Chapter Text
They sit and talk in the cramped office for hours, and then sit in silence for longer. Around 3 AM the bulk of the traffic in and out of the club across the street has died down, and Jason’s mark is still nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t think Lenny’s going to show,” Jason says, voice sticking a little bit after his prolonged silence.
“Hm?” Steph mumbles beside him. He turns a little and sees that she’s completely slumped over, knees drawn up to her chest, head resting against a stack of water bottles. Her posture looks really uncomfortable, but her face is undisturbed. You’d think she was sleeping on a queen-sized bed at The Ritz, to look at her.
Jason scoots over to her and nudges her shoulder. “Hey. You wanna blow this popsicle stand?”
“I’m up,” Steph says in a frighteningly clear voice. She forces her eyelids open and groggily lifts her head. “Am I late?”
“No, you’re on a stakeout,” Jason says. “Well, leaving one.”
Steph scrubs a hand across her eyes. “I’m up,” she says again. Her bangs are sticking to her forehead, and she has a mark on her face where it had been pressed up against the water bottle packaging. Jason catches himself about to sweep her hair back, away from her face. He pauses, then does it anyway.
“Hey. If you don’t get up, I’m going to eat all of your birthday cake without you.”
Steph scowls, then blinks sleep out of her eyes. “I didn’t get any cake.”
“Well, then Lenny did us a favor by not showing his ugly face. Come on. Up.” He stands halfway to his feet and extends a hand to help her up. She groans as she creaks to her feet.
“What time is it?”
“Late enough that all of the bakeries in the neighborhood are closed. But that’s not going to be a problem.”
He takes them out of the building and back down the street to his apartment. Steph comes back to herself slowly, the swampy breeze outside on the street helping a little. They use the actual apartment door, not the fire escape, and Steph realizes that his door buzzer is marked “P. Worth.” She files that away for later.
When they’re upstairs Jason locks the many deadbolts behind them and turns to the kitchen. “I should have a box mix somewhere in here.”
Steph sits on the couch with her chin and arms resting on the back so she can watch. Jason scrounges through cabinets, then rechecks them, then sighs. “We’re going to improvise, actually.”
Maybe it’s the fact that she just woke up, or the alcohol still in her system, but Jason appears to be gliding through the kitchen as Steph watches from her perch on the couch. He takes out a loaf of white bread, and a tub of margarine, and digs out a container of sprinkles from the absolute furthest corner of his highest cabinet. Then he methodically cuts the bread into triangles and spreads the margarine on the bread, before topping the whole thing with sprinkles.
“I think I have a candle around here somewhere,” he mumbles. He disappears into one of the other rooms and returns a minute later with an honest to God scented candle, which he sets on the coffee table along with a plate stacked high with the bread, butter, and sprinkle concoction.
“There. The birthday spread is ready.”
Steph twists back around so that she can see the table. Jason digs a cheap lighter out of his pocket and flicks it a few times before setting it to the candle wick. The warm scent of vanilla and coconut smokes in her nostrils.
“Make a wish,” Jason says, holding out the jar to her. She blows, but the flame only sputters. Jason laughs. Steph leans forward to try again, only to find Jason doing the same thing. Their foreheads almost bump as their breath snuffs the candle out.
“What’d you wish for?” Jason asks, forehead inches from hers.
“That’s not how that works, idiot,” Steph says.
“Right,” Jason says. He twists to set the candle back down and trades it out for the china plate bearing the sprinkled bread. “Happy birthday. Here’s your cake.”
“Nothing about this resembles cake,” Steph says. As she picks up one of the triangles she realizes that the sprinkles are purple and red.
“It’s close enough for government work,” Jason says. Steph nibbles at the edge of the bread and is pleasantly surprised to find that she really likes it. She wolfs down the slice and then follows it closely with another one.
“That fucking slaps,” she says. Jason grins, a wide, happy smile that is so incredibly unlike the Red Hood.
“An old Todd Family recipe,” he says. He picks the candle back up and lights it again, this time setting it on the coffee table. The yellow of the flame glints slightly off of the glass on the bookshelves, reflecting in little points across the room.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a candle guy,” Steph says. Jason shrugs and picks up his own piece of bread.
“Mom liked vanilla. And houses need warm things.” Then, as if catching himself, “and it helps to cover up the neighbor’s shit smell.”
Steph tilts her head and looks at him deeply. The candle is reflected in his eyes, too, a jot of gold in the center of his pupils. They’re wide and dark now, in the dim lighting of his living room.
“Why do you do that?” Steph asks softly. Jason looks up at her.
“Do what?”
