The Birds Who Smile, a Batman fanfic by Raberba girl
Super rough draft: Seatbelt training (going around the front drive) / Making appointments and starting school montage / Jack's puppy eyes
Bruce didn't even try to tempt the kids with breakfast first; all four of them just wanted to get seatbelts out of the way.
This time, he asked Alfred to drive them around the manor's long front drive. Peter and Jack were so interested in the view out the windows that Bruce actually set the timer to count up rather than down, and they lasted nearly an entire circuit of the front grounds without noticing they were still buckled. With John, Bruce was more cautious, sticking to just a few seconds with the seatbelt buckled and giving the boy a colorful liquid timer to occupy him during the rest of the ride. John clutched the toy hard and desperately stared at it, Elephant squeezed under his arm.
Jack was the one who first noticed they were still restrained after several minutes, and protested with a loud, "HEY, WWASSA BBI'CKG I'DDEA, HUH?!"
"Are you watching too much TV?" Bruce wondered as they came to a stop in front of the house and he unbuckled Peter (Jack was already unbuckling himself). The youngest bird had lately been using more uncharacteristic phrases he had to have picked up from elsewhere. "Or are you watching YouTube videos when you're supposed to be sleeping?" The child's phone wasn't supposed to have Internet access, but the kid was Tim Drake; Bruce wouldn't put it past him to have somehow figured out how to get online.
"Ttimuh go ddown, Daddy!" Jack complained, kicking at his father when Bruce tried to hand him ice cream.
"I'm sorry, Jack. I just wanted to see how long you'd last." He abruptly pulled the ice cream back before Jack could grasp it. "I'll give you this when you stop kicking me."
"AI CEAM!"
"Stop kicking, then you will get ice cream."
Jack paused and narrowed his eyes in a very calculating look that sort of gave Bruce chills. Peter had gone stiff and wide-eyed as he read his brother's body language, creeping out of the door when Alfred opened it but unable to tear his eyes away from his youngest brother. John started biting Elephant and stared even harder at the liquid timer, which he didn't turn even though the top half was now empty.
Jack's face cleared. Very deliberately, he said, "You ss'tuppid, BBatman," and delivered quite a hard kick to Bruce's shin, then immediately cringed back, his expression a mix of rebellion and fear.
Bruce put the ice cream back in the cooler. "You'll get this later. Apparently you're not ready yet."
There was a pause. John's breath was coming a little hard, and Peter pressed against Alfred.
"STUPID BATMAN!" Jack signed fiercely, his face twisting. "I HATE YOU! YOU ARE BAD!"
"Don't call me 'Batman.' You can call me 'B' or 'Bruce.' "
Jack panted for a moment, then flipped Bruce off. His weak manual dexterity meant he had to use his other hand to correctly arrange his tiny little fingers, and the effect was more adorably ridiculous than obscene.
"Ffuck you! No ai ceam ffor Jjackie!"
"Ice cream later. You earned it for wearing your seatbelt, but it will be delayed until you behave." Bruce got out of the car and started to help John out.
Jack screamed and attacked Bruce, who fended him off and then tried to put some distance between them. Jack scrambled after him, but before his clawed hands could connect, Bruce caught his wrists and crouched down to his level. Jack immediately started pulling to get away, looking terrified.
"Ssorry ssorry Jjackie ssorry no no do not hhuht li'l bbaby-"
"Jack-"
"crow! crow!"
"Are you trying to make me lose my temper on purpose?"
Jack's struggling had changed from trying to get away to trying to get snuggly, but the way Bruce was holding him kept him anchored either way.
"Timothy Jackson, your brother John already did his worst. I didn't turn into the Man Who Laughs for him, and I certainly won't for you."
"Lle't- GGO...!"
Bruce let go, and Jack backed away fearfully. Not knowing what else to do, Bruce went to give the older boys their rewards.
Jack started to cry, standing there bawling with his hands hanging at his sides. The older boys cautiously approached, John twittering softly and Peter, whose mouth was still full of ice cream, reaching out to grasp his hand. Bruce leaned against the car and waited.
After a while, the sobs died away and Jack miserably let his brothers pull him toward the house, but he stopped when they came even with the car. He trudged over to Bruce and gazed up at him silently with those glistening baby blue eyes of his, face stained with tears and a trickle of snot making its way down his lip.
Bruce's heart melted, and he took out a handkerchief to wipe his baby bird's face. "Are you ready for your ice cream now?" he murmured.
"No ice cream for bad boy."
"You wore your seatbelt, so you earned your ice cream. You should probably apologize for kicking, though."
"Sorry...very sorry, I hate bad boy-"
"You're a good boy," Bruce said firmly, cupping his face. "I love you, Jack. All right?"
Jack studied him a minute. "You love bad boys?"
