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The first was just a sticker, which appeared on Steph's water bottle while she was hanging out at the community center. It said "Queen Stephally" in glittery purple-and-blue vinyl. She never did get anyone to admit where it had come from.
The next was a patch, which she found in her messenger bag after a night of puzzling through AP Chemistry with Danny and Michelle. The patch, perfectly round, bordered in purple, contained a flaming dumpster and the words, "Dumpster Fire Response Team Captain Stephaniel."
Then Danny handed her an envelope, which contained a beaded stretch bracelet covered in purple hearts and "I (heart) Stephard." When pressed, Danny just shrugged. "Kids made Swiftie bracelets at daycare yesterday."
This did not illuminate why she now had one with not-her-name on it.
Then Jenkins handed her a gorgeous purple hoodie with metallic purple lettering and bedazzled purple rhinestones, which said "School of Hard Knocks, Bowery Campus" on the front and the back had a big 01 and the name "Stephelia" like a jersey.
"What the fuck?" Steph asked.
Jenkins shrugged. "You'd have to ask Hood," he replied.
And of course, Steph had noticed that Hood had been calling her bonkers variations of Stephanie when she wasn't in her Spoiler gear, but he also called Tim stupid things all the time, and she hadn't actually learned Nightwing's civilian name for weeks because Hood literally never used it, and TJ had assumed she knew. It hadn't registered.
Hood handed her the folio cover himself. It was a muted purple, not her preferred eggplant, but she would admit it was more professional. It had gorgeous vine-veining across the covers, and her name—well, not her name, but close enough—on the inside where if she were using it professionally she wouldn't necessarily have to explain why her resume said "Stephanie" and her folio said "Stephifer."
"Why?" she asked.
Hood shrugged. "Mateja just got her leather shop set up, wanted to test the tools but hadn't gotten any commissions yet."
"So you commissioned her for me?"
Hood shrugged. "No one else needed anything, but I saw you coveting Will's folio last week."
She had been coveting it! It made him look so fancy! That didn't mean he had to do this!
Hood shrugged again. "I was trying to think of something to ask for, and I saw the purple. It's your fault if I now reflexively think of you when I see the color."
Steph grinned. That she would never be mad about. Also the folio was gorgeous, and she had college interviews coming up. "Fine," she said, pointing at him. "But don't get ideas!"
Hood put his hands up in surrender. "Promise," he agreed.
Except the next week there was another sticker, this one much more complex. Whoever he was asking for them was getting better with the Cricut. This one—still glittery, still purple, still bearing Stephabeth instead of Stephanie—was a cloud, a pot of gold, and a rainbow in all shades of purple, which read "Stephabeth's Glitter Emporium."
Jenkins was still trying to get the floor clean, but Tim had deserved the glitter bomb! She put the sticker on her notebook and carried on, but she did shoot Hood a warning glare when she saw him next.
She turned around for five minutes (okay, it might have been two hours, but listen, Danny knew where all the good food trucks were!) and when she returned, her economics notebook had been stamped or screen printed or fucking painted, she didn't know, with "Stephanna" and "Economics" and some fabulous violets. No one in the center would meet her eyes.
The next week, all her other class notebooks matched, subject, violets, and some ridiculous play on her name. Still no admissions of guilt from the community.
"Steph!" Julianna, Ericka's mom and a budding embroiderer called one afternoon.
Steph spun to face her with a smile, and then stopped at the purple, canvas messenger bag she was holding. The flap had been embroidered with ice cream cones and "Stephabel's Stuff Keep Out." In purple, obviously. Her fingertips itched. She wanted. But.
It was thick, heavy canvas, she discovered when Julianna handed it to her. The seams had been bound in leather, and the strap had a cotton pad for her shoulder. It was expensive.
"Don't look at me," Julianna said pre-emptively. "Hood brought the bag, and commissioned the design. He said something about drug dealers who cut their product don't deserve nice bags?"
Steph frowned. Actually, the last guy they'd taken out together had had a canvas bag similar to this, though it had been cream-colored. She curiously turned the bag over, and sure enough, the hole in the bottom of the bag, where Hood had shot the guy in the leg through the bag, had been mended carefully, and covered with another glittery purple patch from whoever had been making those. This one had a unicorn pooping rainbows on it, and no version of her name. She supposed the bag flap was enough for him.
