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For the second time in as many weeks, Jason gets stuck at a door. He stands in the Manor’s bedroom hallway, hand clenched around the doorknob, the other white knuckling the strap of his duffle. He thinks that— maybe, if he opens the door, he’ll come spilling out. Fifteen and gangly, blue eyes instead of green and glowing. Alive.
This is pathetic, Jason thinks, staring at the dark wood grain like it’ll tell him the secrets of the universe. Or how to get his hand to turn the knob before someone finds him locked in a staredown with a fucking door. Neither of those things happen in time to save Jason from getting caught. Down the hall, Kai wanders out of his own room, leaving the door hanging open so anyone could look inside.
“Oh. You’re here,” Kai says, staring up at him with a blank expression that Jason thinks he should maybe be a little insulted by. “You’re here”, as if it hadn’t been Jason that laced up Kai’s sneakers with the bunny ear method and zipped his jacket to his chin and driven him to the fucking Manor. Yeah, he’s here. He wishes he were anywhere else. “Why are you staring at a door?”
“For fun,” Jason snaps. Kai’s face pinches up in a sour expression, clearly not buying Jason’s bullshit lie. His eyes flick between Jason and the door a few times, then widen in supposed understanding.
“Is it something scary?” he whispers conspiratorially, leaning in as if Jason’s about to tell him some big, exciting secret. Jason snorts, dropping his hand from the doorknob to ruffle Kai’s hair. Kai ducks away, plastering his hands to his head to ward Jason off.
“No, it’s not scary,” he says eventually, as Kai smooths his rat’s nest back to its usual level of disorder. It seems like no one at the Manor has managed to talk Kai into accepting the merits of a brush just yet.
“Oh,” Kai says, clearly disappointed. He rallies quickly, though, his hand inching toward the doorknob. “Can I look?”
Kai doesn’t wait for an answer. Jason’s hand has barely left his side to stop Kai when he yanks the door open, quick like ripping off a bandaid, looking inside with unconcealed excitement. Jason goes tense, his muscles stiffening like he’s bracing for an attack, but nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. It’s a room, an unoccupied room in a house that Jason was blowing out of proportion. No dead boys tumble out. Kai’s face falls again, this time settling into confusion. “It’s just a room.”
“It’s my room,” Jason says, past the dryness in his mouth. And it is. Jason’s childhood bedroom sits undisturbed, likely arranged the exact same way as he left it before he went running off to Ethiopia. Like Bruce left it as a memorial. It wouldn’t be surprising; his entire life is one.
Kai skips into the room, oblivious to Jason’s internal conflict. He throws himself on the bed, still fitted with Jason’s old Wonder Woman insignia sheets, drawn immediately to the first edition Justice League figurine set enshrined on Jason’s bedside table, still in their original packaging. “These are cool,” he says, picking up the Wonder Woman figure. “Why are they in the box? How are they supposed to have fun?”
“They’re not alive, they don’t need to have fun,” Jason says, dropping his duffle and sitting heavily on the bed. The room creeps him out; it’s too clean, too well maintained. Nothing like what it would be if he had actually been living in it. “Anyway, they’re worth a lot of money if they’re in the box.”
Kai’s eyes widen just a fraction, his hands tightening minutely around the box. Jason knows that face, that reaction. Once upon a time, he would have had the same one. “You don’t need to steal and sell them, you have access to more money you could spend in your life,” Jason sighs.
Kai turns an astonished expression on him. “I do? How?”
“Because Bruce has more money you could spend in your life,” Jason says, flopping back on the bed. His little glow in the dark stickers still cling to the ceiling, all these years later. Jason never should have come back here. “And you’re his ward now.”
“I thought I was your ward,” Kai says, setting the box back on the nightstand and sitting cross legged a bit away from Jason. He says it carefully, like he’s bracing for a rejection.
“You are. Sort of.” Jason pinches the bridge of his nose; he’s no good at this whole reassurance thing. Too bad Dick left for Bludhaven already, or Jason would try to pawn this conversation off on him. “I’m too young to have a ward.”
