Archive of Our Own

It comes on a Friday this year, and so Dick calls the Sunday beforehand, to the number the Outlaws don’t know he knows about.

“Yeah,” Jason says when he picks up, and from his tone Dick can tell he’s completely sure the line is secure. That’s sloppy, Dick thinks. But a few years in the ground can put anyone out of practice.

The older brother in him aches to correct Jason’s behavior, but he doesn’t know if he has the right to anymore.

Instead he says, quickly: “Don’t hang up.”

Jason’s dead silence on the other end makes Dick wonder if he didn’t do it anyway. When he speaks again, it startles him. “Whadyou want, Dick.”

“Look,” Dick says, biting back the worst things he could say. “I know you’re staying out of Gotham lately. I get that. But—look, we need you. We needed you last year, and we need you now. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it mattered.”

There’s another long silence. “Yeah,” Jason says finally, his tone oddly civil. “Okay. I’ll drop the kids at their mom’s and ride in on Monday.”

“Do I want to know who is what in that metaphor?”

“Probably not,” Jason says, and hangs up on him.

Barbara glides in ten minutes before Jason arrives; as always, she looks just a little out of place—well, standing. She and Dick orbit one another carefully, him watching her as she enters her own information into the database and starts in on probable targets and power players. Tim’s standing off to the side a little, clearly trying not to make a nuisance of himself and also very clearly trying not to get caught staring at Barbara. Dick doesn’t blame him – in the family, Barbara is more of a legend than she is a real person, and seeing her in action is just enough to cement it. Tim has always been kind of adorably starstruck by all this, Dick thinks. The kind of kid who still sees the magic and mystique in what they do even after years of service. 

Jason appears in a cacophony of sound, the thunderous roar of his motorcycle rattling the walls and no doubt booming up into the mansion. Barbara comes to stand near Dick with her hands on her hips, watching him skid to a stop next to the Batmobile and dismount with an unmistakable swagger. He’s huge, Dick thinks – not that he’s never noticed that since his, er, “revival”, but there’s something in Dick’s brain that just won’t let him equate the Jason he knows – small and funny and curly-headed – with the gigantic, thickly-muscled linebacker standing in front of him now. He’s thick from head-to-toe, legs like tree trunks and shoulders like mountains. He’s not as tall as Bruce, but Dick realizes that he’s probably heavier, now. He’s practically Bane-shaped.

Dick folds his arms over his chest, uncomfortable with the revelation.

“Get a load of these idiots,” Jason says loudly to an unknown audience, shaking his curly hair out of his eyes as he mounts the steps. “Hey,” he says to Barbara, tucking his helmet under his arm. “You look good.”

“Force of habit,” Barbara says, punching him in the gut with one hand and bringing him in for a kiss with the other. She pecks his cheek and musses his hair in a way that seems oddly familiar. Jason groans theatrically and holds his stomach, but she doesn’t seem to have done any permanent damage.

“Jason. It’s good to see you,” Dick says as casually as possible.

Jason laughs outright and then socks him in the stomach so hard he loses his breath. He should’ve been ready for it and he wasn’t. Jason hooks an arm around his neck and pulls him close before he can retaliate, getting him into a brotherly sort of headlock.

“Oh yeah, Dickie. You know how I love reunions.”

Dick catches him hard with an elbow to the ribs and twists out of his grip. He brushes his shirt off and walks back to the console.

“So,” Jason says conversationally, sounding only a little winded as he stumbles the rest of the way up the steps, “what’re you going as, then? Young Elvis? Mikhail Baryshnikov? Strong-yet-sensual ice dancer slash pornstar, Icy Bigdong?”

“I’m going as a vigilante.”

“That’s no fun, that’s exactly what you went as last year.” Jason comes to a stop beside him, wincing a little when he folds his arms, which is satisfaction enough as far as Dick’s bruising elbow is concerned.

Dick’s heard that – in most places, most neighborhoods – Halloween is a holiday. According to Tim, Kon and the rest of the Titans love it, and he knows the Speedsters and the Lanterns are usually pretty into it too. Clark likes it for sure, and Dick’s always hearing about parties being hosted in its honor. He remembers (barely, but with great determination) celebrating it once or twice in his childhood, before his parents died. In fact, there was a time when he loved it too, back when it meant candy and costumes, when costumes were a hobby, not a lifestyle.

But that was a long time ago. From the time he was ten, Dick grew up in Gotham. And in Gotham, Halloween is, hands down, the worst night of the year.

It’s not that no one celebrates – the celebration is half of what makes it a tactical nightmare. Between the kids and the candy and the costumes, it’s a good year if they can make it through without accidentally abducting someone dressed as Robin. They went two good years when it was just Tim and Dick, since neither of them were young enough to be mistaken for a kid and the Red Robin craze had yet to really take root among Gotham’s youth. It’s never a problem with the girls, since costume companies refuse to make Batgirl, Black Bat or Steph’s old Robin costumes without tulle skirts and half the fabric missing. But now that Damian’s taken up the Robin mantle, they’re back to Square One, worrying if the homicidal pre-teen they’ll be scooping off the street will be their homicidal preteen, or if they’re going to have to have another series of awkward conversations with GCPD.

Damian shoves Jason’s feet off the coffee table as he enters the living room, where the flood from their underground base of operations has begun to leak upstairs. Alfred stands supervising near the curtains, pacing slowly around the gyres of paper strewn across the floor, holding his hands behind his back as if to restrain them from their automatic urge to tidy up. Jason, on his part, is focused on decimating his bowl of cottage cheese with bananas and blueberries and spinach, which seems to be keeping Alfred at ease. 

“What’re you goin’ as, kid?” Jason asks around his spoon.

Damian scoffs. “I’m going as myself, obviously. I don’t participate in Samhain.” He adds a haughty little sniff for punctuation. “You pagans and your...idolatrous ritualism. How many holidays do you really need, anyway?”

Jason sucks on his spoon. “It’s a tradition.”

Damian lifts his chin the way he always does when he’s about to quote the Quran. “When it is said unto them, ‘Come to what Allah has revealed…” He pauses, eyebrows furrowing, like he can’t quite remember the full quote, or like he’s not sure how exactly to translate it from Urdu. He sees them watching him expectantly and hurries to finish: “Fools follow their fathers, who were void of knowledge and guidance.” He turns a triumphant look on Jason.

“So you’re going as a wet blanket, then,” Jason says.

“That’s no fun,” Steph says, sitting down beside him with her own bowl in her lap. “That’s exactly what you went as last year.”

“I still think zone defense is going to be our best bet,” Barbara says, folding her arms, following Alfred on his slow, winding route through the sea of paper. “We tried man-on-man last year, it didn’t work out so well.” 

Last year, Barbara was still in her chair. Bruce must’ve been keeping her in the loop, Dick realizes, and now he’s regretting not doing it himself. He clamps down on a wave of shame, storing it away for later. He tries to focus, instead, on the fact that Barbara says ‘we’, as if they’re a real team and not just a random assortment of bat-shaped party favors.

“B is gonna be focused on Joker,” Dick says, folding his arms. “And I think he needs to be. But yeah, I agree with you.”

Jason drops his spoon into his empty bowl, swiping a thumb carelessly over his bottom lip. “So we’re what? Crowd control?” 

“Essentially.”

“Who do we wanna send with B?” Steph asks.

“Cass,” says Dick.

Jason puts his bowl down on the table and nods. His passivity is making Dick uncomfortable. “Yeah, that works. And then the rest of us on him when he gets in our zone.”

“That’s the plan.”

“What about me?” Damian says, looking affronted. 

“You’ll be with me,” says Dick, and if he couldn’t see him relax – shoulders down, expression unwinding, fingers unclenched – he could probably feel it. Damian makes a show of ‘hrumph’ing, but he immediately looks more at ease.

“I still don’t see why Cain should go in my place. I’m an excellent partner.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going to need you, ‘excellent partner’.”

“Yeah, plus Cass doesn’t get territorial when help arrives,” Steph says into her cheese.

Damian whirls on her, hackles back up. “I do not get territorial!”

“Uh, yeah you do,” Steph says. “You’re like a yappy little dog.”

“I am not like a yappy little dog! I am like a competent partner, you infuriating, misshapen—”

“Yap!” Steph yells over him. “Yap, yap! Yap, yap, yap!”

Damian launches himself over Jason’s lap at Steph, and Jason lifts his knee sharply at the exact right time. Damian squeals and tumbles off the couch, clutching his groin. Jason shoves him under the coffee table with his foot shortly before Steph punches him in the side of the head.

“Ow! What was that for?!”

Steph punches him again in the shoulder, scowling. “No kicking the dog!” 

“I didn’t kick him!”

“Knee him, then!”

“I was protecting your honor!”

“Oh, yeah,” Steph says, setting her bowl on the table and reaching under for Damian. “You’re a real honorable guy, Todd. I forgot, all the most gallant knights punch little kids in the nutsack at a moment’s notice, that’s what makes them gallant. Arthur’s Knights of the Nut Punch, I totally forgot.”

Damian releases an undignified squawk as Steph drags him back out from under the table. “He did not punch me in the—”

“The dick, then, God, what is it with you turdsmugglers and semantics?”

Jason makes a show of gesturing. “Steph, his Dick’s all the way across the room, do I look like Plastic Man to you?”

Ace sits up in the other room, ears swiveling toward their noise and barks once, like a crack of thunder booming through the house.

Dick grits his teeth. “Will you three knock it off?”

“I know what I just said about avoiding man-on-man,” Barbara says, thoughtfully, like none of this is bothering her in the least. “But if Knightfall makes a showing, I’m the only person here who has any experience with her.”

“You think she’ll show?” Dick asks.

“Halloween’s always a party,” Barbara says, shaking her head. “I doubt she’ll miss it.”

“Miss Carnes certainly has a Gothamite’s flare for the dramatic,” Alfred agrees.

“We’ll map out the zones and assign them,” Dick says. “Then, if any of us have specific agendas, we’ll hash them out.”

“My ‘agenda’, as you call it, would be not letting Charise knife any of you,” Barbara says, a little snidely, and Dick tries to swallow his blush of embarrassment.

 “That’s not what I meant.” 

“I want Crime Alley,” Jason says immediately.

Dick turns to him. “Crime Alley should be several zones, not one. It’s gonna be a madhouse. We divide up according to need.”

“I want Crime Alley,” Jason says, folding his arms. “All of it. You dipshits can do whatever you want, but that’s where I’ll be.”

Dick purses his lips, and tries not to be relieved that Jason’s finally being difficult. “I get that’s what you want, but we might need you somewhere else.”

Jason shrugs like that’s just Dick’s problem. “Tough shit. Crime Alley’s mine.” He looks over Dick’s shoulder and creases his brows in a look that’s less Hood, more human; Dick glances back to find Alfred giving him a disapproving look. “It’s home. I got people there,” Jason says, a little more subdued.

“People,” Dick says, carefully, but Jason just shrugs and doesn’t say anything more.

“Selina doing her Pussy Protection Squad thing again?” Steph asks, sounding a little too interested.

Dick tries desperately not to sputter. “It’s not th—It’s designed to help anyone…in need.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steph says. “I’m just asking. I checked around at school, I think having it last year really helped.”

“I haven’t checked in with her yet,” Dick says.

“What’s the Pussy Protection Squad?” Jason peers over at Steph with an unwieldy amount of curiosity.

Steph shrugs. “You know. The Anti-Assault Gang. The Costume-Is-Not-Consent Kids. The Kicking-Rapist-Ass…Racquet. Come back to me on that last one.”

“I want in on that,” Jason says. His eyes have that eerie brightness that used to come over him from time to time when he was a child in the room next to Dick’s, having Big Ideas when he got home at three am. Dick’s seen that look in his dreams. In his nightmares.

“That’s a city-wide circuit,” Dick says, trying to keep those memories in their boxes.

“We’ll figure it out,” Steph says before Jason can argue.

“Is Drake not expected to be involved in these little meetings?” Damian asks, perching on the arm of the couch near Steph now, away from his least favorite knight.

“Tim’s busy,” Dick says.

“And Cain?” Damian sneers.

“You might’ve noticed Daddy Dearest isn’t here either, numbnuts,” Jason says, and Damian bares his teeth, crossing his legs more tightly. 

“Master Bruce is attending a meeting with the executives,” Alfred says crisply. “Master Timothy and Miss Cassandra are providing vital reconnaissance.”

“I thought Tim was on a date,” Steph says.

Dick draws a hand across his throat, but the damage is done.

Damian whirls on her. “A date?!”

“A date?” Jason looks genuinely amused. 

“Master Richard,” Alfred growls, and Dick fights the urge to bolt.

“Let’s break for a few minutes, huh?” Dick says, voice a little more high-pitched than he means it to be. Ace barks again and Dick escapes the room before Alfred can strangle him.

Dick’s eyes snag on a line and he stops mid-sentence. 

“Five hundred dollars.”

“Yeah,” Steph says, lacing up her boots over her jeans.

“For?” he asks.

“Candy.”

“You need five hundred dollars for candy?”

“Me and Cass are sharing this year. We need five hundred for candy and dispensary.”

“There is no way you need five hundred dollars for that.”

“Plus my costume!”

“Stephanie, you have a costume.”

“I’m getting a better one.”

Dick looks around. “Do not let me catch you saying that within ten miles of Alfred Pennyworth again.”

“Oh my God,” Steph groans. “Like he’s not totally in on it.”

“Is there going to be a window?” Dick says.

“Boob or butt?”

“Stephanie.”

Steph folds her arms. “Okay, he’s maybe not in on that part.”

“Do you know how painful it is to get mace in your buttcrack?”

“Uh,” Steph says. “Do you?”

“I wore a sequined speedo for six years,” Dick reminds her.

“Blood brothers,” Jason says as he walks down the stairs into the cave. Before Dick can duck out of his way, he scoops an empty water bottle off the console and pelts him in the back of the head with it.

Stephanie doesn’t even seem to notice. “You got mace in your buttcrack?”

“We got mace everywhere,” Jason says, sagely. Dick grabs the water bottle and gets him back, nailing him in the chin and feeling smugly juvenile about it.

Steph stands up and folds her arms. “Kara swears by the boob window.”

“Kara’s bulletproof,” Dick says.

“It’s one night!” says Steph.

“It only takes one,” Jason says with uncomfortable seriousness.

“Wow,” Steph says. “Way to kill my buzz, zomboid.”

Jason shrugs. “What can I say? I like not being the only dead thing in the room.”

“Okay,” Steph says, shaking her head. “Four hundred, then.”

“For candy,” Dick says.

Steph shrugs. “Kids like candy.”

Dick shakes his head and makes a note in the margins. Steph puts her bag over her shoulder and jogs out of the cave with an unmistakable skip in her step, and Dick feels Jason lingering. There’s a towel over his shoulders. His hair’s still wet from the shower, his white streak glistening like liquid quicksilver, but he’s already back in his long-sleeved shirt. Dick resists the urge to ask. He saw Jason’s body…after. And the shirt’s neckline cuts too low, besides. He can see a long, pale sliver of scar tissue peeking out from under his collar.

He doesn’t ask. He knows better than to ask.

He looks up, and finds Jason pointedly looking away, staring at anything Not Him. “You want something in the budget?”

“Do I want any of Dear Old Daddy’s money?” Jason scoffs bitterly. “Nah. I’ll skip asking for my allowance if it’s all the same to you.”

“You could make fliers,” Dick says carefully. “For the Selina thing. Pamphlets, maybe.” Every word feels like cracking an egg over an expensive carpet. He keeps his face as neutral as possible. It’s hard, when his insides appear to be teething.

“Pamphlets,” Jason repeats, looking over at him. That brightness is in his eyes again, that strange, savage beauty.

Dick shrugs carefully. “Whatever you wanted to use it for.”

Jason barks out a sound that might sound like laughter to anyone who didn’t know him. 

“Don’t try to buy me, Dickie,” he snarls, grinning like he just tasted something bad, showing all his teeth. “You can’t afford me for an hour, very less a night.”

Then he stomps upstairs again, and Dick’s left wondering, as always, what exactly he did wrong.

“This is where I say the s-word, Nightwing,” Tim says over the communicator. Dick opens up the video feed from Cass, the windows cascading across the towering screen of the Batcomputer. 

“Yeah, RR.” Dick shakes his head, pushing back from the desk and leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes for a second. “How was your date?”

Tim audibly chokes and Dick sits bolt upright. “Red Robin,” he says, urgently. It’s Tuesday morning, he thinks, mind racing. Too soon, it’s too soon.

“Fine,” Tim coughs. “I’m fine, it’s—”

“Are you okay? Do you need backup?”

“I’m fine,” Tim says. “I choked on my own spit.”

“Gross,” Dick says, but he puts a hand on his chest, feeling his heart thundering along. He’s too on edge. It’s Jason, he thinks. Jason being home is changing everything, making him cagey, ready for a fight at a moment’s notice.

