Work Text:
When the phone rings the first time Jason doesn’t move. It’s 9pm, he’s had a fucking day, and he’s on vacation for the first time in… since he came back to life, because it’s difficult to arrange vacations when you’re a vigilante in the worst fucking town in—
His phone rings again, almost as soon as it stops and now Jason has to admit that he’s curious. Just a little bit. Not enough to get up from his couch where he so immaculately arranged all three of his blankets and he’s having a wonderful time, and whoever needs him can suck it and call tomorrow.
When the phone rings the third time, Jason’s vague curiosity jumps to worry. Who the fuck calls three times in a row?
He leaves the comfort of his couch and drags himself to the kitchen counter where he left his phone to see who thinks to call so late at night and—it’s Tim, and now Jason is begrudgingly interested, because Tim never calls. You’re lucky if he responds to texts in time and with more than two letters. And he absolutely never calls Jason. They're cool, but they're not that cool.
If Tim’s called him three times in the last two minutes, there better be a meteor coming down on Gotham directly.
“I need your help,” is what he gets as soon as he picks up.
“Good evening to you, too. So nice to hear from you,” Jason yawns. “Not actually. The fuck do you want.”
“Your help.” It sounds urgent, by the way he says it, quickly and nervously, which is very unlike him, but Jason doesn’t hear any sounds of explosion or screams of agony from the line, so.
“I’m on vacation. Bother a different jerk from your horde of siblings.”
“No, no, listen,” Tim hurries, the sound of his furious pacing audible through the line. “Alfred is on vacation—”
“So am I.”
“And everyone else is gone, Jason, missions or something and I hate them and they’ve left me with the brat,” he says, and an angry sounding complaint comes from somewhere in the room. “Get your ass over here.”
Jason blinks. It sure would suck to be stuck with a stir crazy Damian. “Sucks to suck.”
Silence. He can practically hear Tim scheming. “I’m gonna tell Alfred you left me hanging. He’s gonna be so disappointed.”
“I’ll kill you.” Jason has the worst family. He casts a longing glance at his blankets and sighs, resigned. “What’s wrong.”
The Riddler tends to give them problems every two months or so, it hasn’t been as long this time but maybe he’s been getting antsy in that cell. That’s fine, the three of them can take the smartass. Hell, Jason could do it on his own but if Tim is bothering him alredy, he's gonna mke both of them work for it.
On the phone, Tim lets out a deep sigh. “Damian is sick.”
Oh, absolutely not. “No.”
“Jason.”
***
Jason is in the manor in twenty minutes and there’s a tiny, snotty ball of rage sitting on the far end of the couch, cocooned in blankets.
That could have been him. He should have gotten sick.
Tim is sitting in the kitchen, watching them warily like Damian is the source of a deadly plague that is about to engulf them all. He might as well be, with how shit he looks. Jason tries to remember what his mom and Bruce did when he was sick. He wasn’t sick often, thank fuck, but he remembers it being especially miserable when he was.
“Okay,” he groans. This is not—this is the last thing he thought he’d be doing tonight. Or ever. “You have a fever, brat?”
“I’m fine,” he says, petulant as always, though it loses some of its power with how miserable he sounds, and the sniffle he ends his sentence with.
Jason grimaces. He puts a hand on Damian’s forehead and it’s a testament to how sick the kid is that he doesn’t bite his hand off. “Yep, okay.”
“I’m fine,” Damian repeats with more ferocity, and now he really sounds like Tim when Bruce is trying to get him to go the fuck to sleep.
“I’ll put that on your tombstone,” he says and flicks Damian’s nose. He’ll use this power while he can, Damian will surely find a way to make him pay later.
There’s an annoyed huff of breath from the kitchen, but Tim doesn’t reprimand him for the death joke. He usually likes them even, so Jason doesn’t see what the fucking problem is; it’s just a regular fever. Everyone gets them.