“You seem pretty old to me,” Kai jabs at him, a teasing little smile on his face. Jason snorts, sitting up.
“Gee, thanks,” he says sarcastically, getting up and grabbing his duffle from where he left it on the floor. He’s had enough of wallowing in his past. “C’mon, let’s go.”
He shuts the door behind him, but he can’t quite leave the boy he was inside. Kai disappears down the hall, and Jason picks one of the empty guest rooms at random. He dumps the duffle out on the bed; it doesn’t quite feel like home, but it’ll have to do. Now he just has to figure out how to live with his ghost hanging over his shoulder.
—
It’s strange to avoid a man in his own house, but Jason pulls it off. Bruce isn’t a particularly difficult person to avoid either, given how little time he actually spends at the Manor. It’s almost harder to avoid him on the streets, where every time he turns around it feels like Jason’s gonna catch a glimpse of a shadowy cape disappearing around a wall. He might actually see more of Tim, who actually is avoiding Jason, than he does of Bruce around the Manor. When Bruce does happen to be home, though, Jason’s sure to make himself scarce.
Maybe the tactics he’s using are a little bit cowardly, sue him. So what if he leaves a room as soon as he hears Bruce’s footsteps coming down the hall, or gives him detached, one word answers when he gets caught in a conversation with him. So what if he won’t meet Bruce’s eyes. It’s a fucking miracle Jason’s able to live in a house with him again.
It’s alright, though. It’s an arrangement Jason can live with. He could see himself enjoying it, eventually, if he tries to. Which is why it isn’t surprising when he has to ruin it himself.
Kai wakes him up one night, sometime around eight PM, when Jason really shouldn’t be asleep if he wants to create any type of normal sleep schedule, but things have been stressful lately, so he’s generously cutting himself some slack on this. Kai’s head peeks over the edge of the bed, his hair damp with water from the shower, dressed in a set of flannel pajamas with ducks on them. Wordlessly, he places a thin paperback on the comforter, sliding it forward until it comes to a rest against Jason’s chest.
“Bedtime story,” Kai says hopefully, tapping a finger against the cover. Jason blinks at him blearily, scrubbing a hand over his face when Kai doesn’t leave him to go back to sleep.
“I’m sleeping,” Jason grumbles, picking up the book and squinting at the title. It’s Frog and Toad Are Friends, and Jason’s stomach clenches as he thumbs the book open. Sure enough, there’s his name, written in stark black sharpie. He’d gotten the book in a school giveaway, read it to bits as a child. He’d pestered Bruce into reading it to him nightly, and Jason knows that if he tried to read it now, it would be Bruce’s voice narrating in his head.
“It’s only eight,” Kai pleads. “Aren’t adults supposed to stay up later?”
“I’m barely an adult,” Jason informs him. Kai just pouts at him, looking like Jason’s ruined his night and also his birthday and maybe even Christmas, too. “Fine. Christ. Pick something else, though.”
Kai frowns at him. “No, I want this one.”
“Why,” Jason sighs, sitting up in bed. Kai takes the book from him, holding it up to point at the title.
“Because it’s you,” he says, smiling. Jason stares at him in confusion, and Kai shakes his head like he’s having to explain that the sky is blue to a particularly dense toddler. “See? Toad! Jason Toad.”
“My last name is Todd,” Jason says incredulously, and the disbelieving look Kai gives him implies that he thinks Jason’s suddenly decided to lie about his last name. He just pushes the book at Jason again, more insistently this time.
“Read,” Kai demands, so Jason grudgingly gets himself out of his (warm, comfortable) bed and takes Kai back down the hall to his own room, settling in the bedside chair. He flips open the book, glancing over at Kai, who snuggles into his pillows with an encouraging nod.
“Frog ran up the path to Toad’s house. He knocked on the front door. There was no answer. ‘Toad, Toad—’” Jason starts, and Kai interrupts immediately.
“Do voices,” Kai says, and Jason groans. It’s easier than arguing with him, though, so Jason pitches his voice low and croaky as he continues, and maybe he feels a little gratified when Kai smiles.
