Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dick knocked on the door.

Jason opened it, looked Dick straight in the face, and then immediately slammed it shut again.

Dick was 100% sure that Jason had checked to see who it was before opening the door—that was definitely one of Jason’s own cameras on the ceiling up there—so as far as Dick was concerned, that was unnecessarily dramatic, not to mention rude.

He knocked on the door again.

“What do you want, asshole?” Jason called through the door. He didn’t sound especially curious, but maybe that was just Dick.

“Could you just open the door, please?” Dick said, sighing. “And not try to break my nose with it this time?”

Jason opened the door again, this time with a conspicuous sneer.

Dick handed Jason his invitation.

Jason dangled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Mmm-hmm. What’s this?”

“Babs and I are throwing you and Steph a joint birthday party,” Dick said. “It’s on Sunday the 13th, because that’s the only day everybody can make it. It's in the park. Bruce is grilling steaks, and I know you know how good he is at that. You’re coming.”

“Like hell I am,” Jason said.

“Yes you are.”

“I'm busy on Sunday.”

“With what?”

“Reorganizing all my bookshelves. Bathing the cat. Literally anything else in the world, dick.”

“You don't have a cat,” Dick said. “Wait. Do you have a cat?”

“She lives in the alley behind the building and comes up the fire escape. She’s fixed and she has all her shots, though. I even give her the flea stuff.” Jason sounded sort of proud.

“Why not just bring her inside?”

“Because I'm not always here and I can't exactly have a cat door on this place can I?” Jason said. “It wouldn't be secure. There’s no shortage of rats around here. Trust me, she eats fine even when I’m not around.”

That part didn't surprise Dick. This was not one of Jason’s nicer safehouses, although he thought the interior was okay. Clean, if a little shabby; well-stocked as far as he could tell, casting a discreet eye across the place. But Dick was pretty sure Jason maintained it as a strategic location, not because of any lingering fondness for the neighborhood. “Makes sense, I guess,” he said. “What's her name? And I swear to god, if you say Bob…”

“Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

“Are you serious?”

“I call her Vincent.”

Dick considered this, considered the likelihood of Jason reciting another damn sonnet if he felt challenged. “Neat. So anyway, you’re coming?”

“I could have sworn that was the exact opposite of what I said. Oh wait. It was.”

“Dammit, Jay, why do you have to be like this?” Dick said, struggling to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Alfred will be there. Babs will be there. Steph and Cass will be there, and Babs said Cass said you and Steph have been hanging out lately. There are going to be people there you like. People who love you, who want to celebrate your birthday and the fact that you’re here now to do that. Just come and have a good time, okay? Tell yourself that you’re coming for Alfred, or because you can't say no to Barbara, if you want to. Or maybe even acknowledge that deep down, hell, maybe not even so deep down, you want to come, and all this posturing and pretending that you have better things to do than spend your birthday with your family is just a defense mechanism leftover from when things weren't so good, and it's time to let it go.”

“Jesus-the-fuck-Christ,” Jason said, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. “I'll come if it means you shut up already, Elsa.”

“Um,” Dick said, taken aback by the sudden lack of further resistance, much faster than he’d expected or hoped for. “Okay. Great. Thanks. Thank you, Jason.”

“Just one thing—”

“...yeeeeess?”

“I want to pick the music.”

***

“Good news,” Dick said to Babs as she picked up the phone. “There was the usual cajoling and dragging of heels, but I got Jay to agree to come to the party. Although he had some musical requests.”

“What are you talking about?” Babs said. “Did he change his mind from this morning?”

“This morning?”

“Yeah, I called him this morning. He said he'd be there ‘with bells on’. It was cute. Honestly, it seemed like he was into it.” Babs chuckled. “He wanted to know if he should bring anything.”

“What, to his own birthday party?” Then the implication of what Barbara had said hit him. “Oh, that son of a bitch! He was just messing with me!”

“Sounds like Jason,” Barbara said, amused.

“How,” Dick said “can one human being be so petty?”

“You said there was something about a music request?”

Dick sighed, annoyed. “I told him he could ask for three albums. Steph ought to get a say, too.”

“What did he go with?”

“Robbie Williams’ Rudebox, Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream, and the first Ting-Tings album.”

Barbara laughed again. “‘Alex, what are three musical acts Bruce Wayne is guaranteed not to like?’”

“What a brat.” Dick snorted. He adopted a deep, dramatic mien. “He’s more spite than man, now.”

