I like your shoelaces and other things that will cause Tumblr beef between siblings

by dickgraysonmybeloved (Agathawouldbeproud26)

Summary:

Basically Duke has a Tumblr, he learns Jason has a Tumblr, he proceeds to ruin Jason's entire time on Tumblr by bullying him, sibling stuff you know?

 

"To be fair to Duke, it was entirely unfair for him to be awake at three in the morning when he had the day shift.

Normally at this hour, he would be hunkered down in bed, blissfully unaware of the idiocy happening just a few floors below him. Maybe watching a random show from one of the seemingly hundreds of subscription services Bruce paid for. That is what he should be doing now. That is what he would like to be doing now"

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Inspired by the amazing art of @ashoss on Tumblr who made art of this first chapter, and naturally I just had to make a fic about it… that took nearly 3 months to be finished but shhh I'm going to do more don't worry

Notes:

• For ashistrashhh.

Hello all! I am back!! I hope you like my new fic!! I promise I'll be back for my tim does tiktok fics soon!

Inspired by this post here by ashoss on Tumblr and ashistrashhh on ao3, thank you so much for letting me write your amazing idea!!

Chapter 1: NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TUMBLR BUT ME IN THIS FAMILY ITS MY SAFE PLACE OKAY???

To be fair to Duke, it was entirely unfair for him to be awake at three in the morning when he had the day shift.

Normally at this hour, he would be hunkered down in bed, blissfully unaware of the idiocy happening just a few floors below him. Maybe watching a random show from one of the seemingly hundreds of subscription services Bruce paid for. That is what he should be doing now. That is what he would like to be doing now. However, patrol was apparently so interesting that everyone in the manor, including the several pigeons that Damian had sworn he hadn’t been the one to smuggled in, was now awake and peering into the darkened cave.

Now that he was up though, he might as well get started on what was to be his long, very long, extremely long, day. Catching up on reports from his fellow Bats and Birds early would possibly allow for his very extremely long day to become just slightly less agonisingly long.

Trudging down the stairs while attempting to read on his phone was no easy feat, but a skill he held up with pride against Tim, who seemed unable to walk more than a meter forwards while looking at his phone. He’d once seen one of the ever-exasperated Wayne Enterprises assistants guiding him through Wayne tower, while Tim attempted to answer emails. With their help, he’d narrowly avoided several glass windows and doors and only colliding with one pillar, resulting in a scrape on his chin that got him grounded for a week. Apparently having identical scrapes on chins was a vigilante no-no. It was a mystery how he had even survived this long in Gotham as a civilian, minus all the vigilante bullshit he got up to behind the scenes.

Thinking of Tim; him and Barbara, (Duke wasn’t brave enough to call her Babs just yet, those tires looked like they could do some damage), were both currently crammed together in front of a single monitor.  Despite the fact there were several other perfectly good monitors for them to use, they seemed hellbent on arguing their way through sharing just one. The display flickered brightly as Duke passed, showing a flash of red and orange light before flicking back to dark as he moved out of view. The pairs not so hushed conversation making its way to him in the cool cave air.

“Play it again.”

“I’m telling you it’s not there.”

“And I’m telling you it is.”

There was a pause before;

“I told you it was there!”

“I believed you.”

“No, you did not!”

Duke tuned out the rest of Tim and Barbara’s ‘discussion’ as he continued further into the cave, still scrolling down his phone as he went. Pieces of gear littered the floor, most were covered in a mix of mud and grass, which could either mean the croc was back or Ivy threw them into a ditch, either way, Alfred and Bruce would be less then please about that. Tossed haphazardly to the side, a knife that certainly wasn’t one of theirs was buried halfway through a leather jacket that was probably Jasons. Duke knew it wasn’t one of theirs, as their knives had little bat silhouettes on them, carved into the bolster. Say what you would about Bruce, the man was dedicated.

He had wondered before if they were special order, and if they were, what exactly the creators were told about where and who the knives were going. Maybe a very dedicated cosplayer. Or a collector.

Picking his way carefully down the steps down towards where the training rooms and med bay resided, Duke side stepped over a line of glitter forming a half circle along the step from wall to wall. The glitter was purple, and broken only by a single, very long, thread of tinsel. Which was particularly weird as it was March and tinsel was banned from the manor after an incident that no one would tell him about.

