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Jason can ignore it most of the time.
—
(This is a lie.)
—
Tim adjusts the lens of his camera, but before he can frame the scene itself, Cass swoops into take it from him, cackling in a distinctively Stephanie-like way that doesn’t bode well for anyone. Tim lunges for it with a sharp cry and she just bends backwards, camera cradled securely, catching herself on one hand, then kicking up and over, narrowly missing Tim’s chin – missing because she’s going slow and he dodges easily, making grabby hands for his camera.
She dances away – literally, because it took them a year to get to this point, but they’re all in the manor having fun together, with video games and food and music and almost everyone’s here – and passes the camera to Steph. Steph raises an eyebrow but doesn’t question it, immediately climbing onto the love seat Dick bodily claimed with a lazy sprawl. She nearly steps on his face in her bid for the back of the couch. He squawks, flails, and rolls off in time to avoid Tim’s scramble to follow.
Everyone’s laughing, playing hot potato with Tim’s camera – and being so-very-careful with the expensive piece of equipment because it doesn’t really matter that Tim’s rich, and Bruce is rich, and they don’t even have to worry about being rich because they have more than enough connections to get a new one. It’s one of Tim’s precious items and they’re going to be careful, damnit.
They’re laughing and playing and having a great time, and they miss Jason slipping out of the family room into the hallway, shoulders tight. He exhales heavily through his nose, eyes closed, and doesn’t go back in.
He’d flinched. When Tim brought the camera out. Flinched and ducked, face paling. Cass saw it, from where she’d been sitting upside down in a chair and he’d been lying on the floor – until the camera came out. Then he was sitting up quickly with that flinch and that duck and that terribly pale face.
She doesn’t know why. She just knows it happened. And she does something about it. Jason slinks out quietly and she doesn’t call attention to it, acts just as confused as the others when they realize he’s gone, pretends she doesn’t know how long it’s been.
After that, Cass keeps a closer eye on him. Just to make sure he’s Jason – because they’re vigilantes and they live in a weird, dangerous world. But then, after confirmation he is Jason, she watches to see why he reacted like that.
And when she figures it out –
Well, if she starts blocking him when someone brings out their phone for a picture, or she just straight up takes the phone and plays keep away for a couple seconds until they forget they wanted to take a picture in the first place – Jason doesn’t say anything and neither does she. But he does get a little more relaxed when he clocks her in the group.
—
Dick climbs the fire escape, hissing quietly when he reaches over his head and his ribs flare painfully. He sucks in a breath and ignores it, reaching again for the next rung and the next until he’s on the topmost floor. It’s kind of stupid. There’s a couple dozen bolt holes easier to get to than this. A handful of stocked safehouses – both his and Bruce’s and Tim’s and Jason’s and, wow, he’s said it before, and he’ll say it again there’s a shit ton of vigilantes in Gotham – anyway. He, honestly, should just go back to the Cave. That’s the next logical step. It’s where all his stuff is. It’s where he said he was going to go.
But, nope. Here he is. Knocking politely on Jason’s window, peering through the blinds with a little frown when he doesn’t answer right away. There’s a hundred and a half reasons why Jason wouldn’t answer right away – spite is usually the first reason and the second is actually the reason why Dick came here instead of all the other options.
He disables Jason’s alarm easily – and knows he can only do that because Jason lets him. It’s the most basic system for a Bat to deal with, a change from when they first discovered Jason’s apartment and his security system was from Talia al freakin’ Ghul what the hell. Now it’s been downgraded. Basically, a wide-open door and a welcome mat all in one.
He slips in as quietly as the window had slid open. The apartment is silent except for the soft whoosh of the automatic water bowl and the humming of the fridge. Dark, too.
Dick scans the main room, settles on the cracked door of the bedroom, makes a face at Jason’s cat who’s sitting at the opening like she’s standing guard or something. The reason he can see her is because the stove overhead light makes her eyes shine ominously. The only Bat she doesn’t tolerate is Tim – they have a strange little rivalry going on where he keeps trying to convince them she’s not a normal cat and she just…continues to act like a normal cat? He has no idea what’s going on with that.
