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“I want a tattoo,” Steph said with a yawn, tucking her legs up underneath her. Jason didn’t so much as glance over at her, focused intently on cleaning his rifle. He ran the brush down the barrel, only half-listening as Steph continued talking. “Like, I know Bruce would flip his shit, but I can get it somewhere my suit would cover, right? Nobody’s trying to strip Batgirl out of her tactical armour.”
“Nobody’s that stupid,” Jason snorted, beginning the slow process of reassembling the firearm. He could do it in under a minute if really pressed, but he liked to take his time. “What would you get, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Steph shrugged, picking up the remote and flicking through a few channels. She found one playing an old rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos and settled back happily, tapping the remote against her knee. “Just something small. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Jason had been thinking for a while, too, that he wouldn’t mind a tattoo. Like Steph said: just something small. Something that would set him apart, a little, from his brothers. He’d bought a home tattoo kit online but chickened out when he went to use it, having war flashbacks to the last time he’d tried to do something like that. He’d needed to go to the doctor and get antibiotic ointment. Steph had bullied him relentlessly for weeks.
He still had the piercing, though, and had added a few since.
“You any good at art?” He asked, standing to return the rifle to its place on the wall. He’d meant to do most of his weapons tonight, but chilling with Steph seemed preferable. Watching reruns and snacking on the veritable feast of chips, chocolate, and cookies Steph had brought with her seemed like a much more pleasant way to spend the night.
“I don’t think I’m so bad,” Steph replied, sitting up and winding a purple strand of hair around her finger. “Why?”
Jason headed for the linen closet, which was where he’d stashed the tattoo kit. Inside were stencil paper, needles, ink – the works. If Steph could draw them something, they could end the night with some ink.
He returned to the couch and dumped the bag on the coffee table, the contents inside rattling against each other, before flopping beside her and stealing the remote. A few flicks through his many channels revealed nothing better on, except maybe The Simpsons, and he’d seen that episode at least fifty times anyway, so begrudgingly he handed it back and let Steph return them to Funniest Home Videos.
Steph rifled through the bag, pulling out bottles of ink and inspecting them one by one. She grabbed a few loose sheets of paper and a pencil, twirling it in her hand as she stared down at the blank page, brow furrowed in thought.
“Head empty?” Jason asked, grabbing his grape soda and taking a sip.
“No thoughts,” she replied, looking up. “Just vibes.”
He passed her the soda and she took a swig, setting it to the side. She went back to studying the blank page, still frowning, as though she could will the perfect design to appear before her eyes.
It did not.
The page remained blank.
“What vibes?” Jason prompted, getting back to his rifle. The repetitive motions of disassembling and cleaning each weapon in his arsenal were soothing to him. He’d been having something of a rough couple of weeks. He reached for his gun oil and went back to the barrel. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, he knew that Steph understood he was still listening. They had spent many a weekend watching reruns and cleaning his guns together.
Well. He handled the guns. Steph handled the remote.
“I don’t know, like.” Steph pursed her lips. “Okay, you have to promise me you won’t laugh.”
“Me? Never,” Jason’s mouth twitched into a grin. “I might tease you a little, though.”
“No teasing,” she replied, deadly serious. He set his rifle down and turned his attention to her. She continued, “I’m serious, if you make fun of me, I will walk out that door and not come back for weeks.”
Honestly, he was just glad for the silent promise of, I will still come back.
“No teasing,” he replied in earnest, one hand over his heart. “Hit me with it.”
“I…” Steph hesitated for a moment before soldiering on. “I want a robin tattoo.”
Jason didn’t say anything for a few moments, his brain still recalibrating with this new information. It was…okay. Steph wanted a robin tattoo. That was not what he thought she’d say, but it made sense, in a way.
She took his silence to mean something else, though.
“See, you think it’s stupid.” She turned away, dropping the pencil on the sketchpad. “Whatever. It’s fine. I don’t care about your opinion anyway.”
“Wait, no, Steph-” He grabbed her elbow and gave her a gentle tug backwards, letting her land on the couch softly. Jason immediately released her, and she turned to look at him, her eyes wide and blue and so full of mistrust it made his heart ache. He hated that she still felt that way. He hated that the rest of Gotham’s vigilantes still made her feel that way. “I don’t think it’s stupid. I can guess why you want it, but I want to hear it from you. Please. Tell me.”
