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The first time it happens, Bruce doesn’t do a great job at hiding his surprise. Normally, he’s the master at schooling his reactions and concealing any unexpected emotions, but it’s safe to say that this catches him thoroughly off-guard.
It was only a couple weeks after Tim’s adoption was officially finalized - hyphenated name and all. Bruce still smiles to himself at the memory of reading ‘Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne’ on those papers, trying not to choke up at his third son being the first to take the Wayne name. Of course that was never an expectation - none of them even have to acknowledge him as a father figure for Bruce to entirely see them as his children, and he has never set out to replace anyone’s parents. Still, it meant something that Tim chose to take it.
With all that considered, perhaps Bruce shouldn’t have been quite so shocked by the teen calling him ‘Dad’, but he is. And he’s even more startled to hear it declared loudly as Tim abruptly sprints towards him down the hall at full speed.
“Dad Test!” is what actually comes out of the boy’s mouth through his running start, before he leaps recklessly at the larger man.
Thankfully, Bruce’s body reacts much faster than his brain, and he swiftly tucks his paper into the crook of his arm and readies his stance to receive his son’s flying form. Tim swoops through the air in a messy cannonball and lands securely into his startled father’s embrace, smiling wide and non-plussed.
Blinking twice through the delayed whirring of his mind, he stares back at that smile while continuing to hold the apparently perfectly content teen in his arms. Finally, his words manage to catch up with him, flat and hesitant as they come out.
“So… Did I pass?” Bruce thinks he might have been going for a humorous tone, but his delivery echoes back with far too much sincerity.
His son’s smile only brightens, however, as he pats him good-naturedly with the hand resting on his shoulder. “With flying colours, B.”
Ah. The return to the familiar is equal parts a relief as it is a little heart-wrenching. Bruce does a much better job at concealing his emotions this time, and sets his boy down with a warm smile.
“Great. Glad to hear it, son,” he adds, hoping to repair any damage he might have caused with his clumsy, shell-shocked reaction.
Despite Tim’s seemingly unaffected mood, Bruce truly expects the strangely heart-warming event to never be brought up again. After such an egregiously awkward reception, he’s certain that his newest official adoptee won’t want to risk being subject to that any further.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Luckily, Bruce is an expert on contingency plans - especially for events he considers highly unlikely. Batman never gets caught unprepared by the same experience twice, no matter how novel it may be.
So when he’s once again scanning the paper, sipping coffee from the mug in his other hand, he jumps into action the instant he hears his son’s voice exclaim those words again. Technically, he hears a short shuffle of socked footsteps from the hall first, but he only fully clues in when a slightly-slurred, strangely-monotone shout rings out from the kitchen doorway.
“Dad Test!”
Bruce is spun around before his sentence completes, coffee and paper quickly set down on the counter and arms open to receive. This leap is far less controlled, and he has to lurch forward and sweep up his son’s legs to actually catch him in his arms rather than simply embracing him. But he does so successfully, lifting the boy up to rest on his hip and smiling back at his sleepy, slow-blinking grin.
“Good morning, son,” he greets, watching bemused as Tim reaches an arm out to the counter and grasps for his coffee with drunken grace.
“Morning, Dad,” he casually replies, somehow managing to sucker-punch Bruce’s emotions even further as he lifts the stolen mug to his lips. “Nice job. A+.”
After a generous sip, Tim pats his shoulder again - apparently the boy’s chosen signal for when he wants to be put down. Bruce complies, of course, completely forgetting to even tease his son for pulling this stunt just to steal his coffee.
It was somewhat naive at that point, but he genuinely still believed that this would be the end of it. Tim would know better than to think the same trick would work twice for swiping instant caffeine, and it seemed that all the emotional leverage of the silly gesture had already been cashed in, as they say.
Once again, Bruce had entirely underestimated the extent of his son’s ambitions. This was only the beginning. For, unbeknownst to him, a grand challenge had been unlocked within the dutiful teen’s mind, and Tim has never been one for half-measures.
Of course, though Bruce might have been slow on the uptake initially, he’s not called the World’s Greatest Detective for nothing. It only takes the next incident for him to realize exactly what his son’s plans are, summarized by one word: escalation.
It’s made crystal clear when he’s walking with Lucius down the near-empty halls towards Tim’s office at WE. It’s early evening, most of their employees are heading out for the night, and Lucius has just handed over an open, manila folder for Bruce to review.
It’s at this moment that their young co-CEO bursts out from his office and launches himself at his father with an almost vindictive shout of: “Dad Test!”
Hearing the declaration echo far and wide down their halls, Bruce barely has time to snap the folder closed and toss it back to Lucius before his arms are full of his son again. This time, he catches the mischievous glint in those eyes and he understands the game.
This was step three - professional setting, minimal witnesses, less time given to prepare, and increasingly important items occupying his hands that he needs to discard in time to prioritize his son.
He laughs it off with Lucius, plays up his back pain and his trouble-making children, but Tim is well aware that the challenge has been received.
It happens next right before a toast at a gala, and Bruce is forced to shove his glass into someone’s free hand while already catching his son with his other arm. He has to fake a stumble for that one, apologizing to the guests he crashed into for his boys and their boisterous antics.
The next one is caught by the press, and that’s when Bruce knows he is doomed. As soon as the story breaks, he waits for the ball to drop. The silence is more and more unnerving the longer it goes on that it’s almost a relief when someone finally breaks it. Almost.
Because of course the first to catch on to this game had to be his eldest. Bruce is approached in the Cave while he’s nursing some bruised ribs, a badly-wrenched shoulder, and some nasty flare-ups in his knees after patrol. He senses the mischievous energy radiating off of Dick’s innocent blinks and swaying posture immediately, and dread pools in his gut.
“Sooo…” his son trails, leaning heavy on his elbow against the wall next to Bruce’s cot. “What’s this whole ‘Dad Test’ thing I hear Timmy’s been up to?”
Swallowing hard, Bruce tries in vain to be entirely unaffected and casual. He can pull off the tone and mannerisms, of course, but this is Dick. He couldn’t truly play off something like this with the majority of his children, least of all his eldest.
“Yes, he’s certainly been amusing himself with that one,” he tries anyway, adjusting the ice pack on his ribs. “I’m sure he’ll grow bored of it soon.”
Daring a glance, Bruce stiffens at the absolute sparkling intent he can see plain as day even through the white lenses of the Nightwing costume. Shrinking into himself and clutching his ribs as pitifully as possible, he looks up at his son with blatant pleading.