He sucks in a breath as he reaches around his front for the side zipper under his arm. Squeezes his eyes shut to pull the top half of his suit off to hang around his waist. Doesn’t open them to get his compression top off. His ribs aren’t broken, but they don’t feel great either. Some poking and prodding reveals heavy and deep bruising only, thankfully.
After digging out some clothes from Jason’s ever overflowing bin of “shit my siblings leave behind” (hmm, he needs to come by more often and contribute to this) and stripping out of the rest of his suit, he sends a text to the group chat to let them know where he decided to hang out for his last morning in Gotham.
Text sent and read (and responded to by Cass and Babs), he pockets his phone and heads to the bedroom. Turtle mrrps! at him but allows a head scratch in return for letting him into the room without opening the door too much more. She trots ahead of him and hops up on the bed, uncharacteristically curls up on the foot of it. She’s a cuddler. Practically a smotherer.
Dick frowns and sits on the edge of the bed next to the cocoon of blankets that theoretically houses his brother. He turns on his phone’s flashlight and sets it to the side so it’s not shining directly on the bed. It illuminates the black tuffs of hair peeking out from the top of the cocoon, helps him see the unsteady rise and fall of Jason’s breathing.
He digs through the blankets until he finds face, places his hand on the now visible forehead. Sighs. When he pulls his hand away, he’s greeted with the glimmer shine of Jason glaring at him from between his eyelashes.
“Fuck off,” he mumbles.
Dick smiles brightly. “Nope,” he chirps. Jason groans and buries his face back in the cocoon. “When was the last time you took something?” No answer. “Jaaassson.” A mumble. “Can’t hear you past the attempts to smother yourself.”
Jason yanks down the comforter, his glare ramping up a couple degrees. “Fuck. Off,” he enunciates clearly and bitterly. It’s hard to see in the terrible light, but Dick can at least make out the redness around his eyes and the glimmer in them that goes beyond the eyeshine. Dick watches him patiently until he visibly sags, defeated. “What time is it?”
“Five.”
“Nine,” he mutters.
Thought so. Dick pats the bed and stands, heading towards the kitchen first to refill Jason’s water bottle. He’s fully aware Jason can take care of himself just like Dick can take care of himself and Tim can, and Bruce (theoretically) can, and Cass and Steph and, okay, plot lost. Jason can take care of himself, but sometimes it’s nice to just…be taken care of? If that makes sense. And Dick – he kind of needs that assurance right now, that he can take care of someone else, and he’d rather that someone be his brother.
He’s shoving a protein bar into his mouth when he wanders into the bathroom for cold meds. He flicks on the light and – pauses, frowning. That’s not…
The mirror is gone.
Like. Full on gone. Not covered. Not out of its frame. Just. A blank wall with little spots of filler for the screws. It’s not sanded down enough and leaves patches of texture under the coat of paint that – Dick checks the baseboards. The walls are a light blue, like a clear sky over a field, but the baseboards have hints of old yellow paint.
Dick’s never been this far into Jason’s apartment before. The med kit is under the kitchen sink, but he knows Jason has stuff in here because that’s where he went when Dick came around last month and needed something for a headache.
And now that it’s staring him in the face – there’s no mirrors in the apartment at all. You’d think without one in the bathroom, there’d be one in the little fake foyer or in his bedroom. But there’s not.
Something heavy settles in his stomach and it’s not the protein bar.
He has to look away to grab cold meds from the little cabinet over the toilet – old, cheap wood that’s more splinters than put together, still no mirror – and when he looks back, the scene in front of him hasn’t changed. Dick doesn’t know why this is so disconcerting. Why he’s stuck on this. It just feels…wrong. Like it should mean something, he just can’t find that meaning.
It sticks with him as he heads back to the bedroom. Jason’s no longer cocooned, but he’s still curled up in the tiniest ball he can manage, head fully under the covers that not even a peek of hair escapes. Turtle is curled up in the pillow, just above his head. Neither of them move when Dick sits down. Jason breathes unsteadily in a different way than a clogged nose and mucus-filled lungs. Dick lifts the edge of the blanket and Jason’s glaring miserably, eyelashes clumped with tears he didn’t let fall earlier.
