Chapter Text
Tim doesn’t really know how this happened.
Well, actually, that’s a lie. He knows exactly how this happened, exactly what words were exchanged and what steps were taken, but he’s still pretty confused as to why, exactly, he finds himself here.
Here being on top of a building slated for demolition several months ago, eating a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone with the crime lord who just shot a man in the head to save him from being stabbed, and therefore, Alfred’s disapproving look. Tim internally shivers. Maybe he should express more gratitude to Hood for helping him out. Alfie’s face of disapproval is nothing to scoff at, after all. He’s seen it push Batman, Bruce Wayne, easily the most stubborn man Tim has ever met, to bed. Alfred could take down governments and probably create world peace with that look, Tim thinks absentmindedly. Additional contingency-to-take-down-the-Justice-League-if-they-ever-go-rogue unlocked! Yes, the name needs work, shut up. At least it’s better than Birdarangs . Dick sucks at naming things.
Honestly, it’s not the weirdest situation he’s been in, and that fact kind of makes Tim want to reevaluate his life choices. Except not, because he’s Robin, and being Robin is kinda awesome, so fuck reevaluating life choices. That’s for emotionally competent losers. Tim has never claimed to fall into either of those categories. He is logical and really cool, if he does say so himself.
Still, Red Hood is well-known for disliking the Bats, so Tim keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for Hood to decide that no, Tim’s actually not worth keeping around, and pull out one of the guns holstered around his waist.
Right now, however, the man doesn’t seem to have any inclination of doing that, appearing content to simply eat his own ice cream cone (chocolate ice cream) in Tim’s presence.
As for how he got here, it was relatively simple.
About an hour ago, Robin had been patrolling the Bowery. Batman was punching his way through the criminals of Diamond District, Nightwing in Bludhaven, and Tim was running a solo patrol through the Bowery. He had orders not to take on anything more serious than a mugging, and for once, he had actually followed those orders, letting Oracle direct him to wherever he could be of most help. It was as he was standing on a rooftop, waiting for the next location to head off to, that he heard the by-now familiar sounds of a mugging happening a couple of alleys over.
Jumping over the roof towards, Tim paused, assessing the situation, before jumping down into the middle of the shadowy alley and punching one of the guys in the face. There were two, and at first glance they appeared relatively unarmed, the usual Gotham knives that everyone carried around notwithstanding.
Tim mentally nicknamed them Stupidface and Idiot. Yes, it was mean. He didn’t particularly care, though. He was hungry and he had math homework that he needed to do. He wasn’t feeling particularly nice.
Stupidface had clearly not been expecting Robin to drop in, and he went down like a sack of bricks, but Idiot immediately got into a sloppy fighting stance, facing Tim. Tim landed several hits in the next few seconds, while Idiot tried to defend himself. Tim was Bat-trained, though, and he quickly was able to beat the guy down enough that he seemed to decide that getting beat-up by a teenager in colorful tights wasn’t really worth it. Smart. Most people just didn’t give up until basically unconscious. Tim gave the guy a mental high-five as he watched him stumble out to the street, turn to the left, and disappear.
In this process, though, he had somehow forgotten about the first guy, who had apparently, in the time that Tim was fighting his accomplice, recovered enough to rush at him with a knife. Tim would have been impaled had it not been for a bang, followed instantly by a bullet hitting the man in the head. He collapsed, and Tim took the opportunity to prepare himself. He didn’t know who or what had sent that bullet, but he knew damn well that he had better get ready to fight. He tried not to focus on the fact that he could see the man’s brain matter, and instead whirled around, eyes scanning the direction the bullet had come from.
He was about to jump up the fire escape to see if he could find the culprit, when a thud behind him sounded. Tim spun back around, and found himself face-to-face with the Red Hood himself.
“Hey there little bird.” The mechanized growl sent shivers running down Tim's spine, and not in a good way. “Sorry for the mess, I just don’t particularly like guys who try to hurt kids. Even if they are swinging around in bright primary colors.”
“Umm.” Tim didn’t really know what to do. On the one hand, Red Hood had never hurt any kids before, and probably wasn’t going to beat him up after killing a guy to keep him safe, but on the other, he was a dangerous criminal that Bruce thought to be a little messed up in the head. So. Tim weighed his options.
