Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In Jason’s opinion, Bruce was just a little too proud of himself.

“You know that Alfred is making about eight million sides and five pies, right?” he asked from where he was lazily lounging on one of the patio chairs, pretending he wasn’t cold.

Babs wheeled herself over and gave him a smack on the back of the head.

“Hey!” he protested.

She did a 180 turn and wheeled herself back over to Bruce and the Commissioner on the other side of the patio, who was being very proudly shown the two smokers Bruce had set up all by himself that were currently cooking the turkey and the ham. “You know Bruce is culinarily challenged,” she called over his shoulder. “Don’t rain on his parade. It’s Thanksgiving.”

“Whatever,” he muttered. He considered it an act almost worthy of sainthood that he wasn’t mentioning that Alfred had asked him to keep a constant watch on the meat situation to make sure Bruce didn’t start any fires/poison them all. Especially since, being November in Gotham, it was freezing cold outside.

“I’m buying you gloves for Christmas,” Tim said, materialising out of nowhere behind him.

Jason craned his head back to scowl at him and pretend that he hadn’t jumped. “I have gloves.”

“Then put them on, idiot. Your nailbeds are turning blue.”

Jason shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. The pockets were, just as they had been an hour ago when he first came outside, a too-shallow and uncomfortable place to put his hands. The curse of having great style. “Shut up. Maybe they’re always that colour and it’s a side effect of the time I spent as a corpse.”

Tim grinned, the little shit. “You’ve got to cut out the corpse jokes, now. Steph and Crystal just arrived, and I don’t think Steph will love it if she ends up having to spend Thanksgiving explaining to her mom why you think it’s funny to talk about how you died and came back to life.”

“Steph’s here?” He sat up straight in his chair and looked inside. Sure enough, he could see Steph and an older woman with short brown hair being greeted enthusiastically by Titus. That dog loved Steph, much to Damian’s consternation.

“Yep. That’s nearly everyone, now. We’ve got a lot of people coming this year, it’s a good thing Bruce is making a ham as well as a turkey.”

Jason gave him a withering look as he stood up. “Since you’re so excited about the smoked meats, I’m deputising you. Make sure Bruce doesn’t start any fires or let those ones go out. They both need at least another hour of cooking.”

“Where are you going?” Tim asked in a voice that was nearly a whine.

He affected the most innocent facial expression he could muster. “Why, Timbo, I’m going to get introduced to Steph’s mother, of course. Don’t forget to put your gloves on!”

Tim, for all of his huffing and arm folding, didn’t move from the spot Jason had turned into a sentry post. He was looking forward to fully cooked food later. Also, he lived in the house that Bruce’s pride and joy smokers were mere metres away from, and he planned to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Jason felt the pins and needles of a rapid temperature change the moment he stepped inside and closed the sliding glass door behind him. Steph, being focused on telling Titus what a good boy he was, wasn’t the first to spot him.

“Oh, hi!” the woman who must have been Crystal Brown said. She didn’t look a thing like Steph, which meant that Steph must have inherited her looks from her sucky D-list supervillain dad. Which was absolutely not a good topic of conversation on Thanksgiving. He shook himself back into reality.

“Hi!” he said, with his warmest smile and probably an ounce too much pep, based on the raised eyebrow Steph gave him. “I’m Jason. Happy Thanksgiving!”

Crystal beamed back at him and grabbed his hand to shake. “Oh, it’s so nice to finally put a face to the name!” she said, with a glance at Steph that Jason was absolutely trying to read nothing into. “Stephanie has told me all about you. Thank you so much for all the help you’ve been giving her at college.”

Steph was an interesting shade of red. He resisted the urge to grin in her direction.

“Oh, I’m sure she’s exaggerated. We’ve got a few classes in common, so we just help each other out sometimes.” That part was only sort-of true. He definitely did the majority of the helping, and a lot of it was with classes Steph was taking that he’d already done. “Your daughter is brilliant, I don’t know how she balances everything she has going on.” That part was absolutely true, and he tried to convey that by looking Steph straight in the eyes.

She wasn’t as red as before. And she was giving him a soft smile.

“I know, I’m just so proud of her!” Crystal said, wrapping an arm around her daughter and snapping him out of whatever that moment of distraction was.