“Say nice things and then follow it up with something crass,” Steph says. “No offense.”
“I don’t do that,” Jason says. “I don’t really say nice things as a rule.”
Steph reaches out and jabs him on the nose. Her finger leaves a smudge of margarine on the bridge. “No lying on my birthday.”
Jason bats her hand away and glances at his watch. “It hasn’t been your birthday in four hours, blondie.”
Steph leans back to glance at the clock hanging over the book/gun case. “Shoot. I have a final due in four hours.”
“At 8 AM on a Monday?” Jason asks in horror. Steph groans.
“It’s the last week of the summer session, but you know how Babs is with homework. I should’ve had it all wrapped up a week ago.”
She slips off the couch and stretches her arms above her head.
“I really do need to go,” she says. “But thank you for going out with me. And for the cake.”
“Yeah, of course,” Jason says. He stands and walks her to the door, although he doesn’t really have to. It would’ve been awkward either way. Steph pauses in the doorframe to look him in the face.
“See you on patrol?” she asks.
“See you on patrol,” Jason answers.
Steph nods. Something in her chest aches a little bit, in a sad kind of way, and she can’t for the life of her decide why. It’s like she’s homesick, but she can see her home in the distance all lit up and golden in the dark.
Against her better judgment, she stands on tiptoe so she can kiss him on the cheek. She doesn’t know why. It just seemed like the right choice in the moment. Jason freezes, but before he can say anything like “what the fuck”, she’s disappeared down the hallway.
Jason stands in his own doorway for another several seconds, wondering if he had completely missed the “this is a date” memo.
When she gets back to her house Steph screams loudly into her pillow until her voice is hoarse. It had been a lovely evening. A great evening. Maybe one of the best of her life. She didn’t have to kiss him. She could’ve just gone home like a normal person, but she kissed the freaking Red Hood on the cheek. And it was nice. He was warm, and there were fucking candles, and she knew he was a sweet guy but hot damn she didn’t know he was that nice.
It could’ve been worse. She could’ve accidentally kissed him on the lips.
At that thought Steph shudders, then blushes, then screams into her pillow again, and then doubles down on her final with such enthusiasm that she is able to submit it an hour early. Not bad for a vigilante/student/professional hot mess.
A week goes by, and summer classes end, and patrols go as they usually do. Batgirl and Red Hood don’t run into each other again until Friday, when he happens to be in the neighborhood as she’s fighting off a group of purse snatchers. He swoops in, helps her take down one of the guys, and then gives her a sharp nod before speeding away on his bike. Steph doesn’t pick up on any obvious awkwardness, other than the usual Red Hood enigmatic energy.
Maybe there isn’t any awkwardness to worry about. Technically speaking, kissing someone on the cheek is a perfectly innocent and platonic gesture. Lots of people kiss their friends on the cheek all the time. She’s not even completely sure how she meant it. But the energy that night had certainly been intense, and it’s easier for Steph to pretend nothing happened and avoid Jason than it is to ask him whether he interpreted her gesture as a come-on or a friend thing.
And then, two days later, it’s the 16th. Jason’s actual birthday. And, as Steph finds out, Alfred’s birthday. When she mentions it to him before Sunday dinner, he frantically shushes her and tells her that if she makes a fuss over it he’ll put salt in her tea. Jason is conspicuously absent from dinner, and nobody else mentions his birthday, but Bruce and Alfred are both in a funk and keep glancing at the driveway every time they hear any sort of noise. It’s not unusual for him to no-show, and in fact he’s gone more often than he’s there, but Steph thinks it’s rotten to spend your birthday alone. And, she remembers, she made a promise last week.
Jason is holed up in his stakeout spot for the fifth time that week, watching the back door of Highlights through his scope, when he hears a knock at the door. Nobody else knows the location of this office, and the rest of the building is functionally abandoned. He sighs and flips his helmet over his head, keeping his hand on his gun as he walks to check through the peephole in the door.
Steph stands in the hallway, in civilian garb, with two plates of chicken tamales and a red velvet cupcake.
Jason tenses and unlocks the door. Steph grins as she lets herself in.
“Happy birthday!” she says cheerily. She sets her wares on one of the water bottle cases and starts unwrapping a package of plastic cutlery.
“It’s-- we did our birthdays last week,” Jason says, sliding his helmet back off of his head.
“That was the intention,” Steph says as she hands him the cutlery and one of the plates of tamales. “But then you bought me tamales and I said that I owed you. So now you get birthday round 2.”
Jason is, admittedly, incredibly hungry, and the only stuff he’d had stashed in his stakeout spot was water and granola bars. The tamales smell heavenly. He settles back against the wall next to Steph and digs into the food.
