Dick blinked up happily at Jason in the morning, the older man having been awakened by the younger's morning stirrings.
"Good morning, Dickie."
"Good morning, Jason!" Dick beamed as Jason sloppily reached up to ruffle Dick's hair.
Dick started pushing himself up as Jason moved forward, but the little boy slowed, suddenly, gazing worriedly at Jason.
"Jason, are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Why?"
"You got up during nighttime. I thought maybe you were sick. And there's something under your shirt."
Observant little rugrat. "I went outside for a walk, and I did get a little hurt, but I've had worse." All true… technically. Wonder Woman wouldn't be happy, but since when had Jason done anything for her?
"I'll be okay." Seriously, though, he should've known Dick would catch on to him. "You know, Dick, I've got a super super special surprise for you today. I'll tell you about it right after breakfast, m'kay?"
Dick looked extremely excited at the prospect of a surprise, and hopped up so fast he bounced a bit on the bed. A worried look ghosted over his face before he seemed to push it away, and scampered over to the door.
Jason pushed himself out of bed, plastering on a smile for the hyperactive kid.
He ambled over to the bathroom to get cleaned up and shave. Dick looked like he was trying to not bounce on his toes by the door.
Jason turned the shaving cream over in his hands - he'd forgotten what it was like to use a rich guy's cream. Mostly he didn't use any at all, but it was kinda fun and soothing to watch the white fluff peel away in clean cut rows.
After finishing up, Jason walked out the door, where Dick was dressed and brushed already. Jason placed the kid on his shoulders out of instinct, and ducked as he walked out the doorway, Dick plastered himself over Jason's head, giggling.
Dick leaned over Jason's head, hair hanging down as he gave Jason an upside down smile. "I'm taller than you."
Jason snorted, and blew in Dick's face. The kid crinkled his nose and popped out of view again. Jason smiled, remembering doing the same thing to Bruce, once upon a memory.
Waltzing into the kitchen Jason grinned as he noticed Dick running about 10 times faster than normal to grab all the supplies. Someone was excited.
After watching Dick scarf his food down like Bizzaro on pizza night, and after making sure to draw his own meal out as much as possible to annoy Dick, Jason finally leaned back and stretched. Dick tapped a staccato buzz role on the table, leaning forward with eager eyes and bated breaths. He definitely wasn't aware he was doing any of it.
"Well… I wonder if we we're going to do anything today. Whatever could I have had planned…"
Dick was shaking now, hands no longer tapping, and he looked like he wanted to explode in helpful energy.
Sigh "Well, if I can't remember…"
"You said there was a surmise! Surprise!"
"A surmise? I don't remember any…"
"No, no, a surprise!"
"Why so I did! I have it now!"
Dick was stretched out across the table, fingers outstretched and eyes saucers.
"This isn't just any surprise. This is one of the greatest surprise of all time. In fact, there have been 5 great surprise rated in history in order of most surprising and awesome, but this one is going to leave them all in the dust." So what, Dick hadn't seen The Princess Bride. Which. Actually was criminal and had to be fixed. But first the kid looked like he was going to have an aneurysm.
"You see, Dick there are about to be a couple more people coming here. Their names are Tim And Damian, and they'll get here in 2 days. And they are not just any two boys. You see, they are also… your older brothers."
"..."
"..."
Jaw drop. Eyes fully wide. Shoulders limp. Pupils dilated. "I… I.. I HAVE THREE OLDER BROTHERS?"
Jason felt a grin spreading uncontrollably across his face. "Uh, huh!"
"I… I… What are they like? What's their favorite color? What's their favorite movie? Do they like ice cream? Will they like me? I love them!"
"Hey, slow down, squirt! They love you. They think you're the greatest thing in the world."
"When will they be here?"
"Two days."
"We… we have to get the house ready for them! What are they like? What do they want from me?"
"They want you to be their little baby brother, and they want you to be safe and know how amazing you are." So far Dick wasn't listening when Jason said stuff like this, but maybe he would if Baby Bird and Demon said it. Of course… that would mean Damian would have to say it…
"Um… what should we do to get the house ready?"
