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“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Jason was halfway to dragging a Scarecrow goon across the wood flooring of one of the bars he looked after, when he saw the kid. He might’ve felt bad after dropping the guy so abruptly with a thud that rattled a nearby table’s glasses, but with the figure of one Damian Wayne at the bar, Jason felt he had more pressing matters than politeness.
To top it all off, the kid wasn't even in uniform. No, the little brat seemed to revel in having trudged somehow unscathed into Crime Alley in his rich, puffy, green winter coat and cashmere sweater. His feet swung as he rocked a misshapen barstool back and forth with the heel of his boots. A clear straw dangled from his mouth as he sipped on what Jason assumed was orange juice with one of those little paper umbrellas stuck out over the rim. A chunky pocket sketchbook was splayed out on the table as he sipped.
The sight almost single-handedly had Jason believing he’d been hit with Scarecrow’s new laced batch of fear toxin during his last bust. It was always weird to see the kid doing kid shit, even if the brat wasn’t even aware he was doing it. For all he knew, the sight was sophisticated: a drink at the bar and a little art. Jason tried to push the mental image away of a kid with a coloring book and a juice box instead. Somehow, he knew if he thought it, Damian would sense it and kill him in his sleep.
The brat didn’t even deign to acknowledge him as stalked towards the bar to interrogate Benny, the bartender who Jason usually went to for information. The man barely looked up from the scotch glass he was wiping down and he didn’t have to ask before the man spoke. “Kid said he was here for you, Hood. Had the look of one of your strays.”
That seemed to raise the brat’s hackles. Obviously, it would take a perceived insult to get the little shit to respond. The straw dropped away from Damian’s mouth as he hissed, canines flashing. “I am not a stray.”
The threatened man leaned on the counter. Benny grinned, throwing the towel in his hand over his shoulder. “Yeah, right. With that attitude of yours? Keep those little teethies to yourself.”
Jason decided to step in before the kid could show Benny exactly what that toothy grin could do. Waving him off, Jason let the Scarecrow goon be taken away by his men in the bar crowd. He guessed interrogating the guy would have to wait.
He turned to Damian who had gone back to sketching in his notebook. “So?”
“So what?”
Jason rolled his eyes, though under his helmet, it probably was more like staring blankly ahead. He had zero patience for this. “Why are you here?”
“I am currently taking a sabbatical.”
Incredulity seeped into his tone, unable to be masked by the vocoder in his helmet. “A sabbatical.“
“Yes, and I find the only place in Gotham no one will bother me is here.”
“Yeah, and what about you bothering me?”
“You won’t even notice I’m here.”
“Bullshit. Besides, there’s no way everyone doesn’t know that you’re here. They’re all sort of obsessive about stalking, you know.”
“It’s not about knowing where I am. It’s about not being bothered. This will work because no one wants to be around you.”
Teenagers were such little shits. Had Jason been this annoying as a kid? No wonder Dick hated his guts back then.
“Oh gee, thanks, kid. Tell me what you really think.” Jason waved a hand to Damian. “You couldn’t bother Dickwing for whatever this is?”
Damian went still for a sliver of a second. “Richard likes to talk.”
Oh boy, did Jason know that. Fair enough.
Jason dragged up a seat to the bar to sit. It had to be bad if Damian ran away to Jason of all people and not even attempt to make the trek to Blüdhaven. He made to drag his hand through his hair, but awkwardly met the smooth surface of his helmet.
…He was gonna regret this wasn’t he. “Babysitting is where I draw the line for my daily social interaction quota, actually.”
The kid stopped all attempts at his calm lounging and snapped his sketchbook shut. “I have no clue why you are so adverse to this after seeing your pathetic attempts at interpersonal dealings-“
“Hey, I’m plenty sociable!”
“If anything, you should be grateful for my company seeing as you have no companions whatsoever.“
Jason wondered if it was childish to tell your little brother he had no friends. Actually, Jason didn’t care. “I have friends- like hell you have friends!”
Damian looked surprisingly pleased. “I’ll have you know-“
Jason pointed a finger at him. “Alfred doesn’t count.”
