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Bruce Wayne considers himself a considerate man, a kind one even. He thinks he properly pays his universal dues; what with taking in orphans and fighting world ending crime occasionally. He even pays his workers a livable wage. All good things that inspire more good things. He thinks he’s entitled to a quiet morning here and there, but alas, the universe has different plans.
Bruce walks into the dining room.
“B, Jason is being a bitch. Beat him.” His firstborn screeches at him at seven in the morning.
" Fuck you , dickwad. You started it.” His second born yells back.
Bruce sighs and makes his way toward the coffee.
His youngest speaks up from down the table, "Actually, Todd, you started it.”
“Uh demon spawn, not to go against your unholy word, but it was clearly Dick who started it.” His third born speaks up and Bruce needs to let out a sigh. Tim was his last hope of a quiet morning.
“Are you challenging me, street rat?” Damian spits out, slamming his hands down on the table, creating a loud clack, rattling Bruce’s precious coffee. He got the darkest roast this morning. He can already tell he's going to need it.
“We’re both billionaires, how am I even-” Tim starts to argue before his brother interrupts him.
“Stay out of this, Tim. You’re being a bitch too.” Dick throws out, stabbing a sausage and bringing it angrily to his mouth. Looking almost resentful of the piece of meat. Bruce wishes he was a cow. So quiet and peaceful, eating grass and being slaughtered for sausage links. Are cows sausage? Too early to know.
Jason puffed his chest and immediately came to his brother’s defense. “Hey don’t talk to my replacement like that ! It has fuckin' feelings too!”
Bruce shakes his head. Oh Jason. You tried.
“ It !?” Tim squawks, loudly. Bruce startles slightly and brings a hand to his poor ear. His poor poor ear.
“You are most definitely an it , Drake. With the way you-” Damian begins to say, a tirade of scathing insults Bruce already knows would result in a full out brawl but he’s interrupted by Jason. Oh Jason, Bruce thinks. Thank goodness for Jason.
“Oh shut up devil child, like you’re not the most it out of all of us.” Bruce takes it back. Jason is evil. Evil child.
Damian looks like he’s ready to begin frothing at the mouth. Bruce knows that’s his cue if he doesn’t want more blood on the cream tablecloths. Alfred loved the cream tablecloths.
He opens his mouth but it’s as if they all know he’s going to say something because at that exact moment, everything explodes.
“Leave Damian out of this, Jas-”
“I don't care if you're defending me Jason, I am not an it- ”
“Oh come off your high fucking hor-”
“ALL of you are unfit to even breathe- ”
“I’m going to eat your dog, Damian. Don’t fuckin' think I wo-”
“Don’t fucking threaten the twelve year old with eating his dog, you fucking sicko!”
“Your haircut looks stupid, Dick. I’ve been meaning to tell you but I felt ba-”
“Haha, you got stupid hair.”
“Bo-” Bruce tries.
“Haha, you didn’t finish high school.” Dick says back.
Jason stands up. Damian is already on the table.
“All of your friends are dead !”
“Your mom is dead!” Dick throws back.
Tim looks over incredulously at the oldest, “Dick, both of your parents are dead.”
“So are yours!”
“Boys, ca-” Bruce says louder this time but interrupted yet again.
“HA!” Damian exclaims. “My mother is alive!”
“Your mom is insan-”
“Tim! You know not to tease him about his crazy mom!” Dick whisper yells.
“My mother is not crazy!” The boy is picking up the knife. The boy is picking up the knife.
“Boys, you need to calm down no-”
“She tries to kill you every other week, Dames.” Jason says from where he’s standing, twirling a spoon in his hand. Bruce does not like how ominous it looks.
“At least my mother hasn’t actually killed me. Unlike some people.”
“ Damia-! ” Bruce tries but Jason is already speaking.
“That’s it. Where’s Titus? Titus! Come here boy!” Jason starts clapping his hands and calling for the dog. His second born was going to eat his fourth born's dog. It was seven in the morning.
Damian yells and jumps from the table onto Jason. Butter knife bared and ready for blood. Jason holds out his spoon and Bruce has his fiftieth heart attack of the year.
“BOYS!” He yells over the screaming pair. Damian lands on Jason but doesn’t stab him. Bruce’s yell startled Jason so much that he dropped the spoon. Thank god.
He glares over at his other two boys-
Oh great. Just great.