It sort of reminded him of a salt ring, and he wondered absently if a glitter-oriented demon had been found in the cave or if Stephanie had just decided that glitter was just salt with more sparkle. Supernatural Tumblr would get a hit out of this, he decided. Quickly snapping a photo and moving to open Tumblr again, he continued walking down to the Med bay, where he was sure the other Bats and Birds were camped out.

 A hum of voices could already be heard from the painfully white room and Duke considered their tone for a moment. Not angry, no screaming, so likely no serious injuries, there was also no sound of medical equipment being thrown, so no one needed to be tied down for treatment tonight at least. Last time someone had to be tied down, Duke had ended up with a bite mark turned nasty bruise on his wrist that he couldn’t exactly explain to the teachers at school and had yet again ended up in the consulars office for a “is everything alright at home” talk.

He would like to avoid that talk, especially that now he could quote the whole thing back to the consular he apparently looked even more troubled.

The Med bay was the only door in the cave that could open with a shove of the shoulder. This was because most of the time the shoulder shover was half dragging the likely very injured body of a sibling behind them, and access needed to be quickly obtained. The Med bay was also the by far the lightest room in the cave let alone the manor itself. It was sanitised and bleached clean regularly, so the white walls, floors, doors, ceiling and equipment really shouldn’t have been a surprise, however the Fluro-white lights that lite the entire place up like Red Hoods and Black Masks gangs on a bad night, really should not have been necessary.

The door now shoved and blinking to adjust to the far too bright room, Duke observed his two... brothers slash vigilante allies. Jason’s arm was heavily bandaged from shoulder to mid upper arm but apart from that he seemed to have no other injuries save for the normal array of mildly concerning bruises. Leaning against the far table, his helmet cast off to the side, Jason wore only a tank top and grey track suit pants several sizes too small for his calves and as such clung awkwardly around his legs, loose until the knee before being far too tight. They were probably some other poor unfortunate family members, whose spare-loot locker had just been raided.

Dick was in the process of changing into his own, thankfully his actual own, set of spare clothes. One would think wearing black and blue would be a dead give-away for black haired man to be secretly Nightwing, but Dicks secret identity seemed to be a strange mix of deny-deny-deny and confuse-baffle-gaslight that actually worked for the most part. If they didn’t count Tim, and no one really counted Tim, he was an anomaly that should be immediately discarded in all data sets, Dicks identity was somehow the most secret, removed from all the people he had just straight out told and/or let figure out. It was a tactic that should not have worked, but stubbornly did so anyhow.

Jason had his phone, black of course, out and was absentmindedly scrolling in a way that reminded Duke that he had his own post to make. Glancing down at his own phone, Tumblr now loaded on the screen, Duke quickly clicked the giant bright blue pen icon on the left-hand side of the screen. Selecting the photo of the half-circle glitter ring, his finger froze above the text empty screen. It probably needed a caption. Something funny that he wouldn’t regret the moment he posted it.

“Oh, guess what holiday is coming up?”

Duke ignored Jason. He was probably going to say something mildly traumatising that should land him in the consulars office. There had to be something to say, maybe “weird sister cousin things”? or “I’m pretty sure that’s not how glitter works”?

Dick all to brightly replied for someone who had spent the better part of the night being beaten up; “Oh yeah! Pi day!!”

Duke settled on “Supernatural salt circles wish they could protect me as well as this” and added the tags #lmao #supernatural, hesitating before adding the tag #glitter. Hitting the also giant bright blue post button before watching the little green line begin to fight its way across the screen.

The WIFI was always worse than bad down in the cave, something about a security risk and a few tonnes of earth, it was a constant source of complaint for most of them. It was never going to change no matter how much they complained however, the bat computer didn’t need it, being wired directly into whatever the hell it was directly wired into, so Bruce wasn’t about to uproot his whole paranoia regime to allow a bunch of teens to post faster. Duke titled his head back and lifted his phone high to possibly hurry up the process.