Oh well. At least he'd be there. With spiteful bells on.

***

Steph was loading an armful of wet laundry into the dryer—hallelujah for in-building laundry facilities—when her cell buzzed in her pocket. She fished it out, one-handed, and continued loading clothes into the dryer with the spare hand. “S’up.”

“Yo, sweetness and light,” Jason said. “Are you going to the thing?”

“If by thing, you mean party, then yes, I’m going to the thing. How about you, dark and crunchy?”

“I will indeed be gracing you all with my magnificent presence. You’re welcome.”

“Tim said you wouldn't go.”

“All the more reason to be there.”

Stephanie snorted. “You know, you’re actually the pettiest person I know?”

“Thank you. I appreciate having my efforts to drag Tim recognized by the woman who once righteously bricked him in the face.”

“Tim had it coming. He pulled my—” Steph took a quick look around the laundry room to make sure it was still empty—“my mask off, which was really fucking rude of him. But seriously,” she said, shifting the phone to the other shoulder, “I am a little surprised. I thought you hated stuff like this?”

“Ehhhhhhh.” Steph could almost physically feel Jason shrugging his ridiculously broad shoulders over the phone. “Like I was gonna say no to Babs when she's the one organizing it. Besides, if I skipped our mutual birthday party on the grounds that I didn't want to celebrate my birthday, then the party would just be your birthday party, and I'd have to go after all.”

Steph pulled the phone away from her face and put her hand over the mouthpiece so she could laugh without giving him the satisfaction. “If you say so, dude,” she said, once she’d recovered herself.

“Also, I don't know if anyone’s ever told you this, but Bruce grills a seriously mean steak. Hell, I'd crash a party I wasn't even invited to just to mooch on that.”

Steph mentally filed away that little tidbit for if she ever needed to persuade a reluctant Jason to go somewhere. It probably had limited utility—claiming Bruce was grilling steaks in her apartment probably wasn't going to work if what she really wanted was to finagle Jason into doing a tune-up on her car—but you never knew.

“What do you want for your birthday?” she asked.

“Ammunition. World peace. The Joker’s severed head in a box.”

“You’re going to be so disappointed.”

“What a refreshing change of pace,” Jason said dryly. “How about you?”

“A pasta maker. Tim has one that he never uses, and I covet it.”

Jason laughed, then hung up on her without saying goodbye.

Just like they did on TV. Steph rolled her eyes and started pushing quarters into the dryer slot.

***

Jason idled the bike into a parking space, putting down the kickstand and slipping off his helmet. Giella Gardens—it was a little chi-chi for his tastes, park-wise, but at least it came with minimal chance of Poison Ivy crashing the party.

It was probably a full house by now, since he’d decided to show up fashionably late. God, he hoped Alfred wouldn’t hold it against him.

He got lucky, sort of; the first person to notice he was there was Steph, who ran straight at him and full-body-tackled him while he was discreetly scrolling through Facebook notifications, looking for clues about the mood of the party.

“You’re late, asshole,” she said, jamming both elbows into his ribs with prejudice.

“Gerroff!” he gasped, shrugging violently. Steph rolled off him, laughing, just before Cass loomed over them both.

The nice thing about Cass was that you didn’t have to say, “I wasn’t going to kill him, I swear”. Or, “I wasn’t going to punch his fucking teeth down his throat, really”. Or “I wasn’t going to break every single fucking metacarpal bone in his body plus all his toes until he talked, honest.” Cass knew what you meant to do before you did it.

Cass also knew when you were lying. What she did about that was mainly a matter of how she felt about it in the moment.

But today, Jason wasn’t pulling anything or shoving anything under the rug, so he just blinked at her winsomely.

“Hi,” Cass said, upside-down to Jason’s head.

“Hi,” Jason said.

Cass looked him up and down, and then leaned down a hand to pull him up from the ground, while Steph laughed and climbed to her feet. “Nice to see you.”

“I said I’d be here, didn’t I? I said it to about three different people.”

“Don’t always...tell the truth,” Cass said, with a raised eyebrow.

She had him there, Jason had to admit. Sometimes a little white lie—or a big honking black one—was the best way to get someone off his back, and he wasn’t shy about exercising that option. He shrugged. “Whatever. I’m here now, and I brought my eating face.”

Cass squinted at him in confusion.

“He’s hungry,” Steph translated. “Which is his own fault for showing up late.”

“Whatever,” Jason said. “Steak me.”