“Yeah, thanks, I lived it. Way grosser on this side, I promise.”

Dick frowns, folding his arms and trying to will himself calm again.

“Um,” Tim says when the silence starts to turn awkward, “the date was fine. Thanks for asking.”

“You know you could’ve told me, right?”

“You’ve got a lot on your mind right now,” Tim says, which is true. “How’s Red Dead Undead Nightmare?”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“So’s he, I bet. …that sounded really wrong, can I rescind that comment immediately. Can you strike that from the record completely.”

“So stricken.”

“How is he?”

“He’s… I don’t know. He’s Jason, RR. I don’t know how to describe it to—”

“Yeah,” Tim says, and Dick doesn’t miss the slight edge of hurt in his voice. “You don’t have to—I get it. History. And stuff.”

Dick grimaces and kicks himself in the shin. “Sorry.”

“Nightwing, it’s fine.”

“It’s not. I don’t mean to make you feel left out. He’s got me all… I don’t know. Right now. There’s a reason we haven’t hung out a lot since he came back.” Dick rests his forearm over his eyes for a second. “We’ve got our own issues. I don’t like seeing what being in this house does to him.”

Tim’s quiet for a moment, and when he speaks again, the edge in his voice isn’t hurt. “He’s dangerous, Nightwing. Like… really. I know you don’t want to hear that, right now. But if he weren’t staying out of Gotham, he’d be on our naughty list, you know that, right?”

“He means well.”

“Lots of bad guys mean well.”

“We need him, RR.” 

“We didn’t need him before.”

Dick pulls his arm away from his eyes and glares up at the ceiling. “Yes. We did.”

Tim’s quiet again. Dick sits up, anger coiling in his stomach.

“Red Robin. That was crossing a line,” Dick says. “Don’t cross it again.”

“Okay,” Tim says. “I get it. Sorry.”

Dick doesn’t think he does get it, and that bothers him. Tim means well too, he reminds himself. Tim’s just a kid, and Damian’s not the only person who gets jealous of all the time Dick was living this life without him.

“Say the s-word,” Dick says, more sharply than he wants to.

“Scarecrow’s on the move,” Tim says. “It’s definitely him. I think you should put Black Bat and I on it full time.”

“Black Bat is going to have her hands full this week. I’ll put a call through to Barbara. I want you to let her lead on this one. She’s better than all of us put together.”

“Yeah,” Tim says. And then, after a second: “Nightwing, I’m sorry. It was just an opinion.”

“It was an uneducated one,” Dick says, his upper lip hitching. “And you know better. Do your research before sharing next time.”

“Okay,” Tim says, which makes Dick feel shitty for getting after him. “I’ll be in touch. Red Robin out.”

Communication cuts out. Dick knows he needs to call Barbara. Instead, he sits in the cave, alone, until the Batmobile rolls in around 4:30.

He jerks up out of a doze, his neck stiff and sore, but Bruce is already there, with a hand on the back of his chair.

“Jason’s here,” Dick says, blearily. 

“I know,” Bruce says. His voice alone is a relief, low like aching thunder. He reaches out and runs a hand back through Dick’s hair. Even through the gloves, Dick can feel the warmth of his skin. He looks up at him and Bruce looks back, clearly trying to read him.

Dick climbs him and kisses him before he can even think not to. He feels drunk, embedded halfway in a dream and halfway out. Bruce seems to sense this, and scoops him up before his legs can give.

“Tim and Babs are on the Scarecrow thing,” Dick murmurs into his mouth.

“I know,” Bruce says, holding him up, and Dick goes the extra mile and clamps his legs around Bruce’s waist, glomming onto him like a koala.

“Really need you to fuck me right now.”

Bruce smiles, and Dick feels it against his lips. Goosebumps prickle along the back of his neck and he kisses him again, hungry and exhausted, empty of everything except his neuroses and wanting to be full of Bruce instead. Bruce’s hand is strong against his back and his tongue is firm; he locks the keyboard and then lays Dick back along it, stroking a hand up his chest.

“I know,” he says, and after that, Dick is lost, wonderfully, beautifully lost, exorcised of himself almost completely.

He blacks out with Bruce inside him and wakes up again in bed beside him. The sun is glaring in through the curtains and Dick hums into his teeth and plants his face in the pillow to block it out. A few minutes later, Alfred comes in to tug them closed and leaves a cold breakfast on the table, all in almost-perfect silence. Dick murmurs incoherently in his direction and Alfred smiles down at him, indulgent and warm, before disappearing again. The house is quiet. Dick squirms into Bruce’s chest, his nose against his neck, and Bruce’s arms encircle him again, squeezing tight.

He hums uneasily.

“I know,” Bruce whispers into his hair.

Dick sighs and falls asleep again, and doesn’t wake up for a while after that.

Someone has pulled the curtains apart, and opened the window – Dick blinks over at his own hand to find it gilded in afternoon sunlight. He huffs and turns his face into the pillow, groggy. He has a sleep hangover, and Bruce’s side of the bed is empty and cool. Dick longs to feel a fading kiss on his forehead, but there’s nothing. Bruce has been gone for at least an hour. Dick does his best to brush off his disappointment, rolling over with a grunt of displeasure. 

He finds himself face-to-face with Selina Kyle and nearly jumps out of his skin.

Selina doesn’t seem to take his surprise too hard; she’s clearly been dozing beside him in Bruce’s stead, though she’s fully dressed and made up, her shoes kicked off at the end of the bed. She yawns and stretches her arms out in front of her, arching her back, her sharp eyeteeth glittering in the light through the window.

“Mm, Boy Wonder,” she says. “That’s not much of a ‘hello’.”

“Did Bruce let you in?”

Selina lifts an eyebrow and smiles slowly. Her lipstick is dark, and it’s stained a corner of the sheets. She glances over at the open window. “What do you think?”

“I think every time you free-climb a building in six inch heels, the whole concept of masculinity seems a little more...I don't know. Trite.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Selina grins.

Dick sits up with a groan, holding his head. He reaches over to the clock and turns it around – 2:30 pm. As late as he would’ve slept if he’d gone on patrol. He looks over at Selina.

“You here for the meeting?”

Selina shrugs, looking well and truly non-committal. Dick’s never mastered telling her coy looks from her actually-dubious ones. “Maybe,” she says. “I got distracted.”

“By me?”

“You looked lonely,” she sighs, stretching out again. “I can’t help it if I have a weakness for pretty boys in distress.”

“Or catnaps.”

Selina rolls back over onto her side, her belly jiggling as she laughs. She props up on one elbow, the angle bringing her breasts together at a mouth-watering angle that Dick does his best to ignore. “Ooh, Boy Wonder, that is criminally punny of you.”

Dick sighs and rubs his face, trying to wake up. When he looks back at her, Selina’s watching him, black nails resting along one of her chubby cheeks. She’s got that eerie brightness in her eyes, the same look he’s seen on Jason, and for a second he can’t help but think of the similarities between them. His stomach squeezes and he swallows his longing again.

“Bruce and I had a little chat while you were out,” Selina says, slowly.

“Great,” Dick says.

“He said you’d been running around like a Robin with your head cut off, lately.”

“Selina,” Dick warns, and stands up, because he doesn’t feel equipped to deal with his part-time-not-so-evil-stepmother today. He feels a cool breeze run between his legs and instantly regrets it. He grabs a throw pillow for modesty, blushing to his toes. When he risks a glance back at Selina, she’s grinning, one of her eyeteeth catching against her thick lower lip. He blushes deeper and grabs another pillow for his backside.

“We’ve got to get you in the holiday spirit, Boy Wonder.”

“The holiday spirit is ‘mayhem and panic,’ Selina. Trust me. I’m in a downright festive mood.”

Selina draws her finger in slow circles in the rumpled sheets as Dick scoops the clothes Alfred left for him off the chair and scoots in the bathroom. He loses the back throw pillow along the way and tries not to faint from embarrassment.

“You and I don’t need to be enemies, y’know.”

“We’re not,” Dick says. He snatches a moist towelette off the counter and cleans hurriedly between his thighs. “We also don’t need to get…familial just because of Bruce’s whole…arrangement.”

Selina hums and Dick feels a little thrill go up his spine. He really wishes her voice weren’t so nice. “Lots of careful word choice in there.”

Dick swallows again and pulls his boxer briefs over his hips. “We’re not enemies,” he repeats, not sure which of them he’s talking to anymore. 

When he comes out of the bathroom, Selina’s still lying there, watching him. She looks like an hourglass lain on its side, her side pinched slightly inward at the waist, the curve of her large hips like a mathematical miracle. Her posture is easy, languid, predatorily graceful, and it calls something out of a part of his mind that he condemned years ago. He scowls and tugs his shirt down over his stomach with more force.

“Are we having a talk?” he asks. “Is that what’s happening?”

“You just seem uncomfortable,” Selina says, her tone serious.

“I’m good at being uncomfortable,” Dick says, his whole body feeling cold. “Are you going to seduce me?”

“No,” Selina says. “You’ve never expressed any interest, and I respect that.”

Dick doesn’t move. He realizes he’s immobilized, standing beneath the archway of the entrance to the master bathroom. Selina watches him for a while, then pushes up from the bed. Dick looks down at her feet – they’re dainty, every toe seeming shaped with immaculate care, easily the smallest part of her. She pads over, but keeps her hands where he can see them, holds herself at an appropriate distance.

“Richard,” she says, and he hates when she uses his first name like that. It always feels like she’s invoking some kind of black magic. “We’re not enemies. I’m not going to touch you. You don’t want to rely on me, that’s fine. You’re a big boy, now. No matter how Batman feels about it, you’re old enough to make your own choices.”

She reaches into her pocket and lifts a slim, baby pink card with a glossy black cat embossed on the back. She holds it out to him between two fingers, and he takes it, the cogs of his body beginning to unlock.

“If you want me to cut Catalina Flores’ hands off, I can do that too,” she says, just as pleasantly.

“Could you just stop sleeping with my boss?” Dick asks, looking down at the card.

Selina tilts her head. “Could you?”

Dick purses his lips, knowing the answer.

“You don’t have to be a part of this if you aren’t comfortable with it,” Selina says, serious again, and he doesn’t know what to do with that. He feels fundamentally incompatible with her gentleness. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Dick shakes his head, running his thumb along the edge of the glossy cardstock. “He’s healthier this way,” he says. “Happier. I’d rather have a piece of him than none at all.”

“You’re always going to have a piece of him, Boy Wonder.” Selina puts a hand on the dresser for balance and puts on her shoes. “Bruce gives away his heart and never takes it back. You know that. It’s his worst habit.” She peers at him, a few inches taller in platform pumps. “You’ll have a piece of him. It just might not be the piece you want.”

“How the hell did you climb in those?” Dick asks, because he can’t go any longer not knowing.

“A lady never tells,” Selina says, smiling with all her teeth.

Stepping into a room that peacefully houses Jim Gordon, Jason Todd, Selina Kyle, and Helena Bertinelli is a practice in absurdity. Dick has to quickly check the clock on the wall to make sure he hasn’t just stepped into an Escher painting. 

Everyone in the room has claimed a small territory for their own, their costumes like banners of allegiance. Selina lounges on the couch, pointedly alone. Steph and Cass lean against the arm of the couch, clearly more within Selina’s realm of protection than out of it; Steph is gesticulating wildly, clearly articulating her side of an argument. Jason is at the window, staring out over the grounds with Damian, surprisingly, at his side. Kate Kane is in the corner, ostensibly people watching. Dinah Lance, Tatsu Yamashiro, and Helena Bertinelli stand in a cluster, each looking more slightly rankled than the last no matter what order you view them in. Barbara, Tim, and Alfred stand over the table, surveying the map. Tim reaches for a pin and Barbara slaps his wrist. Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock stand slightly abreast of the gathering, looking distinctly out of place.

As Dick walks in, the chatter dies off almost immediately. He clears his throat a little, feeling himself get into character almost by accident.

“Folks,” he says, with a grin that’s pure Haly.

“Nightwing,” Jim says. “I didn’t realize you’d be coming.”

“It’s a long trip from ‘Haven, Commissioner,” Dick says, smiling around the lie. “And my feathers haven’t exactly come in yet. Looks like everybody’s here.”

“Minus the guest of honor,” Helena grumps.

 “Yeah, where is old Beetlejuice anyway?” Harvey looks as grumpy as Helena, if not moreso, and has clearly refused to take his hat off in the house. “What’re we doing in the House That Time Forgot?”

Alfred gives Harvey a look like he’s trash that someone forgot to take out.

“Mr. Wayne has kindly lent us the use of his home in order to establish a neutral staging area for all of us to meet and prepare in,” Dick says, folding his arms. “And Batman is preparing for what’s to come. There’s no reason for him to be here.” 

Jim Gordon cuts in before Harvey can come back at him. “He’ll be heading off Joker, I expect.”

“The hope is that he also punches, kicks, and arrests Joker at some point,” Dick says. “But yeah, that’s about right. I’ll be taking the lead in his stead, if you don’t mind.” 

No one seems to, and so he strides to the table with a confidence not his own, feeling like he’s leaning heavily on the unnatural warmth of his own stage personality. He can’t help it, right now - he needs to be Nightwing. He needs to be confident and charismatic and not yet another person in the room loudly wishing that Bruce were here.

He takes his place at the head of the table and the group cinches closer in around him, like beads on a drawstring.

“This year,” he says, “we’ll be dividing the city up into zones, and patrolling those zones in teams.”

“What’re expectations for turn out?” Dinah asks. 

“Bigger than last year – lower petty crime turn out, but they’re not our main concern. Scarecrow’s still at large, this time around, and Calendar Man’s caseworker doesn’t seem to know where he is, which means he’s almost definitely off his psychotics. We’re going to need to take the proper precautions, which means anti-toxin for everyone before we head out, and a few vials apiece on our person.”

Harvey huffs loudly. “Plannin’ to let the cops in on that one?”

“We’ll be setting up vaccination clinics throughout the city. One at GCPD Headquarters, one at Wayne Tower Plaza, and one at North City Park.”

Kate cuts in. “Who’ll be manning the clinics?”

“Wayne Enterprise security agents together with what officers the Commissioner can spare.”

Harvey scoffs. “Who’s bright idea was this?”

Barbara folds her arms slowly, and Tim – by her side – looks up at her with unmistakable awe. “Mine,” she says, boldly, and Harvey immediately looks down and swipes his hat off his head, like a kid getting scolded.

“Those clinics are going to be our outposts,” Barbara continues. “The best way to track Scarecrow is very likely to manifest in the way we want it to least: people coming into contact with Fear Toxin and running around causing mayhem. Our best bet is to be prepared, and expect to get lucky. Crane can’t resist a good set-up.”

“Batgirl and Red Robin have been doing the legwork on Crane,” Dick says, “so they’ll be placed at opposite ends of the city in order to cover our bases. As soon as we spot Crane, they’ll leave their designated zones to pursue.”

“Commissioner,” says Kate. “Have we had any luck closing down the freeways and the ports?”

“They’ll agree to a curfew,” Jim says. “But nothing longer than 8 hours.” 

Dick nods. “We’ll have to make that work.” He spreads his hands on the map and begins pointing. “Alright. Black Canary, Katana, Huntress – we’d like to split the Birds of Prey between Arkham and Blackgate, with police back-up. Think that’ll be a problem?”

“Not for us,” Dinah says with a wicked grin.

“Batwoman; we’ll be putting you in Granton. That means you’ve got the Stadium, North City Park, and Endsbury.”

Kate nods. “Fine.”

“Red Robin; we want you in Uptown, between Lemmars and Yeavely Park.”

“Roger that,” says Tim.

“Robin,” he says, and boy is that confusing with all five of them in the room like this. “You and I are gonna take all of Midtown.”

Damian sneers and folds his arms self-importantly. “Obviously,” he says.

“Any expectation of Ivy throwing down at the Botanical Gardens?” Tim asks.

“Thankfully, no,” Dinah says, “Gourds aren’t her thing.”

“Spoiler,” Dick says to Stephanie. “We’re giving you the City Hall District. Batgirl, you’re covering South Hinkley to Haysville.

“Red Hood,” he says, and he sees Jason shift. “That puts you in Crime Alley, with Black Bat and Batman in Amusement Mile.”

“What about Catwoman,” Cass asks.

“Catwoman’ll be doing a full-city circuit,” Dick says. Selina nods at him from across the table. “Her station’s specialized – if she comes into your zone and doesn’t offer support, assume that whatever she’s busy with takes priority.”

“That doesn’t sound particularly fair,” Helena says.

“Then you’ll just have to trust me that it is,” Dick frowns. “Anybody else have something they’d like to add?”

“It’s a wide net,” Jim says, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment, the way he says it – he sounds grave and uneasy.

