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“Why the hell did Bruce ask me my weight?” Jason asked, his voice blaring from Dick’s phone. Dick, somewhat distracted by the pasta water boiling over, took a second to internalize Jason’s question.
“What do you mean?” he asked, picking the pot up, then dropping it again because it was hot. “What were you talking about before?”
“We don’t talk,” Jason’s voice crackled from the counter as Dick put him on speaker and set his phone down. He grabbed a towel off the counter to lift the pot again. The water had started foaming over the sides now and sizzling as it hit the flames. “He texted me out of nowhere.”
“He texted you asking?” Dick said, depositing the pot on a burner that was off. “I don’t know, Jay. Maybe it's his roundabout way of checking in. Making sure you’re eating enough.”
“He’s gonna give me an eating disorder instead,” Jason said, but his voice was back to its usual grumble, instead of laced with anger. “He’s so fucking weird, man.”
“It’s B,” Dick shrugged. He tentatively put the pasta back on the flames after turning them down. “You know how he is at expressing his feelings. But at least he’s trying?”
Dick knew suggesting this might send Jason off the handle, but he had been trying to subtly implant the idea into Jason’s head for too long. His younger brother tended to ignore subtlety, something that hadn’t changed from his Robin days, so Dick had taken to obnoxiously trying to fix the Jason-Bruce relationship. It would make family dinner a lot less awkward if Jason weren’t constantly glaring at Bruce over their basil krapow, though it would be possibly less entertaining.
“And succeeding just about as much as you and cooking,” Jason said. “I can’t believe you messed up pasta.”
“Not all of us grew up with a kitchen,” Dick defended weakly. His fingers were smarting where droplets of boiling water had hit him. The pasta water was starting to foam again.
“You lived in a literal mansion with a fully stocked kitchen for ten years,” Jason said, a laugh coloring the edges of his voice.
“I had Alfred!” Dick protested. “Anyway, don’t you have a crime to commit or something?”
“Nothing worse than the crime of your cooking,” Jason retorted, now actively laughing. Dick flipped the phone off before remembering Jason couldn’t see him, but he couldn’t begrudge Jason’s laughter, not after it had become so hard won. He settled for glaring at his pasta, which was boiling over again. He turned the heat off, absently stirring the water and uncooked pasta with a wooden spoon.
“Are you gonna respond?”
Jason went so silent for a minute, Dick was sure he had hung up, but when he checked over his shoulder, the time on the call was still going.
“I already did,” Jason said, all traces of humor gone from his voice. Dick inwardly cursed himself.
“Well, that’s… that’s good, right?” Dick said. After a bit more silence, he added. “Jay? Did you two get into a fight about it?”
“It’s not that,” Jason sighed, but he sounded less grim. Dick wished they were having this conversation face-to-face. Wished more often than not that he had stayed in Gotham for Jason, prevented this darkness from festering inside his little brother, although he himself probably wouldn’t have survived in Bruce’s shadow.
“It was just so instinctual,” he said. “After everything, B basically says ‘Robin, report,’ and I just… do.”
They had talked about it before. The push and pull of Robin. Dick giving up the role, but still being devastated when Jason had taken it. Jason, ripped from the mantle and now unwilling to associate himself with it. Both of their Robin trainings so deeply ingrained that only death could undo it. In Jason’s case, not even death. Dick paused for a moment, grappling with the sudden onslaught of emotions, before he burst out laughing.
“Jay, fuck, it’s not that deep. People answer texts without thinking about it. It’s not a Robin instinct.”
After a second, Jason started laughing again, too.
“Fuck you,” he said. “I was having a crisis, dickwad! I come to you for advice, and you laugh in my face!”
His faked outrage was such a change from immediately-arrived-in-Gotham-Jason’s unshakeable fury that it instantaneously made Dick switch from laughing to wanting to cry. He was just hysterical from this damn pasta.
“On a more serious note, Jason, could you help me with my actual crisis?” Dick said. “How the hell do I boil this pasta?”
“Put it in a bigger pot,” Jason said. “Turn the heat down. Put salt in the water first.”
“Wait, thanks,” Dick said. “I didn’t expect you to be actually helpful.”
“I hate you so much,” Jason said with a sigh. “So much, circus freak.”
“Love you too, Jay,” Dick said. “Alright, I’m gonna try to finish this pasta before patrol, so I’m hanging up on you.”
“Yeah, yeah, have fun,” Jason said.
“And Jason?”
“What?”
“Seriously, if you start freaking out about this for real, call me again.”
