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The low murmur of weary conversation in the Batcave dies down when Damian, stripped of his suit and in pajamas, trudges up the stairs after Alfred. Bruce thinks he’s getting too tall, too fast— filling out the shirt he stole from Dick just a little too much.
With a short sigh, Bruce turns back to the computer monitor and flexes his sore hands. There was a time he could type fluidly regardless of the hour, but there are nights now when he’s reduced to picking through the keys with fingers that are slow to respond and curved stiff with rebellion. It grates at him, pain and inconvenience alike, so he’s already on edge in the quiet cave when a faint clink echoes through the caverns, then another.
Bruce bites his tongue, literally. Things have been tense enough that he doesn’t need to pick petty fights with Jason one of the few nights he stays in the cave after things to accept one of Alfred’s protein shakes. He can swallow that annoyance to keep peace.
There’s another clink.
With his lips pressed tightly together, Bruce turns from the monitor and his own untouched protein shake to at least see what the hell is going—
Jason is standing by the workout mats, helmet on, and has just pushed the shake toward his mouth again. The stainless steel straw hits the solid face of his helmet with the same metallic plink. He tries a fourth time while Bruce is staring.
“Jason?”
There’s no response.
The distance from the computer to the mats isn’t far, and Bruce covers it in a few strides, with wary, cold fear pooling in his gut.
“Jason.” He tries one more time, standing in front of him, hoping this is a joke— he’ll touch his shoulder, Jason will yank himself back out of reach, haul the helmet off his head, and flash that crooked grin.
Worried, Old Man?
In the past few months, as Jason has spent more and more time with them, those jokes have become run-of-the-mill. Jason lies motionless for just a minute too long on the couch, slows his breathing just enough to trigger the biomonitor alarm in his suit, pretends to choke on a midnight burger by the Batmobile. He’s all drama, ramped up to eleven, a made you look over and over. It’s a constant cycle of Harold and Maude-esque scenarios, with just a touch more of the mundane, and Bruce’s heart skips beats every single time.
The first time it had happened, he was angry— legitimately, veins-hot furious when Jason laughed as Bruce’s open panic faded. It was Alfred who encouraged him quietly, curtailing the continuation of a frustrated rant, to let it play out. All Bruce could see at first was cruelty, a twisting of the dull-edge knife in his side, until a kind hand on his shoulder and a reminder for patience made him step back.
Jason is getting something out of it, something more than morbid, mean humor. Bruce now suspects what he thinks Alfred saw from the beginning: a testing of Bruce’s attachment. Jason seems to find reassurance in the fear that Bruce can’t fully disregard no matter how many times it happens. Previous circumstances what they are, Bruce knows that he will always react the same way initially, never able to trust that it’s probably a joke. Jason is the son that will get away with crying wolf a hundred times, a thousand times.
This time, however, Jason lifts the shake again and the straw hits the helmet. He doesn’t answer to his own name.
One of the conditions of Jason being reintegrated into the family’s cave base—access to the tech and equipment— was shared schematics for Jason’s own armor. His gear possibly harming someone who was trying to help him, like Alfred, was the selling point there.
It’s also the true reason Bruce asked to begin with, even if Jason didn’t believe it at first.
Those schematics are how Bruce knows exactly where the security catch is on the helmet, to depress it and gently tug the hood up and off Jason’s head.
Beneath the helmet, Jason is pale. His dark hair is disheveled, drenched with sweat, and he has a vacant look in his eyes. The protein shake moves again and this time the straw lands in his mouth, while Bruce is holding the helmet. His expression registers only mild surprise, but he doesn’t acknowledge Bruce at all.
“Jay,” Bruce says, low and firm.
Nothing.
He sets the helmet aside and gingerly attempts to place a hand on Jason’s shoulder. Jason shudders once but doesn’t shake him off, doesn’t look away from the middle-distance where his attention is fixed. The shake in the straw slurps noisily and Jason lowers it from his mouth. It’s shaking in his hand. Bruce gently pries it away from his tight fist and puts it down near the helmet, genuine worry now churning in his stomach.