“It’s what we’ve got,” Dick reminds him, “and calling in favors from carpetbaggers hasn’t served us very well in the past. If we can close down outlets in and out of the city, we should be able to contain it.”

“We’ve survived this long,” says Dinah, which could be uplifting except for the way Jason clears his throat. Unease passes over Dick like a pall.

“Yeah,” he says, putting his hands on his hips and refusing to make eye contact with anyone. “We’ll be fine.”

Harvey gives him a dubious look from across the table. Dick coughs into his hand and touches the back of his neck.

“I mean… Probably.”

Alfred comes around with refreshments as people filter out of the manor, conversing once again among themselves. Jason takes his helmet off before its even really safe to do so, eyes sharp and sunken in with bad temper and lack of sleep. He pads over to Dick and stands there, awkwardly, until he finally disengages with Barbara and Tim and gives Jason his full attention. 

“You gave me Crime Alley,” Jason says, not making eye contact.

“You called dibs,” Dick says. “I don’t know if I had much of a choice.”

“Whatever,” Jason says, still not looking at him. Dick wrinkles his nose and folds his arms.

“Is ‘whatever’ Jason-ese for ‘thank you’?”

“I dunno. Yeah. Sort of.”

“Have you slept?” Dick finds himself asking, even though he knows he really, really shouldn’t.

The effect is immediate – Jason’s whole body goes rigid and his face goes tight, getting hard and mean. He turns to glare at Dick with an unnerving intensity.

“What’s it to you?” he says, with an unnatural amount of suspicion.

“You need sleep, Jason. We all do.”

“Fuck off, you’re not my dad.”

Dick stares at him, trying not call any attention to just how ridiculous Jason’s being, because that promises to exacerbate the problem. He tightens his lips.

“Look, if you’re uncomfortable in your old room—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“—you can just sleep in mine.”

“Why, you lookin’ to make sure that bed sees some use now that you’ve set up shop on Bruce’s cock?”

Dick doesn’t hit him, but it’s only because he clearly doesn’t need to. He nearly does – nearly. Jason’s words are like brass knuckles slicing into his cheek, and the resulting outrage and coupling shame is visceral. Physical. The urge to retaliate is so bred into him that he barely resists.

But as soon as the words are out of Jason’s mouth, guilt flashes over his face like lightning, and he stops being able to look Dick in the eyes again.

“What is wrong with you?” Dick asks, his voice choked and quiet, his fists shaking at his side.

Instead of getting offended, Jason just looks broken and lost, his eyes wide open and empty. He shakes his head, like he asks himself that same question all the time.

“I swear to God, I don’t know,” he says, and then he walks past Dick into the hall, and disappears into the shadowy, twisting bowels of the house.

“What the hell did you do to Todd?" 

Dick pushes himself into upward dog, sweat dripping off his chin and onto the mat, glaring at Tim as he comes down the stairs. “What did I do to Todd?”

Tim lifts his hands in surrender. “Whoa, hey. I come in peace, Dick. Seriously. 

“What did I do to Todd?”

“Are you gonna yell at me again? It’s feels like you’re gonna yell at me again.”

Dick grits his teeth and curls back into child’s pose to get time to think. Tim comes over and waits at the edge of the mat with his shoes off and his arms folded. When Dick finally unfolds and looks up at him, he looks cagey, like it took everything he had to come down here and Dick’s already made him regret it. Dick sighs and stands up, grabbing him by the wrist and tugging him onto the mat.

“C’mon. Spar with me.”

Tim frowns, still looking worried, but shrugs off his hoodie and tosses it into the corner. He snatches the medical tape out of the air as Dick passes it over, and starts wrapping his knuckles in that clean, efficient way of his. Dick flexes his shoulders and shakes himself loose, taking calming breaths.

Tim finishes wrapping and rolls the tape across the mat to his hoodie, stepping forward and taking stance. Dick drops into his own, and they circle one another slowly.

“Loosen your knees a little,” Dick says. “Check the balls of your feet, make sure you’re getting enough elasticity through your legs. I wasn’t yelling at you.”

Tim snorts and bounces a little on the balls of his feet, still shockingly obedient after three years on the job. “Sounded like yelling.” 

“It wasn’t yelling. It was like…the opposite of yelling. Like…not yelling. Nelling. I was nelling at you.”

“I think ‘knelling’ is actually a real word,” Tim says. “And I don’t think it fits the situation that well.”

“Two minutes. Fists up.”

Tim shifts back and forth in his hips, flexing his feet, and then jabs. Dick blocks him. Tim jabs again – Dick blocks – crosses with his left – blocked – jabs. Dick catches his wrist and pulls just slightly, letting Tim’s momentum carry him past. Tim rolls and is back on his feet in a second, back in stance. They circle, slow.

“I want you to let go on the Jason thing,” Dick says.

“He’s here,” Tim says, shaking his head a little. “What do you want me to do, ignore him?”

“I want you to act like you don’t know him yet. I want you to cut him some slack.”

Tim jabs, putting too much force behind it, and Dick catches his wrist again, this time in both hands, and steps back quick; he releases with one hand, cups the back of Tim’s elbow, takes another step back. Tim’s feet fly up and he faceplants as Dick puts him down into the mat, holding his arm straight up with one hand at the shoulder, his other still at the wrist, taking his pulse. After a moment of studying his breathing, Dick releases him, gently, taking a few steps back around him.

“This is ‘nelling’?” Tim says into the mat.

“No. This is me gently kicking your ass. For…anger management reasons.”

“Cool,” Tim says, clearly not very cool with it at all. He pushes up on his arms and catching his legs under him, vaulting upright like a spring. He turns to Dick and tips his neck one way then the other.

He jabs – Dick blocks. He crosses – Dick blocks – then he hooks with his right, and Dick ducks and dodges.

“Use your legs more,” Dick says, pulling his chin just out of reach of an uppercut.

Tim swipes forward with his knee and Dick blocks with his own.

“I don’t get it,” Tim says, jabbing, getting blocked, then jabbing with his other hand. “Are you mad at him, or are you mad at me?”

Dick blocks, then jabs. Tim ducks in, blocking, guarding his head. Dick lunges with a roundhouse kick to his stomach and Tim barely dodges back in time, leaving his hands up. “Guard your body and your head,” Dick says. “I’m mad at both of you. You’ve got no business being mad at anybody.”

“You’re mad at him!” Tim catches Dick’s foot on the next kick, throwing his leg back down, jumping forward to make Dick jump back. “That’s all the reason I should need. We’re family, Dick, that’s how family works.”

He kicks front, once, twice – Dick blocks, and weaves to the side. Tim comes to the side with a roundhouse. Dick blocks with his leg, then returns with his own roundhouse. Tim blocks with forearms, taking it with a grunt that lets Dick know there was too much force behind it. Dick paces back, giving him space.

“Jason’s family too,” he says.

Tim comes forward, jabbing. Dick catches his fist, but not his leg – it’s a good fake-out – and takes the impact as it connects with his side. Pain reverberates through his torso, and he throws Tim’s hand away and hooks right. Tim ducks, comes in with a right roundhouse, but Dick’s faster this time – he plants a foot beneath his solar plexus and shoves back with a push kick, taking him off balance. Tim throws his hands wide to keep standing, the breath going out of him in an audible whoosh.

“That’s time,” Dick says, nursing his bruise. “Take a breather.”

Two miles on the treadmills, twenty suicide drills, and three reps of fifty on the weight circuit, and Tim’s black bangs are sticking to his face as he guzzles his water. Dick is on the uneven bars, feeling alive again, blood warm and skin slick with sweat. He does reps, slowly, moving from pike to tight arch without casting – pike, legs straight out in front of him, curled forward – tight arch, pulling them straight back behind him, core tight. The bar presses into his stomach and his hands, into his thighs when he curls forward. This is home, he thinks. This is his place of sanctity. He can feel his heart beating in his forehead and his palms. He’s more aware of his own steady breathing than any other sound.

“I swear,” Tim says, “you are the only person I know who does that with a smile on your face.” 

He is smiling, he realizes, softly and to himself, and when Tim makes him aware of it, he feels it spread into a grin, so wide it pinches his cheeks. He casts, feeling the thrill of momentary weightlessness, letting it fill his whole body.

Tim watches him from the mat, his brows drawn down but his face soft with either amazement or affection. Dick casts again, wondering if it's a mix of both, feeling flooding with endorphins, warm tingling that spreads from his chest to his stomach.

“Feeling better?” Tim asks.

Dick casts and releases his shoulders, swinging down, then up in a handstand drill, then down, in pike, pulling his feet straight to keep momentum, and up in a handstand drill again. He flies, then falls. Then flies. Then falls. His stomach follows in a giddy circle, palms burning from friction. Flying. Then falling. Then flying. Then falling.

He spreads his legs, then candlesticks at the top of his arc, slowing, then twirling, one hand off the bar for one thrilling moment, then back again. He catches his momentum at the top of his arc and swings back, changing direction. He kips up and stops at the top of the bar, perched forward against his shoulders.

“Yep,” he says, feeling – for the first time in days – like he could laugh.

He swings down, landing on both feet, clapping his hands to redistribute his powder. His arms and chest burn pleasantly, his palms hot, his core still tight, muscles thick with coursing energy. Tim tosses him a water bottle, which he catches. He walks off the mat and sits down next to him, uncapping the bottle and taking a deep swig. He sighs, refreshed, and leans back against the mirror.

“Being in this house does things to you,” he says, finally, as the buzz is beginning to die down. He flexes his fingers. The tape feels sticky in some places – it’s peeling in others. He can feel the tension of it against his knuckles, pulling at his skin. “You’re not really old enough to know what I’m talking about yet. But you will. There’s gonna come a time when you’ll...outgrow Red Robin. Where you’re gonna want to shed that skin and move on from it. Or where you’ll have to. And when you do, it’ll mean taking big steps away from this place and not looking back, whether you’re doing it because you want to, or not.”

He takes another swig of water, studying the stalactites overhead. “And then, when you come back here, it’s gonna be different. Being in this house… It’ll put you back in a place you didn’t wanna be. It’ll make you a person you didn’t wanna be. It’ll mess you up.”

Tim’s looking at him, elbows propped on his knees. “So why come back at all?”

Dick sighs and shakes his head. He can feel sweat cooling along his shoulders and the back of his neck. “Because this is where you grew up. This is where your family is.”

Tim’s quiet for a moment, seeming to mull this over. “Are we talking about Jason, or are we talking about you?”

“Both,” Dick says, realizing it’s true. “We’re talking about both.”

--

Dick and Tim shower together, and then Tim gets a call from Barbara and heads out to join her. Dick watches the sun set from the cave, studying the soft purple of the twilight, and fields a few calls from Bruce and Cass. He does a few hours of research before Alfred finds him and urges him upstairs. Dick lets him, mostly because he can’t deal with another night like last night without any patrol to break up the monotony. He wasn’t meant for the sidelines. It’s obvious from the itch in his throat.

He climbs the stairs, pleasantly sore from his workout, and finds Ace in the living room, pacing. He sits down on the couch and clicks his tongue, calling her over to scratch her ears. She whines and fidgets when he stops, so he keeps going, massaging her head, patting her side when she lies down on the floor next to him. He looks over at the map, still in the center of the room – from this angle, it looks like a chessboard made up of very thin, garishly colored pawns.

It’s only the sound of someone knocking something off an end table in the other room that alerts him to the fact that he should be expecting company.

“Shit,” Jason hisses, fumbling for whatever it is. There’s no crash so he must catch it before it hits the floor – Dick sighs, refusing to look over.

“You have to be more aware of your surroundings when you’re sneaking.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jason says without venom, surprising Dick by coming into the room anyway. “Nobody asked you.”

Dick glances at the red, ceramic vessel in Jason’s hands, unable to keep the critical look off his face. “The vase did, maybe.”

Jason growls with annoyance and sets it down on the coffee table. Ace lifts her head to sniff it. Dick looks it over – there’s water sliding down the left side of the glass.

“Was there something in that?”

“I dunno,” Jason says, obstinately, and Dick fights the urge to roll his eyes.

“Jason, what do you want?”

Jason folds his arms and looks away from him, exhaling hard through his nose. He looks tired, Dick observes. Tired and worn down, like a used sand belt. He seems determined to make his large body smaller, shrinking down into his chest, his huge shoulders rising towards his ears.

“Nothing.” He purses his lips, eyes running over the lines of the carpet. “…I’m sorry. About earlier.”

“You’re sorry.”

“Wh, yes.” Jason looks up at him, scowling. Dick watches him blink off his automatic anger and swallow, like it hurts to maintain eye contact. Shame is radiating off his body so thickly Dick can almost see it warping the air around him, shivering like hot air in summer. “Yes,” Jason says again. “I’m sorry. 

“Why?” Dick asks.

“We’re gonna do it this way?”

“Yeah,” Dick says. “We are.”

Jason exhales sharp again, shaking his head slowly. He swallows a second time. Looks down. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. I said it because I wanted to hurt you.”

“You did,” Dick says, and Jason winces and turns his head.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

Dick takes a second to breathe, watching Jason stand very still, like he’s expecting punishment in a tangible form – that’s just like him, Dick thinks. Jason likes things to be physically quantifiable. He’d like lashes he can count.

“What you said to me was…” He closes his mouth, because he kind of wants to yell. He’s not going to, he reminds himself. He’s not going to, even if talking about it is making worse, opening it up again, turning the bruise from brown to black. “You don’t get to talk to me like that.”

Jason shifts, nostrils flaring. “I know.” His mouth shifts around words he hasn’t said yet. “I don’t shame people for that shit. You’re a big boy, you can do what you want.” He folds his arms tighter. “It’s none of my business.”

Dick watches him for a moment – he looks wrong, all grown up and in this house. Maybe it’s his size; the fact that he looks like no house should be able to comfortably hold him. Maybe it’s the fact that all his clothes are a little too tight, like he’s never figured out that he’s no longer kid sized. Maybe it’s the fact that in life, he dwarfs his own ghost; that it’s so clear that the manor stopped being his home years ago, without him wanting it to.

“Okay,” Dick says, because someone ought to forgive Jason for still being a kid, for never having gotten the opportunity to grow up in a normal way, and it might as well be him. 

“Whad’you mean ‘okay’?”

“I mean, okay. Okay, you’re sorry.”

Jason looks back at him, a mixture of disbelief and anger twisting across his face. “What’re you doing?”

“You apologized. I’m accepting your apology.”

“Yeah, don’t do that.” Jason shakes his head, nose wrinkled, incredulous. “It’s weird.”

“I’m doing it anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because you crossed a line but you clearly feel bad about it.” It’s Dick’s turn to fold his arms over his chest. Ace lifts her head and whines for the lack of attention. He ignores her, though he sees Jason’s eyes dart over. “And because you’re my family and I love you, and I don’t want you to think that you’re going to scare me off by being an asshole. Because you’re not. …going to scare me off, that is, you are being an asshole, like…a hundred percent.”

“Fuck off,” Jason says, but he says it like he just doesn’t really know what else to say. Dick wonders how much of the time that’s true.

He keeps quiet for a minute, shifting. Ace puts her head on the couch cushions, whining.

“Why’d you give me Crime Alley?” Jason asks.

Dick sighs and starts rubbing Ace’s head again. “You wanted it. You know the area.”

“We all know the area.”

“You know it better. It used to be your home. And you know the girls there. The kids.” Dick pauses, looking up to see if Jason gets his meaning, but its clear from his face that he does; he looks like a turtle aching to pull back into his shell. “They trust you. I think you have a better chance of keeping them safe.”

Jason’s face is tight with private misery; a deep-seated, protective anger that Dick wants not to understand and wants even less to admire. (He can’t help himself, in the end. Jason’s inalienable protective instincts are one of the things he’s always loved about him most. Death might’ve taken a lot from Jason, but it hasn’t taken the most important things. Dick wonders if he realizes that.)

“…we get a lot of assaults down that way?” Jason asks.

“Yeah,” Dick says, and his throat feels thick saying it. “It’s been bad the past few years.” He looks down, trying to focus on Ace, on the softness of her fur and the heat of her body, her obvious contentment. “There’s a reason we put Selina on it full-time.”

Jason nods but doesn’t say anything. He looks as if he’s standing overlooking a warzone, preparing to jump down into the trenches himself.

“I wasn’t kidding about the pamphlets,” Dick says. “We need a way to get the word out. An…emergency hotline of some kind. People need to know that we’ll protect them if we can. But the net’s too wide to expect to find them all on our own.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, and he has that bright look in his eyes again. Dick purses his lips.

“Have you slept yet?”

Jason scoffs. “What’s it look like?”

“I want you to sleep. If you can’t sleep here, we’ll get you a hotel.”

Jason shakes his head a little, looking disgusted with him. “You ever get tired of being a busybody?”

“Yeah,” Dick says, annoyed. “I do. You go out of your way to make it exhausting.”

Jason draws his mouth into a thin line and looks away again. Dick can’t decide if he looks more angry or guilty.

