Work Text:
There was a blonde girl on his front step with a plastic grocery bag dangling off one wrist and her hands buried deep in the pockets of her purple overcoat. Jason frowned, looking down at the tiny screen that showed a couple of different views from the security cameras he had set up around the joint. It almost looked like-
There was a knock, and sure enough, the girl on the camera had reached up to his door. His frown deepened as he got up to answer it. Nobody came calling to the Red Hood’s. Nobody ever just - popped over. It was unheard of.
Stephanie waited patiently on the step, popping her bubblegum in her mouth as Jason opened the door and looked her up and down. He glanced around behind her, as though he was expecting another member of the bat brood to pop out and surprise him, but when he realised it was just her he relented and stepped aside, waiting for her to follow him inside.
“What do you want?” he asked, pulling a couple of mugs out of the dish rack. Steph dropped the plastic bag on his counter and folded her arms.
“I came to ask for your help,” she replied. “You can say no, I just figured you might be the only member of the family who could help me with this…”
At that, Jason peeked inside the bag. There was a bottle of shampoo, some conditioner, and… “Hair dye?” he asked, pulling out the brightly coloured bottle. “What do you want to dye your hair for?”
“It’s time for a change,” Stephanie replied, twisting a blonde strand around her finger. “I want something that feels a little bit more...me.”
“Okay, sure,” Jason shrugged and dropped the dye on the counter, returning to the mugs. He set the kettle on to boil and moved around the kitchen slowly, gathering up sugar and teaspoons. He held the tea box out to Stephanie and let her choose, and suppressed a smile when she chose a chamomile and rose tea. He pulled out an earl grey tea for himself and placed each of them in a mug, leaning back against the counter and waiting for the water to boil.
Stephanie was looking around curiously, given she’d never been inside. Her eyes lingered on the wall of firearms and knives for a moment before drifting across to his couch - a lumpy thing he’d gotten for free off a local Facebook page he couldn’t bring himself to part with - and bookshelf stuffed full of classics. She didn’t make any remark, though, just waited patiently as he poured the water into the mugs and let the tea steep.
“Sugar?” He asked. Steph nodded, and accepted the mug he held out to her after he’d spooned some sugar inside. She watched the teabag bob up and down in the water, twirling the string around her finger to discard it in the trash once the tea was to her liking.
“Who knew the Red Hood was such a good host,” she joked, taking a sip.
“That could be poisoned, for all you know.” Jason brought his mug to his lips and savoured the warmth for a moment.
“It’s not.”
“It could be. I have a reputation to maintain.”
Stephanie grinned at him, and he gave her an uncertain smile back, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. He glanced back down at the bottle of dye for a moment and gave it a moment’s consideration.
“Why did you think I was the person to help you dye your hair?” He asked. “Why not Cass, or Dick?”
“Cass is busy and Dick and I aren’t exactly on those terms.”
“And we are?”
“Yes.” Stephanie took another sip. “Besides, we all know you dye your hair.”
“I do not,” Jason shot back.
“You do,” Stephanie smirked. “Your roots are showing.”
“They are not ,” Jason fussed with his hair for a moment before realising she was teasing him. He shot her a dirty look, to which she stuck out her tongue, and rolled his eyes.
“Okay,” Steph finished the last of her tea and set the mug down beside his kitchen sink. “Are we gonna do this?”
“Sure, I guess.” Jason pulled out the shampoo and conditioner, handing Steph the bottles and pointing her in the direction of the bathroom. “Shower’s in there. There’s towels in the cupboard next to it.”
“I’ll be back in five,” Steph replied, shrugging off her overcoat and leaving it over the back of the couch. Underneath she was wearing a black tank top and black leggings, and Jason quietly thought to himself that was probably a good thing, because he had a vision of the dye getting everywhere, and he didn’t want to ruin her clothes.
He’d made that mistake before.
Steph returned a few minutes later with her hair wrapped up in a towel, tank top slightly askew. She adjusted it quickly and looked up at Jason, hands on her hips.
