Chapter Text
Damian was close to presenting. Jason could tell because the little shit had been trying to chew his way through his leather glove to get at his scent gland for the past five minutes. It was making the stake out he was supposed to be on a little difficult.
"Would you quit that?" He snapped when the kid attempted to switch to his other hand, the hand currently holding the gun he had trained on his target because it was becoming increasingly clear he was not going to be able to stick around for the information he wanted without Robin giving him away, precariously balanced in the rafters as they were. Incapacitate and leave for the cops to deal with it was, then. Not his favorite method but needs must when you're wrestling a hormonal preteen under one arm just to get a clean shot.
Robin wasn't even supposed to be there. He was supposed to be on the other side of the docks with the rest of the Bat pack, under Nightwing's careful supervision, waiting to catch a shipment of some new and newly fucked up drug about to flood the streets of Gotham, whilst Jason eaves dropped on the bastards organising it from the rafters of their chosen dingy warehouse meeting point. It was by no means his chosen role, but the bats had gotten word the drug was a possible heat inducer and so Jason, the only omega present, had been banished to eavesdropping. Fucking typical, he groused internally even as his instincts preened a little at the percieved proof that the pack cared even a fraction.
The only reason he'd even been invited on this mission was because he'd been forced to stay at the Manor the night before and the Bats had probably felt too awkward discussing their new case in front of him and not offering to let Red Hood tag along. That and he was just about ready to climb out of a window and make a break for freedom, the fact his last safe house was compromised be damned.
About half an hour into his stakeout, however, a shadow had slipped into his personal space and began determinedly nosing at his neck. After a short scuffle- ended mostly because Robin realised Jason was wearing as many layers as he physically could in late spring to cover his primary scent glands- and the demon had refocused his efforts on his wrists and the secondary glands there. Jason's instincts were taking this as a sign this poor pup needed to be bundled up in a nest and comforted through his presentation with scenting and cuddles. And since he was the only omega in the Wayne pack, the duty must automatically fall to him. Jason, on the other hand, was aware that the "poor pup" was Damian Al Ghul Wayne and the closest he would probably ever get to cuddling the kid was being impaled on one of the swords he was so very fond of. Besides, he wasn't even really in the Wayne pack anymore and hadn't been since before his death.
Finally, his target stepped into his clear line of fire- just as Nightwing's frantic voice broke the silence of the comms. "Has anyone got eyes on Robin?!"
Jason was too well trained to jump even if the level of panic startled him a little and unsettled his already riled up instincts. Robin, on the other hand, clamped his teeth further into Jason's glove and growled loud enough for their targets to spook.
"What was that?" One of the men below said, head whipping back and forth. "You think it's a Bat?"
"Anybody?" Nightwing was still asking with increasing desperation and Jason would answer if he wasn't busy holstering his gun and trying to ease the pressure Robin was exerting on his wrist. Seriously, pup fangs or not the kid's jaw was ridiculously strong and he had no doubt he'd be left with bruises when he took the glove off.
"I think I saw him heading for the warehouses," the Replacement replied, before Jason was distracted by Robin biting down harder.
"Robin," He tried quietly, but the pup wasn't even looking at him, masked eyes locked on the men below. Another muffled growl made it past his lips, louder this time and the men finally seemed to figure out they were above somewhere if the half a dozen guns suddenly pointing upwards were anything to go by. Jason sighed deeply, before finally giving in and answering Nightwing. "I've got him. Better hurry, Big Bird, pup's about to present." Then shut his comms off so he didn't have to listen to the resulting uproar as he worked to dislodge Robin's grip.
"Pup, you need to let go." He murmured again, for once bemoaning the impersonal, modulated voice of his helmet. "Habibi, please, you're hurting me." The pet name slipped out on accident but apparently did the trick. Finally, Robin's jaw loosened and he whined softly in apology, head tilted towards Jason in what almost looked like submission. The behaviour was, by all means, bizarre. Closer to how a pup should act around their dam than a fourteen year old alpha around an estranged omega.
Shit, Jason thought as he realised how close to his first rut Robin must truly be. SHIT, Jason thought as Nightwing crashed through the roof of the warehouse and every single man scattered.
The big blue bird was followed by a veritable flood of other Bats who all landed and began scouring the warehouse. Although not one of them seemed to think to go after the men sprinting out of the building. Alphas had terrible priorities, Jason decided as he grappled down from the beams, Robin's arms around his waist as the pup instinctively clung on.