“I need you in peak condition on Friday. And your body needs rest.”

Jason’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t say anything. Dick sighs slow, trying to figure out how to have this conversation on his own.

And then, an idea occurs to him – an idea he absolutely hates himself for having.

“If you can’t sleep in your room, and you don’t want to sleep in my room…” He almost doesn’t say it. He doesn’t want to say it. He runs through a thousand reasons not to – it’s too obvious, Jason will never go for it, Jason’s his younger brother, Dick doesn’t want to share anymore than he already is – but Jason’s already looking at him and he feels too compelled to finish his thought. “…Bruce’s room is as open to you as it is to me.”

Jason stares at him for a second. Dick feels his ears tingling with embarrassment.

“What the fuck are you saying.”

Dick swallows again. “I know you used to sleep in there when you were younger.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, slowly. “Because sleeping is what we’re talking about.”

Dick switches tactics, because he’s right – playing dumb isn’t the way to go about this. “Jason, I’m not blind.”

It’s Jason’s turn to flush this time, red like roses blooming under his brown cheeks, spreading up to his ears and down the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, you’re something,” he says, showing his teeth.

It’s hard not to bite his lip, to try to hold the words back by force – they come spilling out of him so matter-of-fact, even with panic twisting like a snake inside his mouth. “What Bruce and I have isn’t exclusive. If it would help…you two should have a conversation.”

“Are you pimping out your boyfriend to me?”

“He sort of pimps himself, to be honest.” Wow, that sounded a little bitterer than he meant it to be. “He’s not cheating,” he clarifies quickly, because it’s clear from the look on Jason’s face that he’s coming to the wrong conclusions. “There’s…an arrangement. In place. That’s all.”

Jason lets out a bark of mean laughter. “What, like a…squad of Bruce diddlers? The Incestuous League of Batbutt Enthusiasts?”

“Yes.”

Jason laughs aloud and then stops short.

“Are you serious?”

“Do I sound not serious to you?”

“And you’re okay with that?”

The shift from laughter to outrage is so abrupt that it feels like whiplash. Dick blinks, not really sure how to respond. He shakes his head, trying to be someone else.

“It’s good for him.”

“What the fuck do I care what’s good for him?!” Jason snaps, hands down at his sides in an instant. He looks like he’s ready to hunt Bruce down and strangle him, which Dick has strangely conflicted feelings about. “What about you, what do you get out of it?”

Dick doesn’t really know the answer to that question. He knows the few things he can’t say: he gets to kiss Bruce when he wants to, touch Bruce when he wants to; he gets a say over what goes on in Bruce’s life; he gets to see Bruce happy, really happy; he gets to love Bruce without being crushed under the immense pressure of being the only person loved by him; he gets to maybe see Bruce live to old age.

But those things are intangible. Unquantifiable.

“I get a piece,” he says, because that’s the only thing he can say.

“How the hell is that enough for you?” Jason asks, eyes narrow, and it’s so strange to have those protective instincts turned on him, instead of watching them be turned on someone else. Jason – Jason Peter Todd, his little brother, who used to be small enough to piggy back if he sprained his ankle, who came back from the dead so angry that he’s toxic even to himself – is looking at him like he wants to pick him up and carry him away from here, and it’s making Dick’s stomach twist up like a balloon animal.

“I don’t know,” Dick says, because he’s not sure it is enough.

Jason stands there in front of him, staring, wrists shaking a little from how tight he’s clenching his fists. And then, like a tropical storm moving inland, he crosses the floor and catches Dick’s face between his hands and kisses him, hard.

His lips are warm and firm, and Dick can feel him breathing. His hands cup Dick’s head with an unforeseen gentleness. He cradles him. He kisses him once, draws back once to exhale, then kisses him again. Hard and quick, but warm. Dry. On purpose. He does it twice as if to confirm that he meant to do it.

He pulls back slow. Dick hasn’t figured out whether he wants him to or not.

“If Bruce wants me, he can tell me himself,” Jason murmurs, and at only arm’s length Dick can almost taste the words.

“Jason,” he says. It comes out like a whisper.

Jason pulls back a little more, taking his hands back without drawing them possessively over Dick’s body. He hasn’t broken eye contact yet – he watches Dick’s face like it’s all that matters.

“I’ll be in your room,” Jason says. “You can come if you want.”

Dick opens his mouth to say something. Jason paces back, shaking his head.

“Do whatever you want,” he says, dismissively. “Whatever feels right. You’re not gonna hurt my feelings.”

Dick knows that isn’t true – Jason’s pride is tender and easily wounded – but he doesn’t say so. Jason backs out of the room with his face composed and his posture loose, seeming both sober and finally at ease. Dick lingers on the couch, staring after him, hand resting, motionless, on Ace’s head.

The kiss feels like a rock that’s been dropped in his pocket.

After a few moments – or perhaps much longer – he stands up on legs that don’t feel quite like his own, and follows him. Ace whines, then barks, but Dick doesn’t turn his head. Every step forward feels like he’s entering deeper and deeper into a dream – sliding headfirst down a rabbit hole, yet to reach terminal velocity.

He keeps walking, anyway.

“You’re going as Batgirl.” 

Steph spins around and does a little pirouette, modeling it for him. Seeing her in Barbara’s colors is deeply, deeply strange, and Dick can’t help the alarm and discombobulation that comes over him. Barbara’s grinning over at her, dressed in Steph’s eggplant purple.

“Hot, huh?” Steph grins.

His thoughts must show on his face because she exchanges the grin for a frown in an instant.  She puts her hands on her hips. “What? You didn’t think I was really serious about the boob window, did you? I mean, come on Dick, I’m not stupid. If I want the Joker sizing up my funbags I’ll get one of those whipped-cream bras, like Katy Perry has.”

Dick grimaces, trying desperately not to picture it. “That is…the most disturbing thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Aw!” Steph coos, pressing her hands to her chest in mock adulation. “That’s sweet.”

Dick sits down, because he needs to – he feels a killer headache coming on. He gestures loosely between them. “You don’t think this might get a little confusing?”

“What, you worried you’ll try to snog me instead of Barbara in between Robin kidnappings?”

Dick’s killer headache is named Stephanie Brown. He puts his face in his hands.

“That reminds me, actually,” says Barbara. “I brought you a gift.”

Dick groans. “Is it Excedrin?”

“Better.” Barbara pauses. “Hopefully. Do you not have Excedrin in the house?”

“Medicine cabinet’s locked,” he says.

“Because of Jason?” Barbara looks dubious. “That’s kind of rude. I don’t think he’s much of a risk for prescription drug abuse.”

“Because of Damian,” Dick says. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a long story I’m trying to purge the memory.”

“Do prescription drugs even work on Jason now?” Steph asks.

Dick groans louder. “I don’t know. Can your gift be to not ask me anything more about Jason?”

Steph snorts and puts her hands on her hips. “What is this, Secret Santa?”

Barbara opens her backpack and takes out a small, featureless black box. She walks over with it, and peels one of Dick’s hands from his face, placing it in his open palm. Dick glances up – even that feels exhausting, like the muscles of his eyes have strained in the night – and then looks down. The box has a matte finish, but is otherwise completely ordinary. He can barely see the seam to open it.

Inside, there’s a single black band of metal. It glistens in the light as he peers at it. When he reaches in to pick it up, blue cybernetics alight under his fingertips, pulsing as soon as he makes physical contact. He lifts it, turning it over.

“Uh, Babs… not to be rude, but…”

“It’s a tracker.”

Dick looks over at her. “Like a…‘you guys’ tracker?”

Barbara smiles coyly, like she’s got something up her sleeve. She lifts her arm, and he sees her own bracelet – the same black metal, pulsing bright gold when she touches it. She presses the center of it. Dick’s bracelet pings, and he looks down: “Batgirl,” the read-out says, bright and large enough to read clearly, even at a distance.

He glances over at Steph, who splits a devilish grin and holds up her own arm. Her bracelet glows violet as she pokes it; his bracelet pings again. “Spoiler,” it reads.

“Babs, this is incredible. You made one for all of us?” he asks.

“Sure did,” Barbara says, grinning at last. “I figured it’d fix a lot of problems… Plus, I got to fool around with some new Wayne Tech before Bruce got his hands on it.”

“Not too shabby, huh?” Steph says, walking over. There’s a little swagger in her step, like she takes deep-seated personal pride in Barbara’s success. “This way, Demonspawn might even make it home in one piece.”

“I could seriously kiss both of you. I mean it.”

Steph laughs and elbows Barbara in the ribs. “Score one for Not-So-Secret Santa.”

No one notices. He’s in a house full of detectives, a city full of metahumans, and no one so much as mentions it all through Wednesday. He spends all day waiting for the other shoe to drop, and strategically shifting his collar to cover to dark bruise on the left side of his throat. Jason eats breakfast with him in silence before the sun’s up and then disappears from the house entirely – going where, Dick has no idea. Bruce is gone before he’s awake, already neck-deep in his Joker hunt, trying to flush out every haunt in Amusement Mile to narrow the patrol area on Halloween night. It’s strange to think of Batman roaming during daylight hours, but this is the one week a year that people allow for the possibility. Even the weather seems to abide: the storm clouds overhead are so dark that at 2pm it feels like twilight. 

After distribution of the bracelets, Cass offers to take Bruce his, and disappears after him with an ice pack in her hood to fight off the smothering humidity. Steph and Tim collaborate quickly on homework – they’re both taking the week off from school, but Alfred won’t hear of them not doing it. Barbara commandeers the Batcomputer, running algorithms and doing research, synthesizing Fear Anti-toxin and using her civilian identity to begin organizing the police department.

Damian demands Dick’s attention around lunch, just as he’s beginning to realize how little there is for him to do.

“Grayson,” Damian proclaims loudly as he walks into the kitchen. “Spar with me.”

Dick swallows his mouthful of brown rice and salmon, trying not to look evasive. “I’m eating.”

Damian scowls and puts his hands on his hips. “Obviously. I mean after.”

“Perhaps you ought to sample the experience for yourself, Master Damian,” Alfred says, placing another bowl at the empty stool and giving Damian a pointed look.

Damian makes an exasperated noise and mounts the stool in a single motion. He scowls down at his food. “Pennyworth, there’s far too much broccoli in this. You know I hate broccoli.”

“All the better to expand your palette, Master Damian,” Alfred replies, scooping an extra sprig out of the pan and placing it on top of Damian’s beans and rice like a defiant little tree. “You’ve been criminally deficient in greens lately.”

Damian grumbles, pushing the broccoli around with his fork, but he knows better now than to push back. Dick steals another floret out of the pan and pops it in his mouth before Alfred can stop him.

“Eat,” he says, nudging Damian’s arm.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Damian says, archly, but he eats anyway, as if saying Dick’s not the boss of him makes it his idea in the first place.

They eat in companionable silence for a while, their chewing the only sound as Alfred packages the leftovers and then begins doing the dishes in the sink. Damian swings his feet, toes thunking against the underside of the island, and piles his broccoli off the side, pushing through his rice and black beans to find every last morsel of tempeh.

“Y’know,” Dick says, “you’re supposed to save the good stuff for last.”

Damian combs through his food, pushing it around his bowl. “What’s the point of that?”

“So you feel rewarded for all your hard work in the end. You eat all your broccoli, so then you get to eat all your tempeh.”

“Why not just eat all the tempeh and none of the broccoli?”

“Because if you’d ever like to leave this kitchen, I assure you that is not an option,” Alfred says from the sink.

Damian sticks his tongue out at the back of Alfred’s head. Dick tries to disguise his laughter as a cough. Damian ducks his head just in time to avoid Alfred’s icy stare, stuffing a floret into his mouth.

“Babs got you your bracelet,” Dick observes, nodding to his wrist.

Damian wipes his hand on the napkin he hasn’t put in his lap and taps the surface of the metal. It lights up in red, yellow, and green. Dick’s chimes – “Robin V”, it reads – and he smiles slowly despite himself. Not just any Robin; his Robin. Of course Barbara would get the significance of that.

He taps his own, and looks over to see Damian’s bracelet chirp: “Nightwing” appears on the face.

“A useful little gadget,” Damian shrugs.

“Barbara’s pretty brilliant,” Dick says. “You said thank you?”

“She was giving them to everyone.”

Dick puts his fork down, turning to give Damian a look. “You’re going to go say thank you. Now.”

Damian wrinkles his nose, looking slightly appalled. “I don’t see how that’s—”

“Now, Damian.”

Damian sighs long-sufferingly, pushing off his stool and stomping out into the living room. Dick watches him go and turns back to his food to find Alfred watching him.

“What?”

Alfred smiles slowly, shakes his head, and turns back to his dishes. “Nothing at all, Master Richard. Occasionally, one feels the urge to congratulate himself on the obvious quality of your upbringing.”

Dick smiles, too, despite himself. “Feel free to give into that urge whenever, Alfred.”

“As you say, Master Richard.”

Damian returns as if from an extended stay in the Sarchasm. He climbs his stool again and stabs at his lunch, as though Dick’s just forced him to undergo something repugnant.

“You said thank you?” Dick asks, just to be cheeky.

“You have ears, Grayson, I presume someday you’ll learn to use them.”

“Yeah, okay, Oscar.”

“My name is not Oscar. What is that in reference to.”

“Uh, Sesame Street? As in, you’re a grouch. Oscar the Grouch.”

“I am not a grouch.”

“Really? Because you sound pretty grouchy to me.”

Damian takes a bite and menaces Dick with the tines of his fork, talking with his food in his cheek. “I could kill you with this,” he says.

“Yeah,” Dick says, “but then you’d have to eat the rest of the broccoli without me.”

Damian seems to consider this as he chews. He takes his fork back and hurriedly scoops a few more bites into his mouth.

“Don’t choke yourself, Rush Limbrat.”

Damian grunts, clearly channeling his father. “I need to finish this so I can hit you with things." 

Dick’s stomach takes a guilty, fearful plunge and he puts a self-conscious hand on his neck, rubbing slow and trying to think fast. He wants to spar with Damian – between Jason and Tim, he hasn’t had any time for his own Robin, and now that he thinks about it, Damian’s been shockingly well-behaved about that. He hasn’t lashed out in any jealous rages, he hasn’t mocked or insulted either Tim or Jason to their faces as far as Dick knows… in fact, he’s been incredibly appropriate, this week. He’s even eating his broccoli. 

But if he strips down to spar him, Damian’s going to see Jason all over his body, and Dick has no idea how to explain that to an eleven-year-old and he doesn’t want to try.

“Listen, kiddo… I might need a raincheck on that.”

Damian scoffs. “What, are you so discouraged by Drake’s sorry attempts at fighting that you’re giving up the lifestyle completely?”

“What? No. Tim’s—I’m not discouraged. I’m…couraged. Totally couraged.”

Damian rolls his eyes. “What, then?”

“I’m just tired, that’s all. I haven’t been sleeping that great.”

“Tired,” Damian repeats, disbelief thick in his voice, and suddenly Dick wants to inhale the words. Damian looks so disappointed – Little Boy Disappointed, the kind that comes in tandem with guileless optimism, but also Grown Man Disappointed, the kind that comes in tandem with relying on an endless parade of people who do not have your best interests at heart. Damian looks at him for just a moment like Dick is everyone else, and even with Jason’s mouth branded on his throat, Dick can’t stand that, not even for a second.

He flounders, searching for a compromise. Then he purses his lips and turns his head, calling into the living room.

“Babs! Whose day is it today?”

“Mine,” Barbara calls back.

“Switch with me,” he says, and he feels the expression on Damian’s face change before he sees it. “Dami and I can take patrol tonight.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he glances over to find Damian decimating his broccoli at full speed, grinning with rice sticking to his chin.

He nudges him with his elbow. “Let me get a nap?” 

Damian scoffs and rolls his eyes, but he can’t muscle the smirk off his mouth, Dick can tell. “If you insist.”

Dick reaches over and musses his thick, bristly hair. Damian flicks his fork against his wrist, getting rice on the sleeve of Dick’s turtleneck. Dick wonders when, exactly, aborted murder attempts started to read as affection to him, before concluding (with slight embarrassment) that that must predate Damian by at least a decade. He knows better than to surprise Damian with a hug, so he doesn’t.

But in a few years, he thinks, pressing his fingers to his neck, that too could change.

“I’ll come get you at 8?”

“Dinner, then patrol,” Damian says. “I remember.”

Dick aches to hug him. He smiles instead, getting up to bring his dish to Alfred.

“Yeah,” he says. “I figured you did.”

The shrill ringing of his cellphone separates him sharply from the gauzy tangles of a dream he immediately forgets. He blinks up at the ceiling, momentarily disoriented – it takes him several seconds to establish where he is and why, and to remember where his phone is. He sits up, getting an unpleasant rush of vertigo, and sifts hurriedly through the mess on his nightstand, digging his phone out from where it’s wedged between the lamp and an open box of condoms. He props it against his ear, rubbing sleep from his eyes. 