“Well, Master Damian,” he pulls his best Alfred accent, which earns him a glare from Damian and a snort from the kitchen. “I’m afraid you must rest and keep hydrated. Or you’ll die.”
“Jason.”
“Chill man, he’s fine. Make him tea, force him to sleep it off.” He can hear Damian’s displeased noises from the couch. This must be horrible for him. His enormous pride hurt and all that. Like Jason cares.
“Can I go now?” The lone sight of how comfortable Damian looked—fever aside—made his soul hurt.
Immediately, Tim panics. “What. No. You’re staying.”
Like hell. Jason starts moving toward the front door, and Tim follows, throwing a quick instruction to not fucking move to Damian.
It’s weird to be in the manor when it’s so damn quiet. Briefly, he wonders if this is how it had been those years when it was populated only by Bruce and Alfred and, occasionally, Tim, with Dick having moved out and Jason dead. He stops wondering pretty quickly.
The manor is never quiet nowadays, at least not when he's dragged over. He finds himself glad for it.
“You can't leave me here,” Tim manifests in front of him as he's about to open the door. “What am I supposed to do with him?”
“Stop being a goddamn mother hen, for starters. Give him a tylenol or something,” he says and tries to reach for the doorknob. This doesn’t seem to do much to reassure Tim, as he continues to stand in front of the door and Jason has promised Dick he won’t start fights with his shit brothers even if he is slowly running out of patience. “It’s a fucking cold, Tim. I don’t know what your problem is.”
“What if it’s bad?” he mumbles, like Jason isn’t really supposed to hear it.
Now Jason is starting to think Tim has never witnessed a cold before, which is impossible because just a few months ago he had one bad enough that it landed his ass in a hospital, and gave both Bruce and Dick heart attacks. Somehow it had been way worse dealing with the two of them worrying themselves sick than Tim coughing his lungs out. Fuck, from what he's heard, Tim has been through the clench and come out on the other side.
The dots start connecting in his head. God, this is stupid.
“Order a pizza.” He watches Tim’s shoulders slump in badly concealed relief. “You’re paying.”
***
As soon as Tim announces Jason's staying for the night or two, Damian's mood sours. Not even the promise of pizza could mellow him out, which is a little bit worrying, but hey. If Damian has decided he'd rather suffer alone than deal with his two brothers trying to help, that's fine. Fuck if Jason cares. He's sure the kid can deal with a cold, he's grown up with assassins. There are worse things he's been put through at a younger age than a common cold.
He watches him get up from his spot on the couch, blanket burrito and all, and walk up the stairs like a little shit princeling going to his chambers. He regrets not taking a picture for later blackmail material.
“Told ya,” he grumbles at Tim around a pizza slice. “He can handle himself. He'll be fine.”
Tim hums, unfocused in a way that Jason has learned means he's not listening. He kicks him in his side and gets little to no acknowledgement for it. “Hey. Stop fretting. It's annoying.”
Tim nods. He doesn't stop.
Sleeping in an empty Wayne manor is harder than Jason remembers, and he finds himself stirring awake at every sound. Everything’s too loud in the silence, everything echoes, and Damian’s cat is having the zoomies of its life in front of his door right now. And he's pretty sure the footsteps he's been hearing for hours now come from Tim's pacing.
Just as he's falling asleep he's shaken from it by the creak of his doors opening. There’s no way for him to miss the light, quick footsteps that stop in front of his bed—he can practically hear Tim’s breathing. He gets the bare minimum of a warning in the form of a whispered Jason about two seconds before Tim launches his entire self on top of him.
“Christ,” he wheezes as all air leaves his body. “You fucking bitch.”
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Tim mutters, his bony elbow digging into Jason's side.
“Yes!”
“Damian’s burning up.”
“Yeah, dipshit, he has a fever.”
There’s a minute of silence—Tim doesn’t move, and Jason could throw him off easily but he’s tired and it’s 3am, and not everyone is used to being wide awake at the witching hour—before Jason gives in.
