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Jason has been different lately.
By lately, Bruce means he’s noticed a slow, but steady change over the past year and a half.
It’s different from how Jason had changed before. Jason had come back hardened, angry, different, and slowly grew from that into a man that was both a stranger to Bruce and some grown version of the son he remembered. But that’s what all kids grow up to be isn’t it?
But the last year and a half had changed Jason into something softer than before.
And it is killing Bruce that he does not know what has caused this change.
When Jason returned and even for a long while thereafter he had been all jagged and sharp edges, with soft spots hidden under layers of quick, hot anger. That roaring inferno in him had calmed to small, controllable flames over the years, but now it was as if that fire had been reduced to embers.
A year and a half ago Jason started smiling again.
Subtle, small smiles had returned over time, but this one had been different. It was a grin that cracked across his whole face, squinting his eyes and warming his cheeks. It was the sort of smile Bruce hadn’t seen from Jason since before his death. He thought that smile had died right along with his little boy, but there it was, clear as day, illuminated in the batcave by the light of Jason’s phone.
And it disappeared as soon as it was noticed. Tucked back away along with his phone as soon as Jason caught sight of Bruce’s staring.
And Bruce wanted to ask, he did, he really did, but the peace between him and Jason was so tentative, so fragile. One slip up or push too far and Jason was out the door leaving only the sound of stomped boots and revved engines all over again, Bruce could see it. So he kept quiet. But the changes kept coming.
The dark circles under Jason’s eyes slowly disappeared. A healthy color and warmth returned to his cheeks. His injuries looked like they had been tended to more carefully. He let up on some of his more biting and brash remarks towards the others. He started patrolling with granola bars or clementines tucked into the utility pockets of his pants. Speaking of patrol, his obsessive patrolling of Crime Alley slowed, it didn’t stop, it never would, but he started taking nights off, allowing other people to take up patrol in that area when he had so adamantly insisted against it in the past. He even communicated better, actually starting to answer his texts and pick up calls. And he checked his phone religiously, aptly hiding the screen from anyone around him each time, but it was so often that it was nearing the point of being compulsive in Bruce’s mind. There were nights Jason would arrive for patrol with that smile still plastered on his face, a private giddiness radiating off of him with each step. Everything about Jason had settled and softened.
By all accounts, Jason was improving. Absolutely none of this was cause for alarm. Yet, Bruce felt like he was spiraling. Obviously, there was something going on with Jason, but he had no idea what it was and it was driving him insane.
In a last ditch effort to avoid becoming frantic, before patrol one night he described all of this to Dick and asked if he had any idea what was going on with Jason. And Dick laughed in his face; shoulder shaking, tear jerking, wheezing laughs. Then he clapped him on the shoulder, said “so much for you being ‘the world’s greatest detective,’” and left for patrol, still laughing like Bruce had told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard.
Bruce was desperate. Which is exactly how he ended up at Jason’s apartment at 2:48 AM, in full Batman getup, trying to pick the lock to his front door, silently praying that Jason didn’t walk by this area of Crime Alley on patrol anytime soon.
Bruce expects to click the lock open, quietly snoop through Jason’s apartment, figure out what is wrong with his son and leave everything just as he found it. Not a hair out of place for Jason to notice that somebody had been there. What Bruce does not expect is to hear the shuffling of footsteps behind the door, for a second he thinks the jig is up, that Jason was home and he needs to leave that instant, but the steps don’t sound like Jason’s. This is much worse, he must’ve gotten Jason’s apartment number wrong when he followed him, Bruce has been trying to break into a stranger's apartment—
His thoughts are cut short by a quiet, but disgruntled voice behind the door, “you have got to be fucking kidding me—”
Just as he’s about to dart ashamedly into the night, he hears at least four extra locks unlatch as the door swings open. And he’s met face to face with you, very tired, very annoyed looking you, still dressed in dirty scrubs from the shift you presumably just got home from.
“You are so lucky he isn’t here right now,” he can see the glint of a handgun sitting on a small, wooden table in the entryway. “With the racket you were making, he would’ve fired through the door.”
Bruce stammers a little, the heat creeping up on his cheeks as you point how conspicuous he was being thankfully hidden by his cowl, “I apologize, I wasn’t aware Jason had any roommates—”
With Bruce’s words you burst into a fit of laughter and all of the pieces fall into place.
You are not a roommate.
Dick was right, Bruce’s title of “world’s greatest detective” absolutely needs to be stripped from him.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with his son.
Jason had simply fallen in love.
And Bruce had just introduced himself to his partner by trying to break into their home.