Chapter Text
Sometimes Jason simply decided to ignore most of his league training. Not that it wasn't useful, but it required a very specific context, said context being murdering. He used this set of skills a lot in his life, but these days he became a lot more 'family friendly' as one could say.
His recent reconciliation with the bats, their slowly progressive relationship made Jason sacrifice some of his bad habits, which included leaving people with holes in their bodies all around crime alley.
Now, he figured he wouldn't need to use his league training soon, not if Bruce, Dick, Cass or Tim had to say anything about it. Steph and Damian were neutral about it, the blonde even more when she broke into his house at three AM to ask Jason if he would shoot an annoying girl in her class, which he always responded with "Unless she's selling crack to infants and kicking puppies, she's gotta stay alive".
Anyhow, it was three AM, and Stephanie was bitching on his ear again, now about some other girl who mocked Stephanie's dancing skills on a party, which left the girl feeling embarrassed and vengeful…
"-and I couldn't do anything about it, because she just danced so well, and all those boys were ogling her!" She said with a groan, lifting her phone to show him some pretty girl dancing a pop song on top of a pool table
"She's doing all the movements wrong, what poser." Jason says while taking a sip of his beer, snorting as he stared at the video.
"-and it's so cool-wait what?" Steph said like he just told her something absurd, and looked at quizzically.
"I mean, the tempo is off, her hips are too stiff, she's doing the movements on the wrong order-" He drawls out, blinking his eyes heavily as he feels the pleasant buzz of alcohol on his bloodstream.
Steph stares at him in pure silence, like she just realized something important. She crawls closer to him, her face coming impossibly closer as she stares into his sould like she had never seen him before.
"Jason fucking Todd…Do you know how to dance?" She said while shaking his shoulders.
Jason sighed, trying to get her grubby little paws off his shoulders so he could answer without being shaken like a pair of maracas.
"Yeah I guess…? Just stop treating it like it's the end of the word!" Jason huffs and uses his hand to push Stephanie away from him.
"IT IS!!" She screams, not giving in the slightest and crawling on top of him like a spider monkey. "How the hell did you learn how to dance?! B stalks you all the time nowadays, and you were too busy decapitating people when you were a full time crime lord-"
She stops, and Jason could hear the cogs and screws in her head working. Stephanie might not be the brightest tool in the shed, but the shed in question was a bat-shed, and everything that had to do with bats came with a healthy dose of investigation and tactical intelligence.
"No way" She mutters while staring at his white streak and then his green eyes.
"Hmm…"
"No. Way."
"Yes way." And there goes another sip of his beer.
"Talia Al'Ghul taught you how to dance."
"Technically she taught me how to ways to seduce people, dancing was just one of them."
Step stared at him wide eyed, and suddenly started vibrating like she was a plane about to take off.
"Oh god, this is perfect!" She squealed, gripping both of Jason's hands, making him drop his beer. He was ready to slap her head for that, when she got uncomfortably close to him, with those scary blue eyes of her shining like death lasers. "You can teach me how to dance! And then I'll fucking destroy mackenzie on the dancefloor, and I get to see you sway your hips as a bonus-"
"And what makes you think I'll agree to that, huh?" He says with one raise eyebrow, staring at her through half lidded eyes, words already becoming slightly slurred from all the alcohol. Maybe he wouldn't have given up this information if he were more sober, but life taught him you can't deal with Steph's 3Am rants without a healthy amount of beer in you, so…
"Well, I won't tell the rest of your little family that little Jason, poor innocent boy, has been terribly coerced by an assassin group to shake your ass to attract disgusting people!" She says with a bright smile, and even while drunk, Jason knew what this meant.
The whole Red Hood thing left a shit ton of bad blood between him and the clan, but ever since they started working on his whole redemption arc, they've gotten strangely...protective. It was like they started to see Jason as some poor little traumatized creature, one that bit and scratched when scared.
Jason thinks is some kind of trauma response to all the shit he did to them, but they started to translate his actions as some kind of cry for help.
