Doodles

Random Gotham Citizen: ranting My neighbor keeps playing music too loud—

Jason: What kind of music?

Citizen: Does it matter?

Jason: If it's good music, I'll ask them to turn it down. If it's bad music, I'll make sure they never play music again.

Citizen: ...it's country pop?

Jason: cracks knuckles Oh, we're gonna have a conversation about their taste AND their volume.

———

Steph: I heard you mediated a custody dispute between two villains over who gets to keep the hyena.

Jason: Harley won. Obviously. But now the hyena is trained to growl every time it hears Pitbull music.

Cass: Scary. But effective.

Jason: Put that on my business card.

———

Bruce: reading an official letter from the GCPD “Red Hood has resolved 34 neighbor disputes, de-escalated 11 road rage incidents, and mediated a PTA meeting that was about to turn into a fistfight over bake sale proceeds.” Jason. What are you doing?

Jason: kicking his boots off They weren’t resolving it themselves. I’m empowering the community.

Dick: By threatening to shove subwoofers up their—

Jason: Allegedly.

Tim: To be fair, noise complaints in Crime Alley are down.

Jason: Thank you, runt. See? Tim gets it. 

Tim: I didn't say it was legal. 

Jason: Details, Timmy. Details.

One of those ways is just "dying" in increasingly dramatic ways around the manor just to mess with him.

Bruce will walk into the kitchen to find Jason face-down in a bowl of cereal with blood everywhere, and Alfred standing there completely unfazed.

"Master Jason has 'died' four times this week, sir. I've stopped cleaning up the messes."

Dick thinks it's hilarious and has started rating the performances. Damian offers unsolicited critiques ("Your positioning is unrealistic. The blood splatter pattern suggests you would have fallen backwards, not forwards.")

Tim just steps over Jason's "corpse" in the hallway while typing on his phone, completely desensitized. Once he actually used Jason's "dead body" as a desk to sign documents.

The one time Jason actually gets hurt (falling down the stairs while texting), everyone ignores his genuine groans and calls for help for a solid ten minutes.

"I think my ankle is actually broken this time!"

"6/10. The desperation is convincing but the scenario lacks creativity." Dick calls from another room.

Bruce walks in, sees Jason at the bottom of the stairs, sighs deeply, and walks out.

Cass is the only one who can always tell when Jason is actually hurt. She'll silently appear with a first aid kit when it's real, and with theater makeup when he's faking, to help make the "death" more convincing.

During a charity gala, Jason "assassinated himself" by dramatically stumbling into the ballroom with a realistic plastic arrow through his chest, whispering "Et tu, Bruce?" before collapsing onto the dessert table. Bruce just handed his champagne to a confused socialite and said, "Excuse me, I need to dispose of a body. Again."

When asked why he keeps doing this, Jason just shrugs and says, "Coming back from the dead once was traumatic. Coming back from the dead thirty times in ridiculous ways? That's therapy."

Nobody wants to deal with Red Hood on Tuesdays (he's always in a bad mood after mandatory family dinner). Nightwing on Thursdays is a menace (that's when he tries out new puns). Robin on weekends is excessively violent (no homework = extra energy). Red Robin during finals week is your sign to keep away from alleyways and pray.

Batman is always Batman, but villains know he's slightly less intimidating on Monday nights (when Alfred makes cookies), because there's a 50% chance of finding him on a rooftop, cowl pushed back just enough, stress-eating.

There's a betting pool among henchmen about which Bat will show up to stop their crimes. Joker keeps sabotaging it by specifically planning his schemes to get the "full set" of Bats to show up at once.

They have an unspoken rule that these stories never leave the family, but within Wayne Manor, everything is fair game.

Tim can't live down the time he sleepwalked into a Justice League meeting and gave a twenty-minute presentation on why hotdogs are basically a taco before anyone woke him up.

Dick is still haunted by the security footage of him practicing pickup lines in the Batcave mirror while wearing the Nightwing suit. ("Hey there, they call me Nightwing, but you can call me... anytime." finger guns)

Jason refuses to acknowledge the existence of his teenage poetry journal that Damian found and distributed to everyone. No one is allowed to mention the phrase "darkness of my bleeding soul" in his presence.

Damian pretends he doesn't know about the video of him baby-talking to a kitten for forty-five minutes straight while thinking no one was home.

Bruce has no embarrassing moments because he's Batman. Except for the time he got his cape stuck in the Batmobile door and dragged himself halfway across Gotham before realizing.

It lasted exactly 12 hours before Dick sent a meme.

Now it's just chaos, but Bruce never leaves because secretly it's how he keeps tabs on everyone.

Every few weeks he'll respond to 74 messages of nonsense with a single "Focus." and everyone behaves for approximately 5 minutes.

The real mission communications happen in individual texts directly to Bruce, who feels a tiny spark of relief each time his phone pings with "OFFICIAL MISSION CHAT (217 unread messages)" because it means they're all still alive enough to be annoying.

Occasionally in the middle of arguments about cereal rankings and who stole whose equipment, Bruce will just type "Status?" and everyone immediately responds with their location and condition. No one ever comments on this ritual, but everyone participates without fail.

Even Jason, who once replied "bleeding out in an alley but the cereal argument is worth it" which resulted in five vigilantes converging on his location in under three minutes.

———

"You're going to kill us both," Jason says calmly, one hand braced against the dashboard as Damian takes a corner at approximately twice the recommended speed.

"Tt. I have perfect reflexes, Todd. I was trained by the League of Assassins."

"Yeah, to kill people, not parallel park. Slow DOWN."

The car screeches to a halt at a red light, throwing them both forward. Jason sighs deeply.

"I've literally trained with Formula One drivers," Damian mutters, tapping impatiently on the steering wheel. “I’ve been driving since I could speak.”

"Is that why you're treating Gotham's pothole-ridden streets like Monaco? Light's green."

As Damian accelerates again, Jason gets a text. He glances down to see it's from Dick.

'how's it going?'

'he's either going to be the best driver in the family or we're both going to die. no in-between.'

"Stop texting Grayson about me," Damian says without looking away from the road.

"Stop reading my texts while you're DRIVING."

"I have peripheral vision superior to—"

"I SWEAR TO GOD, DEMON SPAWN—"

Bruce calls Jason later that night. "How did it go?"

"Great. Your son only tried to kill me seven different ways with my beat up old Toyota. New record."

"So... you'll take him again Thursday?"