Work Text:
Jason doesn’t know what he’s looking at.
He just wanted a glass of water. He didn’t even think Bruce would be home yet. That was the only reason he’d gone to investigate when he heard the giggling coming from the den. Not that he really thought any home invader would have been clinking glasses and giggling in the lamp-lit sitting room at two in the morning, but it’s Gotham. Stranger things have happened. Then Bruce’s baritone laugh joined in on the noise, the rich, warm one he used when he was undercover as himself—seriously, he referred to it that way; Jason thought he had issues—and Jason should have taken that as his cue to turn around and go right back to sleep.
But he was curious what kind of guests Bruce would have brought here this late, when he’d never, in the whole eight months Jason’s been living here so far, brought anyone at all. And fine, maybe it would have been hard for Jason to sleep again, not knowing who else was in the house. It’s Bruce’s house, he can bring whoever the fuck he wants, Jason just needs to know.
So he crept through the shadows of the hallway, which is maybe not what Bruce would want him to use his Robin training for, and now he’s looking at—well, that’s the question.
Music is playing softly, and there’s an open bottle of champagne on the low table. A haphazard platter of fruit and cheese makes it clear that Alfred has not sanctioned this event. Two pairs of intimidatingly tall heels are piled beside the armchair, with two dresses thrown over the back of it—sequined silver and dark, blood red.
There are two girls in the room with Bruce. They’re the kind of girls Jason thinks he’s supposed to be distracted by, if that sort of thing ever happened to him. The girl sitting on the carpet with her legs folded underneath her has light brown skin, deep plum-colored lips, and long, dark hair that shines captivatingly in the golden lamplight; she’s wearing what appears to be Bruce’s black t-shirt over sheer black tights.
She’s sorting through a tray of little glass bottles. “Brucie, this is fucking appalling. I thought you liked color.”
The irony makes Jason crack a smile. Bruce says, “Dark nails are so much more dramatic, though, don’t you think?”
The second girl is on the couch with Bruce—facing away from Jason, but he sure can see every inch of her bare legs in the borrowed boxers she’s wearing. Dyed blonde hair tumbles down her back; according to theme, her dark sweater is practically swallowing her. She’s bent intently over something in her lap, and she snorts. “No. Glitter is dramatic. Black is basic.”
“Ouch.” Bruce whistles. “That would have been a really devastating insult—five years ago.”
The first girl crows, “Oh, called out for being out of touch by the oldest man alive.”
“Inez, I’m in my thirties,” Bruce says, sounding genuinely offended.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, and going by decade instead of just saying a number is what old people do.”
“I’m only a decade older than you, so I’d watch how you talk about it,” Bruce says easily, pointing his champagne glass at her. “It comes fast.”
“We know you’re young at heart, baby,” the blonde girl says, which is another thing that would make Jason laugh if he wasn’t hiding. Bruce is absolutely not. Bruce is a grumpy old man at heart. It’s like his whole thing.
Right now, though? He looks—young isn’t even the word for it, though it’s not wrong. He’s lounging all the way across the couch, and he’d look incredibly relaxed if Jason didn’t know it was a calculated position: head tipped back, one arm thrown over the cushions, legs stretched out toward the blonde girl wearing his clothes.
His hair is messy the way it is at the breakfast table during their really early mornings—or, no, like when he’s just pulled off the cowl and it’s held in place by sweat more than gel and looks almost as wavy as Jason’s. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt, shiny like it might be silk, untucked over a pair of black sweatpants, the fancy designer kind (designer sweatpants, that’s the world Jason is living in now) that make Alfred give him a disapproving look when he accidentally wears them into the Cave instead of his regular workout clothes.
Most absurdly, there’s a thick streak of silver glitter high on his right cheekbone.
No, actually—most absurdly, his eyes cut to Jason in the shadows just then, and they look almost preternaturally blue, and Jason is pretty sure it’s because he’s wearing makeup.
Jason takes an involuntary step forward, because he knows he’s been caught, but he’s so thrown by, by everything, that he registers a moment too late that Bruce didn’t call him out for spying and probably wouldn’t with guests around. Probably he’d deal with it later—without witnesses, a small part of Jason insists, but he ignores it because Bruce isn’t fucking like that, if he doesn’t know that by now he doesn’t know anything—
Then the dark-haired girl, Inez, catches sight of him and says, “Oh, shit, there’s a kid.”
“That would be my kid,” Bruce says dryly, and Jason’s stomach flips the way it always does, the few times Bruce has said stuff like that.
