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Jason has a dream every once and a while.
He doesn’t enjoy it very much. It starts off with him dying in a violent fire, maniacal laughter chasing him through it, and slowly progresses through a story of hardship and pain where his life is devoid of his family. He kills, he maims, he becomes the very worst version of himself that Jason thought possible. He actually hurts his family in this strange dream, and it feels so vivid at all times, that he always wakes with a start. The images of Tim or Damian, of Bruce's betrayed face or Dick's pain clear as day, would haunt him through the day. They're so powerful and affect his life to such a degree, that Jason starts a dream journal to see if it's a recurring nightmare or not.
The internet says, given how often they happen, that they are recurring nightmares and he should probably be in therapy for PTSD or something. Jason privately thinks it's a joke since the only traumatising thing that ever happened to him was his mother dying and he had to live on the streets before Bruce plucked him up.
"It's such a joke! If I were to cheat, why would I write about that?" Jason exclaims, waving his hand around and leaning forward a little. Across from him, Tim rolls his eyes and elbows Damian, pointing towards Bruce. The man's been calling him for about five minutes but Jason is in the middle of a story, and he doesn't really care what the old man needs the brat for.
"I mean, it's really specific? You could be copying it every other day." Tim returns to eating his dinner, cutting up his chicken and slathering some gravy all over it. Jason sighs and stabs a piece of broccoli, using it to point at Tim. Beside him, Dick lightly taps his hand to tell him to lower it, pointing to a little puddle of butter that's not formed on the table because of his gesture using the vegetable. Jason winces and subtly uses his napkin to clean it up, side-eying Alfred who's right beside Tim.
"I'm writing it down!"
"You could still be cheating!"
"How?!" Tim shrugs and widens his eyes, like that's supposed to be an answer, turning towards Damian when he pokes his arm repeatedly to get his attention. Jason moves his own away from them, back towards Bruce who he had the original conversation with. He waits for Bruce to be done convening with both Dick and Alfred about who's going to take Damian to his soccer game, which is apparently tomorrow, given they've all got something to do.
"I could take him," Jason says and ignores when Dick gapes at him for interrupting his sentence. Jason kicks his shin below the table when he starts to exclaim that he's busy tomorrow, giving him a look, and Dick understands immediately, shooting him an apologetic look. "If he doesn't mind coming to my class with me before."
Currently, everyone at the table knows about Jason's "class" tomorrow except for Alfred and Bruce. Surprisingly, he's managed to keep this a secret from Alfred because the butlers so busy trying to keep up with Tim's crazy schedule and Damian's secretive habits when it comes to his events, that when Jason says he's got an extra class for study, then he waves him off and puts it up on the whiteboard in the kitchen.
The study class is, in fact, a study date .
Damian would be able to hang around for a while in the coffee shop while Jason meets up with Kyle, his sort-of-boyfriend that's currently out of college and working as a freelance artist. He'd hired him a while back to create a gift for Tim; for months Tim had been talking about getting a silly portrait of himself and his friends dressed in old timey clothes and around a poker table, each of them smoking a cigar, and Jason had commissioned Kyle to to do because he liked him and knew he did good art. Two birds, one stone, as they say.
They've met up only a few times since Tim's birthday, a few weeks ago, and hopefully tomorrow Jason will ask him out to an actual dinner rather than asking Kyle if he wants to hang out with Jason while he "studies". Aka, drinks coffee and bitches about his teachers or classmates. Kyle went to a different college, in California actually, but lives in New York where Jason studies. It's only about a thirty minute drive to his university, given it's on the edge of the state, but Kyle lives in the city. It takes him a while to get to the coffee shop they frequent and Jason doesn't want to bother him with no reward anymore.
So, tomorrow is important to Jason but if no one else could take Damian, he could sit at a different table to them and play a game on his phone, or even bring his friend from Metropolis.
"Don't you have an extra class tomorrow?" Bruce asks, pausing in his eating for a moment. The table is always loud during dinner, especially when they're all here; official and unofficial kids gathered around the table and hounding each other like wolves.
