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Voices bounce around the cave, volleying left and right like some kind of aggressive tennis match.
Dick can’t even hear his fingers on the keys of the Bat Computer with how loud his brothers are being, jabs and barbs over something entirely pointless being thrown across the expanse of the room. Why on earth they were down here instead of upstairs was lost on the oldest sibling. He had been attempting to finish a report of a mission from the night prior, when his brothers appeared from nowhere and started debating. The argument didn’t need Dick’s input, nor did they ask for it. It was like they wandered into the cave just to grate on his last nerve.
A few times, he called over his shoulder for his brothers to pipe down, belatedly realizing he sounded a bit too much like Bruce. Of all the times the man had to be away on a WE trip, it had to be when the trio of vigilantes were butting heads. Typical. Only once was Dick’s request for quiet actually acknowledged; his other attempts had been drowned out by their heated discussion.
“Look, we apologized for going into your territory, Jason. The point is that Riddler’s escape was tied to a larger crime, and taking him down was a higher priority-”
“Apology accepted, whatever, but I called dibs for a beat down on that guy last month. The Baby Assassin does not get to overrule that claim cause he got there first!”
“Imbellic and irrelevant, Todd, I handled it much more effectively than you could’ve hoped to.”
“Have both of you forgotten that I invoked ‘Call Dibs’ three months ago on Mr. Freeze, and you two teamed up to take him down before I could, just to spite me?”
A loud scoff. “I hardly needed Todd’s assistance in a matter so trivial, Drake. He was lucky I didn’t impale him as well just for getting in my way.”
“Oh, bite me, Demon Brat-”
The sudden flurry of rolling wheels scrapes against the floor as Dick stands. He shouts quite abruptly, “One!”
Jason and Tim freeze immediately. Damian’s mouth has parted, a retort loaded in the barrel and waiting to be fired, but the sudden bellow and locked-up state of his brothers give him pause. He turns to where the twin pairs of wide eyes have locked onto the Bat Computer. Dick’s form is silhouetted in blue light. He’s hauntingly still. The sudden lack of voices echoing through the cave makes for a horror-esque scene, serenaded by the muffled squeaking of bats from deeper into the enclaves of the rocky space.
“Dick, we’re sorry.” Tim quickly starts bargaining. Goosebumps prickle along his skin as a nervous flutter starts up in his gut, the feeling tugging his lips up into a weak grin. “We’ll pipe down, it was a dumb argument anyway. S-So, just go back to your work, yeah? There's no need for this-”
The fool.
Instinctual fight or flight having Jason and Tim’s feet backing up, arms beginning to raise to their sides defensively. As if that would save them from the monster they've created. Damian stares, completely baffled, as the two boys edge towards the elevator while Tim rambles endlessly like an auctioneer on crack cocaine. In hindsight, he should’ve immediately followed their lead with the slow retreat.
“Two.” Dick turns off the computer, still facing away from his brothers but holding an unfathomable amount of power.
Jason is cussing under his breath now. His stomach is in knots with little jolts of nerves heightening his anticipation for what's to come. He hates how easily this game can make him go from a fully grown adult to thirteen again in seconds. He growls for Dick to “Cut it with the freaky shit”, but the wobbly smile trying to take over his face is winning this battle.
Hearing Jason sound so highly strung finally makes Damian take a few wary steps back from the computer. Grayson had never laid a hand on him with the intention to hurt, even when sparring, he heavily pulled his punches. This menacing aura protruding from his still form raises the hairs on the back of Damian’s neck, a small thrill zinging through his stomach. Was this to be similar to Grandfather’s tests? A training exercise? Or was it more akin to a punishment? Drake and Todd seemed jumpy, but not fearful, instead giddy for some bizarre reason. What on earth-?
Finally, Dick turns, an evil grin on his face. “Three.”
“SACRIFICE THE CHILD!” Tim shrieks, abandoning the elevator in a mad dash and instead flies up the stairwell. Without question, Jason grabs Damian and throws him at Dick, scrambling after his younger brother a half step later.
Damian barely gets out an undignified yell before arms are encircling him like an octopus, and he’s staring up at the predatory gleam of Dick Grayson’s eyes. “The first victim,” he hums, something menacing in his voice that Damian can’t place. The pounding of footsteps fades up the stairs. No help is coming.