“Hello?”

“Richard.” Lex Luthor practically purrs his name, and he has to restrain himself from leaping back from the phone like it’s possessed.

“Madame President,” he chokes out. “To what do I owe the, uh…pleasure.”

“Oh, it’s nothing really, just a mother doing her sovereign duty.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

Lex laughs unpleasantly and Dick grinds his teeth. He has no idea how Clark puts up with her; she’s actually the worst. “It means you have approximately 25 seconds to put Timothy Drake on the line before I come there to skin him myself.”

Dick stiffens, nostrils flaring. “He’s not—”

“Richard,” Lex says, sounding bored. “Let’s not play this game. I know he’s there. I can allow you requisite time to find him, but you will put him on, now, or Airforce One will be in your front yard before sundown. You have a lot to do before Friday, I would hate to see you distracted by the kind of media frenzy that would generate.”

They really can’t afford that kind of thing right now, but handing Tim over doesn’t feel right. He tries to figure out how Bruce would deal with this. He’d probably tell Lex exactly where she could stick Airforce One. There’s a reason Bruce never went into politics, Dick reminds himself.

He purses his lips. “What did you need to talk to him about.”

“I’m sure I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

“Lex, what’d he do.”

“That sounds like an excellent question for you and Timothy to hash out with what I imagine will be a very expensive team of lawyers.”

“What did he and Kon do,” Dick growls, because he can bridge that logic gap just fine on his own.

“Well, if my track record as a teenager is anything to go by, plenty of things that I don’t feel like talking about in mixed company.”

“Are we talking federal lawbreaking here?”

“Put him on the phone, Richard.”

“No.”

“Fine,” Lex says, loftily. “I’ll see you in two hours.”

Dick doesn’t even get a chance to respond – she’s already hung up.

Is it treason to say you hate the President? Because he hates – capital H, Hates – the President.

He throws back the sheets of his bed and hikes a pair of sweatpants up over his hips. He takes the stairs two at a time, tramping a little more heavily than he necessarily needs to. He doesn’t even understand when Tim would’ve had time to start trouble with Kon – it’s the week before Halloween, no one in the house has had a moment’s rest since Monday.

He finds Tim in the cave, running through katas with Steph and beckons him over, the cold air biting at his skin.

Tim jogs over, looking perplexed. Dick hands him his phone.

“You need to call the White House,” he says, folding his arms.

Tim’s face puckers with surprise, then worry. “I can explain.”

“Can you explain in less than twenty seconds?”

“…no.”

“Then I’d go ahead and call the White House first. Try to diffuse any pending national incidents if you can.”

Tim winces but hits redial and scurries off, cradling the phone to his ear. Steph sidles over to keep Dick company, watching Tim as he sequesters himself against a corner of the training floor, cupping the mouthpiece so as not to be overheard.

Steph looks up at Dick, then reaches out and pats him right on the nipple. “Want a shirt, Titty Titty Bang Bang?”

Dick ducks back, slapping his hands up over his chest. “I’m good, Steph. Thanks for asking.”

Steph shrugs, then jerks her head in Tim’s direction. “What’s that about?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, you know a little.”

Dick shakes his head at her. “Not enough. Leave it.”

Steph rolls her eyes. “I’m not a dog. Besides, you know Tim’ll just tell me.”

“Yeah, I do. So do you. So I’m not sure what you’re asking me for.”

“Well,” Steph says, “mostly to establish just how boned he is.”

“Whadyou mean.”

“Nothing,” Steph says.

“Stephanie.”

“Nothing,” Steph says, smiling a little.

“Steph, if you know something and you’re not telling me…”

“What could I possibly know that you don’t know?” she asks. She’s biting her lower lip, clearly trying not to grin outright.

“I didn’t do anything,” Tim says into the phone, loud enough for them to hear.

Steph sucks her lips between her teeth, looking a little more sympathetic. Dick fights off the cold and catches her by the arm.

“Give us a second.”

Steph shakes her head a little but jogs up the stairs. Dick waits until he hears the clock slide back into place before slowly crossing the room.

Tim’s not saying much, but as he gets closer, Dick can see the expression on his face is one of barely concealed rage.

“Fine,” Tim bites out. “Goodnight, Madame President.” And then he slaps the phone face down on the mat and plants his face against his knees.

“Well?” Dick asks expectantly.

“She’s not coming here to skin me,” Tim growls into his knees, “but I’m probably going to need a lawyer.”

“Tim, tell me what’s going on.”

Tim lifts his head from his legs, but doesn’t look at him at first. He sits there, glaring at the mat, then gets up and crosses to the Batcomputer. Dick follows him at a distance, though walking out onto the stone floor demands that he also step into the crossbreeze flowing in from the entrance. He shivers, goosebumps prickling up the back of his arms, wishing he’d taken Steph up on her offer for a shirt.

Tim types something into the computer – some sort of passcode – and one of the compartments along the desk whirs and opens, revealing a small Rubik’s cube from some internal safe. Tim picks it up and throws himself down in the chair with it, twisting his hands aggressively as he mixes it up.

“It’s about my date,” he says, bitterly.

Dick pauses, knitting his eyebrows.

“Your date.”

“Yeah, the one I had on Monday night.”

“Why w—” Oh. “…oh.”

Tim glances up. “What?”

Dick opens his mouth to speak, then realizes he has no idea what to say. He unfolds his arms. Puts them on his hips. Turns his head. Clears his throat a little. “…I guess I just assumed…”

Tim’s frowning. “You assumed what?”

“I mean, it wasn’t Steph, obviously, I just… assumed it was Tam.”

“That’s kind of heteronormative of you.”

Dick folds his arms, tighter this time. He clears his throat again. “I know.”

“There’s more than two people on Earth I could’ve been on a date with. You know that, right?”

“Wh, yes. Yes. I know.”

Tim purses his lips, then looks down again. Dick is still reeling and trying to look like he isn’t.

“You—” He shakes his head, starts again. “I’m sorry, you went on a date with Conner Luthor-Kent?”

“Conner Luthor-Kent and I are dating,” Tim says, starting to solve his cube. “Going on dates is typically what you do when you are dating someone. It’s in the name. I don’t make the rules.”

“You’re—Tim, Kon is sixteen.”

“Sixteen and eleven months,” Tim says, stubbornly. “And…so? You didn’t have a problem with that when we weren’t dating.”

“Yeah, Tim, because for most people, ‘not dating’ precludes having sex with people.”

“We’re not having sex!” Tim yelps, looking mortified. “I’m not stupid! Jesus! His mom’s the President, his dad’s Superman! God, you think I have a death wish?!”

“Occasionally, yeah!” Dick says. “What did you do? Whadyou need a lawyer for?”

Tim tightens his lips, turning his eyes down – Dick’s sure he’s not even seeing the cube right now, because his fingers stumble across it nonsensically. “I think Lex is planning to sue me or something. I don’t know. She wouldn’t say.”

“Well, walk me through what happened. You’re saying she didn’t know?”

“That we were dating? Yes, Dick, I’m completely stupid, of course she didn’t know!”

“Walk me through what happened, Tim.”

Tim matches a pair of reds together too soon. The riddle in his hands is getting more and more complex the more he twists it, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Kon and I met up in D.C. and patrolled for a little bit. He got bored, so we decided we’d eat. He had his heart set on this café in the Bellagio.”

“In Las Vegas?”

“Yeah,” Tim says, shaking his head. “I told him it was too far, too much of a risk, but you know him, you know what he’s like. As soon as his mind’s made up, you’ve got a better chance of unmaking the universe. So we went. Some of Lex’s people saw us. It’s whatever.” Tim looks up at him, deeply exasperated. “I don’t know what she’s so upset about, but we might as well get me a lawyer just in case.”

Dick wants to beat his head against a wall.

“Tim, Conner is sixteen. You’re eighteen.”

“So?”

“So, if you left the state without his parents’ knowledge or permission, that constitutes kidnapping!”

Tim stares at him for a second and Dick watches the understanding sink in. He can tell it’s there when Tim’s annoyance shifts to disbelief, then wild, unmistakable terror.

“Oh my God,” he whispers. “I kidnapped the President’s son.”

“Yeah,” Dick says, “you did!” Because it should be obvious, Tim should’ve known this before he even said it, he should have known better. “You’d better pray she doesn’t take you to court, because the best lawyers in the world are not gonna be able to beat that one.”

“Dick!” Tim cries, as if that’s not fair, and the hell it isn’t.

“Whadyou want me to say, Tim? You should’ve told me.”

Tim goes bright red with indignance. “It wasn’t any of your business!”

“Well, it is now, isn’t it?”

“That’s not fair, Dick,” Tim says, and his voice trembles with anger or tears. Possibly both. Dick can’t tell from his face.

“The world isn’t fair,” Dick says, bitterly sure of how true that is. He’s lost too much in too short a life to ever think of the world in terms of fairness. Two parents dead, a mentor who wanted him to be everything, a lover who can barely ever put his thoughts into words – a childhood spent in darkness when Dick lives for the spotlight – a half-aborted first love and countless, stupid seconds, each one stupider than the last. A friend, a partner, smarter and better than he’d ever be shot in her apartment, sitting in a chair with no hope of recovery. A beloved younger brother, there then gone in an instant, then back again just a little bit wrong. The world isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. Dick stopped looking for fairness a long time ago.

“You’re telling Bruce about this,” he says, because he’s sick of digging his nails into the meat of his own unhappiness. “You’re going to sit right here until he gets back, and then you’re going to tell him exactly what happened. Every single thing you need to do tonight, you’re going to do from this chair.”

“You’re grounding me?!”

“I am more than grounding you. I am undergrounding you. You are subterranean, and you are staying that way until B gets home and figures out what to do with you.”

“What, why?!”

Dick puts his hands on his hips, showing his teeth. “Because you should have told me. Tim. You owed me that.”

Tim looks stricken, then the anger is back, hot and vibrant. “I don’t make you tell me about whoever you’re seeing.” 

It takes a second, and then Dick remembers. 

Oh. Right. He’s not wearing a shirt.

He’s not wearing a shirt, and Jason’s all over him – bitemarks up his neck and half-healed scratches down his torso. There’s a particularly impressive hickey directly over one of his nipples. That must’ve been what Steph was patting before. He wasn’t even paying attention.

This is why he can’t patrol after napping, he reminds himself. His brain is a haze of shame and panic.

“I know it’s somebody in the Manor,” Tim says, coolly. “And from how you’ve been hiding the hickeys, I’d bet it’s not Bruce this time, either. Barbara wasn’t around to make those, and I know Steph’s not interested. Anybody who’s anybody knows you and Selina don’t get along.” He twists his Rubik’s cube, not even looking down. “You and Todd work things out, Dick? Anything else you want to tell me about how good his intentions are?”

“That’s none of your business,” Dick barks.

“No!” Tim yells, throwing his arms down against the edges of the chair. “It’s not, is it?!”

His voice booms around the cave, and it leaves him breathing a little hard. Dick feels some essential panel of himself crack, a line like a spindle of spider’s silk bisecting some vital plane of him.

“Even if we’re family,” Tim murmurs softly, like hearing his own echo scared him back. “It’s none of my business. So I don’t ask. Because we deserve to have things, Dick. We deserve to have a few things that are…just ours. Just ours and nobody else’s. Y’know?”

Dick feels too heavy to speak. Tim looks anxious.

“Please don’t underground me,” he says, and now it does sound like he might cry. He looks scared, and Dick wishes he were the kind of person who could punch scared looking shitbricks, even though they’re scared looking.

“…I won’t,” he says, instead. And then, “I’m sorry,” because he is.

Tim looks unsure, like he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to accept that apology or not. He looks scared of him.

Dick folds his arms again, sinking backwards into his discomfort. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Tim swallows, and looks at the floor. He holds the Rubik’s cube in both hands, letting it dangle limply between his knees.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” he says.

“It’s okay,” says Dick.

Tim frowns deeply. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It didn’t feel like the right time yet.”

“Tim,” Dick says. “It’s okay. I get it.”

Tim looks up at him plaintively. “I’m not going to tell anyone. About…” He gestures loosely to the marks darkening Dick’s brown skin. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Dick looks back at him until he turns his head down again.

“Do I have to tell Bruce?” Tim asks.

“Yeah,” Dick says, quietly. “You do.”

“Do I have to tell him by myself?”

For half a second, Dick considers saying yes. Lord knows Tim’s earned it. But he doesn’t know what he’s feeling right now – he feels numb. Unpleasant tendrils of shame stretch obtrusively over his mind, blanketing everything else. The nuances of what he’s experiencing right now haven’t made themselves apparent, yet.

And, more importantly, when he looks down at Tim, he doesn’t see an enemy. He sees him – the second smallest Robin and getting smaller by the second, shrinking into Batman’s chair with the Rubik’s cube he can’t solve, about to get taken to task by his best friend’s mother and his own adoptive father.

Tim’s just a kid, he reminds himself. He’s just a kid, and he’s still making mistakes, and he’s still learning, and if anyone’s going to teach him not to be such a socially ungraceful ass – well, it probably won’t be Dick, because those words could just as easily be describing him. But it wouldn’t hurt to go a little easier on him.

“What time is it?” Dick asks.

Tim glances down at his wristwatch. “Quarter to eight.”

“I have to go upstairs and get ready for patrol. But… I’ll come back early. Alright? I’ll wait here with you. We can tell him together.”

Tim exhales a shaky sigh of relief. Dick reaches out and puts a hand on his head, mussing his hair a little.

“Hey,” he says, softly. “It’s gonna be okay. We all commit felonies every once and a while. Comes with the territory.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

“We are locked in an eternal battle of cops and Robins, my friend. That’s the life we chose.”

“I’m sorry, Dick,” Tim says.

“I know,” Dick says, because he does. He knows.

He and Bruce almost collide over Wayne Tower because – as it turns out – no good deed goes unpunished. 

Dick vaults over him to plant a foot in a goon’s face and goes into a handspring as he lands on the balustrade at the edge of the roof. He nails another in the chin with his heel, landing with both feet on his chest, and then Damian lands beside him, cracking another one in the head with his staff.

Dick jumps down onto the roof and immediately ducks out of the way of an aluminum baseball bat. He feels the wind as it misses him by inches. He punches the goon who swung it in the stomach and jabs his elbow into his chin, snarling. The goon tumbles back, and Damian kicks the bat out of his hand – it goes skipping across the rooftop.

Dick hears heavy footsteps and whirls, catching a brandished section of rebar with both hands. The goon behind it is heavy and angry, and he struggles to hold him back. Another grabs Damian by the hood and yanks him backwards, choking him. Damian reaches up, grabs him by the arm and throws him forward. Dick shoves his goon back a step, getting out of the way so that Damian’s goon can go facefirst into the balustrade.

Cass pounces on Dick’s goon from behind, arm catching him around the throat as she chokes him out. He loses his grip on the rebar, swiping his hands out directionlessly, trying to get her off. Dick takes the opportunity to kick him in the shins, and he goes down like old growth, hitting the rooftop with an audible thud.

Dick sighs and tosses the rebar aside. It clangs against the cement.

Bruce tosses Black Mask from the top of the AC unit; Roman hits the rooftop with a grunt, head lolling back, and Bruce glides down to land beside him, a little more gracefully.

“I had him,” Damian scowls.

Dick reaches out and puts a hand on his head, noogying him aggressively. Damian hisses and bats at him like a cat.

“Thanks,” Dick says to Cass, who nods a little.

“It was no problem.” She looks at Damian, and Dick can swear he sees her smiling. “You… had him.”

Damian scoffs and folds his arms, ducking out from under Dick’s hand.

Dick looks over at Bruce, because he hasn’t said anything yet – by now, he’s usually decided whether he wants Dick around or not, but he’s quiet, standing over Roman, looking down into his face. Even from a distance, Dick can see his exhaustion. It’s in his very stitches, from the angle of his shoulders to the weariness of his eternal frown. He looks tired. 

Dick turns to Cass again and jerks his head to the left. “You guys give us a minute?”

“Yes,” Cass nods, and begins walking to the far side of the roof. Dick gives Damian a look. He scowls, deeper, looking like he wants to say that Dick doesn’t get to dismiss him, but he can clearly sense that something’s off. He growls and stomps off after Cass, his brow furrowed with frustration.

Dick walks closer to Bruce slowly, trying not to spook him. “Batman,” he says, carefully, but Bruce doesn’t look up.

He reaches out and touches his elbow. “Boss,” he says, and Bruce looks over at him without a single change in his expression. Dick wrinkles his brow, but releases him, unsure. “You alright?”

Bruce shakes his head and breathes out slowly through his nose. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “We’re running out of time.”

“Yeah,” Dick says, because what else can he say? The clock is an object without mercy.