"Yeah but it's only an hour." Bruce raises an eyebrow. "It's, like, a study thing — it's to make sure everyone understands the play." Bruce's eyebrow raises an inch further and Dick starts lightly tapping his foot under the table with his own, warning him that their dad is about to get suspicious. "I'm going to help the TA, she's literally swamped because no one understands King Lear for some reason? Such an easy play, don't understand how considering I got it when I was thirteen." Now that he's appropriately dissed his classmates and explained why he's going, Bruce nods.
It really is ridiculous though; how can you not understand that Edmund and Edgar are supposed to show the sides of good and evil? Edmund clearly is the greed of those less fortunate, shows how his fathers unwillingness to treat him like his actual son and not a bastard, can pervert someone and make them betray their own family while Edgar struggles to get back to where he was and reunite with his family after being wrongly banished, always making the good decisions and helping people when it matters, and therefore arriving at the top by the end of the play.
Don't even get Jason started on the sisters or King Lear himself. King Lear is not a character deserving of sympathy, Jason thinks, because he's a character unwilling to feel sympathy himself. He's got to become poor to suddenly feel bad for the poor and his madness is no excuse for how he treats his kids, pitting them against each other. True, Goneril and Regan are horrible towards him and awful suck ups, but Cordelia? All she did was place no words on her love and refuse to debase herself like that in front of the whole court, knowing no matter what she said, it would never be enough.
Cordelia might be his favourite character if Jason wasn't so fond of Edgar. He enjoys reading about the good guys, what can he say, even if Cordelia is barely in the play. She's there at the beginning and then reintroduced at the camp with Kent, but after her marriage to France. Jason thinks it's a bit sad, to be honest, that all Cordelia did was care for her father and ended up dying for it.
And Edgar! What a character with passion and pride, kindness blooming from his every word. When Jason was thirteen and he read the play for the first time, he nearly cried when he understood that Edgar wasn't taking Gloucester to kill himself but rather fooling him into believing God had saved him. Edgar showed true compassion from the very start, even towards Edmund who betrayed him. At the end, when he becomes the king of Lear's land, Jason had never felt so vindicated and happy for a character. Edgar struggled a lot during the play, especially dressed as "Poor Tom".
They're relationship meant a lot to him at the time as well. In a way, behind all the betrayal and murder and tragedy, Jason sort of likened them to himself and Dick. He could never figure out who was who, though, if he was Edgar or Edmund. It used to infuriate him that he could see both himself and Dick in Edgar as well as Edmund, but now it makes him feel good. It made Dick seem more like a real person when Jason was younger, that he'd have a good side and a bad side.
"That's very kind of you, Master Jason," Alfred drawls from the other side of Bruce and Jason nearly blanches. Shit. Excuse was good enough for Bruce but not for Alfred, who knows that Jason never bothers to go to these types of study classes. Not as busy with Damian's random activities as he thought he was.
"I don't want to go with Jason, though," Damian bursts in, cutting a piece of carrot apart and dipping it into the side of hummus he always brings with him to the table. "I can take the bus."
"No," Bruce and Dick both say at the same time, shooting each other faux sceptical glances before smiling a little. "The bus is too erratic, who knows when you'd be home. Also, the bus is sketchy ," Dick continues, much to the annoyance of Tim.
"I took the bus to school," Tim says, offended and now glaring at Dick. Jason laughs and elbows Duke to get his attention on the budding fight that's coming up, who then gets Stephanie and Cass's attention. Everyone watches, wrapped up in how Dick sucks in a deep breath to try and defend himself but Tim barrels forward. "I asked you to drive me when you visited, and you said no. The bus is fine, Tim, c'mon." Jason laughs as Tim pitches his voice higher, tilting his head and curling his lip as he mocks Dick.
"Don't do that," Dick groans, throwing his head back, "you know I hate that voice!"
"If I could take the bus, why can't Damian?"
"Maybe the bus has changed!" Dick defends. Jason is watching them go back and forth like a game of ping pong, dinner a little forgotten in front of him. He could never forget about Alfred's beautiful English Roast Thursdays, but this is turning out to be a pretty funny argument that has the power to go someplace mean. Bruce is watching with a keen eye, aware that he'll be told to fuck off if he tried to interrupt now.
" How would you know?! You never took the bus, I was the only unfortunate soul who had to!"