Steph worried her bottom lip with her teeth, her gaze darting away. She reached up to tuck a purple-and-blonde strand behind her ear, revealing a line of piercings up her right ear, glinting silver in the light. She inhaled again, held it a moment, then exhaled slowly.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not going to,” Jason promised.
“I – I’m the Robin everyone forgets. Seventy-three days. That was my whole tenure as Robin. That was it. I tried so fucking hard to be the best Robin I could be that entire time. I took so much of Bruce’s shit because I knew he was hurting. I tried so hard to prove to him that I was – that I was worth it. I tried to prove I was worth being Robin.”
Steph’s eyes were shining, but she blinked away the tears before they could fall.
“I…I was Robin. Even if nobody remembers it.”
“I know,” Jason said quietly. “I know you were. I remember it.”
She laughed. “You were dead.”
Jason hesitated. He didn’t often talk about the events after his resurrection, not with her, at least. Their friendship was based on getting each other out of messes, watching old TV shows and making smartass comments about them, and a mutual love of grape soda and gummy bears. They had heart-to-hearts on occasion, sure, but there were some things too painful to speak of. His lost days were one of them…and for her, it was what he was about to bring up next.
“I was in Gotham when you died,” he said. “I tailed you for a few nights, watched you hold your own against some bank robbers and carjackers. You were good at the banter. Then Black Mask captured you, and…”
He wasn’t sure he should say this next part. He said it anyway.
“I thought Bruce would make it to you in time.” He bit the inside of his cheek and dared to look at her. She looked…not quite betrayed, exactly, but hurt.
Slowly, she said, “Are you sure you didn’t leave me to die because I was a pretender like Tim was?”
He froze, looking up.
“No. No, of course not. You…I had my issues with Tim, but not with you. You were good. You were a better Robin than either of us were. You were as good as Dick.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” She stared at her hands, picking at a scab on her knuckles. “I don’t think anyone can be as good as Dick is. Bruce compares all of us to him, even when he says he isn’t.”
“Tell me about it,” Jason said, and they shared a smile for a moment, but it was tense. “Why do you want a robin tattoo?”
“Even if nobody remembers, I was still Robin. And I guess the tattoo would be my way of showing myself that.” She shrugged. “I know it’s dumb. It’s just…something I want to do for me.”
“Okay!” Jason clapped his hands together. “One robin tattoo, coming right up.”
“Hell, no.” Steph put her hand up. “You are not freehanding this shit. I’ll draw something. We’ll stencil it onto me. Then you can follow the lines.”
Jason shot her a crooked grin. “Do you actually think I’d try to freehand something like that?”
“Do you need to be reminded what happened when you got your first piercing?” Steph raised her eyebrows, leaning back into the couch with a smirk. “Do you also need to be reminded who fixed it?”
“I could definitely go without that reminder this week.” He settled back into the couch, somewhat relieved they had made it through that without a real argument breaking out. “Are you going to start drawing?”
“Shut up. Yes.” Steph pulled out the pencil and twirled it in her hand once more. After a moment, she started sketching fine lines on the page, forming a shape no longer than her thumb. Jason watched, a little mesmerised, as details became apparent: the curve of a wing, feathers aligned, the sharp edge of a beak. Steph was actually crazy talented at drawing – though she’d only ever described it to him as doodling. She did that a lot. She tried to downplay her skills, like they were nothing, meant nothing. If they didn’t contribute to her skills as Batgirl, they were worthless.
“You’re good at that,” he said, leaning over to watch.
“And you’re good at guns,” she replied with a shrug, pencil scratching against the paper. “We all have our thing.”
“You’re good at a lot more than that, and you know it,” he said. She glanced at him with half a smile before returning to her drawing. Jason continued, “I mean it, Steph. You’re incredible.”
“Don’t get sappy on me, Todd,” Steph replied. She picked up an eraser and carefully rubbed out a few lines before replacing them carefully. She blew the eraser dust off the page and passed it over to him. “There. What do you think of that?”
