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Jason pounded down the back stairs, swinging past the pantry into the kitchen. His hair dripped down the back of his neck. He wasn’t late, he wasn’t late, he wasn’t --
Gray hair and pressed white cotton flashed in the corner of his eye. Jason skidded to a stop before he tripped into the back hall, peering uncertainly behind him into the kitchen.
Alfred sat quietly at the buffet counter, sleeves rolled up, contemplating a slice of coffee cake. His thin fingers with their old man's knuckles curled in the handle of a steaming white mug. Jason hadn’t known anybody bought mugs in sets before he moved into the manor, but there was a whole perfect row of them hanging on little hooks by the coffeemaker.
A black stand mixer waited next to mixing bowls and a cookbook open to a page marked with a satin ribbon.
Jason’s gaze bounced back and forth between the grandfather clock in the hall -- long narrow steps down to the cave and Bruce’s imminent return from patrol -- and the cookie fixings arrayed on the counter. A dark window showed the 4:30 am view of the back garden. Jason took a slow step backwards into the kitchen. Alfred continued looking calmly into his tea.
“Uh,” Jason said, “he’s not back?”
“He has returned,” Alfred said. Jason goggled at him. Alfred had been the one to send him upstairs to shower after training. Jason had been gone all of five minutes, and now Alfred was... here. With mixing bowls.
“I thought, since you were going to be up no matter what on this school night, we might as well address your request on baking -- "
Jason jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "I was gonna -- " He frowned. The vibes were pretty weird right now, but not in a life or death way. “He in the dog house or something?"
But that didn't parse with the whole… fresh cookies thing, unless they weren’t gonna give Bruce any. Jason didn’t think the Batman was generally moved by dessert.
Alfred sighed. "Sometimes when you know you won't approve, it's best not to watch."
What the fuck. "Does he... need help? I can watch his back or -- ” Jason squinted at Alfred’s weary old face, looking for hints. “I read files pretty… good."
Yeah, sounded like a real scholar there, Todd. A+ use of that library card.
Alfred went to the mixer, drawing Jason after him with his calm, deliberate steps. He pulled the open cookbook over. Jason took the apron offered him, warily pulling it over his head, eyes glued to Alfred.
"No,” Alfred said in the tone of the world-weary martyr. “Best to leave them to it."
Jason froze with the apron strap half over his head, eyes gone round and dark. Someone was in the cave with Bruce. Someone allowed to be there.
Alfred sighed. He held out his hand. "Come back up stairs afterwards."
Jason flung the apron over Alfred’s wrist and peeled out of there, socks slipping on the polished wood floors.
There was nobody by the batmobile, nobody on the training mats, no one at the big bank of computer screens. Jason flipped carefully and silently down the back of the big monitor display. Maybe it was Batgirl? Or wow, shit, holy -- Superman? That was possible, right? But no. The person in the cave was somebody who belonged here and who made Alfred sigh. Jason was kind of pissed that guy wasn’t on the mats. Or no -- the rings. That would have been something to see.
He found them by the work tables in a nook hidden from view of the stairs, their dark suits bleeding into the shadows of the cave. Bruce had pulled an adjustable lamp over and the light caught on the blue across Nightwing’s chest.
Jesus.
Nightwing was tiny.
He looked skinny as hell standing at Bruce's shoulder, a stiletto blade next to the broad axe of Bruce’s body, and he moved around the table like there was nothing holding him down, light on his feet to Bruce's heavy stance. He didn’t look like Robin either, too floppy haired. The one time Jason had seen Robin talking to the cops, he'd had his hair combed like Sunday mass.
The suit didn't look armored, not with Nightwing moving so lightly and each muscle sharply defined in light and shadow. There was an imperfection in the blue chest stripe that caught Jason’s eyes in the harsh lamp light, a patch someone had tried to conceal as part of the design. Jason scoffed; Nightwing hadn’t gotten his shit together enough to get a real Alfred-quality job done.