“You’re so annoying,” Dick diagnosed Jason’s grumble as affectionate. He didn’t bother to respond, as his little brother had already hung up. He instead eyed the pasta, an arch enemy if ever he’d had one. He had a fight to win.
The text had rattled around in Jason’s head for the next few weeks, but then he’d had to deal with a turf war as Falcone pushed into his territory, and he forgot all about the exchange. He had (forcefully) obtained information about Falcone’s newfound confidence, which apparently came from a non-Gotham buyer poking their nose around in Gotham’s harbors. Jason (violently) intercepted a few shipments before the buyer got the message, but Falcone was now pissed that Jason had fucked up his deal.
“He shot two of our guys,” Roy banged into Jason’s apartment, flopping unceremoniously onto his battered brown couch. “I’ve deposited them in Gotham General, but I don’t know if they’ll make it. We’re barely gonna be able to cover the medical bills at this rate.”
“Did they take the shipment?” Jason had been covering his expenses lately by renting out his gang as hired muscle. That had enough headaches without Falcone actively targeting their jobs.
“No, we took care of it,” Roy said, now flipping between channels on Jason’s TV. Jason finished disinfecting the friction burn along his arms and pushed back from the kitchen counter. He’d had so much experience with pain, but low-level injuries were all the more annoying because he couldn’t complain about them.
“Where were you?” Roy asked as Jason made his way to the couch and flopped down beside him. He ignored the little twinge in his chest as Roy threw a slightly scratchy wool blanket over both of them.
“Trying to find our leak,” Jason said. “Falcone’s gotta be getting his information from somewhere.”
“Let’s be honest, it’s not like we have everyone’s loyalty secured,” Roy said, finally settling on a rerun of a Top Gear episode. “Falcone probably just paid someone more.”
“This is the third time this month,” Jason said. “And I’ve kept the teams completely separate. You’re saying we have three different people blabbing to Falcone?”
“Not completely separate,” Roy said. “You and I know about all of them. Artemis. Kori.”
“Right,” Jason scoffed. “Somehow, I don’t expect any of us to turn traitor for Falcone of all people.”
“He could be bugging us,” Roy said. “We should do a sweep of the main warehouses. Don’t you have any of that fancy tech stored away?”
“Hm,” Jason thought for a moment. “I could steal some from the Cave. I don’t have anything up to date enough to pick up Falcone’s tech, but Batman will.”
He kept his tone neutral, but he could feel the familiar drop in his stomach when he thought about Bruce. He knew Roy could sense tension seeping back into the conversation, but he didn’t let up.
“You could also just ask,” Roy said. Jason didn’t bother to respond. “Not Batman, maybe. But, like, one of the others. Stephanie or something.”
“Or I could take it.”
He didn’t add that he didn’t want Bruce to think he was relying on him. That he was afraid that the kids would laugh at him, or tell Bruce, or just straight up say no. He didn’t have to say any of it, though — Roy knew when pushing further would be more harm than help. It was one of the reasons Jason tolerated him crashing his place at all hours.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“Not whatever this is,” Jason gestured at the TV. “Can you put on something watchable?”
“All you ever wanna watch after a tough night is nature documentaries.”
“It’s interesting but mindless!” Jason argued. He made a half-hearted grab for the remote.
“Emphasis on mindless!” Roy snatched the remote out of his reach.
“Who has to go out on patrol again later tonight?” Jason asked, his nerves settling with the familiar banter.
“Fucking fine, but we’re watching one about the ocean. I’m sick of the rainforests.”
“Fine with me,” Jason said, settling back into the pillows for his hour of respite. “Why would I not wanna watch something about large bodies of water?”
Slipping in after patrol was not Jason’s greatest idea. In his defense, he hadn’t thought there would be any real activity after the fight at the docks earlier, but, as usual, crime slept for no one. He had been caught in a shootout that had nothing to do with him, really, but there had been a kitten mewing pitifully, just audible under the angry shouts and clanging of metal. He had swept in at the rescue, cursing his soft heart and softer abdomen, especially as one of the bullets ricocheted off his armor. There wouldn’t be lasting damage, but Jason could feel the bruise blossoming beneath the heavy armor. His movements were clunky and uncoordinated as he tried to avoid his injury brushing against his clothes.
Luckily, there was no one in the cave. Either tonight was a heavy patrolling night, or Bruce was buying his cohort of vigilantes Batburgers as a paltry excuse for fucking up their lives so tremendously. Jason felt his scowl deepen against his will. He loved Batburgers.