While waiting for his post to go through so he could close the app, ha, his screen was filled with his mutuals latest post. A huge bust of Julius Caesar and the words “HAPPY IDES OF MARCH” written in the ‘quote’ font and coloured red. He’d forgotten it was the Ides of March, luckily he’d already had a post queued since last year when he’d forgotten and promised himself he wouldn’t miss it twice. It was his favourite Tumblr holiday, who didn’t like a day dedicated to wanting to stab an old white dude who had died over 2000 years ago? Not him, that’s for damn sure. He reblogged the post, a new neon green line climbed across his screen, fighting with the other to get to the other side first.

Jason coughed slightly, face lifting up in a way that instantly made Dukes eyes narrow. That wasn’t a good sign of things to come. He scrolled down to the next post reblogged by the same mutual, another bust of Julius Ceaser with the words “be the change you want to see in the world” written over the images side. Knife emojis were placed next to the words You and To, with three stabbed through the O in World. Duke added it to the pile of green bars fighting for dominance.

“Yeah… Pi Day… That’s what I was talking about.”

Jason was being shifty, why was he being shifty. There was no reason for him to be shifty if he was actually talking about Pi day, and it had been Pi day yesterday. Duke had also had a post queued for that since last year, as it was easily one of the more forgettable Tumblr holidays-

“Oooh Jason, there’s this one diner in Blüdhaven! We should go there for Pi day; they have the best Pumpkin pie. Maybe Damian or Duke would wanna go too-“

Dick was rambling on in the background but suddenly Duke couldn’t hear him. His head was frozen on Jason, on the phone in his hand and in the not so subtle was he was shifting along the bench as Dick spoke. There was just no way. He had to be mistaken.

Jasons phone screen lit up, an all too familiar t-shaped icon notification popping up before Jason clicked his phone off again.

There was just no way.

Jason had Tumblr.

 

[Posted to pre-cracked-andfrozen-stillglows]

It seemed like his original post had beaten the reblogs at least.

Chapter 2: A TOTALLY NORMAL WAY TO CONFIRM IF SOMEONE HAS TUMBLR /SRS /HAVE DONE THIS IRL

Summary:

Duke confronts Jason in a totally normal and safe way

Notes:

This one is needed to bridge the gap between okay… just bear with me.

LAST CHAPTER UNTIL JULY! Yell at me if you see me uploading :D, HAPPY PRIDE Y'ALL!

Anyway, this was written both last night and tonight when I was out-of-it! So it may be a little… off. I'll fix it later!

As always, it's not funny, expect to me! Thank you again for all the support on the last chapter, I live for it!

Thank you again to @ashoss on Tumblr for letting me write their idea!

Was it smart to do this while Jason was cleaning his guns? No, no it wasn’t. Was he going to do it anyway because someone would hear the gunshot and at least check in? Yes, yes he was.

Unlike normal households, such as the one that Duke had been raised in, the Wayne family had very strict rules around stuff like trying to murder your siblings. Projectiles, such as the Batarangs, were fine to use indoors, and plain fists were always a go too, but guns were off the table completely. Meaning that if Jason even cocked one of the things, at least one of the Bats’ ears would twitch and send them hurtling towards wherever an injured Duke would lay.  So, while it wasn’t a smart move, it was better than bothering Jason while he was say, wrapping his fists for patrol, or restocking his Batarangs.

Jason was in complete concentration leaning over the guns. Dark grey metallic things with the, obviously required, miniature bat carved into the handles and red highlights that may have been from paint pens. The cave was empty at this time of day. Barbara and Dick were both out of the manor for work, Bruce and Tim were busy upstairs, hopefully close enough that they would hear a gun go off, and Damian and Steph were at school. Alfred was also busy doing something upstairs, going on about another function coming up that he had to prepare for that Duke hoped to avoid simply by ignoring its existence.

This meant that only people that would be in the cave at this time of day would be Jason, Cass and himself. What with Jason being legally dead and all, he didn’t exactly have a job to get too. Unless you counted terrorising the Gotham criminal underground as a job, which Jason does. Cass however… Duke didn’t really know where Cass was, and he’d learnt by now not to question that. If she was in the cave, then Duke just hoped she liked him enough to step in if things got ugly.