“What the hell is happening?” He demands, gripping onto the arm that’s swept him against Grayson’s chest and mentally running through all the ways he can break the limb should he have to.
Grayson chuckles, and Damian can feel it with how closely pressed he is to his brother. He looms over the boy as he says, “Karma”, with a toothy smile.
Fingers delve into the exposed flank not tucked against Grayson’s torso, wriggling around the skin with careful precision. Despite his arm being looped under Damian’s legs to keep him close, his hand doesn't falter in its path to tickle him to bits. Damian gasps sharply, a leg kicking out on reflex as he scrunches further into Grayson’s arms, trying to curl into himself as his nervous system goes haywire.
“GRAHahahaysohohon!” He’s giggling. Giggling. Like some helpless child, the older boy scopes out his torso for places to tickle with an inane accuracy. Grayson has tickled him before - one does not gain Dick Grayson as an older sibling and expect to evade his playful mannerisms - but this time, it feels more intentional than just messing around. Grayson’s nails are scuttling over his neck with a speed that has the boy squeaking with laughter, trained hands reduced to smacking at the spidering digits. His method is usually to just jump his hands around, lean into the silliness of this bonding activity, but this is precise. Honing in on the spots that send Damian up the wall.
Grayson proves Damian’s hunch when he starts speaking, something resigned yet amused about his tone. “Five times I asked you guys to pipe down, or move to a different area of the house, or godforbid stop arguing entirely, but did you listen? No, of course not. So now I have to leave my very important work to teach you all a lesson.”
Damian tries to argue his case. “Thehey wehehere beheing peheverse!”
Grayson apparently took that as a challenge.
Fingers slip from his neck to under his shirt suddenly, spidering around Damian’s bellybutton and causing the kid to toss his head back with the force of his cackles. He tries to remove the offending digits from his sensitive skin, but Grayson is annoyingly good at this and uses a dirty tactic of blowing in Damian’s ears to make him scrunch away with a giggly whine - a hand pawing at his ears to ward off the feeling.
“Stohohopihihit!”
Grayson flashes his canines in a grin, though thankfully, he relents the attack on Damian’s ears. He settles for tracing patterns across Damian’s abdomen, letting the kid calm down from the sensations buzzing through his nervous system.
“This is a generational game, Dami,” Grayson says conversationally, like there isn’t a snickering child being held prisoner in his unrelenting arms. “Jason and Tim have both been subjected to it through Bruce and me over the years. You push enough buttons, and you’ll earn yourself a Countdown, and if you’re caught, you’re tickled. Those traitors had the right instinct in bolting, but assuming I’ll be slowed down or swayed off by giving me the youngest first? Poor judgment on their part. Their punishment is gonna be twice as bad for that little act of cowardice.”
Despite giggling his head off, Damian felt a wave of satisfaction knowing Grayson also saw the injustice of throwing him to the lions. Those two royally screwed themselves over with that play.
Grayson hums, contemplative. “Seeing as it’s your first time with this game, it’s probably fair to keep your sentence short and hunt down the other two. But first…”
The hold around Damian’s thighs tightens, keeping his legs pinned as Grayson removes his arm from the boy’s back. Damian yelps, swinging from being upright to being a victim of gravity, dangling from an unfairly strong grip. He doesn't even get a chance to growl a half-hearted threat before his knees are being scratched and spidered over by light fingernails, completely free to torment him now that they aren’t holding precious cargo.
“RIHIHICHARD! NOHOHOHO!” Damian’s shriek echoes through the cavern, youthful laughter flowing freely from his lungs in unstoppable waves. He twists around from his upside-down position as he cackles, wrapping his arms around his stomach when a few fingers slink down to skitter over his stretched torso. It wasn’t long before he was snorting.
“There we go,” Dick chuckles, “was wondering when my favourite sound was gonna make an appearance tonight. Thank you for joining us, Piglet.”
Damian didn’t have the brain capacity, nor the air to protest the nickname; his voice had disappeared within his tumbling cackles. He’s stuck in a loop of tensing and untensing his knees in quick succession as Dick’s fingers scribble behind them. Occasionally, they’ll skitter to the boy’s calves before swiping back to their original target, a pattern Dick kept up until Damian’s cheeks were flushed pink. He wasn’t sure he could plead with his brother, the air in his lungs too busy keeping his laughter running a mile a minute.
Thankfully, Dick has other victims to claim this night.