"Well…" Visions of pink bedrooms and signs saying 'Red Hood was the greatest Robin ever' and 'Batman is a sissy' (because he's not going to teach Dickie any really bad words) flash through his head, but he disgards them. He wants Dick to have the best relationship possible with his brothers, and tricking the kid into pranking them is probably a bad idea.
"Well… first I guess we should make some food for them." What did you even do for younger siblings you were excited to see? Jason usually just shot at them less. That probably wouldn't work for Dick.
Dick looked up eagerly, eyes trained solely on Jason as he waited for the older man to deliver every answer deemed most important in Dick's little universe. Jason decided that was a lot of pressure.
"Yeah! I bet they're hungry from coming all the way over here!"
Jason had purposely avoided thinking about whether they'd had any kind of food over there. There wasn't anything he could do to help them either way. "We'll have to make all kinds off food. And coffee. Timmy lives off coffee. And he's gonna die off coffee," Jason mumbled to himself, considering the middle Robins' horrendous dietary choices.
"Now we also have to remember that precious little Dami is vegetarian. Do you know what that means?"
"Nuh, uh!"
"It means he doesn't like eating meat. He's kinda dumb like that. So we haf'ta make sure we don't make anything with meat in it, okay?"
"Gotcha!" Dick started running around the kitchen, grabbing food and utensils like an insane man.
"You got ideas for what to make, shortstack?"
Dick skidded to a halt, a deer in the headlights of accusation. Jason mentally sighed. "Dick, you're better than me at this. You have ideas; we do 'em. Now, what are we making?"
"Umm… I was just… sorry?"
"No sorries." Jason placed a hand on Dick's shoulder. "You're in charge. What are we doing?"
As it turned out, baking an insane amount of food, (that would last over two days) took a long time, and resulted in fun games of: 'Find the Pantry' and 'What to do with Food you Used Baking Soda on Instead of Baking Powder'. Then Jason decided that as a mature and responsible older brother he absolutely had to introduce Dick to the concept of a food fight.
Jason was hiding behind the kitchen counter with a bowl of flower mixed with some food coloring he'd hastily thrown in. Dick would come by soon, and then Jason would begin the greatest war of his career. Dick moved forward, innocent and oh, so naive. Jason leapt forward, and flung his weapon at the 8 year old.
"Food Fight!"
Dick jerked backwards, shock and confusion playing across his face.
"We shall now have war!" Jason cried, leaping onto the counters and grabbing some marshmallows to throw at the disoriented child.
They hit target, and Dick backed up hesitantly, eyes darting back and forth.
"Try hitting me more than I get you!" Jason cried, vaulting over the refrigerator to land in front of the door.
Dick, hesitantly threw a couple M&Ms at him, which Jason allowed to hit. "Good job! That's the spirit!" Jason sprinted to the counter to throw some more flour at Dick, who dodged (mostly) this time, and ran to throw some marshmallows at Jason who allowed a few to hit.
"I'm wounded!" Jason cried dramatically, ensuring to project the fact that he was, in fact, kidding, and throwing up a rush of peanuts toward Dick, who was hesitantly dodging to the side. Dick actually managed to barely get hit, and threw some more M&Ms at Jason, letting the individual candies bounce off the counter into a multidirectional hail of sugar. Kid was getting good.
Jason laughed, shielding his face with his arms, and popping a few chocolates into his mouth, before throwing a lump of cheese at Dick's chest. It hit him, bouncing onto the floor, where Dick gave it a confused glance before moving forward toward Jason, fingers outstretched for some stray marshmallows, when he knocked over a plastic pitcher of kool aid. Jason, who had been anticipating marshmallows, made an 'O' of surprise, as the green sea poured over his face.
And chest. And arms, obviously. And… yeah, they'd made too much kool aid.
And Dick... Okay, damage control time. Except… maybe this could be good. If Dick knew he had messed up in (what was probably in Dick's mind) big-time, and if he knew that Jason didn't care, then maybe he could start healing or something.
Jason had been thinking that a lot recently. Flashes of green and water and hedidn'tkillhimwhywhywhyI'mgoingtokillhim jarred him into the depressing knowledge that it might be a very very long time before anything could even make an impact on the poor kids psyche.
