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Jason clenches his hands tightly around the steering wheel, breathing in through his nose and steadily out his mouth. Luckily, the Pit is nowhere to be felt, but Jason almost wishes it was – wishes he’d have a better excuse for the growing inferno in his chest.
“I don’t speak ‘whine’, runt,” he says pointedly, ears still ringing from a certain ten-year-old’s high-pitched and freaking annoying voice. He almost wishes he’d brought a chalkboard along for Damian to scratch instead. “Speak like a human, or don’t speak. It ain’t complicated.”
He hears Damian taking deep breaths in the back seat, and Jason almost laughs. He distantly wonders if B taught them the same calming techniques.
Dick, on the other hand, jitters nervously in the passenger’s seat, half-turned and glancing between Jason’s pursed lips and Damian’s undoubtedly furious green eyes. Someone needs to get the guy some Adderall.
Jason just needs a drink, laws be damned. “How about we just play the silent game until we get to the manor?” Dick blurts when Damian draws in a breath to speak, nearly smacking his face against the window as he whips around to face the kid. Jason would snort if he weren’t too busy trying not to blow a gasket and accidentally decapitate the brat. “Whoever speaks first, loses. Winner gets…” he digs around in his pocket, then triumphantly pulls out two crumpled bills, “six dollars!”
Tim makes a small choking sound in the back seat.
“I will not be bribed by your childish games, Grayson,” Damian insists, pushing himself forward until he’s leaning over the middle console of the front seat, right next to Jason’s arm. Jason can practically smell him. “I’m merely trying to discuss the circumstances surrounding my untimely dismissal from school, but Todd is being completely intransigent, as per usual.”
Jason feels his eye twitch. “Your ass will be in transit if you don’t watch your damn–”
“I said intransigent, you dimwit, not–”
“Okay,” Dick interjects quickly, and Jason breathes in sharply, shaking his head briefly and forcing himself to just focus on the road. Tim is definitely cackling now, and Jason would be more pissed at him if Damian wasn’t still up his damn ass. “Let’s all take a breath, yeah? You don’t need to defend yourself to us, Damian – what happens to you and Tim is up to Bruce. We’re just the chauffeurs since he’s in a meeting, alright?”
Which, if you ask Jason, is pretty damn stupid. Just because he has his own car now doesn’t mean he’s a free valet for all the brats Bruce decides to take in. Tim is one thing – at least the kid is tolerable and makes pretty decent conversation – but picking up both of them? Especially after they got in a fight and very nearly blew their cover by taking on five kids, each of them twice their size?
Jason has his own assumption that Damian started it and Tim jumped in to finish it, but all is fair in love and war. If he had to wager a guess: they’re both getting chewed out and grounded, at the very least.
Jason hopes to fuck that Damian is getting more, whatever the punishment may be.
“Well, Father certainly hired terrible service, then,” the brat seethes, pushing himself up on his hands and leaning forward, and it takes everything in Jason not to shove his face back into his seat. Apparently, the kid needs a lesson on talking like a human and sitting like one.
Turning his head for a moment to glance at the kid, fully intent on telling him right where he can stick his ‘terrible service’, Jason freezes.
His own voice startles him. “Where is your damn seatbelt?”
He refocuses on the road quickly, sending a furtive glance to Dick, who is doing an absolutely godawful job of playing damage control. What the fuck.
Has the kid been unbuckled this whole time?
“That is beside the point, Todd,” Damian insists, and like hell it is. “Your terrible driving ability is of no hindrance to me, however inconvenient. Now, if we could discuss this like adults–”
“We’re not discussing shit until you buckle your damn seatbelt,” Jason interrupts sharply, now hyper-aware of every car passing them, of every knick in the road that could make Damian go flying. Shit, the kid is so tiny – should he have gotten one of those Baby On Board stickers?
Out of the corner of his eye, Jason sees Dick open his mouth, probably either to bitch at Jason for the language or, if his priorities are straightened out for once, yell at the little shit stinking up his backseat. “This is far more crucial, Todd! I’m trying to explain the circumstances surrounding my needless suspension, and if you put in a good word for me with Father, then perhaps–”
Holy fuck, someone needs to smack this kid. “Perhaps nothing,” he snaps, caught between wanting to reach back and put on the kid’s seatbelt himself and wanting to drive extra cautiously. “I don’t want to hear anything out of your mouth until your seatbelt is on, so freaking do it. Now.”
