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‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a -
“Oh my god is that a mouse?!”
“Yes, isn’t Alfred an excellent hunter?”
Tim shifted his gaze from the admittedly adorable smug look of Alfred the cat and her catch to Damian’s own unbearably smug face. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. They had managed to work together on their presents for the Kent boys (Kryptonian proof snow sleds, handmade by Tim and hand painted by Damian, ready for New Years at the Kent farm), get them wrapped (they were gaudy, practically neon, and probably the cause of Gotham’s tape shortage), and now they were halfway through Wayne Manor, trying to get them under the tree. Killing Damian now after all that would be a complete waste of time and suffering. It would not be worth it. Probably.
“I meant why is there a mouse? Where did Alfred even find it? And get it past Agent A?”
“She must’ve snuck it up from the Cave while Alfred was cooking. He didn’t leave the kitchen for 6 hours today.”
It was Damian’s turn to jump and shriek. Tim felt vindication rise in his chest and magnanimously decided to let the mouse lie and not tattle to human Alfred that Damian was letting cat Alfred supplement her diet as she chose.
“Evening, Jason,” said Tim, since Damian looked like he was still trying to decide between telling Jason off for sneaking up on him or pretending Jason wasn’t able to sneak up on him in the first place. It was a particular sort of constipated looking face that Tim had become familiar with while they were working on the sleds.
“Replacement, Demon Brat,” replied Jason, nodding at each of them, “bit late for good birdies to be out of bed. What goodies could you possibly be trying to sneak into the house that require-”, he made a gesture that vaguely encapsulated the whole situation. Lights off, cowls on for better night vision, their unwieldy presents in hand, Alfred munching her mouse on the stairs, and ugly Christmas sweaters still snug on their shoulders from Christmas dinner some short hours ago.
“Christmas presents. The paint had to dry for an extra day so that it could be ensured that none of it would scrape off in use”, replied Damian as he and Tim shed their cowls. It seemed he had gone with pretending he hadn’t jumped three feet to his left to hide behind Tim and the sleds when Jason started talking.
Jason flipped on the lights and looked between the two of them and the unsubtle monstrosities of wrapped presents created from three glaringly different rolls of wrapping paper.
“You’ve never wrapped presents in your lives before.”
It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact coming from the only person in the room who grew up without people who would take care of those things for the young master of the house/assassin compound. Tim and Damian stared resolutely back, refusing to acknowledge any imperfections in their creations. Tim struggled not to itch his neck where he could feel a strip of tape peeling off.
“...Right, ok, go on ahead, I know where Alfred keeps the good wrapping paper.”
As Jason walked off, surprisingly amenable to fixing their kindergarten arts and crafts project of a wrapping job (if you had asked Jason, he would have told you that that was an insult to kindergarteners), Tim and Damian turned and strode resolutely towards their goal of the family room and the glowing 30 foot Douglas fir dripping in lights, ornaments, and gleaming gold ribbon. Looking at the tree in its splendor, it occurred to Tim and Damian that asking Alfred to help them would have been a smart and wise decision, not a betrayal of their pride in hand making their Christmas presents. They shared a long look with each other and silently decided to never mention it.
Half an hour later saw Jason sitting next to two immaculately wrapped, if obviously snow sled shaped, presents in classy holly leaf patterned paper and elegant red ribbon.
“You know, I don’t see why you couldn’t have just stuck a bow on them and called it a night.”
This time, three shrieks rang out in surprise. Jason whirled around, over-rotated, and nearly toppled over. Damian, banned from helping after the third near miss with the scissors, had been lightly dozing in an armchair and wasn’t so lucky, ending up on the ground after trying to get up and slipping on a stray piece of ribbon. Meanwhile, Tim jerked and banged his knee on one of the sleds, promptly curling in on it with a curse. None of them had noticed Dick in the doorway, but it seemed that he had been up for a while, if the steaming mug of cocoa in his hand was any indication.
“What the hell Dickhead, how long have you been there”, Jason exclaimed, throwing Dick a glare that might have been intimidating if he didn’t have bright gold glitter twinkling from his furrowed brows.
“Long enough”, he replied, taking a long slurp from his cocoa, eyes positively sparkling in amusement as he looked at his brothers on the floor. Covered in tape and glitter and surrounded by the remains of two further rolls of wrapping paper, they made quite the sight.
Seeming to realize this, Tim uncurled, crossed his arms mutinously, and said, “You could have helped.”
“Or made us some hot chocolate”, muttered Damian, eyeing the mug in Dick’s hand like it was water after he’d spent days in a desert.
“Awww but you looked like you were having so much fun”, Dick replied, laughing at them, “besides, helping you would have meant that I would have to help with clean up too.”
He glanced around the room meaningfully before taking another swig of his hot chocolate and swanning out the door.
The remaining brothers looked around at the chaos they’d made of Alfred’s family room mere hours before the man would get up to get it ready for Christmas morning and gulped.