Kai’s half asleep by the time Jason finishes Spring, but he rallies enough that Jason can’t sneak out of the room just yet. “Read me another, Jason Toad,” he says quietly, and Jason despairs inwardly. It seems like the name is going to stick.
Jason reads two more stories before Kai’s sleepy enough for Jason to leave. He’s got his hand on the doorknob when Kai mumbles something, too quiet for him to hear all the way across the room. “What was that?” he asks, crossing back to Kai’s bedside.
“...I don’t think Bruce likes me,” Kai says, turning his face into the pillows. He seems smaller than he usually does.
“Huh?” Jason says, unprepared for the change in topic. It’s a problem that truly never crossed his mind; he’d been so preoccupied with getting Kai to tolerate the Manor that he hadn’t even considered what Bruce might think of Kai. “What makes you think that?”
“He’s always watching me! I can feel it,” Kai bursts out, curling in on himself. It only serves to make him look even smaller, a shaking little lump under the heavy comforter. Ah, Jason thinks slowly. It’s probably not an actual dislike, then. Bruce is just being too heavy handed with his surveillance of Kai. Which is another problem that Jason’s going to have to fix, but at least it’s not something unsolvable as Bruce’s disfavor.
“...I’ll talk to him,” Jason promises, and Kai goes slack against the bed. Jason turns off the light, tugging the comforter up so that only half Kai’s face peeks out. “Sleep tight.”
The thing about avoiding Bruce like the plague is that it means that Jason knows Bruce’s schedule down to the minute. Bruce isn’t out patrolling tonight, so Jason sucks it up and decides to tackle this new issue now. He’s not in any of his usual haunts, though, and as the list of places he might be dwindles, Jason feels progressively sicker. When he’s not in the cramped, out of the way secondary library on the upper floor, Jason gives up and heads to the Cave.
His codes still work. Jason wants to throw up.
He lets his footsteps echo down the stone stairs, not wanting to have to announce himself verbally. There’s two voices floating up the passageway, voices that abruptly cut off as they hear him coming. Jason makes his way over to the dais, where Bruce and Tim Drake sit hunched in front of the massive conglomeration of monitors. Tim sneers at him when he gets close enough to see, and Jason shoots him a cutting grin back. He stops a ways away, leaning against a railing.
“You shouldn’t be here, Hood,” Tim says, open hostility in his voice. His fists sit clenched at his side. Jason glances at Bruce, who sits by silently, watching. Typical, Jason thinks bitterly.
“Get lost, Drake,” Jason drawls, packing as much disinterest into his tone as he can. The less it seems he thinks of Tim, the madder he’ll get. He’s rewarded by Tim’s face going an instant, vibrant scarlet. “The adults are talking.”
“You can’t seriously think you can just waltz in here like you belong,” Tim laughs, clearly enraged. Jason feels a sick sort of pleasure twist in his chest; even after everything, even with his clearer head, he’s still vindictive over Tim’s position as Robin. “After everything you did?”
Jason doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to; Bruce’s silence is as telling as if he had personally welcomed Jason into the Cave with a red carpet and flowers. Tim looks between them, furious at what he finds. “No fucking way,” he says. “After everything he did to me?”
“Tim, I think you should go,” Bruce says quietly. He won’t meet either of their eyes, staring instead at his laced hands, stone steady in his lap. A vicious burst of warmth bleeds through Jason’s chest; as little as he wants to do with Bruce, seeing him undeniably choose Jason over Tim is gratifying in a way he can’t explain. Tim gapes at Bruce, shaking with outrage. “I’m sure you’ve got homework to finish up.”
“Unbelievable,” Tim says through gritted teeth. “Fine. Whatever.”
He stalks off the dais, having to pass Jason on his way up to the Manor. It seems like he’s going to skirt around Jason, but he swerves to slam his shoulder into Jason’s arm at the last second. “Fuck you,” he spits, glaring over his shoulder. Jason just smiles coldly at him as he retreats.
“Good talk,” Jason calls after him. Over on the dais, Bruce sighs. Oh, poor you, Jason thinks aggressively, before he remembers he actually came here for a reason.