No wonder B & A can't get their story straight about whether he graduated or was sent away for being reckless.
Nightwing looked like someone who’d grown his way out of the Robin uniform by going up and not out. Jason knew a few corners where Nightwing could make good money with that unreal slender build -- except he’d be eaten alive by the first person to smell fresh meat.
Jason snorted, and Nightwing turned his head, looking over to the pool of shadow where Jason waited. Jason felt dumb just standing there. It probably looked like he’d walked up, not like he’d done a fucking great wall climb to get over here unseen. What a waste of a good sneak.
“Hey,” Jason said, hands on his hips and jerking his chin in a gruff greeting.
Nightwing just kept fucking staring at him, face totally blank like he was Michelangelo's David or something.
Jason tipped forward on his toes. Louder: “Hey.”
“Hey,” Nightwing said hollowly, about a step up from a fucking robot. He stared again, until Jason wondered if maybe he should start something, and then Nightwing turned back to Bruce like Jason was a TV channel he’d just switched off: "That's all I have. I couldn't get anything else without following him here."
Bruce had his cowl down but his expression looked like he still had it up. "Keep me apprised."
"That's the price of entry?" Nightwing said, prissy, and Jason really did think about starting something.
“It’s not a price.” Bruce leaned on the table. “If you have some information to contribute, I find it valuable.”
“But if I didn’t give it, you’d come looking to collect, right?” Nightwing stepped away from the table, pointed towards the extra bike parked next to the batmobile, dismissing Bruce in his own cave.
Jason stepped into his path. “Of course he would, because it's our city.” Because it didn’t matter his reasons, Nightwing had left Gotham for someplace he liked better, like he was returning a shirt that didn’t fit. “It’s our job."
Jason glared up at Nightwing’s white lenses. Maybe the guy wasn’t that tiny, but he wasn’t huge either. Jason had handled worse by a mile. Nightwing looked Jason over from his stocking feet to the stiff white t-shirt Jason had pulled out of a plastic-sealed 3-pack yesterday. Jason was hyper aware of the water dripping down his neck, the loose pajamas he was wearing. He wished he had the suit. His suit.
"You went out tonight, huh?" Like he fucking knew Jason wasn’t allowed out with B more than once a week yet.
"How the fuck would you know?"
“Jason,” Bruce said sharply. “Go upstairs.”
Nightwing didn’t watch him go.
Jason yanked the apron over his head, hot all over and dragging a mixing bowl towards himself with a metal rattle. Alfred handed him the measuring cups like he was resigned to the mess contained in Jason’s furious face and clenched hands. But Jason hadn’t forgotten yet that the plenty in this kitchen didn’t reflect plenty everywhere. He was here on good behavior, and if Jason left now, he wasn’t going to leave with a new suit, new name, new city, and the freedom to disrespect Bruce in his own damn cave.
“Two and a quarter cups flour,” Alfred said, and Jason leveled them off like a surgeon.
He felt so stupid. He’d chased rumors of Robin sightings. Had told people to count on Batman and Robin where they couldn’t count on God or the cops. Had promised that Robin was the nice one to Batman’s frightening shadow. And Nightwing had barely looked at him. Jason, the wannabe in a borrowed suit -- provisionally borrowed, once a week, and not on school nights.
“He’s so tiny,” Jason blurted out.
“Yes, you both are,” Alfred said. He traded the empty cup measure for a measuring spoon. “Baking soda.”
Jason hoisted himself onto the counter to reach the third shelf and the orange box next to flavorings and brown sugar. “At least I don’t have a patchy suit.”
“Patchy?”
"Yeah. Right here." Jason twisted and dropped to sit with his legs off the counter, the box of baking soda held on his lap. With his other hand, he traced a circle on his left breast with his thumb, measuring spoon held between his fingers.
Furniture scraped across the floor and cloth rustled; Alfred sat down heavily. His glasses came off so he could run a hand over his face before dropping it to the counter next to his glasses. “Two of them,” he said faintly, apparently to the wall, “I've raised two of them.”