From here, Duke could make out the left side and back of Jason’s head, and he could also clearly see the mess of metal in front of him. Pieces of what should have been a gun where arranged in some sort of pattern over the table, some bent out of their intended shape, some looking like what Duke thought a piece of a gun should look like. They were grouped together in a way that probably made sense to someone who knew what they were doing.

Jason turned a piece with a split in the metal over and frowned slightly, Dukes own lips twitched downward to join.

Look, Duke had to be honest here, he might have been raised in the Narrows, but what he knew about guns pretty much amounted to “load, shoot and injure/kill” and Bruce wasn’t exactly trying to correct that. Nor was he brave enough to ask Jason for lessons on the things, but for some reason he was brave enough to ask Jason if he had Tumblr. It truly was a paradox.

Taking a breath, Duke begun his quest for the truth. Or at least Jasons URL.

“Hey Jason?”

Jason spun instantly, snarl on his face and a gun already in hand. This was definitely a mistake. A moment later and the gun was dropped, giving way to the slightly bemused if a little pissed off, expression on Jasons face. With a sigh, Jason spun back to the table, gun thrown down into the mix of metal. 

“Fuckin’ shit, Narrows. Give a guy a little warning next time.”

Duke hadn’t been trying to be sneaky, so either Cass had started to rub off on him or Jason had really been out of it. Which was a bit unusual, he had been having a good week. Not so many bodies were dropping that Bruce was getting annoyed, but not so few that something was up. He hadn’t fought with Dick in at least three days to Dukes knowledge and there had been no (serious anger) screaming coming from the cave in over three weeks now, which was actually a little concerning.

That was also the entire reason why Duke was even risking this. Jason had been in a good enough mood that maybe he would just take his kneecaps and not his life for asking about Tumblr. Key words being had been. Clearly something had happened, and this line of enquiry was best aborted now before he was from this life.

‘Okay, be cool, Jason doesn’t want to kill you yet. Play it safe and everything will be okay.’

“I wasn’ even trying, maybe you’re just goin’ soft”

‘Shut up Thomas’, Yes, thank you brain, for thinking something sensible. Perhaps you could have done that thirty seconds ago? Jason huffed, back still facing Duke, and braced his arms on the table, fingers a slip away from pulling the trigger of a nearby gun. Duke gulped.

It was strange though, how when with the others his Narrows accent, well, narrowed. It was still there, just paled in comparison to what it used to be. But with Jason, who let his Crime Ally drawl fly free, it came out of its shell again. Just as strong and as rough as it always had been. Duke didn’t do it on purpose, at least he didn’t think so, but he did it anyway, unconsciously changing from how he spoke to Bruce to how he spoke to Jason.

At this point, there was nothing left to loose. Jason was going to kill him anyway; he might as well try and find out. Achieve what he set out to do and all that. Although, asking could speed up the process… maybe if he annoyed him enough, it would be quick and painless instead of slow and filled with lots of glares. Steading himself, Duke prepared his death wish.

“I like your shoelaces.”

Jason froze. The little part of Dukes mind that was more concerned about victory then survival celebrated.

Slowly, Jason turned away from the table. His face impassive, clear of whatever he was now planning on doing to Duke. Jasons hands hung freely by his sides, where, Duke was now realising, there was still two guns strapped into their holsters. He knew enough about Jason to know they were ready to fire whenever the older man wanted them to, always keeping his guns in perfect condition. As Duke watched, Jasons fingers twitched as if to close around a trigger. He didn’t need more of a waring.

Duke bolted. Turning and making his way back to the staircase at cave entrance, he scrambled up the first few stairs, head ducking to avoid what he was sure was about to be bullets flying past his ears. Later, he swore, he did not use any Meta abilities to get away, he wasn’t that scared on Jason. He was scared about to runaway however, though that was more a healthy want to live, more than anything else.

He made it little more than a few steps up when Jason called out to him. As no bullets had been fired yet, and the sound of a gun at the ready hadn’t reached his ears, Duke figured it was safe to pause. At least behind one of the many metal pillars holding up the spiral staircase.

“What did you just say?”

Duke stilled behind the beam, breathing turning shallow. Cautiously looking back down at Jason, still frozen in place, face pale, guns thankfully not drawn, Duke shouted his answer.