"I love my boys, whether they're bad or good, and you're my boy, so I love you."
Once they all got inside, he put on a video, and as soon as he sat down, Jack curled up in his lap and clung to him. Peter giggled and cuddled into his side, and John climbed up the back of the couch to perch on his shoulders.
*hopefully this is the last one and they get a therapist very soon after this who points out that bruce should have trained them in relaxation techniques first (unless he just doesn't tell them about the seatbelt issue. but the kids would probably mention it during therapy sessions)
*before I realized that, there was going to be a scene...later on where bruce starts to teach john relaxation techniques as a strategy for...a certain thing that's a spoiler, and he has a giant Facepalm Moment when he realizes he should have taught it to them for the seatbelt thing
xXx
*now that john's no longer trying to kill bruce and the kids' documentation is finally in order (i don't know if this will stay a montage or get expanded into real time in the final draft):
Bruce had...quite a few reservations about trusting mental health professionals with his youngest, most vulnerable children, so he procrastinated by starting with a speech therapist, an ASL instructor, and a general education tutor. He waited a few weeks to make sure the boys did well with them, which they did. (At least, Peter and Jack did. John would cooperate on some days, but then do...the opposite of cooperation on others.)
After some experimentation, they found that it worked best for the tutor to start the day with some warm-up activities, the speech therapist to work with the kids for an hour, the tutor to teach the day's lessons before lunch, and the ASL instructor to work with the kids while they did homework after lunch. It kept the children occupied all day, and the younger boys seemed pretty happy with it.
"John," Bruce asked on a bad day, "why are you upset?"
"Bored!"
"What do you want to be doing instead?"
"I want SMALL people! No more big people!"
"...You want to talk to children your own age."
"Big people say 'Do that do that do that,' I say NO. Tired. Hungry."
"You're hungry?"
John gave him an annoyed look as if Bruce had missed the point.
"All right, Johnny. I'll see if I can find a class to enroll you in."
The Wayne Foundation was still preoccupied dealing with fallout from the Batpocalypse, but Bruce was able to persuade them to restart some of the extracurricular programs that they'd been running before Barbatos. Bruce signed up John for a gymnastics class and a music class, so twice a week, the boy was taken into town. The younger children at first clamored to go, too, but Jack hated both classes and gave up after just a week and a half. Peter got frustrated with gymnastics but was happier with flag football, then got sucked into a book club, so that made three trips into town a week. Bruce carefully monitored their progress until they seemed to be ready for school.
Although the public schools were more-or-less functioning again, Gotham Academy and the other elite private schools were taking their time rebuilding and still educating students via the Internet rather than on campus. Very few specialized schools had recovered yet, either, which meant that, at least for the time being, Bruce had to trust his kids with the public school special education program.
It was difficult to find a good fit for the boys. John and Peter were initially placed in the Adapted Learning class, but it did nothing for them on an academic level. The school was short-staffed and didn't have an assistant to spare to accompany Jack into a gen ed class, so Bruce repurposed the boys' tutor. Then John frightened an administrator enough to prompt her to transfer him to the behavior unit, but that classroom was also short-staffed and John kept wandering out to find his brothers whenever one of the other students had an episode and stole all the teacher's attention.
Then Peter started getting in trouble, though it turned out that was because he kept coming to the defense of Jack, who was apparently being bullied during lunch and recess when his tutor wasn't there to bodyguard him. Jack started refusing to go to school altogether, and Peter was becoming more and more violent in addition to learning basically nothing outside of the books he read for fun, so Bruce gave up and had the younger boys homeschooled again, hiring a second tutor to work with John in gen ed. That seemed to work out best, since John was actually learning now while still being socialized with peers and didn't have to worry about his baby brothers, who both seemed happier learning quietly at home at their own pace.
Meanwhile, Bruce had finally found a therapist he reluctantly decided to half-trust. Even if his OCD hadn't compelled him to spy on her sessions with the children, he still would have, anyway - after Harley Quinn, Dr. Strange, and basically every other mental health professional he knew of, there was no way he was going to let one stay alone with his battered little ones.
The first session was simple enough: she had them drawing pictures. John lay on the floor and languidly colored an entire page solid blue. Peter drew a picture of Titus and then another one of the Batman Who Laughs lying in a pool of blood with a giant rock and about thirty swords and arrows raining down on him. Jack impatiently threw down the crayon after about three seconds and started taking photographs instead, proudly choosing as the best one an image of his own foot pressed against Peter's.
John, when asked about his artwork, would only say that it made him happy. Peter gushed about how great Titus was for fifteen minutes and then, when *the therapist* finally managed to switch his attention to the other drawing, pressed his middle finger against the depiction of his abuser. Jack rambled half-intelligibly about his photo, something about warm and safe and together.
xXx
*fam's hanging out in the living room or something, jack's in bruce's lap on the couch
"Maybe tomorrow, Jack, all right?"