Usually he keeps it neutral and polite, refers to Jason as his ward along with careful looks at Jason like he’s a feral cat, like he’ll run back to Crime Alley if Bruce tries to claim him as his own. Usually when he says it, it’s for other people’s benefit, like that time they were out to eat and he was trying to put a flustered waitress at ease by pretending he was just a normal dad out with his kid, or the one and only time Jason got in trouble for fighting at Gotham Academy and everyone was trying to pin all the blame on him, street rat with anger issues, and Bruce had swept into the office more furious than Jason had ever seen him without the cowl and demanded to know what was being done about his kid getting punched in the face, as if Jason hadn’t started punching first.
It's for other people’s benefit now, but Jason looks again at the studied ease of his posture and the glitter on his cheek and thinks this is a very different version of undercover Bruce Wayne.
He starts to get up, setting his champagne glass aside and moving as if to swing his legs off the couch, and the blonde girl swears and grabs at him. “Don’t move, you just fucked me up.”
“Language,” Inez hisses.
“Ruby, I need to…” Bruce sighs and gives up. “Never mind. Jay, what is it, baby? Did you have a nightmare?”
It takes Jason a moment too long to realize that Bruce is talking to him. His voice has gone soft in a way Jason has never heard it before, not even undercover, and he only uses pet names on really scared kids during patrol.
Oh. Right. They’re undercover now. Jason is meant to be the scared kid, in this situation. And he’s been standing here too long already to think of a better reason that he’s out of bed and spying on them.
“Yeah,” he says, and his voice comes out rough. Helps to sell it. It has nothing to do with the question replaying in his mind, Bruce’s soft tone and the pet name and the way it—it sounds like something his mom would say to him. Would have said to him, when she was alive. And he really was just asleep, so he’s not on, and he’s tired, and he’s blaming that for the way he has to blink a few times to get his vision to stop wavering.
Inez makes a sympathetic noise. “Oh, honey, come in here.”
“It’s late,” Bruce says. “Ruby, seriously, stop holding my feet hostage, let me walk him back to bed.”
“I don’t need—” Jason stops, suddenly unsure whether a normal kid would want that.
“Why would he want to go back to bed? He just had a nightmare,” Ruby says, like Bruce is an idiot. Jason thinks he likes her.
“Yeah, Bruce, obviously he wants to be with his dad,” Inez says. “Let him hang out.”
Which is mortifying, but Bruce looks back to Jason and gives him the tiniest shrug, a twitch of his shoulder that Jason knows means it’s up to him. He knows because it’s the same thing Bruce did that time he came to pick Jason up from school and one of the moms cornered him in the parking lot to ask if Jason wanted a play date with her son, even though they all knew she just wanted to be able to brag about her kid hanging out with Bruce Wayne’s ward. Jason did not.
But now he takes a few steps into the room, as much for curiosity’s sake as anything, though he really doesn’t think he could go back to sleep now. For a moment he feels self-conscious about the fact that he was just sleeping—his hair is probably messier than Bruce’s, and he’s got sleep breath, and he’s wearing the dorky Superman pants that Dick sent him for Christmas just to annoy Bruce, because they’re actually really soft and warm.
Then he rounds the corner of the couch and stops thinking about any of that, because he can finally see what Ruby’s been bent over so intently, and it turns out she has Bruce’s feet in her lap and she’s painting his toes purple.
She’s painting Batman’s toenails with shiny, dark purple polish.
Jason’s brain has stopped computing.
“Jay, these are some of the friends I went out with tonight,” Bruce says. “This is Ruby and that’s Inez. They’re, uh, models.”
“You don’t say,” Jason says flatly, and Inez snorts and tosses her long dark hair, but his brain is still ticking slowly over the situation. Maybe, when he hears guys talking shit about hot girls and they say things like I’d let her do whatever she wanted to me, the whatever is literal and includes nail polish?
Then again, that doesn’t explain the eyeliner. Which—Jason is not a little kid and he’s not clueless, he knows some men like to wear makeup, hell, there’s a few boys at school who wear nail polish and aren’t even bullied too badly for it, but—it’s Bruce. It’s Batman.
Ruby finishes his pinky toe with a flourish and then glances up Jason. Then does a double-take. “Wait, hold up, this is your kid? I thought he was, like, in college now.”
“You’re thinking of Dickie.” Bruce has his head tipped back again, his eyes half-closed, champagne glass dangling from his hand down by the floor. “I have two sons now, remember? Jay’s the baby.”
“I’m almost thirteen,” Jason protests, and then flushes, because obviously Bruce knows that. Obviously he doesn’t actually think Jason’s a baby, he made him Robin. It’s for the cover.