Every time he patrolled, someone would follow him, be it for help, or to communicate any kind of thing that could be a trigger for Jason in their super secret comm that he pretended not to know about. So yeah, basically his family somehow got strangely protective of him after they finally kissed and made up.
"You know damn well that's not what happened! Just because I learned a set of skills in assassin school, doesn't mean I used them-!"
"And you know that's not how they're gonna seeeeeee it~" She sing-songed, blinking those bug eyes at him like some cartoon character.
He took a deep breath, realizing that maybe he had no other option, and that he would probably need to become Angelina the ballerina or some shit, and help the purple loving crack addict to win some kind of highschool musical dance battle.
"Fuck my life I guess, meet me on friday after lunch, guess I'm gonna show you how to shake some ass."
"FUCK YEAH"
—-----------
Dancing wasn't a lesson he disliked in the league, quite the contrary actually.
He learned from various instructors, different kinds of dancing, and different rhythms. Those lessons were his reprieve from the harsh beatings he got while training with different fight styles., or the hunger and thirst he felt while locked inside a dark room for his own resistance…
He kept it as his own secret little hobby. He danced in his living room occasionally, sneaked into Cassandra's dance studio when he knew no one was home, and he kept on dancing.
It was also pretty useful to manage pit rage, which made his dancing escapades more frequent.
So yeah, it was his safe heaven…
One which he had to share with Steph now, unfortunately.
"Come on, move those hips! Are you trying to dance or incorporate a stick?!" He said while shoving the blonde's waist with his thigh.
"What the actual fuck?! I don't have that many bones in my body, it's fucking impossible to move my hips that way! Are you some kind of alien?!" She says while pointing at him accusingly, glaring at the way Jason demonstrated the movements like it was as easy as breathing.
"If you bothered to stretch more often, you would be having an easier time-" He says while pointing at his waist, demonstrating how his upper body was practically immobile while his lower one moved like water. "-you need to feel your core, It's up and down, like making an imaginary infinity sign with your hips…." He says while pointing at her. "You're just moving your waist in round circles like hoola hooping, and that's not what we're doing here."
Steph gulped down, looking very intimidated, like Jason’s movements were some kind of universal threat.
“How the actual hell can you do this…It’s like watching a professional belly dancer, and I feel like someone who’s only got the belly part down-“
She says with a huff, going to the other side of Jason’s living room, the furniture having been pushed to the corners to give them more space, and grabbed a water bottle.
“Well, we’ve only been working on this two weeks, you can’t just expect to learn how to ‘move your body like a sexy worm’, as you called it, in two weeks.” He deadpans, cocking his hip to the side, which made Stephanie laugh.
“Right, and do you think I could manage it in-“
Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the sound of Jason’s window cracking open, making both of their heads turn sharply at whoever invaded Jason’s main safe house-
‘Hello? What are we doing?’ Cassandra signed from where she was perched on his windowsill, staring at them like she already knew the answer. She was dressed in normal clothes, and since it was still quite early in the day, she must have only dropped by for some chit-chat, not anything mission related.
“Oh great, another one-“ Jason said while slapping his hand on his forehead, wondering just how many people were going to annoy him about his dancing abilities, and hoping Cass wouldn’t be one of them.
“Oh, hey Cassie! We were just-“ Stephanie paused, trying to come with a plausible excuse on why they were both sweaty, both wearing loose yoga pants and matching crop-tops (courtesy of Stephanie’s insistence on twinning with her new ‘dancing bestie’ Jason.) , not to mention the whole furniture swept aside. “-we…were sparring, yeah! I wanted Jason to give me some lessons-“
‘Dancing. Fun. Can I join?’ Cass signs, an amused smile on her face as she takes in Stephanie’s obvious lie. She looks at Jason, a pleading gaze that made him feel like trash from glaring at her earlier.
“…Why the fuck not? Not like you’re a snitch or anything." Jason sighs, and lets out a resigned laugh a few moments later when Cass takes off her shoes by the window, and comes to stand beside him and Steph, slightly bouncing with happiness.
