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Jason didn't come to the manor very often anymore. He'd stop by on the major holidays, and for Alfred's birthday. Sometimes, Tim would mention he had found him pillaging the library in the dead of night, and they'd still get packages in his name that would be left in the entryway and disappear a day or two later. Occasionally, there'd be very specific foods served at breakfast — stacks of messily plated blueberry crepes, or a basket of conchas, that they didn't need Alfred to tell them who had helped him cook that morning to know. He kept his distance from Bruce, though. A polite nod, sometimes, but their interactions past that were stilted at best. He'd still laugh and joke with Dick, and he was a picture-perfect big brother to Cass, but his silence was telling when Bruce would enter the room.
So when he barged into Bruce's room late at night, he honestly had the thought he was about to be murdered. For such a large man, Jason moved like a ghost, barely the whisper of footsteps as he crossed the room. Bruce sat up against the headboard, setting his book aside and readying himself for a fight. Jason's eyes, once such a beautiful sky blue, were flared an unnatural green in the dim light.
"Jason, what–"
"Shut up," he hissed. Bruce reached for his bedside table as he drew closer, preparing to grab something he could use to defend himself, but Jason rounded the opposite side of the bed, and proceeded to collapse onto the mattress. Before Bruce could fully process it, he had a leg thrown over his own, and an arm wrapped around his hips, and a head on his stomach, and Jason looked so small , curled up like that.
"Are—"
"I said shut up." He turned his face into Bruce's shirt, and took a slow, deep breath. They stayed like that for several minutes, just listening to the sound of each other's breathing and the soft rain on the windows and the rustling of trees. Bruce let his hand rest on Jason's back, just barely touching until he could feel the way he melted under even just that, and held him tighter.
"Jaylad,"he whispered eventually, just the softest breath, in case he had fallen asleep. He got a grunt in response. "What's the matter, bud?"
"I fell asleep on the couch in the library." Bruce frowned. It wasn't the first time someone had gone to get a book in the morning to find their wayward brother passed out in a chair. He liked having new books to read at his safe houses and Alfred's only rule was that he bring back the ones he wasn't going to read again before making off with more. Bruce imagined him taking naps back there was far more common than they realised — just like when he was a boy, he thought, it was always a safe space for him — but he had never come to Bruce after them before.
"Did you have a nightmare?" He just shrugged.
"Must've rolled over at some point." His voice was shaky, and Bruce rubbed circles between his shoulder blades. "Woke up and the," he finally moved his hand from where it was clutched in the shirt at Bruce's side, holding it in front of his face. "And the lights were off, and I must've had a dream or something. Thought I was underground again."
"Oh, Jason." He could hear the strained breath, and he held tighter around his father's waist. He knew of Jason's post-resurrection claustrophobia, Dick had mentioned it before, that he had gotten trapped during a mission and was out for the count for a solid hour or so after the fact, but he didn't realise it was bad enough to trigger just by having something too close to his face. He supposed he should have expected it. He wasn't anxious to know the lasting scars of waking up in a casket. "What do you need from me?"
"Nothing," he stated firmly, but it was accompanied by another tight squeeze of his arms, and him snuggling closer. Bruce had to smile. "What're you reading?"
"Atlas Shrugged. It's an old favourite of mine." Jason nodded a bit. Bruce knew he had read it, or assumed so, at least, by the fact it had disappeared from the library a couple of times, and it wasn't really to Tim's taste. Maybe Damian's.
"Could you…" Jason hummed to himself, and clung tighter. Bruce just shifted to hold him closer, his hand going to gently brush the hair away from a flushed face.
"I can't know what you want if you don't let me," he reminded softly, the same way he would when Jason was a kid, caught up in fear and frustration making him shut down. He went back to rubbing the planes of heavy muscle where he remembered the knobs of a too-visible spine. Jason still melted when he drug his nails down his back, the same way he always did during movies or when he got too antsy at galas.
"Do you want to read out loud?" He asked quietly. Bruce smiled. They had played this game before, years and years ago. Then, Jason would usually sit on the floor by Bruce's side, too reluctant and independent to admit he wanted to cuddle. He'd lean back against the bed, eyes closed, and he'd fall asleep like that, and Bruce would keep talking to keep him lulled as he scooped him up and moved him to the daybed under the window. He always looked so peaceful and sweet in those morning hours, huddled up with a soft throw blanket and the gap in the curtains letting a beam of sun highlight his little round cheeks and button nose.
"I might know something you'll like better than Rand," he murmured with a smile, and shifted just enough to reach the second drawer in his nightstand. His son groaned at the change of position, but Bruce was able to fish out the battered, royal blue book that was his goal, the spine pulling away from the amount of times he had opened it after a tiny twelve year old Jason had sheepishly picked it out in a store. There was still a bookmark from the last time he read it, and it made his heart ache. Just a week before . He could never bring himself to move it, forever cherishing the memory of those last moments of peace he'd ever have with his son.
He cleared his throat, ran his hand from Jason's hair down to the small of his back, and back up again, feeling the way he sank further into him, relaxing just a bit from his tight ball. He opened to the bookmark. Jason wouldn't need a refresher. He was fairly sure they both could recite the whole thing from memory, if asked. He could feel the shift of Jason's head as he looked up, and when Bruce started reading, he could hear the breathless little sigh, and the soft, desperate whimper behind it.
"I thought I was rich, with a flower that was unique in all the world, and all I had was a common rose. A common rose, and three volcanoes that come up to my knees, and one of them perhaps extinct forever. That doesn't make me a very good prince. And then he laid down in the grass and cried. It was then that the fox appeared."
Jason's breath was steady, his lips still curved in the smallest hint of a smile. Bruce, as carefully as he could, shifted down further, letting Jason's head rest on his chest, close enough to place a soft kiss on his hair.
"Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back."