***

Jason and Steph were standing together by the pond, tossing pieces of ripped-up hamburger bun to the ducks as they converged on the shore in a mass of quacking.

“It says right there not to feed the ducks, guys,” Tim said, gesturing at the sign.

“I’m an outlaw, Timmy,” Jason said, flashing him his middle finger. “It’s even in the team name. And, if you’re worried about breaking the law, I could point out that we’re also currently violating open container laws with all this booze.”

“You are, I’m not. Because you won’t share with me,” Tim said bitterly. “All I wanted was one lousy wine cooler.”

“Sorry, Tim,” Steph said, pretending to be apologetic when Tim knew damn well she was laughing at him. “But you’re underage. What would your dad say if he caught us providing alcohol to minors?”

“Don’t ask us to contribute to teenage delinquency, Tim-Tam.”

“I’m twenty,” Tim groused. “I’m not a teenager or a damned minor. And what happened to being an outlaw?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Just then, a duck waddled up off the shore and snapped at Tim’s ankle. "What the—!" He yelped.

Jason snickered.

"Animals communicate a lot through body language," Steph said. "I think that was Duck for 'Where's my bread, bitch?'"

"Excuse you?” Jason said to her severely. “Watch your goddamn shitting language."

Steph stuck her tongue out at Jason.

Tim decided to go find someone else to hang out with for awhile.

***

The draft hadn’t technically started yet, but the negotiations were intense.

“What I’m saying is,” Steph muttered to Jason, “We’d both definitely pick Cass, right?”

“No fucking shit.”

“So the simplest solution is to work together. Team up. Whichever one of us ends up going first, we pick Cass, and then each other.”

Jason bared his teeth. “I hate systems.” He stood up and announced, “Hey, motherfuckers, there’s only six of us in this game. My team is Steph, Cass, and me, because I fucking said so and they both think that’s cool. Your team is the rest of you losers.”

“Language,” Bruce said, from somewhere distant from the field. Jason ignored him.

Steph looked at Cass, who shrugged. Steph also shrugged.

“Great,” Jason said. “The Ladies Auxiliary Wing of Kicking Your Fucking Ass—that’s the team name—are prepared to kick your ass, whenever you’re ready. I will now defer to the Chair.”

Steph bent over in her seat, wheezing. After a moment, she sat up again. “The Chair is fine with these teams. Anybody mind?”

Dick, Damian, and Tim all exchanged loaded glances. Steph had the impression that neither Tim nor Damian was okay with this at all, but neither was willing to give up their claim to Dick.

Eventually, after individual, agitated consultations with each of his teammates, Dick nodded. “Team Bratva accepts.”

Cass prodded Babs, the official keeper of the soccer ball and presumptive ref, who’d gotten bored enough about the arguing to have retreated into an ebook fifteen minutes ago. Babs looked up, shoved her phone down into a pocket, and then spiked the soccer ball as if she was playing volleyball. “Catch!” she shouted.

The resulting three-on-three soccer game involved so many deliberate ball-on-body blows that Babs stopped tracking them in favor of noting the ball-on-skull injuries, so she’d have a concise concussion report for Leslie, when this was all over.

The game ended in a vicious brawl between Tim and Damian (after Damian deliberately kicked the ball into Tim’s head) that went on uninterrupted for a full ten minutes before Bruce, noticing random passersby putting cell phones to their ears in concern, pulled them apart.

Team Bratva lost by default.

***

“Okay, people,” Dick announced, clapping his hands, “Time for cake and presents!”

“Who died and made you the master of fucking ceremonies?” Jason asked.

“Bruce did,” Dick said.

“Excuse me?” Bruce said, setting his beer down on the table.

Dick slapped him on the back on his way over to the picnic table where a pile of irregularly-shaped presents sat side-by-side with the lemon chiffon cake Alfred had baked that morning. “You did, you know.”

“How are we gonna do this?” Steph asked Jason, nudging him with her shoulder. “You, then me? Alternating? Mutual-wrapping-paper-ripping frenzy?”

“Alternating. You go first, sunshine.”

“All right, twilight,” Steph said, and picked a package up at random. It was addressed to Jason, so she set it aside and pawed through the pile for one of her own presents. She found a flat, rectangular package from Tim, which turned out to be a copy of Animal Crossing. “Aw, Tim,” she said, a grin splitting her face.