“Thank you?” Dammit, no, that sounded like a question. Sound actually grateful so he doesn't kill you next. “I mean, thanks.” Tim straightened up a little bit, trying to look taller. It probably didn’t do much though. Puberty was still holding out on him as far as growth spurts went.
Red Hood tipped his head to the left a bit, as if contemplating. A tiny bit of light from one of the few unbroken streetlights in Gotham shone off the scarlet helmet, shifting with the movement. Tim resisted the urge to nervously shuffle from side-to-side, wondering whether he could leave or if that would piss off the literal crime lord in front of him. He stood, trying to stay as still as possible, like a hamster when confronted with a cat.
Maybe he’ll shoot him now. That thank you probably wasn’t emphatic enough, was it. Or maybe Tim should just make a run for it before Hood passes judgement. He might be able to outrun him. Maybe. Tim’s like forty percent certain. Thirty. Maybe twenty-seven. Overestimating by large numbers helps his confidence, though. Possible paths run through his mind at a speed not unlike the speed of the class hamster from fourth grade on its little plastic wheel thingy. That is to say, extremely fast, extremely loud, and making it difficult to pay attention to anything but them. Like the outside world. Which currently contains a very dangerous, well-known killer of a crime lord. Mob boss. Is there a difference between a crime lord and a mob boss? Crime lord sounds cooler. He’ll look it up if he lives until tomorrow morning. Tim drags himself out of his inner quagmire of thoughts, which now concern the fate of his fourth grade class pet and whether it’s possible that Sprinkles Transformer the Third is the Red Hood (fourth-graders are almost as shitty at naming things as Dick Grayson. Don’t judge Tim, he voted for the much more dignified name of Stuart Bob Batman. He was in a bit of a Minions phase at the time, sue him). Hood then proceeds to say something so far off of Tim’s expectations for this conversation that he legitimately has to re-run the words in his mind to clarify to himself whether it meant what he thinks it meant.
“D’you want ice cream?” Red Hood asked, and Tim blinked. What? This was not in the approved scenarios for this conversation to take. Go back, go back, control-z, Hood had a script, follow the damn script please and thank you. If you follow the script, Tim knows what to do, what to say, all of that stuff that people do when interacting with other normal or at least semi-normal human people. Hood is diverging, though, and Tim does not like it no he does not, go back to the script so he knows how this conversation will go.
“Ice cream?” Tim asked, a little incredulous. None of his many contingency plans have prepared him for this.
Hood shrugged before he answered. “Seeing people die is a traumatic experience. Seeing people be murdered even more so. Come on, consider it an apology for any additional trauma I may have caused you.”
The voice changer made the man’s voice sound a lot more threatening than he probably meant it to. Tim had the weird thought of whether the guy could drink with it on, and if he slurped the water would the sound be all mechanized? What would mechanized water sound like?
Tim didn’t know what possessed him to agree.
Approximately ten minutes later, they landed on the rooftop next to the ice cream shop that the Bats were known to frequent. It was one of the only places that Batman actually allowed them to be seen, and its popularity had grown astronomically when the vigilantes had become semi-regular customers, as had the number of major rogue attacks the place suffered. Petty crime and robberies didn’t really happen to it, though. And, as Stephanie enthusiastically told anyone willing to listen after getting her ice cream- Tim was the main recipient of these monologues- they made a delicious ice cream sundae. Tim, for his part, had been getting the same order every time he went, a double scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream. It was the same as Dick’s order, and Tim had originally tried it after seeing Robin eat it on patrol once, only to immediately declare it his new favorite flavour.
It was one of those glass rooftops, the ones at a slight slope that you see in movies all the time. Gotham seems to have an overabundance of them, which, for a city so steeped in crime, doesn’t really make architectural or common sense, but they have an aesthetic going, Tim supposes, and far be it from him to ruin the extra edge of danger that slippery glass adds, as well as dramatic lighting from somehow, inexplicably always empty rooms below. Still, it always takes him a couple of seconds to make sure he isn’t about to slip off of it and land on his neck in the street below.