There’s a lull of silence. It’s a brief, powerful thing, and Jason feels his nostrils flare when he doesn’t hear the click of a seatbelt several seconds later.
“You can’t order me around, Todd,” Damian finally grits out, and Jason turns to look pointedly at Dick, well-aware that he won’t be able to speak civilly if he tries. Dick looks at him with wide eyes.
“Damian,” he hears Tim’s voice from behind him, quiet and placating, “it’s still twenty minutes back to the manor, but even if it were only five, you should still wear a seatbelt. Did you know that wearing a seatbelt can decrease your chances of severe injury by 50%? And since you’re smaller than the rest of us, risk of fatality–”
“I am not wearing a seatbelt,” Damian insists, cutting him off, and Jason scoffs in disbelief, shaking his head slightly. “Although, that would prove useful, if Todd’s lack of driving ability is any indication.”
Okay, that’s it.
Jason is an impulsive person, sure, but he has the foresight to check his rearview mirror before slamming on his brakes, almost satisfied by the soft thunk of Damian’s body against the back of Dick’s seat. It’s heavily padded, so he knows that it doesn’t actually hurt, and Alfred instilled the importance of seatbelts into Jason the same way, back when he refused to wear one. Jason knows that the kid is fine, and it’s a damn good way to teach him about natural consequences.
He veers off to the side of the road, pulling to a quick stop that most definitely jerks Damian forward enough to drive the lesson home, and puts on his foreways.
When he turns to face Damian, he’s immediately met with the image of a snarling chihuahua.
“I rest my case,” he spits out, nostrils flaring in a way that Jason loathes to admit is similar to his own mannerisms, “and I should charge Father with child endangerment for allowing me to ride with you. Your driving is atrocious.”
Jason breathes out sharply, ignoring Dick’s nervous shifting and how Tim awkwardly turns his gaze toward the window. “Do you seriously not get that it’s freaking dangerous to not wear a seatbelt? Are you kidding me?”
Damian juts out his chin, head up. The little shit looks him up and down, fucking sizing him up, and Jason hates that he’s made that exact same face himself. He knows exactly what those blazing eyes mean.
“It’s not my fault that you’re all inferior to me,” he says, the bold little fucker. “I am the superior Robin, and I can withstand far more–”
He barely feels Dick’s hand on his bicep.
“That is it.” He shoves open the driver’s side door and storms around his car, ignoring Dick’s calls and Tim frantically swiveling around in his seat, unbuckling his own seatbelt. If the kid thinks he’s getting between Damian and the ass-beating of a lifetime, then he’s got another thing coming.
Jason has two hands for a reason.
He rips open the backseat passenger door, hauling Damian up by his Gotham Academy uniform shirt and blatantly ignoring his squirming and protests. The kid needs a damn reality check – like, yesterday.
“What are you doing? Unhand me now, Todd.” Jason laughs shortly. Damian is really going to want his hands off him in a second.
“Jason?” Tim pipes up hesitantly as Jason maneuvers his grip from the boy’s shirt to his bicep, “Are you… uh… really punishing him? Right here?”
Jason gives a grunt of affirmation, having to focus his attention on gripping both of Damian’s arms, since the kid is so damn squirmy. Little jackass.
Too much like his family.
“Punishing me?” Damian questions brashly, kicking out wildly when Jason slides into where Damian had previously been seated. Jason holds him at arm’s length, and Damian pauses for a moment, looking at him smugly. “Father will be angry if you kick me out.”
The little shit thinks he’s smart, huh?
“I’m not kicking you out,” Jason says easily, jerking the kid forward just hard enough to surprise him, and he tumbles toward Jason, landing over the knee he has propped up inside the car. His other leg hangs out, and really, he’s just barely perched enough to be considered in the car.
It’ll do. “I’m kicking your ass.”
Damian pauses in his struggles and the long stream of Victorian curses he’d been spewing, and Jason uses the opportunity to tug at his uniform trousers, pulling them down to mid-thigh. Just enough to expose his Superman boxer shorts.
His struggles increase by tenfold.
“We’re kind of on the side of the road…” Tim begins at the same time Dick exclaims “Jason!”, but Jason doesn’t particularly care about Tim’s point or Dick’s concern. He lifts his hand high, attempting to channel any sense of sternness and responsibility he’d learned from Bruce and Alfred, and slaps it down in the middle of Damian’s ass. Hard.