“Well, you definitely should be!” he said, false holiday cheer permeating his voice. “Now, everyone’s out on the patio looking at Bruce’s super cool smokers, if you can stand the cold.”

Crystal turned to look at her daughter. “Oh, we’ll have to go and check that out! And you can introduce me to Bruce Wayne!” She laughed. “I can’t believe I’ve never met the man who’s invited me to his house for Thanksgiving!”

Jason laughed along with her, a fake, sitcom canned laugh. She wasn’t about to meet Bruce, she was about to meet Brucie, because even Steph’s wonderful, hardworking mother wouldn’t be deemed worthy of learning even the secret that her host for the day wasn’t an idiot himbo.

“Yes, Bruce is a very enthusiastic host,” he said.

“It’s so lovely to be invited to a place like this, isn’t it?” she asked. “I remember Steph said that you’re a friend of the family. You must be here all the time!”

He looked at Steph, who’s face seemed to be trying to convey something between an apology and a plea to go along with it. Fair enough, her mother couldn’t exactly know that he was the murdered and resurrected black sheep of the adopted Wayne family. He didn’t tend to acknowledge that he was anything more than an acquaintance of the residents of this house most of the time anyway.

“Not as often as I used to be when I was younger,” he said to Crystal with a smile on his face that did nothing at all to betray the painful truth behind that answer. “Now, if you’ll just excuse me, I’ve got to go and help Alfred out in the kitchen.”

Steph gave him another apologetic look behind her mom’s back as they walked away, and he smiled back. No harm done. She was probably still going to try to corner him for an unnecessary explanation later. Hopefully he could distract her with his grand plans for pranks.

Trying to help Alfred was a no-go. It was clear where his charge had picked up his stubborn pride, because Alfred Pennyworth had a week’s worth of food preparation work, a perfectly timed schedule and three ovens, and he would accept assistance from no man.

“Alfie, I can see you trying to stir the caramelised onions with one hand and the roux with the other.”

“And what would your point be, young man?” Alfred asked. Somewhere in the room, a timer dinged. Without missing a single stir of the roux that would form the base of his gravy, Alfred used the handle of the wooden spoon he was using to flip open the door to the lower oven at his left. The onions came off the heat temporarily and a tray of steaming bread rolls landed on the cooling rack on the kitchen island. Without missing a beat, Alfred grabbed a tray of something wrapped in puff pastry and slid it into the rolls’ recently vacated spot in the oven.

“No point, Alfred. No point.”

He wandered back outside, snacking on the cranberry and brie in filo pastry hors d'oeuvre he’d snagged from the fridge without Alfred noticing. The party had grown while he was gone – Steph was nowhere in sight, but Damian had emerged from wherever he had been hiding and was trying to keep Titus, inquisitive about the smell of ham, away from the smokers, and Crystal Brown was now chatting to a bemused Selina Kyle.

“I didn’t know she was coming,” he commented to Babs, who was observing the scene from close to the door. Her dad was still enthusiastically talking to Bruce about something, presumably related to the fine art of cooking meat outside, next to the smokers.

“You mean Selina? She’s here more often than you are, these days,” Barbara said.

“Ouch,” he said. “You’re not normally this mean on a holiday, Barbie. You aren’t still sore about the giant red balloons, are you?”

Her head snapped towards him. “Are you finally admitting to the balloons?”

“What balloons?” he asked smoothly. She glared at him, and he cracked a smile. As it had done since he was twelve, that wore her down.

“Fine, I might be a little on edge. Dad asked me if I was sure we were invited this year, because of, you know, and Dick isn’t here yet and Tim just told me that he’s bringing a plus one.”

Jason did know. Thankfully not too many details, but he was aware that the golden couple had broken up a couple of months ago. It hadn’t occurred to him that Barbara and Jim might skip the Wayne family Thanksgiving over it, since they’d been automatic parts of the family for so long that it didn’t feel like their connection was via Dick. Since he’d lived in the Manor through some of their peak on-again-off-again years, it had barely occurred to him that it might make Thanksgiving awkward.

Time to be reassuring. “Dick’s an idiot, but he’s not stupid. Nobody brings a date to Thanksgiving. He’s probably just trying to scare her off or something, show her how crazy his family is so she’ll dump him out of terror that he’ll pop the question.”