Damian feels his centre of gravity shift again, swinging him upright and tucked into a pair of strong arms once more. He tenses instinctively, hands covering his stomach and knees as he whines out, “Rihihihichard.”
“I’m not tickling anymore, Dames,” Dick chuckles warmly, watching Damian giggle himself silly. He firmly rubs at the boy’s arm, patting his knee and suppressing an amused snort when the boy squeaks in giddy panic.
Cute, he thinks, shifting Damian to one arm so he could rub the boy’s back unimpeded. The kid really needed to eat more; he was way too easy to just pick up and hold. That, or Dick and the rest of his family were vigilantes with Herculean strength, that was also an option.
“Learned your lesson, then?” Dick raises a brow, shifting to tame the wild bird's nest that’s become of Damian’s hair throughout the ordeal.
“Yehes… I apologize for disruhuhupting you, Rihihichard." Damian hates that giggles still demand to intertwine with his voice, but the endeared look sent his way makes up for the embarrassment a bit.
“It’s alright, I kind of needed the break anyway.” As he speaks, Dick walks through the cave and enters the elevator.
Hitting some buttons and ascending to the manor, his mind begins mapping out the possible hiding places or routes his brothers may have taken in hopes of evading their retribution. Those muppets. Did they forget who they’d been messing with? The elevator dings suddenly, and Dick steps out into the warmer air with Damian still in his arms. Alfred wanders around the corner with a glass, a placid yet amused quirk to his lips.
“Is there a reason, Master Dick, that your two brothers almost shattered four antiques while rampaging the halls like a pair of hooligans?” He asks, handing the cup of water in his hands to Damian, who takes it with a surprised, yet grateful smile.
Dick snickers, setting the boy down and gently ruffling his hair. “They invoked the Countdown.”
Alfred’s eyebrows raise as his smile widens. “Ah, I see.” He tilts his head slightly behind him. “The drawing rooms might require your attention then, Master Dick.”
Damian watches Dick’s grin expose more teeth and tries to ignore the giddy, nervous swoop his stomach gives, despite it not being directed towards him.
“Thanks, Alfie. If you hear screaming, everything’s probably fine.” He’s off like a rocket in half a second, footsteps practically silent despite the flat-out sprint he’s broken into.
Damian feels absolutely no remorse for what is barreling his brothers' way. He sips his water. “How did you know what the Countdown was, Pennyworth?” He asks curiously, looking to the butler who’s straightening a rug that was scuffed up - Drake’s clumsiness probably. That boy could never keep his feet when he was panicking.
“Who do you think invented it?” Alfred’s eyes twinkle with a conspiratorial gleam, taking pride in the floored look Damian sends him. He chuckles. “It may have been passed down the generations, but it had to start somewhere, Master Damian. Afterall, I needed to keep young Master Bruce in line somehow.”
Jason’s feet pound against the carpet of the manor, wheezing for breath. Look, he’s fit, but he’s also psyched out of his mind right now, and not being able to catch his breath seems fair considering the position he’s in. Tim isn’t doing much better, but he’s got a case of the giggles hindering his air capacity, sending glances over his shoulder, and almost slamming into walls because of it. They’ve been running the halls of the manor like some kind of horror house maze, hoping to either escape Dick entirely or confuse the man so much he spends the rest of his days trailing the halls looking for his brothers like some kind of ghost story. That works out in their favour in the end.
Suddenly, an unmistakable, gleeful cackle echoes through the halls of the manor.
It’s almost comedic how Jason and Tim stop dead in their tracks, twisting their heads left and right down the halls in thinly veiled panic. They’d been moving nonstop for ages. How the hell did their oldest brother catch up so fast?!
“This way,” Jason yanks Tim’s arm away from the drawing rooms as they’d planned, and instead speed through an adjacent door that leads to Bruce’s study. They only make it down two more corridors before that same eerie cackle rings out, somehow sounding closer.
“Oh god, he’s hunting us. He’s actually hunting us,” Tim hisses somewhat hysterically, turning in place to locate the sound.
“Shut up, Timmers,” Jason growls, though he’d be lying if he says that sound isn’t making him nervous. He suddenly feels bad for the criminals Dick pursued as a kid. It was everywhere, completely surrounding them. He backs up a few steps, then motions hurriedly down the hall. “We should be able to make it to the bedrooms; there are locks on those doors.”