“You okay?” Dick asks quietly.
Jason’s glare deepens. “I’m not a child,” he rasps out.
“I know. You’re my brother.”
He closes his eyes like the words pain him and Dick silently offers the cold meds. It takes a second before he reaches for them and he overshoots, missing Dick’s hand by a mile. Jason freezes, visibly clenching his jaw, and tries again, clumsily snatching the meds from Dick, retreating further under the covers like he’s trying to hide.
Dick lets him. Doesn’t say a godsdamn word. The atmosphere is fragile. One wrong word from shattering into a million pieces. He doesn’t want that. He wants to sleep on the weirdly comfortable couch in the main room, secure in the knowledge that his brother is safely tucked away in his room and not in some warehouse in the middle of a different country.
He drops the blanket edge, smooths it out, then stands. The thermostat gets dropped a couple degrees, air conditioning clicking on, and Dick digs out the weighted blanket he’s honestly shocked Jason hadn’t already brought out. He dumps it on Jason with no preamble and Jason just takes it. No grumble. No swear. Gods, Dick wants to ask, he wants to demand answers – but he’s tired and in pain, and Jason’s tired and sick, and they’ll probably end up insulting each other instead and he’s just not in the mood.
Turtle’s staring at him as he rolls the blanket out to cover every inch of his brother’s curled form. Dick stares back – doesn’t win the impromptu staring contest. She just flicks an ear, unimpressed, and his eyes start to burn. He blames the late night and his ribs for the loss.
Dick pats vaguely where he’s pretty sure Jason’s knee is then grabs his phone – shit, battery’s low – to head out. He gets as far as the door before he hears a muffled, “Thanks,” behind him. Then, tacked on for good measure: “Dickhead.”
He grins. “Anytime.”
—
Stephanie passes over the tablet and leans back in her seat, arms crossed, expression – not unhappy, but not relaxed. This isn’t a casual meeting for all that they’re wearing street clothes and hanging out in a coffee shop. She watches Jason flip through the surveillance pictures one by one, his nose wrinkling, and accepts the coffee Cass hands her. Cass sets another cup at Jason’s elbow, but he doesn’t even look at it, brows furrowing.
Finally, after what seems like forever, he glances up, eyes flicking to the coffee first then to Steph. “What about it?”
And there’s not enough weight in his voice for this situation.
She raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?” She leans over and flips back a couple pictures until she gets to one that has Jason’s face perfectly in frame talking to their number one suspect. “You really gonna start with that, Alley?”
They both watch him carefully as he stares at the picture for a too long moment. Steph feels Cass sigh heavily next to her and when she looks over, Cass is slumping inelegantly in her seat, cup coming up to cover her mouth – but her eyes….Her eyes are sad, staring at Jason like her heart is breaking.
Which – she doesn’t get. She’s missing something, that’s the only reasonable answer. Steph turns back to Jason and –
Shit. That doesn’t – His face is dangerously pale, knuckles matching as his grip edges on being too tight on the tablet – she has no doubt he can break the damn thing – and his eyes are shining, a painful realization in them.
Jason swallows thickly, carefully sets down the tablet and quickly grabs his coffee just a second too slow to hide the way his hands are shaking. He stares at the lid then brings the cup to his lips, turning in a way that hides half his face.
Abruptly, she realizes that she’s not supposed to be seeing this. Jason wouldn’t, doesn’t want her to see this. Steph looks down, drags the tablet towards herself, and waits, flipping through the pictures, sipping her coffee, nudging Cass so they can duck their heads together, whispering loud enough for Jason to hear they’re not talking about him, but quiet enough to get away with talking about the case.
She hates meeting in the Cave. The Clocktower is only a little better. It makes her feel too detached from the streets and she knows that’s at least partially why Jason works out of his safehouses more often than not.
Only partially the reason though, she’s fully aware of that.
“Okay,” Jason says roughly after a few minutes. He seems a little more settled, but there’s something in his eyes that makes Steph think that this is only temporary. That they’re going to get through this meeting and he’s going to escape as soon as possible because he’s seconds away from breaking – she knows that feeling too well, has seen it in the mirror before. “Okay. That’s me. Right.”