Robin paused, waiting for Red Hood to land, which he did about ten seconds later, boots hitting the rooftop and grappling retracting. And of course, because Tim had no self preservation instincts, he immediately opened his mouth.
“What did you mean by additional trauma?”
“What?” Hood paused from tucking the grapple into some hidden inside pocket of the brown leather jacket, head swiveling towards Tim.
“Earlier. You said, that, um. You were apologizing for any ‘additional trauma’ you may have given me. What did you mean?” Tim does his best to keep his voice steady, and also to say this in a way that makes the quotation marks around “additional trauma” obvious without sounding super condescending. Nobody likes that.
“I’d have thought it was obvious, tiny bird.” Tim shook his head, then lifted a hand to brush away a stray piece of hair from his eyes. He’d been trying to grow it out more recently, but now it flopped into his eyes all the time, and it was still in what Dick called “the awkward phase” where he couldn’t really tie it back.
“Well, you’re Robin.” Hood answered, as if it made sense. Maybe to him it did. But to Tim, who was apparently not on the same wavelength as the murderous crime lord, a fact he was quite grateful for all things considered, it did not.
“So?” He sounded almost petulant. Not the image he really wanted to project.
A strange, twisting noise came from the helmet, and Tim ventured a guess that it was a snort.
“You think mentally well, untraumatized people run around in bright costumes fighting crime? Aren't you supposed to be smart?” Hood said, tilting his helmet towards Tim, and Tim got the distinct impression he was smirking, though how he managed to convey the facial expression through hard red chrome and metal was a mystery.
“Hey!” Tim exclaimed. That comment felt a little unfairly targeted. “I mean, you’re not really wrong, but still, you don’t need to point it out,” he grumbled, trying to think of something to do with his hands. They were just hanging by his sides right now, and honestly, he was probably being way too cognizant of where they were located, but he needed somewhere that wasn’t going to immediately make him be seen as a threat.
Hood walked a couple of steps forward, and Tim tensed, preparing for the worst, a punch, a tackle, something, but instead of attacking him, Hood reached an arm out and- booped him. Just. Tapped him. On the nose. What?
“Exactly, see, you agree. Now, what do you want? It’s important, and if you don’t tell me in the next few seconds, you’re gettin’ your own ice cream.” The fucking Red Hood . Who had just tapped his nose with a glove that was almost definitely deeply unsanitary, asked.
Tim scrubbed at his nose with the back of his own glove, pointedly ignoring the fact that his gloves were probably no cleaner than Hood’s, and asked the actual important question in this situation.
“Did you just boop me?” He asked, trying to convey his best version of the BatGlare. It was failing, he could tell, because a wonky mechanical noise emitted from the helmet that could probably be considered a demented Roomba’s version of a chuckle. Maybe. Ehh, willing suspension of disbelief. It was a chuckle, Tim decided, because one, he legitimately couldn’t think of anything else it could be except an angry growl warning of his imminent death, and he was like, eighty-two percent sure that Hood wasn’t going to kill him. Maybe. (Okay, fine, it might have been more like a sixty-seven percent certainty, but that was still more than fifty, so pretty good, all things considered.)
“Yes.”
“Why?! I have done nothing to deserve this!” Tim yelped. He felt vaguely offended, though he couldn’t place his finger on why exactly. It felt kind of like when Dick teased him about being absolutely tiny and called him Timmy. Weird, but also kind of nice. Which was a weird way to feel about a crime lord, but alright, brain.
“Because why not, and besides, your nose was right there. So, back to the matter at hand. What do you want?” Yeah, Hood was most certainly smirking. Definitely. Tim hated him. This must be why he was labeled as a high-class threat in the Batcomputer’s very extensive filing systems. He had booped Batman, hadn’t he. Oh my God, he had booped Batman and that’s why Batman hated him. It wasn’t because of the killing, because some of Bruce’s friends had killed so that didn’t make sense as much, like Two-Face, he blew people up all the time and Bruce still tried to help him. It was because Red Hood had managed to get close enough in close combat to boop Batman and then not ended up in the ICU. Tim takes back his hatred. Red Hood is awesome. And there’s ice cream involved. Can he somehow convince Dick to marry Hood? Just so that he can do ice cream stuff again with the guy who probably maybe totally booped Batman on his weird emotionally congested nose.
