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It takes Dick the better part of an afternoon to mediate the clusterfuck Jason gets himself into. It’s the last thing Dick wants to be dealing with that day given the importance of everything else he’s meant to be doing, but there’s nothing to be done for it. Waste of time that it is, all Dick can do is bear through the bullshit. Listening with half an ear and pretending to care as a room full of Gotham Academy parents raise hell over petty slights and thinly disguised prejudicial disdain.
That this is how Bruce must have felt whenever he had to run interference for Dick isn’t lost on him. ‘So shall you reap,’ the saying goes, but the universe is taking it too far with its karmic retribution this time. Dick was a kid back then and he’s no dad now; he’s arguably not even a brother. Given that, the wave of sympathy Dick feels for Bruce is short-lived. It doesn’t fill him with penitence, just an inordinate amount of irritation.
It doesn’t make sense why Dick is here, sitting in the Dean’s office of Gotham Academy with Jason stood beside him and a hoard of pissy parents flanking them from all sides. There’s no way Dick is at the top of any emergency contact list. Given the severity of the allegations being made and the proposed punishments, Dick doesn’t feel qualified to be the one dealing with this. It seems inappropriate. Negligent, even.
Then again, maybe this is Bruce being petty and getting back at him. Joke would be on him though, because Dick was so much worse than Jason. Maybe not in crime, but definitely in conduct. Jason at least has the sense to stay quiet beside him and look chagrined. Dick can’t say he ever attended any of these farcical meetings with anything remotely resembling remorse–just a biting smile and a sharp tongue that got him out of trouble as much as it got him into it.
That Dick fully intends to employ the same tactics to get Jason and himself out of this mess is something he duly notes. Bruce might have always gotten irritated with Dick for his manipulations and the vicious way he talked circles around people until they fessed up to their shameful truths, but the fact stands that Dick’s means are effective. He’s not going to fix what isn’t broken. That besides, Dick doesn’t get to play this game all too often anymore. He misses the strategy to it–the challenge in quick, critical thinking and emotional intelligence to achieve his own means.
It’s a little twisted. In his defense, so is this meeting.
However quiet Dick is about it, Jason still flinches when Dick heaves a long suffering sigh. The kid is sensitive to frustrations not meant for him, antsy because Gotham’s elites are calling for his expulsion and the dean that panders to them is more than ready to commit. Dick hears it in the way Jason holds his breath; sees in his peripheral the way Jason shifts his weight from foot to foot and how he ducks his head whenever the need to look to Dick for assurance overcomes him.
They claim Jason has been stealing from the other students. There are a suspicious number of his peers that can attest to witnessing the thievery, but most damning is how multiple items were found in Jason’s bag during a routine check that morning–prompted by a tip off from one of their many upstanding scholars. It’s a point the dean drives home by dumping the contents of Jason’s bag across the low table separating them all, a mix of school things and luxuries displayed with tacky flourish, an ineffective ‘gotcha’ moment that does little more than reignite everyone’s ire and fuel their outrage.
It’s tedious.
Just as tedious: Jason. Who stays so quiet where he stands beside Dick that the kid may as well not be there at all. Dick knows Jason isn’t shy with his words. He’s got as sharp a tongue as Dick and a temper to match. To take the verbal lashing instead of fighting back, kicking and screaming? It’s weird.
Curiously, Dick looks at Jason. Quiet as he observes him: from the way Jason’s hands tangle nervously behind his back to the stubborn set of his jaw. It looks like Jason tries to convince himself he doesn’t care what happens; that this was expected, so he can’t be disappointed.
“We’ve extended him more grace than we would other students given Jason’s…extenuating circumstances, but we cannot accommodate him further.” The dean challenges him. Dick’s gaze slides away from Jason, attention shifting to the thousands of dollars worth of stolen luxuries on the table in front of them, scattered over Jason’s discarded school things. “He’s been caught red-handed too many times over. If he insists on being a thief, perhaps he might have better luck being rehabilitated in juvenile detention again.”
Miserable as he looks, Jason bites his tongue. It’s like the kid is so jaded that the insult of false allegations doesn't register to him. Or he’s so distrustful of authority that he’d sooner take the abuse he can anticipate than risk being hurt worse by trying to defend himself or by asking for help.
‘Speak up.’ Dick wants to tell him, ‘You’re better than this.’
But Jason stays quiet. There’s no fight in him, not even a spark.
“We won’t tolerate this unscrupulous behavior, Mr. Grayson.”
No, Dick thinks to himself, he doesn’t suppose they will. Dick certainly won’t be.
