Chapter Text
Dick grasped the slick rung of the fire escape and sighed. The Nightwing part of him was dying to run; twitchy with frustration and desperate to dive and leap and fly. Officer Grayson, on the other hand had completed a full shift before driving up to Gotham to settle in for surveillance, and wanted to go to bed.
Tim had been intercepting messages suggesting that Ivy was tearing up the city searching for a stolen batch of seed. If Ivy had created it and someone wanted to steal it, that was enough to bring the Bats out in Force. B had even pulled Jason in, via Dick of course, because his contacts among the city's drug Lords would potentially make or break their search.
Good intel or not, the raid they'd been expecting to intercept on one of four possible safehouses, had never materialised. Bruce and Tim had stayed to watch a little longer at theirs, Tim mutinous and muttering in frustration at the rare instance of his intel proving unreliable. Steph and Cass carried out a quick infiltration, eliminated their location as a possibility and headed home. Dick and Damian had elected to give up and traipse over to check in with Jason.
It wasn't the first mission where Jason had joined their team but Dick was starting to think he'd never get used to it. It wasn't even like he'd known Jason well in the before times. In fact, he'd watched the young teen settle into his old shoes with such conflicted feelings that it had erected an indelible barrier between them. Those feelings had settled over time, as he grew into his role with the Titans, but absence had done as much as resentment to make sure he and Jason had never become close.
Recently, Bruce had been taking full advantage of that. He seemed to think Dick could be some kind of Switzerland in the detente between Batman and the Red Hood. Dick was honestly buckling a little under the strain. His feelings about Jason hadn't exactly become less complicated following his death, resurrection and recreation as a crime lord.
The object of his frustrations was silhouetted against the glow on the opposite edge of the flat roof when he and Damian emerged. Without turning to acknowledge them, his voice rang out across the shadows.
"Wing, I have been staring at this warehouse for 5 hours, if something doesn't happen soon I'm going to blow it up out of spite."
Despite the complaint he sounded almost cheerful and wide awake in comparison to Dick's own flagging energy levels. Dick found his heart rate picking up at the little burst of adrenaline he always got from stepping into Jason's volatile crosshairs.
"Sorry, Hood. No movement on any of the other possibilities either."
Jason swivelled around and stood up, stalking over to them. He moved very lightly for such a big man. Even as Robin, he'd had something of a swagger, but with all the additional muscle and training it had morphed into the thoughtlessly confident prowl of a big cat.
Dick watched the white eyes of his mask drop to survey Damian.
"Ooh you brought the gremlin." He cocked his head to the side consideringly and addressed his next comment directly to the youngest bat. "He been talking your ear off all night?"
"Incessantly," Damian drawled and Dick looked down at him, too surprised to be offended.
Jason barked a laugh, the eyes of his mask flashing.
"Aw, forced to listen to Golden Boy. Poor Child of the Demon." Damian hissed like an irritated cat and Jason raised his hands and a grin came through in his voice. "Alright, still demonic enough all by yourself, I get it." His voice turned teasing again. "But maybe all these soft, do-gooder types are rubbing off on you…"
Damian crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air. Dick looked between them as if he was watching a tennis match, if he'd had to imagine how Jason and Damian's first meeting would go, this would not have been it. Even with civilians Damian could be extremely standoffish, often refusing to interact at all.
"I would never permit my skills to degrade. My training is proceeding well."
And that was about as much of an acknowledgement as Bruce, Dick and his other teachers were going to get, thought Dick, lips twitching in amusement.
As Dick repressed a sigh, Hood spread his hands and dropped into a fighting stance. Dick tensed and Damian looked at Hood suspiciously and then spoke:
"Good day?"
Dick frowned, what did that mean? Jason just shrugged and answered equally nonsensically.
"Good enough."
Dick glanced at Damian and saw a small smile on his face before he exploded forward. Dick reached out to grab him too late.
"Robin!"
Hood threw a punch at him and Damian deflected, sliding under his guard and landing a hit on Jason's ankle. Movements a blur, Damian planted a boot on Hood's thigh and feinted an eye strike. When Jason dodged, Damian swung himself up on Hood's shoulders and pressed a fist against the exposed strip of flesh on his neck in a mimicry of a stab. He held it there for a moment and then released it in favour of running his hands over Hood's helmet and rapping on it.
Dick's heart was in his mouth but Jason just wrapped a massive hand around Damian's boot to hold him still.
"Shivlet, if you damage that, I will gut you."
He reached up with the other hand and ruffled Damian's feathery hair. Damian shook him off but otherwise ignored it. Which was better than Dick ever got!
"What is it made of? If I can damage it, it is not good enough."
"I have faith in your abilities to fuck with shit, Demon."
Hood glanced over at Dick and rolled his eyes.
"What?"
What? Seriously, did Jason really think Dick wasn't going to question this? He didn't even know where to start, this was seriously twilight zone. Damian had even been specifically warned about Red Hood. He had stood there and nodded, although to be fair he often did that even when he had zero intention of complying.
"You two…know each other," Dick said. It should have been a question but from their behaviour it was perfectly clear that they did.
Damian straightened and looked down condescendingly from his perch. Dick nearly smiled, Damian did always seem to want to look down at people and from up there he finally could.
"Oh no, complete strangers." Hood said flippantly. "He just likes to be tall."
Damian reached down and pinched his neck beneath the mask.
"The Hood was brought into the League and trained by my mother. Of course I know him."
Dick blinked slowly and wondered if any of the others had successfully worked that out.
"Does B know?"
Damian shrugged.
"How should I know?"
Jason barked out a laugh.
"That's the way, shivlet. Make them work for it."
Dick glared at the pair of them but anything he might have said was interrupted by the buzz of their comms. Dick pressed a finger to his ear.
"They've called it," he reported with a sigh of relief. "Nothing doing tonight."
"Well then," said Jason. "I have a criminal empire to run."
He patted Damian's leg and the kid obediently started to move, then stopped.
"Springboard?"
His voice was testing, almost hopeful. Jason sighed.
"Fine. Go ahead, gremlin."
Jason held his gloved hands out in front of him at shoulder height. Damian grinned and scrambled up to stand on his broad shoulders. He leapt onto Jay's outstretched hands and Hood catapulted him into the air.
Damian tucked into a ball and somersaulted neatly twice before hitting the ground in a crouch. Dick would have bounced up and added a flourish but Damian was utterly silent.
It looked like something they'd done a hundred times before and the sense of whiplash Dick had been experiencing intensified. Before he could comment Jason had slipped quietly off the edge of the building with a sarcastic salute.