He lets Tim drag him to the brat’s room. The cat follows them, weaving in between Jason's legs so that he nearly falls over three times, and he can't imagine how Damian doesn't get endlessly frustrated with this. Except no, Damian will tolerate anything from an animal, it's the rest of the society he doesn't want to even look at.
He almost feels bad for thinking badly of him once he finds Damian in his bed, shivering under a blanket or two, looking worryingly red in the face. At least the part of the face they can see, as he buried most of himself in the blanket.
Jason tugs the blanket off his face and puts a hand on his forehead. He clicks his tongue.
“Told you,” Tim whispers from where he's hovering at the door.
Problem is, Jason doesn't know much about bringing fevers down. He vaguely remembers his mother putting cool towels on his forehead when he was sick, and him being very vexed by it because he was already cold, but she'd insist despite his struggle. And a bit of it may have been because he liked it when she sat next to him, making sure he didn't just curl up underneath the covers again.
He sits down on the bed and tells Tim to open the window, because the air is too humid to breathe. Slowly, as to not wake him up, he untangles the second blanket from the ball that is Damian's body and sets it aside.
“Find me a cold towel or something,” he whispers, because if Damian wakes up this is going to be ten times more difficult. He hopes, foolishly, that they can bring the fever down before he wakes and starts being his unpleasant self.
Tim hands him a cold washcloth and Jason brushes away the hair that's been sticking to Damian's sweaty forehead. “Should probably run him a bath, too.”
They manage half an hour without waking him, which is short of a miracle. It's almost worrying; Damian tends to be overly aware of anyone and anything in his vicinity and Jason remembers Dick telling him how long it took to get Damian trust him enough to fall asleep in the same room. None of it is that surprising; they all know where Damian grew up. And Jason understands it, sort of, from his street kid days. It's much different but in the end it often folds on itself similarly.
It's the third time Jason switches the washcloth for a colder one when Damian squints up at him. There’s an attempt for it to be an angry glare, but he’s clearly too exhausted to make it work. “Todd.”
“You gotta wash and change, junior,” he says, looking at the sweat drenched clothes and sheets. It’s a wonder Damian hasn’t woken up earlier out of sheer discomfort. That tends to be how Jason’s colds go nowadays; sleep it off, wake up sweaty and gross, get a change of clothes and go back to sleep. Repeat.
Damian however, seems content enough to continue bathing in his own sweat. It’s stupid. It helps no one. It’s extremely Damian and Jason really should have expected this.
He watches as Damian grabs the cover back from his hand and pulls it over his head in a move that is surprisingly childish for him. “Get out of my bedroom.”
“As soon as you get out of those wet pajamas, gladly,” he pulls at the cover again and is met with Damian’s furious brown eyes. Illuminated by the night lamp, Jason swears he catches a tinge of desperation there. “Look, Dames, lying around in wet clothes will only make your cold worse. You wanna end up like the other dipshit over there? You don’t. So come on.”
In what might just be a dumb move, Jason reaches out to grab Damian by the shoulder. Tomorrow, he will blame the late hour and his sleep-blurred brain for his carelessness, because Damian, very predictably, sleeps with a knife stashed somewhere in his bed and it's mostly thank to Tim's yell that Jason manages to move out of the way just in time to get merely nicked by it. He presses his fingers on the sting on his forearm.
“Oh, you'll wish you hadn't done that,” he says, eyeing where Damian is clutching the knife. Weakly, because his hand is a bit shaky.
Dick loves to insist that they've gotten far with the kid—Dick has, Jason reminds himself, because Bruce is as good at handling Damian as he is at showing earnest emotions, which is to say, he's really not. Still, they clearly have a way to go because he's positive neither Dick nor Bruce would let Damian just have a secret knife in his room for brother stabbing purposes.