Steph could still remember sitting on the couch with him years ago, playing this. She’d always liked how low-stakes the game was—no drama, no violence, just boring stuff like planting a tree and watching it grow. It was relaxing. She’d never gotten around to picking up her own copy, though; it was something she’d only ever played with Tim, and just once, randomly, with a bewildered Cass in the Clock Tower. “Thanks,” she said, before she tossed Jason’s package towards him.

“You’re welcome,” Tim said, with a smile.

Jason’s package turned out to be a first edition of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, from Bruce. Jason held it reverently, looking at it a little longer than was dignified, before glancing up at Bruce. “Thank you,” he said in a rough voice.

Bruce nodded at him.

“Okay,” Jason said. “Steph again.”

Dick dug through the pile of presents this time, and pulled out an envelope, which he handed to her.

She ripped it open, looked at it, and started laughing. “An IOU for new tires,” she announced to the company at large. She inclined her head at Bruce, who smiled at her. “Thanks, dad.”

Dick handed a longish-shaped wrapped box to Jason.

“It’s a sword,” Jason said. “It’s definitely a sword.”

Steph heard Damian hoot dismissively from the back of the group.

Jason stripped off the paper off the long wooden box and slid it open. “Well, will you look at that,” Jason said, softly. “It’s a sword.” But he sounded pleased. Jason lifted the blade from the box, slid it out of its scabbard, stood, holding the blade with a loose wrist, testing its movement.

“It’s a French saber,” Damian said. “Antique.” He sounded slightly—adorably—anxious to Steph’s ears.

Jason gestured theatrically with the saber towards Damian. “You and I are going to fight,” Jason said, with a dangerous smile. “I trained on the épée, but I can adapt.”

Damian locked eyes with Jason, grinning savagely. “I welcome it.”

“Guys. Can we move it along?” Dick said.

Damian wrenched his gaze away from Jason’s. “Fine. Do my other one next!”

“Ohhh-kay,” Dick said. He fished around in the diminished pile of presents until he found the one Damian wanted. It was small, rectangular, and heavy for its size. “Steph?”

Steph took it. It felt awful lot like a phone. She unwrapped it...and it was a phone. She reflexively checked her pocket, which was empty. “Godammit, Damian,” she said. “Did you steal my phone?”

“Yes,” Damian said, smug. “Last week, you mentioned that you’d been careless enough to crack your phone’s screen.”

“I fell on my ass after I decked a rapist with a swastika earring,” Steph announced loudly. “Metal grating is slippery. And for the record, I got up, I punched him, again, which was necessary, and he’s currently in custody. Pending charges.”

“It’s the same phone,” Damian assured her. “The same model, that is. But the case is so much better. It’s from the R&D of Wayne Enterprises. It’s super-resilient and lightweight. I had it custom made in purple, just for you.”

Steph had been poking at the phone while Damian bragged. “Did you...Damian Wayne, did you swap the SIM card on my phone.”

“Obviously,” Damian said. “I took the opportunity when you were preoccupied during the game. You never even noticed that I’d removed your old phone from your pocket.”

You little shit, Steph didn’t say, while she fumed. It wouldn’t really be cool to say that right in front of his dad.

“He’s such a little shit,” Jason said, conversationally, to Dick. “Did you know about this? I didn’t.”

“I helped him get the prototype case. I thought that was cute. The SIM card, though, that was all him.”

“Enough, guys,” Babs said. She wheeled over to the table, picked up a box, and tossed it to Jason.

It held a light grey hoodie. Jason fingered the material, making an appreciative sound. “Whoa, that's soft. Is this cashmere?”

“Thought of you...when I saw it,” Cass told him.

Jason grinned at her. “What part of my utterly badass, rough-and-tumble persona made this remind you of me?”

“Fuzzy inner lining,” Cass said, beaming, and Jason burst into laughter.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Thanks, Cass.”

Babs handed the next box to Steph. “This one is also from Cass.”

Steph ripped the paper off and opened it to reveal a long loop of soft, pale yellow fabric, densely patterned with darting brown dragonflies—a summery infinity scarf. “Oh Cass,” she breathed. “It's beautiful. I love it. Thank you.” She looped it twice around her neck, then stood up and threw her arms around Cass and kissed her on the cheek.

Cass smiled up at her in a way that conveyed the same thing she'd said to Jay—when I saw this, it made me think of you.

“All right, mine next,” Dick announced. He tossed identically shapes packages at both Steph and Jason, packages that turned out to contain sparkly blue Lush bath bombs.