He strode up to the Batcomputer, relishing the heavy stomping his boots made against the normally hushed stillness of the cave. Though he could tread as silently as any of the others if he wanted to, he had always loved filling the place up with sound, whether he’d been flipping around as Robin or screaming at Bruce as Jason. The weighty sound of his Red Hood footfalls was more a comfort than rebellion, though. A steady I’m here, I’m here, I’m here that just happened to double nicely as a fuck you to the dim mystery of the Bat. He started rifling through drawers, searching for a simple scanning device. Bruce didn’t tend to keep older tech in the cave, but there could be some older scanners that one of the others was tinkering with that wouldn’t be missed. Jason found some scanners in the top right drawer of the tech equipment rack, which at some point had been decorated with purple tape and smiley faces, but Bruce would notice any missing, so he put them back reluctantly and considered his next move.
Bruce tried to run a tight ship, but with a minimum of five other vigilantes actively operating out of the cave and only a few who cared about tidiness as much as him, things were often misplaced. Jason stood still for a few moments, straining his ears for the sound of the Batmobile rumbling up to the cave, and, when he didn’t hear it, headed into the training room.
This was still one of his favorite places in the cave. There was a sparring ring on one end and then various, insanely specific exercise equipment on the other end. There were a few benches, as well, and these were littered with towels, half-empty waterbottles, and, bingo!, various pieces of tech with wires exposed and parts jumbled. Tim or Barbara were the most likely to fiddle with something to fix or improve it while chatting with one of their siblings who was working out. They were also the most likely to work out where their missing project had gone and not report it to B, so these were a safe bet. Jason wrinkled his nose at the mess he had to go through. Alfred would be prescribing a cleaning day soon. As he sifted through the tangle of wires, looking for a scanner that was mostly intact, he spotted a couple of oddly shaped bags lying to the side of the sparring ring, so he took a detour over to the equipment. He had to keep up with the brood, and snooping on their training regimens was an easy way to stay in the race. As he approached, he realized they weren’t exactly bags, but rather some sort of cloth-covered weights. The largest was roughly the size of a large adult man, probably around Jason’s height. The others were shorter and a little slimmer, going down in size till they hit a little more than four and a half feet. They were vaguely the same shape as people, too, except the ‘arms’ were two curved, padded hooks. He kicked the smallest with his boot, drawing it back with a hiss when his toe connected and the bag didn’t move. How heavy was this thing? He gingerly gave it another nudge, this time tipping it onto its side.
On the side of the weight, in neat, printed numbers, it read 83. Jason blinked twice. An oddly specific amount of pounds. His mind started racing, making connections where he didn’t want to see them. He had to test his theory now that he had it, though, or he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
He went to the largest weight, the one that was his height, and knelt beside it. He reached over and carefully tipped it on its side, already knowing what the number would read, already feeling the significance in his stomach like he had just swallowed a stone.
He sat on his knees for a moment, the implication swirling just out of reach as he processed the number. 284 pounds. His weight, give or take. More importantly, the weight he had texted Bruce so many weeks ago. He stayed on his knees for a few moments more, then gently pushed the strange, human weight back on its side so the awkward arms were facing up to the ceiling. Then he stood and left the cave, footfalls silent.
Jason: I saw your weirdo custom weights.
It was the first conversation he had initiated with Bruce since his return, and he tapped it out furiously and sent it before he could overthink and make it into some monumentous occasion. He had let the thought of the weights marinate for a few days, avoiding Roy’s questions about the cave and even stooping so low as to ask Tim for the scanner. The younger boy had dropped it off without question, asked for a few tips on the best ways to move cargo from the wealthier to poorer sectors of Gotham with the highway under construction, and then left, as Jason should have known he would.
He just couldn’t stop thinking about Bruce carefully placing a custom order for a human-shaped weight that was exactly Jason’s height and weight, and then training with it hooked over his back. He knew that Bruce was strong, that he wanted to be strong to protect his flock or whatever, but he hadn’t thought the man would make something so elaborate, so specifically designed to showcase his anal need to protect them. If Jason was being charitable, he supposed he could describe the act as love.
Jason hadn’t thought Bruce would include him in that. Some part of him was angry. He had made it so clear he didn’t need Bruce anymore. But part of him, the part of him that just wanted Bruce to come read to him in his low, soothing baritone whenever he was injured, or sit next to him on the couch and look through files when he was sick, was soothed. He didn’t feel exactly happy at the revelation, if he could even call it that, but steadied. That was what Bruce had been to him, what he’d lost to the Joker’s crowbar. That silent, immovable presence. A solid foundation, a safe place to run to. Home. And Bruce, even without Jason’s permission, was still crafting his body to carry Jason to safety.