“Sit,” Jason said, pulling one of his dining chairs out onto the tiled kitchen floor. Stephanie sat, crossing her legs and leaning back, and Jason unwrapped her hair, towelling it dry some more.
“So I was thinking sort of a lavender ombre moment,” Steph said, grabbing her phone and scrolling through her Pinterest boards until she found the one called ✨ hair inspo ✨. She showed Jason a few photos of models with luscious blonde hair and lilac ends, brunettes with purple streaks, a few raven-haired girls with violet underneath. She focused in particular on one image, of a blonde with a soft mauve through the ends of her hair, and tapped the screen. “This one.”
Jason squinted at the photo, and then down at the bottle of dye in his hand. It was not lavender. It was not mauve. It was not lilac. It was actually a shade called Ultra Violet, and he knew if he put it straight on her hair it was not going to come out anywhere close to the shade she wanted.
“Hang on a second,” he said, wandering his way back to the bathroom where he found the shampoo and conditioner sitting on the counter. He grabbed the conditioner and returned to the kitchen, setting it on the counter beside the dye, and dug through his cupboards for a moment until he’d pulled out a plastic bowl he could mix the dye in. He poured in a generous amount of conditioner and an equally generous amount of dye and set about mixing them while Stephanie brushed through her hair with the hairbrush she’d found in his bathroom. Jason started clipping strands of hair up and off her face, knowing that doing this in layers was how they were going to best achieve the result she wanted.
He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and surveyed everything before him. Bowl of dye, check. Hairbrush, check. Stephanie with damp hair, check. Clips, check. A towel to wrap around her shoulders, check.
“Just start dyeing already, this isn’t rocket science, Hood,” Steph rolled her eyes.
“Alright,” Jason shrugged and started putting the dye through her hair with his gloved hands. He started at the mid-lengths of her blonde hair and worked his way down, packing more dye onto the ends. Her hair was so blonde he thought it’d suck up the colour like a sponge, and he was right about that at the very least, but he worked diligently as he made his way through her hair.
“I’m pretty sure this is not how Brad Mondo does it,” Stephanie remarked, tapping her fingers on either side of the kitchen chair.
“Are you in Brad Mondo’s salon, or are you in my kitchen?” Jason asked, unclipping a section of hair and starting to work the dye into it. Stephanie snorted and leaned back, enjoying the low budget head massage she was getting from Jason’s fingers through her hair. He grabbed the hairbrush and brushed the dye through the strands, softening the way it mixed through the blonde in the top half of her hair, to accomplish that ombre look she wanted so badly.
“Are we done?” Steph asked, eyeing a soft purple strand on her shoulder. “This needs more purple dude, just stick some straight out of the container onto it.”
“If you’re sure,” Jason replied, adding the Ultra Violet dye to the very ends of her hair and using the hairbrush to blend it through, leaving her with a soft mauve on top and a bright shock of purple on the ends. He wrapped her hair up in plastic wrap the way he’d seen his mom do it and left her sitting there, playing Candy Crush on her phone. He downed the last of his cold tea and stripped off the now purple latex gloves, dumping them in the bin, before grabbing his kitchen timer and twisting it around to 35 minutes. He leaned up against the counter and looked down at her, thinking to himself.
“If you’re going to brood, can you go do it somewhere else?” Stephanie asked, looking up from her game.
“I’m not brooding,” Jason said. “I’m thinking.”
“Brooding,” Steph replied. “It’s all you bat boys do.”
“I’m not brooding,” Jason repeated, annoyed. Who did she think she was, coming into his house and being - well, herself, really? But still. Who did she think she was? This was why he never had anybody over, aside from the fact that nobody wanted to come over anyway.
“If you’re not brooding,” Steph twirled around on the chair, sitting so she was straddling it and could rest her chin on the backrest, “What are you thinking about then?”
“Why you came here. Why you asked me to dye your hair.”
“Hm,” Steph gave him a noncommittal hum in reply, waiting for him to continue.
“I just don’t get why you’re talking to me.”
“Because everyone deserves a second chance, Jason,” she replied, touching the plastic wrap on her head self-consciously. “And you were honestly the only person I could think of who would know how to do this.”