“Please, son, not right now…” Bruce is not above whining, but Dick just throws his head back in laughter.
“No, no, don’t worry, B!” he replies dismissively, and it would be a much greater relief if he didn’t follow it up with an ominous: “I wouldn’t jump at you like this - you’re expecting it!”
And so, with a heavy sigh and a long list of contingencies, Bruce resigns himself to await the inevitable. He doesn’t end up waiting long, but he’s still so completely exhausted by that point that he’s not even slightly fazed by the fact that Dick chooses his moment at a crowded gala in the middle of a Justice League-assisted, civilian intelligence-gathering operation.
“Dad Test!” his eldest loudly announces with exaggerated, drunken slurring as he swings off a low-hanging light fixture straight for Bruce.
Eye twitching, Bruce just lets his champagne flute drop and shatter to the ground as he braces, forcing out a winded grunt as his son’s weight slams into him despite not bothering to shift his deadpan expression. It’s reasonable for Brucie to be annoyed in this situation, right? He can’t bring himself to commit too hard to playing the part when his son isn’t contributing even a modicum of effort.
The actual way he should be playing this in order to maintain their identities would be to allow Dick to knock them both to the ground in a dramatic tumble, followed by groans and cries of agony and a hospital visit. But if he did that, he would fail the test - and that just isn’t an option.
Instead, his grip squeezes into his eldest’s pant leg as he raises an unimpressed brow. “Really, son?” he sighs, ignoring the uncontrolled snickering spilling out of his comm.
Flashing a blinding smile and still teetering back as if drunk, Dick pats at his father’s face and cheers, “You passed!”
Now, Bruce could hope that the saga would end there, but unfortunately, he knows better. It’s only a few days later when Nightwing pulls a similar stunt in the middle of patrol, with Red Robin swiftly following suit. Thankfully they don’t make those incidents too public, so he saves the lecture until Dick shows up at the tail end of a WE meeting and leaps off the table at him in front of the entire board.
He tries a little harder to put up an act of struggling with his son’s weight and massaging the pain afterwards, but he quickly drags the cackling eldest off for a stern talking-to.
“You can’t keep doing this, son. Especially after pulling the same stunt as Nightwing!” he snaps, running an exasperated hand over his face. “We don’t need to bring any more attention towards Brucie’s unexplained strength! He should not be able to catch his grown son like that!”
“Psshh, I don’t know why you’re worried about that,” Dick replies easily, waving him off with an incorrigible grin. “It’s the Dad Test, B! Nobody’ll question Brucie for that! It’s his duty!”
All of his arguments fell on deaf ears after that. Though Dick at least rolled back his own participation, it was clear that this was only to make room for new tactics.
The next child to ‘Dad Test’ him is a surprise for completely different reasons. He’s heading up the stairs towards his home office with a stack of papers and a bagel when he hears a shout ring out from the landing.
“Dad Test!” Stephanie declares, her hurried footsteps breaking off as she vaults down the stairwell towards him.
Setting down the papers on the step and jamming the bagel in between his teeth, Bruce charges up the stairs to meet her cannonball before it gets too painful for both of them. He manages to catch her from the side and roll his back into the railing to stop the momentum, reducing the impact of her knees to his ribs.
She flashes a sunny smile at him as he raises a brow in quizzical amusement, still holding her against his abdomen with one elbow bent back over the railing to support them both.
Snatching the bagel from him - leaving the small chunk in his mouth behind - she pats his arm with a distinctly more patronizing air than his sons had.
“Congrats, B, you passed,” she hums, hopping out of his arms and tearing a bite out of his bagel.
Trying not to smirk too wide, he tilts his head at her with overplayed suspicion. He’s not about to overtly call her out, especially with something as emotionally volatile as this, but they both know this isn’t her suddenly choosing to casually call him ‘Dad’ after so many years of adamantly insisting that she is not included as one of his kids.
As she skips off down the stairwell, still humming to herself, she quickly tosses back: “Thanks for making me money!” and Bruce doesn’t bother hiding the laugh he releases in response.
“Any time!” he calls after her, hoping the extra weight on his words isn’t too much for the light-hearted atmosphere.
Bruce is absolutely thrilled when the next child to test him is Cassandra. She already refers to him as ‘Dad’ most of the time, but he doesn’t get any less joy out of hearing it each time. Part of that he imagines is due to how seldom his wonderful daughter is home, but he also doubts that the sentiment will ever truly wear down.
This time, it had been almost three months since he’d last seen her off to Hong Kong, and her sudden arrival has never been quite so welcomed. He is heading down towards the Cave when he hears her call out, alerting him to the fact that she is currently hurtling down from the rafters.
“Dad Test!” she cries gleefully, arms up and smiling wider than he’s ever had the pleasure of witnessing before.
Falling into stance with readied arms, his own face splits into a matching grin as she drops into his embrace. Just to make her laugh, he spins them around a few times, dipping her low and pressing their foreheads together as soon as he stops. He’s successful, and she throws her head back in laughter, wrapping her arms around his neck as they go. Her giggles continue even after he swings her back up from the dip, and Bruce wishes he could hear that beautiful sound for the rest of forever.
“How long have you been back?” he asks, his cheeks starting to ache from how wide he’s smiling.
“Since morning,” she replies, eyes twinkling mischievously. “Came fast. Had to test you.”
“Oh?” he chuckles, raising a brow. “Well, I’ll take any excuse for my daughter to visit. Did I pass?”
Flashing all her teeth, Cass raises a finger and leans in close, booping his nose. “Yes. Good job, Dad.”
And once again, he melts. He doesn’t realize until about an hour later that she’d used that opportunity to slip the caramel candies out from his jacket pocket, but he can’t even pretend to be anything other than impressed.
Bruce is a little stunned when Duke does it, for similar reasons to Stephanie. He’s only been fostering the boy for a couple months since his parents were infected, and he is well aware that he is only seen as a temporary guardian figure.
Of course he feels highly protective and paternal towards his foster son, but he doesn’t expect Duke to return the sentiment in any fashion. After all, Dick was emphatic for years that he couldn’t see Bruce as a father out of a sense of loyalty to John Grayson, so he would expect nothing less from a child whose parents are still living.
He’s overthinking this, obviously. His kids clearly get a kick out of sending his mind and emotions scrambling, so that’s why they’re all getting bribed into pulling this stunt on him. That is made quite apparent by Duke’s example.