Bruce: Ah.
Bruce’s first reply was almost instant. He spent more time trying to come up with his next text, the bubbles indicating typing appearing and disappearing a few times. Finally, his message came through.
Bruce: I usually put them away. Tim says it makes him feel like he’s in a body bag.
Of course, the others knew about this. Did Dick? Had he lied when he’d said he didn’t know why Bruce wanted his weight? But no, Dick had no reason to lie. This was probably some insane thing Bruce had started after Jason had died. He certainly hadn’t done it before.
Jason: He’s right. It’s freaky.
Bruce: What were you doing in the cave?
Jason rolled his eyes and turned off his phone. Bruce’s first instinct, as always, was to pry, to ask, to know. He reached to get his leftovers out of the microwave, but his phone buzzed again before he had even grabbed the handle.
Bruce: Not that you need a reason.
Jason couldn’t tell if this was guilt-tripping or genuine. Knowing Bruce, probably a mix of both.
Jason: Just needed to borrow some equipment. Tim handled it.
I’d have liked to see you, came Bruce’s reply a few seconds later. And then, again unprompted, You should come to dinner at the Manor on Sunday. Dick will be home.
Jason felt bile rising in his throat, his stomach clenching in the now familiar sensation of anger. Home. And why did he have to order Jason around like he was still just a kid? He put his phone down again, determined not to respond. A few minutes later, Bruce hadn’t said anything else. Jason knew he wouldn’t.
He got his food out of the microwave and lifted a forkful to his mouth without even sitting down, glaring at his phone like it had personally wronged him. He wished he could ask Roy to come over, but he was looking after Lian tonight. He ignored his phone for another full minute until he realized that he wasn’t actually ignoring it; he was just thinking really hard about not thinking about it. He grabbed the offending device reluctantly and texted Dick.
Jason: Why are you going to the Manor for dinner on Sunday?
Dick’s reply came after a few minutes. He must be on a slow patrol night.
Dick: jesus i feel like im in an interrogation
Dick: idk i just go for dinner sometimes and b asked plus a’s making his autumnal beef stew you know i eat that shit up
Jason: So, the free food.
Dick: why do you ask ??
Jason: B asked me to come.
Dick called immediately and, after taking a second to roll his eyes, Jason picked up.
“Don’t make a big deal out of this,” he said immediately.
“I know B has asked you to come for dinner before, and it’s always been an outright refusal,” Dick said before Jason could even really get his sentence out. “And I’d be flattered to think that you’re coming for me, but we both know that isn’t true. You didn’t even come for Duke’s birthday dinner, which you knew I’d be at.”
“Whatever, I was just thinking about it,” Jason grumbled. “And I go to the Manor sometimes now.”
“But never when B asks,” Dick pointed out. “You specifically make a point not to go then.”
“Whatever,” Jason said again, taking another bite. Dick finally took a moment to breathe and, when he spoke again, his voice was softer. It was a tone Jason always forgot about, and it came like a gut punch in the shape of the words oh-yeah-he’s-my-big-brother.
“You’re right, it doesn’t have to be a big deal, Jay,” he said. “You can just tell B you’ll think about it or something and make the decision later. But you also don’t have to go, even if you want things to change. You can do whatever this is on your own terms.”
Jason blinked the sudden tears out of his eyes, caught between irritation at himself and relief at being understood.
“I don’t want to do it on my own terms,” and then, oh, horrific weakness, he knew, but this was Dick. “I just want to go home. For dinner.”
“Oh, Jay,” Dick’s voice was impossibly soft.
“I feel like I’m… giving up. If I say yes. I still think he does things wrong. That he fucked me over.”
“We all do, sometimes,” Dick said. “That doesn’t mean he’s not your dad, Jay.”
They hadn’t thrown that word around in a while. In the early days after his return, it had elicited a white-hot spike of rage so tangible it actually hurt. Now, all he could think about was that equipment in the sparring room. He thought about Bruce, carrying the dead weight of his absent son on his shoulders, training for a day Jason might someday need him.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, angrily swiping at the few tears that had fallen onto his cheeks. “I have to go, freak. Have a good patrol.”
“See you later, Jaybird,” Dick’s voice was still quieter than usual, but he didn’t say anything else as Jason stayed on the line a few seconds longer, listening to his brother’s breathing. He hung up and finished his meal.
Fine, he texted Bruce, and then added, I’m at 286 now.