"Robin!" Nightwing called in obvious relief, already sprinting over. That was probably Jason’s cue that it was time to cut his losses and chase the leads. Maybe he could still catch up to them with a little help from Oracle. His plans, however, were foiled when instead of running and leaping into the older alpha's arms, Robin wrapped his arms around Jason tighter and growled.
Everyone in the warehouse froze at the same moment.
Everyone apart from Jason who craned his neck down to stare disbelievingly at the head of black hair pressed firmly into his side. "Are you fucking shitting me right now?" All attempts at removing his new limpet were met with increasingly demanding whines until he was battling on two fronts to get the pup off as well as beating back his own instincts with extreme prejudice.
Nightwing was the first to snap out of his shocked stupor, dropping into a crouch in front of Robin with his head tilted just so to show he was a non threat to the pup. "Hey little D, you doing okay?"
In a true testament to how deep in it he was, Robin didn't even try to bite out a sarcastic remark or something equally scathing in an attempt to hide his vulnerability. Instead, he watched Dick warily from behind his domino mask and chewed on his lip with what looked like slowly emerging fangs. Jason almost winced sympathetically when the kid cut his lip and whined softly around the trickle of blood. Nightwing did wince, leaning forwards just slightly like he wanted to jump the distance and bundle Robin up into an octopus hug. The movement wasn't lost on Robin either, who would have lunged for Dick had Jason's reflexes not kicked in and he got an arm around the kid to tuck him back into his side where he could keep him pinned.
"Hood, take off your scent blockers." Red Robin's voice sent a wash of something cold and uncomfortably through him.
"Fuck no." He said with as much outrage as he could muster, which was quite a lot given the situation. Jason didn't take his scent blockers off if he could possibly help it. Especially not in front of the Bats. There was something far too vulnerable about having all of his emotions on display for anyone with a half way working nose and he might have been on better- bordering on good- terms with his ex pack but he was no where near letting them scent him.
"Jay, please." Dick's quiet voice and the raw pleading in his now unmasked eyes when Jason turned back to look was enough for him to at least consider it.
He was Bat trained, like the rest of them, and he could recognise the taught technique for dealing with a surprise presentation: stabilise the pup, get them somewhere safe first and then try to find their pack. Normally stabilising meant calming panic or tears though and not trying to convince them their older brother wasn't a threat.
"... I'll have to take my hood off," He said hesitantly, his hold on Robin tightening momentarily as he tried to calculate the likelihood of him going for Dick's throat if Jason let go to take his helmet off. He chanced a glance at the assembled Bats, the Replacement just off to his left and inching closer, Spoiler and Orphan hanging back but watching with interest. No sign of Batman, and maybe that helped ease the cold feeling a little.
Dick was apparently on the same page as he smiled reassuringly, "I'll catch him if he bolts. Trust me, Little Wing."
Jason was not going to admit how comforting those words were, but he did silently release his grip on the kid and unlatch his helmet, passing it off to Red Robin when he held out his hands for it. It wasn't exactly pleasant to tear off his scent patches, especially given he wore the military grade style that covered from just under his jaw to the base of his neck on both sides, but the sharp sting was better than the slow agony of revealing himself inch by inch.
Soon he could scent himself on the air, old books and smoke and a little spicy like cinnamon, all undercut by very obviously omega tones. It was half the reason he hid it so religiously, just how omegan his scent was. It didn't fit his image as the Red Hood in the slightest. Right now though it was also overlaid by bitter anxiety that had Robin pushing back into his side and Nightwing swallowing thickly. Even the other bats were all shifting nervously now, clearly unsure what to do with Jason’s unwillingly revealed emotions. Just his luck too that he’d forgotten to wear a domino under his helmet.
It wasn’t that Jason was always anxious around the bats, Hell he knew he could take most of them one on one if it came to it, it was just that his instincts got… stressed about them. There were too many jagged edges, loose ends and tangled knots in their relationships, paired with no access to their scents and absolutely no bonds between them. Well, it left him guessing at where they stood in every interaction and he may have been better than good at reading most people, bats were never going to be like most people.
When he chanced a glance at him, Dick was looking back with too many emotions in his eyes.
