Chapter Text
A YEAR LATER
A lot has happened in the months since last Father’s Day. For one, Bruce now (somehow) has four more children, since:
- He finally managed to investigate Tim’s parents a little more, and thus has custody of Tim as a ward now due to the fact that clearly Jack and Janet Drake can’t be trusted with him;
- Talia, spurred on by League instability, revealed and subsequently turned over Bruce’s biological son (!) to him, and hadn’t that been a fun conversation – especially when Jason sheepishly revealed his own knowledge of Damian;
- Cassandra was discovered and subsequently adopted, which had only lent credence to Alfred’s characterization of Bruce and un-parented kids as “alike to a cat and catnip”;
- and Bruce has also taken custody of Duke, who has steadily been edging up behind Jason as Alfred’s unofficial favourite due to the fact that he’s the only one who reliably has table manners.
Bruce isn’t really sure how his life got to this point. But he’s happier now than he ever has been, so perhaps chaos isn’t necessarily bad.
Besides, the Manor has always been too large and quiet. These days, it’s filling up quite nicely.
He thinks his parents would have been proud.
#
Bruce wakes up on June 19th to an empty bedside table. He only has a second to feel the slight sting of disappointment before his door is creaking open and Jason appears, poking his head around the edge to make an impatient noise at him.
“Come on, old man,” Jason says, the hint of a smile at the edges of his mouth, before he’s bodily shoved out of the way and replaced by Dick, who grins widely at Bruce.
“Better get down to the kitchen before Damian tries to stab Tim with one of the bread knives again,” Dick chirps, and before Bruce can ask any questions the two of them have disappeared again.
He doesn’t bother to get dressed, just throws on a dressing gown and toes on his slippers (even though when he wore them down to breakfast last week, Jason and Duke both snickered at the monogramming behind his back). Then he’s heading down the stairs, bemused.
Dick has been over more often these days, often taking a weekend or two each month to hang around the Manor. He says it’s because the commute from Bludhaven is a nightmare, but he and Bruce are both aware the drive rarely takes more than half an hour.
Privately, Bruce thinks it’s the allure of siblings that has drawn his eldest back. One of the things Dick had disliked most about the Manor as a child was how quiet it was — a stark contrast to the noisy, life-filled chaos of the circus.
These days, the Manor is hardly ever quiet.
Bruce’s relationship with Dick has also improved drastically since Jason effectively began to bully him into expressing his feelings. Dinah, who Jason has been seeing for therapy, has been – Bruce feels – a tad too enthusiastic in encouraging this.
Capitalising on the improvement Bruce had shown since Jason yelled at him last June, his second son has been forcibly applying child therapist techniques he found on the internet, meant to encourage ‘the identification and verbalization of emotions’.
(Bruce had been made to carry around “My Little Box of Emotions” and an accompanying set of flash cards for an entire month, until you can prove you can express yourself without them, Jason had explained. He can’t even bring himself to be offended that they’re for children, since they were actually, embarrassingly enough, helpful. He hadn’t thought Jason was being literal when he said Bruce had the emotional capacity of a toddler, but not only was he serious, he was right. Bruce is never living this down. Somehow, the trade off does seem worth it, though. As long as Clark never finds out.)
Jason has been trapping Bruce in his study every few weeks to force more communication techniques on him, and even though it began as a half-joke, a way for Jason to vent his frustration with Bruce’s reservedness, the exercises and tools have actually been helpful for both of them. As a result, Bruce and Jason talk more, these days, and they’re better at it than they ever have been.
Dick and Bruce have been having discussions, too, and when Bruce tried to use the techniques Jason had bludgeoned him over the head with, they were surprisingly well-received. (Considering many of them revolved around “the new and fascinating concept of listening,” in Jason’s words, which Dick had also been complaining about for years, this is perhaps not surprising at all.)
When Dick brings him his favourite apricot rugelach from Bludhaven the week after a good discussion, Bruce tries not to feel too much like a golden retriever being rewarded with peanut butter.
He’s trying to do better for them. For his eldest sons, and for Tim, Damian, Cassandra, and Duke. He’s trying to be a good dad, the way Thomas Wayne was for him, the way Alfred is even now. When he talks to his children carefully, trying to listen, trying to hear them, he feels something deep inside him warm a little. It feels like hope. It feels like the chance to be better, to try to heal that angry, silently stoic eight-year-old inside him a bit more. That child’s hurt has been eroding away at his happiness for thirty years now, and he’s finally ready for it to rest, for him to enjoy the family he has somehow been lucky enough to end up with.
For all of the healing he’s done with Dick, though, Bruce doesn’t know why his eldest is here today. It’s a Thursday morning, which means he must have called off work.
He stops with a hand on the railing of the staircase as he considers the date again.
