A/N: I went back and forth today on if I want to make this an every Sunday thing or every other Sunday thing. But I figured I'm trying to prove I can be more responsible with this project, so let's aim high. Here's hoping that my last-minute changes save this time. In other news, I am sorta between jobs though I have two lined up in the short term and need to see how they will affect my schedule in the future. If ever it looks like I may need an extra week to update, I will let you guys know, but the goal is to keep this going on schedule!

ENJOY!

My Robin Reversal AU:

Dick-11 Cass-15 Jason-16

Jason-18

Chapter Twenty-three: Coffin Nails

Bruce did not typically snoop through his children's rooms. He trusted them with weapons, hostage situations, crime scene evidence, and dealing with the murderous criminal underground; how could he not trust them with their own possessions? So when he was digging through Jason's things, it was because he was looking specifically for an old retractable bat-a-rang design and he knew Jason had one in his room. He wanted to upgrade the schematics, but since the older models didn't really work out the way he had originally intended, they had all been re-purposed, meaning Jason had the only one left. Of course, Bruce had already asked beforehand to borrow it, and Jason didn't seem to mind. But that was a week ago and Jason never got around to actually handing it over and Bruce was determined to finish this little pet project.

This was one, and only reason, Bruce was in his son's room, rifling through drawers and reaching beneath the bed. Jason's room always seemed to walk the line of neat and total disaster. It was a constant source of irritation for poor Alfred, who would take one look at the bedroom, demand Jason take the day to clean his room, only to witness Jason throw all the close in the hamper and place the books back on the shelf and be done in less than ten minutes. Realizing it never got any worse than that, Alfred had since decided to let the boy keep his room in the way that obviously made him more comfortable. So when Bruce reached under the bed, pulling out shorts, shoes, and a copy of 'Treasure Island', he was slightly surprised when he felt his hand touch a pack of cards. Except, before even pulling it out to see he could tell it was a little too thick, a little too narrow, and the film around it didn't feel right. Retrieving his arm and inspecting the item in his hand, Bruce felt his blood begin to boil.

Downstairs, Jason was reading 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin' with Dick sitting next to him, watching 'Supernatural' on his phone with earplugs, and Cass on the floor putting together a puzzle on the coffee table. The room was quiet and everyone was enjoying each other's company separately. It was one of the nice, rare occasions that they got together with no arguing, no trouble making, and no 'because Alfred said we had to'. The silence was destroyed when Bruce screamed out his middle child's full Christian name.

"JASON PETER WAYNE!"

Jason sat up, book almost toppling to the floor and his heart pounding with the question 'what did I do?' going on in a loop in his head. He stood from the couch and turned to face the stairwell just as Bruce was stomping down, already glaring at him. Jason's heart froze in place, that was the 'Batglare'. Whatever he did, he royally messed up.

Beside him, Cass; who still only really spoke in body language, shot up and took three large steps around Jason to get Dick to back away. Dick had pulled his earbuds out when he heard Bruce over his show, but had been looking around confused and had even opened his mouth to ask what was going on before Cass had grabbed his hand and started to lead him toward the kitchen. Seeing Bruce stomp up to Jason, glare in place, and Jason white as a sheet and frozen in place, Dick was even more confused and way more concerned. Then he saw the carton of cigarettes in Bruce's hand. Yeah, Jason was a dead-man.

When Dick and Cass scurried out of the room and left Jay to his fate, a small part of him wanted to call them out for being traitors, but the look in Bruce's eye held him in place. He felt his lungs in his throat and tears start to well up in his eyes, he suddenly felt like a young child again instead of the teenager he was. Bruce had rules. They were simple rules. Jason just got caught spitting on those rules.

Bruce only waited long enough for Cass to get Dick out of the room before he grabbed Jason by the arm and all but dragged him toward the study. Jason was too scared to fight the tight grip on his arm, memories of Willis Todd breaking his arm when he found Jason sneaking food into his bedroom came flashing back as Bruce's steel grip left no room for a struggle. Bruce wouldn't do something like that for such a small infraction on the rules. But this wasn't food in the bedroom, this was one of Bruce's biggest taboos. No drugs in the house. Jason snuck 'drugs' into Bruce's home. Honestly, Jason always put tobacco on the same 'drug' status as caffeine, could you really call it a drug? To Bruce? Yes, yes it was. And he has always made that explicitly clear.