But there's a familiar deer-in-the-headlights look in Damian's brown eyes that makes Jason's stomach turn uncomfortably.
“Damian,” he starts, firmly. Slowly. “Hand me the knife.”
It's not like he—Damian is not going to seriously hurt him. If he wanted to, he'd have already done it and Jason would be much worse for wear, ill or not. It's more of a warning. One of many spikes Damian likes to keep around himself, still. And Jason has Tim at his back, too, so he's not afraid. Just worried. Because he hasn't had to be that cautious with Damian in a long time, which doesn't mean he's out of practice, but he'd rather not have to do it in the first place. Feels wrong. Off kilter.
Damian stares at him like he's stupid, like he's asking the most unreasonable question. Jason crouches down at his level and puts a hand in front of him, waiting. He can be patient when he wants.
It does something because Damian looks a little bit like he's considering it, and with how weird the entire night has been this might just work. He's not looking Jason in the eye, gaze instead glued to the shallow cut on his forearm, jaw clenched tight.
“If you speak of word of this to father—”
“Do I look like a snitch to you?” Jason asks. “Come on, junior. Knife. I'll give it back to you once I'm out of the house.”
It's not much; Jason doesn't have much. He's well aware his presence isn't the most calming, and he doesn't have a way with words like Dick does, but it seems to be enough for now because Damian slowly hands him the knife, handle first.
“Thanks.” He slips the knife in a sewn in sheath on the inside of his boot where he'd usually keep his own, making sure that Damian can see where he's putting it.
There's a long, tense silence as Damian sits against the headboard and stares at the damp washcloth like it offends him personally. Jason is about to request his cooperation again, but no knife in sight is apparently enough for Tim to throw all the caution in the wind. He steps around Jason and picks up Damian like a ragdoll. “Okay, you little shit. Shower.”
Damian shrieks. Jason is too busy thinking about how if Tim gets sick from the brat and dies of a shitty cold, he'll have to kill them both and explain it to Alfred. He watches them disappear to the hallway that leads to the bathroom, Damian having barely any strength for struggle. He tries his best.
“Unhand me, Drake!”
Jason catches just the barest glimpse of his face, shocked and mortified and instantly feels better about his ruined vacation, because at least he gets to see this. When’s the last time anyone picked up Damian like that? When’s the last time anyone picked up Damian at all?
There's a short, blissful moment of silence before another shriek echoes through the hallway.
“He bit me! Motherfucker!”
Jason can't stand them. Tim will owe him for this for the rest of their miserable lives.
***
The next morning is appropriately awkward and silent and Jason is starting to think Damian might be plotting to get rid of Tim for throwing him in that bath last night, but hey, it helped. He looks a bit less like he's about to melt away.
(“He does it out of love,” Jason said once Damian had returned to his bed, hair damp, dry clothes on. He had time to change the sheets in the meantime.
Damian grimaced. “I will shove his love up your ass.”
“I'll tell Alfred about this, you know.”)
Tim has quarantined himself in the kitchen and gone through most of their hidden stash of Capri Suns. Jason has been sitting on the couch next to Damian, periodically checking his temperature and growing more worried with each time the kid doesn’t complain or even glare at him for it. Either they're bonding, which is unlikely, or Damian is more ill than they expected.
“When’s Bruce coming?” he asks, not too keen on the idea of admitting that he’d rather have an adult around—a parent, rather. Jason is an adult, but he’s an adult in a sense where he shoots at people and does tax evasion and that does not include doting on sick children. He may just suck at this.
He can hear the frown in Tim’s voice when he answers. “A week.”
There’s a sudden sound of music from whatever video Damian has played on his phone as he continues to pretend that he’s not listening.
Tim slurps on his juice and Jason swears to himself that he’ll snitch to Alfred where they keep the boxes the moment he sees the man because if he has to hear that sound one more time—
“If we tell him Damian’s sick he might come sooner,” Tim suggests.