Jason hesitated with the measuring spoon inside the box, uncertain. Alfred looked devastated, his face worn, like he didn't care that Dick had left or why he'd left or how he treated Bruce at all. He looked like Jason's grandmother when she'd still been alive, the way she looked at Jason's mom even after Jason's mom had left Jason with her for three days without warning. Like there were things you couldn't fix, and sometimes people died of them, and it killed you too.
Jason slid off the counter. He took Alfred’s hand tentatively. “He seemed okay. Probably just tore it on a nail." He scrambled for something else to say, something only a little bit a lie: "And it wasn't a bad patch job, just not as good as yours.”
Alfred shook their joined hands, a silent thanks. Jason had done this for his mom, but it was weird doing it for Alfred or Bruce who didn't seem like they could ever be powerless enough to find Jason a source of reassurance.
“Uh, hey, Alf,” Nightwing said.
He stood in the doorway closest to the cave’s concealed entrance, maskless and damp now like Jason, wearing a cobbled together outfit of clothes safe for upstairs. He had on a pair a black tights with stirrup bottoms, old and too small from how sheer they looked over his knee. The shirt was Bruce's and fit like a one dollar poncho. Its length was probably the only thing keeping the tights decent.
“Master Richard,” Alfred said warmly. “Are those downstairs tights?”
Nightwing -- Dick, now -- clutched his chest. “Alf, come on, I'm a little low on options down there.”
“A reasonable critique, Master Richard. I'll see that it's stocked for your next visit.”
Dick looked a little panicked. He seemed taller away from the forbidding darkness of the cave, and Bruce. “Alf, I don't need -- “
Alfred picked his glasses slowly up off the counter, taking his time to wipe them carefully without a care in the world. “I, of course, wouldn't expect my slight wishes to influence you, but Jason would like to see you more.”
Dick winced, but he shot Jason a look like maybe he hadn’t seen through the guilt trip and thought Jason wanted him around. The shower had flushed his olive skin in warm, rich tones. “Hey,” he said with a smile, kind of tentative. That white grin framed by the dark hair falling around this face -- Jason could see Dick took it for granted that people smiled back at him.
But Jason knew too many con artists, had already been picked out as an easy mark for most of his life. He leaned back against the counter, flicking a spot of flour off his apron bib. “Yeah, why don’t you try that on someone who's listening, bub.”
“Uh,” Dick said. There was a fading bruise under his right eye. Jason couldn’t believe he’d come up to see his sort-of-dad’s sort-of-dad looking like that, not when Alfred had needed to sit down just thinking about a tear in Dick’s suit.
Alfred held his hand out for the cookbook, and Jason hopped to get it for him. He knew not to be mean to Dick’s grandpa.
“Time to add the dry to the wet, Master Jason.” Alfred tapped his finger on the text and smiled at Jason reading over his shoulder. His smile was a much softer, realer thing than Dick’s. “Do be patient with Master Richard. He is considered almost universally likeable; you’re confusing him.”
“Come on, Alf,” Dick said. He was rubbing a hand over his face, the same gesture Alfred had made earlier, and yeah, he looked pretty fucking confused, didn’t he. A total doofus in a baggy shirt and ballet tights stretched tight around his caped crusader thighs. Dick.
Jason felt his chest puff out. “Yeah, I guess my bullshit meter's set to a different neighborhood."
Dick had his hand over his eyes, sighing. “Alfred--”
"Master Jason tells me you have employed an amateur seamstress recently."
Dick's hand dropped from his face, and he shot Jason a look of white-faced betrayal.
Jason blinked at him because shit, he wasn’t a snitch! He hadn’t realized that --
“Off with it,” Alfred said.
“We’re not downstairs,” Dick said weakly. “Also I'm fine --”
“And when you return more than bimonthly, I will act as though I have the time or the patience.”