“I like your shoelaces.”

Jasons face scrunched like one of the reports Brucie got his hands on during corporate meetings.

“Are you fucking joking?”

Duke poked his head out from behind the poll just enough to that he knew Jason could see his face. He flashed a grin down as the, lightly fuming, anti-hero who had guns that were loaded with real bullets.

“No!”

Now, he bolted again. Taking the stairs three at a time and running like it was the Joker at his heels, he bolted. A second later, he heard Jason curse, and the sound of heavier footsteps begin to follow him up the stairs, metal rattling at the two raced.

Duke made it to one of the numerous hidden doors first, slipping inside and back into the manor just as Jason reached the same landing. Not waiting a moment longer then he had to, he was off again like a shot. Much like the actual shots that were probably soon to follow him.

Skidding along the carpeted hall, Duke aimed for his room with a grunt and flung himself through the slightly agar door, narrowly missing a couple million-dollar vase on the way in. Slamming the door behind him, Duke pushed his full weight against it, trying and failing to hold in his now bubbling laughter. Jason pounded on the opposing side of the door, shouting something he couldn’t quite make out through the mix of door-pounding and laughter.

This would make a kickass Tumblr post.

Sliding his phone out of his pocket and unlocking it with slightly shaking hands, Duke thumb moved to press the large t icon of his favourite app. Quickly opening it, and moving to make a new post, Duke begun to type;

“just found out my older brother has a tumblr and i said i liked his shoelaces someone put me down”

Like any good Tumblrian, he immedently hid the most important information in the tags.

#before he does it himself #he has a gun #and a knife #several knives #hes also like a foot taller than me #technically hes legally dead so he cant hurt me #dont ask #long story #he may actually kill me #i dont think he wanted me to know #pray for me pls #hellsite #shitposts #i will find his account #if you know who he is tell me #i doubt you do tho

Thankfully the WIFI in his room was miles better than the cave could ever hope to be. The green line quickly racing to the other side of the screen.

[Posted to pre-cracked-andfrozen-stillglows]

Jason was still beating down the door, now with the added bonus of kicking the lower half. Duke moved his hand up the door, and slide the lock that Bruce insisted on being installed on all doors, into place. Bruce was the paranoid sort who also installed bullet/ray gun/missile proof doors in his house, which Jason knew all too well. He was safe… At least until dinner. He wasn’t so stupid as to miss a family dinner when the call came from Alfred. Until then he could and would, if he didn’t want a bullet in his leg or a black eye, wait. Maybe he could risk slipping out the window while Jason banged on the door? Or wait for him to get bored and leave? That wouldn’t take too long, Jason wasn’t exactly the most patient person.

“Open up, Narrows! We need to talk.”

A pause and then;

“I’m not leaving.”

Another pause and Duke was starting to hate the fact that all Bats thought the same;

“And don’t even think about using that window!”

Duke was really, really starting to hate that fact that they all thought the same.

“Come on, I won’t hurt you!”

Pause;

“Much.”

No. Duke could defiently wait until dinner. Even Jason wasn’t stupid enough to miss dinner when Alfred called.

He just had to survive until then.

Notes:

Please give me comments. It's how I judge my self-worth <3

Chapter 3: Duke and the great escape: (nearly) broken elbow edition.

Summary:

Run boy run.

Notes:

I started writing this right after I published the last chapter and then stopped as shit hit the fan, :( But I’m back now!!

Seriously, google “huntsman spider wall drop”. You will understand what I am talking about later. Trust me. (Video) Like specifically the one from 9news about the plane and the spider. Trust me.

A/N I have no idea what his favourite meal is, I bullshit my way through, so help me gods

“Pass the potatoes, Duke?”

Duke did not pass the potatoes. He was too busy trying to burn a hole through Jason's skull, which he could actually do, but he was more trying to do it in the metaphorical sense. He wasn’t trying to do it literally. Not only would it be a mess to clean up, but Alfred would not be happy about the spoiled food. He also didn’t want to test Jason's personal favourite theory that he was “built different” and would come back again anyway when there were other people around, just in case he was actually built different. Duke wouldn’t survive the humiliation of proving him right.

