Chapter Text
Living in a mansion gives Jason a sense of safety he’s needed for so long, but it also gives him a twisted mess of anxiety as a constant companion.
It sucks having something to lose.
Adrenaline and panic, those are things he can handle. Even worrying about whether he’ll eat tomorrow, or how bad the snow’s going to be are familiar.
This is different.
This anxiety reaches far beyond the here and now, reaches to days and weeks and months of ‘what if?’. The good things keep building higher and higher until he’s standing on a mountain of advantages that will break him when he falls off.
And with it comes the guilt.
For years, he’s sneered at the fancy rich kids with their restaurants and their families and their prep schools. If he had everything in life handed on a silver platter, he’s always told himself he would make the most of it. And here he is, 2 weeks into staying with the richest man he’ll ever meet, making nothing of himself.
He has food and shelter and so much time to himself and he should be taking advantage of it. He refuses to squander this. He’s just got to stop being a coward and open the goddamn door.
Alfred had shown him this room when they toured the house, but Jason had purposely zoned out. He did his best to forget it was here, but he’s better at lying to others than himself.
He opens the door and slips inside before anyone can see him, and before he can chicken out. It’s bigger than the last apartment he and his mom stayed in.
More intimidating too.
Floor to ceiling bookshelves line every wall, like the library in Beauty And The Beast if it was darker and more claustrophobic.
He grabs a book at random off of the shelves.
The print is small and the words cram together in a wall he can’t scale. He closes the cover.
Shorter book. Easier book.
Wayne doesn’t exactly have a collection of picture books, and anyway, Jason may be stupid, but he’s not a little kid. He opens a few covers, abandoning them quickly.
How’s he supposed to figure out what the pages say if the pages won’t shut up? What could they possibly have to say that takes that much ink? Even Jason and his big mouth don’t go on and on that much.
When he spots a promising paperback, it takes some wiggling to dislodge it from between two giant tomes. The front has bigger writing than the other books, more colorful too.
101 Dad
Dad, he actually knows. For as hard as he worked to make Father’s day cards when he was little, Willis didn’t seem to appreciate them.
The last word is harder.
101 Dad J-
Jobs? No..
101 Dad J-
Jokes? That would make sense, dad jokes! Makes sense with the cover too. It looks like it could be a joke book, and there’s a guy with a tie on it, which at least fits some people’s idea of what a generic dad looks like.
He flips through the pages, scanning quickly. The words are blocked together, probably setup, punchline, space, setup, punchline, space. Some of them have the setup and punchline lumped together and so they look even shorter. It feels way less intimidating to look at, and it genuinely feels worth a shot.
This time, he starts in the middle, finding a page where the words seem shorter. It’s just jokes, it shouldn’t really matter where he starts.
He pauses when he finds one he already knows some of the words to.
…you…the…at…school?
…he…up.
Okay. So just fill in the gaps. At least at one point he had a better idea of what sounds the letters made, everything had a billion exceptions because they were designed by morons, but he at least knew some of it. The more he got passed up though, the less he had a chance to practice. Hell, he probably knows less now than he did in the third grade.
Stop whining about it and just fill in the gaps, Jason . He looks back down at the page.
…he walk up?...he walked up?...he walk up… he…
Fuck it, that doesn’t make sense. He starts somewhere else.
Dad?...Did!...Did you he-he-head?
Damn it all to hell. He can’t even read the little words and that’s ignoring the huge one sitting in the middle of the sentence that he’s been trying to pretend isn’t there.
kid-
Wait, he actually knows that. Kid. Kid what?
Kidn- kidney? Kid-kidnapper?
Did you hear about the kidnapping in 5th period? Don’t worry, he woke up for 6th.
Fuck it, that’s not reading, that’s guessing. He’s heard that joke a million times before. Looking at the book, he’s not even sure the wording is the same. The book had school, so it probably just says school and not a period, and then he probably woke up for lunch or recess or something.
He flips to a different page and finds one without any words as long as kidnapping. He’s going to actually read this one, not just guess it from one word. He’ll start with the words he already knows again.
Sight words. That’s what Ms. Kaur called them in 1st grade. She was nice, she’d always give everyone animal crackers. They’d have quizzes on the sight words and she’d cover up the posters that showed them all. He missed way too much school to memorize them all, and it wasn’t like he was a fast learner of anything, but he still caught on to some of them. The ones in first grade were easy and short, but words like school, open, closed, Sorry No Public Restroom, he’s just kind of picked up along the way. But he doesn’t think he can just pick up everything he needs to read a book ‘along the way’. He’s got to actually read the words.
Still, he needs all the help he can get, so sight words first it is.
What…of… can…and…?
…
Well, that’s not encouraging. He groaned, letting his head flop back, giving himself a moment to wallow in self-pity. His eyes feel tired from staring daggers into the page, trying to pry meaning out of them by sheer force.
There’s 101 of these suckers.
Okay Todd, get it together. Do you want to be one of those rich kids that has access to everything and still blows off school like it’s free? It might not cost money to go to public school, but the times when he wasn’t taking care of mom, or sporting a black eye, or fucking homeless dwindled every year. Hell, after mom died, he couldn’t even enroll.
Although it wasn’t like he was some kind of genius when he was at school.
He makes himself look back down at the page.
What…of… can…can be?
That has to be right, can be makes sense. He goes back to the beginning of the joke.
What can? No …What kids? No …What cold? Coat?...
Fuck! It’s not even a long word. Most kindergarteners could probably do this. There’s no one here to even see him, but he feels the same shame he’d get with 62 eyes on him during popcorn reading. Fuck popcorn reading.
What…of… can be…?
…
The joke stares at him like he’s the punchline.
He lets the book close slowly, feeling age-softened pages scrape lightly against his thumb. If he was smarter or more patient or trying harder…
He hates himself a lot right now, but he doesn’t quite hate himself enough to keep torturing himself like this.
Right before he closes the cover, he catches sight of writing in pencil, faded but still readable.
Ha. Still readable if he could read.
B,
Happy Birthday? No. Happy Father’s Day. I…
He can’t read the rest of it. God, that’s a long note. The last word though, that isn’t hard to guess.
Dick.
Of course. Of course Dick would give Bruce a book. Of course he’d be able to write a goddamn essay on the cover. Of course the golden boy would be smart enough to be the perfect little son and give the perfect little gift to his perfect little bat-dad on perfect little Father’s Day.
And Jason can’t even read a joke.
His eyes blur while he shoves the books back onto the shelves. He’d rather throw them around the room, but the last thing he wants is anyone to know he was in here.
Bruce is used to Dick, what’s he going to think when he knows how bad at this Jason is?
When he walked in, the library felt grand and intimidating, now it feels hollow and mocking.
Jason thought he could just come in here, pull a book off the shelf and figure it out? His lip twists more into a sneer than a smirk at the biggest joke of them all.