Bruce moves past him to the edge of the building, and Dick follows. Below them, Gotham rests like a drunken debutante, her dress spread out around her in a puddle of grit and smog, her narrow streets like puckered ribbons strewn across the cloth. Even at two am on a Thursday the city is alive, its citizens rushing through it like bugs in a maze, its buildings dappled with neon and dirt. The air smells like smoke and piss, even this high up; the breeze coming off the bay is salty and sour. The light from the city blots out the sky, so that it looks as if the stars have fallen into the streets below, glittering and dancing with a playful, malevolent light.

Bruce looks over all this with the eyes of a guardian; a father. His face is simultaneously drawn and affectionate, stern and kind. It’s an expression Dick is too familiar with. The lines the cowl cuts along his cheeks are severe.

“Any leads?” Dick asks, trying to be gentle.

“None.”

Dick shakes his head a little. “That’s weird. Joker’s usually pretty responsive if you show an interest.”

“I know. Which means he’s planning something big enough to be worth the wait.”

“And worth the attention to detail.” Dick folds his arms. “Forget signing me up, sign me down.”

Bruce stays silent – a breeze picks up, and his cape swirls around him, liquid and dark. Dick folds his arms slowly, trying not to push too hard this time. He’s tired, Dick reminds himself. Very tired, and with almost nothing to show for it.

“You coming home tonight?” he asks, quietly, hoping he’s downwind from Damian and Cass.

Bruce looks over at him, slowly. The corners of his mouth tug. He looks slightly less stony than usual.

“I can’t,” he says.

Dick tries to swallow his disappointment. He nods, shortly. “Yeah,” he says. “Alright.” Then, because he’s embarrassed: “Tim has something to talk to you about. But it can wait.”

Bruce continues looking at him expectantly. Dick shrugs. “He may have been an accidental accessory to kidnapping. It’s fine, we’ll work it out.”

“The incident with Conner.”

Dick blinks, trying to hide his shock – he sometimes feels like he’s losing a stoicism contest with Bruce around, like his face broadcasts too much too easily. “You already know,” he says, dumbly, and of course he does, but… “Wait, how do you already know?”

“Lex called.”

“Lex called,” Dick repeats, feeling truly stupid now. “Lex has your direct line?”

“Superman does,” Bruce says.

“She used the Justice League communicator for that? God, that is…”

“We’ll take care of it,” Bruce says, like that’s the end of the conversation.

“She is out of control. Completely out. She has a…deficit of moral culpability, I mean that.”

He almost catches Bruce smiling. Almost. It’s there, then gone again, like a green flash at sunset. “That’s democracy.”

“Yeah? I want my money back.”

Bruce does smile then: indulgent, like Dick’s trying too hard, but like Bruce is too fond of him to mention it. Somehow, it’s even more embarrassing than asking him to come home. He swallows again.

“You could stay out ‘til sunrise, then sleep through tomorrow,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant about it. “If you’re not finding anything now, you’re going to need to be at the top of your game Friday.”

Bruce watches him for a while – intensely, the way he watches Gotham. A wind whisks over both of them, feathering through Dick’s hair, a few strands whipping around his forehead. Finally, Bruce turns his head, looking across the roof at Cass and Damian. Dick follows his gaze: they’re engaged in a quiet discussion of their own; Cass is showing Damian how to play Cat’s Cradle with one of her zip lines.

Bruce’s fingers on his chin catch him by surprise and he jumps a little into the soft kiss that follows. He sighs a little, Bruce’s stubble tickling his chin, his lips chapped from the wind and hot to the touch.

Bruce draws back and it’s so hard not to follow. Dick feels butterflies in his chest, pinwheeling giddily behind his ribs.

“You probably shouldn’t do that out in the open,” he whispers.

Bruce runs his fingers slowly down Dick’s chin, thumb smoothing over his lips, top then bottom. The gloves make the pads of his fingers rough, but his touch is gentle. He pulls his hand away slow like he’d like to touch him a little more, and Dick wants to ask but he won’t.

“I’ll be fine,” Bruce says.

He crosses the roof before Dick can stop him. Cass looks up, but doesn’t stop the game until Damian realizes Batman’s looming over them expectantly. He leaps back, face thick with little boy embarrassment.

“You’ll listen to Nightwing,” Bruce says, sternly. Cass carefully untangles her line and presses a button on her belt to retract it. Damian looks sour.

Dick looks down to find his arms still folded, hands getting cold where they’re locked under his elbows. He hears Bruce leap from the building and glide off, but doesn’t watch, because he can’t will himself to.

“Be careful,” he hears Cass say.

Behind him, Roman groans, beginning to come to. Dick walks over and kicks him in the head, just so that he’ll have something to do with his damn butterflies.

Dick gets back to the cave at three and sends Tim up to bed with Damian. He hears them arguing all the way up the stairs and waits a while to follow, so that they’ll hopefully have bickered themselves hoarse by the time he gets there. He stops at the computer to update their files and the search diagram for Joker. He and Damian didn’t see anything tonight either, which is honestly more incriminating than if they’d run into an entire pack of Joker lackeys. Joker’s definitely planning something big, and Dick hasn’t the slightest desire to know what it is. 

He changes and showers downstairs, and emerges to find his post-patrol drink waiting for him beside one of the sinks. There’s extra banana slices in it, with honey yogurt and peanut butter. He tries not to chug it, but it’s so exactly what he wanted that it’s impossible to resist. He’s done with it before he’s even up the stairs – he’s licking the peanut butter off his teeth when he leaves it in the kitchen. He leaves Alfred a little note of thanks on the counter, because there are a few things he loves about being home, and Alfred is most of them.

He listens to the mansion as he heads back to his room. The house is old – very old – and its groans and creaks are healthy for its age. He hears no pitter-patter of restless feet, which means Damian must be in bed. He’d put money on Tim still being awake, but he isn’t in the den when he passes, which means he must be in his own room. There’s a dim light filtering under the door as he passes. He resists the urge to knock and tell him to go to bed.

He wonders, vaguely, where Bruce is; where Jason’s spending the night.

He opens the door to his own room, closing it behind him with a sigh, and almost jumps back through the wood as he flicks on the light.

Well, he thinks as Jason grabs his pillow and flattens it defensively over his head, that answers the one question.

“Dios mio, turn off the fuckin’ light,” Jason snarls into the pillow. Dick wonders if Jason still dreams in Spanish – it always seems to come out quicker when he’s tired. Even his English sounds buttered, lilted and round with it in a way sleep can’t account for.

“Are you naked?” Dick asks, because it’s the first thing that comes out.

Jason groans loudly and reaches up, whipping back the covers to expose himself: boxers. Safe, then, Dick thinks, absurdly. He tries desperately not to notice the way the muscles in Jason’s arm move, or how plush his chest looks, even in repose. He’s trying not to take stock of the color of his nipples, or the sinister curve of the Joker smile carved into his flesh, or the way his bellybutton looks, or his autopsy scar, or the circumference of his thighs.

He didn’t realize this was going to be a thing, he thinks, dumbly. He'd wanted Jason, but not- not in his bed, not waiting for him. Not forever, not with Jay's assumptions weighing on him. Is he committed now? People don’t just casually show up in your bed, usually, right? Maybe Dick had misread something, or- is Jason even playing by the same rules as he is? Are they even playing the same game? This isn’t how he operates - his courtship with Kory lasted months before becoming tangible. Physical. With Bruce, there’d been an entire discussion; hours of hashing out what was and wasn’t going to go on between them. He’s not ready for this, he thinks, frantically. Jason didn’t ask, he didn’t- God, Dick can’t handle it when people don’t ask.

He’s frozen in the doorway, feeling completely blindsided, when Jason peels the pillow away from his face and squints at him. His curls are tousled, white streak like a feather at his part, and his face is flushed with sleep.

“Would you get your fat ass in bed?”

Dick folds his arms tight. “Are you gonna ask if you can sleep here?”

“I’m already sleepin’ here,” Jason says combatively. “Whatchu gonna do about it, cabron?”

“Uh, kick you out?!”

“Too late!” Jason yells, throwing his arms out. He grabs the pillow and slaps it back over his face. “¡Chinga usted!”

Dick fumes, stomping into the bathroom and slamming the door. God, the nerve of him. He drags his hands back through his hair, grabbing his toothbrush and scrubbing the peanut butter out of his mouth.

Just once, he’d like for something not to be a battle, he thinks. Just one time.

His scrubbing slows as he takes in the fading marks on his skin, the bruises on his neck and on his chest, and realizes, with a prickle of unease, that Bruce had touched him - kissed him, even - with remnants of Jason on his body, hidden under his suit. Bruce - oh god, what's Bruce going to say.

He bites down around the bristles of his toothbrush. It feels like his stomach has dropped all the way to his ankles. He feels like he’s in freefall.

He can’t deal with this right now, he thinks, with mounting panic. He can’t, he can’t hash this out, he doesn’t have the energy, and he desperately doesn’t want to. He’s spent all day trying to forget that it happened, trying to discount it as unimportant, trying to hide it from anyone who’d think to ask.

Halloween is less than two days away. He can’t do this right now. He doesn’t have time to do this right now.

He spits in the sink, takes his vitamins and supplements with water, and braces himself before walking back out into his room.

The light’s still on, which is the first sign that he may not need to punch Jason in the mouth, though he still wants to. Jason himself hasn’t moved – he’s still lying there with Dick’s pillow over his face. Dick puts his water down on the nightstand and snatches it back. Jason glares up at him, more awake than he was when he left. 

“Get out,” Dick says, as coldly as he can manage. “I need to go to bed.”

Jason doesn’t budge an inch. “So go to bed, what’s stopping you?”

“You are.”

“You said I could sleep in here.”

“I said that last night.”

“Yeah, and you said it the day before that, which implied the offer was open until the end of the week.”

“You couldn’t ask first?!”

“You weren’t here!”

Dick snarls, exasperated, and throws up his hands. “I was here all day, Jason!”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t!”

“Jason, get out!”

Jason bares his teeth, sitting up. “You gonna make me?”

“Yes!” Dick yells, because he’s tired of this, he’s tired of it. He’s tired of Jason pushing, and he’s tired of being pushed. He’s tired of no one listening to him. He’s tired of trying to quash the desire to tell people what to do. He knows better than they do. He should talk, and they should listen. Tim should tell him, Bruce should listen to him, Jason should ask. He’s tired of it. He’s tired of all of this.

“So make me!” Jason yells back, and Dick almost does. He almost does. He leans halfway across the bed, planning to grab Jason by the shoulders.

Instead, Jason grabs him by the front of the shirt, jerking him forward onto the bed. Dick throws his hands down for balance, and they land on Jason’s bare legs. He feels his blood go hot.

“I’m gonna kiss you, okay?” Jason asks, very calmly, and Dick falters.

“I—” He’s blushing too hard to form words.

Jason pulls back an inch, and his hands relax in Dick’s shirt front. His face, instead of being angry, is perfectly calm, like this is all going according to script and Dick’s forgetting his lines.

“Is it okay for me to kiss you?” Jason says again, and Dick just nods, dumbly, unable to think too far past that.

And then Jason does, thankfully – he kisses him deeply, confidently, and the butterflies are back again as he licks into Dick’s mouth, hands sliding up Dick’s neck to cup his cheeks. He kisses him slowly, passionately, like he was planning on it all along and Dick feels goosebumps prickle on his skin, feels his heart hammering in his chest. He sucks on Jason’s tongue almost without meaning too, and Jason hums softly into the kiss, and he forgets what he was thinking about.

“You’re so bossy,” Jason murmurs. “Mangonear, ya know? Bossy as hell with a great ass.”

“Do you speak Spanish to throw me off?” Dick asks, a little slow post-kiss.

“Yeah,” Jason says, eyes fluttering back open, “sometimes.”

Dick didn’t realize how perfectly curled his eyelashes were until now – short and black and sweeping upwards, just like the curls of his hair. Jason runs his tongue over his lips slowly and Dick feels his cock twitch in response, growing heavy between his legs. His panic has left him, swept out and replaced with something else, something with a bittersweet aftertaste.

Who cares what Bruce thinks, he wonders.

(He does.)

“Can I touch you?” Jason’s whispering now, voice very soft, like anyone could possibly overhear them.

(He just doesn’t care right now.)

“Yeah,” Dick says. Then, remembering: “Yeah. Touch me.”

Jason runs his hands down and under Dick’s shirt, touching his stomach and his side. He pushes his fingers up Dick’s spine, then pulls them back, following the curve of his ribs. Dick chokes back a giggle, trying to ignore his ticklishness, and biting off a moan as Jason catches his nipples with both thumbs, smoothing over them slow, then pinching slightly, rolling them between his fingers. Dick swallows, nervously.

“Kiss me,” he says, and Jason’s there in an instant, one hand slipping out of his shirt to catch him by the back of the head, kissing him like he’s hungry. He drags his teeth over Dick’s lower lip and Dick shudders with delight.

Something occurs to him suddenly and he catches Jason’s wrist, jerking back. Jason freezes instantly, like Dick unplugged him.

“I wasn’t actually gonna kick you out,” Dick says, trying not to sound breathless. “You—I wasn’t actually gonna kick you out, you don’t need to—if you think this is the only way to convince me to let you stay, you don’t have to. You can stay, Jay, I’m sorry. I—you don’t need to… If you’re doing it to convince me.”

“I’m not,” Jason says, but his voice sounds strange, and he stays very still.

“Okay,” Dick says. “I just…” 

Jason cuts him off. “Say my name again.”

“…Jason?”

Jason purses his lips, eyes narrowing, and Dick’s confused for a second before he realizes his mistake.

“Jay,” he says, softly, and he knows that’s what Jason wanted to hear because his whole face relaxes.

“I wanna eat you,” Jason murmurs. “I wanna eat you out.”

“Jay,” Dick gasps, and then they’re kissing again, deeply, and Jason’s hand is fondling his chest and the other is disappearing down the back of his sweat pants. His fingers slide down the crease of Dick’s ass and over his entrance and Dick moans sharply, hips jerking forward. He feels himself clench involuntarily, and Jason hums again, grabbing a handful of him and squeezing.

“You okay?” Jason asks and Dick nods feverishly and catches his mouth again. Jason hooks a finger in the hem of his pants and pulls him onto his leg, and Dick groans, humping forward, grinding his erection against Jason’s thigh. The polyester has gone from warm to stifling, soft and comfortable to restrictive – he wants it off. He whines and hitches his hips forward insistently, feeling Jason grin against his mouth.

Jason pulls away, leaving Dick panting against his temple, and grabs him by the hem again, pulling his pants down. Dick falls back to help him; Jason sits up on his knees and Dick can see his boxers tent as he pulls Dick’s pants off. Jason tosses them aside and Dick watches, thighs spread open across his lap, cock hard and optimistic-looking. Jason grabs him without warning in one hand and pumps languidly. Dick feels his temperature spike and jerks his hips upward, shuddering deep.

“Thought about you all day,” Jason murmurs. He reaches down and claps a hand against the back of Dick’s left thigh, squeezing his cock slow. “Thought what a bossy whiner you are.” He leans forward, rolls his hips – Dick feels him pushing along his balls, feels the thin cloth of his boxers catch and grab at his skin. “Thought about what you look like when you come.” 

“Jay,” Dick whimpers. Jason flicks his thumb along the head of Dick’s cock, smearing precum as he goes, and Dick lets his head sag back, panting open-mouthedly. The sensation is like greased lightning.

“Roll over,” Jason says, and Dick whines as he takes back his hands, but he does it. The sheets are cool against his cock and his stomach. He grabs a pillow and tucks his arms under it, resting his cheek on top. He feels the mattress creak as Jason shifts, legs framing his own.

Jason claps both hands on his ass and he starts, grunting soft as the shock eases. Jason snorts and kisses between his shoulderblades, and Dick feels himself relax, unexpectedly. Jason hums like he’s thinking and licks a line up Dick’s spine, kissing the back of his neck. Dick hums his ascent. Jason’s hands squeeze, and he shudders.

Jason puts his lips at Dick’s ear, murmuring soft as his hands move over him. “Thought about tasting you, Dickie. God, do I want to taste you.”

Jason’s thumbs press deep into the flesh, and he drags them in slow circles. It tickles, and it feels nice, and Dick’s heartbeat is loud in his ears. “Want to eat you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Dickie,” Jason whispers. He pulls him apart slow and Dick trembles at the stretch, groaning a little. “Wanna fuckin’ worship this ass.”

He nips the back of Dick’s neck, and Dick bites his lip, trying to stay sane.

“Do it,” he chokes out, because he’s bossy and Jason likes it, he realizes. He likes him bossy. “Do it, Jay. Eat me.”

Jason groans a little louder than he probably means to, and then his breath is gone from Dick’s neck and between his thighs instead, and Dick almost stops him but Jason licks him and he jerks forward with an ungodly sound. Jason spreads him open and dives into him with a warm, wet kiss, licking in, and Dick spasms, contracting around him twice and struggling to breathe.