No, Jason's rapidly approaching second death would not ruin this dinner, especially not as it was one of Duke's favourite meals.

Alfred definitely made it on purpose. For almost any other meal, he could have maybe faked a sick day and hidden in his room until Jason got bored of trying to break the door down. But if he didn’t show up for this, he ran the risk of Bruce trying to break down the door himself. The second the text telling them when dinner would be served hit the group chat, along with the promise of Duke’s favourite meal, he knew his time was up. He had spent the final 45 minutes leading up to dinner plotting his escape. An escape he could still feel on his scraped knees and bruised arms.

When Alfred sent his final text of the evening, a quick “Dinner in five.”, Duke had put in place his master plan of not-getting-beaten-to-a-pulp-thank-you-Jason.  First, he’d opened his window enough that he could reasonably fit out of it. He wasn’t stupid enough to actually try and get out that way, but he knew how to make it look like he had. Then he draped part of his bedspread over the windowsill, this was to make it appear like he was trying to muffle his movements against the window and its frame. It would be obviously faked if he hung a bedsheet out the window. They may be multiple stories up, but a Bat knew how to get out a window without injury from pretty much any height. One of them apparently once did it from the 84^th floor and landed, with the help of a grapple, without a scratch.

No one was completely sure who, but everyone knew it was Bruce. He was too smug every time it came up. No fourty-something-year-old white man should be that smug, especially not one who was also stupid rich.

Next was the part he was proudest of. That was mostly because it had been Jason who had taught him everything he knew about sound manipulation, being the weird red masked voice modulated over dramatic vigilante that he was, and nothing was more satisfying them using someone’s knowledge against them. Duke thought this at the same time that he realised that if you removed the “red” part of that statement, he could very well be referring to any of them. Including himself. He wasn’t sure how or what he felt about that, so he packaged it away for another day, like a forgotten Christmas gift in the back of the cupboard that would be found in roughly fifty years when the homeowners died. Except he was pretty sure all that was inside was trauma and attachment issues.

Duke grabbed a small metal necklace chain from his dresser before, as silently as possible, shimmying his way up the wall to crouch between the right-hand wall and the wall with the door in it. With his left foot balancing on the edge of the doorframe and his right balancing him out against the opposing wall, Duke carefully moved his right hand off the wall, chain grasped between his fingers. Lining up his shot carefully, he under-armed the chain into the window. It smashed against the glass a little harder then he’d intended, but it still produced the desired affect; a sharp pling was heard. It was just loud enough that Jason, who was still trying to break down the door with both his fists and feet, must have heard it because the door suddenly stopped trying to become one with the floor.

“What the fuck did I tell you about using that window, Narrows?”

Duke suppressed his wince, trying very hard to not even breath. A blink would even be a risky move. Instead, he crouched in his corner and waited. Sure enough, a second later, Jason forced the door open with his shoulder, once again proving that if he really wanted Duke dead, he probably would be already. He still wasn’t taking any chances, however, so he quickly dropped from the ceiling like a huntsman spider he’d once seen in a documentary and shot out of the room faster than a human who just has a spider fall on them can react.

Pity Jason wasn’t a human who just had a spider fall on them.

Duke spun down the hall, knee colliding with one of the far too many, technically wooden but feel like brick, vase/weird art stands, before hurling down yet another side passage. His knee throbbed for a moment before it remember it had definitely had worse. It would still be annoyingly bruised later. For a second, it seemed like Jason either hadn’t seen him or hadn’t kept up with the maze that was Wayne Manor, but then Duke caught a glimpse of a leather jacket and threw himself down a hidden flight of stairs.

Turns out, no matter how trained you are, there is no perfect way to throw yourself down a set of stairs. It is going to hurt no matter what, you are going to skid on the bottom step and lurch yourself into the wall, nearly colliding with the 13^th-century vase that’s been in the family longer than you have, and you are going to let out a shriek that immediately alerts your would-be killer to your location.