Bruce led his son to the grandfather clock, put in the code on the clock face and pulled the pendulum, opening the entrance to the Batcave. He then began to descend, his other hand still latched around Jason's arm. Not enough to bruise, but enough to get the point across that Jason was going with him.

A faint memory of when Willis had died and Jason got caught with alcohol. He was still new to being in Wayne Manor, his name was still in the process of getting changed. He had been so sure that Bruce was going to throw him out after that. Bruce had been understanding then. Jason had been in mourning, despite how much he said he didn't care. Bruce might have been Jason's 'dad' as far as the little runaway had been concerned, but he couldn't stop the fact that Willis was his biological father.

That did not feel like the same situation as this one. Bruce was furious, more so than Jason had ever seen him. Logically, Jason knew Bruce wouldn't ever actually hurt him. Emotionally and Mentally, Jason had been programmed to expect it anyway. He felt numb all over, a tear was threatening to run down his face. He wanted to call out to Bruce but he didn't know how to address him in that moment. Would he still be allowed to call him 'Dad' after this? Would it upset Bruce if Jason started calling him by his name? The words begging for mercy stuck in his throat and choked him, causing him to sob quietly as Bruce all but dragged him over to the med-bay and pushed him to sit down on the cot with a look that demanded he not move. Bruce then threw the cigarettes into a small incinerator bin used for particular materials that had to be discarded completely.

"Da- Bru-, S-Sir?" Jason stuttered, not knowing how to address him. Bruce paused for only a moment to assess his son. Jason looked terrified, tears in his eyes in a way they hadn't in years, and he was shaking all over. Bruce felt his own expression soften for a moment, he didn't mean to scare his son this badly. Steeling himself over once again, he finally let Jason know what was about to happen and to give him the lecture of a lifetime.

"Sit still or we'll be spending hours getting a proper x-ray," Bruce grumbled, he purposefully made certain it wasn't a proper growl. Jason blinked up in confusion at him, taking a quick second to dry the tears from his eyes, though they were replaced almost instantly.

"D-Dad?" Jason asked. Good, Jason was at least a little reassured.

"I don't know how long you've been smoking, Jason, but there is only half a pack left of the one I found. I've decided I don't want to know the specifics of how long, because it ends today. But I will be damned if I don't check that you haven't already caused ill-effects to your body with this. You will be submitting to a full physical, right now." Jason was almost due for a new one soon anyway, two birds with one stone, and since Jason always hated physicals it made for a good punishment. So three, three birds with one stone.

"I- I'm sorry, I know your rules, I just, I thought that it was, I mean, I knew it wasn't, but when I was on the street-"

"Jason Wayne, I swear, you have been beating the same excuse to death whenever you're caught doing something you're not supposed to. I'm not having it. You've been in this house now for two, soon to be three, years. You've had your time to adjust. You're sixteen years old Jason, start taking responsibility," Bruce shut down the argument before it began. It really had been a habit of Jason's. Getting a little too rough with his schoolmate? He's used to sparing properly with the other kids on the streets. Said something wildly inappropriate in class? It was okay to say on the streets. Forgetting his table manners at dinner? What good were table manners on the streets? It was time Jason understand that was no longer an excuse that he would be allowed to use.

Jason sat in shamed silence as Bruce worked the x-ray machine, and then followed orders as he was given the full physical that he had been promised. When it was over Jason and Bruce had both calmed down enough that Bruce finally trusted his voice as well as Jason's ability to comprehend the situation.

"Obviously, you're grounded. This has to be the biggest breach of trust I've ever had in this household. Therefore, Nightling will be benched for the next six months-"

"Six!" Jason exclaimed. That was half a year! It had to be the longest he had ever been grounded from crime-fighting. Longest anyone had been grounded from crime-fighting before.

"If I can't trust you to not bring this substance into my home, how on Earth do you expect me to trust you out there? On. The. Streets?" Bruce emphasized the words to hit the point home and use Jason's own excuse against him.

"I promise-"

"Promises are useless if there is no trust. This isn't just you sneaking in a puppy or a pornographic magazine, Jason, these could kill you. Can you imagine if Dick or Cass had found them?" Well, really that was hardly a concern. Cass wouldn't really understand what they were or how they were used, nor would she really care. Dick was actually his 'good' kid of the bunch and would have gone straight to Bruce with them and narked on Jason first thing. But he needed to make a point here.