“It’s perfect,” Jason replied, looking down at the page. A small bird in profile, its wing tucked against it, standing tall and proud. He couldn’t quite tell if it was a robin or a sparrow, but he supposed it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Steph liked it.
Steph stared down at it for a moment, before squaring her shoulders and nodding. “Okay. I’m ready. Let’s tattoo it.”
Jason’s eyebrows shot up. “Right now? Right this second?”
“Right this second,” she said, determination in her voice. “We’re not wasting another minute.”
“Are you scared you’ll lose the nerve to go through with it?”
Steph rolled her eyes. “As if.”
Jason moved his guns and supplies off the coffee table piece by piece, wiping his hands on a rag. “Okay. Come on. Let’s go wash my hands and…wherever you’re putting that.”
In the bathroom, Jason turned on the hot water and waited a few seconds for it to go warm. He wet his hands and squirted a generous amount of soap onto them, lathering them up quickly. He could practically hear Leslie Thompkins in his head griping about safe handwashing practices, so he made sure to get between his fingers and under his nails, only rinsing them off when he was certain they were clean. Steph sat on the edge of the tub, watching him for a moment before tearing off a length of paper towel and passing it to him.
“Do you just…keep this in your bathroom now?” She asked.
“I needed to stitch my hip the other day,” Jason replied as he dried his hands. “And I remember you yelling at me about how hand towels aren’t sterile.”
“They’re not,” Steph said, “But I didn’t yell.”
He laughed and stepped out of the way so she could wash whatever she needed to wash.
“Also, what do you mean you needed to stitch your hip?” She started scrubbing at her forearm with soap. “That seems distinctly like something Alfred or Leslie should have looked at.”
Jason shrugged. “Some lucky punk managed to slash me just below the waist. It bled through my pants almost immediately. I didn’t have time to find Leslie or head back to the cave.”
“Dude, you live in Park Row,” Steph replied. “Leslie’s clinic is four blocks away.”
Jason tore off a strip of paper towel for her in return. “I also didn’t want to get yelled at.”
She snorted. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair.”
He opened the bottom drawer of his vanity and dug out an unopened packet of razors. He passed it over to her. “You need to shave it.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. She squinted at him for a moment as she peeled open the packet and pulled one free. “Are you sure you don’t have any ink hiding somewhere I haven’t seen?”
“I am tattoo free,” he confirmed. With a little smirk, he said, “But you’re welcome to check.”
She gave him a half-hearted shove before soaping up her arm again. She ran the razor over a patch a few inches big just below the crease of her elbow, midway down her arm. Rinsing it off, she gave the razor a quick blast with some water and set it down on the counter to dry.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”
“Good,” Jason replied. They made their way back out to his living room. Steph took a seat back on the couch and started setting everything up while Jason sanitised his hands for good measure. He sat down beside her and pulled out the stencil paper, preparing to transfer the image to her arm. “I’m just checking, you’re sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” Steph said firmly.
“On your arm,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Where everyone can see it?”
Steph rolled her eyes. “Less talking, more stencilling.”
He shrugged and got to work. When he was done, he peeled it off and took a look. It had transferred pretty well. Almost identical to what she’d drawn, bar a couple of slightly wonky lines, but it didn’t really affect the art in any way.
“What do you think?”
“I think you should stop talking and start inking,” Steph said, nudging his ankle with her foot. “C’mon, dude, you weren’t nearly this anxious when I said I wanted to dye my hair.”
“Because that wasn’t permanent,” he replied. “This could change how everybody sees you. This could piss your mom off. This could affect your future employment prospects.”
“Oh my God, you are such a narc,” Steph laughed. “I don’t care what people think about me, my mom has a tramp stamp so I don’t really care what she says about me getting a tattoo, and dude, having ink has not affected anyone’s employment prospects since 1987. Do it.”
Jason swallowed. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” Steph shot him a comforting smile. “You’re gonna do great. Don’t worry.”
He was still worried. But, he set up the ink and the tattoo gun, then took a deep breath.
“I’m going to load the ink now,” he said.
“Do it.”
He dipped the tip into the ink and watched as the reservoir filled. With a deep breath, he turned back to Steph and got to work. As soon as the needle touched her skin, she giggled.
“What?”
