Chapter Text
It was a bad night.
There was rage bubbling in his gut, and Jason had been wandering the rooftops hours past when he usually would have gone home. Patrol hadn't quelled the restlessness in his legs and the craving for violence was loud, overpowering most other thoughts, even with the knuckles of his leather gloves still caked in blood.
It wasn't a smart decision, he knew, when he’d shut off his comm, pretended to turn in for the night, and gone beyond the boundaries of crime alley. It was just that… he’d been doing well. He’d managed to have tea with Alfie at the manor last week and lunch with Dick two days ago. He’d kept his comm on so Babs could check in with him (though admittedly, on a private line most of the time). He’d even worked a case with Tim that had overlapped into Crime Alley, without incident. As far as the Bats knew, he had the pits under control, and he wanted to keep it that way. So, Jason smothered both the exhaustion gnawing at his joints and the inner voice that whispered some bullshit about making better choices, left his territory, and hunted for a fight.
Raised voices caught his attention, and he changed course to investigate. It didn't take him long to reach the source–three guys, backing a fourth, much smaller man up against the brick wall of a mechanic’s shop. The man’s stance was defiant, despite being cornered, and before Jason could move, he swung a wild punch at the closest guy’s head.
Before he’d put any real thought into the movement, Jason grappled from the roof, landing heavily and drawing a gun at the same time. The other two men whirled to face him as their friend staggered under the blow to his jaw.
The taste of iron and rot filled his mouth. “I’ll give you five seconds to make a smarter decision here,” he growled, cocking the gun. “Five, four…”
“Shit, this ain't Hood’s territory! What the hell?”
“Who gives a fuck, let's get outta here!”
Disappointingly, they ran.
Jason stood stock still for a moment, bloodlust still flooding his veins and green tinting the edges of his vision. His palms itched, trigger fingers twitching, and something in him really wanted to fight the civilian twink in front of him, so before he could do something he would regret, he breathed in for four, held for seven, out for eight.
In for four.
Hold for seven.
Out for eight.
In for four…
“Hey, big guy, you alright?”
Jason snapped back to attention. The civilian was still there. He stood casually, hands in his pockets, staring at him with a concerned look on his face.
It made him want to deck the guy.
“...what?”
“You doing okay? You seem a bit… out of it.” He looked Jason up and down, eyes lingering just a little too long in a way that made his violent thoughts shift to… something else.
The guy was pretty, with fluffy black hair framing his round face. He was skinny–too skinny, in Jason’s opinion-and about four inches shorter than Jason’s six feet.
“...I'm fine.” he wasn't, but the fight was draining out of him, and that was about as close to fine as he was probably going to get, so it wasn't really a lie.
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks for that, by the way. I could have taken them, but who am I to begrudge someone else the chance to be all moody and intimidating?” What? “I'm Danny, by the way.”
“...”
“I already know who you are, obviously. Red Hood, big bad crime lord, hero of crime alley, all that jazz. You're tall, but I thought you’d be taller, for some reason.”
“...you’re not from around here, are you?”
“What gave me away?” A lopsided grin lit up the man's face, practically glowing under the yellow streetlights. When Jason didn't respond, Danny fidgeted with the sleeves of his oversized hoodie, shifted on his feet, and kept talking. “Moved here a few months ago. Always wanted to open my own shop and the rent here is cheap.” He gestured at the building behind him. “And I figured, with all of the bullshittery that happens in this city, there’s probably always a need for mechanics.”
If the accent hadn't given it away, the way the guy rambled certainly would have. No one in Gotham talked to strangers this freely. No wonder he was getting jumped. Annoyance pricked behind Jason’s eyes–a side effect of the exhaustion that was settling deeper into his bones now that his rage had subsided, he was sure, but also, what was with this guy?
“You always this… friendly?”
Danny’s cheeks flushed. “Right. Sorry. Crime lord.” He flapped his hands at Jason. “My bad. Just wanted to say thanks. You ever need anything repaired, feel free to stop by. I’ll give you a discount.” His eyes wandered down Jason’s torso again before snapping back up to the helmet. “Or, you know, you could just… stop by. For any other reason. If you need… well, anything .” He turned and unlocked the door, then hesitated and faced Jason again. “Not telling you what to do or anything, you can make your own choices, but… maybe you should be done for the night, big guy. Hard to protect your territory if you’re all beat to hell.”
The door closed with a soft click. The man wasn't wrong; the longer Jason stood in one place, the more exhausted he felt, and injuries from the night that he hadn't noticed were starting to make themselves known now that the adrenaline was waning. Before he could run out of steam completely, he grappled back up to the rooftops and headed back towards the alley, ready to find the closest safe house to curl up and lick his wounds.
~X~X~
Danny curled up midair against the door the second it was closed behind him, covering his face and groaning. “ If you need anything , of all the dumbass things to say…” Mortifying. The whole situation was mortifying. It was like the second he caught sight of Red Hood's leather-bound muscles all of his higher brain function had gone out the window. Not even three months into living in Gotham and he'd already managed to talk the ear off the (unbelievably hot) crime lord that ran the entire neighborhood next door. He could never tell Jazz.
The whole point of his moving to Gotham in the first place was to keep under the radar. Maybe settle down for longer than six months, something he hadn't done since he was eighteen. Telling his parents about Phantom hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped, and when they'd freaked, he grabbed his go bag and booked it, only returning to make sure the portal was out of commission before taking off.