“Did you go to Sunday Dinner?” he asks Steph. She nods.
“You were right. Alfred is weird about his birthday. Killer roast beef, though.”
Jason sighs. “I should’ve just gone. But Bruce would’ve been weird about it.”
“If by weird, you mean ‘attempts to show you love and affection because it is the day of your birth and you’re his son,’ then yeah, probably,” Steph says.
“And the whole ‘I feel guilty because you were dead and then we didn’t talk for years and we only recently figured out how to be in the same room with each other without problems’ thing,” Jason says. Steph sighs.
“I’m glad you two can talk now,” she says, “but it sucks.”
“It sucks ass,” Jason agrees. He spears a chunk of tamale with his fork. “They’re still good sober.”
“Better, maybe,” Steph says.
They eat in silence for awhile, and when they’ve both finished their food, Steph slides the cupcake in front of Jason. She pulls a Batman birthday candle out of her pocket and jabs it into the white frosting.
“I’m hoping you have a lighter?” she asks. Jason nods and whips one out, flicking the candle to life. He blows it out just as quickly, then uses a plastic fork to cut it roughly in half. He passes one of the halves to her.
“Any progress on our man Lenny?” Steph asks. Jason tells her some of the details of the case as they eat their cake, and they half pay attention as they watch the club through the scope.
After awhile Jason pauses his talking and glances at Steph. She’s nodding as he talks, watching through the window dreamily, and there’s a smudge of frosting on her nose. He reaches out and absently wipes it away with his thumb. She looks up at him, forehead crinkling.
“What?”
“You had frosting--” He gestures to her nose with his thumb. She swipes at her nose and laughs.
“Hold still,” she says, scooping up some frosting and jabbing it at Jason’s face. He dodges and yelps.
“What the fuck?”
“Hold still!” she repeats. She finally swipes him across the nose and laughs again, sitting back to look at her work. Jason smudges at his face, trying in vain to remove it, but he doesn’t seem all that mad.
“What was that for?” he asks, befuddled. Steph doesn’t really know how to answer, because she kind of just did it on impulse. She shrugs.
“Seemed right,” she says. Jason scoffs, but he doesn’t seem actually insulted.
“And here I tried to help you out of the goodness of my heart,” he says in mock betrayal.
“Yeah you did,” Steph says. “Because you’re sweet.”
Jason starts.
“That is… not a word that has been historically used to describe me,” he says after a long moment.
“Well, it’s true,” Steph says. “You’re sweet. A cinnamon roll. A regular honeybun of a man.” And now she’s saying stupid stuff, because she accidentally made herself nervous. She didn’t have to make this weird. And yet somehow, of course, she did.
“And I think probably you always have been,” she continues, “but not in a weird way.” Which, of course, sounds weird.
Jason settles back against the wall and looks down at his hands. “You’re not half bad yourself.”
He goes quiet, and Steph sincerely worries that she has ruined this interaction, when Jason finally pipes up.
“I don’t really know how to do this.”
“Do what?” she asks quietly.
“Whatever this is,” Jason says. “The-- the young people stuff. The joking, and the flirting.”
Steph’s heart pounds in her chest, but she doesn’t answer immediately. “The flirting?”
“If that’s what this is,” Jason says. He scrubs a hand through his hair. “Like I said. I don’t know.”
His other hand rests on the floor between them, within reach of hers. She reaches out with just her pinky finger, brushing against his.
“Do you want it to be flirting?” she asks. She hadn’t called him last week intending for it to end up like this, but now she can’t imagine it going any other way. Being around Jason is easy, comfortable. Like she’s a puzzle piece finally snapping into place.
Jason turns his head, looking her deep in the eye. His eyebrows are knit together, crinkling the skin just above them. He’s got a little white scar just between them that she hadn’t seen before.
Very slowly, he leans forward, cupping one rough hand against her face. She leans in a little so that their lips can touch. The kiss is slow, warm, honest. Steph can tell he’s new to this, but it’s been awhile for her too. When he finally pulls away she misses it immediately.
“I just kissed Batgirl,” Jason says. Steph laughs.
“I just kissed Red Hood,” she says. “Not bad for two dead kids.”
Jason snorts, rather. He reaches up to swipe at the bridge of her nose again.
“I accidentally frosting-ed you,” he says.
She kisses him on the nose. “Like I said. You’re sweet.”
He leans back in to kiss her, still warm and slow, but with less trepidation. Steph closes the gap between them and wraps an arm around his neck.
They find out that stakeouts go by a lot faster when you’re kissing.