Chapter Text
Here were some facts about Joseph King:
He preferred Jessie over Joe, he was a wanderer who didn’t stay in any particular homeless camp, always wore those round sunglasses even at night, and his actual name was Danny James Fenton.
It hadn’t been long after they found out about the anti-ecto acts when Sam had suggested they make a fake identity for Danny, just in case. Tucker had played into it as a joke so they could all file off the edge of the implications, considering his parents and now the government, and they had all had a laugh about it. They still made some names, though. That in itself became a joke, tournaments for the best and worst fake names and possible identities. Tucker had even made a virtual ghost person with the long term favourite name of the group, a sickly kid who took classes from home in the poor part of Gotham, so the name had a trace from before it would be activated… in case it needed to be activated.
When they told Jazz… Danny remembered the complicated look in her eyes. She gave some feedback, though, helped sell the story and suggested that upon activation of the ghost identity they could kill the fake parents and have that be what forced the identity to live on their own.
The name had been funny at the time, suggested by Tucker after Danny had found out from CW that by right of conquest he was now monarch over the Infinite Realms. Joseph King, shortened to Joe King, from “Yo, it’s the King!” but it stuck around because it sounded like “joking.”
So Joseph King was new in town. Two weeks new, one week fired, three attempted robberies to his former job, and several stolen showers from a gym down the street that had since earned a reputation for either being haunted or having busted pipes, one of which was true. Danny had also seen Red Hood once, from a distance.
He’d learned a good few things before coming to Gotham, kinda had to if you were supposed to have lived there for any greater length of time even if it was supposed to be mostly from home confinement due to sickness. He knew the local law enforcement was so unreliable that Sam went on rants about it several times, and as an extension he knew roughly about the Batman situation.
Batman, founding member of the government affiliated Justice League, did not like metas in his city, he kept a gaggle of kid sidekicks by him, and he didn’t enter Crime Alley which was Red Hood’s haunt. He had some villains, same as Phantom, but if Danny just stayed put in Hood’s haunt then Mr. “Vigilant that Works With The Government” wouldn’t need to know about him, mistaken as a meta or not. Danny did not need to know more about the man, just enough to know to stay in Hood’s haunt at night when the bats came out, and explore the greater Gotham area in the day if possible.
That’s what he did for two weeks. Carried around his pack, slept in whatever safe area he could find and phase himself into, hid his stuff in bricked up alcoves, went to work at the cafe, stopped a robbery, went home. Of course now his schedule had emptied up a bit after getting fired via union busting. Danny hadn’t even really been serious about it! It had been right after the third attempted robbery of the week and second of the day when he had joked about needing a union if they were gonna work under these conditions and hey presto he was fired because the manager had apparently overheard and was not in the market of paying above minimum wage.
The second week in Gotham had been for finding a new job.
He wasn’t flat broke or anything, but he didn’t wanna steal anything other than some water from the gyms showers until it became a necessity for his human body’s survival. He was already half dead, going with a little less food wouldn’t kill him. Jazz would though, if she found out, so getting a new job without a high school diploma or much experience would have to be it for now… even if it was easier said than done.
Luca’s, located on the corner by Sheldon Station near the border of Hood’s haunt, was the last place that Danny looked in. Mainly the reason for it was that he’d heard they were hiring via less than normal means which would make it kind of suspicious to show up out of nowhere and hand the owner what he wanted straight on a platter. The owner, Luca, wanted a disposable kid to man the counter and grill so the place would look less like an obvious front for whatever business the man had going on in the back. This was the info that Nicky had given him in return for a tip on how to help the family he left behind.
Danny had lurked on and off by the station for the better part of two days before he plucked up the courage to apply to a job that wasn’t listing and was for sure a front with how few customers came through. It was a small space, he saw from outside, with about six people worth of standing space before the high counter and then the kitchen. It felt even smaller once he came inside, the waiting area almost oppressively small and the counter and everything behind it intimidatingly large as if it was trying to prove something.
In the back was a large man wiping the prep station. In the front was Danny, nervous.