Bruce is seated comfortably at the Batcomputer, suited up without the cowl and pouring over dozens and dozens of reports for a case. He’s just raised his mug of horrid, cold coffee to his lips when he hears a sudden burst of footsteps rush in from behind.
“Dad Test!” his foster son’s calls somewhat hesitantly, his voice echoing far and wide through the empty Cave.
Spinning his chair around and discarding the mug in the way, Bruce barely has to raise his arms to catch the boy as his brilliant, yellow-clad form appears midair from a blanket of shadow. Landing solidly into his lap, Duke’s shoulders hike up as he immediately flashes an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, B,” he chuckles breathlessly. “I just couldn’t resist the bribery.”
Blinking once, Bruce forces his lips to curl into an assuring, playful smile and squeezes his foster son’s shoulder.
“Nothing to apologize for,” he replies easily. “Though I’m sure you went too easy on me for your brothers’ standards. I swear they’ve been trying to cripple me.”
Duke barks out a laugh, the tension melting from his shoulders. “I think you’re right! Dick wanted me to blind ya n’ swing down feet-first from the rafters!”
“Mark my words, that boy will be the death of me…” he sighs, shaking his head with only slightly exaggerated exasperation before steeling his expression. “But he’ll never see me fail.”
Pulling a curious face, Duke leans back and tilts his head to one side. “…Oh, yeah?”
Bruce knows what dangerous levels of ‘challenge accepted’ sound like when they’re barely concealed within an innocent tone. Perhaps this should frighten him, but he’s too busy being pleased that Duke is feeling much more comfortable about all of this to care.
He meets his foster son’s eyes with full severity and firmly declares: “Batman will never fail the Dad Test.”
He knew exactly what he was inviting with a statement like that, but he’s fully prepared to meet the challenge this time. Within less than a day, his devilish children start conspiring together, ambushing him two at a time and then just full-on attempting to dogpile after that fails to make him waver. Duke tries several more times with far more ruthless tactics - the flash bang was a nasty one, but it wasn’t enough to rattle him.
All the while, Bruce tries very hard to not let his heart burst inside his chest. It’s impossible to deny how much it’s affecting him to be called ‘Dad’ so often and so casually in so many private and public places, and it’s slowly cracking apart some deeply-buried, fragile part of him that he so desperately doesn’t want to acknowledge.
Stalking around the manor, he overhears the others all pestering Damian to participate for what he imagines must be at least the fifth time.
“I still do not understand your insistence on this subject, Richard!” his youngest is snapping, clearly exasperated. “I have told you already, I find this so-called ‘test’ to be ridiculous and utterly pointless! Not only does Father have nothing to prove in this regard, Drake’s assessment criteria is also both redundant and completely arbitrary! I am as aware of Father’s ability to catch me as he is of his relation to me! It’s ludicrous!”
Bruce is a lot more successful at stifling his own laughter than the rest of his children, and he tucks himself against the wall to listen in on their conspiring.
“It’s just a game, Dami!” Dick sputters out through helpless giggling. “I just don’t want you left out!”
“Liar,” Tim declares from much further away. “He’s just trying to see which one of us can finally make B cry.”
“Yeah!” Steph agrees tauntingly, the creak of a couch highlighting her movements. “Perhaps the ‘Superior Robin’ could be the one to make our Broody Bat crack!”
Bold of them to assume that Bruce hasn’t already sobbed his eyes out several times. Just because they weren’t there to witness it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
“That is equally nonsensical,” Damian grumbles in response, a sneer evident in his tone. “What is there for Father to be emotional about? Perhaps it is some sentimental revelation for the rest of you, but there is nothing noteworthy about his blood son announcing him by his role.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Tim huffs, and Bruce can practically hear his eye roll.
“Dami, that’s not—”
“He likes it,” Cass pipes up, seeming to cut straight through all the noise in the room.
In the short silence that follows, Bruce feels a sudden pang in his chest and quickly finds himself retreating. Dick and Steph start saying something else, but he’s already too far away to make any of it out and he doesn’t think he should any longer.
It serves as a reminder to not get carried away - his children are doing this with the express intent of prodding at his emotions for entertainment. It’s a glorified prank that they’re all just having fun with, and that is perfectly fine. He doesn’t need them to call him ‘Dad’ or see him that way, and he probably doesn’t deserve that from them anyway. No matter what, to him they’ll always be his kids and he will always put everything on the line for them. He will always fight to keep them safe and cared for, even at a distance if they don’t want his help or if they don’t want anything to do with him anymore.
He won’t delude himself into thinking that something like a running joke has changed any of that. At the same time, he can’t help the burning desire - the almost consuming need - to prove himself that blazes through his body every single time any of them try to test him. It should concern or perhaps embarrass him how deeply important a silly thing like this is to him, but secretly he relishes every chance they provide to earn his worthiness in some minuscule, yet calculable way.
Bruce truly feels genuine gratification from receiving an arbitrary ‘A+’ for catching his damn kids. Yeah, he’s definitely getting carried away…
Still, somewhere in the farthest depths of his fracturing soul, he’s holding on to a secret hope. He’s aching like a fool, quietly praying that one son in particular might bless him with just one more opportunity. It would be a pitiful fragment of redemption, but it would be more than worth every broken bone in his feeble, cursed body.
These thoughts are incredibly counterproductive for his goal of keeping things casual and not ruining his kids’ fun, so he pushes them out of his mind with extreme prejudice.
Besides, Jason hasn’t even been around the manor since before the game started - off on some Red Hood business that he was generous enough to inform them about, but hasn’t yet requested any assistance with. Bruce has been keeping tabs on him through Oracle anyhow, and trying not to wonder if he’s heard about what his siblings have been up to.
He’s just finished another check-in with Oracle, standing up from the Batcomputer with a heavy sigh when Damian finally throws his hat into the ring. He heard two sets of near-silent footsteps enter the Cave and was expecting another ambush before recognizing the practiced gait of his youngest.
At first, he guesses that the boy might be serving as a distraction for the second figure hanging back by the entrance. But before Bruce can turn around to greet him, those steps quicken to a familiar dash and he has to hide a grin.
“Test of fatherhood!” Damian announces, practically grumbling as he does.
When Bruce whips around, his son is already careening towards his sternum with elbows raised and one foot extended in a kick. Apparently Robin wants to treat this test like a training exercise, and who is he to not oblige? In one fluid motion, Bruce snatches the underside of the assailing ankle with his left hand and yanks, essentially flipping his flying son horizontal. Yelping surprise, Damian swings back into his waiting, free arm, and Bruce cradles the boy into the crook of his neck.