And he says that last bit quietly, like he has to remind himself of the fact. What –
“Tell us what you know,” Cass says, not gently, not softly. But there’s a certain tenderness to it that usually comes out when she’s interviewing civilians. Jason’s too caught up in his own internal thing to notice. “What were you doing there?”
Stephanie looks from Jason to Cass then back again. The clues are all here. She’s a master at putting them together. But also – does she want to put them together? Does she want to figure this out? She made it a rule to not look into the personal lives of other vigilantes other than on a surface level to make sure they’re legit, she trusts Babs’s process for the deeper stuff, but also…she comes by her nosiness naturally, long before she ever donned the Bat brand. It’s in her blood.
He’s entitled to his secrets. Everyone knows he’s kept a shit ton of stuff to himself – cough, magic swords, cough – and he’s never going to tell them all of it. Steph doesn’t want to ruin things by prodding too deep.
So – she doesn’t.
It burns her a little to turn away from the mystery, but Jason latches onto Cass’s questions like a man drowning and, well, she can’t, she can’t bring herself to push him further into the trenches just to satisfy her own curiosity.
But – That’s me. Right. – she thinks she might have figured it out anyway.
—
Damian can’t sleep. Every time he tries, he just sees – He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut until lights burst behind his lids. His phone lights up, vibrating quietly, and he swipes away the message from Maps without reading it. That is a…tomorrow Damian thing. When he has the capacity to talk to someone without breaking down – why do the bad guys always have to go after kids?
The Manor is quiet in the liminal space between patrol ending and the sun breaking over the horizon. Not even Pennyworth is awake, just an hour too soon. Damian would normally go to the kitchen or the Cave, but he’s feeling restless, like bees buzzing under his skin, and goes wandering instead.
He won’t admit to anyone the checks he does on the rooms the rest of the Bats stay in when they visit – they’re all empty tonight, only him, Bruce, and Pennyworth are in residence – but he checks them all the same.
Nothing has changed much – just a few things out of place, Timothy’s spare skateboard is missing, Richard has taken another poster to Blüdhaven, Cassandra got new shoes, Stephanie has actually left behind a pillow like she doesn’t mind coming back, and then…
Jason’s room is in an odd state of chaos. His Red Hood suit is in a pile on the rug – Pennyworth will have a fit no doubt – the open window gives away how he came in. He no longer trips the alarms in any capacity at his late-night comings and goings, but he stopped sneaking in right around the time Bruce just started outright giving him supplies instead of letting Jason steal them.
(Jason still steals them.)
Damian latches onto the mystery, taking note of the partially opened drawers and the clothes strewn about – Jason normally keeps everything neat and tidy – There’s no blood. The med kit stashed under his bed hasn’t been moved. So, not injured, but in that case…what?
He heads to the library first, then the kitchen. Finds nothing. Damian frowns and heads to the Cave. Why would Jason sneak into his bedroom first if his goal was the Cave this whole time?
And Damian’s musing on that question when he walks by the small grand room that’s been converted into a home gym. He hears a noise – a grunt and the sound of a body hitting crash mats – and peers through the doorway.
Jason’s laying on the ground next to the balance beam, arm thrown over his eyes, dressed in gym shorts and a thin work-out hoodie. There’s chalk on his hands and in his hair, and he’s –
Breathing unsteadily in a way Damian knows all too well. Jason’s trying not to cry.
He doesn’t understand. Jason doesn’t look injured despite how loud of a fall he just heard. Maybe it’s for the same reason Damian’s having trouble sleeping? A case that’s just too much of a reminder about how awful some people can be?
Jason heaves a big breath and sits up, running his hands through his hair, leaving behind streaky marks of chalk that look grey compared to his white bangs. He stands, clapping his hands together, shoulders tense. Damian can’t see his expression, but it looks like he’s bracing himself for something before he heaves himself up on the beam, sitting on it first then hopping onto his feet.
Damian expects him to break into a routine – he’s nearly as acrobatic as Richard and Cassandra, surprisingly so considering his height and muscle distribution – but Jason just…stands there. Wobbling uncharacteristically, head held high, breathing picking up faster and faster.