"He, fu-flipping dyed it purple?" she grumbled.
Julianna laughed. "You know, he had his fingerless gloves on, and they did kind of look a little off-color."
Steph grumbled.
"Let him, darling," Julianna said quietly. "It's the only way he knows to show he cares."
Steph supposed being taught basically all your meaningful emotional regulation skills by Bruce The Goddamn Batman Wayne would make you prone to gift-giving as a sign of affection. "Fine," she sighed.
Somehow this grudging agreement must have made it back to Hood, because two nights later there was a gorgeous pair of gloves and a matching scarf. The scarf said "Stephothy" down the length in impressive flowing script. Steph didn't even know you could knit (crochet?) cursive letters.
Three days after that she had a collection of buttons for her denim jacket which spelled "Stephaline" when ordered correctly. Then a set of glitter pens (all purple ink) which had "Stephthew" on all of them. Then a custom notepad which declared "From the Desk of Stephena" across the top. Six days after that, after her phone case broke on a chase across Robbinsville, a customized WayneTech phone case, emblazoned with "If found please return to Stephald Brown."
"Steph," her mom said quietly, turning the phone case around so she could read the words. "I'm not upset," she started. "Just concerned."
Steph groaned, crossing her arms on the counter and bending to hide her face in them.
"It's just— some of this is expensive," her mom continued gamely, nudging the purple messenger bag at their feet with her toes. "And I don't—I don't know where you're getting the money."
Steph groaned again. "I'm not," she said. "Hood keeps giving me shit."
"Steph," her mom said, sounding like she didn't know where to start, whether to correct her language or worry about the crime lord apparently giving her daughter things.
Steph sighed and picked her head up. "Mom, did you think I'd bought a phone case that said 'Stephald' on it for myself?"
Her mom looked at the phone case again, still on the counter between them. "But why?" she asked quietly, looking up at Steph with worried eyes. "What's his interest in you?"
Steph shrugged. Couldn't exactly tell her, 'He's taken me under his crime-fighting wing and is also supplying me with grapple guns and body armor!' "He does it with all the kids," she said instead. "Any of them he thinks he can get away with it with, anyway."
Her mom's eyebrow raised. "And he thinks he can get away with it with you?" There was a tense skepticism that Steph knew was about an older man taking interest in her teenage daughter.
"He knows I'd hit him with a brick if he tried anything," Steph said before she could think better of it. Then she added, "He's got a boyfriend anyway, I'm pretty sure."
Steph's mom did not appear to find either of those facts particularly reassuring. She just continued to stare at Steph. "How did he even know you needed a new case?"
The story Steph had told her mom about breaking her old case (and thankfully not her phone) had involved a rapid trip down several flights of stairs, helped by a teacher in a hurry and several oblivious teenagers. But it was nothing Red Hood would have reason to be aware of, unless he was paying considerably more attention to Park Row High School than was normal, even knowing his focus on making the Alley safe for kids.
Steph shrugged. "I was moaning about it with Michelle and James, and TJ—that's the boyfriend," she added since her mother never went to the community center to know him, "Asked if I was all right—I think he thought I had fallen down the stairs, not just dropped the phone. But it got Hood involved in the conversation." She shrugged. "And then two days later, Jenkins handed me the case."
"And the other stuff?" Her mom asked, gesturing at the messenger bag again. She didn't know that it was filled with an entire stationary store's worth of school supplies, all purple, all decorated with variations of her name, but she certainly seemed to suspect.
Steph shrugged. "It's a joke, I think," she said. "He calls all the kids weird nicknames. Danny introduced me as Stehpanie the first time, so I corrected him to Steph, and he started sticking the wrong name-halves on Steph right there. Then I started finding stuff, stickers, pens, patches, the Swiftie bracelet. Then he had Julianna give me the bag, and Jenkins gave me the phone case, and the hard-knocks hoodie."
"I thought you made that," her mom said quietly.
"Definitely got made on the community center Cricut," Steph said. "But not by me. And no one but Hood would've put Stephelia on it." She shrugged kind of helplessly. "I don't think he means anything by it except to be helpful."
Her mom sighed. "I trust your judgment," she said quietly. "But please be careful. He's a dangerous man."
