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Taylor Smith stands anxiously in the third floor hallway of Hood's (unofficial) main building, staring at the door to the big man’s office. He's got a report to give, and he's scared.
The important thing to note, though, is that Taylor does not work for Red Hood.
No, really, the dubious legality of his normal job aside, he could count on one hand the times that the Alley's crime lord had interacted with Taylor about anything, even through connections.
When you're stuck in poverty like a rat in a glue trap, when the curse of homelessness gnaws at your stomach and gives you a cold every time it rains, you have to make shit choices in order to survive. It was just how life was. But the shit things people have to do are often as illegal as they are humiliating, and Taylor had gotten arrested, like an idiot, for trying to rob a chain store in Midtown. He wound up with a misdemeanor, and everybody outside the Alley who looked past his criminal record dismissed him at the interviews as soon as they heard him speak, words full of missing consonants and cobbled together vowels. Uptown people, Alley rats specifically, had a distinct accent that anybody with a brain could recognize.
His uncle Carl, old and burned out as he was, was still alive. Listed as next of kin in the paperwork, he had found Taylor at the station, and after claiming guardianship, took Taylor to his cramped and rickety (but dry) apartment and gave him the spare room.
After Taylor's run-in with the cops, he had decided that, if he could avoid it, he didn't want to do crime anymore now that he didn't have to in order to eat. Weirdly, his uncle had accepted his choice without laughing it off, and gone out of his way to get him a job that was as legal as possible. Fortunately, Uncle C was friends with the autoshop guy down on 12th, Mr. Henríquez, and had managed to get Taylor an under-the-table gig delivering tools and car parts and mildly sketchy packages for cash pay (because the bank didn't want to let a felon from the ghetto open an account).
Unfortunately, his new job came with a catch that he'd only learned about later: The autoshop that Ernesto Henríquez ran was the only place Hood would go to get work on his bike done, and apparently, Mr. Henríquez was one of Hood's actual employees too. More than once, Taylor had come back from a delivery to see Hood leaning on a wall and chatting with his boss like they were old buddies, which was weird. That all aside, though, by Alley hierarchy rules, Hood could give Taylor orders too. If your boss worked for someone else, that person could directly give you orders too, if they felt like it, so Taylor's ability to keep his nose clean was dependent on Hood leaving him alone.
Strangely, despite this, Hood had only asked Taylor for two things, out of the four times he'd ever seen the man.
The first order/ask of Taylor had been the first time they'd been face to face, and wow comparing the community center's staff room fridge to a human person in terms of scale was a wild thing Taylor hadn't believed was possible.
Taylor had been on his lunch break during his volunteering when Hood had come in with a tote bag, set a stack of folders down on an empty table, and dropped into one of the seats. Taylor was using the power strip to charge his phone, and Hood's first request of him had been simple: ‘Could you plug in my phone over there?’
Almost something normal, if you ignored the weird fact that a kingpin was willing to let a random kid touch his crime device.
The second thing Hood had ever asked of him had been… less benign. ‘Can you deliver a message to the Coventry?’
All Hood had wanted was for Taylor to tell some new, small-time vigilante that Hood wanted to talk, which… sounded like a threat, but there was enough plausible deniability for Taylor that he decided he could probably get away with it. He was a runner (although for legal reasons, he was just a delivery guy) which meant he transported letters and messages and shit, but he only ever did trips that were legal, or that he could prove he had no knowledge were illegal.
He'd accepted, because it paid well. Looking back, he should have noticed that it paid too well, and it should have been his main warning that it would be dangerous. After he did his research, he realized that Simon Dark was sort of a serial killer (allegedly in a sort of avenging-angel kind of way). Hood had paid up front, though, and Taylor had gotten groceries so his uncle could take the night off, but that meant, shittily, that because had already spent some, he couldn't back out. The big man's only condition in exchange for the chunk of cash was that Taylor come back and give him a report of how it went.
Taylor had done his errand, and now all had to do was open the door.
Red Hood was scarier than Simon Dark, though. The Alley's new leader was gargantuan, filling doorways and built in a way most people weren't, but in exchange, he should be slower to compensate for his weight and mass. He was not. In fact, he was faster than should be humanly possible – quicker than most of the Bats, even, usually. Sure, Simon Dark could teleport and was strong enough to garrote a head off, but every few weeks a video resurfaced on local rat forums that showed shaky footage of Hood, with a visibly broken leg, grabbing the Bat's cape near his shoulder and hurling him off a roof one-handed. That was not the sort of guy to underestimate. Pairing that with the severed heads incident?