Ears blazing red, his youngest instantly blinks from shock to the the most disgruntled scowl that Bruce has ever witnessed.
“Father!” he almost whines, squirming in the snug embrace. “What have- It was not necessary to catch me this way!”
Batting his eyes innocently, Bruce lets a ghost of a smirk show as he tilts his head. “Whatever do you mean, son? Was that not the test?”
“Not in such a humiliating manner!” the child protests, growing more insistent with his squirming as Bruce only squeezes him tighter. “Now release me! I have already proven that you will not be reduced to tears by this ridiculous exercise!”
The stifled snickering from the Cave entrance abruptly bursts into hysterical laughter, and both Bruce and Damian turn in unison to find Dick stumbling out around the corner, phone flailing in his hand. This time, Bruce dutifully releases his youngest when the boy leaps out of his embrace to charge full-force at his brother.
“Recording was not part of the agreement, Grayson!” he shrieks, flinging himself at the hopelessly-winded eldest’s bowed head.
As the two of them tumble down in a flurry of limbs, Bruce hopes the recording will survive the scuffle. It isn’t often that he gets to hold Damian without the boy being ill or gravely injured, and he’d sure like to see that preserved. The Cave security cameras can always serve as a backup otherwise.
After Damian’s attempt, things get quiet for a while. Duty calls and most of his children go back to their regular schedules of not being around the manor the majority of the time. Dick sends him the video as a sort of parting gift before heading back to Bludhaven, and he takes it as a sign that they’ve given up on this game of escalation and finally determined that he will not be bested.
He gets a genuine, lighthearted hug and a ‘see you later, Dad!’ from his eldest as well, which nearly does do the job of causing him to break down in front of witnesses. Nearly. He manages to save it for the bathroom immediately out of sight. God, he’s so pathetically fragile right now. It’s almost a relief that this game seems to be over, if not for the quietly spreading hollowness that is only familiar for its temporary absence.
Then he receives the call. Batman, Red Robin, Black Bat and Spoiler are all out patrolling when their comms light up with a request for back-up from Red Hood. Based on the pinged location, Bruce is currently the closest Bat on hand - he may have been pushing his patrols suspiciously close to Crime Alley these past few weeks for this specific reason.
Firing off a grapple, he starts rushing in immediately but still switches on his comm to check. It’s already a lot for Hood to ask for back-up, especially as a general request, and Bruce knows that the crime lord would rather receive it from anyone else.
“I’m two minutes out, Hood,” he rattles off, swinging across to the next building.
Jumping off and releasing the grapple again, he waits for his son’s rejection. A moment passes, blood rushing his ears and heart pounding in his throat and he swoops, releases, lands—
“Double-time, old man!” Hood barks back, accentuated by rapid gunfire. “Let O give ya the rundown!”
The echo of the shots overlap as Batman races closer, fighting to focus on Oracle’s report of the situation rather than the dozens of nightmarish flashes invading his mind at his son urging him to hurry.
Moments later, he descends onto the scene exactly as the Terror he’d always set out to be. A dozen guns whirl on him at once, lighting up the night with a panicked fury that will not save them. Assessing the fight through the chaos, he feels only the slightest relief when he spots Hood on the rooftop above, shielded from the majority of the shooters. Batman’s arrival seems to have freed him to deal with the few stragglers that had managed to encroach on his position, so he seems secure for now. Except for the small fact of the building he’s standing on being very on fire.
From Oracle’s report, he knows that the entire structure is bound to blow at any minute. That is absolutely giving him heart palpitations, though apparently Hood is ‘keeping an eye on it’ and is prepared to extricate himself before that happens, which seems vastly over-ambitious in Bruce’s opinion.
Still, he has to focus on the immediate threat at hand. Hood has no escape route if Batman doesn’t clear the way for him, so he’ll just have to take care of that in record time - forty-three seconds, to be exact.
Flinging a batarang through one gunman’s wrists and simultaneously knocking the last one to the ground with both feet to the sternum, he kicks away the latter’s rifle while scanning for more threats. He took a hit to the gut and clavicle which are definitely going to give him grief later, but nothing pierced his armour and he can’t afford to pay them any mind right now.
One goon rises off the concrete among the writhing bodies of his comrades, reaching presumably for a weapon. Batman charges him, kicking for the stubborn bastard’s chin, when he hears a deep, modulated voice call out from above.
“Dad Test!” Hood hollers with rapidly-increasing proximity, the words quickly emphasized by a deafening explosion.
Spinning with the follow-through of the kick, Bruce’s head snaps up to find his fully-armoured, two-hundred-pound son hurtling down from the erupting rooftop, spread-eagle and trailing smoke in a blaze of glory.
Locking in immediately, he runs the mental calculations and swiftly determines that he needs to move. Jason is falling on a clear course for his current position, but the impact at this angle and distance would surely shatter both sets of ribs and send them tumbling to the ground. Instead, Batman darts forward, jumping into the nearest wall and pushing off of it to meet his son from the side as he falls.
Pulling the massive vigilante into his arms, he twists midair and lands firmly on his feet with Jason held halfway between fireman’s carry and bridal style. The landing twists an ankle, wrenches his back and shoulder, and sends a nasty jolt through Bruce’s fresh injuries - but the important part is that it completely absorbs the impact of his son’s fall.
Jason’s weight strains on his aching arms, each of his wounds screaming for relief as they slowly pierce through his pulsing adrenaline, but Bruce is too busy scanning his son’s smoking, crimson armour for any signs that the explosion breached his defenses. The stunned silence and lack of attempts to escape his grasp have him convinced that his boy is severely concussed, and he’s about to request to remove the helmet when a loud snort crackles through its modulator.
“Well, that was… way more impressive than I expected,” Jason chuckles, reaching around and slapping the back of Bruce’s thankfully uninjured shoulder.
He still doesn’t try to hop out of the other man’s arms, but the speech was clear, movements easy, and his coordination appears precise. Bruce finds himself blinking dumbly, his weary mind desperately scrambling for whatever response won’t shatter whatever apparent peace still lingers between them. Please, God, don’t let him screw this up.
“You expected me to fail?” he blurts, instantly hearing it echo back too flat and too easily-refuted.
Fuck. Before he can spiral any further, Jason tilts his head, somehow delivering a masterful deadpan expression even through the helmet.