“What?” He snapped reflexively, desperate to cover the vulnerability of his open scent and unmasked face. “I did what you asked, take the kid now.”
“Jay I, uh, I don’t think that’s going to work out,” Dick said with a nod to where Damian, who had somehow gotten his domino off, was nuzzling sleepily into Jason’s jacket. Dammingly, Jason had at some point shifted his hold to pull the pup further into his side to take more of his weight.
“We should head back to the cave. B’s getting worried.” Red Robin interjected. Jason could only sigh long sufferingly.
“Fine.”
…
It was easier than he thought to convince Damian to ride in front of him on his bike after replacing his helmet and the kid’s mask, and once there the others ran interference on Bruce so Jason could slip past with Damian up into the manor. At some point he scooped the kid up onto his hip and carried him the rest of the way to the pup’s room, setting him on the bed as he hunted through drawers and the closet for a soft change of clothes. No one wanted to wake up still in their suit, and Alfred had given him a dirty look for not changing even as he gestured helplessly to the kid in his arms.
By then, Dick had escaped Bruce’s lecturing and managed to change himself, arriving at the doorway in sweats and a tank top. Jason took that as his opportunity to escape, but doubled back once he reached the door to carefully peel away Damian’s scent patches. Then, before he could lose his nerve, he glanced his wrist along one pillow, scenting it, and hurried out the door.
Jason changed in the guest room he’d been given and flopped onto the bed for a well earned sleep. (And if he forgot to replace his own scent patches that was no one’s business but his own.)
When he woke the sun was well up and making a valiant effort to break through the Gotham clouds and in through the window. He took the time to stretch lazily on the bed like a cat in the sunbeam, enjoying the sheets that smelled just a little like him, before getting up for an overdue shower and unslept in clothes.
Just as he was trying to work up the enthusiasm to face the Wayne pack, someone knocked on his door. When he opened it, Dick’s smiling face greeted him with too much awareness for however early it was in the morning. Upon further inspection, the shadows under his eyes attested to a sleepless night, and there was a twinge of stress in his surprisingly unmasked scent. Jason tried not to think about how long it had been since he could scent his own older brother.
“Rough night?” He asked as he stepped back into the room. Dick, like the well raised alpha he was, stayed just outside the doorway, even if his scent trickled into the room, incoming storm, salt and something sugary like toffee popcorn.
“Yeah you could say that.” Dick’s smile slipped into something more tired but also much more real. His eyes slid over the room, before coming to catch on the bed and his shoulders seemed to droop a little. “… you’re not nesting?” He asked quietly with what almost sounded like disappointment. Which was ridiculous, in Jason’s opinion, given he’d been there two nights and had been either out on patrol or sleeping for most of them. No where near enough time to build a suitable nest.
”No…? Why?” Jason asked, glancing up from where he’d gone to organise his suit into a duffle bag before Alfred tried to move it into the cave. He understood the security concerns, but at the same time moving it into the cave felt way too permanent for what was going to be a couple days stay until he could acquire a new, far more secure safe house.
Speaking of, he made a mental note to follow up with Oracle about the break in at his old place. Thankfully nothing damning had been taken, all of his gear still in its hiding spots, but the deactivated security system was cause enough for alarm. Jason had done what he could to track the intruder down himself and came up empty handed at every turn, until he’d finally cracked and gone crawling to Babs for help. Which inevitably led to her telling Dick his safe house was compromised and setting all of Nightwing’s overprotective alpha tendencies on him until he’d been bullied into staying at the manor.
”Uh, It’s just Dami’s awake again. We managed to get him to drink some water but he’s refusing food and he won’t settle so I was wondering if you’d… you know…” Dick trailed off, but his eyes were still on the bed and its neatly made sheets.
”Nest with him?” He asked and received a small nod to confirm. He sighed. “Wing, he’s not a pup, he’s quite literally going through the process of becoming a big strong alpha. I don’t think he’d want to be in an omega’s nest, least of all mine.”
”Right. I forgot you missed all of our presentations.” Dick finally looked back at him, now with the soulful sad eyes he always got when Jason’s death and subsequent years of murdering, terrorising and general menacing came up in conversation. If he didn’t know any better, Jason would have called it disappointment in him. But there was also something amused playing in the corners of his lips that made Jason bristle.