Then Jason looks down –
And immediately falls off the beam, landing hard on the mats without even an attempt to correct in any capacity.
Jason curls up on his side, face buried in his arms to muffle a frustrated scream. With his heart in his throat, Damian creeps into the room, watching Jason pull himself into a small ball.
He should walk away. No one likes showing weakness, vulnerability, least of all Jason Todd. And Jason’s here without telling anyone, during that one time no one should be awake, for a reason. Damian isn’t supposed to be seeing this.
Jason doesn’t acknowledge his approach. Damian doesn’t announce himself. He steps around Jason and hops up on the beam, kicking his legs back and forth as he waits for Jason’s breathing to somewhat settle again.
When it does, Jason peeks out with one eye, glaring. “Little bats are supposed to be sleeping,” he mutters, voice hoarse. Damian shrugs.
“What’s wrong with you?” Damian asks instead – and if it sounds less demanding than the question normally sounds, neither of them point it out.
Jason ducks his head back into his arms for a long moment before he sighs and uncurls, sitting up with his legs crossed, craning his neck to look up at Damian. He cocks his head to the side, squinting, before the furrow between his eyebrows smooths out, and something lightens in his expression. Damian mirrors the head movement, frowning.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jason asks.
A stalemate. Jason won’t answer Damian and Damian won’t answer Jason. Two equally stubborn individuals at too early in the morning, both of them just…not ready to actually have the type of emotional conversation this promises to be if either of them were to answer.
Damian entertains the idea of jumping off the beam and heading back to his room, but he stays where he is, carefully inspecting his brother as the silence stretches on and Jason keeps looking up at him, his shoulders loosening, his posture slouching. The air is different than it’d been when he first stumbled upon him – from tense and angry and frustrated to this sad-tinged sort of…relief.
He grips the beam tighter, shifts his body weight and Jason stiffens, jaw locking up until a muscle ticks in his cheek, entire body tensing. Damian just pulls up his leg to tuck it under his thigh, other leg hanging down, and Jason slumps, almost going boneless, still –
Still looking up at Damian. It can’t be nice on his neck, but he doesn’t seem to want to look away or stand or come up on the beam with him. Damian thinks, for a second, that Jason doesn’t want to be alone – but then that thought fades as they continue to stare at each other.
“What are the chances Drake’s going to break his skateboard?” Damian blurts out. Jason raises an eyebrow. “His spare is missing. He’s with his team this week.”
Jason snorts. “You’re such a snoop,” he mutters good-naturedly. Damian kicks out, nearly nailing him in the head, but he simply leans to the side to avoid it.
—
“Hood got tagged,” Red Robin grits out over the comm. Everyone tenses. “Shit. Hood – no. Jason!” A pained grunt and a muffled swear as Tim tries to lunge for him on a broken leg. Ragged breathing. A bay door slamming shut, the chain rattling noisily. “Shit. Shit. He bolted. Oracle –.”
“I have him,” Batman says, already grappling to the roof, mentally planning the route. “Robin, Spoiler, help Red Robin to the Cave. Batgirl, wait for Gordon.”
There’s a chorus of affirmatives and Bruce leaves them to it. The rain picks up. The wind blows cold.
Jason Todd dosed with fear gas – Bruce finds him exactly where he expected.
He sits huddled on the rooftop. His favorite gargoyle is behind him, a partially melted candle sitting in its mouth. It’s light pink this time, halfway gone. A ragged bouquet of flowers, petals scattered by the rain and wind, lay next to its claws.
Robin had always been easy to spot up here in the sky with his bright, bright colors. Jason liked this particular gargoyle – unlike Dick who liked all of them and could never pick a favorite – because it gave him an unbroken view of the skyline all the way to the harbor, Wayne Tower twinkling in the dark. When the nights were calm, you could look up and find Robin watching over them.
Over the years, tokens started appearing. Trinkets from those brave enough (or stupid enough – or both) to make the climb. He kept the coins and the medallions, and the charms and the drawings safely tucked away, and he could…just never find the right moment to bring them up to Jason, to give them to him. It never seemed an appropriate. More of a painful reminder of what he lost instead of a reminder of how much he’d been – is – loved.
