Archive of Our Own

Bruce should not be awake right now. It’s coming up on three o’clock in the morning—well over two hours since the night’s patrol was wrapped up. Three of Bruce’s six children are fast asleep in their bedrooms upstairs. Dick informed Bruce via text last week that he would be staying with Roy and Lian until the seventeenth, and Jason’s tracker puts him at his Crime Alley apartment, safe and relatively sound.

The only wild card of the night is Duke, who was abnormally not asleep in his bed when Bruce did his nightly rounds to make sure for his own peace of mind that no one was dead, missing, and/or bleeding out in a gutter somewhere. Duke could be any of the three, for all Bruce knows. Saddled with the day shift, Duke has the closest thing to a normal sleeping schedule out of everyone in the household, even if he still only gets four or five hours on average.

Duke hasn’t answered any one of Bruce’s texts in the last hour, and he’s turned his tracker off. Duke mentioned this morning that he made plans with a few of his old Robin friends tonight, but Bruce foolishly assumed that he would have the decency to return home at a reasonable time. Or, at the very least, that he would call.

Bruce has half a mind to call Leslie and have her check the morgue for any unidentified teenage corpses.

Bruce knows well that Duke is perfectly capable of handling himself, even outside of the Signal uniform. All of his children are deadly weapons—Bruce wouldn’t allow them on the streets of Gotham if they weren’t—but his anxiety-pulverized chest refuses to loosen itself until he has some proof of life. So, staying up all night it is.

To keep himself awake and alert in case Duke has been kidnapped by cannibals and needs a hasty rescue, Bruce has occupied himself with Alfred’s beloved stash of thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. Bruce is on his fourth one in half as many hours, this one taking the form of Mount Rushmore.

Bruce’s hand stills just before locking in the final piece of Lincoln’s beard when he hears the lock on the manor’s front door being unlatched.

He arrives just in time to watch Duke stumble in through the foyer, attempting to keep himself quiet to hide the fact that he is completely wasted. Bruce can smell the alcohol from here. Duke bumps into a coat rack and just barely catches himself on the wall. “S’ry, sir,” he mumbles.

Bruce steps into Duke’s path, blocking him from venturing further into the house. It takes a moment for Duke to register the new obstacle before him. His mouth drags into a lopsided grin. “Bruce! Wha’s—wassup? How’s your night goin’?”

“You’re drunk," Bruce accuses.

“Me? No way. No way. I would never do that.” Duke hiccups. “Totally sober.”

Bruce was expecting to get a call from the police telling him that Duke was kidnapped by a rogue gang, or that they found his body floating in Gotham River. He already had his eulogy planned out. Bruce massages his throbbing temple. “Why do you do this to me?”

“No idea what you’re talkin’ about,” Duke insists too confidently for a boy with what is either cocaine or powdered doughnut sugar sprinkled over the front of his hoodie. “I’ve done nothing illegal ever in my life.”

“You’re standing at a forty-five-degree angle.”

Duke straightens himself up. Failing terribly, he props himself against the wall again. “I always stand like this. Scoliepsis.”

“What did you drink, and how much?” Bruce demands, getting right down to business. Best to ensure his son won’t die of alcohol poisoning before Bruce has time to ground his ass for life. And, frankly, he’s too tired for a hospital visit tonight.

“That’s a secret.” Duke giggles, pressing a finger to his lips.

Bruce rolls his eyes. From the smell alone, he’d guess tequila. He guides Duke to the kitchen with a firm hand on his back, being careful to steady him when he stumbles. Truly, the Venn diagram of drunk people and toddlers would be a perfect circle. “Come on, mister. Let’s get you some water.”

Bruce guides Duke into a chair at the kitchen table. “Stay,” he instructs.

Uncaring about Bruce’s disappointment, Duke crafts himself a pillow out of a placemat and a bushel of bananas and lays his head down. “What’s for dinner?”

“Dinner was pot roast and steamed carrots, but you missed that while you were out getting drunk with your friends.”

Duke wrinkles his nose, huffing into his banana pillow. “I hate carrots. So fuckin’... orange. Terrible.”

Bruce hums in halfhearted sympathy. He places a glass of water on the table beside Duke’s head. “Because god forbid you kids eat something healthy.”

“‘Xactly,” Duke mutters. He cracks one eye open to stare through the clear water glass at Bruce. The curvature distorts his features like a funhouse mirror. “Can I have a sandwich?”