“I’m two hundred n’ fifty fuckin’ pounds n’ I just jumped off a damn buildin’ atchya,” he replies, gripping his shoulder and shifting in a clear indication that he wants down.
As Bruce hurriedly complies and helps his son right himself back onto his own feet, Jason breathes another laugh and adds, “I expected that to hurt us both.”
The vigilante twists his back with a groan as he breaks away, rubbing gingerly at the back of his helmet. Bruce finds himself instinctively reaching out to check the damage, but aborts the motion halfway.
Something wrenches in his gut and he fails to stop the words from spilling out, far too breathless: “So I passed, then?”
Instantly, Bruce’s ears ring with the force of his own regret. Jason turns that scarlet mask back on him, and in the silence he hears his son rifling through a million, biting retorts. His mind is eager to fill in the blanks, stretching out that single moment into an eternity of torment.
So what if you passed, old man? Is the first thing he hears, snapping at him in Jason’s voice. This stupid test doesn’t prove shit when you’ve already failed and continue to fuck up every possible fatherly test that’s ever been given to you!
It takes every ounce of Bruce’s strength to not flinch back from the phantasmal words invading his head. You let me die and you still haven’t killed the bastard responsible.
His breath remains caught in his throat as he prepares to hold strong for the real thing. He knows it may well pierce him deeper than anything his mind can conjure, and Jason deserves to speak it without having to be subjected to Bruce’s pathetic grief.
But the silence is broken with another laugh, sharp and mocking but still unfathomably light.
“Yeah, y’aced it, old man.”
Jason shakes his head, swinging his fist into Bruce’s bicep as he turns and walks off towards the street. Staring frozen after him, Bruce thinks he stays locked in place for at least a minute even after his son has completely left his view.
The words play over and over in his mind like a heaven’s chorus he can’t quite believe. He studies them relentlessly, picking out every subtle fragment of meaning from his son’s tone and failing to draw a single conclusion from any of it. All he knows is that, blessedly, he didn’t fail this time.
He carries that with him, and all its weight and weightlessness, through the blur of the next week. It’s spinning around in his head through every part of the day, even during the points where complete focus is crucial, like patrol. In fact, he’s mid-swing on his grapple, dangling over a dizzying fall into abyssal darkness, when his attention is forcefully snapped back to the present.
Batman is patrolling with Red Robin for the first time since his game of escalation had seemed to plateau, and it had been a quiet night for Gotham so far. Perhaps that was what allowed Bruce’s mind to run so far away from him, and perhaps also what prompted Tim to indulge in the opportunity.
Either way, all of his thoughts come to a screeching halt when he hears his son call out a chipper: “Dad Test!” immediately followed by the bone-chilling sound of a grapple loosing from the ledge beyond them.
Bruce’s stomach drops, his every nerve freezing over as he lurches his body through the swing, twisting with all his might to redirect his course and make it back around to his boy before it’s too late. They’re so high up, they’re so high—
If he misses, there is no surviving that fall. He still can’t see, Tim was two paces behind him, he can’t turn enough to even see where his son is falling, or how long he has left, how steep the angle needs to be— Is he coming at this right? Will he be too late? Oh, god, don’t let him be too late—
Catching his feet onto the windowed walls of a sky-scraper, Bruce finally turns himself around and reverses his momentum with a sprint. His heart stops again when he sees his son in freefall over the endless darkness, arms raised high with one hand still trailing the slackened grapple line. There’s a bright and easy grin on the boy’s face even as he hurtles downward - calm and completely, utterly trusting. Bruce has seldom felt more terror in his life.
He closes the distance in less than a moment, yet it feels like an eternity of death in perpetual motion. After leaping off the wall, he can only watch, pray and fall through every millisecond of their careening course. When he finally crashes into his son, he wraps around him tight enough to crease kevlar and doesn’t breathe.
They swing harshly towards the opposite building, twisting in the air until it’s Bruce’s side that slams into the concrete ledge and accompanying gargoyle. He still doesn’t let go. He still doesn’t breathe.
“Oh, shit, you landed on Greg—” Tim says, hissing through his teeth in sympathy. “That’ll hurt… You didn’t have to…”
The boy trails off as he tries to shift in his father’s embrace and finds himself still entirely pinned by an ironclad grip. The relentless pressure is the only thing holding off the trembling. Bruce’s lungs are beginning to spasm, but he just can’t bring himself to release a single thing.
“Dad?” his son croaks, voice breaking with worry. “Are you-? Did-? What hurts?”
The horrendously misplaced concern is what finally pulls him back, though each inhale is shallow and strangled and every exhale shudders. Pressing his forehead into the boy’s crown, he clutches him somehow closer.
“Son, why would you do that?” he rasps, shocking himself with how little rage he manages to conjure.
Something of a nervous laugh shakes out of Tim’s chest and he pushes back, craning his neck to a comical degree when Bruce doesn’t let him pull away.
“Do… what? The test?”
He says it like he doesn’t believe what he’s hearing - like there’s no logical reason for his father to be upset over this. That’s enough to awaken a hefty fraction of Bruce’s anger, and he grasps his son by the shoulders, pulling him back until they’re eye to eye.
“I know you know how inexcusably reckless and dangerous that was!” he bellows, the modulator just barely disguising how wrecked and desperate his voice is. “Loosing your grapple and not even having your back-up readied? What the hell were you thinking?! If I failed—”
“You weren’t going to, B!” Tim cuts in, earnest and insistent like his father just isn’t understanding something so obvious. “I knew you’d catch me!”
The statement simultaneously sweeps the wind from his sails while also punching up his adrenaline straight from the gut. He doesn’t think he’s ever related more to Daedalus in his life and is currently cursing every decision he’s ever made for the thousandth time.
“You d— I- If I failed, even with your back-up grapple, that fall could’ve killed you! Do you even understand that?”
He’s still replaying it - the freefall, arms high in the air, and that bright, trusting smile plummeting into the depths below. That smile - it looked just like…
“Of course I do!” his boy retorts with a scoff, waving off his concerns like they’re nothing. “But you never fail!”
The words splinter him completely, and he crumples back into his son’s embrace with a breathless sob. He squeezes the life out of both of their lungs and desperately chokes out corrections.
“Yes, I do,” he wheezes, burying his burning tears into the crook of his son’s neck. “I do, I do, I did, I have, I have so many times…”
How can he dare to make all these promises when he knows that his kids will believe in them? All the way until the bitter end.
