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The night started out great was the thing. Not only was it family dinner night, but everyone, even Jason had made it home this week. So they’d decided on a full family patrol that night, with even Duke joining night patrol. And with his children on paired patrols, it was nice and quiet.
In fact that was the issue. It had been far too quiet of a patrol. Arkham was past due for a break out, but the security was currently holding, Hood had successfully just finished off another crime family (Bruce was holding his tongue on the methods used because Jay hadn’t killed anyone and they were still in an uneasy peace at the moment), and even Selina had been quiet as of late. Which meant there wasn’t enough for an entire family of vigilantes to do.
From what Bruce gathered, Tim, Duke, Steph and Cass were currently holding a contest on who could create the coolest trick mid grapple, with Harper (who wasn’t even on patrol, they were just doing this outside her and Cullen’s apartment) judging. Damian and Dick had managed to foil a B&E, and were now drinking milkshakes on top of a building. And Jason- Actually now that he thought about it, Bruce hadn’t heard from Jason in a while.
“Any change, Nightwing?” Bruce asked on the open comm line, trying to make sure it didn’t sound like he was singling out Jason. They were talking again, and he was trying to keep it that way.
“Nope, still quiet over here.”
“What about you Hood?”
“Been quiet over here as well. Nothing worse than a few mugging and a couple of car break ins.” Jason replies. There’s a pause while Bruce tries to process the background noise until finally Tim asks the question that Bruce has been trying to wrap his head around.
“Are you playing Mamma Mia in your helmet?” Tim asks.
There’s another pause until Hood turns his comm back on where Mamma Mia is definitely playing in the background “Maybe”
Bruce sighs into his open comm (disappointed sigh #3: ‘I’m not surprised but that doesn’t mean you should do it’) while Steph chimes in “See B this is what happens when you don’t let Oracle play music over comms.”
Bruce knows he’s making a face now but there’s no criminals around right now so it’s fine, before reminding Steph of why they have that rule in place. “We don’t play music over the comms because it’s distracting from our job and makes it harder to communicate which is the entire point of our comms.”
“Sounds fake but ok.”
“Hey Hood can we make requests? Because I want Voulez-Vous next if we can.” Duke chimes in. It’s then that Bruce remembers why he prefers not having all his children on patrol on unless there’s an emergency. There’s never enough chaos to keep all of them entertained at the same time.
“Signal don’t encourage him, Hood stop corrupting your brothers.”
“Me? Corrupting them? If anything you should get mad at Dick, Dick was the original corrupter.”
There’s a chorus of “title of your sex tape” and an affronted “Hey!” over the comms, covering up his resigned “no names over comms”.
“How was I the original corrupter?” Dick presses, and while Bruce stares at the sky hoping for the bat signal, hoping for an emergency he can use to distract the current chaos.
“You’re the one who dressed like the fifth member of ABBA.” Jason replies, while Mamma Mia continues to play, but this time jason doesn’t close the comm channel when he’s done speaking so the music continues.
There’s a snort from Barbara over the comm and an affronted “ouch” from Dick, but thankfully nobody brings up the fact that the most recent person to wear the aforementioned costume was Jason. Bruce still doesn’t know what led to that, but he’s learned sometimes it’s easier to not question the calmer weird things his children do.
There’s a lull while Mamma Mia plays in the background, then as it fades out Jason starts talking again. “You’re listening to Red Hood radio, up next a request for one of our listeners. This one goes out to you nightlight.” Then Voulez-Vous starts playing over the comm. Bruce let’s out a resigned groan and debates banging his head against the brick wall in front of him. Tonight’s patrol was worthless enough, and his children are obviously bored enough to handle anything that might come up, maybe he should just head straight to Selina’s. And given the song requests on the comm this isn’t gonna die down anytime soon.
Bruce let’s out another sigh before opening a private comm line to Barbara, “Oracle, I have a lead I’m going to investigate in the Bowery, alone. Please attempt to keep everyone on track as I’m going radio silent.”
“You’re escaping to Selina’s, got it. Enjoy.”
Bruce debates attempting to save himself, but there’s no way he’s going win this one. Hopefully this will be a one time thing, and everyone will be distracted enough that no one will bug him about going to Selina’s.
It’s not until the video of Signal dancing to Voulez-Vous goes viral that Bruce realizes that Red Hood radio was not going away for a long time.