Keeping Up With Bats

“Come on, babe… seriously?”

Jason’s voice hits the quiet room with far more weight than he intends, dragging across the stillness like rough gravel, thick with disbelief and a frustration so reluctant it almost embarrasses itself as soon as it leaves his mouth. His brows pull together in a tight, uneasy line—an expression he would never aim at you on purpose—especially not when you’re standing there blinking too fast, your lashes wet and trembling, your throat bobbing like you’re trying to swallow something sharp that refuses to go down.

“You have like a million of them.”

He gestures vaguely toward the counter, where the remains of the china teacup—your moderate-quality, robin patterned, impulse-buy teacup—lie scattered like a small, stupid tragedy. They weren’t heirlooms or antiques, not rare pieces from some dusty backroom chase. These were cups you grabbed without thinking, without sentiment, without ceremony. Eight of them total. A casual, mismatched set.

Well… seven now.

“I’ll buy you one, I swear—”

His hand lifts halfway, caught in a helpless, uncertain arc before the words collapse in his throat and die there, because the moment he sees the tears actually slip free—heavy tears, slow tears, so silent they seem almost reverent in the way they fall—Jason goes completely still.

He stares at you like you’ve grown a second head. Like he’s witnessing something impossible.

Teacups. You’re crying over teacups. Teacups you still have seven of.

“Are you—” Jason stops mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open in a stunned, graceless pause, and the expression that flickers across his face—hesitant, baffled pity—makes your stomach twist with pure humiliation. “Are you actually upset at me right now?”

You shake your head—barely, weakly—because even you don’t understand it. The tears aren’t sharp with anger or hot with blame; they’re just happening, spilling for reasons you couldn’t name even if you tried. You bite your lip hard enough to sting, keeping your mouth clamped shut because you know the moment you speak, the words will fall out trembling and pathetic.

“Hey—” Jason tries again, exasperation threading through the tired edges of his voice, “when you broke that part of my motorcycle I didn’t say shit. When the hell did material things start mattering to either of us?”

“Why wouldn’t my things matter to me?”

Your voice shatters right down the middle, thin and fragile like porcelain under too much pressure, and before he can see the way your face twists with the effort of holding yourself together, you crouch down.

You gather the broken pieces carefully, almost ritualistically, your hands moving with a reverence that feels too gentle for something so ordinary—as though, if you’re soft enough, steady enough, patient enough, maybe the cup will knit itself back together and the part of you that cracked with it will follow.

“They shouldn’t.”

The words escape him with a force that seems to rip straight out of his ribs, unbidden and unrefined, slicing through the stillness of the room before he even fully registers he’s said them. They hit the air too hard, too sharp, reverberating like something brittle thrown against concrete, and he looks instantly, horribly aware of the damage they might cause.

Jason draws in a breath that stumbles unevenly through him, his chest rising with the kind of sincerity he has spent years learning how to smother beneath sarcasm and a bulletproof smirk. There’s something desperate in the way he inhales, something taut and aching, as if the confusion flooding his voice is so deep, so marrow-level, that it drags grief behind it like a shadow disguised as irritation.

Because in his world—one stitched together by scarcity and tight budgets and objects that were borrowed, stolen, or broken before they ever reached him—things were never allowed to matter. Not cups, not toys, not clothes, not anything you could hold in your hand.

In his world, things broke all the time. In his world, people broke too. And no one ever cried over either.

He grew up wanting things he wasn’t allowed to touch, told to keep his hands in his pockets and his eyes down, to pretend he didn’t see what he desperately wanted, trained to choke on desire before it had a chance to hurt him.

And the truth—the painful, embarrassing, childlike truth he would never speak aloud—is that he would’ve traded the last unbruised shard of his soul for a cheap plastic cup with a peeling racecar sticker on it, something flimsy and mass-produced, something that would never impress anyone, simply because it would have been his. Just one object that belonged to him alone. One thing no one could rip from his hands, or throw away in a rage, or pawn, or break, or use as proof that he didn’t deserve anything nice in the first place.

And he has no idea how to bridge the distance between your heartbreak and his history.

And now he’s standing here, watching you cry—cry—over a teacup he’s never once seen you cradle to your chest like something precious, never watched you display on a shelf with the kind of pride reserved for heirlooms, never heard you speak about with anything more than offhand fondness when you stumbled across a new one to add to the pile.

It hits Jason strangely, almost disorientingly, the way a dream curdles into something slightly off-kilter, because the sight of your tears over something so… replaceable presses on a part of him he doesn’t know how to unpack, a part of him that twists slowly, tightly, like a knot forming in the center of his stomach.

He’s so careful with your belongings it borders on near-religious devotion, a quiet reverence he never names out loud because naming it would make the feelings behind it too visible, too exposed. Jason never touches your jewelry trays because the clasps look delicate in a way that feels above his pay grade, like the kind of fragile luxury that should only ever be handled by someone who doesn’t have a lifetime of breaking things embedded in the muscle memory of their hands.