(He couldn’t help but think, on those occasions when he couldn’t stop his brain from remembering, how ridiculous it was that they’d accepted he was trans so readily, but couldn’t accept that their own invention had half killed him .)
The GIW, while too incompetent to really be a threat, were annoying enough that he’d been looking for a reason to leave, anyway.
And it hadn't been so bad, at first! Sure, losing his haunt had... hurt, more than he'd expected it to, but he quickly buried that under the excitement of collecting new experiences and soaking in new sights. The only place he could have been considered even remotely "well traveled” was in the Ghost Zone, and as far as Danny was concerned, that didn't really count. His ghostly side had taken up pretty much all of his teenage experiences, ruined any chance he'd had at actually dating, destroyed his relationships with his family, and ostracized him from his hometown even more than he'd already been. So with the portal sabotaged, his relationship with his parents effectively severed, Sam, Jazz, and Tuck all away at college… Danny was free to indulge in his human side to his heart's content.
There was only one issue with that.
Danny wasn't just human.
Danny was half ghost. With all the instincts that went with that.
For some reason, Danny had assumed that the overpowering desire to protect would stay the fuck behind with the ghosts of Amity Park. But it hadn't, and he'd gotten more mixed up with superhero business than he'd wanted to in those first few months. As time went on, he got better at helping without being noticed, making use of intangibility and invisibility to give heroes a subtle hand–tripping burglars, jamming weapons, even invisibly joining the odd battle during a few alien invasions. (Why were there so many of those, anyway? Earth just did not seem worth that much effort.) The instinct to help seemed satisfied by that, and he was able to stay under the radar. Perfect.
It was a different instinct that kept getting him into trouble.
The desire to brawl.
That one... that one was tricky. Now that his parent's portal was shut down and Vlad had no idea where he was, the only people strong enough to really spar with Danny would… Well, let’s just say that it would attract attention he really didn't want. He was enjoying his anonymity, thanks. The urge to pick a fight was a constant, burning itch in the back of his brain. That handful of alien invasions were the only real relief he'd had in five years.
In the end, the irresistible urge to pick fights was what landed Danny in Gotham. There was always a chance that the Bat and his Birds would be a problem, of course (Batman’s distaste for metas in Gotham was not exactly a secret), but Danny hadn’t been noticed since his first year away from Amity. He was pretty confident he could fly under their radar, as long as he picked his battles carefully, and there was so much fighting to be done in Gotham. Danny was positive a few fights here and there would be completely missed. After a little research, he’d decided his best bet would be to get a place close to Park Row, but not so close as to draw the Red Hood’s attention, the idea being that the Bats would continue to respect Hood’s territory and not cross paths with him too often, and Hood would be too busy inside his territory to notice a few extra scraps on his borders.
Was it a foolproof plan? No. Danny’s plans were never foolproof.
The garage he’d rented was a shithole, for one. It took more work than he would have liked to get it usable again. For two, he’d seriously underestimated the amount of ambient ectoplasm in the air. He wouldn’t be surprised if every single Gotham native was at least a little liminal, which would certainly explain the amount of crime and fighting in the city. Exposure to ectoplasm always seemed to affect humans like that, on some level. Of course, this meant that finding someone who wanted to fight him was too easy– all he had to do was go for a walk in the early hours of the morning, after most of the city’s vigilantes had left the streets, and it was inevitable that someone would try to jump him. He was feeling better than he had in years.
The third problem, though, was that while he had technically understood how much crime there was in Gotham city, he’d severely underestimated what that would mean for Danny’s protective impulses. They had kicked into overdrive, making him twitch with every distant gunshot and every rogue attack alert. He’d continued to go with his usual formula–helping out subtly when he happened to be out and about, but pretty soon, that stopped being enough. He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to stop himself from getting actively involved. He’d have to figure out a solution soon, though, because it was starting to itch the way his desire to brawl had, and now that he’d had some time without it, Danny was reluctant to have to live like that again.
As a matter of fact, it was itching right now . Underneath the embarrassment of his less-than-ideal interaction with Red Hood, it spread, tingling down his spine and making his very bones feel like they wanted to jump out of his skin to follow the vigilante crime lord home. The man was clearly exhausted. He’d covered well, but he was hurt, too– he’d been favoring one leg over the other when he’d landed in the street, and the way he held himself told Danny that some of his ribs were probably at least bruised. While Danny was sure that he could still defend himself (the veritable arsenal of weaponry the man was carrying around spoke to that), he couldn’t help but think about all the times he’d kept going beyond his limits in Amity Park. If he hadn’t already been half dead, some of his injuries absolutely would have done permanent damage.
And Red Hood, well… for all he was a brick shithouse of a man with a brutal reputation… he was still human. A more liminal human than average even for Gotham, based on the aggressive-angry-fight me vibes he'd been projecting when he first showed up, but human nonetheless.
It wouldn’t hurt to make sure he got home alright. Just once. Maybe try and calm him down, talk to him with a little ghost speech to help the guy relax once he got where he was going. He might not sleep at all, otherwise, with how worked up he felt.
He hesitated for one final moment, before the pull became truly overpowering. Then Danny transformed, turned invisible and flew through the wall after the Red Hood.
Just this once.