Jason was dying all over again. It was unfairly hot for a June morning. Jason flopped his head over to face Danny, "You know what I would kill for right now?"
Almost everyone had spent the morning in the pool. Jason was now face down on a pool chair in the shade. Danny was two chairs over on his back, complaining about East Coast humidity.
Danny's head lolled to the side so he could look at Jason, "Snow?"
"Close. An icee."
"Oh, that does sound good. You got one of those machines lying around here somewhere?"
"No. Alfred doesn't want us ingesting that many chemicals."
Danny pouted, "Boo. Want to go get one?"
"Sure. But we can't tell anyone because they'll want one. And I'm driving."
"Ah, shit."
"What's up," Danny asked as he continued perusing the chip aisle of the closest 7/11 they could find.
"Paparazzi," Jason spit out. One thing he did not miss about being (legally) alive, it was the public's obsession with the day-to-day life of rich people. Once Bruce 're-alived him', as Duke calls it, the media was everywhere. Jason wanted to hit up that deli on sixteenth? Suddenly the trip takes four times as long because every reporter and their mother wanted to interview him. Bruce drags him to an event? Jason's face was plastered across every article and several magazines for the next two weeks. There was one memorable occasion, after Jason had been back around for a little bit, of a reporter crawling in through a restaurant bathroom's window. Jason misses being dead.
Danny glanced at the front of the store, where a crowd of cameras was gathering.
"You want to leave now? Or make them wait until we're done?"
Jason watched as the crowd shuffled backwards as a customer left, "They won't come in. We can just drink our icees in here and then head out."
"Alright," Danny picked up a bag of goldfish, "in that case, I'm going through with my plan of standing in front of the open drink fridges."
True to his word, Danny walked right over to the Diet Coke, opened the door, and tried to become one with the fridge.
"You are one weird bodyguard," Jason sent a photo of him to Cass.
"Nah, I'm just a weird dude who happens to be a bodyguard."
Jason snorted. Jason much preferred Danny's laid back style of handling to the helicopter parenting the GCPD guys did. Besides, the closest thing to a threat here was the gun under the cash register.
Jason opened the door next to Danny and sighed as the cold washed over him. When Jason was little he and some of the other alley kids would run around from convenience store to convenience store and do this on hot days.
"Ah, crud. Alright, I got to go out to the RV for this one."
Tim and Cass were sitting in the room Tucker was borrowing as his office space. He was explaining his preference for infrared cameras and motion sensors, and as someone who uses cameras to mainly ID and track said IDed people Tim doesn't typically work with either, when a friend texted him and asked him to help them with some coding project they emailed over.
"Do you have a different set up in the RV?" Tim asked.
"Yes and no. All my tech is some type of hobbled together hybrid, so nothing is really the same. But the computer in the RV has the ability to process this much faster. And a bigger screen."
Tucker's set up here was already amazing, if a little cluttered for Alfred's standards. What did he have out in the RV?
Tim reached for his crutch, "Need me to lead you to the garage?"
Tucker grimaced, "Yeah... I've only got parts of this house memorized at the moment. I'm halfway convinced we don't have to worry about a attack happening here just because the whole layout is a labyrinth. The kidnappers would just get lost and we'd find them three days later, begging us to show them the exit."
Tim laughed as he pulled himself up. He waited for Tucker to grab his keys before leading the way. Traveling on crutches was slow and noisy, but Tucker didn't seem to mind, easily falling into step beside Tim and keeping the slow pace. The manor had already been severally altered to allow Barbara to move freely, so it was easy going. Just long.
They entered the elevator and Tim let Tucker hit the number for the first floor. Tim watched Tucker's face when the doors opened again.
"Wow. How do I keep forgetting you guys have so many cars. I literally parked the RV in here, it's not like I haven't seen any of it before."
The crutches made a click-swing sound as Tim started moving again, "Duke has the same reaction still too."
They walked up to the RV. Up close it looked like a modified trailer. Tucker unlocked the door and a set of stairs unfolded.
"Hang on for a second, it's a little hard to move in here right now," Tim watched as Tucker disappeared into cab. Soon there were the sounds of machinery as the RV made itself bigger, walls and the roof pushed outwards to extend the room inside.
"Alright! You can come in now."
Tim bypassed the steps and pulled himself up and in with a jump, his hands braced on the doorframe. Tim looked around, and inside, inside was tech geek heaven.