Jason stared at his knees, his hands balled up in fists. Bruce studied him for a moment. He was no longer scared or uncertain. Jason was angry. He was angry at Bruce for his punishment and for pointing out his faults. But more than that he was angry at himself for having those faults, for getting caught, for doing it in the first place, for not reaching out about his problem before it became something to 'get caught' with.

With the physical over with and Jason properly lectured. Bruce made his way back up the stairs, hoping he could trust Jason to at the very least take his punishment seriously and work out his addiction. There were going to be changes made, of course. First being that Jason's room will be spotless from here on out.

Two years later, . . .

Jason was visiting for a couple of days. He hadn't lived in the manor for little over a year, fulfilling the tradition of moving out shortly after he turned eighteen. He was welcomed home by Alfred, then shortly after a sixteen-year-old Dick, and about a couple hours later his dad Bruce. The visit was actually going well, Jason had left the manor before the tension between him and Bruce had a chance to grow into something that could ruin their relationship like it did with Damian. Jason was smart, and he knew that Bruce was a typical Alpha male type, and he was alright with other males around so long as they didn't get too dominant within Bruce's territory. That was something that went doubly for his own sons. As blasphemous as it may sound to compare Bruce to an animal that doesn't fly and sees with echo-location, Bruce was very much like a lion. King of his pride, proud of his cubs, a great father when it came to connecting with those cubs, but growing distant as the cubs grow up.

The comparison actually made the whole thing easier to swallow when he himself started to get more and more dominant as a maturing male. He remembered all those arguments when he was sixteen and seventeen. He started to question Bruce's decisions instead of following blindly, which is usually the first sign of a young bat 'coming of age', apparently. So Jason decided to go to college in a different city, transferring out of Gotham University, and then said his long goodbyes to his family as they helped him pack his things.

It had been obvious that Bruce didn't really want him to leave, but was well prepared to say good-bye. He must have been feeling it coming for a while now. So Jason leaving wasn't bitter-filled with disagreements and regretful word choices. So when Bruce came around the corner to see him, there wasn't any remorse, no apologies, nothing to sour the happiness of the father/son reunion.

At least not for another hour when Jason excused himself to go outside, walk down the lane, and in plain view of the front room windows, if just a ways away, lit up a cigarette and had a smoke break. Jason swore he could hear his Christian name being shouted on the wind, though it should be impossible to hear from inside the house, and he smirked.

Just because Jason grew up didn't mean he'll ever grow out of being an obnoxious little butt-head.

A/N: So, to clear anything up, because I am from Midwestern America and I don't really know if this is an us thing or if it's just a thing. When your Momma call's your Christian name, your ears are already sore from the phantom feeling of her yanking it about once she gets her hands on you, so I don't know if anywhere else calls it that or if they just say 'Full name'. I'm not very religious, but I always felt 'Christian Name', even when someone wasn't Christian, made for a harsher tone to why the name was being called. I also get the feeling that Jason himself isn't very religious in this story, but he still does have some of the habits from when he was a kid, though they've grown more into a satire of religion than any actual faith. (Crossing himself like a priest would when he sees something bad, 'praying' for the patience to not strangle his little brother, calling out to the saints when a plan has gone completely wrong, etc. etc.)

Also, as to my personal opinion on Bruce's arm grab of Jason, Bruce definitely overreacted. Given he realizes he had overreacted, it was an overreaction none the less. No, I do not agree with underage smoking and I would definitely destroy my voice yelling at my nephew if I ever caught him with them before he was 18. Bruce shouldn't have just grabbed Jason like that, so I would first like to say I do NOT condone child violence like this. (Corporeal punishment such as spankings is a very long topic of discussion for me so if you'd like to know my personal beliefs on this then PM and we can talk. In short, I believe there is a fine line between a swat and a hit. One is corrective action and the other is abuse.)

Lastly; cigarettes. I personally do not smoke and do not see why anyone would, but I have always been surrounded by people who do. Half my high school smoked and I just couldn't see why. Like, it makes them feel mature? What's the Grown up's excuse? But I know there are people who do smoke and they are aware of the health risks, they bought it legally, and with those two items on board, then I don't have a problem with it so long as it's not in my house or car. My friend Kass is currently trying to quit smoking and I've been wishing her the best of luck.

R&R if you liked. (Need a default response? Just say 'Jason, you shouldn't smoke!'. I'll take it.)