Bruce’s mouth twitches like he’s trying not to laugh at him. Bastard. “Still the baby of the family, Jay.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid, maybe he’ll adopt another one someday,” Ruby says.
“I’m still caught up on the fact that this one’s almost thirteen,” Inez says. “Honey, you’re tiny.”
Jason bristles. “I’m still growing.”
“Well, yeah,” Ruby says, amused. “Bet you wish you had Brucie’s genes for that.”
“Ruby, god, you can’t just say that to him,” Inez says.
“What? Why not?”
Inez gives her a meaningful look, jerking her head toward Bruce.
Jason doesn’t get it until Bruce says, “No, actually, believe it or not, Jason does know he’s adopted. He was twelve when I got him, you see.”
Except he’s not. He’s not adopted. Some people forget that, and some people don’t let him forget it, but Bruce is just fostering him. It’s only been eight months.
For a moment, when Jason meets his eyes, Bruce looks a little startled, like he might have forgotten it too, but that’s stupid. Bruce doesn’t forget things. It’s just part of the cover.
“Second coat,” Ruby announces, prodding Bruce until he points his foot again, grumbling.
Inez pats the floor beside her. “Jay—Jason? Come sit with me.”
Jason glances automatically at Bruce, but he doesn’t wait for permission this time. He sits cross-legged beside Inez, and she pushes the little tray of nail polish toward him.
“I was trying to pick a color for your dad’s hands, but if you want, I can do yours instead,” she says.
Jason goes still.
That’s. He doesn’t—
When he was a little kid, four or five, a girl in their building used to babysit him sometimes. Mostly they’d watch TV, mind-numbing reality shows Jason probably shouldn’t have been watching. She painted his nails, once, a hazy memory half-buried until now—she did her own and then told him to pick a color, just for fun. He picked a bright cherry red, and it wouldn’t have meant much to him at all if not for his mother, later, holding his hands over their chipped bathroom sink and scrubbing until it all came off, his fingers red and raw, her hands shaking badly around his. She wouldn’t admit she was upset or explain what the problem was, but when Willis came home, it’d taken just one of her nervous glances at Jason’s hands for him to realize oh, that would’ve been one of those weird things Dad got mad about. And she’d protected him.
It's a good memory, all things considered. One of the few times Mom protecting him didn’t get her hurt instead.
“Jay?” Bruce’s voice is still so soft. Jason still expects to see some sort of censure in his expression when he looks up, but Bruce is just watching Jason steadily. Like he’s trying to figure him out. It’s more of a Batman look than a dad look, Jason thinks, but he doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with dads, at least not the kind Bruce is pretending to be. “It’s all right, buddy, you don’t have to.”
“I know that,” Jason says, flush crawling up his neck again.
“But if you want to, it’s fine.” Bruce keeps watching him, and Jason feels a sort of paranoia he hasn’t felt since the early, early days here. Like it’s all some kind of trick. Like, maybe Bruce is using the cover to make him think it’s okay, but if he’s stupid enough to actually believe it, Bruce will take it out of him later—
But Bruce isn’t like that. Jason curls his knees to his chest. Willis pretended to be a tough guy, but he was a coward, and he never liked pain—but he still probably would have shot himself with his own gun before he put on eyeliner. Stupid, macho man bullshit, Jason would have hated it even if he didn’t see how it made his mom’s smile freeze on her face and left rings of bruises around her wrists because it was just so fake. Because he knows it’s not safe, not even for him, not if he doesn’t want to play along with it. Be like Willis.
He never wants to be like Willis.
And Bruce isn’t.
“I’m good,” he tells Inez. “Thanks.”
She’s looking curiously between him and Bruce again, but she doesn’t say anything. Jason’s stomach still drops a little, wondering if he’s fucked up the cover by being too fucked up—he’s not good at hiding it the way Bruce is, not yet. Ruby is just concentrated on finishing his toes; when she screws the cap back on the bottle, Bruce sits up and sets his glass aside. “Come over here.”
Jason’s brain still needs a second to process that he’s the one being addressed with that tone, but his body is already scrambling up from the floor and over to Bruce. As if he’s been waiting for it. Bruce lifts an arm, and there’s hardly any room between him and the end of the couch, but Jason’s small enough to fit there, like the spot was made for him. It was, just now, but it feels natural in a different way, the way Bruce drops his arm around Jason and draws him against his side, for all that it’s never happened like this before.
A moment later, Bruce is tapping out code against his arm, which explains why he’d called Jason over to sit in such a specific position, and Jason decides it must be his Robin training paying off that he’d listened so easily, some cue he’d registered subconsciously to follow the undercover order.
U OK?