“Um,” he started, and the guy turned to him with a look that Danny thought might be suspicion.
Suspicious or not he soon walked over to and leaned on the counter as if he was about to conduct some sort of mafia deal. “What can I do you for?” he asked with a rough voice that Danny thought either came included with the whole ‘operating a front business’ package, or chain smoking.
“I was wondering if you guys were hiring?” The guy squinted at him and the maybe suspicion became obvious suspicion. Danny just tried his best to look normal, casual even.
Then his look turned inquisitive and he looked Danny up and down as if assessing him. “You got a name, kid?”
“Joseph King, sir. People call me Jessie.” To which the man scoffed.
“Don’t give me the ‘yes sir, anything for you sir’ attitude. I’m not your commanding officer, squirt. I’m the Luca of Luca’s, call me Mr. Romano if you’re gonna keep with the formalities”
Danny just nodded, “Sure.”
Mr. Romano was looking at him again. Skinny arms, ratty hair, sunglasses… oh he would probably ask about those, his other boss had. Other than ‘weirdo who wears sunglasses indoors’ his bill of health should be clean on the desperate and disposable looking front.
Mr. Romano leaned back as if he’d reached a verdict. “You good for any specific times, Jess?” Oh that was a little too close to Jazz for comfort... but he did need the job.
“I’ve got nothing better to do if the pay is good.” It was something he’d heard said in some kind of deal happening under the fire escape he was sleeping on one night and he might as well start learning how to talk like someone in Crime Alley now rather than later when it could become a bigger problem.
Mr. Romano nodded at that, “smart kid,” he said with what may have counted as a pleased look. “Three days minimum, I pay you in cash daily, noon to seven, hours can change when I think you can take it” he continued and Danny could just tell what would happen those other four days and after 7pm.
“How much are you paying?” This was the important question.
“Good catch, 25 an hour. You can handle that?”
For a service job at an unpopular hole in the wall dine and go place, 25 dollars an hour might as well have been charity if it wasn’t a pair of golden shackles. It would be just barely enough with the 3 mandatory days to be under minimum wage for the same hours 6 days at a normal job. It was an obvious trap. Mr. Romano wanted it to be obvious, probably. Lure the desperate and disposable kid into loyalty so they could expand the hours. It was a glowing neon sign that this place would be paying him dirty money.
“Sure. No insurance.” It wasn’t a question, Danny didn’t want any papers tying him to this place, he wanted Mr. Romano to think he was fully undocumented, and wanted no one working here to care if he did or did not get hurt while working.
“You start tomorrow,” Mr. Luca Romano said before turning his back and returning to the kitchen, and Danny left with a new job.
- Week 3 and 4 -
Danny got most of his information from ghosts or passive observation. With the main goal of not standing out you have to learn the lay of the land before you start taking any kind of action, even if the tugging of his obsession begged otherwise.
What he had learned from the first three weeks had been this;
1 No one but the clients call the working girls prostitutes. He had seen a guy get flung half way across a sidewalk over using the word for one of the seemingly more popular girls, and seen several others get slaps from their intended for the same offence.
2 Crime Alley might be Hood’s haunt but it was still rowdy. Red Hood seemed to take care of the organized criminals first and the random violence last, which made sense but still made people very jumpy and sometimes stabby.
3 The community might be tight knit but at the same time, somehow, it was also everyone for themselves. Never count on a favour unless you can. Never ask for help unless it’s offered. No one ever smiles because they’ll take you for an easy mark in a terrible world and you’ll end up sorry for showing unconditional kindness.
It was strange, but Danny was adapting somewhat. That last point had been important to learn because if he had started protecting and helping people expecting nothing in return he would’ve been in a lot of trouble right now, so he was happy he’d waited. With this information in hand he could help people in exchange for the smallest possible price and it would all be fine. Yup. No problem with that logic.