“Oh…” Tim curses, wriggling around and clinging tighter in a vain attempt to match his father’s strength. “…Cass was right, wasn’t she? Of course she was…”
Emotion wobbles abruptly in the boy’s tone, and all of a sudden he’s sniffling, too. Bruce doesn’t know what to do, he can’t make sense of it anymore. All he can bring himself to do is start gently rocking the both of them back and forth on the ledge. Tim only sobs harder.
“M’sorry, B… for starting all this…” he mumbles miserably. “I didn’t mean— She- she said you liked it, but you were hurting. We- we were hurting you.”
“No,” Bruce breathes out instantly, disoriented by the whiplash but steadfast in his conviction. “Never.”
“But we were!” Tim cries, bunching up the bullet-proof material of the Batcape in gloved fists. “We weren’t looking close enough, but you know you can’t hide it from Cass!”
“I’ve been hurting, yes,” he sighs, pleased with how steady his voice comes out. “But you didn’t hurt me. None of you hurt me.”
His son pulls back and Bruce takes the opportunity to cup the boy’s tear-stained face with both hands - just a hair too tightly to be tender - and shoves their foreheads together. The cowl clacks against his son’s domino as those white lenses fly wide.
“You just scared the goddamned life out of me, and you’re never going to pull something that stupid and dangerous ever again—”
He inhales deeply as Tim winces, wobbling lips forming a strained, remorseful grin, and counts out his exhale before continuing.
“…But you could never hurt me with such a precious gift. Your sister only saw me… wishing I deserved it,” he explains softly, letting his eyes fall closed for a moment.
But he snaps them back open when he hears his son’s breath hitch strangely, and finds himself startled by the shock and anguish written all over the boy’s face, even through the domino. Tim is staring back at him like he’s a kicked puppy that’s grown five heads.
“Oh my god…” he whispers through obvious strain. “Do you… Do you think we’re joking?”
Brow furrowing, Bruce blinks rapidly through his sudden confusion. He barely gets to part his lips before his son’s expression once again falls through several stages of grief, still squished up in Bruce’s gloved hands.
“B. Dad. Please tell me you know that I meant it,” he blurts out with a strangled desperation. “You don’t— You know that, right? Please say you know that.”
“I- I don’t…” The gears in his mind seem to have rusted over as he continues to blink at his son. “Know what?”
“I took your name, Dad!” Tim all but wails, grabbing the folds of black cape that hang by his collar. “You can’t seriously think I was kidding!”
Oh. Shaking his head hurriedly, Bruce brings their heads together again with a choked-out huff.
“No, no, I don’t— I know that, son,” he chuckles wetly, swallowing hard and brushing his leathery thumbs back and forth over the boy’s reddened cheeks. “I know that wasn’t part of it, and it means the world to have the privilege of sharing my parents’ legacy with you. But I don’t love your siblings any less for not sharing the sentiment. They all have their own reasons and I would never dream of holding that against them.”
He said something wrong again. Tim’s posture had started to relax at first, but now it’s coiled like a spring and his expression has fallen to something ashen and unreadable. Bruce wishes they were safe at home without the masks so he could have a better chance at figuring out whatever it is that he’s missing here. Not that he’s ever been the World’s Greatest Detective when it comes to his children’s emotions, especially in regards to himself.
“…So you do think we’re joking,” Tim says finally, his words flat and mechanical.
It takes a full three seconds for the statement to process in Bruce’s mind before he frowns again, feeling hopelessly lost in the tumbling snowball of this conversation. Even in all his gear, he’s not equipped for this.
He hasn’t even decided if the comment was one intended for a response yet - let alone started assembling one - when his son speaks again, turning away as he leans back from Bruce’s hands.
“We should head back to the Cave.”
A heavy stone sinks into the man’s gut as he swallows roughly, shifting belatedly to allow the both of them to straighten out on the ledge. He must have really said something wrong if Tim is the one cutting the talk short. Normally, Batman might protest ending patrol early like this, but he doesn’t think the two of them are in any condition to continue on safely and effectively. Besides, Bluebird, Black Bat and Robin are still on duty, and it’s almost morning when it’ll be Signal’s time to shine.
He keeps a grip on his son’s shoulder despite most of his instincts screaming at him to avoid touch in these scenarios - their grapples aren’t readied and the panic of watching the boy fall is far too fresh in his mind. But Tim doesn’t tense or shy away from his father’s hand. If anything, he leans into it a little as they pull out their grapples and prepare to dismount. He won’t look at Bruce, though, and that coiling tension remains.
Maybe he just doesn’t want another freak out and is ignoring his own comfort for the sake of his father’s. Bruce lets go as soon as his son’s line is secured.
The trip back is silent aside from them both rattling off reports into their comms. He knows he still needs to properly lecture the boy about grapple safety and taking risks on the field, and probably have an extensive talk about his own, very human limitations when it comes to keeping them safe, but he doesn’t think he can be Batman anymore tonight. He feels absolutely worn-down and hollowed-out and doesn’t think that would make for a great stern-parent-talk. Maybe he should save it for a family meeting…
Almost as soon as the thought crosses his mind, he and Tim arrive at the Cave to find it unexpectedly populated.
First of all, Cass and Damian appear to have beaten them back from patrol and are currently peeling out of their suits and casually debriefing the others. Stephanie is nodding along where she lounges in Bruce’s chair, eating chips in her civvies with her feet up by the Batcomputer. Next to her is a very sleepy Duke, in the yellow and black Bat-themed pjs that Tim had bought for him the Christmas before his foster brother had moved into the manor.
Far more surprising is that several feet away, helmet at his hip and chatting with Alfred by the equipment lockers, is Jason.
Bruce freezes in place against his will and he prays with every remaining ounce of strength that his son won’t notice him staring. It’s not exactly uncommon any longer for Jason to swing by the Cave or even the manor - he’s even joined for several family dinners and stayed the night under non-life-threatening circumstances on occasion. Bruce has walked in on his son casually occupying the Cave before, and he is capable of being normal about it.
At this current moment, however, reasonable human behaviour is quite far from being a skill he possesses.
Tim, on the other hand, does not freeze like an idiot, and instead walks past the threshold and into the Cave towards his family. Cass and Damian notice their arrival first, turning around to greet them. Bruce then has the unfortunate privilege of watching his masterfully-keen daughter’s warm smile drop as soon as she meets his eyes through the cowl.