When he straightens, Jason’s eyes are closed and the trembling in his fingers is moving up his arm and along his shoulder until he’s quivering like a frightened puppy. His breathing is starting to come out in little desperate gasps, and Bruce racks his mind for what they’d encountered earlier in the night, anything at all that could have triggered a response like this. There’s nothing he can think of, nothing obvious, but there’s no real order or logic to triggers. There could have been something so small or inconsequential he hadn’t even thought to register it.
He grabs a free chair from the edge of the mats, the one Dick uses for leg stretches, and puts it behind Jason.
“Sit down,” he says, pressing on Jason’s shoulder.
Jason resists the pressure and steps forward, which Bruce thinks is a good sign, maybe, if he’s coming back to himself-- he still isn’t sure if this is a dissociative episode or a seizure of some kind-- and then Jason throws his arms around Bruce.
There’s a sick shame that burns Bruce’s throat at the realization that his first instinct is to tense, to be ready to fight being thrown over. The struggle he’s braced for never comes and after a second, he processes that Jason is hugging him. More than hugging him, he’s clinging to him, letting Bruce hold up most of his weight. He’s shaking like a leaf fluttering in a stiff wind, and Bruce wraps his arms around Jason.
The boy— the young man, the nearly grown man, the young adult, his son— is hunched forward so his clammy forehead is pressed against Bruce’s throat, tightly enough to make it feel like it’s hard to breathe even if it’s just a psychological sensation. Bruce is still breathing, while Jason’s fingers dig into the back of Bruce’s soft cotton shirt and fiercely clutch like it’s a lifeline.
“Shh,” Bruce says, the syllable falling from his lips automatically. When was the last time he calmed him, that he even saw him this upset? Surely, Jason has been, Bruce thinks, but he wasn’t there to see it or help. That thought makes tears spring to his own eyes, his throat now tight for another reason besides physical pressure.
Jason makes some sort of strangled groan and his fingers clamber across Bruce’s back like he’s scrambling for a better hold. Bruce tightens his arms in response, moving one hand up to bury in Jason’s damp hair, cradling his nape and combing through the curling ends with his own stiff fingers.
“Jay, shhh,” Bruce says. “Shh. Breathe. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
There’s a hiccup from Jason and then a deep sob, that tears out of his chest and tears right through Bruce’s heart. Another follows, and then they’re pouring out of Jason in a steady stream and he’s big enough now that Bruce has to plant his feet to hold him up.
It must only be a few minutes, but they’re such wrenching cries that Bruce feels like it’s gone on for hours when Jason calms to just faint rattling wheezes. Bruce runs a hand in circles on the small of Jason’s back, still murmuring. Even if Jason isn’t weeping as hard, he’s still bent against Bruce like he’d collapse to the floor without someone propping him up, and the angle is turning into hell on Bruce’s knee.
“B,” Jason says, pleading, and something in the rough syllable— the first he’s spoken in a while— triggers some latent memory in Bruce of caring for him when he was young, of exactly how he sounded when he was sick.
Bruce shoves him into the chair as gently as he can and hops the railing for the trash bin under the computer desk. He vaults back with it and presses it forward. Jason grabs for it and stays bent over it, the hot beads of sweat running down his temples. Nothing happens, and after a moment Jason drops it on the floor and rubs his face with both hands.
“I think it’s staying down,” Jason says hoarsely.
He’d felt clammy earlier, but Bruce puts two fingers under his chin and tips his face up, presses his lips to Jason’s forehead in a brief kiss. Jason blinks at him while he checks behind his ears with the backs of his knuckles, too.
“You don’t have a fever,” Bruce says, frowning. He crouches, one hand on Jason’s knee while the kid sags limply in the chair like he’s been drained of energy and bone alike.
“Feel like shit,” Jason mumbles. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Bruce says.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what the hell that was,” Jason asks flatly, staring at the floor. He still seems distant, not fully there. Bruce suspects it’s for another reason now.
“I don’t think I have to,” Bruce answers. “How often is it happening?”
“Ah, it’s, uh….not for a while. Used to be a lot. Not that bad for a, uh, long time.” Jason laces his fingers behind his head and stretches, trying to expand his chest, and then folds in on himself with his arms wrapped around his stomach. “Sorry.”