Jason came barrelling into the passage above the second after the cry had left Duke’s mouth. Lucky for Duke, he only had a hallway, three more corners, and a single staircase to go, all of which posed opportunities to lose the psychopath currently chasing him. Unlucky for Duke, Jason cared less about getting injured then he did about tackling Duke to the ground, and as such threw himself down the stairs with the furiosity of a middle-aged man who was about to chicken out of a bungee jump before one of his mates compared him to a woman. Not that if you called Jason a woman he would be offended, Cass could kill any of them after all, just that he embodied the same reckless abandon as someone who's just had their identity challenged.

Jason came down the stairs as Duke was already around the second of the three corners and was rapidly approaching the final staircase. There was the tell-tale thump of a body hitting a reinforced wall, before the sound of shattering china could be heard. Duke hesitated for a moment before he threw himself down another, larger, steeper staircase. There was a chance that Jason would stop chasing him, at least for a moment, if he’d actually broken the vase.  There was a slightly unwritten rule in the house that if you broke it, you owned up to it. It wasn’t a good look if half of the Wayne heirlooms had suddenly been replaced with dollar store versions. Especially if there was a house tour planned to be filmed that day, and Alfred had only just returned from vacation, and as such had only just noticed the replacements.

It had been a stressful four and a quarter hours.

To keep track of the various broken, damaged, missing, and/or moved pieces in the house, a photo, with text, needed to be added to a group chat called “we broke it (There are no pig heads on sticks)(anymore)”. If something broke, an immediate text needed to be sent for Alfred to go about the procuring the necessary repairs or replacement. Jason wouldn’t risk Alfred's wrath for this. Maybe. Duke leaned closer back towards the corner he’d just flown around, one foot on the edge of the staircase, the other bent forward. Listening. There was not a sound from around the corner, but that didn’t mean much.

“Fucking got you!”

Jason was out and around the corner before Duke could even think about what he was seeing. Luckily, his body didn’t apparently need his brain to be functioning, acting immediately on the flight response and throwing itself down the staircase. Jason’s hand grabbed at empty air as Duke’s body leapt from its place at the top of the stairs, slipping on the highly polished are-you-sure-that’s-not-stone wood and falling elbow-first down the final twelve steps. Because it is always the number twelve. It hides behind thirteen in the same way a child might hide behind a parent after doing something particularly nasty to another child. The parent might defend the behaviour, but one should never forget who did the behaviour in the first place. Eleven certainly doesn’t.

Duke’s elbow landed with a crack against the marble floor. Had he been a regular teen boy with regular bones that weren’t broken on a regular basis, it might have broken. But because he wasn’t, it didn’t.

It did hurt like an absolute mother fucker, however, and Duke proceeded to let everyone know about this fact.

“Oh Fuck! That hurt like a mother fucker!”

There was a thump behind Duke. Jason had landed near the centre of the staircase and was peering down at the pain-wrought being that was Duke. This is it, Duke thought, this is how I die. And he didn’t even get to make a Tumblr post about it. A shame too, it would have done numbers after his previous post. He wondered if his mutuals would miss him. From above, Jason watched him like an especially annoyed hawk whose just tossed its prey down from the sky and then has watched it somehow survive, so now it's going to have to fly all the way back up and throw it again. Something it would very much rather not do. Jason placed a foot down onto the 12^th step, his eyes still fixed on Duke, and proceeded to slip forward with the ease of a 1930s banana slip cartoon. The 12^th step, pleased with its catch of the two, went back to being a nice normal step with a nice normal amount of trip-slip-ability. Next year, when it was time to hunt again, it would get three of them.

With an audible crack, Jason’s body came to a rest beside Duke's own. He didn’t move for a moment, face scrunched with pain that he would never admit, before he lunged. As Duke was faster, and as he had had longer to recover from his own fall, he managed to dodge out of the way of both of Jason’s hands and one of his feet. Struggling to his own feet, Duke made a break for the door. The door to the dining hall, and wasn’t that a weird thing to say, remained closed unless someone was going through it. This was partially to keep the space clean and undisturbed by the happenings of the household, and partially so visitors, on either side of the door, would catch to much of an eye full of the house around them. It was better to let people think it was a strange tradition, then that they were trying to prevent anyone seeing a Batarang fly past, or a bat where they defiently should not be.