He was sure Damian’s eye was twitching. “…Kent visits the manor at times.“
Ha! He got the little shit there.
…Man. Was this what Jason’s life was becoming? Satisfaction after bullying little kids? Jason shook his head. “I’m still not convinced you haven’t threatened that Jon kid into that by the way.”
Damian brandished his straw at the bar crowd like it was a sword. “As if your little legion of minions here isn’t managed by a healthy dosage of fear.”
“They prefer the term employees or business partners actually-“ Wait, a second, this line of conversation felt strangely like a deflection. He had to be losing his touch to start falling for Robin 101. “Hey! I'm not having this conversation with you. Go home. Don't you have a bedtime?”
“The term is curfew, Todd. And with our line of work, you know we are nowhere near a time where we would be asleep.”
“Don’t care. Get lost.”
“In Park Row? Alone?”
Jason knew the kid inserted just enough of that unbearable Bristol brat energy into that whine just to be annoying. “Please, you got here in that rich brat get up just fine.”
Damian brushed imaginary lint dust off of his puffer jacket and sweater with all the pomp of an Alfred fresh from the dry cleaners. It was odd how perfectly Damian was a copy of the man at times. “Hm. We are miles from Bristol. The trains do not run this time and Pennyworth should not be driving so late. He says hello by the way.”
Then, from seemingly nowhere, Damian slid over a still warm container of food in one of Alfred’s sturdier tupperwares. Jason groaned at the bribe and the implied ‘watch your brother’ from Alfred that it was. “You’re telling me Alfie let you out of the house this late?”
“It was relatively early when I got here. It’s not my fault you take exorbitant amounts of time cleaning up minor squabbles such as this.” Damian gestured to the drag marks from the Scarecrow goon left on the bar floor with the tips of his steel toed boots.
“Fuckin’ hell.” Jason dragged his hand down the face of his helmet, feeling more infinitely tired than he did when he started this conversation. He was supposed to be having a meeting about Scarecrow not minding territory lines, not figuring out custody issues with his kid brother. He did not have time for this.
“…You’re gonna be silent.”
“Of course.” Jason half wanted to take it back with how smug Damian managed to make that sound. He pushed through, telling himself it was all for an homemade Alfred dinner. He slowly dragged the container by the lip across the table towards himself.
He tapped the cover, enunciating each word. “I’m gonna hear zero, zip, nada from you.”
Damian nodded, turning back to reopen his sketchbook with an annoyingly triumphant smirk on his face. “I am adept at being unheard.”
And unheard he was.
The kid turns out to be surprisingly well behaved while he gathers his guys back up again. It was weird enough that he looked over to glare a hole into the side of his head every so often. And like the little bat he is, Damian always seems to sense when Jason does that. For the sake of his reputation in his own damn bar, he tries not to look as unsettled as he feels when Damian’s unblinking green eyes meet his own directly through his HUD. Probably some freaky echolocation shit he learned from the League. Or some weird genetic Bruce trait.
It’s a bizarre bastardization of Bring Your Kid To Work Day, but Jason guessed it was just Gotham enough to bring your punkass ex-assassin little brother to mafia meetings to be normal. At least normal enough for no Gothamites to bat an eye. There were stranger things than the Red Hood talking crime lord business at the front of a bar eating homemade stew from a tupperware. Even stranger than the kid sipping orange juice and cutting up apple slices with a boot knife looking equally as threatening behind him.
As a true city native would say: it’s Gotham. What can you do about it?
By the time he’d scraped Alfred’s dinner clean, his guys were given their orders and the goon he’d caught was shuffled off to some warehouse by the docks, the kid had already packed up his things and was following him as he began walking out of the bar.
“Where are you going now?”
“Home.”
“You don’t live here?”
“In a dingy dive bar?”
“Seems your style.”
“Brat.”