He knows that she sees everything - his jumbled-up, festering pile of pain, confusion, bled-dry exhaustion and wallowing self-pity that he calls a body might simply appear marginally tense to anyone else, but to her, he’s always an open book. She knows not to confront him in front of the others, though, so Bruce can only hope that no one else will pierce through his crumbling defenses before he has the chance to pull himself together.
Why does he still have hope?
“You were right, Cass!” Tim announces in lieu of a greeting, sending a nauseating jolt of horror through Bruce’s gut.
His son’s voice carries to the Batcomputer where Stephanie’s head snaps up, freezing mid-motion with a pinched expression, and Duke squints over in pure confusion. Damian is also frowning, and Cass looks like she’s preparing for a fight while Bruce opens his mouth to protest, flinching from his frozen state in a desperate need to correct this crash-course. His children have not been hurting him and that is the absolute last thing he wants any of them to believe! This is exactly why he tried so hard to swallow down his emotions and just let them have their fun. He would never dream of imposing—
“Dad thinks we were all just joking with the test,” his son continues with a strange edge to his tone, and Bruce’s mind goes blank. “And he doesn’t think he deserves it.”
Cass pulls a face like the words physically pain her and Bruce’s panic only doubles. What is even happening right now? This entire night has felt like a rapidly-unspooling thread that he’s been desperately scrambling to collect to no avail.
“That’s not—” he tries, suddenly unsure of what he’s attempting to argue. “I don’t…”
“Wait, doesn’t deserve what?” Duke mumbles out, rubbing one eye as he wanders closer. “To… be our dad?”
The air knocks from Bruce’s lungs and he struggles to steady himself. Oh, that… sounded like a natural slip-up. Like his foster son is too sleepy to realize he just called Bruce his dad for the first time - outside of their game, of course. Oh, no. He can’t afford any more emotional breakdowns today, especially not in front of everyone.
“Tt! Father, what is this ridiculous nonsense that Drake is spouting?” Damian demands, tugging insistently at the ridges of Bruce’s glove. “You are aware of your worthiness to your titles, are you not?”
“Damian, I—”
Why does his baby boy have to look so small and adorable in this current moment? He genuinely needs someone to break the emotional tension in this room immediately or he is going to burst into tears.
“Well, I, for one, think you’re more than deserving of being my allowance, B-man,” a cheery voice pipes up, dripping with sardonic sombreness.
“ Thank you, Stephanie…” he breathes out, deflating with a sigh of relief and unable to fight back the smirk twitching onto his face.
“I’m honoured, I truly am,” he manages the words with barely a wobble and cheers internally, clearing his throat. “And I also know that Tim is using this to distract me from lecturing him for dropping himself from a skyscraper without a grapple.”
The Cave abruptly devolves into a cacophony of outrage as the four crowding children all shout over top of each other at their extremely-called-out, cringing brother.
“You did what?!”
“Little brother!”
“Wait, you actually did that?”
“I knew you were an imbecile, Drake, but I thought you had at least one functioning brain cell—”
“Hey, c’mon, I- I didn’t jump without a grapple!” Tim protests, flushing beet-red as stiff arms wave wildly.
“No,” Bruce cuts in sharply, not allowing any sort of defense to be formed. “Instead you dropped yours mid-swing and threw your arms up instead of pulling out your back-up!”
Apparently he does have a little energy left for a lecture, though the heart-wrenching sight of his son wilting in shame is a stark reminder of why this was supposed to wait. It has successfully distracted everyone from the previous subject, but at what cost?
Stephanie lurches over where she’s now perching on the desk, covering her face with both hands and groaning, “God, you’re an idiot…”
Beside her, Duke shakes his head in disbelief. “Yeah, that one was not greenlit, man.”
“You literally dared me to!” Tim suddenly retorts, fuming with betrayal as the other boy raises his palms in a gesture too aggressive to be surrender.
“I wasn’t serious!”
“Bad little brothers,” Cass scolds them, arms crossed firmly over her chest.
That comment more than anything seems to cut Tim to his core and he hangs his head, shoulders tucked to his burning ears. Duke also looks deeply chastised, turning away and cracking his knuckles nervously while Damian scoffs again.
“Tt. If anyone is unworthy of his title here, it is undoubtedly Drake! You should disown him at once, Father, and—”
No, no, no, Bruce feels his blood run cold as he rushes to cut off his youngest. They are not going back to this again, especially not with that—
“Alright, that’s enough, Damian,” he stresses, fighting hard to keep himself from shouting.
The boy was only joking, and from the way his jaws snap shut, he needs no further reprimand. Bruce should leave it there if he wants his best chance at escaping any further emotional land mines.
But with all of the everything tonight and the past several months, he can’t stop himself from adding a bleeding, sincere, “I would never disown my children.”
A strained, awkward silence falls over them for a moment, prickling under Bruce’s skin with a desperate need to retreat. And this is, of course, the exact moment when Jason chooses to approach.
“Someone gettin’ disowned over here without me?” he quips through a mouthful of Alfred’s cookies, casually sauntering over from the lockers with a suspicious lack of gear.
Be normal be normal be normal— Bruce swirling, soupy mind shrieks as he internally shakes himself, clearing his throat.
“No—”
“I am! According to the demon,” Tim declares, barrelling over whatever reply he was going to make. “Just because I copied someone and jumped off a building at Dad.”
“Ha! Nice,” Jason chuckles, clapping his brother on the back.
Bruce is so distracted by the total lack of disgruntled or offended reaction from his second eldest that Duke is the first to pipe up.
“It was off a skyscraper.”
“…Holy shit, dude!” Jason cries, nearly shoving the boy to the floor with the hand still on his back. “You’re gonna give the old man a heart attack! N’ not in a fun way!”
“Wait, when did you test B? Stephanie questions, lifting an indignant hand. “Why didn’t I hear about this?”
“A week ago, on patrol,” he replies almost smugly. “Jumped off an explodin’ warehouse.”
“He was trailing smoke…” Bruce finds himself grumbling, tensing when he hears the words echo aloud.
Luckily his children seem content to ignore him for the most part, and Stephanie slides off the desk to lean conspiratorially towards Jason.
“Wait, was that when you called for back-up? I thought only Babs could reach you before then! Did she bribe you?”
If Bruce was any less completely and utterly untethered from everything going on, he might have noticed the undercurrent of goading mischief in the girl’s deceptively casual tone. There is still no guarantee that he would’ve picked up on the intent behind it, but at least he could’ve had a fraction of warning to prepare for Jason’s reply.