The sound of it overthrows the chaos, and the car falls silent just in time to hear Damian yelp in surprise.
Jason doesn’t think he’s ever heard Damian sound like that before.
He smacks his hand down again, just slightly lower, and he pays no mind to Dick’s eyes boring into his head. His older brother doesn’t have the balls for this type of thing, but if this little shit doesn’t know what’s good for him, Jason is more than happy to teach him.
Well. Maybe not happy. But he can suck it up and whale on his ass if that’s what he needs.
But as he lands the third swat, overlapping slightly with the first, Damian begins struggling for real, kicking his legs out wildly and accidentally slapping Tim in the stomach when he flails his arms. It’s easy enough for Jason to wrap his right leg around Damian’s calves, and while it’s a bit more effort to snag his wrists, Jason manages to gather them and pin them to the small of his pack, pressing down with his left arm.
For a moment, Damian continues squirming, attempting to move his hips back and forth but finding himself nowhere. Jason’s hand cracks down again, and again, and he slowly builds up a rhythm that keeps Damian from gathering enough breath to spew any more shit.
“You are not spanking me,” he finally bursts when Jason pauses to shake out his hand, hips wiggling as much as they can with the two and a half inches Jason afforded him. It would almost be funny, if the kid weren’t still acting like a defiant brat.
Jason knows he’s not a bad kid. Really, he does. He almost feels bad for doing this in front of Dick and Tim, because if Damian’s bright red ears are any indication, he’s enjoying this about as much as Jason is.
But, really? He should be just as embarrassed, if not more embarrassed, about acting like a damn toddler while on a highway.
“You clearly need to work on your observational skills, little brother,” he says mildly, resuming the spanking with some lighter swats. With how passionate he was at the beginning, he knows they’re still being felt.
Damian growls wordlessly, bucking up his chest and hips and slamming back down, almost like he’s trying to hurt Jason. It’s almost funny. “I’m not your brother!”
Jason hums, landing a particularly hard swat on his left thigh, and Damian makes that foreign yelping noise again. Damian is relatively new to the litter, so maybe he’s just not there yet.
God knows it took Jason long enough. “Then this is gonna be all the more awkward, kiddo, ‘cause I sure as hell think of you as one.” He makes a matching handprint on Damian’s right thigh, and the kid bucks again. “And I’ll be damned if I let you hurt someone I care about just ‘cause you’re too stubborn to admit when you’re wrong.”
Damian is breathing a little hard, and Jason really doesn’t blame him. He knows that the kid can take pain – hell, Jason is the same way – but being bent over someone’s knee, getting scolded and your ass slapped and realizing that you really did fuck up…
Yeah, Jason doesn’t blame him for the quiet sniffles he hears. Not for a damn second.
“I wasn’t – hurting anyone,” he insists, squirming again, but it’s weaker now. He hides his face between Jason’s leg and the cushion, unable to use his pinned arms, and Jason takes that as his cue that there are tears here or tears coming.
Either way, it’s time to wrap it up. Jason doesn’t want to dole out a full-fledged spanking on the side of the road, anyway – this will due.
“You were at risk of hurting yourself,” he emphasizes, leaving quick and sharp smacks all around the areas he already covered. His skin is practically glowing beneath that Superman underwear. “If you can’t get it through your thick skull that in a hypothetical situation, you’d get roasted if you weren’t wearing your seatbelt? Then I figure this is the best way to teach you. This isn’t hypothetical, and if you pull shit like this again, it’s gonna feel really not-hypothetical. Got me?”
Holy fuck, his hand is stinging. How the hell did Bruce do this with all his runts?
“Todd,” Damian grits out – well, tries to grit out. It sounds more like an embarrassed whine than anything, but Jason waits patiently in the meantime, continuing the steady stream of smacks. “I’m– Jason, I understand! I’ll wear it all the time!”
Wow. Jason doesn’t know if he’s more proud of the kid or himself.
He doesn’t know if there’s some etiquette book for this kind of thing, but he’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to stop now. He should probably drive the lesson home, should try to teach him that being agreeable isn’t what they’re trying to achieve here. Words don’t mean shit if he doesn’t mean them, but Jason has a feeling that he does.
Kid doesn’t seem the type to lie needlessly. And Jason isn’t the type to drag things out needlessly.
“Alright,” he says quietly, lifting his leg off of Damian’s before slowly releasing his wrists, rubbing his hands up and down the kid’s arms as he does. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, but it seems a bit counterproductive to preach about Damian’s safety and then potentially cut off blood circulation. “You did a good job, kid. We’re done now.”