“It tickles.” She scrunched up her face as he kept going.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not exactly. It’s kind of like being snapped with a rubber band.”
He nodded and continued. It was…surprisingly hard. He’d done a few practice runs on some pig skin he’d bought from the butcher once, and those hadn’t turned out too bad, but this was almost completely different. It felt different in his hand, too, the tension and the give not quite the same.
It was slow going. He had to keep dipping it into the ink. He frequently misjudged how much ink he needed – either getting too little and running out or too much and spraying his hand with it. Every time this happened, he’d let out a frustrated huff, and Steph would giggle.
Honestly, making her laugh made it almost worth it.
It took a while, but eventually, it was finished. He wiped over it and leaned back to get a good look at it as a whole image. It was…not bad. Nowhere near, like, professional work, but pretty much all the lines joined up where they were supposed to and it was only bleeding in one spot where he suspected he may have gone a little too deep. He wiped it off again and snapped a photo on his phone, passing it over to Steph to take a look.
“Holy shit, dude,” she whispered. “It’s perfect.”
It was not perfect by any technical sense. But her whole face lit up looking at it, both on the phone screen and when she peered down at her arm. She moved her forearm this way and that, trying to get a good look at it from all angles.
“That was awesome.” Steph sounded enthralled. She looked up at him with a grin, the dimples in her cheeks a gentle indentation in her otherwise perfect skin. The freckles across her nose scrunched up as she gave him a playful shove. “Okay, what about you, boy wonder? What are we giving you?”
“I…” Jason slowed down thoughtfully, his brow furrowed as he considered his options. “I don’t…know.”
“Give me some ideas,” Steph said, already pulling the sketchpad toward her. “I can draw just about anything. I know Damian is the talented artist in the family, but trust me, I’m not all that bad.”
“I know you’re not bad,” Jason said. “I just…don’t know.”
Steph fixed him with a look. “You’re the one with a tattoo kit in your closet. You must want something.”
He hesitated for just a moment, but Steph, ever smart, caught it like a fucking cat with a mouse.
“Tell me.” It came out gentle, perhaps more gentle than she’d meant it to. “I won’t laugh at you.”
“I know you wouldn’t, because you’re a much nicer person than I am,” Jason sighed. “Okay. Okay. It – it is stupid, but. I’ve always wanted something small and meaningful, I guess, and I’ve never really known what that thing would be. But, uh…we spend all this time together, and you’re one of the only people I can actually stand for more than ten minutes, you know? So, I guess I just. I want something from you. Something you give me, whatever you want to give me, and I want you to ink it. Because I…”
Oh, this next part was going to be physically painful.
“I trust you,” he finished.
Steph looked incredibly touched by the confession, but what came out of her mouth instead of any term of endearment or affection, was this:
“You’re such a fucking nerd.”
“Takes one to know one,” he retorted. She elbowed him in the side and leaned in after a moment, resting her head on his shoulder.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “And I know I’ve told you this before, but you’re kind of my best friend. I mean, besides Cass.”
“Yeah, I definitely can’t win against Cass,” Jason laughed. “You’re my best friend too. For what it’s worth.”
Steph bit her bottom lip for a second, before looking up. “I know what I want to tattoo on you. But I want to do it freehand. It’s corny as hell. You might lose some of your reputation after this.”
Jason laughed. “What is it?”
“A heart.”
“Like, anatomical, or…”
Steph shook her head. “No, dumbass. I mean a heart-heart.”
Jason considered it for a moment. “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?” Steph raised an eyebrow. “No arguments from Mr Control Freak himself?”
He shrugged. “No argument needed. It’s small, it’s meaningful, and you want to give it to me. That’s good enough for me.”
They went through the whole process of handwashing, shaving, setting up the ink, swapping out for a sterile needle all over again. Jason rolled up his sleeve partway and presented her with his forearm. She studied it for a moment before nodding.
“Okay, I can do this.”
“You absolutely can,” he replied. “I have faith in you.”
“Well, that’s a terrifying concept,” Steph said with a laugh. There was a faint buzzing as she got started. She was right. It did kind of feel like being snapped with a rubber band. It didn’t even crack his top five most painful experiences. As she continued, Steph said, “I never realised how hairy your arms were until you shaved it just then.”