“Do you think you could antagonize Tim a little less?” Bruce asks tiredly, looking like he already knows the answer. Jason stands there silently, an answer in itself. It occurs to him that maybe, what with the advent of Kai and Jason trying a little harder to be normal about… well, everything, Bruce has forgotten who he is exactly. Jason’s not his son. Jason runs drugs into Bruce’s city and kills the people that irritate him, and that’s him as much as it’s him that pulls orphans off the street and reads them Frog and Toad. When Jason makes no move to continue that line of conversation, Bruce forges on. “You wanted to talk?”
“You’re creeping Kai out,” he says flatly, imitating the lack of inflection his helmet provides. “When I said you could keep an eye on him, I didn’t mean you could monitor him constantly.”
“It’s a necessary precaution,” Bruce hedges. Jason scoffs at him; he’s had more than enough of Bruce’s justifications for why he should get to be overbearing for a lifetime. “He’s a meta; he’s dangerous.”
“He’s an eight year old,” Jason says, his tone leaving no room for discussion. Kai might be dangerous, but he’s not dangerous on purpose. To be completely honest, Bruce’s overzealous approach might make things worse. “Scale it back.”
“You asked me—”
“I asked you to help keep him safe,” Jason snaps, folding his arms so he doesn’t do something stupid with them. Bruce’s face goes slack; it’s obvious he didn’t see it that way. “God, did I need to paint it on the wall? I trust you with one thing and it’s like you take it as a challenge to ruin it as quickly as you can—”
“I’ll scale it back,” Bruce says quickly. Predictable. Throw in one little thing about Jason trusting him again and he’s falling all over himself to keep it. “I thought the situation was less personal than it seems it is. That was my mistake.”
That sort of— snatches the wind from Jason’s sails. He was expecting a bit more of a fight, to be sure. “Yeah, okay,” he says lamely, unsure of where to go at this point. “That’s it, I guess.”
He moves to leave, and Bruce makes an aborted gesture with his hand. “Thank you,” he says abruptly, desperate in a way that doesn’t suit him. It’s not like Batman at all, which means it’s just Bruce, just the pathetic bits of him that are trying to get Jason back.
“I’m not doing it for you,” Jason tells him, pulling away. He’s too— angry for this, to have any sort of meaningful conversation with Bruce. Already the green is licking at the edges of his vision.
Bruce never leaves well enough alone when he needs to, though. “I want you to know anyway. There’s a lot of things I want you to know.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jason says, his mouth suddenly dry. Sometimes, he’s even worse than Bruce when it comes to pulling out of conversation when he should. The idea of Bruce actually telling him what he thinks, instead of wrapping it in some cryptic bullshit Jason has to fight to detangle, though… hard to pass up. “Like what?”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce says simply. Jason reels back like he’s been slapped; out of all the things Bruce could have possibly said, he wasn’t expecting that. He can’t deal with that. Almost immediately the green rushes in, washes everything out. You don’t have to, it whispers sweetly. Let me.
There are a lot of things that Jason wants. He wants to not have died. He wants to never have met Bruce Wayne, or at least have had the good sense to run when he got caught. He wants Tim Drake stripped of the R, but it looks like that’s not going to happen anytime soon short of Jason killing Tim himself, and he swore there wouldn’t be any more dead Robins. He wants to not be in the Manor. He wants to not be the type of person that would take a kid in off the street. He wants his life to not be so fucking complicated all the time, and right now, the Pit is promising that one.
“You’re sorry,” Jason says, and the green flares in victory. Bruce nods; it just makes him angrier. “Well, that’s just fucking great. I’m so glad you’re sorry you got me killed, really makes me feel better. Got anything else to share?”
Bruce closes his eyes, like this conversation is hard for him. Makes sense. When you’ve been running from your mistakes as long as he has, it’s bound to hurt like a bitch when they catch up. “You seem to think I don’t care for you,” he says quietly, deliberately. Jason digs his nails into his arm hard enough to draw blood. “It couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“If you cared, the Joker would be dead,” he spits. Bruce shakes his head, just once. Jason doesn’t— doesn’t believe him. Won’t believe him.
