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“Bruce,” Jason said poking at Bruce’s sleeping body. “Move.”
He didn’t move. Jason gave off a big sigh. He wanted to sleep. His mind was cloudy and his eyes felt sore. Like they had been forcefully held open for hours.
“Bruce,” he tried again.
Bruce smacked his lips like he was trying to remember how to talk.
“Dick?”
“Sure,” Jason agreed, uncertain if he was calling Jason a dick or just asking if it was Dick bothering him. Either way, Jason was more inclined to agree than inform him that his dead robin had come back.
Bruce lifted the blanket under his arms, inviting Jason to curl into his side. Jason slid in easily.
He was tired. Tired from training. Tired of Talia whisper in his head. Tired of her manipulating the pit so it stirred inside of him. Tired of being confused and lost. He wanted his dad, and he wanted to sleep. He now had both, but for some reason, he couldn’t sleep.
Bruce’s arm curled around him, tightening its hold around his torso and pulling him up next to Bruce’s head, so he could press a kiss into his air.
“New shampoo?” Bruce asked.
Jason didn’t want him fully waking up. He couldn’t handle Bruce asking him questions he couldn’t answer. He didn’t know what was true or not. Had Talia lied to him about Bruce not loving him. He thought she had, but if she hadn’t and he had to find out now he didn’t think he could take it.
“Shh. I’m sleeping,” He commanded.
Bruce grunted his agreement on sleeping and settled back down. Flexing his other arm Jason realized he had it wrapped around another kid.
Jason’s brain hissed ‘how could he be here first, wrapped around your dad. he doesn’t get to be here. Not on your night.’ he tried to curl away from his thoughts, but only ended up curling closer to Bruce’s side. He was practically on top of Bruce at this point, but Bruce wasn’t fighting him on it.
Jason pressed his face into Bruce’s chest, breathing in his pine body wash, Jason got deja vu from being twelve and curled up with his dad. He hadn’t changed. He used the smell to ground himself from the pit like Talia had taught him.
Jason dozed off to thoughts of being twelve and still with his dad.
“Bruce, Alfred told me you’re being weird so I have come to investigate. You better be dressed because I don’t want to be scarred for life,” Dick practically screamed at the top of his lungs outside Bruce’s bedroom door.
Jason thunked a pillow over his head, trying to block out both the eyes bearing into the back of his neck and Dick’s grating sing-song voice.
“Jason?” Bruce sounded breathless like he had just run a mile.
“What about Jason?” Dick asked from farther away. Jason was tuning them all out while trying to go back to bed.
The covers were thrown off Jason’s back and someone tried to yank his pillow away from his head. Jason grabbed the pillow stealer’s arm, bending it backward he yanked the person to his chest.
“Give me my fucking pillow.” He yanked on the arm again went it didn’t comply.
Instead of handing him his pillow back like a fucking normal person, Dick, who he now realized had been the one to steal his pillow, threw himself at Jason. He should have accounted for his freaky bendy abilities.
“Jason,” Dick said in between snuffles. Jason’s shirt was getting wet with tears. He wanted to care, he wanted to be mad, and shove Dick off, but other than when he had snuggled with Bruce in bed no one had held him in a long time. And he hated to admit it, but he had missed being embraced.
“How?” Bruce asked from behind him. He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to.
Jason twisted around from Dick’s grasp to see his dad. He looked older. More gray hairs, and lines on his face from the last time Jason had seen him. But he still looked like Bruce. He didn’t look like the horrible person Talia had described, he looked at him and didn’t see someone who had replaced him with a newer younger model. He saw the person who had seen Jason young and hungry and instantly opened his home.
“How?” Dick was asking this time. But not at him, at Bruce. “You said he was killed by the Joker. You lied?” Jason couldn’t tell if he had meant it as an accusation or a question.
“You didn’t kill the Joker,” Jason said. He didn’t feel the calm he had moments before. Bruce didn’t look like his dad anymore. He looked like the man Talia had told him about. The one who let his killer live and replaced him before his body was even cold.
Dick and Bruce moved their eyes onto Jason when he spoke.
Jason jerked Dick’s hands off of him. He scrambled away from both of them. Sitting up fully on the bed he pointed accusing eyes at bruce.
“You replaced me! With him,” Jason jerked his body at the kid still sleeping on the other side of the bed. Like the dead, his replacement hardly even breathed.
Dick’s head whipped to the replacements sleeping form like had never seen him before.
“I didn’t replace you,” Bruce tried to explain. Fumbling with his hands and his words. He looked like he wanted to reach toward Jason, but Jason wasn’t going to let him.