"Unfortunate? Seriously, are you being serious right now?!" Dick returns the mocking as well, leaning across the table to tap Tim's forehead. Tim makes an outraged noise, smacking his hand before standing up as well, slapping Dick across the head though he mostly only catches the top of his hair. It really only wisps him. Dick still gasps as if Tim punched him in the dick and winds up to hit him back. Bruce reaches out to grab his arm and force him into sitting down. Alfred does much of the same to Tim.
"That's enough, boys," Bruce says dryly, sighing a little. Jason frowns, wishes the argument could have gone on a little longer even if it would probably bother the rest of the family for the entire day. No longer interested, Duke, Stephanie and Cass return to their original conversation; on if people who use food during sex are weird or not. Jason misses when you could call someone a freak without it meaning they enjoy weird stuff during sex because right now, he'd like to call them all freaks, but Stephanie would call him a pervert.
As if she's not talking about someone dipping their penis in peanut butter and using it as lube at the dinner table.
"Damian, Jason will take you, you'll be fine. If you want, he can pick up Colin as well." Damian perks at the name but Jason shoots a confused look at Tim. Still annoyed, Tim is looking directly at him and frowning crossly, like Jason offering to drive Damian instead of making the fourteen year old take a bus is the worst act he's ever committed. Rolling his eyes when Jason continues to silently ask who Colin is, Tim mouths back that he's Damian's friend from school that he made recently. Jason is pleasantly surprised that he's made a friend. Damian's a little weird like that.
Damian pulls out his phone to text his friend, ignoring how Bruce reprimands him on having his phone out at the table. Duke subtly puts his away, where he'd been googling if condoms can affect the feeling of sex. Jason wonders what they're learning in sex-ed these days. It's only been around two years since he finished high school, there's no way it's changed so much.
"Wait, Jay, did you say your teacher accused you of cheating?" Stephanie asks across the table, stuffing her face with a bread roll. Stephanie has recently gone vegetarian with Damian and isn't adjusting well to the diet, finding she's hungry nearly all the time, and eats mostly snacks at the dinner table. She's still got vegetables and mash in front of her, as well as a portion of curry couscous.
"Yes!" Jason screams, pointing at her. She starts to giggle and moves back in surprise. "It's so freaking unfair!" At the lack of a curse, Alfred preens. The swear jar has taken a while to take effect but it finally has and Jason is enjoying tormenting his family with the more creative filler sayings and words he uses. Cass lets out a giggle as well and Jason begins to feel vindication, lightly moving forward to lean over the table and look at them properly. "She says that because my dreams are described the same, it's wrong!"
"What if you have the same dream?" Duke asks and Tim sighs, lowering his head because he asked that thirty minutes ago when they were in Jason's room waiting for dinner to be announced.
"Exactly!" Jason screams and then lowers his voice when Alfred chides him, "I get the same nightmare, it literally torments me, and she fails me?!"
"You're failing?!" Bruce exclaims, dropping his cutlery onto the table.
"Close your mouth, you're going to catch flies, B," Jason says dryly, "I'm more mad about what she said."
"You're still failing," he deadpans. Duke snickers and Jason whirls, hits his arm. Duke winces and rubs the area, kicking him under the table. Only Jason gets in trouble for hitting him because Alfred didn't see Duke kick him. Jason hisses that he'll remember this for all time and will get his revenge. Rolling his eyes, Duke tells him to get on with his story before he falls asleep.
"Butter my butt and call me a biscuit, Bruce, it's not even an assignment! She asked us to do it to prove something and she's failing me for something I can't even be failed on!" Tim giggles at the beginning but breaks out into a full blown laugh, rubbing his stomach and face going red, when Jason finishes. Stephanie is also laughing and Jason doesn't appreciate it, though it would be worse if they were sitting together. There's a reason Damian was shoved between them when previously he'd been sitting at the end, beside Stephanie with no one in his left.
"So, how is she failing you?" Bruce inquires, frowning. Jason throws his hands up and makes an exaggerated questionable face before slapping his hands down onto his thighs. He picks up his form, aware that his dinner will go cold soon, and shoves a fork full of almost everything into his mouth, thinking about Professor Blackwell and how annoying she is. After teaching for years, she still makes her students do "experiments" with her that account towards nothing in your final grade but will account for her personal opinion of you, or something, because Jason can't find an actual reason why she makes them do it.