He avoids your vanity entirely, sidestepping it like a shrine he has no right to approach, because the shimmering bottles and soft-bristled brushes arranged in pristine rows look like artifacts—beautiful, intentional, expensive—objects that radiate the same untouchable gravity as all the things he wasn’t allowed to want when he was young.

He places his phone on your nightstand with the gentleness of someone setting down an explosive device, using both hands, terrified his weight might scratch the surface or send a lamp wobbling toward disaster.

He even—Gods, even the thought is embarrassing—hand-washes all your clothes when your not home to do the laundry with him.

Even your socks.

Because the idea of shrinking something soft and beloved of yours makes his throat go tight, because the fear of ruining a thing you love is so sharp it borders on physical pain, because he cannot stomach the possibility of leaving the wrong kind of mark on anything that belongs to you.

And yet here you are, shoulders trembling, breath stuttering in fragile hiccups, tears slipping down your cheeks in slow, devastating arcs over a teacup that has seven identical sisters waiting patiently in the cabinet.

The sight doesn’t irritate him.

It doesn’t make him scoff or roll his eyes or dismiss your grief as melodrama the way someone less careful with you might have done.

No—what it does is far worse.

It cracks something open in him, something raw and jagged and humiliating, because nothing—not the memories of his childhood or the poverty, not the violence, not the hunger—has ever dragged him back toward the aching emptiness of where he comes from quite as mercilessly as watching you mourn something he doesn’t have the blueprint to value.

And the awful part—the part that presses under his ribs like a shard of glass—is that he wants to understand.

Jason wants to know why your fingers tremble as you gather the broken porcelain, why your breath keeps catching in your throat like you’re afraid it will escape you entirely, why your tears fall faster every time his voice slips into that helpless, weary frustration he didn’t mean to let bleed through.

He wants to tell himself that maybe this cup carried some hidden meaning, some quiet memory or sentimental thread he never saw, something soft and secret that shattered along with the porcelain and left you hurting in a way he wishes he knew how to soothe.

But he knows that isn't it. So Jason doesn’t understand.

So he stands there—lost, aching, hollowed by helplessness—staring at the broken pieces scattered between you, each shard glinting with a kind of accusation he doesn’t know how to answer. And for the briefest, sharpest moment, he feels like the fracture on the floor isn’t the worst thing he’s broken here.

And you—

God, you feel so unbearably stupid you could fold in on yourself from the embarrassment of it.

They were just tea cups.

Just cheap little china cups you never bothered to wash the “proper” way like the tiny slip of paper told you to, cups you left in the sink overnight sometimes, cups you barely thought about until one was sitting cracked and broken on your kitchen floor like the aftermath of something far more devastating.

You didn’t even care enough to treat them gently.

You chipped one last week and shrugged it off.

But now—now staring at it shattered beyond repair, splintered into fragments that look like the aftermath of a moment you weren’t equipped to handle—you feel something twist sharply inside you, something raw and humiliating and impossible to explain.

“Jason.” You breathe his name out in one long sigh, trying to smooth the wobble from your voice before it cracks into something pathetic, something you know he’ll mistake for anger. “Please… not right now. I had a long day and—”

“I just came back from an eight-hour patrol, and you’re the one crying, so how is this my—”

“I’m not blaming you!” you snap—not out of rage, but desperation—and the moment the words escape, you hate how thin and trembling they sound.

“Sure as hell sounds like it!” Jason fires back, a sharp huff of frustration leaving him as he begins pacing around the kitchen like the movement might somehow make sense of any of this.

You stare back down at the broken pieces of china, your teeth biting into your lip so hard it almost hurts, and the quiet, exhausted words slip out before you can stop them. “Well how is it my fault you’re taking it that way?”

“Can you stop talking to me like that?”

“How else am I supposed to talk to you?” you whisper, blinking fast, eyes wide and stinging. “What do you want me to do, lie and say ‘It doesn’t matter, Jason, this is exactly what I needed to come home to at ten o’clock at—’”

“If you’re stressed about something else,” he cuts in, exasperation threading through every syllable, “then why are you getting so defensive about the stupid tea cup?”

You stare at him, jaw dropping, because the word feels like a slap. “Stupid?”

“It’s a tea cup.” He groans the words, dragging a hand over his face like this entire moment is exhausting him.

“My tea cup,” you sputter, voice breaking as you gather the pieces into your hands and set them on a plate.

“What—so something you have seven other of matters more than me?” Jason finally asks, and the words aren’t mocking or cruel. They’re lost. Utterly, helplessly lost. Because you crying over something he did feels worse to him than any yelling you could throw his way. Yelling he understands. Yelling has a shape, a form he can wrestle. But crying? Tears he caused? That carves panic into his bones because tears don’t tell him what to do, tears don’t show him where to step, tears don’t give him a blueprint for repairing what broke.

He offered to buy you a new one—twice.