“I was gone for how long before you replaced me?” Jason screamed. “How fucking long Bruce?” no one even dared to open their mouths. “Not even a fucking year! You couldn’t let your stupid crusade rest for a fucking year before you went out for a younger smarter model.”
Jason was sure the kid still couldn’t be sleeping anymore. Not after Jason had fucking screamed. He was probably just pretending, like a lizard playing dead to hide from predators.
“It wasn’t like that, Little Wing.”
Jason snapped his eyes at Dick, he was sure they must have been glowing by the way that Dick had flinched back.
“Oh Really. Well then cue me in, Dick,” he sneered his name like it was a curse. “Being dead makes it a little hard to keep up with all the new changes.” Bruce, Dick, and his replacement flinched when he brought being dead. “Why did Bruce need to get a new kid. I’m sure the reasons or so important that we can just throw away all the old data about what happens when you let a kid fight crime at night.”
“Master Jason.” Jason’s head snapped up to the doorway, where Alfred stood, holding a tray of tea. “You have no need to shout when everyone is perfectly capable of hearing you when you talk in an appropriate tone,” Alfred scolded.
Jason ducked his head in shame. “Sorry Alfie,” he felt like a twelve-year-old being scolded again.
“That’s quite alright, next time keep an inside voice when inside, and please do give an old man his hug. It has been quite a while.”
Jason peeled himself off the bed. Face red in shame from yelling. He didn’t know why he screamed so much. Of course, Bruce was going to get another robin. It’s how it worked. Bruce got Jason after Dick.
Jason wrapped his arms around Alfred. It felt good to hug him after all that time. He had often thought about Alfred while in the league.
“It’s the pit,” an unwanted squeaky voice said from behind Jason. He turned to glare at the kid, making him shrink back until Alfred ‘accidentally’ knocked into him with the tea tray.
“The pit?” Dick asked.
“His eyes glowed when he was mad.” the kid turned to look at him as if asking him to add.
“Talia,” Bruce hissed.
Alfred gave Dick and Bruce their teas.
“She threw you into the pit, Little Wing?”
Jason shrugged. He didn’t know who exactly tossed him, but it was under her orders yes.
“We need to take blood samples,” Bruce grunted, standing up.
It was weird to see that he didn’t have to look up to see Bruce.
“I’ve already taken the DNA samples, sir. They have been run through and have come out as a 98 percent match.”
Bruce faltered. Without a plan he was useless. Jason had forgotten how much human there was in Bruce.
“Would french toast suffice for this morning breakfast?” Alfred said. He really was the only stable thing in this family.
“I love french toast.” Dick sounded too happy for it all just to be about french toast. “We’ll wait here for you,” He told Alfred. “Come on Jay,” he said patting the bed. “I wanna know where you learned the arm grabby thing.”
Jason hissed at Dick.
“Join you brothers in the bed,” Alfred ‘encourage’ while holding the tea tray next to Jason’s head. “If you don’t entertain Master Richard I’m afraid he might come down and try to ‘help’ me.”
“Hey!” Dick protested. “I’m a fine cook.”
“Of burnt cereal maybe,” Jason mocked while climbing back onto the bed, he made sure to wack the replacement with his foot and scratch Bruce on his arm.
Jason settled between Bruce and Dick. immediately Dick latched onto Jason, he didn’t miss how Dick grabbed his wrist and pressed down where his pulse was. His body fully slumped onto Jason when he felt it give a steady beat, but his fingers never left. Jason didn’t stop him. he latched an arm around Dick and flopped down on the bed with him.
Bruce sat awkwardly staring at his two sons until he finally reached out and ran hands through Jason’s hair. He pressed his thumb down on a long scar that ran through Jason’s head and down to the back of his neck. He could remember getting the scar, he could remember how the crowbar had rammed down on his skull, splitting it open.
He shuttered and Dick tightened his grasp around Jason, humming a tune from an old song he had once told Jason his mother used to sing to him.
The brat looked terribly uncomfortable. Jason could really see why Bruce got him, they both seemed completely stumped by human interaction. He looked like he was trying to melt his way to the end of the bed.
Hooking his food under the repl- Baby Bird’s, it fit him better, armpits. He dragged him back up so Jason’s hands could grab onto him and haul him into Jason’s chest.
All the body’s on top of him was making him sleepy. The gentle stroke of fingers in his hair. The comfortable weight on his chest and the warm body curled around his side humming tunes in his ear made him want to doze off for a couple of years. Sue him, the league wasn’t big on ‘self-care’ sleeping was a waste, if you could stand then you stand then you train until you couldn’t. Then you would sleep.
Jason fell asleep before Alfred even made it up the stairs with their french toast.