It seemed like he wasn’t getting rid of the kid anytime soon. His bike had been a few short steps outside the bar under a streetlight. The hot rod red of his red bat symbol and the sleek design that usually accompanied a bat associated bike meant no one was brave enough to mess with it. Especially when they knew he was literally a few steps away from it. Twirling his keys around his pointer finger, he swung a leg over the bike and sat back to wait for Damian to catch up. “You’re lucky Alfie makes a mean stew. Get on.”
Damian cocked his head to the side, eyes assessing the obviously suped up former bat bike in front of him.
“On that monstrosity?”
“Just get on, Damian.”
“Fine.”
The kid just had to make everything like pulling teeth. When the kid had grumbled enough to sit behind him, Jason clicked the locking mechanism of his helmet off, blinking rapidly at the change from HUD view to dim streetlights. Before the brat could complain, he shoved the comically large helmet over his head and kicked the engine to life.
“What the hell, Todd. It smells in here-“
“Shut up, it does not! And keep that shit on, I don’t have any spare helmets.” He whacked the helmet Damian was halfway through trying to pry off his head. He tried not to snort at the little yelp the kid made at the sound. Instead, the kid then actually went to pulling at the sides of his red leather jacket, almost pleadingly.
“Todd, I am going to vomit.”
“Not in my helmet, you’re not. Now shut up and stop being dramatic. I live a block away. You’ll live.”
“I may pass out before then.”
Jason was maybe 67% sure the kid was just being dramatic. He hoped. Getting vomit out of a helmet was work he swore he’d never do again. “Hold on.”
And before the kid could whine and moan about anything else, he sped off into the Gotham night.
Getting to his apartment had only taken a short few minutes, which was a blessing after all the comments Damian was shouting directly into his ear about his driving skills and the general state of being in his proximity. Jason had half a mind to kick the kid off into the sewers and call it a night. Unfortunately, he needed his helmet back and he’d accepted Alfred bribes which definitely counted as some binding legal contract.
After he pulled the bike into the complex’s garage, he began to walk back out into the street to point a grapple towards the roof of his building. He takes another grapple out to offer to Damian who stares at him incredulously.
“Why are we going to your apartment from the roof?”
“It’s Gotham. Who uses the front door?”
The kid, who was obviously guilty of the same crime had nothing to say against that. Instead, took the extra grapple from his hand and followed as he swung his way up to the rooftop deck.
From the top, they could see the whole of Crime Alley. It wasn’t as impressive as the view from say, the Wayne building or the Clocktower, but it was the Alley and it was familiar and home. He still got the awe and fear he’d always get when he went out on patrol, even back then under a different name. There was always just something so alive about watching a city during the night.
Jason thinks about ushering the kid inside to get tucked in and wipe his hands of the whole debacle of tonight. But the way Damian lingers to train a familiar watchful gaze over the city, almost like saying hello and goodbye at the same time- it stops him. Jason’s eyes are drawn to the wall that encloses the stairwell down to the rest of the apartment floors. It’s longer than most, covered in old advertisements and small tags.
“Busted some kids tagging walls up here about a week ago.” Kicking a few cans with his boots, the clang of his steel tipped boots against spraycans jolted Damian out of his thoughts. Or as well as a vigilante could be jolted by such things.
“I don't really care about graffiti, but I’d rather not have civilians lingering around where I work. Left all these cans too.” Jason reaches down to snatch a red one and shakes it a bit before sketching out a quick little red oval with eyes onto the wall of the stairwell. He finishes the doodle off with a wonky looking symbol of a red bat below his little Red Hood doodle.
Damian raises an eyebrow. “And what’s that supposed to be?”
“Uhhhh, me duh?”
The snort Damian fails to hide is sort of sweet and Jason restrains himself from reaching out to mess the little dudes hair up. He’s not Dick. God, he can’t imagine the bloodshed if he attempted to hug the little demon.
Jason scoffs. “What, think you can do better?”
It’s an obvious ploy, saying that to the resident artist in the family. Still, they all have never been people to back down from challenges so of course Damian snatches the red can he tosses at him midair to work his own magic.
It doesn’t take long for the itching Bat trained curiosity to eat at him and blurts out almost against his will as they both are at work on the wall. “So what’s the real reason you’re out here avoiding Bruce?”