“No,” Damian sits up straighter. If he didn’t know him, Jason might say he looked panicked. “I will be fine soon and you will mention none of this to father. Or else.”
Jason can't help the smile. He raises an eyebrow at his little brother, who keeps his eyes on his phone angrily. “Or else?”
“Or else.”
Except Damian is wrong, and the fever returns and Jason is very rapidly starting to feel the loss of control over the situation. They don't even try to drag him downstairs the next morning; Jason takes one look at Damian barely staying on his feet as returns from the bathroom and makes peace with the fact that they're living in Damian's room now.
He's still shivering under the blanket and he's furious that Jason won't let him have two, and in some form of retribution he's refusing the cold washcloth so Jason resorts to putting it on his forehead and the back of his neck from time to time and enduring the kick in the stomach it gets him.
When he stops trying to deal Jason bodily harm, that's when he gets worried. That, and the way Damian stays quiet is frankly creeping Jason the fuck out. He's not used to being the one trying to hold a conversation in the room.
“Need anything?” he asks, again. For the fifth time in the last twenty minutes probably, and Damian glowers at him over the edge of the blanket.
“Stop antagonizing me,” he grits out. He sounds… small, tired. Like a child. “I will tell father about this.”
Now, he has known since the first time Damian stepped a foot into Gotham that he's made differently and that even Jason, who spent a good chunk of time training under the League, doesn't completely get it. But for the first time he feels like he's entirely lost the plot.
He grimaces, makes a what the fuck face at Damian, who just continues glaring, as one does. “You ungrateful bitch baby, I'm trying to help you.”
“I know what you're trying to do,” Damian sneers and Jason has to admit he's taken aback. He thought they've been doing well, lately. “And I don't need your assistance or whatever it is you call it.”
Were it not for his stuffy nose and the fact that he's shaking like a leaf on the wind, Jason would have punted him into the sun.
“You’ve been sick before, right?” Jason asks, because while Damian being a little bitch isn’t unusual, what is unusual is that Jason has never had to deal with an ill Damian before. Considering their family’s everything, he would have gotten roped into it somehow, living outside the manor be damned. Tim has been living alone for a year too and yet here he is. The shit that having a family gets you.
“Of course,” Damian looks at him like he’s stupid which, fair enough. “I’ve been alive for over a decade, and while I am superior to all you idiots, I’m not invincible.”
Jason snorts. “Good to know. When’s the last time you were sick, by the way?”
It’s none of his business. He should just call Bruce and let him deal with his child—whom he has, by the looks of it, conveniently placed in the hands of the first older brother in vicinity and left to fight aliens or something else space related—but whenever he mentions Bruce, Damian gets a panicked look in his eyes, so Jason leaves it alone. As annoying as the little brat is, he is his brother and siblings must band together against their fathers. It’s the rules. It’s the one single rule Jason would feel bad about breaking.
“I don’t see how that is any of your business, Todd,” Damian echoes his thoughts.
“It is now.” Kind of.
“This was a mistake I will never repeat, I can promise you that,” he huffs. “I can deal with it on my own.”
That—Jason doesn’t like the sound of that.
“What’d you mean?”
Damian blinks at him blankly, as if Jason is the unreasonable one in this argument. “I don’t need anyone’s assistance with my illnesses.”
“You’re like, eight. And what kind of bullshit is that?”
“Eleven,” he grits out. Jason can feel him glaring holes in his skin. “And it’s my cold!”
He shouldn’t be laughing at that, firstly because it’s a point to Damian and secondly because his laughter causes Damian to look even more delivish. Like he’s considering pulling a knife at him again.
He is conveniently saved by Tim walking in and putting a bowl of soup on Damian’s nightstand, who switches from glaring with killing intent at one brother to another. “What is this.”
Tim stares back. “Soup.”
“I still have questions,” Jason cuts in to let Damian know. He’s not letting that comment go so easily.
