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Jason's eyes burned into Connor's back.
Okay. So. The stakeout earlier hadn't exactly…stayed a stakeout.
Okay! Okay. They were vigilantes — over four years each at this point. They messed up from time to time. This time they'd gotten into a mild bickering match that got a little too loud and outed their position, and, well — Connor was a smooth talker, but he wasn't a miracle worker. It was a little impossible to explain why the Red Hood and a Shadow were hiding behind a parapet a few feet above a couple of criminal's meeting place.
It hadn't exactly gone well.
He didn't look up. He laid out his shock tags on the table and counted them, silently noting how many he needed to replace and singling out the one that had glitched mid-fight.
"You were sloppy," Jason noted.
Connor's hand stilled. That…wasn't the observation he'd expected Jason to make.
"Sloppier than Bats should be," Jason droned on when he was met with no answer.
"I'm not a Bat anymore." Connor pointed out calmly, like he must've done a dozen times by now, as he swept his shock tags to the side to check on his other gear.
"Sure you're not," Jason said with thinly veiled skepticism. The sound of a hand hitting the table. Connor didn't wince. "But you are avoiding the question."
Why were they always Bats that called him out? Every time.
"You didn't ask anything." Connor said.
Jason snorted. "Fair point. What's up with the sloppy fighting?"
Connor shrugged easily. "I'm just a little rusty."
"A little rusty?" Jason repeated with vague amusement. "Kid, if I'd fought that sloppily as Robin, B would've had me back in the Cave doing hand-to-hand combat drills in a heartbeat."
Connor exhaled softly. "It's not that bad." He said evenly. "We handled it."
Jason laughed. "That guy almost broke your wrist before I shot him." He said, then briefly paused. When he spoke again his voice was slightly pitched, almost curious. "You don't do too good when the fight gets personal, do you?"
"I can handle myself." Connor said, sliding his shock tags back together and putting them back in their assigned slots.
A long, low silence. The feeling in his back was less burning, now, but no less intense.
"Alright then," Jason said, boot to ground in a step. Connor tilted his head to put Jason in his peripheral. "Fight me."
Connor withheld his reaction.
Interesting.
He slowly turned to face Jason, leaning slightly against the table he'd scattered some of his gear across. "What?"
A soft smirk whisked across Jason's face. He lazily stepped forward. "If you think you're so tough, fight me." He repeated, and nodded toward him. "Show me what the Bat taught you."
A slow, sly smile split Jason's face like cracking ice. "Unless you're nothing but lies."
Connor exhaled lowly. Always pushing buttons.
He chuckled softly and leaned faux-casually against the table. "It's not like I can beat you," he pointed out.
"Have you sparred Dick?" Jason asked.
What did Dick have to do with this? "Yeah?"
"How long do you last with him, on average?"
"Um, I don't know, 20 seconds?" Connor guessed. It's not like they usually timed it.
Connor tracked Jason's movements as he walked past him into the makeshift kitchen and picked up a surprisingly innocent chicken timer, no bigger than Jason's palm. "We'll time it." He said. "If you can last more than 25 seconds against me, I'll drop it."
Jason started pushing tables back against the walls, leaving them an open place to spar and throw each other around without worry of hitting something dangerous. Connor hummed as he watched. "If I don't?"
"Thought you said you could handle yourself." Jason shot him a smirk, and Connor tempered the resulting burn of frustration with an exhale that felt like smoke.
Connor shrugged. "Call me cautious."
Jason snorted. "I'd call you more than that, but I'd be a hypocrite." He observed. "How about you train with me for a couple weeks?"
Connor raised an eyebrow. "That couldn't go wrong."
"Only if you lose." Jason smiled deviously, and Connor suddenly got a very, very bad feeling about this.