And, Dick wasn’t too awful to hang out with. The Replacement’s been surprisingly cool, what with the whole willingness to work with the dude that majorly fucked you up not that long ago so long as he’s not trying to mess with him and his boyfriend. Damian would tell him that friends are potential weaknesses and to ensure they can withstand appropriate amounts of torture, which, no. Cass would smile sadly at him, shrugging since she’s David fucking Cane’s daughter and doesn’t have any better of an idea on how to do this than Jason does. Duke’s always got shit to say, and Steph would probably roast him for needing help to find friends and tell him to do what she did.

Wait, didn’t she go to college to find all of her normal friends?

… Should Jason go to college?

He’ll have to figure out what to do with the whole legally dead situation, and then work on getting his GED taken care of, but it’s… not impossible.

Maybe…

“Jay! We’re watching Moana, and if you don’t have a good excuse for why you’re not in the room, we’re starting without you!”

Roy’s shout breaks Jason’s chain of thought, and he blinks back to himself. He can think about this later. He’s got time. Rinsing the plates one last time (Roy can clean his own, he’s got two hands), Jason sets them on the counter to dry.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!”

For now, the only thing he has to worry about is sitting his ass down on a mildly uncomfortable couch, sandwiched between an overbearing feelings-monster and his kid, catching up on the years of media he’s missed.

Buried in rumpled blankets and surrounded by warmth on all sides, Jason finds himself smiling. Yeah, he’ll figure this out. He’s got help, after all.

 Hey, #OnlyInGotham twitter, I thought this guy was one of yours? *pic of Red Hood kicking ass next to Star City hero, Arsenal*

REPLY: What the hell, give him back!

REPLY: oh no, is this because JTs been going on dates?? Are they breaking up???

REPLY: REPLY: You can’t crush my OTP like that, no way. This just has to be another one of his collab things he does every once in a while

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: wait, wait. you guys are missing out – what if, Arsenal/Red Hood/JT?? like, double the red, and Arsenal gets two people ready to fistfight god for him??

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: Okay, either you’re a Star City native who knows WAY too much about Gotham shit, or you’re a fucking traitor.

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: listen, I just thought it could be cute. no need to try and knife me over it

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: *squints suspiciously* you’re on thin fucking ice, my dude

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: I don’t know, he may have a point.

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: HOLY FUCK IS THAT THE REDHOODOFFICIAL? WHAT????

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: OT3 Confirmed???

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: What the fuck is happening here

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: FUCKING MAGIC, APPARENTLY. I DIDN’T KNOW RH EVEN KNEW HOW TO USE HIS FUCKING TWITTER, AND NOW HE’S VAUGE POSTING ABOUT BEING IN A THREESOME??

REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: REPLY: 😊