Barbara looked at him like he was two sandwiches short of a picnic. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Jason sighed. “Okay, how about this. Dick still cares about you even though you broke up, and he’s not insensitive enough to bring some girlfriend that’s serious enough to meet the family with him to parade in front of you. His ‘plus one’ is probably just a friend from work with no family close by. Or one of the Titans, or something. I know Roy wasn’t looking forward to dinner with Dinah and Ollie this year, maybe he bailed and tagged along with Dick instead.”

That seemed to have done the trick. She was actually smiling now. “Thanks Jay, you’re right. I’m just overthinking.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said, nudging her arm. “Now, do you know where Steph-“

He didn’t get the chance to finish the question, because his absolute moron of a supposed older brother chose that moment to make his entrance through the patio doors.

“So this is where everyone is hiding! Happy Thanksgiving!” Dick practically shouted. He then looked behind him, and reached through the doors, pulling a hand back with him. A hand that was connected to an arm, and then to the rest of one of the most stunning women Jason had ever seen in person, and someone who needed no introduction. Dick gave her one anyway. “Does everyone remember Kori?”

Kori, aka Starfire, aka Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, Teen Titans founding member, part time supermodel, and Dick’s former fiancée, gave a shy wave.

Beside Jason, Barbara made a slightly inhuman noise.

This was going to be an interesting Thanksgiving.

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe he brought her,” Barbara hissed.

“So you’ve said.” Jason idly wondered how long ago that hors d'oeuvre had been and whether he’d be able to get away with snagging another one if he swung by the kitchen again. Probably not. He might need to recruit Steph to go, and grab two.

“I can’t believe you hugged her!”

“She’s my friend, Babs, that’s how you greet friends. I hugged you when you got here, didn’t I?”

“No, you were too busy making fun of Bruce and his smokers.”

“Oh,” Jason said. “Well, sorry. Do you want a hug now?”

Barbara’s glare could have melted ice. “I don’t want your pity hugs, Jason Todd. I want my ex not to have brought another girl to Thanksgiving.”

“Would it make you feel any better if I told you that I’m not 100% sure that gender works the same way on Tamaran, so she might not be a girl in the traditional sense?” Jason asked. He was actively salivating thinking about cranberry sauce now, this was a problem.

“Tell that to her boobs,” Barbara muttered.

Jason supressed a laugh and stood up. “Well, now you’re just being bitter. I’m going to go and see if Alfred needs any more help.”

He made it about three paces into the next room before Steph intercepted him. “He doesn’t need any help.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Because I already helped him,” she said with the kind of grin that meant she was holding back key information so it could be a ‘reveal’.

He couldn’t help but smile back. “And how, exactly, did you help Alfred prepare Thanksgiving dinner?”

She presented the hand she’d been unsubtly hiding behind her back with a flourish, because it was unexpectedly holding a silver tray packed with filo pastry, brie, and cranberries. Jason eagerly grabbed three at once.

“Because I’m serving the pre-dinner hors d’oeuvres for him,” she said unnecessarily.

“Stephanie Brown, you constantly surpass all expectations,” he said with a grin through a mouthful of food. You could take the kid out of the Alley, but talking with his mouth full had been such a thing of horror to society ladies at galas when he was 13 that it was a firmly engrained habit now.

She blushed, and gave him a curtsey and an additional and somewhat perilous flourish of the tray. “I try. Now, I’ve got to pass these around. Do you think Babs would want some? If I was her right now, I’d want some. Or would she be mad if I gave her ten of these things and then she couldn’t eat dinner?”

“She can hear you and wants whatever the food is,” Barbara called from the next room, where Jason had just left her. She wheeled herself in. “Oooh, brie and cranberry in filo?”

Before either Stephanie nor Jason could do anything to stop it happening, the tray was balanced on Barbara’s lap and she was wheeling away.

“Maybe she’s going to serve them around to everyone else to save me a job?” Steph theorised without much enthusiasm.

“Maybe,” Jason agreed. “Or maybe she’s going to eat all of them herself in celebration of the most dramatic Wayne family Thanksgiving in history.”

Steph gave him a look. “Most dramatic in history? You forget that I’ve known this family for years. How does ‘Dick brings a date’ even rank?”