The accusations are bullshit and it pisses him off. Neutral as Dick keeps his expression, there’s a cold severity in his eyes that steals the collective breath from the room. It shuts them up because even out-of-touch ignoramuses aren’t blind to a wolf in a pack of sheep. The threat passes between blinks, at which point Dick yields.
He doesn’t doubt that Jason could pickpocket a man for all his worth, but like hell the kid would be caught in the act or with any evidence to prove it was him. Even without the Robin skill set, Jason was surviving alone in Crime Alley for years. Jason is too capable, competent, smart for this crap.
To get caught.
To steal at all now that there’s no need.
That this school and these people assume otherwise? It irritates him. Dick taps his finger once against the armrest of the chair he sits in, a show of impatience until he remembers to still himself. He isn’t any stranger to this institution’s biases or classism. He endured it for years, himself, but it doesn’t bother him any less now that he’s removed from it. If anything, it feels worse. Because it’s Jason who’s forced to endure it now.
Gotham’s elites can think what they want of Jason’s pedigree, but there’s nothing about him that’s lacking. He’s a good kid who tries too hard and cares too much; who gets under Dick’s skin, tests his patience, and reminds him of the magic of his own namesake.
It’s apparent from what’s happened in this meeting alone that Jason isn’t the Crime Alley delinquent everyone wants to generalize him as. He’s the sort of kid that worries about the opinion of a father so much that he’d trick the school into calling Dick . Because somehow Dick’s annoyance is more bearable than Bruce’s disappointment. The sort that gets nervous over a meeting with the dean and who shrinks at the threat of expulsion. The kind that flinches when his book bag gets unceremoniously upended across a table, denting the corner of his books and creasing the pages of his homework.
A kid who won’t speak up for himself because experience has proven to him his voice doesn’t matter.
The silence that settles over the room is heavy. Everyone waits on Dick, but Dick waits on Jason. One beat, then two. Hasslesome as it would be, Dick wouldn’t mind accommodating more trouble if it meant Jason would try defending himself. Whatever he had to say, Dick would back him up if the kid would just try .
But he doesn’t. Or rather, he can’t. Because everything Jason might want to say is caught somewhere in his throat. He’s nervous, frustrated. Scared and hurting and it’s striking–the difference in Jason when he’s dressed in Dick’s colors compared to the ill-fitting uniform of Gotham Academy.
Jason is more confident as Robin. Dick hopes that changes with time. Let the boy keep the confidence Robin inspires, because it’s Jason in the end.
Until Jason comes to understand that though, Dick is here to catch him. So, though it doesn’t bear asking, Dick looks at Jason and prompts him: “Did you do it?”
Everyone else in the room scoffs, rolling their eyes at the display. Dick keeps his attention singularly on Jason–the way Jason’s expression pinches and how he bites his lip to keep it from trembling. Though he continues to avoid Dick’s gaze, Jason still shakes his head once. Then again, more fervently. Dick wonders if this is the first time Jason has been asked his side of the story; if it’s the first time anyone cared to listen.
“No.” Jason says, and it’s enough.
One day, Dick hopes Jason can stand up for himself better. Until then, it’s not like Dick isn’t here to have Jason’s back.
With just a look, Dick commands focus, drawing scornful glares away from Jason and forcing them to settle on Dick, instead. For all the protests that flew to everyone’s lips upon hearing Jason’s denial of guilt, they’re hushed now under the weight of Dick’s gaze.
They wait. Tense, irate.
And Dick shrugs, lackadaisical.
“Seems we have a difference in opinion.” Dick says.
“We have proof –” Someone starts to say, but Dick scoffs, brushing them off with an impudent wave of his hand.
“Fabricated.” Dick concludes, catty in his dismissiveness. He doesn’t miss the way some of the students startle, eyes wide as they try to cut discreet glances between each other. When they catch Dick watching them, they hurriedly look away, posture stiff and skin pale.
They’re not nearly as impressive as they all thought they were. They never are.
“Mr. Grayson, we are not doing this again. ”
The challenge makes Dick smile. So fake that it becomes something chilling, biting as he settles in. Pulling one ankle to rest over his knee and slouching just far enough to rest his temple to his fist. ‘Not doing this again,’ hah. Dick will do this as many times as it takes.
More than being a kleptomaniac, Jason is ostracized. Disliked, unwanted. Dick’s heart bleeds for him. And it’s because of that vexing empathy that Dick spends an afternoon mediating the clusterfuck of injustice Jason finds himself caught up in. It’s still the last thing Dick wants to be doing, but he wouldn’t be anywhere else. Because Bruce might be able to handle this diplomatically, but Dick goes for the throat–same as when he was a boy who was spurned and hurting.