'What dance? How to move?' She signs while looking at them expectantly. Jason can't help but smile at her genuine little smile from just being next to them. Cassandra was truly someone who could make you laugh with only a few words, or in her case, no words at all.
"Well, right now I'm trying to teach Steph some basic Jazz Funk movements. She's trying to out-slay some mean bitch in her school." He says while pointing at Steph, who pouts at him for outing her petty reason for learning how to dance.
Cass nods, and stares at Steph with the same seriousness she would in a mission. It seems like Cassandra doesn't like the idea of some girl making Steph feel uncomfortable, so Jason guesses she's about to crash their lesson to help Steph as much as she can.
'Teach moves? I copy, I help.' She looks at him through those cute little dark eyes of hers, and makes Jason wonder how the hell he ever hated this tiny menace that called him little brother when she was just this adorable.
"Yeah yeah, I'm gonna do the choreography slowly, I bet you won't even need me to repeat it after I'm done." He says with a small smile, and takes his phone out of his pocket, pressing play on the random pop song Stephanie insisted was the one that held 'all the vibes she needed for victory'.
Jason moved expertly, twisting his body in mesmerizing ways that could surely impress a crowd. His hips swayed with the beat, his feet moved with every note, his arms swayed and framed the whole sequence with fluid movements. He lost himself to the beat, and when it was done, he heard the cheerful claps coming from Steph and Cass.
"Damn, no matter how much I see you dance, it never ceases to amaze me how lethal you look!" The blonde girl says with a whistle, winking at Jason when he gives her an amused smirk.
'Very good. Little brother moves pretty. Feels like water.' Cass says through twinkling eyes, and steps forward, dragging Stephanie along with her. Soon enough, Jason and Cass team up to teach the teenager the moves, their joint lesson clearly taking effect when Steohanie starts moving more like a slug than a drowning worm.
They spend the rest of the evening like this, dancing, talking, and just having fun…
"Red Hood, come in." A static voice, easily recognizable as Oracle comes from his small communication device on a nearby table.
Jason quickly abandons their shared space in favor of getting up and grabbing the small device.
"Red Hood reporting. What 's up O?" Jason tries to say lightly, but can't quite hide how his voice is slightly raspy from all the movement he was doing around earlier.
"...Batman, Red Robin and Robin need some help at the cave. We can't reach Black Bat and Spoiler, so I was hoping to catch you for some backup." She says, worry overtaking her tone as she mentions the two missing girls.
Jason grimaces, looking back at a whistling Stephanie and an apologetic Cassandra, both already grabbing their coats an shoes and getting ready to leave.
"I've got Black Bat and Spoiler right here with me. Taking spoiler to the cave right now, think B can wait for about 15 minutes? Black Bat is already on her way, probably will arrive in 10" Jason says while grabbing the keys to his motorcycle, nodding at Cassandra who is already climbing out the window where she came from.
Babs is silent for a few seconds, before sighing with relief upon realizing the girls were alright.
"Yeah, 15 minutes sounds reasonable. Meet you all soon."
He puts on his armour and helmet, his boots too. Jason tossed a spare helmet at Stephanie, who catched it with practiced ease. They descend the fire escape quickly, falling two flights of stairs at a time, before landing beside Jason's motorcycle, hidden behind the nastiest trash cans the world has ever seen.
"Dude, gross…Can't you use a parking garage like everyone else?" Steph says while covering her nose with her free hand not holding the helmet.
"And risk the infamous Red Hood's motorcycle getting found out? Nah. This place is way safer, no one gets within a ten meter radius of this dump unless they want to get a hundred different types of virus, bacteria and cancer, so it's perfect to hide my babygirl." He says while cooing at the motorcycle, the red and black vehicle shining within the dim lights of the alleyway almost as if preening from the praise.
"...I'll never understand your one-sided psycho-sexual obsession with your motorcycle-"
"Don't talk about Lizzie like this, she's sensitive." Jason said while glaring at Steph, gesturing for her to get on.
"Right, sorry, I'll never offend your dear bike wife Lizzie again, my bad." Steph sighed, got up on the spoiled vehicle.