Séan in his class didn't do the last one she assigned and she pulled him to the top of the lecture hall and asked him why, in front of the entire class, and when he said he didn't feel like doing extra work that wasn't important for his grades, she called him lazy.
"You're trying to tell me," Stephanie starts between laughs, hands pressed onto the arms of her chair and blonde hair falling in front of her face, "that your teacher just — doesn't like your dreams?"
"Yes!" Finally, someone who gets it! Tim may actually start crying from how hard he's laughing. When Jason turns to complain properly to Bruce, he's got this funny look on his face. So does Dick, actually, and Alfred as well. Jason doesn't try to parse through that, ignores all the times some of these seats have been empty, sometimes even his own, and turns back towards Tim.
(Dick moved out when he was seventeen and never looked back for two years. No contact, no seeing each other, not even a letter sent in the mail. He struggled the whole time, living paycheck to paycheck, and wondering what he was going to do with his life. When he finally came back, Jason was there and they had their own problems — Dick's unwillingness to accept Jason and Jason's hatred towards change in a place he thought safe.
In a way, Tim arriving was like a godsend. He smoothed things over with Jason and Dick, uniting them in their plan to smother him with love and torment him at the same time. Bruce followed suit, as he usually does, and when Tim admitted he felt like he needed therapy, the whole family apparently took it as a suggestion. Things became easier. Personally, Jason became medicated and a lot calmer, found ways to work through his aggression and spikes of anger. The dream helped a lot, actually, because it gave him a clear cut of what he didn't want to be. An angry man.
They had nearly three years where everything was good and happy. Jason turned nineteen, began college after taking a gap year, Dick left the force and started working as a gymnastics coach for kids in Bludhaven, Tim was nearly finished high school. It had been good .
Then, suddenly, Tim was in the hospital three years ago. He'd been in an accident and had surgery, didn't wake up for three weeks, and had to lose an organ. Bruce thought he was actually going to die and then Damian arrives, citing that he's his long lost son or whatever and only eleven years old , aggravated that Bruce adopted other children before him. The amount of arguments that came free from that were reckless, but they doubled when Tim woke up and found he'd been "replaced". Tim, like Dick, moved out at seventeen and never came back. He only comes for dinner, never stays the night like Jason does sometimes. It's still strained, if you look closely.
Bruce is probably… appreciating it, he supposes, with a funny look on his face. It could be love, Jason reflects and chances a short glance at Bruce. His face is soft around the edges, eyes kind and taking them all in; laughing with each other, making fun, poking and prodding at their lives. Jason heard from Cass that she had a recital for her ballet later in the month and made a mental note to be there even if he wasn't a part of the original conversation. He knows that Dick will cut his shift short tomorrow to catch Damian's soccer game.
They're all nearly grown. Kids like Cass and Duke came to the family fairly old, each a respective age of seventeen and sixteen. Dick was the youngest, Jason supposes, and they lost a lot of time together in the middle. After dinner this evening, Jason will get in his car and drive away. So will Dick. So will Tim. Stephanie will catch a ride with Cass, who will probably stay the night at her place. It'll only be Duke and Damian in the house, two out of six. Duke's already looking at colleges, getting ready to be seventeen.
Jason's appreciating it in a way as well, he guesses, looking at Tim's face. It strikes him many times during the day that maybe his dream is real, happening somewhere out there in the universe. He believes in parallel universes as well as the multiverse. Theoretically, it could be happening right now. He doesn't like that.
Bruce is still gazing at him, lost in thought, and Jason looks away. Whatever his relationship is with Bruce, it's not important right now. What's important is the outrage of his teacher treating him like that.)
"Somebody needs to cream her corn because, by god, is she not getting any! It must be why she's so mean, literally all the time."
"Ever consider maybe she just doesn't like you?" Duke asks, cheekily smiling at him. He dodges the second hit well enough, hand still reaching up to the place where Jason hit him last. Scoffing, he shakes his head but can't stop the smile tugging at the side of his mouth.
"I can't believe you'd say that to me," Jason says, mock seriously, "and here I thought you were my favourite brother. Stephanie, you've been upgraded."
"To favourite brother?" Damian bursts, putting down his phone. Jason grins. "She's not even a man! Or your brother!"