Maybe— Dick is here for Father’s Day? They had never addressed it beyond a card before, but. But Bruce has been trying, and Dick has been willing to meet him halfway.
He still isn’t John Grayson, but maybe there is a little room for an additional father in Dick’s life after all, even if it took them far too long to get here.
The thought makes something go soft in Bruce’s chest, and he resumes his pace downstairs. When he enters the dining room, however, he stops in his tracks once more.
All his kids are clustered nervously around the table, whispering to each other. Bruce can see Damian make a face before Dick leans down to whisper something to him that makes him subside, still looking customarily grumpy. Duke and Tim have their heads bent together looking at something on Tim’s phone. Cass and Jason are intently holding a conversation, their hands moving almost fast enough to blur.
The table has been set inexpertly: the forks are on the wrong side, and the tablecloth is skewed. It would be evident it wasn’t the work of Alfred even if the man himself wasn’t sitting primly at the end of the table, the kids arranged around him. Bruce is pretty sure he can count the number of times Alfred has sat at the table with them on one hand — for all that he is a member of the family, he still takes his butler duties very seriously.
But Bruce can’t deny that Alfred looks pleased to be there, his crow’s feet crinkled and the corners of his mouth slightly upturned. Jason has situated himself just behind Alfred’s right side, and Bruce can see the tips of his fingers from where he’s laid his hand lightly on Alfred’s shoulder. He also catches the split-second of movement when Damian’s little hand comes up to squeeze Jason’s dangling left hand perfunctorily before dropping back to his side. At the touch, some of the tightness around Jason’s eyes seems to ease. Dick is looking on approvingly.
Bruce steps a little closer, and the kids huddle closer together, finally noticing him now that he’s actually entered the room and shed his automatic lurking behaviour. Their conversations break off, and they glance at each other before appearing to check in with Jason silently. When he nods, they face Bruce again, looking determined, if fidgety.
“Happy Father’s Day,” they all chorus, several of them a beat early or behind, an undercurrent of nervousness running beneath the announcement.
Oh.
Bruce looks down at the table, finally taking in the dishes set out. There’s a huge plate of pancakes of incredibly varying sizes, a bowl of unevenly-cut orange slices, and a vast quantity of turkey bacon, only about half of which is burned (not a bad ratio for non-Alfred-prepared food. Unfortunately, it also includes the orange slices, though Bruce isn’t quite sure how that could have possibly happened). Hummus and labneh are arranged around sliced pita, alongside bean sprout rice, shakshuka, and huevos rancheros.
It looks like everything the kids know how to make for breakfast gathered together on one table, and Bruce is realising, confronted with a leisurely Alfred and the clustered children waiting for his opinion, that that’s exactly what it is.
His children got together and made him breakfast for Father’s Day.
Well – he corrects himself, eyes catching on Alfred settled contently at the table, his eyes crinkled, the suggestion of a dimple on his right cheek – his children got together and made him and their grandfather breakfast for Father’s Day. This is clearly a present for Alfred, too, considering the way he was evidently caught before he could begin preparing breakfast and kept from doing any of the work. A gift of both breakfast and a rest.
Bruce realizes he hasn’t said anything yet when some of them begin to shift a bit on their feet. Jason is getting that slightly angry look on his face that he gets when he’s been a bit vulnerable and isn’t sure if someone’s going to make fun of him for it. Dick is glaring at Bruce in the way he has, where it doesn’t look like glaring but sure feels like it, somehow silently communicating that if Bruce makes his siblings feel bad about this in any way, Dick will make his life hell. Again. The rest are just looking at each other, a feedback loop of searching for reassurance.
“Thank you,” Bruce manages, and it only comes out slightly scratchy. “This looks wonderful. Thank you.”
Nobody does anything so obvious as sigh in relief, but there’s a collective release in the room, the ratcheting tension having let go in one big swell of gladness.
“Sit down already,” Jason mutters, his hand slipping from Alfred’s shoulder, and Bruce takes his seat at the head of the table, across from Alfred, who gives him a slight smile that seems all the more genuine for its lack of performance.
Everyone else scrambles for a seat. Cass and Duke settle on the left side of the table, sandwiching Jason between them neatly, but the right side almost immediately devolves into near-carnage.
Bruce recognizes the problem immediately. The situation is this: Dick has taken up the seat at Bruce’s right hand, which leaves only the middle seat and the seat closest to Alfred free. And that middle seat is in hot demand today.
Titus normally lies under the table during mealtimes (much to Alfred’s consternation and Bruce’s resignation), and is most easily reachable from the centre chair on the right side of the table. As a result, Damian has a vested interest in sitting there.
Tim, however, also has a vested interest in it, where he usually doesn’t: if he sits in the other seat, he will have no way to avoid a sitting, focused Alfred with no serving to occupy his attention.
