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It’s well after four in the morning when Hank stumbles—literally—over the new kid Robin.
He’s sitting on the kitchen floor in the dark, his head down, face hidden under unkempt hair. The shadows make it hard to see exactly what he’s doing, but there’s some shifting and rustling before he raises his face, like maybe he had his hands over his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, features mostly hidden in the dim light, but Hank can feel the heat of his glare despite the chill of the AC.
The little idiot fell off a building today—or technically yesterday—so Hank gives him a pass. Just this once.
“Hey,” he says, nudging the kid’s feet out of the way so he can open the fridge. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“No,” the kid says, his voice rough. He doesn’t seem willing to elaborate.
Hank grimaces to himself. He heard the little gremlin’s cry when the explosives went off, heard him scream as he fell. His voice echoed over Kori’s comm, the kind of sound no kid should ever make. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to talk—his vocal chords are gonna take a hot minute to recover from that.
Goddamn Deathstroke. Pulling out a container of Dick’s favorite juice, Hank takes a swig straight from the lip. Dick’ll be pissed once he figures out that Hank did it, but honestly fuck him a little. He’s the one that got them all into this mess. Not that Robin 2.0 is blameless here, but Dick, the fucker, should at least know better by now.
Whatever. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks or whatever. All Hank has to know is that he and Dawn are gonna be gone after this whole shitstorm blows over. Whatever Dick wants to do to fuck up his life or the kids’ isn’t gonna be their business anymore. Hank is washing his hands of it.
…After he finishes this carton of juice. And some frozen waffles, maybe. He squints into the carton’s opening, trying to gage how much is left in there.
It’s here, standing in the light of the open fridge, that he realizes the kid’s eyes have gone distant.
“Oy,” Hank says, nudging him again with one socked foot. “You good, kid?”
The kid doesn’t respond. His gaze is unfocused, like he’s zoned out, mouth slack. In the bright light from the fridge Hank can make out the cracks of chapped lips, shadows under tired blue eyes. The kid is wearing jeans, but Hank can just make out the shape of bandages underneath, wrapped around the place where Deathstroke cut the tracker out of him.
He’s had a hell of a few days. He’s too fucking young to be in this kind of shit. Trust him—Hank would know.
“Hey,” Hank says, crouching down until he’s in front of and roughly level with the kid. He tries snapping in front of his nose but gets no response. “Kid. Baby Robin. Bike Brat. Idiot.”
…Nothing. Hank sighs. Then, shuffling carefully backwards until he’s an arm’s length away because fuck if it isn’t a bad idea to go prodding at a vigilante—yes, even a miniature one—having some kind of crisis, he gives the little bastard a light smack on the cheek.
The kid startles, his vacant eyes jerking to Hank. He kicks out on instinct, but it’s with his bad leg, and he hisses in pain as Hank grabs his ankle so he won’t do any damage to either of them.
“You good?” Hank asks, arching a brow.
“Peachy,” the kid mutters, wrenching his foot back with gritted teeth. He doesn’t look peachy—his face is too pale, all washed out in the fridge light like some kind of ghoul. When Hank doesn’t back down, he scowls, lowering his head to scrub at his eyes with the palms of his hands.
“If you’re so peachy maybe you should go to bed,” Hank says critically. “It’s bedtime for the normal and perfectly okay human beings, you know.”
He expects a prod in return, or maybe a cocky grin and some snark. Kid has overconfidence out the ears on a regular day. But today is no regular day, and the silence rings out. All Hank can hear is the sound of the kid swallowing, too loud in the dead silence of the early morning.
“Suit yourself,” Hank mutters. He goes to stand, but pauses when the kid swallows again, harder this time. He hunches over, curled up like a much smaller child.
Watching closely, Hank narrows his eyes. Is he…?
The kid swallows again, thickly, like he’s trying to keep something down.
Fuck. Hank has no idea where the instinct comes from—too many parties where he and his asshole friends got puking drunk, maybe—but he’s moving before he really thinks about it. In less than a second he’s got the fruit bowl under the kid’s chin, apples rolling across the floor where he dumped them.