Jason grabbed the XL cup and started filling it up with blue raspberry. Danny, who was mystified by having more than three options, was going down the line and getting some of everything.
"Even the grape fanta? Really?"
"I said I was getting all the flavors, I'm getting all the flavors."
Jason stood back to select his second layer's flavor, "What flavors do you usually see?"
"Red, blue, and if you're lucky, Coke."
"Only three? Where do you live, the middle of nowhere?"
Danny snorted, "Not even."
"Damn."
Danny popped the cap on his cup, "We're a tourist hotspot if you can believe it."
Jason took a sip of his drink and leaned back against the counter as they got in line, "Really? Where are you from?"
"Amity Park. Ever heard of us?"
"That place all those paranormal youtubers dream of going?" Jason had heard of it before, usually in the context of 'this place is more cursed than Amity'.
"Yep. Home sweet home."
"Is it actually haunted?" It probably was. If aliens and magic exist, ghosts aren't really a big leap. Hell, Jason's pretty sure he qualified as a zombie.
"Oh yeah. We're also the most radioactive town in North America. Get a geiger counter within ten feet of me and it'll go off," the woman in front of them gave Danny the side eye as she took a big step forward.
Being that radioactive couldn't be healthy. Surely he's not contaminated enough to set off any of the detectors in the bat-designed suits? If he did, Tim would have a field day.
"Your hometown is both haunted and radioactive? How?"
Danny shrugged, "Something about ley lines and a leak. My parents explained it a few times when we first moved there but I didn't really pay attention."
Jason laughed as they ran. They had decided to go out the back door and just book it to avoid the paparazzi after they finished eating. He hadn't had this much fun in a long time. Suddenly Danny grabbed his arm and swung them into an alley and pulled them both behind an AC unit.
Jason's back hit the brick the same time Danny's hand covered his mouth. "Shhh," Danny said through his own adrenaline induced laughter. Jason braced himself for the heat coming off of Danny's body on this already awfully hot day, but the wave never came, and Danny's hand was cool despite all the running they had just done. Jason looked up and Danny's brilliant blue eyes were sparkling. They both turned to watch the alley entrance.
Danny kept his hand over Jason's mouth, which kept him close enough that with every inhale their chests brushed each other's. Danny heard something, pushing himself up against Jason completely as he shushed Jason again.
The last few stragglers ran right past them a few moments later. They both broke out into laughter the second they made eye contact. Danny dropped his hand, but kept his elbow against the wall, and shifted his weight back. Jason relaxed against the wall in turn, which separated their bodies by a small margin.
"That was fun, but dealing with that everyday would suck."
"Tell me about it."
"Did that guy really ask you-"
"Yep," They both started laughing again.
"Man, talk about invasion of privacy."
Danny pulled his arm back and took a step away from Jason, and Jason immediately felt a pang of lost. Having Danny in his personal space had been… nice. Jason wanted him back, so before he could overthink it he slung an arm around Danny's shoulders and pulled them both towards the mouth of the ally.
"You don't even know the half of it. When Bruce first took me in this one lady…"
"The RV, was actually, originally, for RVing. A couple summers ago me, Danny, and our friend decided to do one of those 'visit every state in the continental US' things. Sam rented it for us and... stuff happened so we ended up having to buy it. And we've just kinda, taken it apart and put it back together a few times. Really customized it."
"Wha- how? How does someone who can build all this go into low level bodyguarding?"
Tucker shrugged, "Well, none of us really know what we want to do, so we're just doing this while we figure that out. And it really was a team effort. After the second time it exploded-" Wait. What. Back up. "-the Dannies' parents wanted to play around with it. They're engineers. Kinda. Its not the main thing they do but they both have degrees in it. And they went nuts with it, Jazz made them take most of it out. They have their own army tank-RV hybrid-" What. "-that they built from the ground up. That thing is totally not street legal. So they kept asking to mess around with it, and considering half the frame was blown to pieces we figured they couldn't make it worse. The whole reason it still functions like a RV is because Dani does a lot of traveling and Jazz kept a close eye on everything. So Sam's the one who bought it, the Fenton's are the ones that built and customized it, and I just store all my computer and tech stuff here. The reason we brought it is because its where we stay between jobs, and usually during them. Most people don't have a house with two hundred unused rooms."
Tim made a mental note to look into the Fentons' parents before the end of the day. He hadn't deemed it necessary for the initial hiring. Perhaps they worked for the military? But for now…
"Can I?" Tim motioned towards the large built in double monitors.