Jason rests his head against Bruce’s shoulder so the man can feel him nod.
His shirt is as silky as it looked, soft and cool against Jason’s cheek. He doesn’t really want to move. He draws his legs up onto the couch, bare feet tucked into the hems of his too-long Superman pants, and wonders how long he can get away with resting here.
It’s just that Bruce is warm and solid and suddenly, Jason is tired again. Sleep-tired and the kind of tired he’s been pushing away and away ever since his mom died. Since before that, really, since she got really sick, but it’s late and he doesn’t want to think about that now. He pushes his head harder against Bruce, and Bruce taps: OK.
“Inez,” Bruce says, and Jason can actually feel the rumble of his voice like this. His eyes slip closed, near-automatic. “I might have to take a raincheck on the manicure. Got my hands full.”
Oh, that explains it. Good. Jason is helping, by not moving away from him. It’s a good excuse, for this cover.
Sure enough, Inez says, “Fuck, I don’t even care. Dad Brucie is the best thing I’ve seen all night, and I saw—”
Bruce’s broad palm covers his ear, warm and startling. “Little ears, hey.”
“Honestly, it all makes sense now,” Ruby says. “The way you are with all of us at the club? It’s your dad instincts.”
“I don’t—Jay, is that supposed to be an insult? Are they calling me lame?” Bruce asks.
“I don’t know, I’m twelve,” Jason says without opening his eyes, but he can’t hide his grin when Bruce jostles him against his side.
“No, you’re still cool,” Ruby says. “But, like, the way you watch all our drinks and stopped Mandi from going home with that guy when she was way too high—”
“That’s normal,” Bruce says. “You all do that for each other.”
“Yeah, exactly. Guys don’t do it for us,” Ruby says. “Guys watch us do it and wait for us to slip up so they can—”
Jason tenses against Bruce, and Bruce says firmly, “That’s not because I’m a father, that’s because I’m not a fucking monster.”
A burst of shocked laughter escapes Jason before he can stop it. Everyone stops abruptly and looks at him, and he looks up at Bruce. “You said—”
“No, I didn’t,” Bruce says quickly.
“Swear jar,” Inez whispers, and then Ruby is laughing too, curled over on the other end of the couch. Jason knows they’re laughing more at the concept of Brucie Wayne having to censor himself for a kid, but he doesn’t care, because they don’t even know what’s really funny, which is that the real Bruce hardly ever swears like that—it sounds funny in his mouth—and the look Alfred would give him if he did.
Bruce lifts his hand from Jason’s shoulder to smooth down Jason’s messy hair, and Jason leans heavier against his side.
“Hey, she’s right, though,” Inez says, but she’s looking at Jason. “We’ve been partying with him for—what, two years now? On and off?”
“I don’t party,” Bruce interjects. “Please remember you’re talking to my child.”
“That was, like, one of the tamest words I could have used for it,” Inez says exasperatedly.
“Babe, you literally have glitter all over your face,” Ruby tells him.
Bruce pauses. “I do?”
“It’s not all over,” Jason says, though he doesn’t believe for a second that Bruce doesn’t know. He’d have to know from the placement alone; Bruce knows when someone gets within ten feet of him, let alone touches him, and it looks like someone dipped their fingers in a pot of glitter and smeared it across his cheek. Jason squints at him. “The—is that lip gloss? That’s messier.”
Bruce touches his free hand to the corner of his mouth. His fingertips come away shiny. “Oh. Yeah, that’s—I put that on without really—”
Horror dawns on Jason at the clumsy explanation. “Oh, gross, you didn’t, did you? You were making out with some girl.”
Inez snorts. “Honey, it wasn’t a girl.”
Bruce grimaces. “Let’s not talk about—”
“Oh my god, did you just out him to his kid?” Ruby says.
“No,” Jason says, offended. He looks back to Bruce. “I retract my ‘gross,’ because I’m not a fucking bigot, even though the thought of you making out with anybody totally is gross. And you just said fuck, so you’re not allowed to tell me off for it, I get one free.”
Bruce huffs, but it’s not a cover thing, it’s his familiar soft laugh, the one Jason’s heard a million times during patrol, when they’re sparring, on the drive home from school. Every time, it warms Jason all the way through, only it’s worse now, because they’re still doing cover things too, so Bruce briefly hugs him closer and drops his chin atop Jason’s messy hair and says, “Noted, Jay,” and his voice is just as warm.
“That’s a good place to use your free swear,” Ruby muses. “Saying fuck bigotry.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Bruce says, sitting back. “He’s still in detention from the last time he said that.”
She frowns. “You get detention just for swearing at whatever fancy private school this guy sends you to?”