“Jay,” Bruce says, putting a hand on Jason’s cheek. He doesn’t leave it there, it’s just enough to draw Jason’s eyes to his. There’s a haunted, scared depth to them right now. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
On instinct more than planning, he tugs Jason just slightly in the chair and hugs him again. Jason takes in a deep breath, and then another, leaning against him. He doesn’t return the hug this time, his arms still crossed tightly around his middle, but he lets Bruce hold him there for a few moments while his breathing evens out.
It feels fragile, a bridge made of smoke. The longer it goes on, however, the more it solidifies into something defined and bearing.
“Can I, uh…” Jason hesitates, as if caught on the middle of that bridge, tucked into Bruce’s arms. “Stay,” he exhales quickly. “Stay. Can I stay.”
“Of course,” Bruce says. “As long as you need. This is your home, Jason.”
Jason’s laugh in response to that is a little hysteric, and quickly swallowed, and he nods against Bruce’s chest. He exhales again. “Fuck. B, I…”
He sounds close to crying again, and a little angry about it. Bruce tousles his hair and pulls back, to put a hand on each shoulder to brace Jason and look him over.
“Upstairs,” he decides. “You can clean up later. Can you make it?”
Jason shakes his head. “No suits upstairs. You know the rule. Alfred will be pissed.”
“I think Alfred will overlook it,” Bruce says. He doesn’t mention how many times he’s disregarded that rule, most frequently after Jason died.
“I can clean up,” Jason says, climbing to his feet. He’s moving like an old man, hunched and hesitating before every motion. Some of the limber energy returns while he walks toward the showers, like something coming unfurled and growing into form.
Bruce doesn’t call him back. He sits at the computer again and pretends to be typing, but he’s really just listening for any suspicious absence of sound.
After he’s typed and erased three lines three times, Jason staggers out in some of Bruce’s sweats with dripping hair. The towel is still around his neck and Bruce turns the monitor off. Jason waits in the middle of the main bay, his face tipped up toward the cavern ceiling and eyes closed. Bruce takes the towel and rubs Jason’s hair mostly dry, while Jason’s head lolls around with whichever direction Bruce is scrubbing. Bruce tosses the towel in a laundry basket with a flick of his wrist.
“Upstairs,” he says, turning Jason that direction by his elbow. “Your old room or another one?”
That’s the best way to ask, Bruce thinks— straight out, abrupt, watch Jason like a hawk to read his reaction. There isn’t much of one.
“Yours,” Jason says, just as bold and abrupt. Because he’s ahead of Bruce on the stairs, Bruce can’t see his expression, if Jason feels self-conscious about this. It also means Jason doesn’t see his surprise.
“Alright,” Bruce says, before the silence can stretch into the territory where Jason, even upset, misreads it as reluctance. “You know the way.”
The house is quiet and still around them, dim in the wee morning hours, and Jason does go straight to Bruce’s room without hesitation or misstep. He makes a beeline to the bed and flops down, burying himself in blankets while Bruce just stands and watches, a little bewildered.
Jason rolls over and huffs to blow hair out of his eyes, and Bruce stops standing there like an idiot in his own room. He can’t remember the last time Jason even ventured upstairs, much less this far— since his return, he’s always stopped at the kitchen or the den, somewhere on the main floor.
The blankets are a little tangled and Bruce has to kick them out, but he ends up settled on his side facing a son he’d lost once, still feels like he’s lost in some ways. Jason isn’t pretending to sleep, but he looks drained. Bruce brushes the hair back when it falls into his eyes again and Jason sighs, a deep and full and content sound.
It makes Bruce’s entire chest ache.
He leaves his hand there, his thumb brushing the hair back over and over.
“Do you want to talk?” Bruce asks, clearing his throat halfway through. His mouth is dry. He’s afraid he might scare him away.
“No,” Jason says, his voice like sandpaper. He sounds like he’s spent decades smoking, though Bruce knows he won’t touch cigarettes. He used to turn his nose up at the ones Bruce used for Matches Malone. A memory of another kind of smoke seeps into Bruce’s head and he blows it away. “I just want to be here.”
“That’s fine, Jay,” Bruce says. “I’ll be right here, too.”
Bruce doesn’t think he can sleep. He feels more awake than he has in weeks, while he watches Jason’s eyes droop and his face go slack, as deep and even breathing fills the room.
This is rest enough for him.