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Jason was reading in the library of Wayne Manor, waiting for Alfred to announce dinner, when Dick plopped down on the couch beside him. Dick didn’t say anything, just fiddled with a throw pillow, and that was a warning sign Jason recognized. Dick wanted to talk.
Jason resisted the urge to look up immediately, knowing that ignoring Dick wasn’t going to be enough to make him go away, but also wanting to put off whatever conversation was incoming (at least till the end of the chapter). If Dick was just passing by and annoying him out of principle or boredom he would already be asking ten million questions. No, Dick’s silence, his waiting until Jason got to a place to stop and engaged willingly meant that this was going to be a talk .
After three pages, and without looking up from his book, Jason sighed. “What do you want, Dickface?”
“You’ve been spending a lot more time in the manor recently.” Dick was staring at him; Jason could feel it.
Jason’s voice was thin as he replied. “Is that a problem?”
“Of course not.” Dick wasn’t staring anymore and was now repeatedly throwing the pillow to just above head height, catching it, and repeating the process. “It’s really good having you around more.”
Jason couldn’t stop himself from glancing up at that. He searched Dick’s face for any hint of sarcasm, but there was none, just a genuine smile.
Toss. Catch. “You’re staying for dinner, right?”
“Yeah.” Jason knew there was more to this conversation, but he still couldn’t quite figure out what thread Dick was pulling on yet.
Toss. Catch. “And you’re joining us tomorrow to help plan out that big trafficking bust?”
“Against my better judgment.”
Dick grinned at that. Toss. Catch. “Roads are pretty icy right now.”
“Uh-huh.” Jason could feel his defenses rising, like he could sense a discussion coming that he’d already had before, even though he still wasn’t sure what Dick was getting at.
Dick held onto the pillow without throwing it, breaking the rhythm, and glanced back at Jason. “So, you should really spend the night here.”
There it was.
Jason rolled his eyes. “Dick–”
But Dick cut off whatever weak excuse Jason would have come up with. “See, at first I thought you and Bruce were getting into it when I wasn’t paying attention, but the two of you have actually been doing okay lately. And you and Damian seem to have come to an understanding. And you know Alfred worries about you out on your bike so late and on bad roads. But you still always hightail it out of here at the end of the evening like the house is on fire.”
Jason looked away. He really should have figured someone in this house of detectives would notice, but he was not expecting anyone to really care enough to question him about it.
Dick had resumed tossing the pillow. “So, it isn’t any of the usual suspects. And I just can’t figure out why you keep bailing. But it's become a pattern. I heard you tell Cass that your apartment was being fumigated last week, and you still didn’t spend the night here. When you broke three ribs a few months back you left the cave against medical advice and one of Alfred’s more disapproving looks to recuperate elsewhere.”
Dick caught the pillow and turned to fully face Jason. “Why don’t you want to stay at the manor, Jay?”
Jason had a choice. He could try to ignore this whole conversation and go back to his book. This was a low stakes inquiry. No one was likely to get hurt if Dick didn’t solve this mystery, so if Jason refused to engage with it, he knew that Dick would eventually drop it, if only to keep Jason from spending even less time at the manor.
Or he could lie. Jason could give any number of reasons that Dick wouldn’t really like but that he would begrudgingly accept and that would put an end to this conversation. He didn’t have one ready (he tended to just come up with reasons he couldn’t stay when he needed them without considering the larger pattern) but with enough sarcasm and stalling he could easily come up with something Dick would have to believe.
Or…
Jason shut his book. He glanced at the door and listened carefully. One of the good things about Wayne Manor was that it was an old house, and old houses had their own voice when it came to the various creaks and squeaks people made while moving around. It wasn’t impossible to learn them and try to avoid some of the more obvious ones (all of the kids knew to avoid the sixth and fourteenth steps if they were trying to sneak downstairs, for example) but it was a difficult house to move around silently. And, unless you were a child trying to sneak into the kitchen for treats or down to the cave when you’d been benched, there weren’t a lot of reasons to take that much trouble when moving around the house day-to-day.
Jason sat back heavily, and when he spoke it was low and quiet. “You can’t tell Alfred.”
Dick had already looked concerned, but Jason could see his words cause a noticeable uptick in Dick’s apprehension. Keeping secrets from Alfred was not a request one made lightly. Dick nodded solemnly. “Okay.”
There was no sense in dragging it out. “I hate my room.”
Jason saw Dick’s head tilt a fraction as he frowned. That was clearly not an answer he had been expecting.
“Your room?” he repeated.
The words started tumbling out, somewhat unbidden. “It’s not even really my room at this point. It’s a shrine to someone I wouldn’t even recognize anymore.” His fingers played with the edges of the book cover and he momentarily resented that he loved Alfred too much to smoke in the manor (and he was trying to quit…again).
“Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the hell out of the fact that Al has kept up with it all these years. He cleans it just like he does everyone else’s rooms and apparently has ever since Bruce found out I wasn’t dead anymore. Airs it out, changes the sheets, dusts, the whole routine. When I ended up in there after getting a face full of fear toxin last fall I found out that he even keeps buying new clothes in my size and keeping a few things there, just in case.”
Dick nodded. “He did the same thing after I got kicked out. Kept my room in order, just in case I ever needed it.”
Jason felt his shoulders slump. “Which is why you can’t tell him that’s the reason. It’s not his fault that I can’t stand to be in there.” He ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath to steady himself. Dick waited and just listened. “The book I was reading before…before I left is still on the nightstand. My textbooks are gone because I’m sure Alfred returned them to the school, but I’ll bet the desk is full of my old notebooks for a school year I never finished. There are posters on the walls, and I still even like some of the bands and movies, but I can’t relate to the kid who put them up there anymore.
