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Things slowly started to change after the most recent case of late-night injury care.
Nightwing was now an occasional visitor at the apartment, which Alex had decided was one of the best things to happen to him, and as a result, your son was slowly acquiring a small collection of Nightwing merchandise that you were pretty sure were being supplied by the man himself. This included various stickers, a couple of action figures, a keychain, and a little pen that could project a tiny version of Nightwing's logo onto the wall when you pressed a button. There was also a sticker/decal thing that read "Get 'traught or get dead", which you didn't really get, but Alex seemed to think it was funny. So it was pretty much just harmless stuff, and if you were being honest, you were a little amused by Nightwing's not so subtle attempts to win over Alex.
That wasn't the only thing that had changed. Once he'd finally been released from his 'bullshit forced recovery' - his words, not yours - Jay started making his own regular visits again. But he was slowly giving you both a little more trust and a lot more vulnerability.
Sometimes he showed up wearing only the domino mask, which you scolded him for because, "We just had the discussion of why you're supposed to wear the helmet, are you actively trying to give yourself a concussion? Because that's how you get a concussion, Jay."
Other times it was the opposite. He'd show up with the usual full mask, but when he took it off, he wouldn't have anything underneath it.
The first time he'd pulled off the helmet to reveal his entire face, you'd turned around and nearly dropped your cup of coffee in surprise. Jay had just given you an unreadable expression, shrugged awkwardly, and muttered something about how you'd already seen his face, so it didn't really make much of a difference anymore. Which… yeah, alright, that was fair. But if you were being honest, you'd kinda expected him to wear the domino more often in order to make up for the fact that it ever had to come off in the first place.
You'd be happy to admit that it was nice to actually get to see him, rather than trying to guess his expression or tone through opaque lenses and sometimes a voice distortion. But on the other hand, you were now regularly able to see his entire face, which was still something you were getting used to. And Jay was surprisingly expressive.
Whether it was reacting to some story about what had happened at the hospital, grinning while you went on a tangent about the new neighbors down the hall, or even getting animated about one of his own stories, you were coming to realize that Jay was actually pretty easy to read. Maybe it was because you'd had to get used to partial or even no expressions first, and you had to use only his body language and his tone as context clues. Now that you could see all of his face as he talked, it just made everything easier.
He almost always had a grin or a smirk playing around his mouth; like it was his default expression. His eyes would light up with either amusement or annoyance - and it was usually annoyance - when he told you about the stunts that Nighting or Robin would pull on their patrols. Sometimes his eyes would harden if you told a story about dealing with rowdy patients at work, although you didn't really understand that particular expression. You worked at a hospital. There were lots of people who were stressed, worried, scared, angry, or a combination of multiple things, and they couldn't really be blamed for being difficult to work with. It seemed no different than him having to deal with troublesome criminals on the streets every night.
Currently Jay was sitting next to you on the couch, sitting forward with his forearms braced on his knees, brow furrowed and tongue caught between his teeth as he focused completely on the gadget in his hands. Supposedly the gadget had malfunctioned a tiny bit during the beginning of his patrol, so when he came by to check on you, he decided to take a break to see if he could fix whatever the problem was. But it had been twenty minutes now and you'd gotten through four chapters of the book you were reading; so far it seemed like Jay had just been pulling pieces apart, looking at them for a while, and then putting them back without actually making any adjustments. So you were privately calling bullshit on the gadget being broken. You were pretty sure Jay had just wanted a reason to stick around for longer.
As you watched him 'work' on his gadget, your mind drifted away from your book and toward something that you'd been thinking about a lot lately.
"...hey Jay?" You let out a long, slow breath, hoping he wouldn’t be too offended by your question. “Can I ask you something? And it’s completely okay for you to say no.”
“Depends," he said, flipping a part over in his hand before putting it back exactly where it came from. "You’re not gonna ask me to do anything embarrassing, are you?”