“Shut up, Todd,” Damian says, not taking his eyes off Tim. “I don’t want your contaminated food.”
“Fuck you!”
“Christ, brat, has your mother never made soup for you when you were sick?” Jason asks and regrets it instantly but it’s a second too late. As soon as the words leave his mouth he feels himself physically cringe.
Damian doesn’t have to answer for Jason to know what it will be. “No.”
This doesn't come as a surprise, and now that he thinks about it, Damian’s utter refusal to be seen as sick and needy makes a lot of sense, too. He’d bet being sick at the League of Assassins sucked.
Jason feels overwhelmed, all of a sudden.
“Damian, have you been hiding from Bruce that you’re sick?” he asks. Carefully. “Every other time, I mean. Because you clearly are right now. “ And he’s included them in it. Goddamn.
“I don’t ‘hide’,” he grimaces.
“What do you call it?”
“Dealing.”
Right. Right. Because that's much better.
The image of a feverish Damian curled in on himself on his bed, alone and avoiding everyone in the manor won’t leave Jason’s head as he sits there and listens to bickering and soft clinking of spoon against bowl. (Damian only accepted the soup after Tim assured him repeatedly that he did not put anything in it that Alfred wouldn’t, and by the time Damian decided to believe him the soup had gotten cold and Jason had to go reheat it. He doesn’t like thinking about why Damian would be so certain that they’ve poisoned his food.)
“I think we should call Bruce,” he says, because he just can’t seem to leave it alone. Tim shoots him a warning glare like he’s thought the same thing; they just barely got Damian to relax. “Or Dick. You trust Dick, right brat?”
Damian frowns at the soup in his lap. “This is not about trust. I trust father.”
“But you think he’d be upset with you for being ill?”
He gets two glares for that one, and he really doesn’t have time or willpower to deduce why both of his brothers think this is a normal or smart thing to do or encourage.
He sighs. “Look, fuck Bruce and all, but he wouldn't.”
“I know that,” Damian says. Jason has a hard time believing him, considering the whole argument they’re having—it must show on his face because Damian repeats, more forcefully. “I know that.”
“But?”
Damian is visibly struggling to find the words for what is bothering him, and it’s the most lost he’s ever seen him. His red nose and the chicken print blanket he’s wrapped in only add to this visual. He stammers out, “I’m not weak.”
Jason squints at him. He’s shivering, just a little bit, so Jason tightens the blanket around him.
“You’re sick,” Tim says. He’s staring down at his phone and Jason considers just texting him to stealthily message or call Bruce, but he doubts that would endear him to Damian. All it would do is ruin the little trust the kid has in him. “We’re all weaker when we’re sick. It’s normal.”
“Yes,” Damian nods, looking a bit relieved and pleased that there’s something they can agree on. “It’s a weakness.”
Jason and Tim share a grimace.
“I don’t think that’s what I said,” Tim mutters. “It's—you are weaker, but it’s not a bad thing. Well, sure it is but—”
“You are making absolutely no sense,” Damian says and Jason is ready for this to blow up in their faces again. This is why Damian and Tim should never be allowed in the same room. “I just mean that father wouldn’t be pleased that I can’t... fulfill my duties, as usual.”
Is this how Dick feels every time he and Damian have one of their heart to hearts? He hates it. His entire soul hurts. He refrains from reminding Damian that he is eleven years old even as his brain repeatedly screams at him about it.
Tim doesn’t seem as phased by this admission.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he says, and Jason briefly wants to ask how many times he’s had to have that repeated to him, before he reminds himself that’s not his problem. It's not. Everyone has so many issues in this family. “He’s your dad. He loves you.”
Just has a shit way of showing it, Jason thinks.
He would use this opportunity to call Tim a stinky hypocrite but yet another one of Damian’s cough fits interrupts him, so he shoots him a dirty look instead and rubs Damian’s back as he rasps.