"Well, I wasn't really considering going swimming today, but you seem to have other ideas!" Jason gave the kid a grin, trying to project as much cheerfulness as possible without seeming creepy.
Jason moved forward, and scooped Dick into his arms, shaking the kool aid from his hair and onto Dick. "This, is a very normal part of having brothers. Happens all the time. In fact, if you've never spilled any food one one of your siblings, you are probably not a human being."
Dick looked up at him in confusion at his nonsensical statement, while Jason made a show of licking the kool aid from around his mouth.
"And look, now we got to taste test our product!" Dick, looking somewhat unconvinced, started placing on a small smile.
"Come on, squirt. I think we've got enough baking done for today. It's all gotta last two days anyway… we can make some more perishable stuff the day before." Jason started carrying Dick out of the room, glad the floors were either tile or washable carpet. This world's Bruce was obviously well acquainted with the trials of children.
"Okay, now the first thing to do is to get changed." After that… hmm. Tim liked coffee… they could get coffee maybe? Damian liked… pointy objects? Jason figured he was putting way too much thought into this. The ideas was to make Dick happy, not Tim and Damian. What made Dick happy? Bright colors. Physical contact. Other people being happy.
If Replacement and Demon Spawn didn't act happy, Jason would kill them. Easy one. Physical contact. Movie night? Were they doing too many of those? A family movie musical could work. Bright colors…
"Next we're gonna make banners!"
This was doubly beautiful. This world's Bruce was gonna come back home and be all like: 'what happened to my house? Who trashed my house with bright colors?' Jason refused, by the way, to believe that there was any 15 year old left in him. Any sane person (or otherwise) would find the prospect funny.
"Oh! How do we do that?"
Hmm… there was always the option of ordering ludicrously expensive premade banners… he could always play it off as a long range order from the Bahamas, or wherever Bruce was right now… but Dick would enjoy making banners more. Besides, premades might be expensive, but handcrafted ones could be so much more messy.
"Whelp, If the art supply room is in the same place here as it is back home, then we can just pick up some paper off the printer and decorate with markers and glitter or something."
"How do we spell their names?"
Jason started walking down the hall, Dick practically skipping at his heels. "T-i-m. D-a-m-i-a-n."
"Okay!" Something seemed to occur to Dick. "Do they have nicknames too?"
"Well, 'Tim', by itself, is short for Timothy. Nobody but stuffy rich people call him Timothy, though. I call him 'baby bird' or…" Replacement. Hmm… Dick… may not take well to that nickname. How could he understand the concept of insulting nicknames? Especially since Jason hadn't made the name out of brotherly rivalry: he'd hated Tim. He still wasn't all flowery with the family…
"Jason? Are you okay?"
"Huh?" Oops. Took to long to reply.
"Ohh… you must really miss him, huh? Since he's away in the other place and you're here." Dick's look of concern was entirely too self incriminating for Jason's taste.
"I was just thinking. It's okay. I've been in excellent company, and they'll be here soon." Jason shot Dick a reassuring smile, before swinging open a door.
Definitely not an art room.
"Hmm. This is not an art room."
Dick shifted, looking like he wanted to say something, but wasn't sure if he was allowed."
"You got some 2 cents, pipsqueak?"
"This isn't where the art room is in my world."
It occured to Jason that the art room had been moved in his world because Mr Freeze had attacked the manor once, and now they stored incongruous villain repellent materials where the art room had used to be. It was more strategically located.
"Well then, lead on, kid. Where's yours?"
As it turned out, Dick's art room (and the art room of this world) were both located where Jason's old art room had been. They might need to get around to mapping out this manor… Jason didn't at all like the idea of not knowing the layout of a place he was going to be living for who knew how long. But that was a problem for later.
Jason pulled down some of the larger sheets of paper while Dick found tape, and whatever else stood out to him. Before long, they had a pile of paper, tape, colored pencils, markers, stamps, glue, glitter, glitter glue and streamers. This was going to be interesting. Also, Jason insisted on making the banners in the main living room, because it was bigger (because the mess would freak out Bruce more).