Jason shoots down the hall again with a sputtering Tim right behind him. Fucking Giggles Mcgee back there, unable to control the nervous titters spilling out. It made Jason’s lips subconsciously twitch into a grin of his own. They’re so close, just a few more halls, a flight of stairs, and they’re home free-
Dick suddenly skids around the end of the hall with a loud, victorious crow.
Tim yelps, backpedaling on his heels straight into Jason. He darts to the side, aiming to use his brother as a human shield, when an arm suddenly slings around his middle.
“Sorry Timbit, it’s every man for himself.” Jason hoists him up, and the teenager immediately knows how Damian felt hurtling towards certain doom.
“JASON!” Tim shrieks, intercepted by Dick’s arms in a reliable catch, but he feels anything but safe right now. He twists to face his traitorous brother, a hand outstretched like some melodramatic horror movie.
The man is already sprinting down the halls, not looking back once. The bastard.
Tim doesn’t even get the chance to use his silver tongue before Dick’s fingers are skittering and spidering inside that unprotected hollow, making the boy slam his arm down, but it’s too late.
“Dihihihick! Ohohoho gohohod- plehehease! Nohohot thehehere!” Tim squirms, and though it's a valiant effort, this isn’t Dick’s first rodeo in dealing with wriggly brothers.
“No, no, I think I will actually,” Dick tuts, his arms like iron bands around his little brother, who’s a mess of shrieks and snorts.
“Ihihi sahahaid sohohorry!”
“Yes, but you also said ‘sacrifice the child.’” Dick echoes the earlier statement, removing his hand from the sensitive hollow. “‘Sacrifice the child’, Tim? Really? That was uncalled for; it’s Damian’s first Countdown. The little guy had no idea what he was in for.”
Dick drops the boy’s legs and leaves him dangling from one arm that’s tightly wrapped around his ribs, his toes just barely brushing the floor. He felt like some overgrown, misbehaving cat from this undignified position. The free hand takes advantage of the stretched out torso and crawls across Tim’s ribs, relishing in the wild squeal that’s let out.
“NOHOHOT THAHAT!”
“‘Not there’, ‘not that’, if you didn’t want to be tickled, you shouldn’t have annoyed me and gotten caught.” Dick hikes Tim up further to properly stretch out his ribcage and scribbles into the sensitive grooves, amused when Tim’s legs fling around, but he couldn’t seem to coordinate them in an effective way to escape.
Tim’s hands hung on to the one encircling his chest, gripping the limb as a lifeline while he lost himself to unbridled hysterics. It was no secret his ribcage was ticklish - Bruce even messed around sometimes during injury checks just to see if Tim still squeaks, spoiler, he does - but having his upperbody stretched like this made the tickling so much worse. He felt every wiggle, scratch, and jab Dick mercilessly piled onto his nervous system, sending his stomach swooping with giddiness and laughter pouring free.
“DIHIHICK IHIHIM SOHOHORRY!”
“Heard your apology the first time, bud, you know the rules though. You pushed my buttons, so I’m pushing yours.” As he spoke, he prodded up and down Tim’s ribs, drilling into the bottom set and earning himself a high-pitched yelp. “It’s only fair afterall.”
“NOHOHO IHIHIT IHIHISN’T!”
Dick chuckles. “Argue with the guy who made this up, I’m just following the set regulations, Timmy. If the rules get updated, please let me know.”
“DIHIHIHICK! Dihihihick- wahahait, hahahang ohohon- nononononohohoho- dohOHOhon’t! Cuhuhut thahat shihihit ohout!”
Those devilish fingers have finally abandoned his lower ribs, only to begin crawling upwards agonizingly slow. Tim giggles and stammers out half-baked protests as his nerves tingle at the intentionally leisurely movement, only making his brain even more keyed up. The octaves of his voice mirror the climbing digits, as it only becomes higher the closer they get to that accursed spot on his upper ribs. He’s stumbling over his words so much that it doesn't even sound like English anymore. When those fingers are a single set of bones away, they pause, tapping idly on them. Tim holds his breath, chest stuttering with flustered, anticipatory giggles.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Timmy,” Dick purrs gleefully, sending the boy cringing away as his breath curls at his ear, a stray snicker leaking through. “But did you just say, ‘don’t cut that shit out?’”
Tim scrabbles at the arm clinging tight to him. He’s giggling like mad, and Dick hasn’t even begun. “Nohohoho! No- Ihihihi dihihidn’t!”
