Work Text:
“You ever gotten stitches before?” Jason asks nonchalantly, like he’s not pressing a thick pad of gauze to Duke’s head to stop the bleeding. Duke doesn’t answer, gaze unfocused. He clicks his tongue and taps the kid’s cheek with his free hand until they’re eye to eye. He grins, sharp and confident. “Hear me, kid? Ever have stitches before?”
Duke licks his lips before he cracks out a slow, “N-No.” He reaches up to touch the gauze, but Jason blocks him. “Have – have you?”
“Nope!” Jason says, popping the ‘p.’ “Never had a stitch in my life.”
“Ignore him,” Stephanie says as she drops down from the fire escape silent as a cat, cape whispering behind her. “I stitched him up last week.”
Jason lets out a dramatic, mock-offended gasp – smiling softer when Duke giggles. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, East. My pores are clear, my skin is flawless. You must’ve been imagining things.”
She kneels next to him, setting the stark white med kit between them. “He ran into a dumpster,” she tells Duke in a hushed tone like she’s telling a secret. “Totally got distracted by that new graffiti on Hudson off Eden Park. You know the one?”
Duke leans into Jason’s hand, his thinking face on. “Maybe,” he says just as slowly as before, words slurring just slightly. The cut on his head isn’t his only injury, just the worst one. “The one…the one with the wonky Hood, yeah?”
Steph laughs, eyes crinkling in the corners. “Yeah, that’s the one.” She nudges Jason’s hand away and takes over, peeling the gauze back to see how bad it actually is. Head wounds always look worse than they actually are.
“Hey, it still looks good,” Jason says. He slides behind Steph to Duke’s other side, offers his not-blood-covered hand for the kid to take – and he does, squeezing tightly and with slightly too much strength. Jason bites his tongue and doesn’t say anything about it. “The colors are fucking fantastic. You’re just jealous you don’t have an entire wall dedicated to you.”
“Oh please, neither do you,” Steph shoots back.
“Signal is the only Bat I’m willing to share a wall with.” Jason nudges Duke, dragging the kid’s attention from the needle and thread Steph is starting to prep. His eyes are wide, nervous, a slight gold tint to the normal brown that tells Jason he’s trying to see how this is going to go. “How much do you think it’ll cost for them to cover up Spoiler?”
“Hood!” Steph snaps playfully. She jabs him in the shoulder – thankfully with her knuckles and not the needle in her other hand. “Fuck you!”
Jason raises his hand. “Hey, hey. At least they got your suit right. They even gave Signal here his little bat ears. What did I get? Lips, on my helmet. Who does that? Who honestly thinks that’s okay?”
Minus the questionable choices concerning his Hood, the mural really was probably one of the best pieces of art in East End so far – and that’s not his ego talking. The colors are bright and the lines clean, everything perfectly balanced to draw attention and keep it. The location – a local craft brewery that had been built long before Park Row became Crime Alley – belongs to a private citizen instead of the city, which means it can’t be ordered to be covered up.
It's of the three of them. Red Hood, Spoiler, Signal. The three protectors of East End – or so has been claimed. There’s been a few titles whispered here and there, but none of them have really paid attention to it.
Red Hood and Spoiler were painted first not long before Signal’s debut and he was added quickly with obvious love and attention to detail. Literally, the only thing wrong with the whole thing is the lips on the helmet and that’s definitely there for a joke because Jason knows the artist – not like personally-personally, but well enough – and the rat bastard would fucking do something like that just to spite him.
Just because Jason keeps shoving enough tips into the jar to more than pay for his goddamn meal when the guy insists on it being free. Fuck that. He has the money. Let. Him. Fucking. Pay.
Anyway. The three of them with a bit of a flower theme. Red Hood with dark thorns and red roses, Spoiler with bright and happy lavender, Signal with gorgeous blooming sunflowers. It’d almost be embarrassing if it weren’t so flattering. They look strong and ready to take on the work that keeps wanting to knock them down –
And, well, they keep on getting back up.
“’s nice,” Duke mumbles. His grip on Jason’s hand tightens to a painful degree and Jason swears his bones literally creak. Steph shushes Duke gently and goes back to threading through the slice on his head. “Think…think my parents would like it?”
Steph pauses in her ministrations, wide eyes meeting Jason’s through his domino. Duke can’t hear it, but that slight noise in the distance is the sound of their hearts breaking. Jason swallows thickly. Stephanie blinks back the shimmer in her eyes before she breathes in through her nose and goes back to patching Duke up.
“They’d love it, kid,” Jason murmurs – and it makes him wonder if his parents would’ve liked it.
His mom definitely. She’d get all blubbery and teary-eyed and probably do that thing she used to do when she had the energy for it – pick him up and smack kisses all over his face until he’s squirming and laughing and she’s laughing too. His dad – Willis – would ruffle his hair and call him champ and… Jason can only picture himself young in this daydream. He can’t….he can’t see himself as he is now with them and, and – he steers his thoughts away, throat tightening, his eyes burning. He doesn’t need to go down that rabbit hole.
Stephanie – her mom would be proud, he thinks. Wants to believe. Realizes he doesn’t actually know much about her mom. He knows some. He knows enough, because she hasn’t volunteered more and he might come by being nosey (curious) naturally, he doesn’t like to pry when he doesn’t need to. Steph deserves her privacy. He thinks, maybe, there could be a chance her dad might be impressed. Impressed she’s done so much, has come so far, but he doubts it.
He wonders how Bruce feels about it –
“How ya holdin’ up?” he asks instead of following down that rabbit hole. This night is just full of them. He watches Steph smear on an ointment and press on a bandage. Duke blinks slowly at her, expression not quite pulling off casual, more of a wince. “Anything else we need to know about?”
“…no?” Duke shifts his body, wiggling his feet and his hands, bending his neck side to side. “I think I’m okay. Feel a little sick to my stomach, but that might be the concussion.”
Jason briefly closes his eyes, suddenly exhausted. “Yeah, probably. C’mon. Let’s get you up. I’ve gotta place not too far from here.”
He pulls his hand back from Duke’s iron grip, flexing his fingers, hissing under his breath. He ignores Steph’s knowing gaze and wraps an arm around Duke to help him to his feet. The kid staggers into him, nearly sending them against the wall which would definitely send them to the ground in the long run, but Steph is ducking under to his other side and helping out.
“You guys okay?” a voice calls from the mouth of the alley. Steph and Jason tense in preparation for a fight, but it’s just a couple civilians with their phones out. “Do we need to call someone?”
“We’re good!” Steph tells him, a little chirp to her voice that wasn’t there before. “’preciate it, though!”
“That’s our cue,” Jason mutters.
Steph wrinkles her nose at him, but you can only tell by the squint of her eyes. He sticks his tongue out and that you can definitely see. Duke laughs helplessly, smiling despite the melancholy mood that’s fallen and the blood on the side of his face, and the way he sways when he walks.
“Thanks,” Duke says, bashful yet happy. “You know. For coming.”
“Any time,” Steph tells him seriously.
Jason hums. “I mean, it was totally a hardship for me. Really.” Then grunts when Steph punches him. Hard. “Hey! Unwarranted!”
She sniffs haughtily. “Asshole.”
“Duke thought it was funny! Didn’t you?”
“If I say yes does that mean you’ll make me food?”
“….I mean, I was gonna make you food anyway. I’m not that much of an asshole.”
Steph thinks about it. “True. Just barely.”
“Oh, I see how it is.”
Duke laughs again and Jason and Steph exchange smiles behind his back. Score.