Chapter Text
Steph held her breath as the clocked ticked over to midnight.
Ping.
The app updated and finally she could see her assigned dares for the week.
1. Swing from the manor chandelier while blasting Sia’s Chandelier over the manor intercom.
2. Give Wonder Woman flowers.
3. Convince Bruce to allow Damian to keep a pet duck.
She snorted at the last one. All things considered, it wasn’t a bad list. She was confident she would be able to complete all three before the week was out.
A few seconds later, the group chat went wild.
AngryBird: what the fuck is a goonion
BirdWatcher: To those of you who got chores, thank Tim. He sent me his to-do list instead of dares.
StabbyBird: Typical. Drake is obviously incapable of handling his workload and should relinquish his positions to someone more capable.
StalkerBird: whatever. talk to me when you’re cleared to handle justice league level threats, damian
BigBird: were any of you even trying?
Screenshot_20231127
1. Go viral with a tiktok dance
2. Wear a flower crown to a public event
StalkerBird: @AngryBird goon-union
StalkerBird: @Bigbird gonna post your third dare?
AngryBird: was anyone gonna tell me the goons have unionized or was I supposed to just know that?
Bigbird: @StalkerBird No :)
Steph snorted and piped in.
You: @StabbyBird is the duck already in the manor?
Bigbird: Duck?
Stalkerbird: duck?
Angrybird: duck?
BadassBatBird: [duck emoji]???
StabbyBird: no.
She grinned and put her phone down. It was shaping up to be an interesting week.
Steph always looked forward to Sunday morning breakfasts. She usually stayed at the manor on Saturday nights in order to be present for them— Alfred always put together a big spread that included waffles— waffles!— and it was the one meal everyone tried to make it to, so it was bound to be chaotic, no matter what.
But this morning’s breakfast was shaping up to be more interesting than usual— she had woken up to a text from Cass that simply read:
BadassBatBird: 1 [green check emoji]
She had refused to elaborate when questioned, beyond a simple wink emoticon. Steph was dying of curiosity, but she didn’t have to wait long after sitting down at the breakfast table, next to Cass and across from Tim and Damian.
She was serving herself a plate when the table went still and silent. She looked behind her and gasped.
Bruce— aka Batman, aka the guy it was nearly impossible to prank— was sporting Bright. Pink. Hair. Steph struggled not to turn around and stare at Cass in bewilderment, knowing it would give her away.
How? She knew that Cass was good, but this was next level. Suddenly, she was a bit less confident that she could win this tournament.
Bruce sat down at the head of the table, uncaring of the many pairs of eyes following him. Nobody moved. Steph wasn’t sure she was breathing.
The spell broke when Jason walked in, took one look, and started cackling.
From the other room, Steph heard Dick chime in with “Jaybird? What’s so funny?” before he walked in and stared in shock and glee.
“Oh my god!!” Dick giggled, and started chuckling.
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose between his (pink!) eyebrows and sighed.
“Lookin’ good B!” Dick said, through his laughter.
Jason was hiccuping so hard he had to sit down.
Cass, beside her, tilted her head and reached out a hand, running it through Bruce’s hair. He grunted, but allowed it.
“Like it. Suits you,” she said. He sighed again.
Alfred walked in with a pitcher of freshly-squeezed orange juice and only hesitated for a second before putting it down.
“I see we’re trying something new this morning, Master Bruce.” Jason was turning an alarming shade, looking like he was going to pass out.
“What can I say, Alfred? I woke up like this.” Bruce said, looking up at him with a wry smile. Alfred’s lips twitched.
“Well. It certainly is a departure from your usual black-on-black ensemble.” He turned and walked back into the kitchen without waiting for a response.
Steph caught Bruce’s fond glance at Jason, who was trying valiantly to pull himself together. She had expected him to be upset, but he seemed more exasperated than anything. She grinned and decided to join in.
“You know, it really isn’t a bad look, B-man. Pastel-goth is very in right now,” she said, only giggling a little.
That fond, exasperated gaze turned on her. “Thank you, Steph. Please pass the syrup.”
The rest of the morning saw a few more dares completed— Dick’s tiktok-dance went viral within the first hour of him posting it, as expected, and Tim was pouting because he’d had to post a minion meme to his twitter with no context, but he had done it.
Steph approached Dick near lunch time. She wanted to get this done early, before the nerves set in.
They stood in the entryway, staring up at the chandelier.
“What if it breaks?” The question came out of her mouth before she could stop it, and she hunched into herself a little. She hated to sound so insecure around Dick— he was so capable. She didn’t have the same hero-worship of him that she used to have, now that she had seen him choke on a mouthful of Super-Cheeros and spit them across the room (gross), but that didn’t mean she stopped looking up to him.
He grinned at her, good-naturedly. “It won’t. Look—” he pointed up at the ceiling. “It’s bolted into a reinforced plate. And the chain is stronger than it looks. Bruce had it all redone when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time hanging out up there.”
Steph blinked, for a second imagining Dick as a kid, sitting in the chandelier doing his homework. Then she climbed the stairs, Dick trailing after her, and looked where he had pointed. From here she could see the industrial grade bolts and the fact that the chain had to be almost as thick as her wrist.
Fuck it.
She pulled out her phone and handed it to Dick, pressing play on the song which was paused right before the chorus.
Sia’s voice came blaring out of the Manor intercom as she launched herself off of the railing and caught herself firmly on the chandelier, using the momentum to get it to start moving back and forth. I’m — gonaa swiiiing —
From the kitchen came the sound of a despaired “Master Dick! What have I said about—!” and footsteps heading rapidly in their direction, but she had already made it, was releasing her grip and, with a (stylish, if she did say so herself) back-flip, landed on the other side, breathless. There. One down.