“I think you did~” Dick singsongs gleefully, “And who am I to refuse my baby brother?”
He wraps both arms around Tim and hoists him up higher, his forearms now coiled around the boy’s stomach. Ducking around the arm that’s flailing in a panic, Dick plants his lips on the side of his ribs and blows the biggest raspberry he could into that damning spot.
You’d think the boy was being murdered. The scream Tim let out was shrill and panicked, laughter chasing the sound in endless waves. He goes slack in Dick’s grip, gasping and wheezing while his eyes squint with the size of his exhilarated grin. Dick has the good grace to let Tim gain his breath back before plunging his head in once more and blowing another raspberry.
Tim's stuck there, shrieking, cackling, and hiccuping with laughter. The fight is gone from his body, snatched away by the relentless ticklish buzzing flying through his nervous system. His stomach feels filled with that fizzy energy, expecting another wave of merciless tickling on his upper ribs. That expectancy keeps his giggles constant despite Dick giving him a break.
The older boy chuckles, squeezing Tim in more of a hug than a restrictive hold. “You still with me, Baby Bird?” He asks.
“Mehehean,” Tim presses out, completely spent as he becomes dead weight in the embrace. “Thahat was a mehean tactic.”
“I know, I’m gonna do the same to Jason.”
Tim snorts. “Good. Bastard gave me up.”
“That he did.” Dick gently lowers Tim’s feet down to the ground, though his hands stay on the boy’s shoulders when he sways. “Tired?”
“What do you think?” Tim snarks, only to immediately cringe and giggle helplessly, bracing into a feeble defense.
The Pavlovian response causes a bark of laughter to leave Dick. “I’m done,” he promises, gently mussing up Tim’s hair. “Any idea where your brother was heading?”
“Aiming for the bedrooms, but he might try and play it smarter after abandoning me,” Tim answers immediately, feeling no guilt. “Go get his ass.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
He gives an exaggerated salute, Tim blinks, and suddenly Dick is gone. A gust of wind teases at Tim’s bangs, and he scoffs a laugh. Definitely Batman’s kid, he’s mastered that disappearing trick perfectly.
Jason knows he’s fucked.
He sacrificed both brothers to this tyrannical nightmare, and he knows it doesn’t matter where he hides, or runs, or prays to. He’s fucked, with a capital F.
Hearing Tim’s faint screams minutes ago only doubled the butterflies in his stomach, doubtless Dick would find a way to do the same to him. There wasn’t a way out of this that didn’t leave him gasping with laughter and entirely at his older brother’s mercy. Unless…
Jason pauses his jog towards his bedroom. The bedroom. That’s what Dick would expect, the same tactic Jason used when he was thirteen and didn’t think things through. Hiding under the covers and muffling his giggles, only for Dick to pounce on him and tickle him to tears.
Jason spins on his heel and hauls ass towards the library. He never hid here when he was a kid - the quiet in the library was to never be forsaken, he’d been icily resolute on that when he was a kid - so Dick would never look here, cause Jason would never break his own rules. Perfect.
He pokes his head through a crack in the door, but the room is silent. No sign of his brothers anywhere, older or otherwise. He approaches the closest couch facing from the door and slumps down the back of it, taking in deep heaves of air to recover from the laps he’s been doing around the manor. Having to double back and take the long way to the bedrooms after Dick intercepted him and Tim had wasted time and energy. For now, though, he was safe, if only to think of a better strategy and recover the oxygen lost on this wild goose chase.
“This is a good hiding spot, he’ll never find us in here.”
Jason freezes. Oh, no. Please, no.
Dick’s wide grin pops up from the couch Jason’s hiding behind, something chaotic and menacing. “Scream and run.” He assumes, tilting his head.
Jason bolts with a yelled curse, but Dick’s been an older brother for years and practically predicted that move. He tackles Jason to the floor, rolling across the plush rugs and pinning him face down to the carpet.
“Now, Jason. Jason, Jason, Jason,” Dick leers, tutting like a disappointed mother. His fingers tap idly on the man’s wrists, sending jolts through his nerves and having him fight not to curl in on himself. “Sacrificing, what was it, both of your brothers today? Not even fifteen minutes apart, either. That is low, Little Wing.”