He tried explaining it was small, replaceable, meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

But you didn’t let it go.

You couldn’t let it go.

And he doesn’t even care if his own frustration sounds ridiculous, because in his mind he’s changed so much for you already.

You coaxed him open, gently, carefully, teaching Jason piece by piece what it meant to trust someone without waiting for the ground to fall out from under him—but Jason's the one who actually did the opening.

Jason's the one who learned to speak softer when you’re overwhelmed, who forced himself to sleep through the night instead of wandering the apartment like a ghost, who makes himself step back when he feels his temper flare instead of letting it swallow him whole.

He takes care of himself now—because you asked him to.

He tolerates people he would’ve shoved aside or ignored—because you asked him to.

He has given and bent and adjusted more than he ever thought he could for another person.

And Jason's never asked you for anything in return, so the helpless, aching plea slips through his voice before he can soften it, before he can make it gentle.

“Can’t you just let this go?” Jason murmurs, exhausted, grabbing his jacket from the back of the kitchen chair like he’s already bracing himself for the distance he thinks is coming.

And you don’t care—not even a little—if your reaction looks ridiculous or dramatic or childish, because the truth is that you have adjusted so much for him, bent yourself in ways you never thought you would have to, stretched your patience and your compassion and your understanding until it felt like you were pulling threads from your own ribs just to weave Jason something safe to land in.

You’ve explained every emotion you’ve ever felt to this man, laid them out in neat, vulnerable rows so he could see them clearly, so he wouldn’t have to guess, so nothing inside you could ever blindside him the way life blindsided him growing up.

You’ve explained his emotions to him too, talking him down from the cliffs of his own mind, guiding him back toward safety again and again, never once complaining, never once hesitating, because if he was drowning, then you were already in the water with him, pulling him back toward shore.

Was there ever one night—just one—where you weren’t there after patrol, waiting with the med kit, with the soft voice, with the careful hands?

Has Jason ever once gone to sleep without you bandaging him up first, cleaning blood off knuckles that never deserved to split open, humming under your breath so he wouldn’t mistake tenderness for pity?

Have you ever blamed him for anything—any outburst, any moment of panic, any jagged edge that cut too sharp because he hadn’t learned how to sand it down yet?

Have you ever pushed him to talk before he was ready, forced anything out of him, told him that what he felt was stupid or irrational or inconvenient?

No.

Never.

You’ve given him endless grace, endless patience, endless space to unravel and re-stitch himself at his own pace.

So for this one thing—for this one small, embarrassing, fragile break down—

“Please don’t be upset with me,” you whisper, voice trembling in a way you can’t hide, because you genuinely don’t think your heart can take it right now, because even if the reason for your tears is stupid, the feeling behind them isn’t, and lying about that would hurt more than the broken porcelain ever could.

And Jason—

God.

“…so that’s a no.”

And he breathes it out like you’ve betrayed him, like you’ve taken something from him without realizing it, like your refusal to snap out of your emotion is confirmation of some deep, ugly fear Jason’s never learned how to name.

You look down again, wiping your face with the back of your sleeve, your breath shivering in your chest as you try to swallow down the ache pressing against your ribs.

“I’m…” Jason starts, voice fraying at the edges after a long, taut moment. “I’m—I’m going to go, okay?”

You stare at the floor—at the tiny fragments of the cup, pieces so small they’re hardly more than dust, pieces you couldn’t see clearly through your earlier tears—and you manage a small, hoarse “…Okay.”

Jason stands there for a second and then hes nodding stiffly even though your eyes are still glued to the floor, your shoulders tight, your hands curled helplessly against your sides.

Then he walks away, the sound of him crossing the room somehow louder than it should be, like every step is dragging something behind it.

You don’t move.

You don’t even breathe properly.

You just stand there pressed against the fridge, listening to him tie his boots, the laces whispering against each other, the radiator humming in the background like it’s trying to fill the emptiness settling between you.

Then you hear his footsteps again—approaching this time—and before you can straighten or look up or prepare yourself, he’s standing beside you.

“I love you,” Jason murmurs, low and quiet and painfully awkward, like the words are too big in his mouth. “That hasn’t changed—uh… goodnight.”

Maybe it would have hurt less if he hadn’t said anything at all, because the forced wobble in his voice lands in your chest like a bruise, and you hate that you can hear the part he’s trying to hide.

“…tie your boots,” you mumble softly, eyes still fixed on the floor, “don’t trip, Jason.”

There’s a long, aching pause.

“Yeah, babe,” Jason whispers. He stands there for another second—just breathing, just gathering himself in the silence—and then he turns and leaves.

¹ ʷᵉᵉᵏ, ¹ ᵈᵃʸ ˡᵃᵗᵉʳ

Jason might genuinely be dumber than Damian ever suspected, because everyone at this damn table is staring at him—openly, mercilessly—and he’s still shoveling steak into his mouth like he’s in some kind of life-or-death speed-eating contest, jaw working with single-minded determination as if chewing is optional and survival isn’t.