The Alley was known for its… well, Crime, and lots of folks did killing here, whether it be mugging a rich couple, Wayne style, or a sex worker stabbing a John or a Janet in self defense, but decapitation was… hard to do, and you had to have enough enthusiasm for what you were doing to make the elbow grease required for a bonesaw job worth doing. Usually, sick fucks like Pyg and Joker stayed out of the Alley. Joker liked spectacle, and the news didn't care about the ghetto, so why would he? Pyg was almost always in Arkham, anyways, too, not exactly bright enough in the way he needed to escape unless there was a mass breakout.
Hood was still only classified as a drugs-and-weapons sort of criminal, though, not a capital-R Rogue like Ivy or Joker. Capital-R Rogues who were also drugs-and-weapons criminals were people like Penguin and Two-Face, but they were obsessive with their gimmicks, and always tried to expand too quickly, which got them caught. Hood was… methodical. Slow. Even with the whole heads in a bag thing, he was an outlier. He was quick enough to evade the Bats, smarter than the kingpins, and more vicious in his violence than half of the actual Rogues (even if his crime scenes were of a smaller scale). He wasn't something the Alley (or Gotham) had seen before, and that put everyone, even Taylor, who didn't do crime, on edge.
All this meant that nobody wanted to risk pissing him off. If Taylor bailed on this, Hood could easily track him down. It wouldn't even be hard – Hood could just walk down to Mr. Henríquez’ building and wait for Taylor's shift to start.
Fuuuuck, but Hood was scary.
Willing himself to swallow back his anxiety (no weakness, no weakness), Taylor opens the door.
Red Hood looks up from some papers. “Hey. How'd it go?”
Taylor hesitates.
Hood seems to catch his unease and snorts, pointing at the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down, kid, I ain't gonna eat'cha.”
Taylor, obediently, sits down in the oddly comfortable seat facing the terrifying armored killer, and refuses to let his guard down. “Message delivered,” he said.
“And?” Hood asks, setting down the thick manilla file he'd been flipping through, still open and face up for anybody to see. Is it a test? Taylor keeps his eyes firmly on the helmet, because if it is, in fact, a test, he refuses to be dumb enough to fail. Knowing too much got you silenced.
“He was curious, creepy, asked me for info I didn't really have, and after bein’ very ominous for no reason, vanished.” There. Clear, concise, simple.
“Info like?”
Shit. “Your reason for seekin’ him out. What you were like.”
Hood snorts. “What'ja say?”
“That you were the stuff of nightmares,” Taylor blurts, before immediately slapping a hand over his mouth.
Hood seems to take no offense, throwing his head back and laughing with his chest. The voice filter does not make it less unnerving. “Hahahaha! Ah, aheh, shit, kid, I like you.”
Fuckfuckfuck those were not good words in the Alley even if he wasn't being a creep-
“You're funny,” Hood continues. “I needed that. Not many can get a laugh like that outta me these days.”
Taylor swallows. Kay. Less bad. Good, even. Maybe.
“Ha. Thanks, kid.” Hood seems to collect himself shaking back into seriousness. It was a weird swap to witness. “Mm. Back to Simon. Please tell me that's not all you told him.”
Does he think Taylor is dumb? “Um. No. I told ‘im that he and you were both rumored to be scary n’protective in equal measure, that I barely knew you, an’ that I was just a runner. I gave him the rundown of your rules, told him the basics of your… operation, and said that I thought you wanted to make sure he was up to your standards in terms of lookin’ out for people.”
Hood hums. “Fair. Anything else of note?”
Taylor fidgets for a short second, but speaks. “So, y’know how the Bats do that thing where they vanish the second y’take your eyes off ‘em?” Taylor, due to wanting to keep his bones as they are, does not mention that some people have noticed that Hood does it too, given that he very publicly hates them.
Hood nods.
“He uh… didn't do that. He fuckin’- I watched him evaporate into thin air, like a black mist.”
Hood taps his finger for a second. “That may be an issue,” he murmurs to himself. “Eh, then again, I can always jus’ stab ‘im.”