Steph booked it down the hall and into her room, hearing Dick say “it wasn’t me this time!” just as she was closing the door with practiced silence, and then into the en-suite to turn the shower on. Made it away clean, and the shower will be my alibi.
She grinned, letting the nerves dissipate. That had, surprisingly, been a lot of fun.
The rest of the day seemed to pass by normally— though Jason and Damian were conspicuously absent. That could be normal though, nobody ever really knew what those two were up to.
Steph called the local flower shop to place an order, but otherwise didn’t worry too much about her other dares. She had six more days, after all.
Cass didn’t seem to share the notion, completing her second dare — and therefore the week’s competition— before the day was out. She showed up in the cave that night before patrol dressed as Robin— which turned out to be hilarious, as Damian screeched in rage and Bruce actually choked in surprise.
When asked, she shrugged and signed my turn, which made Bruce’s face go pinched. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“You know I love all my children equally, whether they have been Robin or not,” he ground out awkwardly, after a few seconds. Cass grinned brightly and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, before nodding and heading over to aggressively ruffle Damian’s hair.
Bruce sighed. Steph surreptitiously took a picture. He wasn’t wearing the cowl yet, so he was just standing there, in the Batsuit, with pink hair and an expression that was just… so done. She caught it, but a second later he was meeting her eyes and raising an eyebrow.
She snapped a picture of that, too.
“I don’t need to remind you that that picture had better not go anywhere?”
Steph flashed him an innocent grin.
“Nah, this is just for Babs. She didn’t get to see your new look this morning, and I don’t want her to feel left out.”
He sighed, and pulled the cowl on. She wondered if they should start keeping a tally of the number of times he sighed during this tournament. He’d probably reach a new personal record. She snickered at the thought, and sent the pictures to Babs before going to change.
Sadly, the next time Steph saw Bruce, his hair was back to normal. She had a feeling he had dyed it back, seeing as she knew hair dye didn’t fade that fast. Maybe he had some kind of special bat-designed shampoo to take care of it though. You never knew, with the Bat.
By then it was Wednesday, and they were a few more dares down. Dick had made gossip-mag headlines with his flower crown, which he had worn to a children’s hospital charity benefit. It suited him almost ridiculously well, because of course it had.
The newspapers, though, betrayed the fact that a second dare had made the morning headlines— and Stephanie found herself impressed by Damian. He had somehow managed, in two days, to plan and execute a difficult heist: switching the Superman exhibit from the Museum of Metropolis with the Batman exhibit from the Gotham Museum.
Tim had completed his second dare by spending a day volunteering at an animal shelter, and Jason had, apparently, broken into the League of Assassins to retrieve Damian’s favorite katana. She only knew this because of the aftermath—Jason had thrown the katana at Damian’s head in his sleep and the resulting squabble had carried all the way to patrol, until Batman put a stop to it by threatening to bench them both if they didn’t behave on the coms.
That, of course, went down like a lead balloon.
Damian had, of course, bragged about finishing his second dare, while also managing to complain about Tim, since he had one of Tim’s to-do list items. To Steph, though, he seemed a bit pleased— he had taken on one of Tim’s cases, which she was sure put a bit of a chip on his shoulder, especially considering Tim’s snide comment earlier that week.
By Steph’s count, that just left herself and Jason with dares to complete to ensure they progressed in the competition.
Luckily, there was a Justice League meeting that day, which let Steph move on with her plans.
She made Jason drive her to the flower shop on his bike— there was no question whose dare it had been (everyone knew Jason was a simp for Wonder Woman, which he would freely admit if questioned) so she didn’t feel bad exploiting him for a ride. Not that she would have, anyway.
When she walked in, she clocked the bouquet immediately. It was gorgeous. There were big red roses and what looked like small yellow sunflowers— sue her, she didn’t know flower names— wrapped together in blue paper. The colors were very recognizable and she was ecstatic with how it had turned out.
She quickly paid for it (with Bruce’s credit card, of course) and they headed back to the manor, where she went up to her room to put the finishing touch on it. She opened her desk up and carefully sprinkled some purple biodegradable glitter on the faces of the flowers.
Perfect.
She checked the clock— right on time— suited up, and headed down to the cave to zeta up to the Watchtower.
She paused on her way there, quickly turning around and heading to one of the tech desks. She put a com unit in and slipped in some camera contacts. Better.
“Hey O, you up?”
“I read you, Spoiler, what do you need?”
“I’m gonna do a dare now, want to be my witness?” Babs hummed, and after a second, responded.
“Yep, I’m watching. Just make sure you turn your head when you’re looking at things, we’re still working on getting those contacts to move with your eyes.”
“Gotcha.” She stepped into the zeta tube, holding her flowers carefully in the crook of her arm.
This is going to be awesome.
She opened the door casually, ignoring the way B abruptly stopped talking as his presentation went dark on the screen.
“Spoiler,” he started, but she was already halfway across the room.
She stopped in front of Wonder Woman, surprised at how nerve-wracking this was. She decided that selling it was the way to go, and gave a dramatic bow, holding the bouquet out in front of her.
“Flower delivery for the coolest superhero in the league,” she said, grinning cheekily. She heard Superman’s bark of laughter and Flash’s offended noise, but stayed bowing until Wonder Woman took the bouquet.
“They are beautiful, Spoiler. You have my thanks,” she said, catching Steph’s eyes with a sincere smile. Steph fought a blush as she straightened up and turned around abruptly, leaving the room as casually as she had entered.
Unable to help herself, she turned around as she reached the door.
“Bye losers,” she nodded to the room.
“Bye Wonder Woman,” she gave a nod to Wonder Woman, and, with her cheekiest grin, shut the door.
She heard a familiar sigh, and fought a giggle. That was another tally— and another dare down. She was officially moving on to the next week.
Nice.