“Fair point,” Jason conceded. After a moment, he offered: “I don’t kill any more, you know.”
“I know,” Steph replied. “Do you think Barbara would have let me come here if you did?”
“Do you run all your life’s decisions by Barbara?”
“Just the stupid ones,” Steph shot him a cheeky grin. He found himself compelled to grin back, but he didn’t know why.
“Speaking of stupid,” he said, tilting his head to consider her hair. “Isn’t this going to mess with your secret identity? Batgirl running around with purple hair?”
“Please,” Steph rolled her eyes. “I haven’t had a secret identity since I died. It feels like everyone thinks they know who Batgirl is. If this adds fuel to the fire, so be it.”
“I wonder what Bruce would say to that,” Jason snorted.
“What Bruce doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” Steph laughed. “Besides, there are like a hundred girls on my college campus with this exact hairstyle. Maybe one of them is Batgirl! You never know.”
“No,” Jason laughed, “I don’t suppose anyone would.”
The kitchen timer went off with a sharp trill, and Jason looked up, waiting for it to shut up. He started unwrapping the plastic from Stephanie’s head, wiping away a stray bit of dye from her shoulder with the towel, and pointed her back towards the bathroom.
“Rinse it out until the water runs clear,” he said. “It should take about ten minutes.”
“Roger that,” Steph replied, saluting him before she wandered down the hall and into the bathroom. The door closed, and Jason looked around the mess that had become his kitchen. There were smears of dye across his chair, the counter, even on the tiles, so armed with a roll of paper towel and some kitchen spray, he set about cleaning each surface off. The dye clung stubbornly to the grey tiled floor, leaving behind purple stains, and Jason groaned, closing his eyes and wondering if this bode well for his bathroom.
It did not.
“Uh, Jason?” Stephanie stepped out of the bathroom, hair wrapped in one towel, another around her body. “Your shower is kind of...purple.”
Jason closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten. Tentatively he asked, “How purple?”
“More purple than it was to begin with,” Stephanie offered, stepping aside so he could go and investigate the damage. While he was gone she changed back into her tank top and leggings, towelling her hair dry. She hadn’t had a chance to look in the mirror yet, but figured that could wait until after Jason had sorted out the whole purple bathroom situation.
“Okay,” Jason said slowly, exiting the bathroom. “That’s not...unfixable. We can fix that level of purple.”
Stephanie beamed at him, relieved he wasn’t mad at her. She pulled the towel off her hair and threw it over the chair, and turned to return to the bathroom, but stopped short when she realised Jason was staring at her.
“What?” She asked. “Something wrong?”
“You might want to go check your hair,” Jason said.
Stephanie rushed into the bathroom and stared at her reflection. Her damp hair was pushed back off her face, falling down around her shoulders in light waves. Maybe it was the water, but it was purple. It was a lot more purple than she’d intended. Where Jason had applied it so it would be a soft lilac, it had come out more of an amethyst, and where he’d applied the violet directly, it was a shocking colour not unlike the Batgirl uniform. The two colours blended together seamlessly, working through her hair in a soft ombre, but it was not what she’d asked for.
“Oh My God,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry,” Jason said. “If I’d known your hair was pre-lightened, I would’ve mixed more conditioner in.”
“Pre-lightened?! I’m a natural blonde,” Stephanie shot back.
“Uh huh,” Jason replied, unconvinced.
“I am,” Stephanie said, shaking her hair out over her shoulders to get a good look at it. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t anything close to the soft lavender balayage she’d been aiming for, but it wasn’t bad. It was actually...kind of cute.
“Here,” Jason said, plugging in a blow dryer he pulled out from the bottom drawer. He started drying her hair slowly, and she leaned back, enjoying the heat and the warm air flowing through her hair. Once it was dry, she dared to look at her reflection again, and this time, she didn’t think it was so bad.
“I love it,” she gushed, reaching forward to twirl a purple strand around her finger. “Oh, Jason, it’s perfect!”
“Really?” Jason asked, blow dryer tucked into his belt, not unlike the way he’d holster a gun. “You really like it?”