“I’m not avoiding-“
“Dude. I told Bruce to eat shit at least a hundred times when I was Robin. I became a crime lord. Tim joined his Titan boy band in New York. Even Dick ran away to do disco in space or whatever that was all about- anyway! What I’m saying is that you’re like-“ Jason balks, holding a hand under his chin. He scratches his cheek just below where the domino rests on the bridge of his nose.
“Oh man, you’re totally weird.”
“I am not ‘totally weird’-“ Damian shouts reflexively, and boy is it weird to hear him say ‘totally weird’ of all people. “Besides, listening to the Batman is the most essential part of being Robin, you washed out imbecile.”
“Blasphemy. I’m pretty sure every time a Robin listens to Batman a baby angel loses its wings or some shit-“
“Can you get to the point?”
“Okay, okay. I’m just saying its weird that you haven’t staged a runaway by now.” Jason shrugs, trying to sound subdued and chill about it. Sort of in the ‘well, you know how Batmen are’ way. “For it to happen, well, Bruce had to have happened.”
Jason knows he’s right from the way the kid pushes past him to start rummaging through more of the abandoned pile of spray cans at the foot of the barely tagged wall.
It takes a long while of watching Damian sketch out lines and test out swaths of colors before he speaks again. Jason is almost ready to accept that he’s probably lost whatever leeway he’d gained when the faintest whisper comes over the soft hiss of compressed paint on wall.
“Sometimes I think, maybe after everything I might-“
They continue on painting in a bout of silence. Jason doesn’t push for answers Damian obviously is having a hard time trying to put into words. Instead, he makes a rather stunning rendition of the Batman in all his formless and blob-like glory. It’s pretty hilarious if he does say so himself.
Jason gestures to it as a peace offering but the look in Damian’s eyes tells him he’s on the cusp of something vast and unknown. Damian sighs, switching gears.
“…Grandfather was a doctor.”
They both knew which one Damian was talking about. It was a rather big topic Bruce always seemed to be so proud about yet never mentioned a bit without getting morose. It’s an abrupt change of topic Jason isn't really sure where it’s going, but Jason knows enough about Damian’s flightiness to let his pondering run its course. He tries not to pause in what he’s doing lest he spook the kid from sharing more.
“And Father was to become one before his mission took precedence.”
…Oh, shit. This was like, way more than overbearing Bruce talk. This was starting to sound like future talk. Like Robin graduation talk. Jason attempts to sound as nonchalant as he doesn’t feel, picking up a black can to jot in his own additions to Damian’s piece.
“I’ve been skipping patrols. Getting distracted. To volunteer at the Wayne Hospital. I’ve been signing off on it as Father.” Holy shit! Damian Wayne? Mister I find your lack of devotion to the mission disturbing Damian Wayne? Mister I always listen to Batman Robin? This was crazy. This was crazy, right? Absolutely fucking batshit sort of-
“You know Bruce would let you do anything you wanted right?” Jason hums, lazily checking his nails like that was totally something he would do in this situation- holy fuck, he was not qualified to be therapy-ing this kid! “I actually think he’d like this idea you got going on better than the capes.”
Damian turns away, but not before Jason catches a face of pure and certain doubt. The sort that comes when someone tells you shit like Santa isn’t real or like your dog just died.
Ah. So this wasn’t so much a hypothetical future talk the kid wanted to have with Bruce- this was a thought that'd been going on for a while, a conversation that had probably just happened.
“I always knew I was born to fill legacies. To be an Alexander, the son of The Bat, a Robin-“ With each title, Damian cut a sharp and harsh line of paint across the wall. Overspraying a bit, the can sputters out more air than paint. The kid haphazardly tosses over his shoulder not exactly registering it almost colliding with Jason’s still unhelmeted face. He catches it, not really annoyed with seeing how out of shape Damian is.
“But isn’t this path a sort of legacy too? It may not be as rooted in the mission as the others, but- I mean, can’t he see that I’m taking this seriously too?”