(His aversion to sitting beside Alfred would look insulting to the butler if everyone in the family, Bruce included, didn’t know that the reason Tim wanted to be as far away from him as possible during mealtimes was only because Alfred was brutal in ensuring Tim ate decent amounts of food. The February Decaf Incident and the March Protein Campaign were only the most recent examples of Alfred’s immense power in that area, along with his even more immense will. There’s a reason Bruce pretty much just does whatever Alfred tells him to. There’s not a lot of use in fighting back. At least this way he folds with some dignity intact. Not a lot, but some.)
As such, Damian and Tim engage as soon as they have the opportunity, elbowing each other fiercely as they jockey for the same seat, both of them with bony enough arms to make it hurt. Due to Tim’s already-bruised rib, though, Damian quickly acquires the middle seat, sitting with a distinct air of victory and angling his body in a telling manner that suggests a foot is being used to surreptitiously give pets to a certain great dane.
Bruce reminds himself to check on Tim’s rib later. He remembers the time he got his youngest’s pointy elbow shoved into his own ribs. Ouch.
After the scuffle has died down, breakfast begins in earnest. Everyone is clearly a little uncomfortable with the sheer sentimentality of the morning, and using food to circumvent it. (Food as distraction is a time-honoured Wayne family tradition, dating back to when Bruce was five and Thomas Wayne used a liberal application of ricotta pancakes to Martha Wayne’s breakfast plate to circumvent a confrontation about the large family of raccoons he was convinced should be allowed to reside in the back garden.)
There are huge pitchers of orange juice and Turkish coffee and black tea set out, likely due to the fact that Alfred isn’t up and about filling people’s cups the way he normally would be, and Bruce pours himself a hefty amount of coffee. He lifts it to his face and watches his family through the steam. They look… happy.
He feels happy.
One of the books in “My Little Box of Emotions” had been about happiness. The character in it had been a smiling embodiment of sunshine, with little arms and legs.
Bruce gets it more right now than he had at the time. He feels it, this happiness, the kind that has legs, that moves all on its own. The kind of happiness that feels like its own person, living inside you, telling you this is good. This is yours.
It’s been a long time since Bruce has allowed himself to feel unfettered happiness. It feels good to identify it and not be afraid of it, not shy away from it as something he doesn’t deserve or something that could destroy him.
He crunches his way through overcooked turkey bacon and smiles, meeting Alfred’s eyes across the table. When they look at each other, there’s a brief moment of complete understanding, like they both know the other is saying, we did a good job with them, didn’t we? For once, Bruce feels almost like he deserves to be able to say that.
Breakfast is boisterous and loud, in the way that has become normal for them over the last little while. The little legged sunshine in Bruce walks and walks, happy, happy, happy.
(He thinks about the family his parents had always wanted – a loud house, full of children. They’d mentioned it often, the idea of filling the halls with siblings for Bruce. Siblings he’d never gotten. It feels good to have children here now, so many of them, their laughter echoing in the halls the way his parents wanted. He hopes they can hear it, wherever they are.)
Eventually, when pretty much everything on the table has been demolished, except for a few particularly raw-looking pancakes, one of the somehow completely uncooked eggs on the left side of the shakshuka pan, and some of the mysteriously burned orange slices, the plates get passed through everyone’s hands to be piled at the end of the table.
Jason gets to his feet to collect the dishes in a sturdy grip and disappears into the back. Cass rises to follow him, sweeping the dirty serving platters up in her arms, and Dick nabs the pitchers to finish the procession. Duke, who had been single-mindedly consuming the last of his coffee, looks up to find the table empty and makes a slightly guilty expression. Tim just looks awkward, still pinned down under Alfred’s gaze, since Alfred had refused to let him pass over his plate to be cleared and is still watching him to ensure the last of his food is actually eaten. Damian looks torn between haughty and matching Tim’s awkward expression.
Cass and Dick return a moment later, and Bruce looks to Dick at his left with a confused expression. “Where did Jason go?”
Dick looks at him shrewdly, and Bruce knows some part of him is always evaluating his parenting of Dick’s siblings. Part of Bruce is always a little indignant about this, and part of him is just pathetically grateful that Dick isn’t judging Bruce’s parenting of him on the same scale. They both know he’d fail. He’s trying, these days. More than ever. But he’s aware he still has a long way to go.
“He’s getting something ready,” Dick finally says. He hesitates for a moment, before continuing, “He organised this whole thing, you know.”
Bruce had sort of suspected. Jason is one of the few people who could manage to get all his siblings together to do something like this, willing to do what he asked – Duke and Cass because of their fondness for him, Dick as a result of his particular brand of brotherly duty and guilt, Tim out of residual Robin-related hero-worship, and Damian due to that strange little bond they have as a result of their overlapping time in the League that no one, not even Bruce, really understands.