“Losing you was the greatest pain of my life,” Bruce murmurs, and at that, Jason actually laughs. Of course he’s found a way to make even Jason’s fucking death about him—
“Hurt real bad, did it?” Jason snarls, stalking over to Bruce’s chair. Bruce tracks him as he approaches, but doesn’t move otherwise. “Here, let me share something with you. I’m glad that it hurt. To be fucking honest, I hope it still does. I hope it fucking— eats you alive until it’s everything you can feel, until it’s everything you think about.” He grasps the arms of Bruce’s chair, leans over him until Bruce is covered by his shadow and the green flicker of Jason’s eyes washes over the planes of his face. Jason studies it; Bruce doesn’t look scared, which is a shame, but he does look upset. He’ll just have to settle for that. Jason smiles at him, something warped that could maybe pass as his childhood one in the right light. “It still won’t come close to how it felt to die.”
Bruce’s breathing hitches, his pupils contract a little. It’s a fucking win in Jason’s book. The Pit carries him out of the Cave on a high, up to his borrowed bedroom before it leaves him cold and empty. Jason leaves out the window, takes his bike back to the city for his gear and goes to find something to kill.
—
The Manor is distinctly chilly for the next couple weeks. Bruce is barely home at all, and the few times Jason sees Tim, Tim spends the entire time serving him a death glare that could level buildings. Jason doesn’t feel— bad, exactly, for what he said to either of them, but it’s definitely made the situation awkward. Everyone notices. Kai seems to take it badly in particular, acting oddly withdrawn at times and overly exuberant at others, like he's trying to patch the massive hole Jason’s ripped into the dynamic himself.
The nightmares are nothing new. More often than not Jason sleeps in a green-tinted mess, an ever rotating highlight reel of the Joker and Nanda Parbat and Bruce. Once he’s awake, he usually can cobble together enough of an attitude to think that after seven years, his subconscious should have been able to cook up something new. When he’s still asleep, they’re just as effective as they always are.
Tonight the Joker turns him to a paste on the concrete floor. Smears his shoes through Jason’s wreckage, laughs when he still tries to curl up enough to protect his chest and head. Jason lies there and waits, nerves alight with fear and pain as the laughter rings in his ruined ears and a shadow flickers past the windows. Finally, Jason thinks with sick relief as the Joker giggles, going to wait by the door for Bruce to come save his son.
It’s not Bruce that comes dancing into the room, though. It’s a boy, trailing traffic light colors and light on his feet as he turns circles around the Joker. He can’t lay a finger on the boy, whose bright smile and blurred face crush an aching longing through Jason’s chest that he can’t bear.
“You’re slow,” the boy remarks, easily dodging the Joker’s clumsy swings. He speaks in a mishmash of voices; it’s Dick’s voice one word, Tim’s the next. His own, high and young and full of mirth. “It’s crazy that B hasn’t put you down yet.”
“Your old man’s a soft touch,” Joker says on a cackle, frustration straining the words. Robin skips away from him, lighter than air and looking for all the world like the Joker is boring him.
“Ah, well,” Robin says conversationally, shrugging as if Bruce’s flaws mean nothing. The Joker rushes him, bringing the crowbar up in a vicious arc that should tear out his throat. Time moves like jello; Robin flashes a brilliant grin that brightens the frigid warehouse. “We like him that way.”
He waves a hand, swiping through the Joker’s body and dissipating him like a mist. Jason sobs from his heap on the floor, and Robin sags, a single moment of vulnerability before he seems to notice Jason for the first time. Tears slide down his swollen face, painful and hot. “Please,” Jason croaks, his hand twitching in Robin’s direction. “Please.”
“Ugh,” Robin says, disgust dripping from his words as Jason’s stomach drops through the ground. He backs away, looking at Jason like he’s something awful smeared on the bottom of his elven boots. “What are you doing here?”
No.
Robin waves a hand, swiping through the Joker’s body and dissipating him like a mist. “Please,” Jason begs, and Robin looks at him in horror, looks sick, looks like he's seeing his own death. He is. Robin runs, leaving Jason broken on the ground with a bomb ticking at his back.