“Rude,” Jason replied. “Did I say that about your arm?”
“I’m blonde,” Steph replied. “My arm hair is also blonde.”
Jason mumbled, “Bottle blonde, maybe,” and earned himself a kick to the ankle. He ducked his head and laughed, taking a look at his forearm where Steph was very diligently inking into his skin. From what he could see, everything looked pretty straight and even, though of course it wasn’t done. He watched, slowly, as the image took shape: a perfect heart, dark black against his skin, with only one slight patch of blown ink.
“Sorry,” Steph said, giving it a wipe. “I’m going to trace over it again, okay? Get this line a little neater.”
“Go for your life,” Jason replied. She got back to work. When she finally switched everything off and leaned back, wiping his arm once more, he inspected it closely.
“What do you think?”
Steph looked nervous. She didn’t need to be; he wasn’t bothered that it wasn’t technically perfect. It was conceptually perfect, which was better in his eyes.
“I love it,” he said honestly. “We should probably look up some tattoo aftercare or something. Let this not go down the route the piercing did.”
Steph giggled, holding up her phone. “Already beat you to it.”
They ended up in the kitchen, awkwardly wrapping their arms in saran wrap after giving them a quick wash to get the leftover ink off. After a few seconds of struggle, they shared a look, before Steph burst out laughing. Jason chuckled with her, reaching over to secure the wrap on her arm, and then waited as she likewise did his.
“It said twenty-four hours, right?”
“Right,” Jason said. He knew she knew that. But she always checked. “Which means we have to patrol tomorrow night with it on.”
Steph groaned, resting her head against his bicep. “We did not think this through.”
He shrugged. “No. But it’s cool, right? We have tattoos now.”
“We’ll see.” She stepped back and looked at him with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “Your cheap ink might just fall straight out of our skin.”
“I did not buy cheap ink,” Jason said. “I got this stuff from a tattoo supply place. It was all very legit.”
“Mm,” Steph said. “A likely story.”
“And before you ask, they didn’t ask to see my tattoo licence because New Jersey doesn’t issue them,” Jason replied. “But I did have to show them my driver’s licence.”
“You don’t have one of those either!” Steph shoved him playfully. “You were dead when you were supposed to get your permit.”
“Yeah, but my guy who does fakes does really good ones,” Jason shot back. He picked up his wallet off the counter and showed it to her. “Look.”
“Well, that’s terrifying,” she squinted at it, as though trying to find some fault or flaw. “But now I know who to go to if I need to leave the country under a fake name.”
Jason grabbed them fresh drinks and nudged Steph back over to the couch. They took up the same positions earlier, now just navigating around the tattoo equipment as well as Jason’s small arsenal of guns in the process of being cleaned. He passed her the remote, and she immediately got to work trying to find something to watch, flicking through channels almost mindlessly.
She paused, a playful grin on her face. “Ink Master? It feels appropriate.”
“New season or old season? I’m not caught up. I was watching it with Cass.”
“Old season, I think.” She set the remote down between them and leaned back into the couch, closing her eyes. For a split second, Jason saw the tension melt out of her, before she opened her eyes again and became on guard once more. “Jason? Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah, of course,” he replied.
“I’m really glad you answered the door that day I tried to dye my hair,” she said. “I thought everyone else was going to laugh at me for being a ditz. But I knew you wouldn’t. I did kind of expect you to crack a joke or two about me being a dumb blonde, but…you didn’t.”
Jason managed a smile. “I’m glad you picked up the phone when my ear was more pus than skin.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “You were such a baby that day.”
“Yeah,” he admitted, “I was.”
She tucked a blonde strand behind one ear and offered him a kind smile. “I’m really glad we’re friends.”
“Well, now we’re friends with matching tattoos,” Jason said, looking down at his arm. “Well. Kind of. Kind of matching. Spiritually matching?”
“Spiritually matching,” Steph agreed.
As the night wore on, she curled into his side, and he threw an arm around her comfortably. They ended up watching a whole season of Ink Master, laughing every time someone came in needing a coverup for a home done tattoo and debating how many months it would be before that was the two of them. As Steph drifted off to sleep, Jason looked down at his arm. He might end up with more ink eventually, but he knew he would never get this one covered up.