When Jason was Robin, he’d sit right on the ledge next to the gargoyle, leaning into it like they were both watching the sunset. Or he would contort his way onto its claws, tucking himself under its chin, looking as comfortable as a spoiled cat in the sun. Not even Dick would’ve been able to stand the hard ridges under him for too long, but Jason would stay like that for hours if you let him.
Now, though. Jason as Red Hood –
He sits on the roof behind the gargoyle, knees pulled to his chest, face buried away. His helmet is long gone, hair plastered flat to his skull.
He doesn’t twitch when Bruce touches down. Doesn’t move at his approach. Bruce crouches next to his son and reaches out – hesitating, hand hovering just before contact. Jason shakes his head without looking up, tightens his hug around his legs.
Lightning flashes brightly. Thunder booms too loudly. Jason flinches then, shoving himself further against the wall separating him from the gargoyle.
“Just the weather,” Bruce murmurs, spinning the antidote between his fingers. There’s no space to inject it safely and properly. “You’re okay.” Jason shakes his head again, shoulders heaving. “Yes. You are. You’re okay, Jason.”
“No,” Jason whimpers. He looks up and – his domino is gone. Bruce swallows thickly. He looks so young. A split above his eyebrow, leaking blood down the side of his face. His jaw already bruising. His eyes wide and rimmed pink. He can’t tell the difference between rain and tears, but it’s still so painfully obvious he’s been crying.
“No,” Jason repeats, chin trembling. “I’m n-not.”
Bruce risks it and scoots a little closer, dropping to his knees when Jason doesn’t move. “You got hit by Crane’s new batch,” he tells him, holds up the antidote. “Five minutes – max – and everything will be okay.”
Jason squeezes his eyes shut and the chin tremble becomes a full-on wobble. Exactly the same – Exactly the same as it was when he was twelve in that alley, and the same as thirteen and fourteen and fifteen when he came to Bruce with that water stained, faded birth certificate, and said “I wanna find her.” –
And then at nineteen, when he was staring at Batman from behind the Joker, tears in his eyes, a crack in his voice, a wobble in his chin as he finally gave up trying to hold everything back and just it all fall.
“It won’t be,” Jason grits out. And the pure agony and loathing in his voice takes Bruce by surprise, sending him back on his heels. Jason unhooks his arms from around his legs and folds them to his chest, clinging to the edges of his jackets like he’s trying to hold himself together and – and he’s failing, looking like he’s about to shake out of his skin.
“I’m too big,” he whispers. “I don’t fit. I d-don’t fucking fit. I’m too – I’m too tall. I’m too big. I’ve got – my eyes are the wrong color. I’m supposed to – I don’t – .” He yanks off his gloves, nails scoring his skin in his haste. “I’m supposed to have a pen callus right here. And I don’t. It was here and now it’s g-gone.” He lets out a ragged sob. “I don’t fit,” he repeats desperately – brokenly. Expression collapsing, hands pressed to his face to hide as he tries to muffle his cries.
Bruce – Bruce’s eyes flicker to the gargoyle for only a second before going back to his son – his son who. He swallows. How long? he wonders. And then answers himself, since he came back to life. Because of course. No matter how much they tried, they could never get Jason to the proper weight a boy his age should have been, and his height had always been a forgone conclusion.
To wake up. To wake up and find yourself suddenly a hundred pounds heavier and a foot taller – to start with. Bruce can’t even begin to imagine.
Then, in the throes of fear gas, he tries to come to the one place that has never betrayed him. The one place that has always meant comfort and security and – and –
He’s too big. He doesn’t fit.
Bruce pulls off his cowl and slides the antidote away for now. He grabs Jason’s shaking hands in his own, thumbing over his knuckles, squeezing tight. Jason stares, tension him pulling him taunt as a bowstring, his breathing ragged and too fast, borderline hyperventilating. There’s something fragile in the air – and Bruce would…Once upon a time Bruce thinks he would’ve ignored it. Would’ve given Jason the antidote and gone from there. But –
This isn’t once upon a time. This is a year and a half of reconciliation, and this is his son.