“What about Richard?” Damian asks once he’s caught his breath.
“What about him?” Tim frowns.
Jason cuts them off because it’s—a surreal conversation is happening here, right now. “Damian, no one is gonna be pissed at you for catching a cold. What they’re more likely to be upset about is that you’ve been hiding it from them for god knows how many times and going on patrols and endangering yourself because of… I don't know. I don't fucking know what Talia or the league put in your head but it's insane and they can go eat it.”
Damian stares at him, unblinking. He almost looks upset. “My mother did what was best—”
“Right, and she took care of you while you were sick?”
He gets a plastic straw thrown at his forehead for that, and looks away from Damian just for a second to see Tim mouthing dude at him and then Damian is crying—not full on crying, but he can hear the hitch in his breath and see the way he presses his lips together and Jason feels his heart fall to the bottom of his stomach and break. He has to look away. If he looks away it’s not real and he doesn’t have to think about it ever again.
He looks up and finds Tim staring at him in alarm.
So, okay, maybe he could have handled that one better. Smoother. Less… Jason-like. But this is exactly why Jason avoids these heart to hearts—it can only end in tears or rage. Or both. He has things to say, doesn't mean that most people want to hear them.
“Buddy, hey,” he scoots closer to his little brother. Damian doesn’t move, posture perfectly straight, the only thing that betrays what a shit state he’s in the tears pooling in his eyes. And his running nose. He sniffles and manages to look pissed about it. It’s kind of incredible. “I—shit. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay?”
Damian doesn't even give him a glare, which, damn, it's like that. Okay. “It's not you. Unfortunately.”
“Alright,” Jason chuckles nervously. “I'm glad?”
“I just hate this,” he says, and he sounds so angry and tired, which makes sense, considering everything, but it's Damian and Jason has never seen him like this, and he supposes that's the fear, isn't it? “And I hate that I'm not able to be… normal about it.”
“No, no, you're fine,” Jason hurries. “I freaked out, it's on me. You're fine. I get it.”
He can see the little grimace on Damian's face even as he tries to angle it away from Jason.
“I do, listen. It's so hard to unlearn what you thought was right for a real long time. But you're doing great.” He doesn't miss the quick glance Damian gives his bandaged arm. Jason shakes his head. “You're doing great and we're here for you. If you let us.”
He lifts the cold compress and raises an eyebrow. Damian sniffles and leans against the pillow at his back, and lets Jason put it on his forehead.
“Wasn't so hard, was it,” Tim mutters. He hands Damian a glass of water, joined by a firm stare that leaves no space for arguments.
“It's cold,” Damian complains, half-heartedly, resigned to the horrifying ordeal of being cared for. “And I am already cold.”
Yeah. “Sorry for shit-talking your mom.”
Both Damian and Tim send him a glare, which is fair.
It’s very easy to forget Damian is a child, between the swords and the easy violence and his upbringing that left him behaving so distinctly older, but now, sitting next to him with his face all red and blotchy while he tries so hard not to cry because he’s sick and being sick sucks ass—Jason is struck by the fact that Damian is eleven years old. And he’s sick and being sick sucks ass.
“Dames,” Tim crouches in front of the bed to Damian’s eye level. The nickname is surprising but okay, the circumstances are extenuating. “How about Jason makes you hot chocolate?”
Damian squints, instantly suspicious.
Under any other circumstances Jason would protest about his services being offered before he's been asked, but this time he's ready, he's on the way to the kitchen already for all it's worth.
He assumes Damian must have nodded because Tim doesn't stop him from making his way out of the room and downstairs. From the top of the stairway, he can hear Tim talking. “You can borrow my laptop and play Stardew Valley on it. Unless your head hurts. Or—”
He tunes them out and power walks to the kitchen. He knows how Alfred makes his best hot chocolate; he taught him when he just came into the household years ago, distrusting and scared, and desperately needed someone to give him a hand. The small show of what Jason saw as trust, that day, grounded him—Alfred saw something in him and deemed him worthy of this little piece of himself. Feels rather silly now.