“I don't know if this was supposed to be a joke,” Jason said, holding his up in the palm of the hand, “but I assure you, I will use this.”

“I know you will, Jay.”

Babs’ gifts to Steph and Jason turned out to be a $100 dollar gift card to the smoothie place on campus, and an autographed (although not a first) edition of Gaudy Night, respectively, both of which were greeted with enthusiasm by their recipients.

Tim’s present to Jason was an entire crate of Clif Builder’s chocolate-mint protein bars. “What the hell, Tim,” Jason said, staring into the case. “Where the fuck do you shop, Wal-Mart?”

“What?” Tim said, gesturing at it. “It's practical. You’ve got a lot of muscle mass to maintain.”

“I guess,” Jason said, dubiously.

“Hey, can I have one?”

“No.” Jason rolled his eyes as Tim made a wounded face. “You’ve eaten, what, steak, ice cream, cornbread, and like a tub of potato salad, and we’re going to have cake in about ten minutes. You don't need a fucking Clif bar.”

“I burned a lot of calories playing soccer.”

“Nope. You gave these to me. They're mine.”

“Me?” Cass asked. Jason tossed her the bar he was holding without comment. She ripped the wrapper off and crammed half the bar into her mouth while Alfred made a soft tutting sound.

Tim grumbled.

As Jason shoved the case aside with his foot, he remarked, “You know, this makes me feel a lot better about my present to Steph.”

“Uh-oh,” Steph said. “Which is…”

“Open it and see.” Jason strolled over to the table and easily lifted the largest box off of it, dropping it on the ground in front of Steph with an audible thump.

“How the hell did you get this over here on your bike?” Steph asked, ripping the paper off of it. “This is huge.”

“Alfred brought the Bentley over.”

She opened the box and laughed when she saw what was inside. “Oh my god, you actually got me a pasta maker. Wow, this looks just like Tim’s. Is it the same model? How did you know?”

“Broke into his apartment.”

Tim came over to peer into the box. “Waitasec—that is my pasta maker! Goddammit, Jason.”

Jason cocked his head. “I had it on good authority that you never use it.”

“You can't just break into people’s apartments and steal their kitchen equipment!”

“Can too,” Jason said, folding his arms.

Tim glanced at Bruce for support, but Bruce, still nursing his beer, only said, “If you don't want your siblings breaking into your apartment, you should improve your security.”

Tim turned to Steph. “Are you actually planning on keeping that? Do you want to be known as the receiver of stolen goods?”

Steph plopped on the ground and put her arms around the box. “Um, yeah. It’s my birthday present!”

“Steph—”

“We both know the only reason you owned a pasta maker in the first place is because we let you watch the Cooking Channel one time when you were stoned out of your mind on painkillers, and you went online to Williams & Sonoma before N—Dick noticed and took your laptop away,” she said. “C’mon, you don't even cook!”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine, keep it.”

“I'll invite you over sometime for spaghetti,” Steph promised him.

“If I may say, Master Jason’s gift dovetails nicely with my own, Miss Brown,” Alfred said handing her a large, flat package. “Every young person starting off on her own could benefit from a piece of home to take with her.”

It was a large, violet Moleskin notebook with her name embossed on the cover. She slid the band off the cover, flipped through it, and gasped, one hand flying up to cover her mouth.

It was filled cover-to-cover with hand-written recipes. She recognized some of them as dishes she'd had when she’d eaten at the Manor, or snacks Tim had brought with him and shared on patrol. “Oh my god, Alfred,” she said, feeling her eyes welling up with tears. “Thank you. This must have taken you forever.”

“You’re most welcome,” he assured as she wrapped her arms around him in a crushing hug. “I enjoyed practicing my pensmanship,” he murmured, into her ear.

“I didn't get one of those when I moved out,” Dick remarked.

“Neither did I,” said Tim.

“I'm afraid I never quite saw the point,” Alfred said, disentangling himself from Steph. “You both risk life and limb daily; it would be irresponsible of me to encourage you into even more hazard, which is what happens when either of you enters a kitchen.”

“Ouch,” Dick said, with hand splayed dramatically on his chest.

“Come on, Jason’s got two to go, and then we can all have cake,” Babs said, with “get on with it” gesture.

“Yeah, come on, gimme my stuff,” Jason said, cheerfully.

“Gently, please,” Alfred said, as Dick picked up one of the two remaining packages and made as if to toss it. Dick raised an eyebrow, but walked it over to Jason instead.