“I love it,” Steph repeated, beaming at him with one of those bright, sunny smiles usually reserved for Cass and Babs. Jason gave her an uncertain smile back, relieved she didn’t absolutely hate the mess he’d made of her hair. Though honestly, the more he looked at it...the more he liked it, too.
“Okay, now’s the matter of payment,” Jason said, and Stephanie blinked up at him, not yet realising he was joking. “You’re gonna help clean this bathroom.”
“That’s….fair. I can’t say that’s not fair,” Steph said. Jason returned the blow dryer to its home in the bottom drawer, alongside the hair straightener he had. Sometimes he was having a bad fringe day, okay? It was completely normal for a guy to have a hair straightener.
“There’s baking soda in the cupboard in the kitchen,” Jason said, grabbing two sponges from under the bathroom sink. “Go get it and mix it up into a paste with water.”
“On it,” Steph said, walking away. She returned a few minutes later with a white paste in a plastic bowl - thankfully not the bowl they’d used for the dye, because the last thing Jason needed was more purple splattered up his bathroom walls. Sure, they’d seen plenty of blood, but that came out with a little bleach and a quick scrub. Hair dye was a whole other beast.
They scrubbed at the tiles with the baking soda-covered sponges and watched as the purple seeped away, rinsed occasionally by the showerhead. Jason scrubbed high while Stephanie scrubbed low, and they both worked until they had every inch of his shower sparkling clean and dye free.
“Phew,” Steph exhaled, wiping the beads of sweat from her forehead. “That’s backbreaking work.”
“Your fault,” Jason said, nudging her in the side. She grinned at him. “Hey, can I try something with your hair?”
“Like what?” Stephanie asked. Jason just pulled the hair straightener out in reply.
He worked quickly, twirling her hair around the heated pads and pulling it through the strands, leaving her with loose, natural looking curls. He made his way around her whole head, throwing in curls through the bulk of it, making sure the front was perfectly done, before he stepped back and let her admire his handiwork.
“Oh, wow,” Steph murmured, staring at her reflection. “Jason, I think you’re in the wrong business. You need to open a hair salon.”
“Think I’ll stick with fighting crime, thanks,” Jason laughed, but he was pleased to see the soft smile on Steph’s face, the pink in her cheeks when she looked at herself. It was like she was seeing herself for the very first time, and it warmed his heart just a little bit.
They made their way back out to the kitchen, and Jason stood there awkwardly, not sure what to say. Steph was taking selfies with her phone, showing off her new hair to Cass and Barbara, delighted by it. In the time they’d been in the bathroom, it had started raining outside, and Jason frowned when he peeked out the front door and was greeted by a faceful of wind and hail.
“You’re not going out there in that,” he announced when he made his way back inside. Steph looked up from her phone, quirking an eyebrow.
“What do you suggest I do?” Stephanie asked. “I do need to head home at some point.”
“After the storm passes,” Jason said, waving her off. “There’s a Chinese place down the road that will deliver in any weather. Do you want something? My shout.”
“Egg rolls!” Steph exclaimed, grinning. And then, quieter, she added, “Please.”
“Coming right up,” Jason said, pulling the number up in his phone and calling. Within twenty minutes, a bag of steaming food was in their hands, and Jason sat down on the couch, dividing it up between the bowls he’d grabbed from the kitchen. Fried rice, pork, the aforementioned egg rolls - he made sure they both got a bit of everything, before handing the bowl over to Steph.
They ate in silence, occasionally looking up when a great peal of thunder was heard overhead. Steph sipped at the soda Jason had given her, playing with the ends of her hair. Jason couldn’t help but smile every time he glanced at her. Her hair was too cute, and he’d done a pretty damn good job at it.
“Hey, Jason,” Steph said. Jason looked up, swallowing his mouthful of rice and pork before she continued. “I just wanted to say...thank you.”
“For what?” Jason asked.
“For my hair, and for dinner,” Steph replied, looking down. “You didn’t have to do either, but you did, and I appreciate it.”
“Any time, Steph,” Jason said, and he found that for her, he meant it.