He uses his grip to pull Jason into a tight hug, wrapping his arms around him, encompassing him the best he can. Jason shudders, face tucked against the crook of his neck – and here he can tell the difference between rain and tears as Jason cries openly, fear gas making it all the harder to hold back. Bruce clicks his tongue and bodily moves Jason to it’s more of a cradle-hug.
To Bruce, Jason fits perfectly in his arms as all his children do. No matter how big he gets, he’ll never be too big for Bruce to hug, and he hates himself a little for ever letting him think otherwise.
“You’re okay,” Bruce presses to Jason’s hair.
He shakes his head. “I can’t – .”
“You’re perfect,” Bruce insists.
Jason sobs out “stop” and tries to push him away, but doesn’t get very far, fingers hooking in the crevices of the Batman armor – only because his cape is too far away, the angle’s bad. Bruce brings up a hand to card his fingers through Jason’s hair. The other grabs the antidote again and presses it into his neck. The quiet hiss-click is lost to the sounds of rain and Jason’s crying.
He drops the antidote with a mental note to pick up later and rubs up and down Jason’s spine as the antidote works its way through his system. After a minute, his breathing settles and his cries turn sniffles. Another minute and his grip on Bruce’s armor loosens. He slumps against Bruce, shivering as the rain finally seeps through his suit, and doesn’t push himself away until another full minute passes. His face is a little puffy, his cheeks blotchy with a blush, eyes averted in embarrassment.
“That was – ,” he croaks out. There’s the tiniest hint of deflective snark in his tone, but his voice gives out too soon, raspy and hoarse. “Fuck.”
Jason shoves at Bruce, disentangling them, forcing Bruce to reluctantly let go. He stands quickly – too quickly. Bruce climbs to his feet as Jason wobbles. Too big. Too tall. Nothing’s the right height already, inducing vertigo. And now his vision is probably spotting from the head rush. He tries to keep Bruce away again, but Bruce just grabs his elbows, keeps him steady, doesn’t let him pull away.
Not now. Not ever again.
Bruce doesn’t – He doesn’t have the right words for this. He feels like he never has the right words for any situation. Clark and Diana are the rousing speeches, not him. He’d never admit it out loud, not in their hearing, and even admitting it to himself pains him. Because, in this moment, he wishes he did have the right words. He can’t fuck this up.
And then he thinks, well, maybe this isn’t a situation where words are needed. Too big, Jason had said. Bruce disagrees and words aren’t going to prove it.
“Come on,” Bruce says with a little tug where he’s gripping Jason’s elbows. He says it in the same way he starts Come on, let’s head home.
But before Jason can say what or no, Bruce swoops in with an arm under his knees and the other around his back, hefting him up in less time than it takes to blink. Jason squawks – a, quite frankly, hilarious sound he hasn’t heard in years and hadn’t realized he missed until now – and nearly yanks Bruce down in his haste to hook his arms around Bruce’s neck.
“What the fuck!”
Bruce hums and juggles his kid just a little for good measure. He doesn’t grunt. Doesn’t strain. Gives no indication he’s struggling to hold almost two-hundred-and-fifty pounds of muscle.
When Jason registers that, he inhales sharply and holds it, stilling in place. His eyes squeeze shut again – his breath shudders out of him, and it sounds more like a sob.
“Bruce, you can’t,” he tells him quietly, sounding devastated – like this isn’t happening. Like this is all a dream.
“It seems I can,” Bruce fires back. “Easily.”
He’ll never tell Jason this was deliberate – being able to carry his weight. That as soon as he realized what his upper limit needed to be, he changed his work out routine immediately. There’s no chance on this Earth – or any Earth for that matter – he’ll never be fully prepared to single-handedly carry his children.
Maybe one day he might tell Jason, years down the line, but not today or tomorrow.
Not when Jason tightens his grip around Bruce’s neck and rests his head on his arm where it sits on Bruce’s shoulder. Not when something settles in his expression, content and soothed for now, secure in the proof that he’s not too big, will never be too big, for this.