"What are their favorite colors?"
"Red for both."
"What's yours?"
"Red."
"What's daddy's? In your world?"
"Black."
"Oh."
Dick carefully picked out a bright red and began to color the 'D' in 'Damian'. "Is there anything I should know about them?"
"Well… Damian's really prickly, okay? He kinda comes off as really mean, sometimes, but he actually is kinda nice when you get to know him. He was raised by his mom at first, and she… did some mean stuff to him, so he's not very good at doing things with people, now."
Dick looked up, eyes wide, unfamiliar with much more about Damian than his name and heartbroken anyway.
"Tim isn't really mean, but he spends time by himself a lot. But he needs to spend more time with people, so you don't let him hole up in his room all the time, hear? He likes people, he just works too hard and needs some help spending time with people."
Dick nodded seriously, evidently completely prepared to undertake in this most important mission.
"Also, Damian really likes animals, so he isn't gonna be too happy to come here and not have his pets. But. He'll be fine."
Dick nodded again, and sprinkled some black glitter around Damian's name. "Okay. Where are we gonna put these?"
"Around the living room. I don't think they're coming in the door, so it won't be any good to put 'm in the entrance."
"Aren't they gonna be mad about the mess?"
"Naw. Tim's sixteen and Damian's eleven. Tim's the messiest person in the world, and Damian will be annoyed, but it'll be a good annoyed. Annoying yer brothers is about the bes' definition of havin' siblings I know."
Dick glanced up, eyes squinting as he eyed Jason in surprise. "Your voice got funny!"
Jason jerked in surprise, as he realized that Dick was correct. His stupid, street rat, Gotham accent, making an appearance again. Normally, Jason was trained out of that: an identifying accent being nothing but useless in practically all areas of life, and dangerous in vigilantedom, as a serious threat to one's secret identity. But sometimes, sometimes, when his guard was off and he was just… him… it came back, all determined to prove to everybody where he really came from: not from wealth or prestige but from the gutters.
Normally it wasn't a problem: Jason didn't tend to relax around people. Apparently he was gonna have to be more on his guard.
"Yeah, I know, it does that sometimes. Pass me some glitter glue?" Hopefully Dick would be distracted…
"What color?"
"Bright purple. We will put cut out flowers on the poster and cover it in purple glitter glue."
Dick giggled. "I like that. Will they like that?"
"They would like anything that came from you."
Dick ducked his head. "Really?"
"Really, really, squirt."
Dick giggled. It was an obvious lie, but Dick thought it a very nice one. "Well I like everything that comes from you."
Jason startled a little. Dumb kid. Always surprising him. "Really?"
"Really, really, Chicken!"
Jason barked out a laugh. This was new! He… he had not forseen Dick doing this. Honestly.
"Ah. What?"
"Ummm...I… I gave you a nickname?" Dick looked up nervously. "I'm sorry! I wasn't trying to be bad! I… I… I didn't mean to, I'm sorry!"
"Hey… hey, kid, calm down. Why'd you name me Chicken?"
"I… I just… I heard that chickens are really scary if you make 'em mad and they fight for their kids and family… and you seem like you'd do that… and chickens do that thing where… with their kids… they, like, put them under their wings? To protect them? And you kinda do that with me, so… I thought…"
Dick ducked his head and hunched his shoulders guiltily, trembling under their weight of his perceived failure. "I'm sorry."
Jason smiled. "Don't be. It's a good name."
Dick looked up dubiously.
"Besides. You seem to have me pegged. It's a good name. It's from you. I shall henceforth proceed to wear it with honor." Jason proceeded to dramatically tap his chest with the bottle of glue, smearing some on his chest. Thus proceeded an overly dramatized rendition of Jason trying to smear glitter glue off his chest with his hands, which, for some reason only made things worse.
Dick was in hysterics by the time Jason was professing his hand to be part of a conspiracy against him dedicated to ruining his hair. The poster was quickly becoming covered in random splotches of glitter and marker ink.
"J-Jason?"
Jason gave him a fake scowl. "Yes?"