“It’s like a time capsule. Or a museum display. The damn Robin suit in the Cave is bad enough, but I mean, Bruce also has a dinosaur down there, so at least it isn’t completely out of place. We all know he’s a hoarder who can’t let go of the past.” That made Dick chuckle. “But my room shouldn’t be that. It should be…I dunno. Mine . And it just isn’t anymore.”
Dick waited to be sure that Jason had said everything that he wanted to say. “That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing that with me, Jason.”
Jason rolled his eyes but smiled despite himself. It felt surprisingly good to have that off his chest. He wasn’t going to tell Dick, but he was secretly grateful that Dick had asked him about it. It felt a little less shameful to be slinking away from the manor every night now that someone knew why. And seemed to understand.
Dick hugged the pillow to himself tightly. “Now, I don’t know if you are looking for a solution, but I have a suggestion that I think you’ll like, if you are open to it.” He gave Jason a patented Dick Grayson grin. “It involves spending Bruce’s money.”
Jason raised a brow. “I’m listening.”
Dick pulled out his wallet and rummaged through it as he spoke. “It sounds like what you need is to give your room a makeover. An extreme makeover, perhaps. And I just so happen to have,” he pulled a black credit card out of his wallet and held it between his fingers, “access to the kind of funds to make that happen.”
It was Jason’s turn to chuckle. “You’re suggesting we go shopping?”
“I am suggesting,” and the mischievousness in Dick’s grin was contagious, “that we go on a shopping spree the likes of which the kid who used to have that room never would have dreamed of. He was still worried about pissing Bruce off. He didn’t know the doors a Black Card opens for you.”
“You want to turn the very act of decorating my room into a transgression against Bruce?” Jason did not comment on how effective this argument already was.
“I want to make decorating your room a bonding experience, somewhat at the expense of our mutual guardian, who we both know can be an overbearing tightass. Because if we are going to give your room a makeover, let’s not go halfway. Let’s make it an event to remember in order to overshadow what it was before as much as possible.”
Dick shrugged. “And then you can try reading in there when you visit and everything down here is chaos and see if it feels more like it belongs to you. And if it still isn’t somewhere you want to spend the night all the time, maybe it will at least be somewhere you can bear to stay when you are sick or injured to let Alfred dote on you without feeling the need to bolt immediately.”
Jason was already fully on board, but he wasn’t willing to let on that he’d been swayed so easily. “You know he won’t even miss the money.” Because even with nearly unlimited funds, Jason still had some restraint.
“All the more reason to spend it on a worthy cause.”
“Won’t he just make us return everything when he sees the bill?”
“After I tearfully explain to him that it was all I could think of to help my baby brother feel more comfortable staying here with us?” Dick gave Jason a preview of his saddest face, at once full of contrition and pained by a lack of other options, and Jason was reminded, once again, that Dick was a born performer. He dropped the face just as quickly and grinned. “Nah.”
Jason shook his head. People were always so quick to assume that he and Damian were the troublemakers of the family, but they tended to forget the force of chaos Dick was when he wanted to be. Also, (and again, Jason would never admit this) Dick was just better at getting away with stuff.
“Why do you even have Bruce’s Black Card?”
Dick shrugged. “It was for a case.” He did not elaborate.
“And how long ago did you solve that case?”
“Never you mind that. It comes in handy and technically Bruce has never actually asked for it back.”
“He might after we do this.” Jason thought that might give Dick pause about going through with this plan.
But Dick just grinned. “He might.” Dick shrugged. “Worth the risk.”
Finally, Jason broached the topic of perhaps his only actual concern. “What about my old stuff?”
Dick considered this question with more thought than the others. “If you’ve got the energy for it, we go through it now. If not, we box it up for later for when you decide it's something you want to deal with. Or a mix of both. Some things might be easier to immediately donate or throw away and others you might need more time on. Or you send me in there with boxes and you can start with a completely fresh slate. We’ve got options.”
And in truth, options were what Jason felt he had been lacking. He didn’t like hobbling away from the manor with broken bones, but he also hadn’t felt like he could spend the night in that room without facing up to a whole lot of mental demons he still felt wholly unprepared for. Dick was offering him choices. He was offering control.
Jason did his best to smirk, to hide the cascade of emotions he wasn’t entirely ready to admit to yet. “There are a few first editions I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on.”
Dick batted Jason with the pillow triumphantly. “That’s the spirit!” His grin remained as his look turned a bit more thoughtful. “The real question is, which will be more satisfying, us coming home with our arms full of luxury purchases or days and days of boxes arriving from online shopping?”
It was Jason’s turn to shrug. “Why not both?”
“I keep telling you, we need to team up more often. This is going to be fun.” Dick gave Jason an affectionate shoulder bump.
Jason only pretended to be a little annoyed.
There were footsteps approaching down the hall, and both boys recognized Alfred’s gait and the distinctive sound of his shoes. Alfred paused at the library door. “Master Richard. Master Jason. Dinner will be served shortly.”
“Thanks, Al!” Dick called after him as he continued on to find the rest of the household. Dick stood up and stretched in an excessive display of flexibility that left Jason wondering how it was possible for Dick to move that way if he wasn’t missing some bones somewhere.
Jason put his book on the side table and began to follow Dick to out of the library when he paused.
“Hey, Dickie.”
“Yeah, Jay?”
“Thanks.”
Dick paused and gave Jason a small smile. Not a blinding, patented, sunny Dick Grayson smile, but one that showed that Dick understood the weight of that one word and also that he didn’t even feel the thanks was necessary.
He put his arm around Jason’s shoulder as they continued toward the dining room together.
“Let’s see….To start with, I’m going to have to introduce you to the wonders of Egyptian cotton bed sheets. It’s going to change your life.”