Jason half-expects the kid to spring up and punch him in the solar plexus, maybe the jaw if he’s feeling particularly lively. Another part of him thinks he’ll run, or perhaps he’ll sit up gingerly and sulk in his seat for the rest of the ride home. Maybe he’ll demand that Bruce picks him up.
But, no. He just… lays there. Sniffling.
Jason feels a headache pulse behind his eyes, and he briefly considers poking him, just to make sure he’s still responsive. He lifts a finger, about to poke him in the ribcage, when Dick clears his throat.
Jason whips his head up, meeting his eyes quickly, and Dick makes a revolving motion with his hand. Jason’s brows furrow in confusion, his chest aching and his stomach clenching, because literally what? Jason knows he’s better in English than the rest of them, but come on. Is it failing them so miserably now?
He sees movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turns just in time to see Tim’s lips moving. Comfort him, he mouths, eyes wide as he glances down pointedly at Damian, and Jason purses his lips.
Oh. That’s right.
Hesitantly, he lays his hand flat on the kids back, then begins rubbing slow circles there. His uniform shirt bunches up a bit, and he briefly wonders if Damian will throw a hissy fit over that. He hopes not.
He doesn’t think he could so much as swat the kid again, even if he was acting like a complete brat.
“You’re alright, D,” he says quietly, his own chest expanding in time with Damian’s. When he doesn’t protest the back rubs, he inches his other hand up to ruffle the kid’s hair, fingernails scratching lightly at his scalp. “Everything’s forgiven now, just… don’t do it again.”
Yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty good advice.
Damian lays there for another minute or so, until the soft trembling in the boy’s chest eases. Weirdly enough, Jason’s chest doesn’t hurt so much either, now, and when Jason glances up, he finds Dick grinning softly at him.
Jason feels his own face split into a scowl, and if his hands weren’t preoccupied, he’d flip him off. He doesn’t want to think about what his previous expression had been.
He absentmindedly sweeps the boy’s hair back, and that’s when Damian finally moves, quickly snagging Jason’s hand and pushing himself to a kneeling position. “Don’t push your luck, Jason,” he mutters, glowering at him deeply, but Jason can’t shake off the image of a pouting puppy.
His little brother can be adorable when he’s humbled.
“Right back at ya, gremlin,” he says brightly, guiding him to sit in the middle seat. Damian’s face twitches when his butt hits it, but he still puts up a good fight to not show discomfort. Admirable, really.
After a moment, he grabs his seatbelt and buckles himself in, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
Jason tries not to grin. “Dickwad, you take the wheel. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden in the back.” He tosses Dick the keys, ignoring his raised eyebrows when he reflexively catches them, and he tries to avoid Tim’s knowing eyes boring into the side of his head. The bastard is too smart for his own good – even if he jumps into the line of fire for Damian.
Jason buckles his own seatbelt, then settles back into his seat, looking out the window. It really has been a while.As Dick makes his way to the driver’s side, Jason wraps his arm around Damian, pulling him into his side before he can protest.
They’re all silent as the car rumbles to life, but for whatever reason, it isn’t as tense as it should be. Even Damian is relatively settled despite a small slight against Jason’s “atrocious stench” that he’s being “forcibly subjected to”.
He doesn’t pull away, though, and Jason lets it slide, biting his cheek to keep his lips from quirking upward.
“If Dick is allowed to drive your car, does that mean I can use your bike?” Tim pipes up a few minutes later, voice almost startling in the quiet. Damian jerks from where he’d let his head rest against Jason’s chest.
Jason doesn’t even open his eyes. “Fuck no.”
“Jason,” Dick admonishes sharply from the driver’s seat, and Jason doesn’t acknowledge him either, patting his hand against Damian’s opposite shoulder. He’s always found it ironic that Dick is so against swearing. Man should’ve stuck with Richard, if the stick up his ass was going to be that rigid. At least he wouldn’t be a hypocrite, then.
“Father would have both of your asses if Tim drove your motorcycle,” Damian murmurs somewhere near Jason’s armpit, his breath a warm puff of air that seeps through Jason’s T-shirt. Jason lets out a surprised huff of a laugh.
Dick grumbles something about “bad influences,” but Jason doesn’t care, haphazardly ruffling Damian’s hair.
The little demon spawn isn’t so bad.