"Will Tim and Damian be mad that we ruined their poster?"
No. No. No,no,no,no. Dick didn't get to keep doing this. Just for one second, couldn't the kid just… relax? Have fun? Be a kid?
It wasn't fair and it wasn't...
"No. They won't be mad. They'll be very happy that we put so much time and effort into this because we're brothers and we do that."
"...Okay… If it isn't okay will they want to hit me?" Emerald streaked through Dick's hair. Dick ducked his head, lime colored eyes shining and dragging and his fingers bumped into markers of olive and shamrock and crocodile and neon and forest and when did mosquitoes get in the manor and when did they get so loud so loud!
"Jason?" Dick's hair was black. His voice was high. Pupils dilated. Shaking. His eyes were blue. His throat bobbed. "Are… did I do something wrong? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Jason pulled himself to his feet. "You keep working on the poster. I'm gonna… clear my head."
Jason pulled his fist out of the hole in the wall. Plaster paled the skin in dry flakes. His teeth ached from grinding. He wondered, on some level, if Dick could hear him in the hallway. He glanced around to make sure this was the right hallway. It was a bit farther away than he'd intended. It was fine. He was stupid.
What had he been thinking? He couldn't be around children. Look at him. Pit crazy. He could've hurt Dick! He could've… had he told Dick where he was going? Had Dick followed him out of the room? Had he told Dick not to follow him? Had he attacked Dick? Shivering, he clenched his fingers together, leaning against the wall.
He couldn't leave. Whatever happened, Dick needed him for now. Once Tim got here… he could take care of the kid. Jason was no suitable guardian. Once Tim got here Jason could be free to go patrol. He could do that. If he was feeling particularly helpful maybe he could take Damian with him. Get the kid out of the way. But he couldn't be around Dick. He just… couldn't. Couldn't couldn't couldn't. Dick was small and breakable and trusting. He'd just be hurt by Jason's insanity.
Jason couldn't control this. He could turn on a dime. Normal one moment, crazy the next. The pit didn't care it didn't care about what was happening and how could he be so incoherent and uncontrollable he could hurt Dick. He couldn't even remember… what if he spaced out and hurt Dick or left him somewhere and didn't remember it? His thoughts didn't make sense, he didn't make sense, nothing made sense and everything was chaos and everything was green...
But Jason was stuck here for now. He had to keep it together. He had to. And he had to do it without supervillains and guns. Normally he could just go kill something. Now he couldn't. Jason slid to the ground. Criss cross applesauce. Indian style. It was supposed to be Indian style but that wasn't 'politically correct'. Bruce said it was criss cross applesauce. Bruce was stupid. 'Criss cross applesauce' was a stupid name. It was long. It rhymed. It wasn't cool. Indians were cool. They had bows and arrows and horses and…
Jason didn't know when he'd closed his eyes. He didn't know how long they'd stayed closed. But, he was calmer. Calm enough to be around people. Dragging himself to his feet and pushed into the room again, wood sliding over his fingertips, sending shivers up his spine. He didn't like wood on his fingers. Nails on a chalkboard.
Smile. Hope it wasn't predatory. Hope it isn't too forced. "Hey, kid."
"Jason. Hi. I worked on the poster. Like you said. I put on glitter. And smiley faces." Dick offered a small hopeful smile. Tentative. Jason was a wild animal that could strike at any time. Had Dick ever seen a wild animal? Yes. Had he recognised it as one, would he recognise Jason? BruceDaddykillmurderguns WAKEUP
"Good job." Voice rough. Scratching. "Dick I'm… I'm sick. Okay. I'm… I'm just gonna sit down over here and watch you. Ah… bein' sick. It makes me… snappy. So just… be quiet. I'm not mad at'cha. I just need quiet. We're good. Kid."
Jason forced himself into a chair. Shouldn't have thought of HIMdaddy NO. Calm. Calm as a leaf on a pond. Ripples come and go. Float with the ripples. Let them carry you.
"Do you need medicine?"
"No. It'll go i'self."
Dick nodded, and continued coloring, flashing Jason worried glances every couple minutes.