Father, of course, looks absolutely delighted.

Ecstatic, even.

Jason staying at the manor for more than forty-eight hours—actually sleeping in his old room, leaving his boots by the door, existing in a way that suggests permanence—has turned Bruce into some strange, quiet version of jubilant, sipping his miso soup with the serene bliss of a man receiving endless father's day cards. Damian would not be surprised in the slightest if Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s brooding sentinel, were kicking his feet under the table like a child too excited to sit still.

Jason finally glances up mid-chew, cheeks full, eyes flat.

“What.”

Damian doesn’t miss a beat. “Chew.”

“Yeah, seriously,” Dick scoffs, though he’s grinning in that way that means he’s both disgusted and entertained, “what are you, a dog?”

“Do not compare dogs to him,” Damian snaps before Jason can even gather enough dignity to glare. “Titus eats his food like a gentleman.”

“I’m losing my appetite watching this,” Tim mutters, pushing his plate away and turning toward Bruce. “Since I’m obviously done, can I go work on—”

“No,” Bruce cuts in smoothly, still wearing that faint, impossible-to-scrape-off smile, “eat your asparagus.”

Tim groans, picks the limp vegetable up with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man, and shoves it into his mouth. “Acting like your not avoiding your seaweed.”

Jason tunes them out, shoulders lifting and falling with a silent sigh as he scowls and aggressively inhales the last of his food.

Eventually it’s just him, Dick, and Damian left at the table.

The clock on the far wall blinks a clean, indifferent 2:00 a.m.

Bedtime for the bats.

Or it should be.

Patrol itself had been easy—almost offensively so. Just annoying.

A rundown gambling hall and a half-hearted drug exchange at the docks during the storm, nothing he couldn’t handle blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back.

But Jason hadn’t been in it.

Not fully.

Not even halfway.

He’d moved on instinct alone, the muscle memory of nights like this doing all the work while his mind drifted somewhere far from the smoke and the grit and the snapping bones beneath his fists.

Jason had taken more hits than usual—unnecessary ones, stupid ones—including a sharp punch that split his lip and another that caught him square in the jaw. One ancient asshole had even landed a blow to his knee, of all places.

Dick had actually yelled at him mid-fight—“Get your head on straight!”—voice cracking with genuine worry.

Later, on the rooftop where Tim passed out greasy paper bags of burgers, Dick had tugged Jason aside, fingers buried in the mess of dark hair, muttering about how he needed a damn haircut because obviously that was the reason he was off his game.

And Damian—

Damian had burned holes through the back of Jason’s hood all night, silent, suspicious, eyes sharp enough to slice open whatever secret Jason wasn’t sharing.

“You going to bed here?” Dick asks now, picking up his plate, tone light but probing in that older-brother way he’ll never shake.

“Yeah,” Jason mutters, nudging a sad stalk of asparagus across his plate like the world’s most exhausted toddler.

Damian’s head snaps up so fast it’s almost comical.

He stares—really stares—at Jason, eyes widening, brows furrowing, mouth parting in something halfway between realization and disbelief. Jason, predictably oblivious, doesn’t notice a damn thing.

Dick does, though–oh, he definitely does.

He hides a snort behind his hand, mumbling something about making sure Tim is in his bedroom and not the cave before walking out.

And Damian?

Damian is still staring like Jason has just announced he’s selling his organs to fund a circus.

Now it’s just the two of them left in the dining room, the silence stretching out in a way only Jason receives as casual, and Damian watches as Jason takes a slow swig of water as if he can wash the exhaustion out of his bones before pushing himself up to stand, ready to make the quietest, least dramatic exit possible—only for a metal clatter to slice through the room when a spoon hits the middle of his back with the delicate precision of someone who has absolutely no intention of letting him leave.

Jason freezes mid-step, staring at a painting on the wall as though it might offer him a different reality, one where he isn’t being pelted with kitchenware by a ten-year-old assassin, and then he turns, slow enough to betray just how done he is, to face Damian.

“What did Dick say about throwing cutlery?” he grumbles, trying—God, trying—to summon that authoritative ‘dad’ tone Bruce wields like a weapon and Dick wields like a warm blanket, but it comes out thin, frayed, and completely incapable of intimidating anyone who’s ever stabbed a man before puberty.

Damian doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t blink. He just looks at Jason with those flat, unyielding eyes and says, “It’s been a week, you said on monday 'maybe friday'.” like the words are a verdict and Jason is already guilty.

Jason drags a hand down his face, worn-out in a way that has nothing to do with the bruises blooming under his skin. “Look, now is really not a good time,” he mutters, the words reaching for patience and barely grazing it. “And it’s not like I’m keeping you out, alright? I’m not going either—”

“Who said I needed to go with you?” Damian interrupts, his tone sharp enough to cut, as if the idea that he might require accompaniment is almost insulting.