When he's back with the mugs for all three of them—extra marshmallows on Damian's who he refuses to admit how much he likes them—Damian is still in the spot he left him in, and Tim is gone, presumably to retrieve whatever console Damian picked. He sets one mug on the nightstand next to the empty glass of water and hands another to Damian.
“We’re gonna have to tell Bruce about this, you know that,” he says once he's settled on the foot of the bed and made sure Damian's fever hasn't spiked.
Damian makes a displeased noise, but he doesn’t argue or throw a weapon at Jason’s face, so he takes that as an agreement or at least a resignation.
They sit in silence for a bit, before Damian speaks up, quietly. “Do you really think he will be willing to come back just for this?”
“He will,” Jason says prays to whatever might be listening that he’s right about how much Bruce loves his stupid kids.
Tim comes in with his laptop in tow, swearing about wires and batteries.
“I'm gonna—” Jason starts while Tim wrestles with technology. Damian looks at him. “Are you good with me telling Bruce now?”
“Whatever,” Damian waves his hand and looks away. For a moment he looks like he wants to add something, but he keeps his mouth firmly shut and stares at the mug in his hands.
“I'll tell him to bring Dick, too,” he says and watches as Damian nods, visibly relaxing.
He waits for them to start whatever game Damian is playing before he grabs his phone to text Bruce. It's harder to piece words together with the two of them rambling about flowers and vegetables over his head but it doesn't matter, if Bruce needs more than a simple explanation he can go fuck himself.
Damians sick
Tim called me im with them no ones dead yet but im not making any promises
I think hed like you to be with him
Bring dick also or i swear
With that, it's a bit easier to breathe. He lies down and lets his phone fall on his side. Bruce will be on his way, Dick will make Damian talk to him and Jason can go on with his life, not worrying about his little brother being sick and alone in his own home. Not as much, at least.
He has to admit it’s not the worst vacation, lounging at the foot of Damian’s bed and listening to Tim recite to Damian which fish he can get during summer and a bunch of other specific bullshit Jason doesn't understand a word of. Damian clearly does, focused frown glued to the screen as he nods to Tim's instructions.
“What happened to keeping distance, spleenless bastard?” Jason asks when Tim climbs on the bed next to Damian.
“I have to watch Damian game.”
Jason makes a solemn promise to himself that if Tim gets sick because of a video game, he’ll let Bruce know exactly how that happened and then observe in delight the weeks Tim spends grounded and bedridden—he gets it though, the need to be close to Damian. He can see him relax and make place for Tim to lie next to him. He drops his head on Damian’s shoulder to get a better view of the laptop screen and Jason takes a sneaky picture of them before he opens his and Bruce’s messages.
There's a new one there, and he feels the anxiety climb up his spine.
We will be home tomorrow morning. Thank you, Jason.
He breathes out, feeling every bit of it. It's shameful, still, how much easier life seems once he knows his dad will be there beside him. Bruce has that sort of energy. He hates it and it's embarrassing as hell, but he still hopes Damian will get it one day, too.
He sends Bruce the incriminating picture of Tim and Damian gaming and instantly gets a black heart emoji in response, which is corny as fuck. Who taught Bruce how to text, Stephanie?
Tim and Damian never stop bickering on the other end of the bed. The fact that it's lulling him to sleep might be saying a lot about the people he surrounds himself with.
“You know how infuriating it is that you're so good at this? I hate you for it.”
“One would think you'd have already gotten used to the fact that I'm better than you, and yet.”
“Shut up and dig through that trash.”
Jason drops his phone on the floor and rolls over to his side. “Wake me if one of you starts dying for any reason.”
He catches Tim giving him a thumbs up before he shuts his eyes. Not the worst vacation at all. Never doing it again though.