In addition, the fact that the food had come out a little rough but mostly actually edible pointed to someone capable in the kitchen being in charge, of which only Jason and Duke could be said to be.
Plus, well. Jason has always been thoughtful. Not that the other kids aren’t, but– Jason has always been thoughtful in that startlingly-domestic way of his. This was an enormous gift of time and effort, and Bruce remembers Jason telling him about the birthday cake his mom had made him, iced all slowly and carefully. It’s his love language, now that Bruce knows to look for it. Feeding them all like this. Jason has always associated being loved with a full belly.
Yes, this has Jason’s fingerprints all over it.
(Though Bruce is pretty sure it must have taken him an immense amount of effort to not yell at his siblings and just take over the cooking every time they messed something up.)
There’s a sound of movement from the kitchen, and everyone quiets down just as Jason emerges, a tray held aloft in his hands. When Jason sets it down in front of Bruce, he feels like all the breath in his lungs has been sucked out, like his whole body has been shocked.
Bruce raises his gaze from the tray to Jason’s face, looking at the eyes of his son, his son, his son.
“They’re your favourite,” Jason says, and the words only shake a little.
“Yes, Jaylad, they are,” he hears himself say, as though from a great distance. It’s an exchange over seven years old. He looks back down, at the lemon-poppyseed muffins and their cream cheese icing. The curls of lemon peel atop them.
They’ve been arranged on one of Alfred’s platters. No cakebox this time. No pretense.
Jason saying: I made these myself, here, in our home. Here are all the tools to hurt me, here are all the ways I care.
Jason trusting Bruce. Bruce having worked to make himself someone Jason can trust.
When Bruce lifts one to his mouth, it is just as sweet as the last time.
He meets Jason’s eyes, because this is important. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you, Jay. They’re delicious.”
Jason still pinks the same way, and his pleased little smile is an identical copy of the one Alfred is sporting at the other end of the table, holding a cup of tea he’d somehow managed to acquire independently, despite the kids’ insistence on serving him. (Evidently, though Alfred loved them all, this did not extend to trusting them to make his tea correctly. Bruce thought that was probably fair.)
Bruce wonders why he never noticed it before, the fact that his second son so clearly inherited traits from his grandfather. He looks at them both, and then everyone else, and feels his heart grow three times in his chest. He feels like the Grinch in that movie Jason had made him watch during his second winter at the manor, letting it all in and finding out that when you stop isolating yourself, there’s a good life to be had out there.
Jason, still standing, looks at Bruce and says, very quietly and very quickly, “Happy Father’s Day, Dad.”
Bruce feels his eyes burn. “Thank you, son.”
When he is alone later, he will turn those words over and over in his mind, like someone examining a diamond in the light. He will think of them, and hoard them close to his heart. He will weep a little for the luck of his life, the ways in which everything has sought to crush him and yet he still is allowed these miracles of children. The world has been cruel to Bruce Wayne, but here, it has been kind.
But for now, Jason is shifting on his feet, looking supremely uncomfortable, so Bruce releases him from his gaze and lets him hide behind the tray as he carries it down the table to Alfred.
The table, perhaps sensing that the most important part is over, begins to pick up conversations again, until the room is buzzing with people talking. At the other end of the table, Bruce sees Alfred presented with a cupcake, the butler squeezing Jason’s hand briefly in a move speaking of endless affection. Then the tray is placed on the table to be immediately set upon by everyone else.
In a moment, Bruce is sure, someone will start a squabble and the noise will peak with arguments half-garbled by laughter, and napkins will be thrown until Alfred puts a stop to it. But for now, it is a quiet peace.
It’s June 19th, and Bruce has all of his kids in one room, his own second father by his side, all of them a living legacy of chosen love. For a second, he can feel Thomas Wayne’s hand on his shoulder, the comforting weight of it.
“I love you all,” he says, awkwardly loud, and behind it is Thomas’ rumbling bass, the voice he passed on to his son, saying I love you, son, the way he had every night as he tucked Bruce into bed.
There’s a beat of surprised silence, and then a roll of mumbled returns comes back to him, breaking over his head like a wave. The sound of it, quiet and unpracticed but genuine, surprised but true, feels like a benediction. Like a beginning. The same love that was always there, but given voice.
Bruce sits there, cupcake in hand, the late morning sun falling into the room, over the table and over his shoulders. There’s a family, a good family, sitting in front of him, alive and content, and for once, the happiness inside of him doesn’t feel like some big, great, untenable thing. It feels like a key in a lock, like something he’s designed to hold. He thinks he’s maybe a pretty good dad, these days. He thinks he can always get better.
He intends to.