The narrative Dick is told is a convoluted tangle of exaggerations and half-truths. He picks at each thread of it until it unravels. Twists it back around into something neat and humiliating . Until the threat of expulsion is repealed and a small body of students are faced with suspension for their bullying; until it’s Jason on the receiving end of bitten out apologies as these elites try to save face, lest Bruce Wayne hear of this misunderstanding and seek retribution.
It’s not a particularly difficult challenge, but it’s still fun in its own way. There’s always satisfaction to be found in bringing about justice. In making some punkass kids trip over themselves as they try to justify their cruelties to no avail. They’re just kids in the end, but Dick is happy to humble them. He hopes they can all learn to not be such dicks as they grow up.
For all the exaggerated flamboyance and flourish that existed before, it’s decidedly absent come the end of the meeting. Parents filter out with their suspended kids, heads ducked low to hide red cheeks while children scrub at eyes wet with tears–remorseful less because they feel bad and more because they were caught.
Dick helps Jason pick up his discarded things, gathering papers while Jason tries to smooth out the damaged edges of his books when the dean scoffs, loud for the both of them to hear. “Some things don’t change,” He says, because Dick might be grown now but he’s still every bit the troublemaker nomad the dean remembers from when Dick was a boy who insisted on challenging the status quo.
“They really don’t, huh?” Dick snarks back. When he stands, it’s just as tall as he did a few years back–taller, even. He brings Jason up with him, a hand on his arm as Dick bares his teeth in a vicious smile, “What a shame.”
And they leave, anticlimactic as that.
Tense quiet follows them as they go. Or rather, Dick is tense. Jason is quiet. The irritation Dick had shoved down to take care of Jason spikes as he’s given time to think about his waste of an afternoon. The realization that all of Dick’s hard-fought battles with this school to embrace a baseline level of tolerance was for naught, too. It’s not surprising, but it’s still disappointing and irritating .
Jason still flinches when Dick sighs, which has him biting back another behind a clenched jaw.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Dick ought to say, but he’s afraid it will come out too critical–influenced by Bruce’s impact on his psyche and Dick’s own overbearing expectations. Twisted into something not quite kind, because Dick still struggles with it–being gentle when he’s so pissy all the time. ‘Stop doing that,’ he would probably say, and while he’d mean ‘you’re doing your best,’ what Jason would understand would undoubtedly be, ‘stop being weak.’
It isn’t until they’re at Dick’s bike that Jason dares to look up at him. Dick spares him a fleeting glance before pulling his helmet over the kid’s head and pulling the strap snug. When Jason persists with looking at him, Dick meets his gaze, holds it, and waits.
“You came.” Jason says, his voice a low murmur between them. There are no other cars around, no people, just a soft breeze that rustles Dick’s hair and the loose pages in the book bag Jason holds to his chest.
There’s something familiar in the way Jason looks at him–wary, wanting. Dick searches the blue of Jason’s eyes and marvels at the spark of hope he finds there, carefully guarded like the precious thing it is.
“You called.” Dick answers, simple as that.
And Jason looks–stricken. Because he’ll always be more familiar with cruelties than kindness. Guarded as Jason keeps himself, his lingering hurts are obvious in that moment. This is Dick’s protege, Robin , but Jason and he aren’t the same. Not in the way they’re able to trust or connect and that’s exactly the problem.
Because Jason has had to learn to be alone and rely on himself. He knows that people hurt people; hurt people, worst of all. There’s no trust to be had when trust gets you taken advantage of and hurt.
In contrast, Dick has only ever known human connection. Trust was so easy that he could throw himself from a trapeze and know he’d be caught. It’s not hard for Dick to close the distance between himself and a stranger, to influence even a foe to be a friend. Dick has been surrounded by people all his life. It’s as easy as breathing for him to reach out, to catch and hold tight.
No one cares that Jason is brave enough to survive a world that doesn’t want him. That he’s strong enough to bear a mantle that’s burdened with impossible expectations (or that he brings hope to that namesake again, making it soft like the endearment it was always meant to be). A gentle soul, forged through violence and tribulation.
Jason is startlingly alone despite the persisting goodness in his heart. Jason might be alone, but Dick can reach him. There’s no one better to hold onto this boy.
“Call me again, if you need to.” Dick sighs, sliding the visor down over Jason’s face with a snap before patting the top of the helmet. It’s the closest they can get to affection when everything between them is still new; because Dick isn’t much of anything to Jason, least of all a brother. For now, he can be a hero–Robin , if only for another little while. “I’ll be here to catch you.”