"Oh, yeah, sure. I'll put you on the guest login if you want to play around. I know how tempting it can be. I've got a lot of stuff on my account you'd probably be interested in, but I'd rather you not mess with it without me showing you how. I won't risk any of my babies, even for the Tim Drake-Wayne."
Tim started exploring the different features on the computer. Tucker got set up on the second monitor and started coding. Once Tucker seemed suitably absorbed in his work Tim started poking around the programs and files. The guest account consisted of mostly videogames and streaming services, and Tim would have to wait for another time to sneak in here before hacking into the admin accounts.
Tim found a file labeled "Still Unorganized Fenton Files", and it opened to a complete mess. Documents and programs were labeled things like "needs_a_name_7" and "asdfghjkladfg". Tim's cringe must have been huge because it got Tucker's attention. Being two inches apart in cramped space likely also contributed.
"Oof. You found the junk drawer."
"What type of system is this?" Tim gestured to the screen.
"The Fentons are big on 'organized messes'. When they first set the computers up in here they downloaded a ton of stuff from their home computer. Once I got my hands on it I put all my stuff on there, and just threw all the Fenton stuff into this massive folder. I'm slowly getting through what needs to stay and what I can delete. Like a fifth of it is old invention notes. If you see a ghost pun that's probably one of them."
"Why ghost puns?" Tim clicked on a file labeled "make_fudge_for_friday". The screen filled with blueprints of some kind. Tucker rolled closer and leaned over Tim's shoulder, "They specialize in the paranormal. Ah, that was their second design draft for this RV. They completely forgot the beds in this version." Tim looked and saw Tucker was right, no beds. Tim zoomed in on a circular feature. Was that… a built-in rocket launcher?!
Jason was driving them back in the sports car Jason had swiped from Bruce's garage. They were at a red light when that unsettling feeling momentarily overcame Jason again. Jason was distantly aware he heard Danny gasp. A second later a motorcycle pulled up next to them on the passenger side. Danny rolled the window down and addressed the man on the bike, "Johnny, I'm working right now."
"Relax, I'm not here to cause trouble. Yet. Just waiting on Kitty."
"Wonderful," Jason could hear Danny's eyeroll.
"And then I felt you nearby and see you're in this sweet ride. How 'bout a race?" The man made eye contact with Jason as he revved his engine.
Jason put Bruce's car on sports mode and answered for Danny "Hell yeah."
"Its almost as specialized as the bat computer. It can even do somethings ours can't. Its amazing-"
"Tim, is there a point to this?"
Everyone was itching from too much together time, but those who could snuck down to the Bat Cave for a briefing by Tim about some new information he had considering their hired help.
"Tucker is not your average IT guy. Just, be careful about messing with any of their tech, or letting them use any of ours. Tucker has been very transparent when answering questions and seems to have no interest in digging into the Waynes," Cass nodded in confirmation, "but even though he has passed up every opportunity to compromise us or the Bats it does not mean he's not capable. His stuff is sensitive too, he'd know if Babs was poking around."
"So, tell Babs to be discrete."
"No, you don't understand. Tucker caught me trying to get into the RV at three am. The thing is rigged with alarms I couldn't find. The computer booted me out and shut down all the electronics on the RV when I tried to hack into his account before locking me in the RV. When Tucker came down to let me out he was half sleep so I was able to play it off as personal interest and the time as insomnia."
"Then how do you know how great it is?"
"I could see the coding when he let me on the guest login. It's beautiful by the way-"
"So, Tucker is hiding something."
"Yes. Although, there's a good chance it's nothing dangerous. I have feeling its mostly pending patents. I'm still working on it. I also looked into the Fentons. Their parents are borderline mad scientists, but there's no evidence of them or their kids taking an interest in either version of us."
"So, what? They're just weird people? We never get just weird people."
Bruce 'hn'-ed in response.
"You don't actually think they're villains in the making, do you?" Steph asked. She was arguably the most attached to the new trio.
"Earlier today Danny mentioned their hometown was radioactive. That might be able to explain some strange behaviors and the shadows Duke is seeing," Jason suggested.
"Maybe, maybe just their hometown is weird? People are always saying that Gothamites are strange people, especially once you leave the city."
"The Fentons' parents are literally mad scientists-"
"Paranormal researchers! A little strange but still pretty normal-"
"Didn't you say earlier today that they made weapons?"
"Good people." Cass said. Everyone quieted down. Cass put a hand on her chest and repeated herself, "Good people."