Jason opened it and then froze. He lifted out the contents slowly—a large black-and-red pottery bowl, streaked with irregular lines of gold. He stared at it silent, for a minute, two minutes—it was getting really awkward, actually—and then turned his face towards Alfred, as if he was asking some silent question. The look on his face made Steph bite her lip.

“It’s—” Alfred started to say.

“—kintsugi,” Jason said, roughly. “I know. I know what it is.” He turned his face away from the group, and from where she was sitting, Steph thought that she was probably the only person who could see the tear sliding down his cheek, even as his shoulders went stiff.

“I don't,” Tim said. “What the hell is kintsugi?”

Bruce said, quietly, “It's the art of rejoining broken pieces of pottery using a lacquer of gold dust.” He was watching Jason with unconcealed concern. “The idea is to—highlight the places where the object was broken instead of concealing them. To leave it more beautiful than it was before it was broken.”

Alfred came over and wrapped his arms around Jason, shielding him from the group. Jason mumbled something low to Alfred that Steph couldn't quite make out, and she didn’t really want to. She looked around; people were averting their eyes, except for Cass, who watched, silently.

Steph got up and walked slowly over to the picnic table to retrieve the last box. Her box. Her gift to Jason. It had been a bit of a gamble, and she was starting to have second thoughts, but what the hell. It wasn’t like she had a backup plan.

By the time she got back to her seat next to Jason, Alfred was releasing him, with a discreet brush of his knuckle down Jason’s cheek, and a pat on the shoulder. “All right,” Steph announced. “Last present, and then we have cake.” She plunked the box down in front of Jason.

Jason took his time, peeling back the paper, easing open the box. Stalling, but no one was enough of a jerk to call him on needing a moment. “Oh shit,” Jason said, once he got a look at the contents. He looked up at Steph, face split by a lightning-flash smile. “How the fuck did you know? I’ve always wanted one of these.”

“Lucky guess,” Steph told him, in a tone that she hoped implied that she had secret sources of intel. Which...she did not; it had definitely been a lucky guess.

Jason pulled free the bonsai tree, planted in an elegant lacquered box. “Fuck, it’s gorgeous.”

“It's a Chinese elm,” Steph said, vastly relieved that he liked it. “There’s instructions and stuff in the box.”

“Steph, thank you,” Jason said, a little pink in the face. And okay, maybe he was probably, definitely riding the emotional high of the last present, but he did seem genuinely happy about the tree. “This is awesome.”

“Glad you like it,” she said, lightly. “I had the worst time trying to think of something, since your ‘list’ was impossible.”

“Ammo’s not impossible,” Jason said, running gentle fingers over the tiny tree branches. “But this is better.”

She’d kicked the idea around for a little while before she’d gone for it—screw ‘em all; Stephanie Brown could and did think things over—and it was true that she’d had a hard time figuring out what to get Jason. But she’d really liked the implications. Jason was smart; he was careful; he was deliberate. She’d picked up on that, watching him work, while she measured her flaws against his just as cruelly and obsessively as Bruce and Tim and Babs all had. No one ever seemed to acknowledge that about him—how sharp he was. She wondered if that made him as crazy as she felt, every time someone in this family—and it was goddamn almost everyone in this family, at one point or another—had put their face in hers and told her that she wasn’t good enough to do what they all did, and she was a sad little girl who should go home. She wondered if he was as tired of proving himself as she was.

Jason’s sharpness got downright mean and nasty sometimes, in a way Steph hoped she’d never be. But she’d just watched him weep and then smile over a couple of birthday presents, and she knew in her heart that this day was going end with Cass trying to teach Jason how to play Animal Crossing on Steph’s shitty loveseat, while Steph walked herself through Alfred’s recipe for spinach linguine.

“Okay, presents are done, so it’s time for cake!” Dick said cheerfully. Steph blinked. Alfred had started cleaning up the mess of wrapping paper they'd left strewn around, sorting and stacking the gifts.

“Finally,” Babs said.

“You’re in a big hurry for my birthday cake,” Steph told her.

“Have you ever had Alfred’s lemon chiffon cake?” Babs asked her. “Because if you had, you wouldn't wonder why.”

And as it turned out, Babs was not overselling it. Steph moaned around her fork at the first bite, and turned to look at Alfred. “Please tell me that the recipe for this is in that book.”

Alfred said, with a slight smile, “Indeed it is, Miss Brown.”