“You're gonna stab mist?” Taylor asks, baffled, and slightly more confident now that his information had been delivered and he had yet to be killed for it. “With, what, a sword?”
Hood looks up at him, and, completely seriously, says, “Yes.”
Taylor balks at him. “Deadass?” he can't help but ask.
Hood's metal helmet reveals nothing of his expression, but the haunting voice modulator inside it doesn't hide shit in terms of tone. He sounds smug, like he's grinning. “I'm fluent in most weapons, kid. Take my guns an’ challenge me to a katana duel, I'll still come out on top.”
Red Hood was well known to have knives on him at all times, as well as smoke pellets, small grenades, more guns than anyone could actually confirm, and bandages. There was a rumor about candy for kids, too, but not a lot of people talked about it and no one had proof. Taylor does know for certain, though, that no one's ever seen him with a sword.
Asking if he actually has a sword seems stupid, though. “Why?” he manages instead.
“Because when you live in a city like this, y’fight with everything you have or you end up as worm food.” Hood cocks his head for a second, before amending, “Or fish food, if you're uncreative an’ wanna get caught.”
The guy was being… weirdly open. Huh. “Why a sword,” Taylor asks, “not a gun? Ain't that your specialty?”
“Magic sword for magic monsters,” Hood answers, blasé, as if this isn't a wild fucking topic to be discussing with a high-schooler. “Specific circumstances needed. If Simon’s magic like y’say, I’ve got a trump card, that's all.”
Why was Hood spilling secrets so casually? And- fuck, dammit, why couldn't Taylor stop wheedling for more? Knowing too much got you silenced!
“Where did'ja get a magic fuckin’ sword from?” he blurts, mentally screaming at himself to shut the hell up.
“My mom has friends,” Hood tells Taylor. “I've got combat skills n'shit, but I've got a dash of magic for flavor, too.”
“Dude, where are you from?”
“Ain't it obvious? I'm more've an Alley rat than you are.”
Taylor frowns. Hood has the accent, yeah, but…
“I heard you givin’ Japanese lessons to that Keiko girl at the center,” he says. “You speak fluent Spanish with my boss and Tia Melissa whenever you see ‘em, and I overheard Ivan – cranky, quiet, Bodega runner Ivan – say you greeting him in Russian whenever you drop by makes his day. One'a my buddies’ has a sister who told us she saw you speakin’ somethin’ else, too, while visiting her friend's foster mom. She said it sounded like nothin’ she'd heard outta anybody's mouth except her neighbor Abdul. No school in Gotham has that many language classes, an’ I'll bet you could fake an Alley accent if you needed to.”
Hood looks him up and down, and Taylor's heart drops into his shoes. Fuck, he's showed his hand. He's gonna die, he’s gonna get dumped in the harbor- No, getting thrown in the river was how you got caught, apparently, but-
His anxiety spiral gets cut off, his attention switching immediately to the movement of Hood leaning back in his chair. “Clever rat, ain'cha?”
He sounds amused. Taylor can't tell if it's a compliment or a lead-in to a threat. Mob bosses were generally known for the latter.
Hood continues. “Hm. Ol’ Hennie told me you don't do crime anymore.”
Hennie, like… Mr. Henríquez? Taylor swallows. “No, I do not.”
“Why?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Why'd'ja swear off?” Hood elaborated. “Embarrassed you got caught? Try'na prove the stereotypes wrong? Scared'a the cops?”
Taylor feels irritation crawl up his shoulders, Fuckin’ piece'a shit, what kinda game’re you- before he stops. Blinks again. Stuffs his irritation in a box and thinks. Hood doesn't sound judgy, just curious.
“...First one, kinda,” Taylor admits, hoping he's right about Hood being genuine. “Mostly the last bit. Those rich sparkly fucks downtown get mean, but I'm never down there an’ they don't matter in the bigger scheme'a things anyway.”
Hood nods, like this makes sense, like Taylor isn't a wimp who runs from the pigs or a privileged fuck for being able to have better choices available. Weird.
“Why d’ya ask, Sir?”
Hood holds up a finger in a wait gesture before pulling something out of his desk and tossing it to Taylor, who only doesn't dodge because if it was a bomb Hood would get blown right up too, in this little office room. He catches it (thankfully without fumbling it) and looks down to see a burner phone.
“Keep that,” Hood tells him.