In the last week not much had happened. The three days of working at Luca’s hadn’t been very stressful and hadn't involved anything blatantly suspicious other than doing all transactions in cash without a single attempted robbery. Mr. Romano had let Danny bring home leftovers that would be thrown out otherwise and that was probably the most unnerving thing that had happened before Thursday. Sure, he was thin as a twig and looked like a light breeze could knock him over, but Mr. Romano giving him food was still weird even if appreciated. Maybe he did it as another form of loyalty thing, if Danny associated him with free food then he could leverage that for continued loyalty? It was a mystery. The food was good though, and free, so who was he to complain.
On Thursday he had seen a murder in progress. From context clues it seemed like one of Ella’s clients had gotten angry with her for some reason, maybe about having to pay for sleeping with her, and was taking it out on her in a very hands-on approach. Hands-on meaning hands on her throat and her feet off the ground.
Danny had seen murder attempts before, both at home and in Gotham, most were in Crime Alley but he’d also seen it happen in some of the random back streets in the nicer parts where goons came to bother the people rich enough to be worth mugging. It was unpleasant, and he hated that he had gotten used to it. What he hated more was that once he had wanted to step in to help the victim of one attempt only to find himself not too broken up about it when the victim had fully killed the attacker in self defence.
So Thursday night had been unnerving because when he had seen Ella hanging there, having her trachea crushed, he had acted before thinking.
And then Ella was fine.
He went to the library on the weekend after that to do some light research on abandoned and haunted buildings and the librarian, Barbara, answered some of his questions about how taxes work. She was always patient with him and had offered to let him use the library as a mailing address for tax returns and all that. He hadn’t taken her up on it, frankly he didn’t really want to pay taxes considering that it would make a possible trace of him existing for the government, but he also didn’t want to get arrested for tax fraud… actually, working at Mr. Romano’s place would probably get him arrested for other reasons before the IRS came after him now that he thought about it. If he was just normal homeless then he might have accepted, though. It was a good few blocks away from Hood’s haunt but it was worth going there during the daylight hours, primarily for entertainment. Danny didn’t think, generally, that anyone thought it was fun to live on the streets, he sure didn’t, so he would go whenever he could to read or to use the computers.
The library was nice, he liked it enough to, at one point on the following Monday, absentmindedly wonder if he could make it his haunt. It was large and probably had dead spaces behind boarded up doorways and walls he could camp out in, and it had heating, bathrooms, and so many books. Though the thought wasn’t long for this world. Barbara was already looking at him like Jazz did at home sometimes and he could just tell that even if she hadn’t gotten CPS involved yet, she knew that “Jessie” didn’t have a good daily life. Danny didn’t go to school so the best it could look like from an outside perspective would be that he was getting bullied and was hiding out at the library instead of going to class. If he didn’t have prior experience then he might have even considered that as an option.
“You’re here late today Jessie” Barbara said on the fourth Thursday afternoon.
“Yup, no job tonight so I thought I’d hang out here” Danny said, not mentioning the weird looks from people near Ella’s job.
“You work at Luca’s, right? Down by the station?” She continued as she wheeled over to place some books back in their places.
“I do..? How did you know?” He was sure he hadn’t been the one to tell her. He liked Barbara just fine and she reminded him of Jazz sometimes but he wouldn’t have mentioned it, right? Or did it come up during the tax thing on Monday?
“It’s my friend’s favourite place to eat in the area,” she replied and Danny started to mentally count the very few people who could be considered regulars at the place. “He said it looked like they hired some beanpole clone of his brother.”
Someone who didn’t come in while Danny was working, might look like him, and still hung around the area even if he didn’t come in. Oh and who could joke about clones, let’s not forget that. “Guess I’ll have to say hi to him when he comes in since he’s your friend,” friend who probably came in during the illegal hours, “when I meet him should I just call him ‘Barbara’s friend’ or does he have a name?” He tried to joke. He wondered how much Barbara knew about his boss.
“Please call him that, he’d have a paranoid fit if you knew his name,” she smiled. “He has white hair right here,” she pointed to her hairline, “I’m sure he’ll like you.”
When Danny left and went to buy food at Mr. Romano’s outside his normal hours that evening he figured out why Barbara’s friend might have been avoiding him.