”What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dick shook his head, the corners of his mouth curling into a full on smile, and his voice came out fond. ”Jay, alphas like being in nests no matter what age. And yes, he’d like to be in your nest. Did you miss the bit where he went straight for you and your scent over all of us when he realised he was about to rut?”
”That was instinct.” He dismissed easily, as he had been for himself since last night.
”Yeah, instinct to go to his pack omega.” Dick nodded as he spoke, as if his words made any kind of sense at all. Pack omega was not a small title, not something thrown around lightly, especially not in the league whose ideals were still very much ingrained into their resident baby assassin no matter how long he’d been in the Wayne, rather than Al Ghul pack. Jason could maybe blame it on a cultural difference, if the word didn’t hold even more weight here.
”Thats not what I- I’m not-“ he stuttered, stumbling over his denials even if it was absolutely true. He was not the Wayne pack omega, maybe once, before his death he had sort of thought he might one day be, but now? Now he wasn’t even pack.
”Look Jay, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. None of us are going to force you to. But I think it’d help him a lot, and we both know Dami’s too stubborn to ask himself.” Jason had, by that point, turned his back on Dick but he could smell the sincerity pouring off the alpha and it was not at all helping him settle his instincts.
Instead of confront the growing desire to comfort the youngest member of the pack and the odd pride at being the only one who would be able to do it, or the warmth spreading through him at being so trusted and included within the pack as to be allowed near their most vulnerable during his presentation, or even the need to prove he was a good omega, he scoffed.
”Ugh. Alphas.”
”Hey, we aren’t all that bad.” There was a smile in Dick’s voice now. “Besides, you’ve helped me with ruts before.”
”That was different and you know it. I was a pup, it was more you smothering me whilst I faked being worried my food was poisoned to get you to eat something instead of forcing me to eat all of it.” Jason waved his hand dismissively as he slid his duffel bag back into the closet along with his other meagre belongings. Having to change safe houses so often wasn’t exactly conducive to owning a large amount of stuff, no matter what his instincts wanted. Even a true nest was, most of the time, out of the question, and he’d had to leave behind the majority of the materials he had collected anyway.
Only after he closed the closet with a satisfied click did he notice the suspicious silence from the doorway.
”… are you kidding me, you didn’t know that’s what I was doing?!” He asked incredulously when he turned to find Dick looking at him with scrunched up brows and a slight pout.
”You were very convincing!”
”Alphas,” Jason scoffed again as he stomped out of the room.
He would drop by the pup, he decided, but after he’d gotten something to eat. Dick trailed him to the kitchen like an overgrown puppy, still making unhappy noises about being tricked. Only when Jason stepped foot in the kitchen he found the rest of the pack, sans Damian, gathered. He would have turned tail and walked out, pride be damned, when he caught sight of Bruce, but Dick was stood at his shoulder, at enough of a distance to not be threatening, but close enough Jason could tell he wasn’t going to get out of the way any time soon.
Puppy my ass, he groused internally, Dick was more like an overzealous herding dog.
After a moment to steal himself, he crossed the room without looking at any of the alphas watching him curiously and went to stand by Alfred at the counter.
“Morning Alfie,” he said softly and the old beta smiled fondly, offering him a plate of waffles. Jason’s mouth watered a little from the smell alone and he took them with a grateful nod.
“Good morning master Jason. You slept well, I hope? The bed was to your liking?” So Dick wasn’t the only one who had noticed he wasn’t nesting.
“It was fine, Alfie,” Jason said as he went to find a seat as far away from Bruce as he could. He ended up between Dick and the Replacement, the latter of whom glanced up from the phone he was somehow allowed to keep at the breakfast table to give him a very obvious once over.
“Just fine?” The Replacement asked in a tone Jason couldn’t be bothered to decipher, so he shoved a forkful of waffles in his mouth and shrugged.
“If the bed isn’t good, I can move you to a different room.” Jason tried not to tense as Bruce spoke. The air in the kitchen seemed to drop a few degrees and Jason was suddenly glad it seemed everyone apart from Dick and he had chosen to wear scent blockers that morning.
“It’s fine,” he snapped and got up from the table to stalk out the kitchen (not without putting his plate in the sink first, because he wasn’t an animal). He didn’t understand why none of them could mind their damn business when it came to his nest. For non pack alphas to be so invested, it was practically taboo, and sure they were his family once but right now he was a guest omega seeking shelter. That was why Alfred had put him in the guest wing, well away from the Wayne pack and their dens.