“It was Tim’s idea!” Jason argues, trying to ignore the wobbly grin spreading over his face as he pushes his feet into the rug to get some leverage. No such luck.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve made sure he’s learned not to suggest that again. But you… You actually threw them, so I think I’ve got to make this lesson stick. Don’t you think?”
“I’ll- I’ll kihill you.”
“Say that without laughing, and maybe I’ll believe you.”
Jason opens his mouth, and Dick’s fingers drop his wrists to claw at his hips, sending the boy into fits of loud laughter and wildly scrabbling for purchase on the library floor. It was very reminiscent of Jason’s reaction as a kid. All the years passed, changes came and went, and yet some things stayed the same. It pulled a smile from Dick despite the ‘menacing, evil older brother’ shtick he was trying to create. He probably looked like a Wish version of a villainous fiend.
The problem was, he loved his brothers too much to really act minacious, even when they were being annoying. “Having fun?” He asks Jason, just to be annoying right back.
“Gehehehet fUHUhuhucked!”
“Kori handles that, don’t you worry.”
Before Jason can roll his eyes or fake-gag at the joke, Dick is jabbing and prodding along the back of his ribcage, putting his attention towards not hitting the ceiling with how hard he jolts. “GOHOHohod, Dihihick!”
“Still ticklish on your back then?” Dick hums merrily, knowing all too well the extent of his little brother’s sensitivities. Seeing Bruce do back scratches on Jason when he was a kid was absolutely golden. Arguments or not at the time, they could both agree it was cute as hell.
Jason tries to swing an arm backwards to hit Dick, but the guy simply weaves around it and jams his fingers into the newly exposed area, delighting in the garbled shriek Jason gives and crumpling of his body as he gives in to the sensations. All tumbling giggles and wheezes galore.
“Right, so I want a couple of apologies from you, Mister,” Dick says conversationally, using the hand not crushed in an armpit to spider delicately along Jason’s shoulder blades. He has to stifle his own giggle as Jason whines through his laughter, shifting around to dislodge the pesky little digits with no success. “One for throwing Damian. One for throwing Tim. One for disrupting me when I asked you to be quiet. And one for flipping me the bird when I asked you guys to be quiet- don’t think I didn’t see that, Little Wing. You’re not slick.”
“Thohought yohou’d appreheheciate a bihird, Nihihightwing,” Jason snarks through his titters. Well, his mouth always did work faster than his brain.
Dick doesn’t even give him a response, simply slips his hand free from the hollow and scribbles down Jason’s back in its entirety. His nails skip and jump across bones and delve into the gaps between ribs, skittering down to the next target with a keen eye for Jason’s reactions. And boy, did he react.
“DIHIHIHIHIHICK! FUHUHU- OHOHO MIIHIHIY GOHOHOHOD! WAIT, WAIT, WAHAHAHAIT!”
Jason’s fist slams against the carpet as he buries his face into the crook of his free arm, red face warm against his skin and muffling the boisterous cackles he was sure could be heard throughout the whole manor. Lazarus pit or not, it seems his body reacted the exact same to tickling as when he was a boy, sapping his strength and making him useless. He isn’t sure how long he lies there, testing the range of his voice box under Dick’s fingers, which wouldn’t give his damn back a break, but when they did eventually lift from his skin, his nerves were shot to hell. The giggling stuck around despite nothing touching him, fizzing and sparking throughout his body from his clothes shifting around was enough to keep him in a delirious state of mirth.
Dick’s hands return to his back, but instead of scribbling, they press firmly and rub down his spine. “Easy there, Snickerdoodle,” he says gently, but no less playful. “I forget how ticklish your back is.” The guy probably deserved a break from the tickling. Dick wanted his apologies, but he wasn’t a monster.
Jason does take a minute to calm down, and then turns his head to look up at his big brother, flushed cheeks and hair mussed. “Get bent,” he wheezes out, his grin voluntary and goading.
Dick’s hands pause in their soothing ministrations, and his eye twitches.
Ah. Damn. Jason may have made a miscalculation on that onE- OH JESUS CHRIST STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP-
Jason’s screams of laughter may have included his mental chant, but he has no idea, too caught up in his shrieking as Dick presses a raspberry into his shoulder blades. And he didn’t stop at one. Or two. Three. Four. Five. Jason was going to leave a dent in the floor if this kept up, coping with the incessant buzzing in his skin by slamming his fist down.