“No, I said it with my fists,” Jason says.
“You’re twelve,” Ruby says, but she sounds almost impressed.
“Almost thirteen.” Inez grins, looking almost proud.
“You two are the worst,” Bruce informs them. “I never bring anyone to the house anymore, but I thought oh, these two, I can trust these two—”
“Shush, Brucie, let your kid tell us the fistfight story,” Inez says, waving her hand at him.
Jason’s smile fades. “No, it’s not… it’s not really a funny story.”
Bruce smooths his hair again. “Apparently some of Jason’s classmates were—how did you put it?”
“Talking shit,” Jason mutters.
“About me being bi,” Bruce says.
That was not the word they used.
“Fuckers,” Inez hisses. Jason feels slightly better about rehashing the story.
“They thought it’d embarrass me or something,” Jason says. “Which it didn’t, but the way they were saying it—the things they were saying it meant—”
“It’s okay,” Bruce says.
“It’s not,” Jason says, voice higher than he’d like it to be. “They don’t get to talk about you like that.”
“Yes, well, you made that clear to them,” Bruce says calmly.
Jason takes a breath. “It wasn’t my best work. They got in some lucky hits.”
“Little badass,” Ruby mutters.
“I mean, you’re your father’s son, that’s for sure,” Inez says.
Jason jerks so hard against Bruce his shoulder probably bruises Bruce’s ribs, but just as quickly Bruce’s arm around him turns to iron to keep him in place. It should scare him, he thinks distantly, but it’s Bruce, and Bruce has been so soft and safe all night, Bruce has been hugging him—
“No, baby, she’s talking about me,” Bruce says quietly, and Jason’s breath shudders out of him.
Inez is still watching him with her dark eyes. “Bio dad was a piece of shit, huh?”
Jason doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t need him to.
“Sorry about that,” she says. “Should’ve guessed. You want to know what I meant, though?”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. He doesn’t know if he cares, but he wants her to keep talking so he doesn’t have to think about it.
“Like I said, we’ve been hanging around with Bruce for a while now. And, I mean, you know how people are about him, you just said, and like? If I were him, I’d be getting assault charges left and right—”
Jason smiles slightly. “Cool.”
“Inez,” Bruce groans.
“But he always keeps his cool,” she finishes quickly. “Patience of a saint.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ruby says, like she’s just figured out where this is going. “We only saw him haul off and punch a guy literally that one time.”
Jason has seen Batman punch a lot of people, but never Bruce. He is interested.
“Ruby and I were dancing together and this asshole guy was making a thing of it, wanting to get between us, talking shit about turning us,” Inez says. “I’m not—you don’t need to know the details, but he took it way too far, it was really scary, and your dad kicked his ass.”
“We didn’t know Brucie could do that,” Ruby chimes in.
“It wasn’t actually hard,” Bruce says. “He was scrawny. I work out.”
“You have muscles,” Ruby says, prodding Bruce’s bicep with her pointed toes. “That doesn’t mean you know how to use them.”
“I took a kickboxing class once,” Bruce says mildly. “Only because I was in the wrong place for my yoga class, but still, it was fun.”
Jason has to turn his face against Bruce’s shoulder to hide his expression, because it’s all he can do not to laugh. The best part is it’s probably true, because Bruce does things like yoga classes for his ditzy billionaire cover, and Jason is about to crack up at the image of him, dressed in trendy athleisure, trying to pull his punches in a room full of unreinforced heavy bags and energetic pop music. Can Bruce even execute a roundhouse without perfect form?
One of the girls has responded, Jason can tell because he feels Bruce’s voice rumble in his chest a moment later, but he lets the conversation drift on without him. All he needs to register is their light, teasing tones and Bruce’s relaxed posture to know that he doesn’t need to be keeping track of things. Glasses clink again, and Inez laughs. Bruce smells like sweat and a little bit like perfume, but also like the fancy bath products he uses and Alfred’s unobtrusive detergent, and the slow beat of his heart is kind of putting Jason back to sleep.
He hasn’t been this close to anyone this long for a long time. Even if it’s just part of the cover, Jason… Jason will take it, but he’s not sure that it is. Maybe he hopes it isn’t, but fuck, it’s too late to think about that too.
Bruce was undercover when he punched that guy from Inez’s story, and he definitely would have wanted to do that anyway.
“Anyway, kid,” Inez says, so Jason tunes back in, “I’m just saying, you clearly take after this dad. And as far as I’m concerned, he’s a hero.”
Bruce presses a kiss to his crown, probably getting glitter in his hair, and Jason thinks you have no idea.