For some reason, however, Jason’s feet didn’t take him back to the guest wing and instead up the stairs and down the corridor, thankfully passed the room he’d locked his childhood into, before he could stop them. Then his hand was on the door knob and a snarl was rattling out from behind the wood.
“Just me, Habibi,” he called out and miraculously, it worked again. Damian stopped snarling and to his surprise, even opened the door a crack.
“Todd?” He asked in a hoarse voice, one green eye peering around the old wood as a veritable wall of pheromones washed over Jason, so thick he could barely pick out any individual scents.
”Hey pup, can I come in?”
”I am not a pup,” Damian hissed, but he did step aside.
Jason slipped into the room, trying to breathe shallowly and acclimatise. The last time he’d been around a rutting alpha he’d been fifteen. But he still remembered enough from Bruce’s awkward lessons and Dick’s far more hands on approach of yanking him into his den during his cycles.
“Sure you’re not,” he said mildly whilst offering his wrist for a scenting. According to Dick, most alphas were soothed by the scents of pack and although Jason wasn’t that for Damian, it still seemed like the right thing to do. Still, it took a moment for Damian to actually accept, smaller wrist bumbling shyly against his.
“You doing okay?” Jason asked, taking in the kid’s rumpled clothes- thankfully all soft and non abrasive textures- deep flush and glassy eyes, not to mention his hair that was even more messy than usual. The room itself was also a mess, the closet open and half the clothes dragged out and onto the floor. The desk and chair had both been moved at least a little, now sat crooked, and the bed was missing all but the sheets. It didn’t look much like Dick’s den at all, he thought, but maybe it was unfair to compare a currently presenting pup’s space to what he remembered of the older alpha’s den. Dick had presented pretty young, from what he’d been told, well before Jason even set foot in his room, and therefore had years to learn how to keep an optimal den.
Damian himself seemed to be in one of the too much energy to sit still stages of rut, shifting from foot to foot as his eyes darted from Jason, to his bed, to the door and back again. Finally, he nodded jerkily.
“You want me to leave?”
He didn’t get an answer, but by that point Damian had started bouncing on his toes, so Jason walked towards the door until a hand shot out and grasped his wrist.
“Todd,” Damian said, although it sounded remarkably like a whine. It was childlike and oddly sweet to hear from the normally stoic pup.
“Alright, I’ll stay,” he said with a small smile. Apparently, that wasn’t enough however, as Damian started tugging at his wrist, pulling until Jason took a step and then another until he was abruptly shoved onto the bed. It was then that he caught sight of the duvet and pillows where they had been tossed off the bed and onto the floor. “Jeez, pup you made a mess.”
Damian growled at him as he stood up again, and Jason surprised both of them by cooing back. The noise was soft and a little scratchy, given he couldn’t recall ever actually cooing before, but it still came out melodic and fluttering, kind of like a dove’s.
“Huh,” he said, then bent down to gather all of the bedding from the floor.
“What are you doing?” Damian asked after a few minutes of Jason fussing with the duvet on the bed, working it and the pillows into the rough shape of a nest. Jason tried to suppress his jolt of surprise when he realised how close the baby alpha had gotten whilst he was lost in thought, peering at the burgeoning nest from by his elbow.
“Nesting, you brat.” Now that he was looking at him, however, Jason could tell the nest had a glaring lack of pup, so he scooped the kid up despite his hissing protests and dropped him into the middle. “This’ll help, promise,” he said gruffly and went to fetch some clothes from the closet.
By the time he was done, Damian had settled in the centre and was watching him with big green eyes and a slightly tilted head. Jason fluffed the walls one last time, making sure the placement was just so, before climbing onto the bed and tugging the kid into his side for a light scenting.
Over an hour later and the “light scenting” had resulted in a happy-content-safe smelling pup dozing in his lap as the oppressive rut pheromones cleared enough for the scent of mint, old wood and steel to drift through, along with Jason’s own scent.
“Told you it’d help,” Dick’s smug voice came from the doorway, although he kept it soft enough to not wake Damian. Jason would have bitten back something snappy, had he not been distracted by the tray of food in Dick’s hands. “Alfred thought you both might be hungry.”
Jason hummed in agreement from where he sat against the headboard.