Jason raises an eyebrow, too tired to even pretend he doesn’t know exactly where this is going, too tired to carry the weight of this conversation but too human not to try anyway. “She’s not going to want to see you right now,” he says, and the words come out softer than he means them to, softer than he wants them to be.

That actually hits Damian—Jason sees it, the tiny break in the armor, the shift from steel to something almost, almost vulnerable. His expression tightens, curls in on itself, and for a moment he looks less like the demon heir and more like a kid trying to fit himself into a shape the world keeps insisting on. “I… don’t recall doing anything… wrong,” he murmurs, the uncertainty so rare it practically echoes.

Jason exhales, a long, unraveling sound that’s half frustration and half something like grief, because the last thing he needs is to drag anyone else into the mess he’s made. “You didn’t,” he says, and he even tries for reassurance, though it lands crooked. “Chill. You’re fine. It’s me—it’s… her. We’re not talking right now. She’d be upset if you showed up by yourself, and you’re not coming with me because I’m not going.”

“You’ve split up?” Damian explodes, his hands slamming against the tabletop with a force that rattles the silverware, the kind of theatrical outrage only someone raised by assassins and billionaires could ever pull off without flinching.

“No,” Jason exhales, the word coming out flat, worn, so utterly unaffected that it almost sounds cruel, though it’s really just exhaustion wearing his voice like a wet coat. He knows exactly where this is headed, knows exactly how drained he’ll feel by the time he finally gets upstairs, and yet he still tries—Gods help him—to keep things level. “We’re just taking a break, okay—?”

“A break?” Damian repeats, the word hitting his tongue like it’s poison, like the very idea defies the laws of physics. He stares at Jason with something between horror and disgust. “What the hell did you do?”

“Nothing!” Jason shoots back, the frustration rising faster than he can tamp it down. “We just had an argument, alright? And frankly I don’t even feel that in the wrong here—we’re going to talk about it like adults later, but right now I don’t exactly want to see her and I seriously doubt she wants to see you—”

And the second the sentence leaves his mouth, he hears it. He hears it. The way it sounds. The way it lands. He watches Damian go still in that frightening, surgical way he has, his lips flattening into a single, rigid line and his fists curling tight enough that the knuckles pale.

Jason closes his eyes, drops his head, raises a hand in something like surrender—but not quite apology, because he hasn’t figured out how to string one together yet. “I didn’t mean it like that—”

“What does what you did wrong have to do with me?” Damian fires back, each word sharpened to a point.

Jason actually stops. Actually blinks at him. And then, with a tiredness so bone-deep it feels like he’s speaking through mud, he says, “I hate to fucking tell you this, Damian, but you’re my brother first. No amount of closeness—yours or mine—or whatever the hell any of us think we are to her is going to change that.”

For a moment, the room goes very, very still. A breath held by someone who doesn’t want to acknowledge they’re holding it.

Then Jason turns—and finds Dick and Tim standing in the doorway like two busted gargoyles caught eavesdropping on a family therapy session they absolutely didn’t have the clearance for. The tension on Jason's face folds into something sharp and undeniably pissed off.

“What the hell?” he snaps. “Fuck off and go to bed.”

Dick looks at him like Jason’s a stray dog someone just threatened to kick. Tim looks like he’s trying to figure out whether this is finally the moment where a 'trouble in paradise?' joke would get him killed.

Jason pushes past both of them anyway, jaw tight, shoulders tense. He sends one last look over his shoulder toward Damian—the kind of pointed look that carries a warning far heavier than the words themselves.

“Don’t even try to sneak out,” he says, low and firm, a promise more than a threat. “You do that and I— so help me Damian I'll make sure your never allowed to step foot into that apartment again, who do you wana be shed listen to?”

And then he’s gone down the hall, leaving Damian alone with a table full of cold food and a silence sharp enough to slice clean through him.

“Hey… bud,” Dick starts, voice careful, slow, like he’s trying to thread his way through a minefield of tension he can feel but can’t quite see. “Do you want to play a video game with—”

Damian doesn’t even pause. Doesn’t even glance. His head shakes once, sharp, decisive, the motion carrying more weight than any argument ever could. Then he simply walks past them, silent, deliberate, leaving the words hanging in the air like smoke, unclaimed and useless.

Dick exhales, just a little, the sound betraying a mixture of frustration, resignation, and something softer, something that almost feels like sadness. Tim shifts in place, uncertain, then sighs and mumbles a small, "I'll tell Bruce.”

Damian is sprawled flat beneath Titus like some unwilling, furry sarcophagus, limbs splayed and pinned, when Bruce walks into the room. Fresh out of the shower, pretending worry isn't gracing his brow because of the fact Damian has not kicked him out yet. Lucy, the monkey Damian has been itching to introduce for days, perches nearby, inspecting strands of his hair with meticulous little fingers, poking as if she’s checking for fleas or ticks.