“Four apologies, Little Wing.” God, you could hear the smirk in that smug bastard’s voice. “Better hop to before I start again.”
Part of Jason wanted to keep being defiant, but the other, younger, wiser part of himself was strangling that thought and shouting to just give up. “Alrihihihihihight,” Jason conceded, wiping a stray tear from his eye as he sat up on his forearms. “I’m sor-EHEHEHEHE! DIHIHIHICK!” He body slams into the carpet once more and kicks out.
“Hm?” Dick pops his head back up from where he’d been buzzing another raspberry into Jason’s shoulder blades, “Were you saying something, Little Wing?”
“YOU FUCKWIT!” Jason roars through his lingering cackles, desperately trying to turn over to block that horribly ticklish spot. Dick has him firmly pinned with his thighs, and his strength is just gone; there’s nowhere to hide.
“Not hearing my apologies, Jason,” Dick smirks, poking incessantly at his spine with merry little taps, causing the boy to flinch and groan his annoyance through his giggling.
“Ihihi trihihihied!”
“Try harder.”
God, Jason was going to kill this man.
He does attempt, though, yet every time he gets out one syllable, Dick’s either blowing another raspberry or raking his fingers across those hypersensitive shoulder bones. Jason is lost in laughter, cheeks flushed brightly, and a smile starting to ache on his face. He didn’t think he’d laughed like this since… well, since before everything went to shit.
It felt weirdly good, though a little overwhelming.
It was when Dick blew three mini rasberries across his ribcage that he finally worked up the air capacity to shriek. “I’M SOHOHOHORRY! DIHIHICK PLEHEHEASE!” He slaps the carpet twice, a little desperate as he crumbles into a ball of laughter. He wasn’t sure if he preferred dying to this or a crowbar; at least the latter wasn’t embarrassing.
A firm pressure immediately rubs down his back, hard enough to avoid tickling and getting rid of those ghastly aftershocks. Jason slumps to the floor, muffling his titters into the carpet and trying to remember what it’s like to breathe properly. The second Dick’s weight leaves his hips, he’s rolling into a ball. A hand touches his head, and he can’t stop the preemptive jolt and small hiccup of laughter.
There’s a soft laugh above him. “No more, Little Wing. You’ve had enough.” A hand deftly shifts through his messy hair, correcting the little floof of white back into a dignified state. Jason allows it. Not cause he can’t move or he enjoys the feeling, but as a way for Dick to make up for the torture he put him through. He lets his eyes slip closed, going boneless into the floor.
“Did you break him?”
Glee is evident in Tim’s voice, footsteps shuffling over to where Jason is doing his best impression of a blob fish. Jason rolls his eyes at Dick’s prideful chuckle.
“F’ck off, Timbit,” Jason grumbles, shoving his face into his arms and willing away the pink he knew was still staining his cheeks.
“Tt, you deserved that, Todd. After giving up not only myself, but Drake as well?” Damian’s playfully haughty remark made the vigilante look up with a glare. The kid looked far too smug. Dick mustn’t have gone very hard on him. That would need to change in the future.
Alfred walks over with three water bottles in hand, passing one to Tim, to Dick, and setting the third by Jason’s side. “Are you alright, Master Jason?” He asks, and the look he’s giving the boys is nothing short of amused.
Jason can’t help the fond twitch of his lips despite his embarrassment, giving a small nod to the butler. “I’m good.” He fumbles with the chilled water and drags himself up to uncap it. “Bruce raised a monster.”
Dick, whose chugging his water after having to hunt down three brothers, grins around the neck of the bottle. “I learned from the best,” he claims after swallowing. “It’s a generational game.”
“It’s generational trauma,” Jason mutters.
Dick raises one hand and wiggles his fingers, utterly delighted and wheezing with laughter when all three brothers leap away from him with wide eyes.
“I believe you are quite right, Master Jason,” Alfred hums, though the small chuckle he lets out escapes none of them. “Master Bruce will be delighted that something of his family was passed down.”
“Happy to carry on the tradition,” Dick grins, taking another victorious swig of his water. His brothers shoot him identical glares, but Dick notes that each of them is still flushed with smiles on their faces. The boys all looked content, tired of course, but happy.
Dick grins back unapologetically as he swallows. Maybe he needs to invoke Countdown more often if this was the result: a house filled with laughter and only the occasional death threat. A good day for the manor, all in all.