Bruce rolls his eyes and pats Duke’s shoulder. “Drink your water.” While Duke gulps from the glass like he’s been dying of dehydration for weeks, Bruce sets about preparing a peanut butter and cream cheese sandwich—Duke’s favorite combination of condiments, for whatever godawful reason.

Bruce doesn’t bother asking if Duke thought ahead to get some food in his stomach before he drowned himself in tequila. For a family of geniuses, not one of them seems to possess any scrap of common sense. It might be slightly Bruce’s fault.

When he sets down the plate—sandwich cut into quarters, as is the only correct way to prepare any sandwich—Duke’s face spreads into a dizzy grin. “You’re the best, B.” He tucks in gleefully.

Bruce sits beside Duke and watches him eat. “Do I need to give you the lecture on how stupid this was, or can I skip that part?” After six kids, one tires of giving the same lectures year after year. He should have been smarter and videotaped them the first go-around.

“‘M not stupid,” Duke says. He licks cream cheese from between his fingers. “I get straight A’s, I’ll have you know.”

“Mm-hm. How did you get home tonight?”

“Took a cab.”

“Your friends?”

“Crashed at Izzy’s.”

“And how much did you drink?”

“I really like this bread.” Duke pinches the bread between his fingers, watching peanut butter and cream cheese squish out the sides like a flattened tube of toothpaste.

“Duke,” Bruce says again.

“Hm?”

“Where were you tonight?”

“Out,” Duke replies. “Tons o’ fun. Way more fun than you.”

Bruce would be more offended by that if Duke weren’t in a state in which anything from a chemical fire to mashed potatoes could be considered hilarious. And Bruce is very fun, thank you very much. “It goes without saying that you won’t get away with this one easily,” he tells Duke seriously. “Vigilantism or not, we have rules in this house, and not participating in underage drinking is at the top of the list.”

Duke blows a raspberry Bruce’s way. “Hypoxticy.”

“It is not hypocrisy. There is a clear difference between breaking a rule for the greater good, and breaking a rule because it’s fun.”

Duke just snorts, unbothered by Bruce’s tone. “Alfie said you did the same ‘xact thing when you were my age.”

“Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘do as I say, not as I do’?”

“Nope.” Duke polishes off the last of his sandwich and dips his crummy fingers into his water glass to clean them. He dries his hands on Bruce’s sleeve. “Hey,” he says, “how come kangaroos don’t eat sandwiches?”

“Because they’re animals,” Bruce responds, swatting Duke’s hands away.

“But they—they got thumbs, right? They sh’just…make a sandwich. Put kangaroo food between the bread. Whatever they eat.”

“Don’t think that changing the subject will—” Bruce stops abruptly when he sees Duke’s complexion blanch and his throat bob. Bruce knows where this is going. Utterly drained, he sighs, “Are you going to throw up?”

“No,” Duke gags. In the next instant he’s out of his chair like a bullet. The bathroom is too far a journey, so he sprints for the (thankfully empty) sink and vomits directly into the basin.

Bruce shakes his head. Teenagers. He goes over and turns on the faucet, washing the partially digested sandwich and excessive amounts of booze down the drain. “You kids never learn,” he says. Duke retches in response.

Bruce dampens a dish towel and lays it over the back of Duke’s neck, rubbing his back while he heaves. It takes several minutes, but in time, the nausea passes. Duke spits the last dredges of bile into the basin. “Ew.”

Bruce makes Duke sip some more water. “Feeling a little better?” Duke mumbles something unintelligible. He gargles and spits into the sink to rinse the acrid taste from his mouth.

“Let’s get you upstairs, son.” Bruce leads Duke to his bedroom, half-carrying him when Duke’s legs refuse to cooperate. He helps Duke navigate the clutter of his bedroom, the floor strewn with everything from videogame consoles to wrinkled clothes. Bruce doesn’t comment on the mess; he’s picking his battles tonight.

Duke flops onto the bed, still dressed and not even bothering to climb under the covers. At least he kicks his shoes off onto the floor. Bruce retrieves the trash can from the bathroom and sets it within arm’s reach. “Use this if you need to be sick again, okay?”

“Y’sir,” Duke mumbles. He bunches his pillow in his arms and buries his face in it.

Bruce sighs. He runs his hand over Duke’s hair and kisses his crown. “You’re grounded for a month, by the way.” He is met with a disinterested hum from his half-asleep audience. Bruce takes that as the signal to give up for the night. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” Surely the hangover will be punishment enough, anyhow.

As Bruce turns off the bedside lamp, Duke opens one bleary eye. “G’night, Dad.”