The door, like the stairs, was made of the same dark polished wood. It was so old that some joked that it had fossilised in place, only being opened a crack to let people, and sometimes animals, in and out of the room beyond. Intricately carved patterns littered its surface, some of the usual leaves and warped vines, some of what might have been grapes and other such food, and others that may have been once birds and that Dick joked were bats. The carvings had been worn down over the years, from the constant brushing of hands to the constant near-death experiences; the door had seen almost everything and still lived to tell the tale. There were chips in the side from Damian’s sword, notches taken out by Batarangs, shards of glass were surely buried somewhere inside it from the numerous smashed windows and chandeliers, and there were scorch marks hidden below a good varnish and sanding.

Duke sprinted towards the door with all that his now aching knee and burning elbow could give him.

So close! 

His fingers brushed the edge of the ornate metal handle before his body was slammed to the floor. Jason had clearly recovered from his own fall and was not in any way any calmer. Struggling on the cold marble, Jason made a grab for Duke's pocket where his phone was stashed.

“Like hell you are!”

Duke snarled and twisted, trying to break Jason's too-strong grip on the back of his jumper. There were exactly three reasons Jason would want his phone. One, to delete Duke's Tumblr, which he would rather kill Jason over than allow. Duke would do that when every other self-respecting teenager on Tumblr would do so, when they could no longer look at their own blog without cringing, and therefore it needed to be burnt. They would all regret it, of course. Never despise something that once brought past you joy. Instead, shove it in a box with the rest of those similar things, like teddies and Barbie dolls, never to be looked at unless one was feeling markedly nostalgic. Just because it made you happy once doesn’t mean you need to see if after all, but that doesn’t mean it should burn either.

The second reason Jason would want his phone was to find his Tumblr blog, which was a fate worse than deletion. That itself could go two ways: either Jason would relentlessly stalk his blog and he would never be safe again, or Jason would relentlessly stalk his blog, he would never be safe again, and Jason would also share the blog. Which, again, was a fate worse than deletion.

The third reason was probably the correct reason, but that didn’t make it any better. Jason wanted his phone to check if he’d told anyone that he may/may not have a Tumblr account, before promptly killing off Duke. If he hadn’t told anyone, then maybe his death would be quick and easy. If Duke had warned anyone of his suspicions and plan of action, say his entire Tumblr following of maybe more than a hundred people, then his death was going to look at least a little suspicious. Maybe he would get to live a little longer, he doubted it thought. This was going to hurt.

At some point during this chain of thought and subsequent panic, Duke's phone had begun to slip out of his pocket. Why this hadn’t happened sooner, say when he fell down the first flight of stairs, or when the 12^th step had decided to double the amount of staircases he’d fallen down in a day, was likely due to the universe's ability to tell Duke to go fuck himself. Jason had noticed the instant Duke’s hand had closed around the phone. Duke arched his arm away from his body, holding out the phone behind him, while his other arm, along with a shoulder, two legs, and most of his body, attempted to keep Jason away from the phone.

This was largely unsuccessful due to the fact Jason was a good ruler taller than Duke and with bonus muscle mass to match. There was also the fact that while Duke was a vigilante of some prominence, Jason far outranked him in terms of experience. But if anyone asked Duke that, he would swear up and down it was all due to the height difference and that Jason wouldn’t be so cocky in a few years when Duke caught up to him. Bodies scrambling over each other, Jason made a desperate lunge for the phone. With a squawk from Duke, the phone slipped out from his grasp, clattering onto the floor below. Making to grab it only caused it to spin helplessly away from the pair, the polished marble doing nothing to slow its journey. Duke and Jason, still frantically grasping at the other in order to prevent the inevitable murder of one of them, watched helplessly as the phone glided along towards the door. It knocked against the bottom with a thud that seemed to echo louder than it actually was or had any right to be. A sudden, sharp silence loomed over the hall as both of the previously murderous vigilantes froze with wide eyes staring at the phone.

 

There was a pause, and then the door creaked open.

 

Notes:

Seriously, I genuinely live for comments and compliments. The amount of times I reread the comments from previous chapters in the past few months was actually insane. It kept me going and kept me inspired, and for that I can't thank you all enough! May I beg for some more?

Notes:

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Series this work belongs to:

• Part 4 of Batfam - AO3 by august