Taylor mentally screams at himself to shut up again, but still speaks. “I just told you I don't do crime shit.”
Hood's voice sounds… casual. Still no judgment. “I heard'ja. This ain't for that.”
“Then what?”
“You like bein’ a runner?”
Uhhhhh. He didn't like where this was going. “I just said I-”
“No, pause, this ain't a threat,” Hood interrupts, lifting a hand to shut him up. “Do you enjoy your completely legal job of bikin’ around an’ talkin’ to folks?”
Taylor does, actually, but he keeps his mouth shut, because that sounds like a dialog option that'll take him somewhere dangerous, and he's been fucking around with these quicktime replies on a hardcore run enough already; he doesn't want to trigger a distant-future bossfight by saying the wrong thing if he can avoid it.
Hood pauses, like he realizes how he sounds, and folds his lifted hand so it's just his pointer finger aimed at the ceiling as he amends, “To be clear, this is not a threat. It's a real question.”
Ffffuck. Like an open book.
“...I do, sir,” Taylor answers, and Hood relaxes a little.
“Good. If I offer you jobs-” he lifts his hand a little higher as Taylor starts to open his mouth, “-completely, entirely legal gigs, kid, shit like droppin’ off or pickin’ up food, or completely innocent, normal errands, and got you a better bike as well as paid you for the trouble, would you take me up on it?”
…The fuck? “What.”
Hood drops his hand and elaborates, listing things off on his fingers. “Decent, hourly pay, handed over in cash at the end of the week. All losses covered if y'get robbed of the cargo or if your transport gets stolen. Shoul'ja see somebody trashed or drugged and you pay for their safe ride home, you'll be compensated and then some. Y'hear news of someone breakin’ my rules or plannin’ some sketch-ass shit, y'tell me, and get paid for deliverin’ the info. You'd get to keep your job with Hennie – this'd just be something on top.”
Taylor blanks for a moment, because what? Where did this come from? Two days ago he'd never even had a conversation with this man, and now he was being offered a too-good-to-be-true job out of fuckin’ nowhere.
“...Hypothetically,” he starts warily, after a full five seconds of much-needed buffer time, “what would ‘decent hourly pay’ mean?”
“Twenty an hour, depending on how long each individual gig takes,” Hood says, and what the fuck.
“What's the catch?” Taylor asks, because there has to be one.
“No catch. Worst-case, closest you'd get to criminal behavior is the shit y’already do for Hennie.”
Taylor stares at the burner phone he's holding and sinks further into his chair. What the fuck. What the fuck. He's reeling. “Why me?”
Hood tilts his head in Taylor's periphery. “Hm?”
“There's hundreds'a other kids in this city, ones with worse situations who could use the money more – kids who ain't got scruples like me.”
“The scruples are the point of the offer,” Hood insists, sounding weirdly earnest. “I already have people for my crime shit, kid; it's like a third of the community up here.”
“But-”
“No, stop for a sec,” Hood interrupts. “Listen to the words I'm sayin’.”
Taylor finally looks up from his lap, blinks harshly, and nods.
“I run checks on anybody connected to me in any way at all. You work for Hennie, who's your employer and who's friends with Carl. Hennie runs the one autoshop up here I'll use and your uncle's one'a my bartenders. Through them, I know of you, and I've seen your record- Don't look at me like that, kid, listen. I know how it is to be hungry enough t'do things you'd rather not if y'wanna be able to eat. That shit is hard, and y'ain't always able to get away without gettin’ caught.”
Hood pauses there for a second, before saying, quieter, “I got caught once. I did what you did – took it as a chance to turn my shit around.” Then he gestures at the room, his helmet, his coat filled with weapons and the mockery of Batman's symbol on his armored chest. The words chosen for his next sentence are cynical and flat, but his actual tone is… tired. Sad. “It didn't stick, clearly.”
Taylor rubs his face, because this is all fucking weird, and now Hood doesn't seem like a haunting monster of a man with more guns than should be possible while somehow also a larger-than-life half-cryptid like the Bat. He sounds like someone who… well, like someone who goes to the community center. He sounds like Taylor might, in another world where he got less lucky.
“I tried to turn my shit around, an’ I got hit with a stick an’ lit on fire for my trouble.”
Woah, wow, wait, hold up. Taylor feels his eyes get wider and wider with each new sentence, because Christ, what a tone switch.