Bruce eases onto the edge of the bed, reaching down to lift one of Damian’s feet. His hands move with that practiced, silent precision, pressing gently for bruises or tenderness from the night’s patrol—the memory of Dick shoving Damian away from a man and into that tight space between two shipping containers still clear in his mind, the only time Jason had reacted with something close to humor, snorting from his daze as if the absurdity had momentarily broken through the tension.

“I’m not hurt,” Damian huffs, the sound muffled beneath Titus’s fur, thick and immovable. Ace nudges into Bruce's back like hes telling his owner to ignore the little one.

“Humor me,” Bruce replies, voice low and roughened from Gotham’s rain, hands shifting carefully, probing not just for broken bones but for temperature changes and tension in muscle that might betray pain he refuses to admit.

“Father…” Damian’s voice finally cuts through, hesitant, thin, fragile under the weight of silence. Titus has shifted fully, blocking Bruce’s view of his youngest’s face, and maybe that is exactly what gives Damian the courage to ask the question rolling uncomfortably off his tongue.

“Mhm? Yes, Damian?”

“…Your… experienced with women.”

Bruce freezes mid-motion, fingers resting lightly on Damian’s knee. This is not the conversation he anticipated when Tim had peeked into his master bedroom, reporting that the baby needed attention.

Not in a million scenarios did he imagine navigating questions about women or experience with this son, least of all now, when he barley reaches Bruce's hip.

And yet here it is, suspended between them in the quiet room, heavier than any patrol report, any argument, any lesson on discipline—and Bruce knows that his experience isn't exactly…well one he wants to be used for teaching. 

“Did you… meet a girl at school?” Bruce begins carefully, slow and measured, the words more an experiment than a question, and he watches, almost with a kind of detached fascination, as Damian immediately snaps upright, yanking his leg away from his father’s hand as if contact itself had suddenly become unbearable. His ears flare bright red, almost glowing beneath the dim light, and the flush spreads up his sharp cheekbones, raw and uncontainable.

“NOT ME!” Damian practically screams, the volume ricocheting off the walls and into Bruce’s ears, which still throb faintly from the night’s patrol.

“The other one!” Damian huffs, his anger deflating slightly as he pets Lucy, Titus, and Ace with careful, apologetic strokes, murmuring soft noises that are half reassurance, half apology, as if the animals themselves need to understand he’s not permanently dangerous. 

Bruce rubs at his ears, bitterly convinced that after that scream he deserves a pet too.

“Dick?” Bruce murmurs, voice low and cautious, “I think he can figure out Koriand'r better than any of us could, Damian—”

Damian mutters a name under his breath, sharp, almost imperceptible, and Bruce pauses mid-thought.

Of course, he knows of you; he knows that most of his children are well-versed in your existence, your habits, your presence in the orbit of their lives—but the formal interactions between Bruce and you have been limited, almost clinical: a parent-teacher conference, one short exchange of cash in thanks, nothing else. Hell, the only reason he has your number is because Damian's phone and contacts is connected to his.

Bruce is not annoyed that Damian hadn’t called him immediately when the fight happened, but there had been a flicker of irritation that neither you nor Jason had tried, that the initiative had fallen elsewhere.

That irritation fades almost entirely, however, the moment he recalls the selfie Jason had sent a few days ago, one of those rare, candid things. Jason had been smiling ear to ear, face unguarded, and Bruce’s eyes had fallen on your hand brushing lightly against the whipped cream on Damian’s upper lip, gentle and unaware of the camera.

Jason was wearing one of Bruce’s suits, perfectly tailored from no use, and Bruce thinks it has been years—years—since he has seen that effortless smile from his son, never mind one sent willingly, one shared.

“Jason…” Damian spits the name like venom, forcing Bruce’s memory out of that quiet, tender snapshot he had professionally printed months ago and keeps tucked in his desk drawer. “Says the two of them are on a break.”

Damian’s voice hardens further, the word break pronounced like an accusation. He mutters under his breath, barely audible: “What does that entail?”

Ah.

Well.

Talia and Selina had taught him more than enough about what a ‘break’ meant, and Bruce could feel the weight of it pressing into the room, a tension that seemed almost physical, curling around the corners like smoke.

“Well…” Bruce begins slowly, carefully choosing each word as if it were a scalpel, “Your mother—”

“Father. Textbook definition.” Damian’s face scrunches up, sharp angles softening for the briefest fraction of a second. “Not mother's.”

Bruce exhales, long and weary, the kind of sound that carries the history of too many late nights, too many battles, too many conversations that end in nothing but exhaustion. “It’s different for everyone,” he says, hands flexing on his knees, voice low and ragged, “It could entail not seeing or speaking, just acting as friends, maybe seeing other people—”

“OTHER PEOPLE?” Damian actually yells this time, the word snapping like a whip, ricocheting against the walls of the room.

Other people.

People who could, Gods forbid, have little brothers.