No—
Robin waves a hand, swiping through the Joker’s body and dissipating him like a mist. “Please,” Jason says, his voice paper thin and barely above a whisper. Blood drips from his mouth and onto the concrete, Robin crouches next to him and caresses his face so gently he can’t help but lean into it.
“Don’t worry,” Robin soothes him, his kind, incomprehensible face smiling up at Jason. They aren’t in the warehouse anymore, aren’t in Ethiopia at all. It’s a Gotham alley, and Robin stands small and shining in front of him. He holds out a gloved hand; Jason watches it through the lenses of the helmet and his own hand twitches, not toward Robin’s, but to the gun clipped to his belt. “I’m here to help you.”
He's still smiling when Jason puts a bullet through his head. His hand is still outstretched as he falls backward, as Jason screams behind the helmet and nothing comes out.
No!
Jason doesn’t wake up violently from his nightmares anymore. It’s a seamless transition at this point; one second he’s trapped in his head and the next he’s released. He doesn’t fall out of bed swinging or shout at nothing or break his bedside lamp like he did that one time, just lies there shaking as his heart beats out of his chest and the tears dry tight and crisp across his cheeks. Slowly, painfully, he sits himself up, curling up as small as he can get against the headboard.
In that moment, Jason just wants his dad. It's the one thing he won’t let himself have, when in all the time he’s been self aware since he was resurrected, he’s never once tried to stop himself from being selfish. Everything Hood did was selfish in some way; he deserved to be. But when he needs something, really needs it, he won’t let himself. Right now he just needs Bruce to come and brush away the nightmares so that Jason doesn’t have to be the one to do it anymore, but there’s no way he’s going to drag himself down the hall to stand pathetically in Bruce’s doorway, begging for scraps of affection. Especially not after the argument. No, he’ll just tough it out, sit there shaking in his bed until the acid sting of the Pit recedes from his spine and he can force himself back to sleep.
And then Bruce is there anyway, shushing him like a fussy baby and scratching his fingers through his hair. “You’re alright, Jay,” Bruce soothes, rubbing a hand down his back as Jason tries and fails to strangle the sobs welling in his chest. “Everything’s alright. You’re— you’re safe, now.”
Bruce’s voice takes on a certain thickness when he says that, like he can’t quite make himself promise it. He keeps talking, though, a consistent, meaningless rumble as he strings words together that jumble up in Jason’s head. Jason doesn’t listen, exactly, but he focuses on the steady quality of Bruce’s tone and lets it pull him out of the depths of the fear until he can think again.
“What are you doing here,” Jason says, once he thinks he can speak without stumbling over his words. The flatness of his delivery makes it a statement, and his voice is hoarse, raw as if he’s been shouting for hours. Bruce’s hand stills in his hair, resting heavily at the base of his neck. Jason wants to rip it off, but the Pit hadn’t quite managed to skin away everything from before when it tore him apart and stitched him back together. Bruce’s touch still means safety, and Jason’s been scared long enough that he can’t quite bring himself to push Bruce away. Not yet, anyway.
“You were screaming,” Bruce says quietly, and if Jason isn’t mistaken, there’s a barely restrained note of concern there. He doesn’t— know what to do with that. How to feel about that. “I needed to— I came to check on you.”
“Good, that’s great,” Jason says, ignoring the way the sentiment warms something young and painfully desperate for his father’s comfort in his chest. It’s a testament to how out of sorts he is that he can’t force even half the usual derision into his tone. “I’m fine, though, is the thing. You can go now.”
“I’m not sure—” Bruce starts, and that’s enough to finally bring Jason back to full capacity. Who is he to decide what’s best for Jason anymore? Bruce lost that right a long time ago, so why is he still acting like he cares—
“Get out,” Jason snaps, and Bruce’s hand snatches away from him like a startled animal. It’s too much, the amount of vulnerability he’s been forced into unprepared. Jason never wanted Bruce to actually see how different he’s become, not fully. And then, because he’s still confused and halfway between himself now and himself before, he adds a quiet, miserable “please.”
