Chapter Text
Dick wakes up slowly, which is strange in itself. Lately he’s been jolting awake, breathless from a nightmare, or more likely, not sleeping at all.
He lays completely still, not risking opening his eyes, and goes through his mental checklist. Status report, the Bruce inside his head barks. A quick flex of his wrists and ankles shows he’s not bound whatsoever. He’s laying on— canvas, a couch, he thinks. His leg aches, but luckily he wasn’t leaning on it, and the dull pounding of a minor head wound is tolerable. It’s cool- but not cold. Apartment building, somewhere above the first floor but below the tenth. There’s the distant sound of cars, and the noise of someone at a stove.
Relatively safe then. He tries to pull fragments together- He’d been in crime alley- he’d gotten hit with something—
Red Hood.
Dick cracks his eyes open.
It’s certainly a safe house- there are no decorations or personal effects other than a small bookcase with a few volumes on it, a yellowing potted plant in a forgotten corner, and not even a TV to look in the reflection of to see what’s behind him.
He shifts just the tiniest amount to turn around, and the noise in the kitchen stops. He doesn’t see anything more than the back of a dark-haired head before Red Hood puts his helmet back on, and Dick closes his eyes and regulates his breath again.
Booted footsteps, stopping a few feet away from the couch.
“I know you’re awake.” Hood says, voice modulator still on.
Dick sighs, and sits up. He’s still trying to figure out where Hood stands, because he can remember that Hood knows who they are, which, fuck you Bruce for that lack of a heads up, and yet the man did not kill him or threaten to use the information in some way last night.
“ I’m actually going to do what’s necessary to fix this city .” Hood had said, leaning in close. “ I’m killing the people that deserve it. Murderers, monsters. Your nightly activities are a bandaid at best. Gotham deserves an actual solution.”
An avenging angel type. Dick’s seen a handful in his years in Gotham, and they either crash and burn, get in over their heads, or do more harm than help. Bruce would never engage in a conversation with someone like Red Hood. He’d fight him, or disengage. But Dick isn’t Batman, and he never will be.
“Good morning.” Dick says, because Alfred raised him to be polite and Hood could have strung him up against a wall or something.
Hood just grunts. “So, uh, how much do you remember?”
The words send a spike of panic down Dick’s spine, even as he keeps his exterior countenance placid and unaffected. He hasn’t had a great memory lately. Large chunks of the last few weeks have been missing or fuzzy, and last night is no exception. “Not much. Got whammied by some new toxin, you uh, dragged me to your safe house. Most of it’s a blur.”
Red Hood both- relaxes, and doesn’t relax? It’s hard to read his body language with the big leather jacket and helmet. He seems unusually hesitant for someone with the amount of prowess it takes to unsettle the Bat. He’s certainly not an amateur, but here he is, shuffling from foot to foot.
It’s strangely endearing.
“How’s your head?”
“I haven’t had any complaints.” Dick says, completely as a reflex, and then freezes up. He really hopes Hood doesn’t take that as—
“Eww,” Red Hood says, and it’s so drawn out that Dick’s willing to bet that under the modulator, he said that a lot more emotively. “Gross. Too much information, asshole. I’m billing you for therapy.”
Dick laughs, and it’s the first real one in a long time. And god, how lonely is he, that he’s cozing up to the first crime lord not to beat the shit out of him?
“I ask cause um, last night I punched you.” Red Hood’s fists are balled at his side, more in shame than in aggression, and Dick leans forward. “In the head. I really thought you were going to dodge, and I just get angry sometimes—“
“It’s okay.” Dick cuts him off, as Hood just looks more and more miserable. He doesn’t know who’s stranger- himself for being more at ease that Red Hood admitted to punching him, or the crime lord for seeming upset about it in the first place. “My head hurts, but I’ve certainly had worse.”
“That’s good.” Hood says.
“One question though.”
“Shoot.”
“I’ll leave that to you.” Dick quips again.
“Ha, ha.” Red Hood seems slightly more murderous after that one, which was the metric Dick would always judge his jokes by as a kid. The more violent the joke made the Rogue, the better it was.
“You’re not a Joker fan, are you?” Dick asks. Instantly, Hood’s entire body language changes, and he grips the most visible gun on his belt (Dick knows there’s also one on each ankle, two inside the jacket, and another one in the waist band, at the least) as soon as Dick says the Joker’s name.
“No, why the fuck would you say that?” Hood hisses, taking a step closer and puffing his shoulders out. It would frighten a lesser man, but Dick’s worked with Batman for years, so he’s completely unperturbed.
“Uh, let’s see. There’s the helmet/hood,” Dick starts to count on his fingers. “The name, the aesthetic, and the killing people thing?”
“Consider it a reclamation of what I am due.” Hood hisses again. Cute, he gets super formal when he’s feeling defensive. Jason used to do that too, after he ran through all those regency books. “I am protecting this city from monsters like him.”
“Alright, alright.” Dick holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Just checking. It’s good that you’re not, because then we couldn’t be friends.”
Hood sputters something unintelligible under the hood, pauses like he’s about to go off on a tirade, and then evidently thinks better of it, plopping himself onto an armchair and beginning to clean his gun. Dick giggles a little at his expense, but stops to watch him.
They sit there in companionable silence. Dick notices how Red Hood has not placed himself in-between Dick and the windows or the front door. He appreciates the gesture, and it helps some of the tension that he always carries in his chest to relax just a bit.
“So I should probably get out of your hair.” Dick finally speaks up. He still feels unstable, woozy, and compromised, but he’s walked around Gotham in worse states before. He’s strangely reticent to leave, but if Bruce, the closest thing he has to family, doesn’t want him around, this crime lord certainly doesn’t either. “Or out of your helmet.”
“Do you even have anywhere else to go?” Hood intones, not even looking up- at least as far as Dick can see.
Dick winces. Is he pathetic enough to where Hood can tell that at a glance, or is that another secret he spilled last night? Whatever the hell this drug is, it’s strong- and he says “No.” without even realizing it.
“Then you can stay here for a bit, I guess.” Red hood says, and before Dick can open his mouth to thank him, he turns abruptly and goes back to a second gun. He gets up and walks into the kitchen. “Entertain yourself. Don’t touch my guns or leave that room.”
“Yessir,” Dick chirps, and when he attempts to jump to his feet, woozily falls back on the pillows of the couch. Yeah, gonna need some time on that one.
He hears Hood flick on a burner, clatter around with some pans. He’d offer to help, but he’s pretty sure he’d end up accidentally poisoning Hood.
Dick hasn’t eaten in … a while, but he hasn’t been hungry either. However, the crack of the shells and the smell of eggs sizzling makes his mouth water, and for a moment, he just lays back on the couch, with an arm tossed over his eyes, and wonders if maybe today he’ll feel a little better. He hopes so. God, he hopes so.