Dick crossed the room on silent feet and offered him the tray, which Jason took after detangling one hand from Damian’s hair, before finding a safe spot to put it in within the nest.
“Pretty nest, Jay,” Dick crooned when Jason didn’t object to him being half bent over it. “I brought you these, if you want them?” He held up a bundle of clothes from under his other arm, ones carrying pack scents from what Jason could tell, although Dick’s was the most prominent.
The scents were apparently enough to rouse Damian, as the little alpha raised his head with a snarl.
To Jason’s surprise, Dick did nothing more than smile at him. “Hey there, Dami. I’m not here to intrude, just bringing some supplies.” He nodded to the food tray, then held up the bundle of scented clothes. For some reason, Jason found his eyes tracking the movement of the bundle with the same intensity he reserved for stakeouts and sniping.
He wanted the clothes in his nest, badly, but from Damian’s renewed growling the pup wasn’t going to let the strange scents in without a fight. Dick must have realised this too as his smile dimmed slightly and his eyes flickered to Jason with an almost apologetic look.
“They’re just for Jason’s nest, see?” Dick held the clothes out a little more and Damian finally crawled off Jason’s lap to snap his teeth at the offending fabric. “Woah there pup,” Dick admonished, flashing his own far larger fangs at the prospect of the clothes being damaged. Damian however, didn’t back down in his growling.
“Brat, chill out,” Jason huffed, reaching out to ruffle the kid’s hair which thankfully had the effect of making him duck his head and break the hostile staring with Dick. The pup leaned into his hand affectionately with a questioning little chirp and Jason was just about ready to get out of the nest himself and fetch the clothes because the pup evidently needed a proper nest to sleep in, when Dick dropped into a crouch by the bed, clothes bundle dropped to his feet as he purposefully made eye contact with Damian and offered his wrist.
“It’s just me, Dames, I’m not here to disturb you or our omega.” Other than making Jason’s ears burn in a way he’d deny for all eternity, the words seemed to have the intended effect of calming Damian down enough to sniff at the proffered wrist. Upon catching the scent of his precious Richard Grayson, unmuddied by the bundle of pack scents, Damian sputtered out a soft chirp.
”Richard?” He asked in a scratchy voice, his green eyes finally regaining some clarity.
“Hey there, pup,” Dick answered with a signature Nightwing smile. He let Damian rub their wrists together in a gentle scent marking as he spoke, “You’re doing a great job protecting the nest, Dames, but I think Jay would like some more materials to work with. Wanna help me pick some to offer him?”
This time, when Dick held up the bundle of clothing, Damian eyed them curiously.
”…alright,” he agreed after a long moment of consideration. “But only the best.”
”Exactly,” the older alpha grinned conspiratorially as he offered the first item- one of Dick’s own shirts- up for inspection. “Only the best for our pack omega.”
Jason’s protesting huff fell on deaf ears and after a few minutes of watching the two alphas go through the bundle as if he wasn’t there, he decided to distract himself with his phone. He checked for any leads from Oracle on his old safe house, and when she told him nothing had come up, distracted himself scrolling mindlessly until Damian chirped at him.
“What is it, pup?” He asked, tucking his phone away as he glanced over to see Dick still crouched outside the nest and watching him hopefully, that same hope mirrored if slightly more subtly, in Damian’s much closer face.
Carefully, as if it were something precious, Damian held up a far smaller, neatly folded pile of clothes. “For your nest.”
”Hmm…” Jason made a show of taking the pile and sorting through it, feeling both a little ridiculous and oddly warmed by the two sets of eyes watching him intently, as he pretended to deliberate on each piece. The pile itself mainly consisted of Dick’s clothing, all older pieces he noted that had been washed to the point of being faded but still warm, a few things from Alfred he kept specifically for nesting, one of Cass’s tops, one of Brue’s hoodies and, surprisingly, one of Tim’s too.
“They’re perfect, Habibi,” he cooed absentmindedly. Already planning out where would be best to weave them into the nest, he was pulled from his thoughts by two bursts of purring, one puppish but enthusiastic, and the other far deeper. “Stop,” he snapped and tossed a pillow into Dick’s beaming face, but he still carefully kneaded one of Dick’s shirts into the nest to replace it.
After Dick left, he spent the afternoon trying to feed Damian the variety of easy foods Alfred had arranged on the tray between the brat demanding to be scented, falling asleep on him, and then waking up restless and fidgety to patrol the room. Rinse and repeat.