“Y’all were gettin’ bribes?” the boy shoots back, baffled and filled with overplayed outrage. “The fuck? Who’s shortin’ me?”
“Language, Master Jason,” scolds a distant voice, redirecting Bruce’s attention before he can think too deeply about the implications of everything being stated.
“Sorry, Alfie!” Jason calls over his shoulder, dropping the faux-anger as quickly as it was put on.
In the brief pause, Cass tilts her head curiously with a strange smile on her face. “He catch you?” she asks, glancing between her father and brother.
Both Jason and Tim snort in unison, the older boy shaking his head like it’s a ridiculous notion.
“‘Did he catch me?’,” he parrots sarcastically, dramatically wiping a non-existent tear. “Who d’ya think we’re talkin’ about here? Someone who would dare fail the Dad Test?”
Oh.
Oh, no.
Bruce is no longer capable of normal. He has to get out of here, away from their knowing gazes. He can’t do this here, he can’t completely shatter this way in the middle of such a light and casual conversation. Not in front of all of them like this - not in front of Jason.
He hasn’t removed the cowl yet. Maybe if he escapes fast enough, they won’t notice his expression crumbling or the tears burning in his eyes. He feels so helplessly disoriented, but he has to move. Before they see, he has to—
He barely takes one step before his path is blocked and there’s a grip on his arm. Cass is staring right up at him, seeing everything, her brow pinched and wide eyes pooling with care and concern.
“Dad?” she whispers, soft and hesitant.
Like always, it does him in. He can’t even muster the strength to feel betrayed by the intervention - his body language signals must be a horrifying, confusing mess even to someone as astute as his daughter. Bruce doesn’t think he could properly identify even half of the raw, ravaging emotions currently crashing down over him, but he does know that they’ve left his knees impossibly weak.
Trying desperately to steady himself against her, he pries his lips open to speak, but only a choked-up sob tears out. Cass is the only one in the room who’s unalarmed by this, including Bruce himself, and she’s tucked against him with her arms around his waist before he even registers collapsing.
“Oh, shit…” Stephanie murmurs, and Bruce struggles pathetically against a tidal wave to try and reel himself in.
“Got you,” Cass assures him, and he squeezes her like a lifeline while gasping drowned breaths.
“What have you done?” Damian cries out, tense and accusatory through obvious discomfort. “You made Father cry! Fix it!”
“What’d I do?” Jason counters, a true note of fear creeping into his aggressive tone. “I’m not the one who threw myself off a skyscraper!”
“I’m sorry, okay!”
“Not good enough, Replacement! I told ya it gave the old man a heart attack, now go cuddle ‘im n’ show ‘im you’re fine!”
“That obviously didn’t work the first time, so why don’t you try it?”
A shockwave of shame and humiliation briefly grants Bruce the will to flinch back, shaking his head furiously even as his daughter remains glued to him. Tears pour down relentlessly and his hiccuping breaths are pitifully uncontrolled, but he forces himself to sputter through it.
“No— You- None of you have to—” Pulling off the cowl, he rubs furiously at his eyes with the heel of his hand as Cass pulls back just enough to frown at him again. “Sorry, I’m sorry… I don’t know what’s—”
Shit. Wrong choice of words. He realizes a moment too late that he’s just handed his daughter a prime opportunity to explain to all of them exactly what is wrong with him right now.
“Too much,” she replies softly, and he’s immediately unable to counter her at all. “Scared, surprised, happy, hurting, ashamed - too much.”
It will never get less amazing how easily she can completely pick him apart. He just wishes it didn’t have to be in front of an audience. Deflating with a long, weary sigh, he drops his forehead onto his daughter’s shoulder.
Before he can think of anything to say for himself, a small, warm body is tucking under his arm and pressing hesitantly yet firmly into his side.
“…Is the contact helping you regulate, Father?” Damian mumbles, with some of the same language that Bruce had used to explain the ‘purpose’ of hugs to his youngest.
Sniffling hard, he twists around awkwardly in an attempt to meet the boy’s eyes at their impossible angle. “You don’t have to hug me if you don’t want to, Damian,” he replies with what he hopes is a kind and gentle tone.
“That is not what I asked, Father,” is his stubborn retort, and Bruce smiles and squeezes him close.
The honest answer would probably be no, as all of this is only more endlessly overwhelming to his system and every one of those bursting emotions that his daughter so eloquently itemized for him. But is he in any state to shove away his earnest, worried children and storm off to weep alone in his bedroom? Absolutely not. He would sooner perish than overtly reject a hug, especially one offered by his youngest son.
“Yes it is, habibi,” he breathes, pressing a kiss into the boy’s crown. “Thank you.”
“You heard the man,” Jason grunts, and with a startled yelp, Tim is stumbling into Bruce’s other side, arms flinging over both him and Cass.
Inhaling sharply, Bruce goes to protest, but his son is already adjusting and wrapping more snugly around them.
“Geez, you didn’t have to shove me,” he grumbles, shooting his brother a dirty look.
Instantly sensing every dangerous way that this already mortifying experience could continue to escalate, Bruce scrambles for any scrap of willpower he has leftover to possibly cut it short. Maybe if he makes pointed, pleading eye-contact with Cass, she can prevent it for him? But she’s already craning her head towards Jason, oh no—
A warm, weathered hand suddenly rests on the base of his neck, tender and knowing and grounding. A familiar salvation, arrived at the perfect time as he always does.
“I believe that Master Bruce could do with some rest after such a stressful night,” Alfred declares, his tone leaving no room for argument. “And I believe that several of you are in the same boat in that regard. Perhaps we should stow this discussion for now and focus on preparing ourselves for bed.”
“Yes,” Bruce manages to croak, clearing his throat as he squeezes three of his children with an over-drawn note of finality. “Yes, that seems like a good idea.”
At the butler’s prompting, his kids pull away and allow Bruce to recover a sliver of dignity by picking himself up off the ground and straightens out to his full height. Alfred’s hand remains on his back even after he stands, however, and he glanced back at the elderly man with a soft, grateful smile.
“Thanks, Alfie,” he whispers through the shuffling and squabbling of the kids rushing around to strip down and change or shower.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ goes unsaid, but only because Bruce has crashed through his emotional quota for the night, and he is already certain that his father hears the subtext anyway. And if he wasn’t, Alfred’s featherlight response is all the proof he would need to confirm it.
“Let’s get you out of that suit, my boy.”
Letting his eyes fall closed with a long, heavy breath, Bruce nods.
“...Let’s.”