Jason grinned wickedly. “Well, I’m glad you asked. First up, Kori is no ordinary date. She and Dick used to be engaged, I know you weren’t around for that part but it was pretty big news at the time, and as far as I’ve been able to ascertain Dick didn’t tell anyone, including Babs, that they were back together or that she was the plus one he told Alfred he was bringing to Thanksgiving.”

She flapped her hands at him. “Yeah, yeah, knew all of that. Dick is a dick. It’s a Tuesday.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“It’s a saying. What else?”

“Well, I happen to know that Damian is expecting a vegetarian main dish, other than the turkey and the ham obviously, and both Bruce and Alfred thought that fell into the other one’s purview this year and neither of them has made it.”

Her eyes widened. “Alfred’s perfect flawless dinner plan is about to fall apart because Bruce didn’t think he could smoke a tofurky?”

“To be entirely fair, I think he’d probably be right about that.”

“How long have you known that time is slowly ticking closer to a Damian Wayne meltdown-slash-vegetarianism lecture?”

Jason grinned and didn’t answer.

“Oh, Alfred is going to kill you.”

“Hey, as far as Alfred is going to know, I’m going to be realising the omission at the same time as everyone else. And nobody’s going to tell him otherwise, capiche?”

Steph had the audacity to laugh in his face. “Did you really just say ‘capiche’ to my face like some wannebe mobster? Jay, that’s adorable. I don’t care how many mobs you’ve technically been a part of, nobody who can recite the names of every Shakespeare play shouldn’t be saying ‘capiche’.”

“People always forget Pericles.”

“They really don’t. Please tell me that was it, I know we said chaos would be fun but I really don’t want my mom to think that you’re – I mean, the family, the whole Wayne family, which includes you, although I guess she doesn’t know that-“

“Steph,” he said, cutting her off before she could ramble all the way off a cliff. “I have left the best until last, my friend.”

She groaned. “Oh god, do I even want to know?”

He leaned in so close that she could smell the cranberries on his breath. “Selina has been drinking apple juice and soda water since she got here.”

She looked at him blankly.

He sighed. “I’ve known Selina Kyle for probably about a decade. In that time, I’ve never seen her turn down a glass of red wine. The vintage Alfred put out for pre-dinner drinks today isn’t one she has any objections to. I know this because she’s not a wine snob, she’ll drink everything from a 1787 Chateau Margaux to the stuff that comes in a box.”

She sat down. There wasn’t actually a chair behind her, since they were in the hallway between the kitchen and the informal sitting room and both of those rooms were considered to have adequate seating without additional chairs being provided on the route in-between. So she sat on the floor.

“You think Bruce is going to be a dad,” she whispered.

Jason frowned. “Bruce is already a dad.”

She waved her hands. “I mean, properly.”

“Again, Damian has existed for some time now.”

“There’s going to be a baby, Jason!”

"Maybe. Or maybe Selina has just developed a taste for apple juice and soda water."

"This isn't funny!" She ran a hand over her face. "I can't believe you and my mom getting along was the thing I was worried about most for today," she muttered. She looked back up at him. "Do you think Bruce knows?"

"I know that I'm not going to be the one to tell him." Before Steph had a chance to sigh with relief, he kept talking. "Unless I end up in a situation where the timing is really perfect. I'm thinking around the dinner table, right after Dick announces that he re-proposed to Kori, Damian has finished ranting and started helping himself to the mac and cheese, and everything is starting to settle down again."

She looked at him in horror. "Dick is re-proposing to Kori?"

Jason shrugged. "How should I know? He's only my purported big brother, why would he tell me? Maybe Tim knows."

She shook her head in disbelief. "Jason Todd, you are an agent of chaos. You know, I was talking to Kori earlier, and she seems really sweet."

"I know Kori's great, we're friends," he said with a suspicious squint.

"Yeah, you came up," Steph said with a grin that he wasn't at all sure how to interpret. "She thinks you're wonderful, and kind, and funny, and I believe the word handsome was floated around as well."

"Oh no, absolutely not," he said, physically backing away from the young woman sat on the floor.

"I'm just saying, if we need to torpedo a proposal for the sake of our good friend Barbara's feelings on this holiday-day, a love triangle isn't a bad way to go!"

"It's a terrible way to go, and I don't believe for a minute that Kori actually thinks I'm charming."

"I don't think I said charming," Steph said. "But by the way, you're absolutely charming when you want to be, you just choose not to be about 90 percent of the time."