Jason’s hands are holding his thighs and he’s thrusting in and out shallowly, tongue spreading him just wide enough that he can feel it, so wet and slick that its surreally frictionless, ticklish and strange and so, so good. Jason fucks him with warm, wet kisses, undulating his chin just slightly, and Dick’s hyperventilating into his pillow, gasping for breath, shuddering from head-to-toe.

Jason’s tongue slips out of him and he cries at the loss, grinding into the bed. He feels Jason laughing between his legs.

“God, you want it,” Jason says, and he sounds a little breathless too; breathless and relieved and slightly disbelieving, as if Dick wanting him is a cause for genuine wonder. Dick feels him stroke his fingers over him and he whimpers, shoving his hips back in an unspoken demand. Jason laughs again.

“God, you’re really cute, Dick. I wanna take pictures, you’re so… Say my name,” Jason pants, “don’t stop saying my name,” and then he takes his fingers away and kisses him again, warm, wet, deep, twisting his tongue inside him and sucking soft, and Dick’s shaking, gasping his name like a mantra.

“Jay,” he’s saying like a plea, over and over. “Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay, Jay…”

He wakes up warm and in the dark. Jason’s arms are heavy where they drape over him, his skin hot to the touch. Dick can feel him breathing slowly against his back, chest rising and falling, heartbeat loud and healthy along his wrist and his chest. He finds himself listening to it closely, anxiously anticipating each breath, and something strange comes over him – a hot, sour tingling against his ears and behind his eyes. Jason’s arm is around his chest and he ducks down against it, kissing his wrist. He can feel his pulse against his lips, and it makes him want to sob. 

He swallows it. Swallows it. He pushes the emotion back into its box. There’s a scar along Jason’s bicep – some old wound where the skin split open, then healed over – and Dick traces it slowly with his fingers, modulating his breathing. When Jason inhales, he can feel the grooves cut into his chest pressing against his back. The desire to somehow hold him closer claws at his lungs and he swallows it over and over until it slowly retracts.

Jason kisses his shoulder with a soft, sleepy sound. Dick spooks a little – he didn’t hear him wake up. He keeps tracing that scar with his finger, breathing slow.

“I missed you,” Dick whispers.

Jason hums wordlessly, but leans forward to kiss Dick’s cheek.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “I know.”

Dick closes his eyes again and modulates his breathing. After a moment, he turns over in Jason’s arms and presses his face into his neck because he can; Jason grunts softly, but draws his arms around him again, squeezing tight. Dick rubs his back slow, breathing in the smell of him: sleep and sweat, a little bit of sex from last night; cheap deodorant, morning breath. The bracelet from Barbara is still on his wrist, the cool metal pressing into Dick’s back. He bites his lip and presses closer.

“Really missed you, Jay.”

Jason kisses his hair soft, hand sliding up along the back of his head, and he holds him like that for a long time.

Dick dozes off again for about a half an hour. He snores a little too loud and wakes up to find himself drooling on Jason’s chest. 

“Mm—What time is it.”

Jason sighs into his hair, and Dick realizes he might not be awake. He sits up a little in Jason’s arms, but they’re still holding him tight – there’s not much room to maneuver. He leans over him carefully, glancing at his face as he moves the condoms over to look at his alarm clock. 11:45. Still too early, but he’s too hungry to sleep again. He sinks back into Jason’s embrace and reviews his options.

Jason mumbles into his hair. “What time is it.”

“Quarter to noon,” Dick says. “Gonna let me up?”

“Nah.”

Dick leans in and kisses him and Jason makes a noise of pleasant surprise, meeting his lips with sleepy, uncoordinated enthusiasm.

He lets him up eventually, when they’re both pleasantly winded and Dick’s sheets are in even more dire need of washing than they were the night before. Dick brushes his teeth and gets in the shower, and Jason sleeps a little longer before joining him. They stand side-by-side while Jason brushes his teeth and Dick shaves. It invokes the strangest sense of déjà vu, watching Jason swish the brush around like he doesn’t really care if he gets rid of plaque or not so long as his mouth tastes like mint afterwards.

“Do you shave?” Dick asks, because he’s wondered for a while.

Jason spits in the sink and washes out his mouth. “Not everyday. Doesn’t grow that quick.”

Dick doesn’t ask if that’s the fault of the Pit or not. He’d wager Jason doesn’t know, and if he does, Dick’s not sure he wants to press him.

“You know how?”

“Yes, Mom,” Jason says, putting the toilet seat up, “I know how.”

“I’m just saying. I had to… I learned from Roy. Bruce has got that crazy straight razor thing, y’know?”

Jason snorts. “Yeah, I know. Look it’s not rocket science.”

“You’re not too bad at rocket science.”

“I’m better at punching dudes,” Jason says, shaking himself dry. “You tell B about the President’s Daughter and Tiny Tim?”

“Yeah,” Dick says. And then: “Wait, how do you know about that?”

Jason washes his hands, giving Dick a look like he’s completely obtuse. “Kid was waiting up when I got home, I asked.”

“You asked.”

“Yeah.” Jason dries his hands with a towel.

“You asked.”

“Wh, yes, I can do that, I am completely fluent in English and not completely awful one hundred percent of the time, thank you. Plus, the kid almost pissed himself when I walked in, I figured it was ample opportunity to do some recon. PS, he can not shut up when he’s scared? You should really talk to him about that.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Dick says, grimly. Jason snorts and catches him by the chin to kiss him – which Dick allows not-so-reluctantly – and then walks back out into the bedroom, smacking his ass as he goes.

“He knows,” Dick calls after him, feeling uneasy at the prospect. The problem seems more daunting in daylight.

“So?” Jason rifles through the piles of clothing on Dick’s floor, searching for a clean shirt. Dick leans against the doorframe, folding his arms and watching the bare muscles of his back tense and flex, golden skin rippling as he moves.

“I mean he knows. He knows we’re sleeping together.”

“Yeah, he’s a detective. Trained to observe. I’d be more worried if he didn’t know.”

Dick purses his lips, chest constricting anxiously. Jason looks up, seeming to sense it, and frowns at him.

“What’re you worried about?” he asks.

“I don’t really get how you can ask that after saying what you did a few days ago.”

Jason presses his tongue to one of his cheeks and ‘tsk’s, shaking his head. He snatches up one of Dick’s deep v-necks – his favorite, that is, the one in dark blue – and stands up.

“I’m an asshole,” Jason says. “I’m not gonna fight you on that. But you wanna know why I said that? Other than the fact that I’m asshole?” He steps over a pile of clothes and puts his hands through the sleeves of Dick’s shirt.

Dick points and raises an eyebrow. “Are you gonna ask if you can wear that?”

“Nah,” Jason says, shrugging it over his head. “It’s because you’re clearly ashamed of it. You hate yourself for sleeping with Bruce, and you hate yourself for sleeping with me. And I don’t get why.”

Dick purses his lips and turns his head. He doesn’t want to talk about this. He’s not exactly sure he can talk about this. He knows Jason’s right, but he isn’t sure why he’s ashamed either.

Jason pulls the shirt down over his stomach. Only the dark line of the autopsy scar is visible now; his curls go every which way until he reaches up to ruffle them back into place.

“You got enough to worry about without feelin’ bad about who you’re sleeping with,” he says.

“Does this…mean anything to you?” Dick asks, faintly.

Jason looks at him for a second, then shrugs, and Dick feels like he’s swallowed something sharp. It must show, because Jason’s frown deepens and his brow furrows. He swallows, visibly; looks down. Looks up again, eyes bright.

“You mean something to me,” he says. Dick feels himself stop breathing.

And then, Jason cracks a little, exhaling a bark of nervous laughter: “I… wow. That was…really hard to say. Wow. Uh.” He exhales loudly, reaching up to drag his nails along the back of his own neck. He clears his throat. “I’m really bad at this,” he says. He gestures between them loosely. “The…this. Part. Really bad.”

Dick’s having a little trouble forming words. He wants to step closer, but he doesn’t feel ready yet. He needs the wall at his back – his structural integrity’s been compromised. “You’re not that bad,” he says.

Jason shakes his head. “No. No, I am, Dick. I’m really, really bad at this. This makes me really, really uncomfortable, and I just…” He shrugs, putting a hand on his hip and dragging the other through his hair. “I can’t talk. Anymore. I died, and now I can’t talk to people, it’s like… I dunno. I’m fucked up. I get mad, and shit comes outta my mouth and… I mean that’s always been a problem, but I wasn’t so mad before.”

He shakes his head, not looking at Dick anymore. “I don’t even know if mad’s the right word. I just…” He shrugs and shakes his head again. “I knew, before. I knew who I was and who you and everybody else were and how you fit into my life, and now…”

He shakes his head again. An intense look has come over his face, raw and strange. “You die, and everything else keeps going. Like… You don’t get it. Y’know? Nobody gets it, you just can’t. You think like… You think you know what nothing is. You think you know what it’s like to do nothing. But you don’t. Even if you’re not doing anything at all with your life, you’re always moving forward. You never stop moving forward. Ever. Everything and everyone moves forward with you, in the same direction, at the same pace.”

He’s drumming one of his fingers against his thigh, and Dick can see his bones flexing beneath the skin of his wrist.

“You die, you stop moving. But just you, Dick. Nothing else. Everything else keeps going. The world moves forward, and you don’t go with it.”

Dick bites his lip, watching him, heart aching. “Jay,” he says. “Bruce… Alfred, me… We haven’t changed.” 

Jason looks at him again, not angry, but strangely resolute. “Yeah. You have. You can’t help it. You’re different. Everything’s different.” He tightens his fists. “I’m different.”

Dick feels something uneasy coil in his stomach - he can feel Jason’s alienation in the air like a temperature shift. It’s like sinking through a thermocline. The intensity of his isolation from the world tastes sharp on Dick’s tongue.

“Do you think…” Dick trails off, not knowing what he wants to ask, not knowing how much of Jason’s dark, unwanted knowledge he can take. Jason sits down on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t think shit,” he says, lowly. “I don’t know shit. I don’t wanna know shit. Did the Pit fuck me up, am I really me at all? Am I fuckin’ nuts now? Is this all some big stupid scheme Ra’s came up with? Is it all gonna wear off tomorrow? Is this all just some crazy, fucked up version of the afterlife?” He shakes his head. “I don’t wanna know. I seriously don’t care.” 

“How can you not care?” Dick asks, if only because he envies him. He doesn’t want to know either, but there’s an itch he can’t quell in the back of his throat - something that drives him to find the answers even when he doesn’t want them.

“Cuz what the hell does any of that matter?” Jason looks up at him with that same lost expression he wore after the meeting. “This is how I am now. This is my life. None of the answers to those questions are gonna make me feel better, none of them are gonna help me.”

He looks down between his legs, hanging his head. “I just wanna not be so fucking bitter that you kept moving forward when I couldn’t. Because I am, Dick. It’s not your fault, but I am. I’m bitter as hell.” Dick sees his jaw tighten. “I’m fucked up. I can’t stop being fucked up.”

Dick tries to think of something to say - some way to reassure him. He feels like he would at a funeral; helpless, but simultaneously obligated to say something, anything at all. What can he say? ‘Sorry’? ‘Sorry someone ruined your life by not even having the courtesy to let it stay ended’? That seems woefully understated.

He looks at Jason, and he just looks so alone, sitting there on Dick’s bed in Dick’s t-shirt, with no one in the world who understands what he’s going through. He looks so singular, so solitary, and Dick needs to say something. He needs Jason not to feel so alone.

“I can’t stop telling people what to do,” he admits, finally. “I just want… It drives me crazy that I can’t control all of you. I know that’s sick, but it’s… I feel like if I could just make you all listen to me, maybe I could protect you. But I can’t. That’s… That’s nuts. That’s…entirely kookoo bananas.” He shakes his head.

Jason looks up him again and Dick looks back. He can hear him breathing – a little faster, a little louder, now that the anxiety’s taken hold – and it’s still one of the most beautiful sounds he’s ever heard.

“We’re all a little fucked up, Jay,” he says. “Honestly, I… It’s one of the few really great things about all being together again. It reminds me, y’know? That there are a bunch of other people in the world as fucked as I am.”

Jason snorts and hangs his head.

“Y’know, Roy and Kory wanted to take Lien trick-or-treating. That’s what I was supposed to be doing on Friday. Going trick-or-treating.” He laughs again, and Dick can’t tell if it’s maudlin or not. “I don’t even know how to go trick-or-treating. You called and asked me to come on down to Murder Town, and I could not get here fast enough.”

Dick shrugs, trying to coax him out of it. “Punching dudes is more your wheelhouse.”

Jason snorts. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it is.”

Dick stands there, trying to find something more to say. It just feels like there should be something - something that he has to offer Jason. Some reason Jason’s still here.

“Wait,” he says, after a moment, “you never went trick-or-treating? Like...ever?”

Jason shrugs. “Born and raised in Gotham, Dickie. Round here it’s more like trick-or-beating, which we’ve already established I’m good at.”

Dick must look as perplexed as he feels because Jason shrugs again. “S’not that bad. My mom was one of those secret religious types. Every Halloween it was like she thought the Devil himself was gonna walk in our front door at any second.”

Dick feels something something jagged go through him - he tries to think if he can remember the last time Jason told him anything about his life Before Batman. He tries to get a sense of how delicate the atmosphere is between them. He feels like he’s walking on a tightrope made of spider silk.

“My mom was the same way,” he says, automatically, and suddenly it occurs to him that that’s true. He remembers his mother’s beaded rosary. He remembers how it smelled; like sweet, soft wood and chalk from the uneven bars.

He can’t remember the last time he thought about that.

He finds Jason watching him, his face eerily soft and open. He looks like Dick’s just given him a very precious gift that he has no idea what to do with it. Dick shifts a little and puts his hands in his pockets.

“Do you still celebrate Dia de los Muertos?” he asks.

“Used to,” Jason nods. “Kinda seems beside the point now. Like...I’m livin’ la vida de los muertos. ...unless you’re offering to buy me a drink.”

“You’re nineteen,” Dick scoffs.

“I don’t own my own action figure yet,” Jason suggests.

“You have your own action figure.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, and then he’s grinning like a kid, and it’s cute enough that Dick kind of wants to kiss him again. He wants to taste Jason’s grin on his mouth, lick it off like old chapstick. “He comes with his own little pistols and shit. I already have all the other ones.”

“You have my action figure.”

“Yeah. I got the collector’s edition Disco Nightwing with the deep v-neck and the 80’s mullet. As a gift,” he adds, quickly, but he hasn’t stopped grinning and Dick’s not fooled.

Dick tries not to shudder in horror at the image. ‘Disco Nightwing,’ why ‘Disco Nightwing’? Why not ‘Fashionably Misguided Nightwing’ or ‘We’re All Wearing Spandex and You Think the Mullet Is What Makes This a Disaster Nightwing’?

“Why?”

Jason shrugs. “I like to chuck it off of shit sometimes. When I’m pissed at you.”

“I’ll buy you the new one,” Dick says, putting his hands on his hips. “So you can learn how to juggle.”

“You’re gonna buy me your own action figure for Dia de los Muertos?” Jason shakes his head incredulously.

“Only if you don’t let Kory melt its head off.”

Jason’s grin reaches show-stopping proportions.

“No promises.”

When Dick finally emerges from his room, it’s close to four o’ clock in the afternoon. Jason left an hour ago, and he still feels almost distressingly relaxed, tranquil to his bones. He eats lunch – quinoa salad with blood orange and cumquats – and Alfred buzzes over his shoulder, as attentive of his diet now as he was when Dick was twelve. 

“You really ought to let me include you in the grocery shopping, Master Richard. Proper nutrition is paramount in your line of work.”

Dick bites into a cumquat, covering his mouth when he talks in order to avoid being scolded. “Easy, Alfie. I’m a big boy now. Let me stress for a little longer before I inevitably come crawling back to you.”

Alfred tsks and shakes his head. “I can’t understand how that’s necessary.”

“Yeah, you can,” Dick says, and Alfred ‘hrumph’s, opening one of the cupboards. “Did Jay eat on his way out?”

“He did,” Alfred says, with reluctant pride in his voice. “It seems you’re having a positive effect on him, Master Richard.”

Dick shrugs, but can’t help smiling. “It’s the little victories, right?”

“So it is.”

Steph chooses then to skid in, her bootheels squealing as they leave black tracks across the kitchen floor. She holds up the two round, black objects, like tiny bowling balls, each with a purple carabineer on top. 

“Check it out,” she says. “I got my candy dispensers!” 

“Candy dispensers?” Dick asks, wondering if he really wants to know.

The excitement on Steph’s face is dangerous. “Yeah! Watch this.” She catches one with a finger through the carabineer and twirls it around with building speed. 