Steph nodded. She'd seen him crack a man's cheekbone with a casual backhand. She knew exactly how dangerous the Red Hood was. "Not to kids," she said quietly. "And I'm still that, to him, for a while longer."
"Maybe on my next day off," her mom said slowly, "You can take me to the community center. I should meet these people you're spending all this time around."
"It's safe," Steph said.
"Oh I know," her mom said, laughing in tiredness, not because it was funny. "Or I'd've fought a lot harder about you going there. But," she gestured helplessly. "I want to know your people, honey."
Steph smiled at her. "You'll like them," she said.
Her mom kissed her forehead. "I know I will, if you do," she agreed quietly. "But I still want you to be careful," she added.
"Promise," Steph agreed.
She felt a little guilty about sneaking out as soon as her mom was asleep, but she had a patrol to run.
Like a shadow, Hood appeared between one building and the next. "You're a little behind, Spoils," he observed, vocoder crackling low.
"Mom had questions about my new phone case," Steph replied, perhaps a little accusingly.
She knew the crackle of Hood's vocoder was an amused huff, but only because Nightwing had told her that a few weeks ago. She was still learning to read his tone and noises through the Hood. "Not sorry," he said, shrugging. "You'd be even madder if I bought you a new phone, so we gotta keep the current one safe."
Steph scowled at him under her mask. "You better not," she said.
"How about comms?" he asked, holding his gloved hand out flat to offer her one of the bat-comms on his palm.
"You convinced Batman?" she asked, breathless with hope.
Two weeks ago, Batman, seeing her in action for the first time, had tried to send her home, and Robin and Hood had stepped up to argue her case. Hood had told her not to let him stop her patrolling, and she could cover the Bowery for him if she wanted to avoid the Bat till they'd talked him around.
"He allows how another set of hands could be useful, if Wing is going to split his time between Gotham and the Haven, and says you have a good head on your shoulders and a solid right hook, and he's willing to work with you instead of against you."
"Yes!" Steph whooped, punching the air and grabbing the comm from Hood.
"He does want you to come by the cave a few times a week for training with Robin, but I was actually going to recommend that anyway. He's a good trainer, and Wing will kick his ass if he's too rough on you, so." Hood shrugged. "He trained me and Wing and Robin, and we turned out all right."
Steph fitted the comm in her ear, and then let him fix the control around her wrist, just below the cuff of her gauntlet.
"All stations," he rumbled, voice echoing oddly through the comm in her ear and the vocoder, "This is Hood, Spoil-Sport is live in the Bowery." He elbowed her gently. "Say hello, Spoils."
"Hello Spoils," she said obligingly.
A woman laughed in her ear. "Hello Spoiler, this is Oracle. You're transmitting clearly."
"Hi Oracle!" Steph said, thrilled to finally hear the voice of the Bats' tech goddess.
"This is Nightwing, in the Haven," TJ said cheerfully. "Hear you good."
Hood made a derisive noise, and Steph was pleased to recognize it was about Nightwing's grammar.
"This is Robin, and I'm in the Diamond District," Tim said brightly. "Glad to hear you!"
"Focus on your patrols," a deep voice growled. "Welcome to the team, Spoiler," he added; it could only be Batman, of course.
"Thanks bossman!" she said brightly.
"Signing off," Hood said, and showed her how to toggle off her microphone.
"Be safe," Batman said, before he too went silent.
Then Hood produced from a pocket somewhere a box that looked kind of like a big jewelry box, like for a necklace or even a set. He flipped the lid up to display the inside. "Replacement earpiece if the one you're wearing is lost or broken, charging cords for the earpieces and the control band. We can build the next set into your gauntlets if you want, by the way, that's what the rest of us do." The velvet also had slots for storing the earpiece she was wearing and the control band.
"Thank you," Steph said quietly. She took the box carefully, and discovered the edge had been bedazzled, likely by the same machine as had made her hoodie, to say "Curses, Spoiled again!" She laughed. "Are you absolutely allergic to using my actual name? Any of them?" she asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Hood said flatly. "Come on, criminals await." Then he was running for the edge of the roof, grapple in hand.
Steph hastily stashed away the comms equipment and gave chase. She would get him to say 'Spoiler' or 'Steph' eventually!