Jack turned his face up to Bruce, shoulders slumped, big blue-and-gold eyes shimmering, little mouth just a tiny bit downturned. ["But...Daddy...it is important, okay? Please, Daddy..."]
Bruce's heart was twisting, but he forced himself to hold firm. "Tomorrow. All right, Jack? Tomorrow we will go *do the thing*."
Jack said nothing, but after a pause, he gradually faceplanted into Bruce's chest, and Bruce automatically put his arms around the child. Another pause later, Jack made one of his sad kitten noises. Then another.
Bruce couldn't stand it. "Tell you what, if you do another *school assignment?* and score at least 90%-" The rest of the bargain was drowned out by everyone's laughter.
Jack, focused only on his father, shifted his face to look at Bruce again and gave a tentative, hopeful smile. ["Jackie is a good boy, we *do the thing*?"]
"If you score at least 90%, then yes."
Jack straightened up a bit, patted Bruce's chest, and said gently, ["You are a good daddy."] Bruce's heart violently finished melting.
"Oh, Bruce, come ON!" Tim burst out. "He's playing you like a harp, can you seriously not see that?!"
"I'm not just giving him what he wants. We made a bargain," Bruce said defensively.
"You'll do anything if a kid bats their eyes at you just right."
"Don't tip him off," Dick called across the room.
"Doesn't matter. Watch." Tim hoisted himself up to perch on the back of the couch beside Bruce. It was a childish move that emphasized how young he still was. "Dad?"
"Yes?" Bruce said warily, trying to fight the glow in his heart with the fact that Tim obviously had ulterior motives for calling him 'Dad.'
"So..." Tim dropped his head, fiddling with a seam on the couch. "I know that, like, you just promised to take Jackie this afternoon and all, but I'd been hoping-" He hesitated, then exhaled and slithered down until he was cuddled right into Bruce's side. "Never mind," he mumbled, turning his face into Bruce's arm. "It's not important."
Bruce stared, aware of the gleeful gazes of his watching family. He tried to wait it out, but Tim didn't waver, continuing to lean against him, even getting caught up in a thumb war with the giggling Jack. "Tim," he finally said, "whatever it is, you're not getting it, just tell me what you were going to say."
"It wasn't really anything," Tim shrugged. The shirt he was wearing just happened to be big enough that it slipped to the side, baring vulnerable skin between his neck and shoulder.
Bruce stared. It had to have been deliberate, but he'd been watching, and the gesture had looked so natural. Just that one small detail made Tim look even younger, especially combined with his vaguely hunched shoulders and effortlessly boneless pose. "...Just say it, and then I'll tell you no."
Tim sighed and shifted away from Bruce, looking very alone now that he wasn't making physical contact with anyone. He'd folded his legs up, knees high, hands casually curled between his feet, shoulders curved and head bowed so that his body formed an almost egg-like shape, still so small even at his age. "I can do it on my own," he mumbled. "The notes I've been working on for the * case. I wondered if you could take a look at it today, give me some pointers, but it can wait...maybe tomorrow, I guess; I'll just do my best in the meantime and hope it's good enough..."
"Tim, that's not even a big favor; I would be happy to look over the case with you."
The others were making noises in the background, but Bruce was distracted by the tremulous hope on his son's face when Tim raised his head. "Now?"
"Well, not right this minute, but maybe in an hour or two-"
He was not prepared for a sly grin to split Tim's face and the forlorn body language to shift into something victoriously catlike, legs now casually stretched out and arm resting along the back of the couch. "You mean right around the time you promised your six-year-old to *do the thing*?" Tim drawled, smirking.
Bruce's face suddenly felt flooded with heat. "Wait-" The rest of the family was howling with laughter by now, Jason actually rolling on the floor in tears as an alarmed Peter shook his shoulder.
["What is funny?"] Jack yelled.
"Awww, Timmy," Dick crooned, going over to wrap his arms around Tim, "I'll be happy to help you out since Dad will be busy."
"I don't need help, I was just proving a point," Tim snorted, trying to swat him away.
"Regardless, you will surely benefit from another's input," Damian announced, pausing beside the couch. "Show me your work, Timothy, and I will show you how to improve it."
"What?! No! I don't want help!"
"C'mon, Timbo," Jason said, scooping his brother into his arms and carrying him off.
"What the heck! Put me down, I was making fun of Bruce and Jack, I'm not actually cute! JASON TODD! Cass, Duke, help!"
"Worked," Cass called after them.
"Too well," Duke laughed.
Bruce looked at Alfred pleadingly. "I don't let my children walk all over me, do I?"
"*ahem* I have some work to do in the kitchen. Please excuse me, Master Bruce."
"Alfred!"
xXx