Dick grabbed the billowy hem of Bruce’s shirt and yanked towards the ceiling, the fabric doing a poor job of muffling his aggrieved groan. The shirt came off, and Jason spilled flour on the counter.
Dick’s hot shower blush had spread everywhere, his eyes wrinkling self-consciously and his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance as Alfred put his glasses back on to inspect the damage. Dick didn't have as many scars as Jason would have thought from someone who went around Gotham without body armor, but there was a new one, angry red and half-healed an inch above the dusky rose of Dick’s left nipple. Dick was skinny all right, all muscle over bone, and Jason was trying not to look... everywhere now that Dick wasn’t wearing a shirt that ended 6 inches above the knee.
“Have you two been properly introduced?” Alfred asked. He’d produced a pair of latex gloves out of thin air, snapping them on as Dick regarded the ceiling with a strained grin.
“Sure,” Jason said as Dick said, “No, I guess not really.”
“Well, then, Master Richard, meet Master Jason, our newest precocious addition.”
“Hey,” Dick offered.
Jason flicked the stand mixer setting from ‘lazy’ up to ‘flux capacitor’, and grinned insincerely over the whirring.
Dick blinked. “Wait, Alfred's not cooking?”
"I'm baking," Jason said.
Alfred looked up from examining the scar, his glasses on the end of his nose. He sounded amused, "Master Jason has expressed an interest in caring for his own luxuries. He even -- ” Alfred prodded carefully around the edges of the wound, Dick’s pectoral muscle twitching, “ --enjoys finishing his homework before patrol.”
“Alf, you wound me.” Dick put a hand over his chest -- over his actual wound so that Alfred had to pull back -- and put on that same disarming half smile. But his gaze was sliding away towards the walls, and he was pulling that big sorry excuse for a shirt back on. “Look, anyway, I'm fine.” He waved vaguely at Jason without looking at him. “Great new addition to the family. You'll go far.”
Jason saw Alfred's face drop, and he blurted out, “Don't you want any cookie dough?”
Dick blinked at him. And okay, Jason had been sending kind of the opposite signal so far, so he gave Dick a hard glare, eyes darting meaningfully towards Alfred. He turned off the mixer, and pulled the lever to drop the bowl away from the stand.
“Right,” Dick said. He heaved a sigh, hidden now by the parachute masquerading as a shirt, and stuck a finger towards the bowl while Alfred let out an aborted, "Wash your hands --"
“It’s a little early for cookies, isn’t it?” Bruce had come upstairs now, washed and cleaned and in clothes that fit. No tights either.
He was smiling at Jason too, his eyes flicking over the mixer, the cookbook, Alfred’s glasses, Nightwing’s finger in the bowl. Jason could see Bruce slotting it all together inside his head, building a working perfect picture that he could turn around and shake until all the facts came out. The way he’d done when he’d caught Jason crouching next to the batmobile with a tire iron, the way he’d known that crime alley hadn’t ruined Jason all the way. Bruce had taken one look and known Jason could fit in this unexpected place and do this unexpected thing -- be Batman’s partner.
But Dick was curling back in on himself, hand retreating from the mixing bowl. His whole body looked awkwardly stuck underneath Bruce’s smock-poncho-sack shirt. “It’s pretty good, kid,” he said, even though he hadn’t even tried any. He nodded stiffly at the adults. “Alfred. B -- Bruce.”
Dick slipped back out into the hall and behind the clock. Bruce’s face had closed off, and Alfred looked longingly towards the hallway, pulling off the latex gloves, one after the other.
Jason had an awful feeling in the back of his throat like this wasn’t his house or his cave or his anything, and he wasn’t -- Bruce had brought him here to keep. He’d seen something real in Jason, and they were going to need a crowbar to pry him out of this place.
He yanked the bowl of finished dough out of the mixer with a clank and cleared his throat. “Hey. Guys. Three hours in the fridge, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Alfred said, giving a little jerk.
Bruce headed for the end of the island. “I’ll get the foil.”
Dick who, Jason thought fiercely.