"Only 90?" he said, raising an eyebrow and stepping closer so he loomed over her. "Most people would put that number closer to 99."

She held her hands up in a silent request to be pulled to her feet, which he complied with without hesitation. "Well then," she said, her face now considerably closer to his face than it usually was, "I guess you're more charming around me than you are around most people."

Jason was saved the challenge of figuring out how to reply to that when Tim appeared in the doorway at the dining room end of the hall. "Alfred says dinner's ready!"

Steph took a step backwards and gave him a small smile. "Guess I'll see you in there," she said.

Any kind of intelligent response would have taken too long - his brain was still rebooting a little. "Yeah," he said. As she walked down the hall, he whispered to himself: "You're not most people."

The family gathered around the dinner table, just like any other family, if other families were gathering around 18th century hand-carved dinner tables won by their current owner's great grandfather in a hand of poker in which he definitely cheated. And if other families consisted of a dad, his possibly pregnant girlfriend, a number of children, biological, adopted, and legally dead but still very much his son in spirit, two young women who had both previously dated his sons and felt like surrogate daughters to him, and one of their parents apiece. And not forgetting the alien princess and the butler.

Kori was smiling at Jason when he sat down next to her. "I did you a big favour earlier, you know," she said in hushed tones.

"You did?" Jason asked. He wondered how she knew that her appearance had contributed to the zero work he'd had to put in to making this a chaotic celebration of a silly holiday.

"I talked you up to Stephanie. It's very obvious you like her, but not to her, I think. You could stand to be a little more forthcoming with her about your feelings, I can only do so much."

Jason could have laughed in relief, but he was too distracted by her blasé announcement that there was something going on between him and Steph. "She thought you were just talking about me because you like me, you know."

Kori thought for a moment. "Was she jealous, when she thought that?"

"Not that I noticed." For some reason, that thought gave him a sinking feeling.

"Well, certainly we can fix that!"

Somehow, despite years of training with world-class assassins and priding himself on being able to see any opponent's next move coming, Jason didn't anticipate Kori's kiss on his cheek, somewhat closer to the mouth than was usual for platonic friends, until it was too late.

Across from him at the table, Barbara gave him a look of incredulity and gratitude. Tim, next to her, just looked tired, but that might have been resignation because he's just realised he had been put next to Damian. Jason had to force himself to turn his head towards the end of the table where Steph and her mom were sat.

She looked jealous, he thought with a dry mouth, as the last few dishes arrived on the table courtesy of Alfred and Dick, who was loudly explaining (ostensibly to Alfred, but definitely in Barbara's general direction) that Kori's plans for the day had fallen through last minute and he'd found out that his good friend of many years had never experienced a real family Thanksgiving.

Damian's eyes were scanning the table for the vegetarian dish that wasn't there, and Jason's eyes didn't leave Stephanie's.

"Father, did you forget to bring in anything from the smokers?" Damian asked. "Or perhaps Pennyworth, from the kitchen?"

Kori and Dick weren't together, and Dick was probably going to apologise to Barbara right after dinner and they'd be back together within a week. If he did anything to mess with Selina, she'd sic Harley and Ivy on him and he'd have no peace for months.

She had been worried about him meeting her mother.

"Pennyworth, are you sure?" Damian asked, his little face starting to turn red.

Jason stood up suddenly. Everyone looked at him. "I, um, I left something in the car," he said.

Then he ran out, and he didn't know who would run out after him or if anyone would, but he got to container in the backseat of his car, and he turned around, and there she was.

"What's in there, Jason?" Steph asked. "I thought you were just running out with a random excuse, and then you were going to leave. But you somehow actually forgot something in the car?"

Jason winced. He would have thought that about himself too. He wondered what it meant about his past approach to Thanksgiving that none of his family had come after him when it looked like he was running away right before dinner. "I didn't forget it. I only just decided I needed to bring it in," he said.

"What is it?"

"It's a thermos container. Pretty good one, too. Keeps cold things cold, keeps cooked foods up to temperature."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're not funny. What's in the container?"

He sighed, well aware that this moment marked the true end of what could have been a beautiful day of chaos. as well as the end of any credibility he had as a Thanksgiving grinch. "It's a Tofurky."

And if he just barely avoided dropping the container when she kissed him, well, that was a Thanksgiving miracle.