“Fire in the hole!” she yells, and Dick and Alfred both duck immediately, taking cover. Steph tosses the ball into the air and it explodes with a loud pop and a puff of smoke, candy pelting through the air, crashing into cabinets and dishes and scattering across the floor. Dick takes a Tootsie Roll so hard to the ear he starts to worry it’s perforated his eardrum.

Steph whoops and runs around, scooping up candy before Alfred can chase her out of the kitchen with a broom. Dick crawls to his feet, watching warily as Steph clips the other one to her belt.

“You sure they’re safe?” he asks.

“Safer when they’re deployed from higher up,” Steph says, grinning lasciviously down at the one she has left. “Worth every penny.”

She must notice Dick giving her a look. She blinks innocently over at him. “You didn’t think I was going to spend five hundred on candy alone, did you?”

“Uh, yes, Stephanie, I did, because that’s what you said you were going to spend it on. And I said four hundred.”

Steph grins and shrugs, scooping the last of the candy into her hoodie pockets. “I said dispensary! This is dispensary.” She looks down at the ball in her hands like it's a precious commodity. “I’m gonna call it the Spiñata Bomb.”

“I don’t hear a ‘bat’ in there.”

“Uh, yeah, cuz it’s not a belfry.”

“Miss Stephanie,” Alfred says, coolly.

“Yup, I’m out, gonna go find Cass and show her. Sorry, Alfred!” And with that, Steph bolts, tearing out of the kitchen just as fast as she came in. Alfred ‘tsk’s again, shaking his head.

“B came back?” Dick asks, already wanting to kick himself.

“He did indeed,” Alfred says, plucking a roll of Smarties out of the sink. “Returned with Miss Cassandra in the wee hours. You might give him a bit longer to rest.”

“It’s fine, Alfred,” Bruce says from the doorway, and it’s by pure force of will that Dick doesn’t jump. Okay, maybe he does. A little. Just slightly.

He really hates when Bruce does that.

Bruce comes in and sits down beside him and Dick’s torn between focusing aggressively on his salad and saying hello, both of which feel equally uncomfortable to him. Alfred sets Bruce’s yogurt and granola down in front of him like he fully expected this – for all Dick knows, he heard him coming. He honestly wouldn’t be surprised. Learning Alfred’s secretly had superpowers all this time might make him seem more human, at this point.

Dick risks a look over at Bruce and finds him looking back at him, eyes gray as half-melted ice. He shakes his head slowly and turns his food, and he swears he can see Bruce smiling again. Alfred shares a look with him, toweling off his hands, and then sighs, as though he and Bruce are communicating telepathically.

“I’ll go see to it that Miss Stephanie does not leave scorchmarks on any of the furniture, shall I, Master Bruce?”

“That would be very kind, Alfred.”

“‘Kindness’ was not chief among my motivations,” Alfred says. He looks over at Dick, who attempts to look like something other than a frightened chimp, and clearly doesn’t succeed. Alfred smiles a little to himself and tuts softly, walking out of the kitchen without another word.

The silence feels obtrusive. Dick chews, slowly, trying to figure out what to say.

“You came home,” he says.

Bruce mixes his granola and his berries into his yogurt, stirring slow. “You asked me to.”

“Yeah, that’s sort of what’s blowing my mind.”

They eat together slowly – Bruce still seems tired, but he’s definitely slept if his sleek robe and slick pajama pants are any indication. He brushed his hair and his teeth (Dick can always tell), but the spicy scent of his cologne is conspicuously absent, like he hurried here to catch Dick alone. Dick’s not sure exactly how he feels about that.

He opens his mouth to ask – closes it. Asks anyway, because it’s just occurred to him and he needs the answer:

“Are you avoiding Jason?”

He looks over and watches Bruce chew, methodically, as though the question is a completely innocuous one. He catches a whiff of Bruce’s minty aftershave – his chin and cheeks glisten with it, newly smooth.

“Coming back is always hard on him,” Bruce says, finally. “I thought it might be best to provide him with as little stimulus as possible. To let him adjust gradually.”

“You don’t think maybe he wants your attention? Like, maybe he’s earned it?”

“Jason spends too much time trying to get my attention,” Bruce murmurs, and his face says he’s somewhere else entirely, thinking of something very specific. “It distracts him. Prevents from connecting with the rest of you.”

Dick feels a knot of frustration catching at the top of his ribs. “He’s still just a kid, Bruce. He still…needs you. Needs us, needs our support. He’s having a hard time.”

“We all are,” Brue says, as if it’s that simple.

“If you gave him your attention in the first place, maybe he wouldn’t be so hungry for it. You’re not going to starve him out, Bruce.”

Bruce takes a sip of his coffee and says nothing. Dick grinds his teeth and dips into his quinoa to avoid snapping at him. There’s a pregnant pause between them.

“I thought I’d let you handle it,” Bruce says, finally. He sets his coffee down, studying the counter for a moment. “I think one of my biggest regrets is denying you the opportunity to play to your true strengths, as a child. By benefit of being my oldest you’ve received…what is without a doubt the worst of my parenting. I always tailored the role of Robin to my own needs, instead of to your talents. You’re very gifted socially, Dick. I’ve been trying to give you more free reign.”

Dick lets that sit on his tongue for a while before he swallows it and begins to fully process. Bruce’s candor is always a lot to take in – it’s so elusive that having it presented to him all at once is more disorienting than ingratiating. It’s like putting on someone else’s glasses. It’s giving him vertigo.

“Do you think you could ever maybe say these things before I dive into stuff? Literally or metaphorically?”

“I didn’t see the necessity.”

“Yeah, well, whether you saw it or not, I’m telling you there is one,” Dick says, flatly.

Bruce watches him, his face composed as ever. “I’m trying to treat you like an adult, Dick.”

“You run an entire international organization of adults. You’re telling me you don’t tell them the plan before you drop them into a hotzone?”

“I tell them when it’s prescient.”

“This didn’t count?”

“You were handling it.”

“Would you just talk to him?” Dick asks. “Like, really talk to him? The way you talk to me when you’re not being infuriating?”

Bruce studies his face, intently.

“Do you think that would help?”

Dick sighs, feeling exasperated. “I think Jason can use every bit of support he can get. Death’s done a lot to mess up how well he interfaces with other people.”

“So has life,” Bruce says.

“Yeah, well, that should make you two fantastic for each other. You can spend all day speaking Stubborn-Jackass-ese.”

Bruce narrows his eyes a little. “Stubborn-Jackass-ese?”

Dick buries his attention in his quinoa. “You heard me.”

There’s another silence, the kind that Dick’s getting very tired of. He skewers a slice of blood orange on the end of his fork.

“I needed to know you felt that he was trustworthy,” Bruce says.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have called him,” Dick says, popping the orange slice in his mouth.

“I know,” Bruce says.

Dick chews on that, quietly.

“I did speak with him,” Bruce adds. “Briefly.”

“What?” Dick looks up with surprise. “When?”

Bruce doesn’t answer for a moment, taking time to chew. “I’d heard he’d said something rude to you a few days ago. I didn’t intend to let that stand.”

Dick blinks, turning that one over in his brain.

“You told him to apologize to me?”

Bruce sets his spoon down. “When you’ve been fluent in Stubborn-Jackass-ese for a few years, you become well-versed in apologies. I encouraged Jason to be creative.”

‘Creative’ isn’t exactly what Dick would call it. …or maybe he would. He blushes involuntarily.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“No,” Bruce agrees. “I didn’t. He’d already decided to apologize on his own.”

“Oh,” Dick says. And then: “Good.” And then, realizing he hasn’t said it already: “…thank you. For the thought.”

Bruce watches him a little longer, eyes tracing over his neck and his shoulder. Dick pauses, wondering what he’s looking at, and then remembers he’s wearing a tank top and promptly chokes on his quinoa. He grabs a napkin and coughs into it, trying to hide his face, drowning in mortification.

He could lie, he thinks. But he’s spent almost a decade trying to figure out how to get away with lying to Batman, and he hasn’t come up with anything yet. There’s no way Bruce brought it up now by accident, either - Dick’s had his hickies out and obvious since he walked in, which means Bruce knows who made them and probably when and how.

“Uh,” he says, mostly hoarse, eyes still leaking. “I can explain.”

Bruce stares at him, looking disaffected. Dick coughs into his napkin, trying to figure out if he’d rather die of asphyxiation or embarrassment.

“You have your whole thing and all, I just-” He coughs, not looking at him. “Look, Jason- I didn’t- I don’t-”

“Dick,” Bruce says, calmly.

“Yeah,” Dick says, still not looking at him.

“You don’t have to hide these things from me.”

Dick hazards an incredulous glance back at him and finds Bruce still sitting there, looking completely unbothered.

“I trust your instincts,” Bruce says, evenly. “I like to have your permission to seek out new partners. But if you don’t feel the same, I can respect that.”

“...it kind of just happened,” Dick says.

Bruce nods as if these things do, indeed, just happen.

“I understand. You don’t need to worry about hurting my feelings.”

But Dick does worry about hurting his feelings, and that’s the source of the problem. “I can have the mission report on your desk by midnight, if you want.”

“Only if you think you’ve recovered information that would be useful to both of us.”

Dick pauses, then puts his napkin down.

“Did you seriously just- I swear to God, Bruce.”

Bruce only raises an eyebrow, expectantly.

Dick shakes his head vigorously, digging back into his quinoa. “God, you’re the worst. You are both simultaneously the worst. You deserve each other.”

Bruce tucks a smile in his cheek and picks up the paper from where Alfred left it in the center of the table.

“Mm,” Dick says with his mouth full, reaching out his hand. “Funnies.”

Bruce smiles a little wider and relinquishes them with a flourish that isn’t quite necessary, but which Dick’s inner showman appreciates immensely.

The rest of Thursday, as always, is a blur. Dick’s itinerary is half confused and frantic, half lackadaisical and disaffected. 

After lunch, he goes downstairs to spar with Damian at long last. He wears a sweatshirt because he’s still not ready to have that conversation with an eleven-year-old, and uses lunch as an excuse to fake a stomach cramp when he gets too sweaty to continue. Damian’s mood improves tenfold, though, and he even joins Dick on the bars for a while, grinning a little as he swings.

They shower, then head upstairs for dinner. With Steph, Cass, and Bruce home, there’s excuse enough to eat at the long dining table. Alfred makes his special turkey pasta primavera – tofurkey for Damian and Cass – loaded with carrots, onions, peppers, broccoli, and several savory chunks of steamed pumpkin.

Jason arrives halfway through the meal, and freezes on sight of them, looking like a deer in headlights. Alfred walks over and presents him with a tray of his own without being asked, and the bald look of gratitude on Jason’s face is both endearing and painful. He disappears down the hall, and Dick finds Bruce watching him when he turns back to the meal. He blushes a little, but says nothing. No one else mentions it.

Jason emerges again when Dick’s in the kitchen with Alfred doing dishes. He brings his tray in without a word, then stands just abreast of them, seeming uncomfortable. Dick glances over at him and smiles gently, just to see what he’ll do. Jason’s expression – a little frustrated, a little scared – softens instantly, and he retreats. Ace, who’s lying on the floor, stands up and follows him out.

They go down to the cave and meditate as a group, sans Jason. Cass leads them in yoga, and Dick focuses inwards for an hour. They cool down, they begin organizing their gear, equipping Fear Anti-toxin and securing their bracelets and trackers. One of Steph’s Spiñata Bombs goes off while they’re laying out her costume, and the bat colony explodes from the ceiling, flooding out of the cave to the sound of her raucous laughter.

Tim gets in at nine, Barbara close behind him. She and Dick spend an hour strategizing as she picks at her reheated primavera, and then they both join the rest of the family in the kitchen for their dose of sleep meds. As they’re leaving, Alfred pulls Dick aside and presents him with water and pills for Jason, without ever being asked. Dick wonders if it would be completely inappropriate to kiss him.

On his way to bed, Dick calls Helena.

“How is it?” he asks.

“It’s the night before Halloween,” Helena says. “That’s how it is.”

Jason’s waiting up for him in his room, strewn across his bed like he’s planning to stage a coup. When he looks up, Dick can see he’s still anxious from dinner, but the sleep meds are already taking effect and Dick can’t really understand how anyone has the energy to be anxious about anything.

He hands Jason his water and his pill, and smiles. 

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Jason says, and then Dick falls into bed with him, and drifts off to sleep with a smile on his face.

Dick can’t remember the last time they were all in the cave together. He doesn’t know if they’ve ever all been in the cave together – not all of them, not with Barbara wheelchair-bound and Jason dead and Damian not yet born. The chill is sharp tonight, nipping his cheeks, and he knows he’s going to be cold in a few hours. He rechecks his utility belt and tries not to watch Jason running his hands over his bike, doing a system check. 

Bruce pauses beside him and Dick looks up.

“Headed out?”

Bruce nods, and Cass appears at his side like a shadow. She lifts her wrist and taps her bracelet, which lights up in bands of white and gold. Dick and Bruce’s chirp simultaneously. “Black Bat,” it reads.

Dick nods to her. “Takin’ the plane?”

“Best chance for a quick response,” says Bruce.

Dick nods again. “We’ll find him, Boss. All of them.”

Bruce nods and moves on, sweeping across the cave to the plane. The cockpit slides open. Cass wiggles her fingers at Steph, like an alien that’s only just learned about the concept of waving. Steph grins and waves back, then makes a show of tapping her bracelet. Dick can hear Cass’ chirp from across the cave, and he sees her smile through the hood before she slides into the plane beside Bruce.

The cave doors slide open, the curtain of the waterfall parting as the plane rotates on its turntable. Dick covers his ears as the ignition fires, squinting into the spout of flame that roars from the back, and then the plane whooshes out of the cave, wind blasting back at them as it disappears into the night sky. The cave doors close, and Dick shakes his head to clear the ringing in his ears.

“That’s gotta be a worker’s comp hazard,” Jason says from his elbow, and he jumps.

“Don’t do that,” he says, frowning over at him.

“You’re the one who told me to work on my sneak,” Jason says, which is true, and which Dick is very much regretting right about now. “You nervous?”

Dick sighs. Shrugs. “It’s Halloween. If I weren’t nervous, I’d be…” He remembers the end to the old adage too late and feels the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“Dead,” Jason says, grinning. “You’d be dead.”

Dick looks dismayed and Jason laughs aloud. “What, too soon?”

“I think the answer’s always gonna be yes,” Dick says, trying not to look as mortified as he feels.

“I thought Damian was going as the wet blanket,” Jason says.

Damian snarls from where he’s sharpening his Batarangs on the stairs. “Say that again and you’ll be going as a failed crash test dummy, Todd.”

Jason snorts, and Dick opens his mouth to tell them to knock it off, but before he can say anything, he’s interrupted by the shrill ringing of Jason’s phone.

Jason digs it out of his pocket without looking over, and pulls it up to his ear.

“Hey,” he says, and Dick really ought to correct him, because that’s still so sloppy.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Jason says, face serious. “Are you somewhere safe right now?”

Dick feels himself go quiet – everyone seems to have paused in what they’re doing to listen. Jason doesn’t seem to notice. He turns, paces forward.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asks, and Dick can see his eyes getting bright again.

“Okay, Alicia,” Jason says, gesturing to Selina. She walks down the stairs like she knows exactly what’s going on, sauntering over into their space. “I’m gonna stay on the phone with you, alright? Catwoman’s gonna come get you. It’s gonna be okay.”

Jason exchanges a look with her and nods, and Selina nods back. She smiles beguilingly over at Dick, then walks over to her own bike, scooping her helmet off the handlebars. She puts it on, the cat ears glinting, then looks back, holding up her wrist and tapping her bracelet. Jason and Dick’s chirp in unison. Selina mounts her bike, revs it, and rockets out into the night, speeding off towards Gotham.

Damian gets up and comes to stand near Dick, looking up at him expectantly. Dick looks down, then looks over at Jason as he paces away from him. Dick looks back at Damian.

“Give me a second,” he murmurs, and Damian rolls his eyes. Dick follows Jason, who walks over to Alfred, sitting in front of the Batcomputer, and gestures to the phone. Alfred nods, keys something into the computer, and begins triangulating the call, routing the coordinates to Selina.

“I’m right here,” Jason says into the phone, and Dick feels his heart swelling with a strange mutation of pride. He catches Jason by the arm, and Jason looks back at him. His eyes are bright, and his face is open, and Dick can see that he’s not going anywhere.

The best things about Jason are as alive as they ever were, he thinks.

“Be careful,” Dick whispers.

Jason puts his hand over the phone.

“Yeah, always,” he whispers, and Dick throws caution to the wind for a moment and kisses him, because he needs to.

He draws back, and he can hear Alicia crying wordlessly on the other end of the line, but Jason looks at him like he’s everything in the world.

“…what are you going as?” Dick whispers, a little breathless.

Jason grins so wide that it splits his face, like he’s been waiting all week for someone to ask.

“Me,” he says. “I’m going as me.”