Hood snapped his fingers. The gloves he was wearing, probably some hybrid fabric or another, made a sharp clicking sound as he did so. Maybe they were segmented with armor too.
“Huh? What?” Tim asked, like the intelligent, classy, smart young man that the older ladies at the galas he went to always said he was before pinching his cheeks and running off to flirt with men who could be their children’s ages and who were most definitely not their husbands.
“Ice cream, dumbass.” Yet again, Tim was blown away by just how expressive full-body armor and a helmet that showed literally no skin could be. The amount of duh, idiot being conveyed was truly astronomical, and was growing exponentially by the minute.
Briefly, Tim wondered whether he could graph the sheer attitude that Red Hood was giving off as a function. It would have a very steep slope, he could already tell. He then realized that he probably ought to answer the question.
“Umm. Mint chocolate chip. Double scoop.” And as an afterthought, “Please.” Nobody could say he hadn’t been perfectly polite during this interaction. Tim had been raised by Jasonet Drake, high society, and most recently, Alfred Pennyworth. This conversation had been inarticulate, yes, sure, but impolite? Perish the thought.
“Cool. Be right back, then.” Red Hood answered, before jumping down a fire escape that Tim definitely should have registered as a possible escape route.
Tim… probably shouldn’t be allowing a literal crime lord with mob ties and a rap sheet longer than Batman’s list of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it contingency plans, which was really fucking long, and he knows because he had to read through and memorize every goddamn one , to get him ice cream that he fully intends to eat, because, ya know, free ice cream. But. Also. Free ice cream. It’ll be fine. Probably. Hood’s probably not gonna drug and traffick him at least. Small victories.
Tim was interrupted from his train of thought, yet again, for like, the ninth time, by Red Hood swinging his way back up the fire escape to the roof. Tim takes a brief moment to be impressed by the fact that the guy just literally swung himself up the rungs, instead of using the ladder like most people, with one hand, and two ice cream cones in the other. There’s what looks like either chocolate or rocky road, and a light green that’s definitely mint-chip.
“Here ya go kiddo.” Hood said, dropping himself down onto the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling over the edge. He switched the chocolate/rocky road, though Tim was leaning more towards just plain chocolate because he can’t see any nuts or marshmallows in it, to his other hand, and held out the mint cone to Tim. Tim walked forwards the couple steps to the edge, and plopped himself down on the edge cross-legged, perched so that he was unlikely to fall. He was about five feet away from Hood’s left side, and he had to scoot himself a little closer to grab the ice cream that the guy was still patiently holding out for him. He then scooted himself back a tad, because he didn’t particularly want to be shoved off the roof, and even though yes, he was holding the ice cream that the guy just got him, and it was pretty unlikely at this point that Hood held literally any kind of ill will or malicious intent towards him, it was still a possibility.
Tim took a bite of his ice cream, and relished the cold spreading through his teeth.
“Did you just fucking bite that? Why’d you fucking bite the ice cream? Nobody does that!” Hood sounded deeply traumatized and horrified, and Tim kinda wanted to laugh, but he also needed to rally himself in defense of his ice cream eating habits. The latter option won in the brief tug-of-war that took place in his mind.
“What do you mean nobody, I do it all the time.” Tim grinned.
Hood sounded vaguely ill. Or constipated. “All the time? Like, whenever you eat ice cream, you take…bites.” Ooh, definitely sounding horrified. “You goddamn heathen.”
“First, off, rude, and second, yeah, I like the cold teeth thing!” Hood visibly leaned away from him, helmet shining brightly in the fancy lighting from the glass of the roof.
“Liar,” he hissed. “There’s no way. You’re a liar. Nobody likes the cold teeth thing. Nobody who belongs outside of Arkham, at least.”
“I do,” Tim says, and takes another bite of the ice cream, just to be petty. Being petty is a tenant of the Robin mantle, after all. Who would he be if he didn’t take this opportunity to almost antagonize a dangerous guy with dubious intentions? At least the ice cream tastes untampered with.