“My adopted mom, who took me in after the whole fire thing when I was a kid, is the closest thing I've had to family since my first set of parents kicked it, and y'know how fuckin’ sad that is? I didn’ even meet her until I was sixteen, an’ she's the one who sent me to fuckin’ assassin school.”
Taylor doesn't… know how to respond to that. Hysterically, he does think is that where you got the magic sword? followed by is that why you wear a helmet? but he doesn't actually say anything. He feels like he's bluescreened – like he's a video that's lagging because of bad internet.
“I wanted to go to college,” Red Hood says, deflating a little. “I didn't get to do that.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Taylor asks.
“Because I don't want anyone following in my footsteps.”
That sentence holds a weight to it that Taylor decides isn't his problem, so he sidesteps it in favor of, “I don't think I'm gonna get lit on fire.” The joke falls flat, though.
“Your criminal record was vague as hell,” Hood goes on, like Taylor hadn't spoken, “but I figure at the longest, it'll take six years before it clears up. Half a fuckin’ decade of scarce opportunities before anyone in this shit city who pays a living wage will hire you, and that leads to fuckin’ up and gettin’ caught when y'need to put food on your table.”
Taylor blinks harshly again, but less out of shock and more at the sudden surprise of his throat getting tight and his eyes prickling. No. No weakness.
“I've got people for doing crime," Hood repeats. "I've got other runners. I've even got other kids I've made this offer to, but us rats are stubborn and prideful and we know in our bones that nothing comes easy unless we claw for it, so most are understandably suspicious and turn me down. Nobody yet has been as clean after their first arrest as you. I don't care if your reason is embarrassment or spiteful rat pride or even fear. Fuck, kid, I'm scared out my damn mind half the time. Everyone I ever cared about ‘til recently either didn't care back or decided I wasn't worth the trouble after long enough, and that kind'a shit fucks with a guy's head. I don't need you for this job, but I want to offer it to you anyway.”
Hood stops, pauses, seems to breathe, and says, for the first time, “Taylor,” like he wants him to look up and understand.
Taylor rubs his face and doesn't move. He will not cry.
Hood doesn't reach over or press him to look up, but he does lean down as if to try to catch his gaze. Taylor refuses. “Taylor, doesn't it get tiring?”
From any other crime lord, it would sound like a lure, a beckoning coo trying to lure him into the web. Here, against all his better sense and his Alley rat suspicion, he believed wholly that Hood really was… just… looking out for another rat. It was terrifying.
And… honestly, it did get disheartening after a while. Plenty of kids shuffled away from him when he sat down in the cafeteria or stared at him with suspicion when he answered a question right. Not all, but enough. His friends were all rats, though, either dropouts or, Hood's people or not, already criminals, and it shouldn't fuckin’ bother him that those uppity rich kids called him a rat when they hadn't earned that word by but it did. It did hurt.
“Yeah,” Taylor whispers, refusing to cry and refusing to look up. His voice will crack if he uses it, and he will not start sobbing in here. Weakness gets you killed, and red-rimmed eyes are borderline blanket permission for someone to try and take your wallet (not that Taylor had one; he kept all his pay in a lockbox under his fucked up bedroom's floorboards). “Yeah, it does.”
In Taylor's periphery, Hood eases up a little in tone (and posture). “I see me in you,” he says quietly, “an’ I wanna keep you from gettin’ dead or gettin’ bitter like I did. That's all.”
Taylor looks at the phone in his hand. “An’ this?” he rasps.
“Y'aint gotta answer now. The offer’s permanently open; there's no deadline. I'll steer clear'a you best I can so you can think, and you shoot me a text when you're ready. If you say yes you can change your mind to no at any point, no questions asked, and vice versa.”
Taylor rubs his face with his sleeve. It doesn't count as crying if you wipe it away before it falls, right?
As if hearing Taylor think (or maybe he just knows how another rat thinks), Hood says quietly, “Down the hallway you came from, there's a white door with chipped paint and a blue L-handle. That's the bathroom. Splash some water on your face, take a breath, and step out when you're ready to go home.”
Taylor gets up, scrubs at his face with his sleeve again, and gets up. Before he leaves, he risks a glance at Hood, who's already back to his folder, now scribbling notes. If Taylor's eyes weren't so raw, he would never have believed Hood’s weird softness.
Maybe that was the point.