By dinner, Jason was itching to get up and move himself, but every time he tried to escape the nest, Damian dragged him back with increasingly demanding whines until he gave in and rubbed his cheek over the kid’s hair for ten minutes straight, thinking of nothing but the calming scents and the odd bubble of warm air that had been trapped in his chest since Dick brought him nesting supplies.
In the end, he might have gone a little over board, as the baby alpha in his first ever rut was apparently unable to withstand a literal cloud of contented omega pheromones and promptly passed the fuck out once again. Jason left him curled up in the center of the nest after running his wrist over the kid’s cheek and back once more.
Jason found the rest of the pack sat down to eat dinner and gratefully accepted the plate Alfred offered him, sitting down to scarf as much of it down as he could.
“You reek,” the Replacement informed him with a curled lip and scrunched up nose that rubbed Jason’s instincts the wrong way somehow more than the little alpha normally did. Before he could bite back a retort, however, the doors to the dining room slammed open and Damian darted in with a sword he was most definitely not supposed to have outside of the cave.
For a room of trained vigilantes, they reacted rather rationally, Jason thought afterwards, once Dick had wrestled Damian and Tim apart and Cass had stepped in to retrieve the sword before someone lost a limb. Bruce had snapped at them all to knock it off and Jason had been about to round on him with a few choice words about parental responsibility when Dick decided that was the right moment to drop Damian into his lap. Obviously, Jason being the only omega present and therefore the most reasonable, had realised Damian shouldn’t be out of Jason’s nest at all and had stormed off with a disappointed look at all of the pup’s so called pack to go tuck him back into the safety of the blankets.
…
Jason got benched from patrol.
Which, okay, maybe he could understand that he reeked of a presenting alpha pup and he himself hadn’t been wearing any scent blockers at all that day, but that was nothing a decent shower with some of the bat brand super soap designed to remove all kinds of pollen, poison, and general Gotham grime couldn’t fix. Only when he tried to get into the cave to get to the showers where the bat soap was kept, he was met with a nervous looking Red Robin staked out in the study.
“What are you doing in here?” Jason asked, eyeing him suspiciously from the doorway. He’d managed to slip away from Damian after the kid wore himself out pacing the room and then the corridor outside once again and was more than ready to get showered and into the gear in the duffle bag he’d hastily retrieved and slung over his shoulder.
“Waiting to stop you,” the Replacement said with a look of trepidation.
Said look was completely warranted as a short scuffle later, Jason had managed to dodge past and through the secret entrance. He stomped down the stairs, creating a racket he was rather proud of, and let his scent bloom with pissed-off-omega so that when he arrived in the cave proper, all eyes were already on him.
“What. The fuck.”
“Jason,” Batman started but Jason was already snarling.
“You’re trying to bench me?! What the fuck did I do this time?!” He snapped, stalking over so he could get in Batman’s face. “I haven’t broken a single rule, so why the fuck did I find the Replacement waiting to stop me coming down here?”
Batman exhaled heavily through his nose and Jason saw red. Before he could lunge, however, a strong hand caught his arm in a gentle grip.
”You didn’t do anything wrong, Jay. You’re doing everything right, actually,” Nightwing told him, although he was already peeling off his domino so he could look Jason in the eyes properly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He rounded on Dick, although he could feel some of his anger drain away to be replaced by confusion.
“You’re doing well with Damian,” Dick clarified. “Better than any of us managed. We thought it would be easier on him if you stayed here to keep him settled whilst the rest of us patrol. And before you ask, Steph’s going to take Crime Alley, none of us are going into your territory without permission.”
Jason hated it, but there was solid logic there. He used to get benched when Dick was in rut too, although at the time he didn’t see it that way. One glance at Spoiler and he found her giving him a reassuring thumbs up. “… why didn’t you just say,” he grumbled.
“I tried,” Red Robin complained from behind him, presumably after chasing him down into the cave. He was silenced by the glare Dick shot over at him.
“Bats,” Orphan piped up, much to Jason’s surprise. She almost never spoke to him, and he could admit to seeing why. They were almost diametrically opposed in morals even after he’d started playing by the Bat’s rules again, and her dislike of him was clear in that he never saw her even when he visited the manor, despite her presumably living there. “Not good at talking.”