Bruce presses a hand to his temple, already tasting the headache forming, the kind that comes whenever hes thinking about his children's love lives. At least it’s not Cassandra, he tells himself bitterly.

Bruce looks down at his son, defeated, the weight of parenthood settling across his shoulders like an old, heavy coat. “I doubt that’s what they did, but—” He pauses, pinching the bridge of his nose, willing the migraine back into nonexistence, “Look, they probably had an argument and just—”

“Have you done this ‘break’ before?” Damian interrupts, sharp, precise, a predator circling a question like it’s prey.

“Yes,” Bruce says, the word falling flat but necessary, the history of his own mistakes and missteps coiling behind it. “With your mother. All the damn time. In fact I think we never formally ended things. See? No problem. Calm down, Damian—”

Damian blinks at him like a bird caught mid-flight, feathers ruffled, heart racing. “That’s… not exactly reassuring,” he mutters, the words soft but pointed, as if every syllable carries a weight Bruce isn’t entirely ready to shoulder.

Bruce shifts, awkward, uncertain. “She’s nothing like Talia, and you can’t assume Jason will act the way I do, so… I’m sure—”

But Damian doesn’t hear him. He sees you. He recalls the way you scold Jason and him, measured but firm, precise as any lesson he’s ever had from his mother. He remembers the tea, the way you handle it, the soft pressure of your hands on the cup, as if you are instilling care into the ritual itself. He recalls the gentle pat to his head, firm yet soft, praise administered like an art form in the same cadence, the same rhythm as Talia.

He remembers Jason, the way he closes off, blocks the world, melts into something unreadable and strange the way Bruce had with Talia, the way he does with you. He remembers the switch flipping, the calm, the mush of familiarity and affection, all tangled into a strange, fragile symmetry.

Damian looks down at his lap, where Lucy has tucked herself, huffing softly, a tiny puff of air as if she’s exasperated on his behalf.

Bruce tries again, voice careful, steadying, the weight of years of lessons bleeding through: “And… it’s not like Jason can’t handle his own relationships—”

Damian looks up at Bruce and mumbles the money move.

"Father...please? I'm only talking about this with you because I trust you to keep it to yourself."

The pause stretches, dense and thick, a pressure that hovers in the space between them, before Damian watches as his father flops onto the bed, resting his head on Ace’s back as if surrendering to the sheer absurdity of parenthood.

“I’ll take you to her apartment,” Bruce sighs, voice heavy with both command and relief, “Go get the keys.”

Damian launches himself from the bed with such ferocity, such unrestrained vigor, that Bruce can’t help but feel a small, fleeting twinge of jealousy.

“CAN I DRIVE?!” Damian yells from down the hall.

“DONT MAKE ME TAKE IT BACK!” Bruce yells back from the bed, petting Ace with the same gentleness his son does all the time.

You don’t even know why you’re surprised when you glance out the window and see Bruce and Damian Wayne crawling back inside—completely unannounced, completely without costume, like some absurdly wealthy, deadly version of burglars who’ve forgotten the subtlety part of the job. Your brain freezes for a moment, caught somewhere between incredulity and the faint, reluctant amusement that it somehow never manages to suppress around this family.

Bruce moves with the quiet, deliberate precision you’d expect, though somehow even that is comically undermined by the fact that he’s wearing a loose dress shirt and slacks instead of armor, and Damian—sharp, rigid, impossibly focused—clings to the sill like a tiny, lethal spider. And somehow, somehow, this is happening in your living room.

Your mouth opens. Nothing comes out. You think about yelling, about asking, about just… doing literally anything, but the scene is already too ridiculous, too surreal, too utterly Wayne to stop watching.

“…I take it Jason doesn’t know you two are here.” Your voice is flat, calm, deadpan enough to make Damian falter at the window, caught mid-crouch like a startled cat, before he stiffens and composes himself with that rigid precision that somehow manages to look both absurd and impressive at the same time.

Bruce just stares at you, eyes flicking toward the floor for a moment, the faintest shadow of shame crossing his face. “Damian is… very convincing,” he admits quietly, almost reluctantly, like he doesn’t want to admit that his youngest has outmaneuvered him. And that the reason he isn't donning his suit and cowl that would make him feel less awkward doing this is because Damian said you…dont allow ‘costumes’ in the apartment.

You sigh, long and measured, because you know that all too well. “...Would you both like some tea?”

“Green, please.” They say it simultaneously, words colliding mid-air, and then both of them pause, blinking at the strange synchronicity of it.

Damian finally lifts his gaze to you, stepping fully into the warmth of your apartment—the one he’s been missing all week—shoulders still drawn back a little, tight with tension, cautious. There’s a flicker in his expression, a shadow of worry that you might be angry with him, and for a quiet moment, you realize that this must be why he didn’t come with Jason.

Why he felt safe enough to come with Bruce.

The thought makes you smile faintly to yourself. Unfortunately that worry was still for not, since nothing—nothing—could make you think of Jason without some measure of fondness, some involuntary warmth curling in your chest.