Jason places the can under his boot, stomping at the cap a bit to compress whatever was left in the can. He gives it a little shake and a test spray before lightly tossing it back to the kid. He doesn’t even think Damian registers catching it mid air, his body a taut line of reflexes and tense emotion.
“There are other ways to save people. Ways that don’t end with people dying on your watch because you weren't-”
Damian’s words cut abruptly, as if he’d only just realized he was saying them aloud. Jason doesn’t say a word when the kid avoids his gaze, suddenly hyperfixated on finishing the piece in front of him. The roof goes silent, save for the interspersed sounds of paint being sprayed.
Jason wants to shake him silly. Tell him that Bruce is just being Bruce- obtuse and mean and loud and when he gets his comically huge bat ears out of his ass, he’ll get mopey and gruff. He’ll awkwardly start half apologizing and half being stubbornly silent about it. Eventually, he’d definitely fawn over MCATs and residencies and his precious little boy who’s continuing his grandfather’s legacy going to go to med school yada yada yada-
But Jason knows from experience that the kid won’t believe him and the thought wouldn’t help a bit. He knew how Bruce got when plans changed. He knew how emotionally impulsive the man could be for all his reputation for calm collectedness. The way he got when he thought a Robin was flying the nest. Jason could probably write all the stupid shit Bruce had probably said without thinking word for word and recite it back Shakespeare style to Damian to confirm.
Instead, he lets the kid deflect by offering him another can of spray paint. He knows it was bad from the way that Damian readily accepted the peace offering without a word.
“There’s still a lot I want to give as Robin. I’m not nearly done yet. I just…”
Damian’s eyes get stormy and defensive, paint in his hand veering off its straight line with a harsh curve. The paint arcs towards his boots and Jason takes a step back. The kid grits his teeth and huffs. A plastic calm retakes the tone in his voice. “I am making hypotheticals, Todd.”
It’s obvious that this was not in fact a hypothetical.
“…A doctor, huh?”
Damian huffs out a humourless thing that could not be considered a laugh. “You think I could do that?”
Jason never doubted him for a second. “Please. You’ve got the money for school. Plus, you’re like a snotty little genius. Like it’d be hard.”
“No, I meant…”
Ah.
Do you believe I am capable of that?
Out of everyone in the family, Jason supposes the kid would see him as the perfect person to understand an unspoken question like that. Even Jason felt like he wasn’t capable of certain things anymore. That after everything, maybe he was better at taking things from the world more than he gave it.
The fragile openness Damian has unwittingly unveiled makes his own faded longing rise. He barely realizes he’s said anything halfway through his words. “…Think I could be a teacher?”
It’s an old childish idea. Jason had barely dreamed the plan up before everything, and once what had happened, happened- the part that had wanted it so bad had stopped wanting. Back then, he’d thought of all the teachers who had looked him in the eye, who had never said things like stupid or street rat aloud but Jason heard it in looks and unfair grades and office visits nonetheless.
He’d fantasized about going back to the Alley, the community center with their small corner of coverless books who’d given him his first Austen. For women with children like his mother who’d spent the last of their change on paperback Dickens. For the students huddled around school bins with their library discard No Fear Shakespeares like panning for gold in a sewer.
He’d imagined walking back into his own classroom one day, to be the type of teacher who would feed the hunger made obvious by their novel stuffed book bags. Who wouldn’t look in a kid's eyes and tell them not to dream. A teacher who wouldn't look at all that want and tell him that just wanting it that bad didn't mean he'd make it out alive.
Right now, it was enough to be able to protect and reach his community in other ways as Hood and he wouldn’t give it up for the world. There were things that Hood could do in the Alley that little English school teacher Jason Todd would never begin to dream of changing. But that little part of him that was still Jason’s Robin, who still believed in things like academia and the school system still wanted. Just a little.
“A teacher?”
“Yeah. English Lit.”
Jason fully expected a snarky reply, some relieved eye roll to get past the emotional landmine they’d both managed to fall over ass first. Instead, he was met with the sight of pure and utter conviction. Damian had his mother’s verdant coloring, sure, but when he got intense about things- those eyes were all Bruce Wayne.