That startled a laugh out of him and Dick cracked a smile too.
“Yeah, I see that.” Jason nodded, thinking it over. Crime Alley wouldn’t miss him for the few nights it would take Damian to ride out his rut, and surprisingly Jason didn’t have any open cases other than his safe house invasion, that had met a dead end as it was. “Fine, I’ll stay with the brat.
With that he turned on his heel, intent on returning to the manor and maybe to the kitchen to make something easy on the stomach for Damian, since the pup had missed dinner. Bruce’s voice stopped him.
”Jason. Your gear.”
After a long, tense moment, Jason dropped the duffle bag and kept walking. It was fine, he reasoned as he went, if he really needed to leave the manor in a hurry, he’d be passing through the cave anyway to get to his bike. He could just grab his armour then.
…
When Jason made it back to Damian’s room, plate of sandwiches in hand, he found the pup missing from the nest, although the shower in the adjoining bathroom was running. He perched himself on the desk chair to wait, idly flipping through one of the kid’s sketchbooks and maybe slightly marvelling at the drawings he found. Mostly animals, as he would have expected, with the occasional tree he recognised from his days traipsing around the manor grounds, or flower he thought might belong in Alfred’s gardens. And most surprisingly, there were a few sketches of people, some he didn’t recognise, but most were of the Wayne pack. He’d just flipped to a rough pencil sketch that might have been himself, when the bathroom door swung open and out came a damp pup wrapped in soft, loose clothing.
“Todd,” Damian said with a small amount of surprise, before darting forwards to wrest the sketch book from his hands. “You came back.”
Jason let the book go without a fight, holding his hands up in surrender, although some of the rut haze must have cleared as Damian didn’t look ready to bite him for intruding on his things. “‘Course I did, I’m living here for the moment.”
”I- Yes. Right.” Damian nodded slowly before slotting the sketch book back onto a neatly arranged shelf. For some reason, Jason got the feeling this was the baby assassin’s way of keeping his hands busy to stop himself from fidgeting. “Todd.”
”Yeah, brat?”
“Would you… Could you possibly… I think it would be for both our benefit if you…” Damian stumbled over his words in a way Jason had quite literally never seen before from the little prince, before finally blurting out: “Would you remake your nest. Please.”
“Sure,” Jason answered before his brain could catch up with his mouth. When he went over to the nest, however, he could see exactly what the problem was. The nest was more than a little rumpled, several areas had been pulled at and disturbed, and one side had almost entirely collapsed. As Jason regathered the materials, deciding it would be best to start from scratch again, he was struck with the image of Damian waking alone in the nest and searching frantically through it.
The pup hovered just behind him as he worked, seemingly working up the courage to speak. “I… I apologise for ruining your nest. I did not… I only worried you were… gone.”
”It’s fine, kiddo,” he reassured quietly.
Half an hour later and everything was very much not fine. The brat had yet to slip back into an instinctual haze but he had grown restless and fidgety, worse his fangs had dropped some more, leaving reeking of pain and looking for comfort Jason was too busy to offer.
The nest wasn’t right. And nothing he was doing was fixing it. He tried yet another configuration of blankets, sheets, clothes from pack, pup, no pup, more clothes that he’d stolen. Even trudging all the way to the guest room for the sheets he’d slept in last night wasn’t fixing Jason’s instincts as they demanded that the nest be made safer somehow. Part of him was tempted to move the mattress itself, tuck it into the corner of the room as Damian’s bed only touched one wall, but he doubted that would do much.
Instead, he started thinking of how to fortify the den itself, something a grown alpha would normally have done to their space by now. But Damian was still only really in the first twenty four hours of his presentation, up until a day ago this was the private space of a pup who had no instinctual drive to make it cool and dark and safe, with the perfect place for a pack nest big enough to fit all the wayward alphas that would need somewhere warm to sleep when they came home.
Unbidden, memories of sharing Dick’s bed when the alpha went through his rut cycles invaded his frustrated thoughts, how the mattress had dwarfed both of them and how easy it had been to give in to his own slowly developing instincts and knead the blankets into a nest.
Fuck it, Jason thought after another ten minutes with no success. He scooped as much of the failed nest up into his arms as he could and cooed for the pup to follow him as he marched out of the room and down the corridor towards a den he knew would make the perfect space for him to keep his pup safe in as he presented.