Hood literally shuddered, though he might have been exaggerating his reaction. It’s still really funny, though.“You’re a fucking weirdo.”
A silence fell over the two of them. Tim didn’t really know how to make conversation with Hood that wasn’t building off of something he had already said, so he just settled for eating his ice cream.
Red Hood seemed lost in thought, looking down at the chocolate ice cream in his hands. Tim wondered why he had gotten it. It didn’t seem as if he was planning to take off his helmet and eat it. It hadn’t melted yet. The general cold of the Gotham air and the fact that his gloves were probably insulated enough so as to prevent any heat seeping through was keeping the ice cream much as it had been when Hood had first sat down, aka, a little lopsided, but perfectly unmelted and intact.
“Thanks, you know, for the ice cream.” Tim felt the need to say. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, per se, but it was heavy, and Tim wanted to shake it off like a thick blanket in the middle of summer.
“No problem bird boy.” Hood answered, not shifting his position in the slightest. Then, he seemed to come to a conclusion from whatever he was pondering, and unwrapped his right hand from the icecream cone, lifting it up to the side of his helmet. There was a series of clicking noises, almost like a series of levers or buttons being pressed, before Hood lifted the helmet off his head. It was pretty cool, honestly. Tim had worn motorcycle helmets similar to Hood’s before, at least in look, and pulling one of those off one-handed was not an easy feat.
Hood twisted to the side, turning away from Tim before he could see his side profile. Tim could still see the back of his head though. His hair was clearly mussed up from being in the helmet for an elongated period of time, and Tim could make out that it was either black, or a really dark brown. It looked wavy, a little curlier than Dick’s was.
“Are you actually taking off your helmet to eat?” Tim asked. He sounded incredulous to his own ears, and there was a sound as Hood presumably set his helmet down, before turning back around. He chuckled a bit as Tim immediately closed his eyes. Batman would tell him to look, to catalog every feature of the man’s face, find potential weaknesses and identifying features. Still, Tim’s knee-jerk reaction when someone takes off their mask without explicitly stating that they’re revealing their identity is to close his eyes. Probably because most of the time people revealing themselves to him are allies and friends, people whom he trusts and respects.
“It's alright baby bird, you can look at me. I've got one of them fancy masks you Bats use on.” Hood said, Alley accent thick on the syllables, curling around his vowels and rounding them out. His voice was deep, though not quite as deep as Bruce's baritone.
“A domino?” Tim guessed, slowly prying his eyes back open.
“That's the one!” Hood exclaimed. He looks like Bruce, Tim thinks. Or, similar, at least. They have a very similar face shape. Then, Tim started cataloguing differences. Hood’s skin was darker by a couple shades, closer to Dick’s caramel than to Bruce’s or Tim’s much paler complexions. His eyebrows were thicker, more expressive, and he had more scars on his face than Bruce. He was younger, too, younger than any of the Bats had guessed from their extensive profiling. Tim couldn’t tell how old, exactly, with the domino mask covering his eyes and a fair bit of the skin around them, but he’d guess around mid-twenties, maybe older. The most obvious feature of his, though, was the white streak of hair at his temple. It was thick, too, and pure white, the kind of white that didn’t come from dyeing, and was only usually the product of extreme trauma, old age, or magic.
Hood was watching him, Tim knew. He was waiting for something, though Tim didn’t know what.
“Are you gonna keep calling me nicknames? My name is Robin.” Tim asked, for lack of a better answer.
Hood looked. Relieved? Pleasantly surprised? Tim couldn't tell, but it seemed positive, and he seemed to be proven right when Hood cracked a small smile, revealing teeth that were just a little crooked.
“Nope, the nicknames stay, birdie.” He said, and dug into his ice cream. Tim took a bite of his own cone. He needed to eat down a bit before he could get back to the mint.
“Ugh.” Tim groaned, and took a risk, letting himself fall backwards so he was sprawled against the glass roof, careful not to let his ice cream spill as he did so. It would be a pity if he lost it now.
Hood let out a small laugh.