Dick has jam all over his hair and Tim has orange juice spilled down the front of his shirt. These are not children. These are not even animals. This is his penance. For what? Bruce Wayne does not know.
Everyone is frozen as he catches his breath from the straining of his voice so early in the morning. He needs a cough drop.
“What is this argument over?” He bites out, looking at each of the guilty kids.
Only silence meets his question.
“Boys.” He repeats himself. They know not to make him do it again.
Tim quietly speaks up, “Jason ate the last of the Cheerios but Dick ate the last of the fruit loops first.”
Bruce feels his tired eyes widen, scratchy and so so tired.
“This is over cereal?” He quietly asks.
They all slowly nod their heads.
Bruce lets out such an enormous sigh that he’s ninety seven percent sure his lungs will give out. Surely they will give out and save him. “You kids do know I’m a billionaire right? You’re all billionaires. We can buy more.” He says slowly, like they are small tiny children. A tone he often takes with them.
Jason pushes Damian off of him while growling out, “That’s not the point, Bruce.”
Bruce shakes his head, exasperated beyond belief, “Then what is?”
He shouldn’t have asked that. Oh god, he shouldn’t have asked that.
All four start screaming at once. Insults are thrown and fingers are pointed. Somebody picks up a muffin and someone else picks up an egg and the next thing Bruce knows, he’s got syrup in his eye. Chaos breaks out and his four boys, four respectable crime fighting vigilante boys, are having a food fight. At seven in the morning. Unacceptable.
“ROBIN!”
All heads instantly snap to him, completely disregarding the food fight they were in the heat of a second before.
“You’re all grounded. No patrol, no TV, no friends.”
Tim starts to ask-
“Yes, that includes Kon, Barbara, Roy, and Jon.” Bruce says and picks up a napkin to wipe away the syrup.
He’s ready for the chorus of objections.
“I'm an adult!”
“What!?”
“Father!”
“No. This behavior is unacceptable. You're all grounded. No patrol. No cereal.”
“No cereal?” Dick asks sadly.
“No cereal.” Bruce answers as he sits back down. Syrup is off, his coffee is lukewarm, and the boys are quiet. Finally.
He begins to sip his coffee and scroll through the daily news but something his off. It's too quiet. The boys haven’t sat back down yet. He slowly looks up and sees every single one of them are looking directly at Jason. Jason himself has resolutely turned his head down, away from their hard eyed stares. What are they up to?
The boys keep staring, Bruce feels his confusion build. Jason peeks up and sees three sets of big eyes. He looks down again. Tim clears his throat, loudly.
Jason seems to finally give up and looks up at them while sighing out a quiet ‘fine.’ This seems to pacify them and they start making their way back to the table. Jason stays standing.
What is going on? Are they planning on murdering him? Finally exacting their Robin revenge ? Well, he always knew it would come to this.
Bruce puts down his coffee and prepares for the end.
Jason speaks and Bruce does not have patricide committed against him. But what Jason says stops Bruce's thoughts dead in their tracks.
“We’re sorry, dad.”
Bruce feels himself freeze. All thoughts have stopped working. System error.
He hasn't hear- Jason didn- but- why did h-
Jason called him dad.
Jason hadn’t called him dad in a long, long time.
That one single word renders him incapacitated. He feels his chest go that hot chocolate warm. The kind he felt when Damian asks to be tucked in, or Tim asks him for help on a case, or Dick smiles that 8 year old Robin smile that never really changed. The kind of warmth he felt the first time Jason called him dad, on that rainy night. Mugs of chocolate clinked between them and a stupid reality TV show playing softly in the background. Warm and happy and everything he knew what family was supposed to feel like.
Oh he knew it was manipulation, plain and simple, but he didn’t care. Not one bit.
“Alright fine, you’re not grounded. Eat your breakfast.”
Big smiles graced each of their faces and even Jason had a fond small smile on his face that let Bruce know a lot more than any explanation could.
They all got back to eating for a moment, picking egg and muffin out of their hair and clothes as they did. It was blissfully quiet for a few perfect moments.
Then Alfred came in, with two boxes of cereal, cheerios and fruity pebbles.
“Good news, boys. There was more in the back of the pantry.”
The birds begin squawking again. Bruce just drops his head and groans.
No one dares point out the small smile gracing the tired man’s face.