Chapter Text
Bruce was on door duty that day. The house was large enough that you had to be near the door to hear anyone attempting to enter it. Turns out butlers had many, myriad purposes outside of emotional support. With modern technology, there was no shortage of ways around this, a modern doorbell could ring through the entire house, or keyed to a specific place, or ding on their phones. It crossed Bruce's mind only in moments like this, and he hadn't gotten around to implementing anything. To give Alfred a break, when they were expecting people, everyone who still lived in the house took turns monitoring the front hallway.
Today’s get together was what Bruce would term ‘medium-sized’. A bigger group than just their family, but not more than plus ones and a handful of close friends. Between the lot of them, it was easy for a group to snowball into large, but in Bruce’s opinion, tonight was a tasteful number. Small enough to still fall under the capacity of Sunday dinner. They were celebrating Stephanie’s engagement, Jason was the last to arrive.
It was a long enough wait that he began to wonder if perhaps Jason wasn’t planning on coming after all. It wasn’t very often Jason made it up to the manor. They were on good terms, but something about the space remained difficult for him, Bruce tried not to push. He had been assured repeatedly by Dick that he was definitely coming. Dick also was the one to mention he would be bringing a friend.
Bruce had no idea who this friend might be. He knew Jason was seeing someone, but despite generous checking of social media feeds—something he did for all his kids—there were no hints to be found. Jason wasn’t particularly active, nor was he tagged in any photos. There were other ways to find out, of course, but any of those could be considered to be tee-tottering the lines of invasion of privacy, a boundary he was becoming better at respecting.
When finally there was a knock on the door, he opened it to reveal Jason holding hands with Connor Hawke.
Naturally, his instinct was to open the Connor Hawke file in his brain, catalogue everything he knew about the man. He was an archer, though maybe the 4th or 5th of the Queens when it came to mastery of the bow (admittedly a very high bar). He was a Buddhist, he split his time between Star City and San Francisco, making him the latter cities' only presently practicing vigilante. He was, apparently, gay.
He interrupted the constructing list to remind himself to smile and welcome them in. Jason stamped his boots on the entry mat. “Took you long enough, old man. It’s cold as fuck out there.”
Connor held out a bouquet of flowers, “For you.”
”For Stephanie?”
He didn’t drink caffeine.
”We have a gift for Stephanie. That’s a, uh, what’d you call it?”
”A host gift.” He probably meditated daily, maybe multiple times a day. He seemed like the type, a font of constant solemnity. Bruce respected that, he appreciated a man with a heightened enough sense of self to develop well-formed coping mechanisms.
”Father of the bride and whatnot.” Bruce knew Jason knew that father of the bride was far from an accurate description for him, but he didn’t argue. He couldn’t help but like the ring of it.
“Thank you.”
”You’re welcome.” He’d begun living in an ashram at 12 years old, he met his biological father when he was 18.
They joined the group. If anyone else was unaware of the identity of Jason’s 'friend' they didn’t show it. Everyone welcomed Connor with open arms.
If Connor and his father had had any sort of blow out or argument regarding the revealing of his parentage, they had done so far away from any potential onlookers, cameras or recording devices. Seemingly, Connor held no grudge against his father for missing so many years of his life. Their relationship now seemed solid.
He fell in most easily with Tim, but also had a good rapport with Damian or the bizarre sort of back and forth that constituted having a good rapport with Damian. The three of them conversed easily, even as Jason drifted away from his side, carving out a small moment between himself and Stephanie, sharing congratulations and a requisite amount of teasing, Bruce assumed.
Of the Bats, Connor had met Timothy first, Bruce not long after. That had been back when Tim was still his Robin, in the years where Jason was lost to them. He’d been 18, and Bruce remembered thinking he was too young to be so on his own, no mentor, no team, no backlog of vigilantism. He’d wanted to suggest the Titans but he wasn’t sure how the young man would react to it. He knew how prickly that particular age could be, at 18 everyone younger than you seemed to be so much younger, trapped in a world you left behind. The older titans, Dick’s friends, no longer operated in the same way. He also thought there was a possibility Connor would resent them as well, for having created something he would never truly be a part of. He’d seen enough of Connor since to know that was unlikely to have bothered him, but he hadn’t truly been thinking of Connor. He’d been thinking of Jason, his inability to fall in with the slightly older heroes, his ever-present fear of being perceived as the replacement Robin. Had Jason been alive then, had Bruce known he was alive, they would’ve been the same age.
They were back together now, having made their way across the room and out of separate conversations. They didn’t show any PDA, didn’t touch each other at all, hadn’t shown the level of closeness that they had as they held hands and huddled together on the stoop. They orbited around each other still, sticking together with an ease, a familiarity. Maybe that was only the right thing to do when bringing your significant other to properly meet your family. The people you knew best getting to know the person who knew you best.
Maybe it was their norm, maybe it was not.
When Connor had first joined the Justice League he also had a habit of participating in illegal, underground fighting rings. This was the last time Bruce had looked into the kid in depth, the only time he’d done a full background check, where every bit of information he drew on now was sourced. He might still do it, despite his complete change in life circumstance. It was hard to know from looking at him.
Even though at the time Connor had no job and an empty bank account, Bruce was pretty sure the fighting had nothing to do with money. Bruce knew it was like to chase that sort of feeling, to crave that sort of violence. No veneer of pacifism could paper over it. Connor might have wanted to save people, did want to save people, but the control that martial arts gave him. The ability to inflict himself unto others, to push himself to a peak, and then carry someone else with him over it. There was something there. Bruce had told him the fighting was dangerous and stupid. He didn’t mention the illegality, he couldn’t make it relevant.
Clark had given up trying to involve him in conversation. He felt, more than usual, he was a passive participant in this party. It happened around him, as he watched his children, trying to understand them. Trying to link together a story with the pieces he had. Dick had been the one to tell him, years ago, that he didn’t have to understand something to accept it. He still struggled with that.
Why wasn’t vigilantism enough to fill the hole, to serve whatever it was Connor was searching for. It could reveal a dangerous mindset, an inkling of revelry, beating the shit out of criminals on dark streets across the world wasn’t enough, he had to get in the ring and shirk off the unspoken rules that by the time he came along, had been enshrined in super-heroism.
Maybe it had something to do with the bow. He was good at it, and yet clearly didn’t prefer it. He was Green Arrow, putting on a costume, aspiring to the legend of an absent father. Playing pretend. Anyone might look for something more honest, more genuine.
He didn’t laugh often. Bruce caught it, noticed the first time he laughed that night, he didn’t know if he’d heard it before or not. He didn’t laugh often, but he laughed easy, no worries hiding behind it. Bruce hoped he wasn’t still fighting in the ring.
Jason and Connor served themselves at the buffet table as if they were one body with four arms, piling food onto each other’s plates without exchanging words. Connor was a vegetarian, that was another thing Bruce knew. He preferred to avoid killing in any circumstance where it could be avoided.
He did not believe it could be avoided in all circumstances.
The night was almost at its end when Jason wandered over to Bruce’s side. “Did you have even a lick of fun?”
“Yes, I’m enjoying myself.”
“That’s good at least.”
Bruce's gaze found Connor on the couch, sitting at the edge of a conversation he wasn’t paying attention to. He was watching them, and when Bruce looked over their eyes locked. Neither of them looked away.
“You’ve been staring, old man.”
He smiled, giving his attention back to Jason, “Have I?”
Jason squared his shoulders, “If you have something to say to me, you can fucking say it; but if you’re not on board.”
“I’m on board.” he patted Jason on the back, and pulled him into a hug. “I’m on board.”