“…Two sugars and—”

“Honey.” You nod softly, gentle but sure. “I take it that’s for you as well, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce notices it immediately—the same airy softness in your voice that Talia once had, long before… everything. The sound of it makes his chest tighten in a almost protective way, the kind of tightness that drives him to think about checking security systems more obsessively, running patrols along streets he shouldn’t need to think twice about, filing addresses away in the back of his mind for frequent, silent surveillance.

Mr. Wayne closes the window behind him with a slow, deliberate motion, the kind of movement that feels both commanding and almost apologetic at once, muttering under his breath with that rare, unguarded humility: “I don’t deserve honey.”

“I agree.” Your voice cuts through the quiet with that clipped precision, that same subtle authority Bruce knows all too well, and both father and son feel it—the unmistakable sting of being scolded by another woman in their life.

“This is all Jason’s fault,” Damian mutters under his breath as he stalks toward the kitchen, each step measured, deliberate, like a small storm contained in a human frame. Bruce sighs and trails behind, a quiet shadow to Damian’s tempest. “I’m putting salt in his hot chocolate.”

“That makes it taste better,” Bruce mumbles, distracted, voice low, already running through possible interventions, calculating ways to prevent this minor rebellion from turning into another justification for why your relationship with Jason is somehow compromised.

Damian turns to him with a look that could have been mistaken for disbelief or horror, eyebrows raised as if Bruce had just sprouted a third head. “You… you poor people are so weird, Can’t afford high-quality chocolate, so you add salt—”

“I’m a billionaire,” Bruce scoffs, the faintest smile tugging at the corners of his mouth at how Damian seemed to relax slightly.

“Do all billionaires use the window?” You quip from in front the kettle, and only then does Bruce fully register that the two of them have already moved into your kitchen, filling the small space with the weight of their presence. In his defense, Bruce isn't used to such small living spaces.

“Just our family,” Bruce says awkwardly, voice softening, attempting to lighten the mood in a room that somehow feels smaller and larger than he can fit in all at once.

You glance over your shoulder, and the glare is familiar—sharp, incisive, the same one Jason had once leveled at him at nine years old, full of judgment that Bruce could only find adorable.

Bruce catches himself mid-thought, wondering—briefly, absurdly—if your parents happen to be alive or not.

For…

…no reason.

ᴅɪᴠɪᴅᴇʀꜱ: ᴄᴜʀꜱᴇᴅ ᴄᴀʀᴍɪɴᴇ & ᴄᴀꜰᴇ ᴋɪᴛꜱᴜɴᴇ

⤷ series masterlist

tag-list [ reply to the master list to be added ദ്ദി˶ｰ̀֊ｰ́ ) ] ᯓ★ @marenyearlylover444, @psysgr, @sourstrawburry, @bloomfaery, @prettysweet02, @r-4-y-v-3-n, @backtonormalthings, @milam03, @animegamerfox, @tamyyyy2005, @arachniis, @k-pevensie28, @thetruecardinalsinner, @dreammarereads, @lllucere, @vieenr0se, @deadbeatphobos, @k-pevensie28, @nyxisnotok,@lemmonpiie,@yo-soy-yo, @starfiremylove, @whosmev, @avlizio, @indigoscribe, @yo-soy-yo, @appalost, @c4xcocoa, @mystic-is-here-to-love, @its-me-mila, @nightlights-and-twiklingstars, @smiithys, @oh-buttercup, @jcks29, @naessheart, @bungunz, @atomicpeachmaker, @lulasgna, @givemefinganame, @dap11, @screamingsilence3, @woderfulkawaii, @radicalcannoliqueen, @itachisrealm, @missmillivanilli, @fluffalorianflash, @koibleufish, @liuope, @athenalive, @idiotussupremus, @foquest, @justamarsbar, @lordbugs, @rosehoneycomb, @bibiznbyler, @andraax2, @lemmonpiie, @mournersinketterdam, @wrenisrad, @chaosandcandies, @saltedcoffeescotch, @0lives10, @s0uz4s, @girl-so-gay, @sharkabb, @blackthemiller, @strawbrysapphic, @inherdiary77

please please let me know what you think, it gives me so much motivation and you will get a new chapter sooner if you do.

©shisuni 𝖺𝗅𝗅 rights reserved , 𝖽𝗈 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝗌𝗍𝖾𝖺𝗅/𝖼𝗈𝗉𝗒 𝗈𝗋 𝖼𝗅𝖺𝗂𝗆 𝗂𝗍 𝖺𝗌 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗈𝗐𝗇. 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗇𝗈𝗍 𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗈𝗐𝖾𝖽 𝗍𝗈 𝗉𝗎𝗍 𝖺𝗂/𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗍𝗀𝗉𝗍 𝗍𝗈 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗇𝗀𝖾 𝗂𝗍. Any oc's/ original ideas are not permitted to be put into other works unless dm'd, discussed, and agreed upon.