"You're not a man," Tim says, just to rile him up. Duke snickers, probably gets a swift kick under the table judging by how he winces and shoots Damian and venomous glare. Tim and Jason share a look, both of them indicating to the two beside them, trying to figure out if the other knows what's going on there. Duke and Damian hadn't interacted cordially all evening and, come to think of it, all week either.
"I'm on my way," Damian grumbles, taking the head pat that Tim gives him fairly graciously. Tim seems oddly pleased when he doesn't get bit after he does it, sharing an appreciative look with Cass, then Dick. When he reaches his hand out to grab his glass of water in front of him, Dick gasps and points at Tim's hand. Jason, confused and wondering what's going on, looks at Tim's hand as well only to exclaim as well when he sees his wrist.
"You got a tattoo!"
"Fuck!" Tim screams, then throws his head back to stare at the ceiling, digging into his pocket to take out his wallet and give Alfred a crisp five dollar bill. Stephanie shoves Damian's head down, stands on her chair to lean over him while using his back as a support and also ignoring his complaints and groans, just to grab hold of Tim's hand and yank it towards her.
"Timmy!" She whoops, grinning widely and looking between him and his wrist, "you naughty boy!" Tim has a short burst of giggles before everything goes silent when Bruce clears his throat. Everyone looks towards him and Jason feels worry build up in his chest, that Bruce will seriously give out to Tim because of what looks like a pretty small tattoo. He gets hung up on the oddest of stuff.
Tim opens his mouth to begin explaining, probably what it is and what it means to him, how important it is to him that he got it — typical teenager stuff people use as an excuse when they do something their dad probably won't be happy with. Bruce's face is as hard as stone, giving nothing away, and himself and Dick share a small look before his gaze settles on Tim again. All at once, he deflates.
"It's fine, son. We all do… things when we're out of home." Bruce gives Dick another side-eye, to which he ignores it and looks around; anywhere but his siblings and Bruce. Jason smells blood in the water. Judging by the way Damian's head comes up from where he's still bowed over with Stephanie's hand on his back and how her attention shifts from Tim to Dick, he's not the only one who notices.
Blowing out his cheeks and moving away from the table, Dick clicks his tongue and looks at his watch. "Look at the time!" He says, pretending to laugh and pat his pockets, "I should head out. Long drive back to Blud, you know how it is, so, I'll head out now—"
"It takes thirty minutes to get to your apartment Richard, sit down."
"Yeah, dude, what was that look for? Bruce, what do you know?" Stephanie hops down from her chair, circling around the table to hook an arm around Dick's shoulder and drag him downwards so that she doesn't have to stand up on her toes as much. Dick mumbles something into her hair, changing the hold into a goodbye hug, and she raises an eyebrow. "What was that?" She says, starting to seem really interested now.
Jason is too. Does… Does Dick have a tattoo? Mr. My Body Is A Temple? Mr. I Still Do Calisthenics So That I Stay Fit? Mr. Why Do You Eat Junk Food Jason, It's So Unhealthy For Your Gut? There's no way, he thinks wildly, and then takes in Dick's outfit. He's too much of a wuss to get it somewhere it would be really sore, so that eliminates the chest and ribs, as well as any places that have a thin layer of skin and a lot of bone.
Maybe on his stomach? No, Dick loves to wear crop tops, he'd never be able to hide that. Though, most of his pants are pretty high rise…
"Oh my god!" Jason exclaims, eyes wide, tracking where Dick's put his hands. They're behind his back but the elbow is moved ever so slightly, so he can have his hands pushed upwards from where they'd rest on his butt. Dick turns towards him, sending him a pleading look with a glance at Damian and Tim. "You have a tramp stamp!"
Laughter breaks out across the room, even Alfred letting out a small surprised laugh that he immediately covers with a cough. Damian roars, stands up and starts to come over and poke at his shirt and pants, demanding to know if Dick would debase himself so much to get a tattoo with the name "tramp" in it. When Dick whirls to tell him to stop pulling at him, Jason sees a quick glimpse of two peaks of wings coming out from his pants and laughs even harder.
"It's not called a tramp stamp! It's a lower back tattoo and I'll have you know, I love it!"
"It's a tramp stamp."
"Oh, whatever Jason, at least I'm not failing a class!"
"I'm not failing! I'm being discriminated against!"
"How?!"
"It's — it's HOMOPHOBIA! There!"
Bruce's sigh could be heard across the world.