“Alright,” Bruce says quickly, standing carefully as if not to spook Jason, and shuffling towards the door. He hovers in the doorway, and Jason peeks out from the darkness of his crossed arms to glare at him. Bruce raises a placating hand, closing the door slowly.
“Sleep well," Bruce tells him, and the door shuts with a soft click.
—
Jason tiptoes around the Manor for the next week. Somehow, it feels like he’s the one in the wrong this time. None of it makes sense; Bruce’s gentle steadiness after his nightmare in the wake of their argument, how Jason still, still finds comfort in Bruce’s presence. Bruce shouldn't make him feel safe anymore. It’s not fair, and it’s unchangeable as it is upsetting.
It confuses him enough that when he thinks he could maybe start making an effort to get along with Bruce, at least in the confines of the Manor, it doesn’t seem like such a terrible idea. Bruce is trying, in his strange, roundabout way, and there is still a stubborn part of Jason that wants his dad back.
When Jason shuffles into the kitchen one morning, Bruce is already there, sipping his coffee with the morning paper spread out in front of him. He still eats the same yogurt-banana-granola mix Jason always found revolting. Something about that, the fact that the fucking breakfast Bruce eats hasn’t changed since Jason was fifteen, manages to unlock some nonsensical little loophole in Jason’s head. Suddenly it doesn’t seem like an impossible task to sit across from Bruce at the kitchen island, so Jason does, dropping his cereal and coffee down with a thunk to announce his arrival. Bruce’s eyes widen slightly when he realizes that Jason isn’t leaving the room as soon as he’s able, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Which is lucky for him, because Jason would be gone in a second if he tried.
“So what’s on the docket for you today?” Bruce asks tentatively, hiding behind his newspaper. Jason contemplates his answer as he stirs his Lucky Charms around vigorously, getting everything under the milk so it can start to get soggy.
“Thought I’d leave a couple body parts outside the police station,” Jason says thoughtfully after an extended period of silence, and enjoys the way Bruce pales. “A few fingers, maybe a nose or two. Keep them on their toes. You know, the usual.”
“Oh,” Bruce says weakly, staring at Jason warily. Jason meets his eyes for once, smiling back angelically with nothing behind it. “Well. As long as you’re having fun?”
Jason has to bite the inside of his cheek hard so that he doesn’t laugh, but it’s a near thing. Something must show on his face, though, because the skin around Bruce’s eyes relaxes in relief. “Christ, Bruce. That was a joke."
“Oh,” Bruce says again, returning Jason’s smile with a hesitant one of his own. It feels almost normal, at least normal for them, and he makes it through most of his cereal before Bruce decides to ruin it. “Have you been sleeping better?”
“Don’t push it,” Jason warns, and Bruce wisely clams up. Kai shows up shortly after, dressed in his school uniform and talking at a frankly offensive pace for the hour. He chatters on about nothing as he squeezes three entire Gogurt tubes into a bowl of rice krispies, stirring them together into a mess that Jason finds grosser than Bruce’s granola.
“Did you get into Tim’s espresso, or something?” Jason asks as Kai proves that a mouthful of his gluey breakfast won’t keep him from expressing his opinion on the merits of learning long division.
“What’s espresso?” Kai asks, stopping mid sentence to look expectantly at Jason. Bruce snorts from behind his newspaper, missing Jason’s cutting side eye completely.
“Whatever,” Jason mutters, picking Kai’s backpack from where he dumped it under his stool. He threads Kai’s arms through the straps, lifting him off the seat to deposit him on the floor. “You’re gonna be late for school.”
“That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” Kai wheedles, wilting under Jason’s unimpressed stare. He scuffs his shoes on his way out of the kitchen, and Jason trails after him.
“Have a good day,” Bruce calls after them, a strange tone to his voice that makes it seem like he expects Jason to snap at him. Jason won’t say the instinct wasn’t there, but he can rise above. This once, at least.
“Yeah, alright,” Jason calls over his shoulder, then takes a breath, takes a leap. “See you later.”