Chapter Text
September.
Nightwing picked up his and Hood’s order from Brenda’s Cafe —two large burgers, two large salads, and one medium order of fries (to split), and swung up to meet Hood at the top of the Mansard roof on a Bludhaven apartment building. Hood was wearing his domino and had his helmet in hand.
Landing lightly, Nightwing dramatically shook his fist at the sky “Curse you, Ra’s, and your damned orthorexia.”
“There’s nothing wrong with eating healthy,” Hood said primly. “This is moderation.”
“I know,” said Nightwing “We can’t live on burgers and fries forever like we tried to do as teenagers. And this is moderation. But fries used to be your favorite food in the world, and this will literally be the second time I’ve seen you eat them in over two years.”
Hood gave a small, wry smile. “Or, you know,” he shrugged. “I grew up, and also you haven’t seen me that much because, like…mental illness, different moral systems, estrangement, both very busy, different cities, life is wild, stuff.”
“Nneka calls Ra’s ‘that almond-mom bastard,’” said Nightwing. “And she eats raw broccoli dipped in pepper sauce for a snack.”
Hood groaned. “I should never have introduced you two.” Nneka was Hood’s employee and ‘work mom’, the third highest-ranking member of the Red Hood Gang. She was passionate, irrepressible, deeply loyal, and (even though Hood wrote her paychecks) seemed a little unclear on who was in charge of whom.
“Too late!” said Nightwing. “We’re texting buddies! I’m going shopping with her and her sister next weekend!”
“You’re what?!”
Nightwing cackled.
“Wait,” said Hood, “You and Oracle had a thing next weekend. A…buying a couch thing?”
Nightwing’s face fell.
“Oh,” said Hood.
Nightwing took his comm out of his ear, tucked it into a pocket at his hip, and zipped the pouch closed. Hood followed suit.
“I canceled the buying-a-couch thing,” he said. “There was a new rogue I was worried about. And Oracle said it was the last time I was gonna cancel on her. So I worked really hard to contain the rogue, but when I told her that buying-a-couch was back on, she…” he slumped.
“Fuck, dude. I’m so sorry.”
Nightwing sighed. “It’s OK. She deserves better.”
“I mean…” said Hood. “Maybe different. Maybe she deserves different. Maybe you’re not compatible. There is no better.”
“Sap,” said Nightwing, poking Hood’s shoulder with a finger.
“So…Thursday Family Dinner?” said Hood.
Nightwing sighed. “I told her she can have Thursday Family Dinner for the next few months, and then we can see if we can be in the same place or need to alternate Thursdays or what.”
Hood groaned. “See, this is why my adopted brother should not have dated my kind-of adopted sister.”
“Piss off.”
“Just making sure we both know that this is all about me,” said Hood with a grin. Then he gave a guffaw. “Oh my god!” he said.
“What?!” said Nightwing.
“Look we both know that you gave Thursday Family Dinner to O, because you’re a gentleman, and also a self-hating fool. But B is not gonna see it that way. B would watch himself be slowly julienned for O, but we all know that B loves his sons more than he loves his kinda-daughters.”
”Eh, in some ways.” Nightwing shrugged.
“B is totally gonna blame O for driving you off.”
“Noooo,” Nightwing moaned into his burger.
“And O is gonna get the silent ‘B is suffering’ look. Oh, I am so ready for someone else to get the ‘B is suffering’ look!”
“Are you still getting the silent ‘B is suffering’ look?’ asked Nightwing.
“Occasionally,” said Hood. “It’s getting better.”
“Is it…all getting better?” asked Nightwing.
Hood blew out a heavy sigh. “I mean…Maria’s helping me get to a place of accepting the things I cannot change?”
“Maria, your therapist?” said Nightwing.
“Yeah. I mean…speaking of how B loves, B loves me with all of his might in every way he can. Which is…basically giving me things and sacrificing for me? It’s not just that B would give me the shirt off his back. B would give me the skin off his back.”
“Without hesitation,” said Nightwing, searching through the bag for the crunchiest fries.
“Yeah, but what I need from B is for him to, one, acknowledge that maybe child vigilantes were bad news. I need to know that I mattered to him enough to make him re-think the rightness of child vigilantes. And, two, to value literally anything else more than he values the lives of his rogues. For instance, me.”
“Which he can never do,” said Nightwing, popping a couple of his extra-crunchy prizes into his mouth.
“Yeah. He’d climb a mountain with no equipment just because I asked for it, casually, to spare me inconvenience. But he wouldn’t, can’t, think for me, even if the alternative was me being tortured to death again.”
“That is…accurate,” Nightwing acknowledged with a grimace.
“And then, to put it the crassest way possible, I can’t afford to cut myself off from my extremely wealthy father-figure.”
Nightwing shrugged.
“I understand the city’s systems and its poor folk better than B ever could,” said Hood.
“You do,” said Nightwing. “B can follow a thread over the moon, and he has contingencies for his contingencies. But he’s never really thought in systems. And although he has a lot of sympathy and compassion for the poor and oppressed, and a lot of empathy for them when their oppression leads to acute victimization, he'll never really understand the...uh..."
"Grinding misery of never having enough resources to cover your needs," Hood finished.
"Yeah, that," said Nightwing.
Hood nodded. “But I’m not a monster,” he said. “I'm not just callously using him for his money without giving a shit about his well-being. I’m still sad when I see him sad.”
Nightwing nodded. He tossed the rest of the fries at Hood. “I’ve eaten at least half of these. You eat the rest.”
Hood ate a fry. “Speaking of packing things away,” he said, holding up a second fry. “I didn’t know you had pockets on your hips until you put your comm in one. How many of those secret pockets do you have?”
“Uhhh…ten? I think? But I can’t put much into them or I start looking like I have a really strange skin disease.”
Hood snickered. “Well, you can’t wear proper pockets, obviously, or the tabloids wouldn’t be able to run pics of your ass every slow week.”
“I’m doing it for the Gotham and Bludhaven economies,” Nightwing said with faux gravity.
“Thinking in systems,” Hood said, shaking his head. He handed Nightwing a card.
“Maria Ramirez,” Nightwing read. “You think I need therapy?!”
”I know that every single member of the Bat Fam needs therapy, Dickhead. You ain’t special there. And a break-up is a good time to take stock of your life and think about what you need and want.”
”I’ll think about it,” said Nightwing, stowing the card.
“Thank you,” said Hood.