Damian’s dark, calculating gaze bore straight into Jason, appraising him before turning away with a short definitive nod. “I see it.”
Jason barked out a laugh, the grin on his face a lame attempt at hiding his wet eyes. “Really.”
Damian turned his own shiny eyes to the wind, blinking rapidly at the cold air passing through. “You’re completely overbearing and nitpick at everything which is only proper for a teacher.“
Damian squawks gracelessly when Jason plants his entire palm to the side of his face to push him away. Neither of them acknowledge that to get that close to the other would have to be let there on purpose.
Jason hopes the kid gets what he wants before he stops wanting it. He hopes he doesn’t want long enough for the dream to become desperation, to become hunger- to eat the dream down to its bones and spit it out like rotten food. At the very least, if he never gets out of this life, Jason hopes he never has to stop dreaming.
“You do know med school would mean a dozen more overbearing and nitpicky teachers right? Not to mention having to rub elbows with the riff raff- I’m sorry- other students.” Jason takes on a snotty tone shuffling around to cross his arms and tut snidely.
Damian makes the exact same tutting noise that he does and folds his arms in front of him. “I do not sound like that.”
Jason smirks. “Who said I was tryna sound like you? Maybe you need to do some reflection on your vocal tone.”
Jason thinks it’s extremely childish for Damian to snatch his Red Hood helmet and try to paint a mustache on it but childish is what Jason thinks he needs to be right now.
“Happy with your work, brat?” Jason grumbles trying to smudge the ink off of his helmet.
Damian shrugs, a smug little grin on his face. “It's probably the only facial hair you’ll ever have.”
Jason sort of loves this little shit, he won’t lie.
Rolling his eyes, Jason looks up at the rendition of himself. It always baffles him to see the way Damian sees the world, how he can recreate it from nothing. It sort of makes his chest twinge to see the way Damian sees him in the ink. Graffiti Red Hood dons a shiny yellow crown as he stands with his back straight and fearless. The red bat emblem emblazoned across his chest feels less like a bloody smeared proof of wrongdoings and more glows, almost like its own beacon of light in the darkness. It’s a vast difference between his old doodle of himself as a red oval with eyes. This Red Hood looks more sure of himself than Jason himself feels.
His eyes trail lower to his boots and under one leg is Jason’s black ink blob depiction of their father with a frowny face. The stylized text below it declares that Batman Sucks! The composition is rather inspired. Very Renaissance. Or was it Baroque?
Damian tilted his head at the section Jason completed. “It’s rather impressive how accurately you depict his expression.”
Jason may not be the artistic genius that Damian was but you could never go wrong with BatBlob.
Damian hums at the finished work. “It’s a tad juvenile, don’t you think?”
Jason shrugs, massaging his scarred hands from their position of squeezing paint caps all night. “People have been doing this sort of shit since the beginning of time, Dames. I think it’s just human.”
“Hm.” Damian takes a warm red, shaking lightly before he adds his own finishing touch to the bottom of his piece.
“Red Hood was here?” The tag is written in bold red beneath everything. “Not Robin? You tryna frame me or what, kid?”
Damian says over his shoulder with a devious smile. “Please. You would love to take responsibility for this defacement. Besides, Robin doesn’t break the law.”
Oh man, Bruce is going to have a field day with this kid’s growing pains. If he thought all of their graduations from Robin were bad, Jason would bet the Batmobile on Damian being ten times worse.
Though, by the way the kid ran away to him of all people in Crime Alley instead of a New York Titans base or deep space or Ethiopia- and that soft, soft dream of his growing wings under all that cold bravado… Jason thinks, hopes, knows he’ll be ten times better.
He gives up on trying not to laugh as the kid moves on to the advertisements plastered across the next wall, finding a good headshot of Bruce as the face of a Wayne Tech poster to deface. Somehow, Jason knows immediately he’ll be alright. They both laugh themselves silly into the cold Gotham air and the night grows shorter in every second.