After the fourth night in a row where one of his kids directly disobeys his orders and gets hurt even more
Burnt out, drained, weary; whatever the fuck you want to call it at this point
He’s been working on himself a lot lately. And at this point in all his relationships, he understands that taking away their alter-ego and benching them will only backfire on him.
So he doesn’t do anything
He mentally throws his hands up in defeat and just… does whatever they wants to diffuse the situation
Dick is expecting another yelling match to commence the moment they get back to the cave. In fact, he went out tonight deliberately trying to get to this moment. He brought cough drops for the aftermath to soothe his throat from all the yelling. He knows it isn’t healthy, but he just needs to let out some steam
Instead of their usual routine, Bruce gets out of the Batmobile and doesn’t even look at Dick. You can’t say his posture is… relaxed… but it isn’t wound up tightly like it usually is when one of his children gets hurt
Bruce goes over to the Batcomputer and starts typing down what happened on patrol that night while Dick does his best not to put any pressure on his possibly broken leg
After a few minutes of silence, Bruce sighs and turns back to Duck with a raised eyebrow, his face passively blank
Dick shifts and winces as his entire leg throbs painfully. “A-aren’t you gonna call Alfred?” Dick responded back petulantly, keeping his voice low in hopes Bruce wouldn’t hear him then get annoyed and finally show some emotion
“Your arm isn’t broken, is it? Use it.” Bruce said simply before turning back around and continuing to type.
Dick felt anger bubble up in his chest, but it felt stupid to try and start a fight when Bruce obviously wouldn’t engage.
Dick storms off in a huff, at least he tries. He makes it a few steps before deciding to sit down and call Alfred.
“Love you,” Bruce calls back to him without turning around, causing Dick to stick up both of his middle fingers in retaliation.
Or with Jason, he’ll pick his battles and accept whatever happens afterwards
Jason’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Extremely reminiscent of when he first came to the Manor
He had shot someone on patrol. Could he have used his rubber bullets instead of his real ones? Yes. Did he lie to Bruce and say that he didn’t have real bullets in him? Also yes
But fuck Bruce and all the rules he has
Now it was completely silent as they rode home in the Batmobile.
Jason checked over his gun for the fourth time before carefully tucking it back in her holster.
“You’re seriously not gonna say anything, old man?” Jason griped. Usually, this would be the catalyst for a large-scale argument, but there was nothing. Not even an eye roll for Jason's old man comment.
“What’s the point? Not like you’ll listen anyway.” Bruce shrugged, ignoring Jason's angry scoff as he stopped the Batmobile. “Here, your safe house.”
Jason blinked at Bruce, looking at him incredulously. “Are you fucking serious? You’re dropping me off at my safe house? Not gonna allow me in the cave anymore?” Jason snarled, not even thinking to question how Bruce knew where his super secret safe house was.
“You said, and I quote, ‘never wanna set foot in this fuck ass cave another day of my undead life’.” Bruce raised an eyebrow, at least it sounded like he did. Hard to tell with the cowl.
“Fuck you!” Jason decidedly does not pout as he gets out of the car and starts storming up to his door.
Bruce rolls down the windows and shouts out a quick ‘love you’ before speeding off into the night.
He won't enable it, but he's not gonna go out of his way to stop them if he's tried once before
Tim’s sitting down at the Batcomputer, mulling over a case that Bruce said to drop several times or at least put a pause in it, cause it's taking its toll on the young detective
When Bruce walks downstairs, Tim’s expecting a confrontation since Bruce had told him to go to sleep at least four times already
When Bruce noticed Tim looking at him, he simply gave him a greeting grunt before shuffling through his own stack of papers
“I know you said to go to bed, but I’m almost done! I swear!” Tim pressed his back firmly against the swivel chair, waiting…
“Mhmm…” Bruce hummed, barely listening. “Sleep, don’t sleep. Whatever.” Bruce takes another sip of his tea before placing it beside Tim, grabbing a folder full of paper, and pressing a kiss to Tim’s forehead. “Have fun, love you.”
Damian’s angry at him for something perfectly normal to be angry about, whether it’s regular teen stuff or vigilante stuff? Agree with him
While he’s threatening to stay a week at Dick’s place or even the Kent farm, Bruce is packing a bag for him
He nods and hums along absentmindedly as Damian rants that he can’t stand being in the Manor. Nothing he hasn’t heard a million times before from his children and other non-children
“What are you doing?” Damian questioned, finally stopping his rant to actually pay attention to what his father’s doing
“You said you needed a break from me, right?” Bruce grinned, actually okay with the house being quiet for a few days. “You’ve been dying to hang out with Jon more, go on.”
Jon, who was listening in just like his father always is, was already floating outside with the biggest and brightest smile on his face
“Have fun, kiddos. Love you!” Bruce called out, ignoring Damian’s sputtering as he shut the manor door behind him
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