"No. But, uh, is… is there, like, a reverse age requirement or something for being Robin?" You watched Jay freeze at your words, and you quickly rambled on. "Because I met Robin and Red Robin that one time you sent them over, and they - Robin is so young. He said he was only sixteen. Sixteen, Jay! I'd dropped out of school and had a kid by that point, and he's out there possibly risking his life to go play vigilante every night."
Jay was quiet for a long time. Long enough that you thought he might not answer, which would be understandable because of all the Bats' secrecy. Then he gave a sharp exhale, sitting back on the couch as his hands dropped into his lap. "Not technically, no. But all the Robins started pretty young. Or I did at least."
You glanced over at him in surprise. "You were a Robin?"
"Mhm." Jay nodded slowly, like he was reluctant to talk about it. You noticed that his expression had closed off a bit as well; his jaw clenched and his shoulders had gone tense, and he stared across the room instead of looking at you. "Wasn't on the job for too long though, but yeah, I was one of the Boy Wonders."
You frowned in thought. Back when you'd first met, he said he'd been a vigilante for five years. But if he had started as a Robin - which was a shock of its own - when he was sixteen or younger? Then that math was not adding up. But something on his face was practically yelling 'do not ask'.
"...sounds dangerous," you said instead. "I mean, letting teenagers go out and fight Gotham's crazies? Really? There has to be better options than that."
Jay snorted. "Don't know if they'd've ended up better or worse for me, but there were definitely other options available. Doesn't mean they got taken."
You hesitated for a brief moment before setting your book on the coffee table and carefully leaning your head against his shoulder. "Well, I'm thankful that you're here now," you murmured quietly. "I like having you around."
The two of you sat that way for a while. You partially wanted to thank him for trusting you with something that was obviously so personal to him, and you partially wanted to apologize for ever asking in the first place. You ended up doing neither because his shoulders had finally lost their tension, and you weren't going to say anything that might make it come back.
And then your brain - absolutely out of nowhere - clicked onto another thought. "Oh, wait, I forgot I have a thing." You pushed off the couch and headed for your bedroom, rummaging around the bottom of the closet until you found the small gift bag. You hurried back to the living room and gave Jay a small smile as you dropped back onto the couch and handed over the bag. "Here, this is for you."
"For me?" He eyed you warily as he deposited his gadget on the coffee table next to your book, but you noticed that his demeanor seemed to have lightened a tiny bit, which was part of the goal. "Do I need to be worried about this?"
"Not at all. Just open it."
He rolled his eyes as he pulled out the tissue paper and tossed it at you, then pulled out the present itself. He immediately let out a disbelieving laugh. "What in the actual hell is this?"
The present was, to be completely honest, a really shitty looking mug. It was a bright neon blue color, with obviously hand-painted red lettering that read, "Happy Three Months, Natalie". In addition to that, somebody had taken a thick sharpie and tried to cross out the word "Natalie" as much as possible, although it was still pretty legible.
You grinned as well, relieved that the absolutely bizarre gift had been enough to distract Jay from the previous conversation topic. "I saw it at the thrift store a few days ago and decided that it was horribly adorable. Then I realized that I've known you for about three months now, so it seemed like the perfect timing to get it."
"This is…" Jay trailed off, shaking his head. "This is something else, sweetheart. It's…"
"It's okay, you can say it's awful," you reassured him. "It's not really supposed to be a good gift. More like a crappy inside joke, or something like that. I also won't be offended if you go home and immediately throw it away."
"What? No way, I'm keeping this awful lookin' thing." Jay finally cracked a grin. "Been a while since somebody gave me such a shitty gift. Gotta put it on the shelf to commemorate it, y'know?"
"Oh shut up," you laughed, reaching over to grab your book so that you could gently swat Jay's arm with it. "Here I am, trying to do something nice for you, and I'm being insulted. Next time I see a crafty mug like this, I'm leaving it at the store."