The kid grunts, trying to shove him away. He doesn’t get much of a chance, however, because it’s right then that he starts to retch, his hands automatically curling over the lip of the bowl as he leans over it.
…There goes Hank’s appetite. He scrunches up his face, leaning as far away as he can get as the kid chokes up a mouthful of vomit. There’s no escaping the sound of wet coughing, though, no matter how far he goes. He resigns himself to wincing through it.
It takes a minute before it tapers off. The kid purses his lips, making gross little noises as he clears his throat.
Right. Well, that happened. “Aren’t you a little young to be hungover?” Hank asks, trying to make a joke out of it.
“Fuck you,” the kid spits. It’s hard to tell, but there might be a waver to his voice.
Hank scrubs his free hand over his eyes, wishing that any of the others were around. He’s good with kids, yeah, but that doesn’t mean he wants to play babysitter to a pukey teenager right now. “Imaginative,” he says, when no one magically materializes to deal with this in his stead. “You must really be feeling rough if that’s the best you’ve got.”
“Not in the fucking mood, asshole.”
“Alright, alright, chill,” Hank says. He grimaces at the bowl. “You done with this?”
The kid shrugs sullenly. Not promising, really, but Hank is not sitting here with a bowl of puke next to him. He squares his shoulders, standing up to shove it in the sink for a quick scrub.
When he gets back, the kid is slumped even lower than he was before, his waxen face nearly level with his knees. Hank dumps the bowl in his lap then drops down next to him. He elbows him in the side.
“I’d ask if something disagreed with you, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything agree with you.”
He gets a sneer in response, pulled across pale lips. “Oh ha ha. You’re a riot.”
“Hey, I’m just being honest, kid,” Hank says.
“My name is Jason,” the kid snaps, sharp.
And, look. If there’s one thing Hank Hall is a sucker for, it’s a loud-mouthed twerp who lashes out when he’s hurt. He’s never been good at walking away. Go figure, right? But as he stares at the kid—at Jason—he can’t help but make up his mind.
“Alright,” he says. “Tell you what, Jason. There’s a state of the art entertainment system on the top level—let’s go watch a movie, your pick. I’ll even turn a blind eye if you want something rated R.”
Jason squints at him, a frown dancing across his face. “…What’s your fucking angle?” he asks, at last.
“Do I look like I’ve got a fucking angle?” Hank asks, nearly laughing aloud at the challenging look on Jason’s face. When Jason doesn’t back down, he shakes his head. “Alright, fine, you got me. I want to make sure you don’t choke to death on your own vomit after we spent all that time trying to track you down. Sue me, I’m sentimental.”
Jason stares for another long moment, his eyes unreadable. Hank looks back, not backing down. He’s not sure what Jason is searching so hard for, but he’ll either find it or he won’t. Hank has never pretended to be anything but what he is—an asshole with a mean streak that needs to be pointed in the right direction. Some days he doesn’t know what the hell Dawn sees in him, except that they hurt in all the same ways. But that doesn’t really matter right now, because he can see that Jason is tired, exhausted—sick to his stomach and probably watching himself fall on repeat behind his eyelids. If Hank can do even one thing to stop this kid from turning to something less healthy to cope, then fuck, he’ll do it.
“Come on,” he says, standing up. He holds out his hand. “I’ll even carry you up the damn stairs. Deal of the century.”
Jason stares at him for a moment longer. Then, more hesitant than Hank has ever seen him, he reaches up to grasp Hank’s hand.
Hank grins, hauling him up into a bridal carry. “Wasn’t so hard, now was it?” he quips, half-mocking.
“I’ll puke on you,” Jason threatens.
“Puke on me and I’ll drop you down the stairs,” Hank says cheerfully. But hey, Jason is smiling, and that’s all he was really aiming for.
It’s been a bad couple days, but fuck if they won’t get through this, no matter how rough it gets.