Work Text:
SEPTEMBER 12, 2021.
Percy is greeted into Mariana's room with a phone launched at his face. He catches it just inches from his nose. "What the fuck—"
"Cocaine! I'm doing cocaine, I swear!"
Mariana curls herself into a ball on her bed, holding her hands out in front of her. From the look of horror on her face, Percy could believe she's actually doing cocaine, if not for the suspicious lack of suspicious substances. He turns the phone to check. Mariana's unholy scream stops him, but by then it's already too late.
"'Robin fanfiction'?" he reads aloud from the orange and white search bar (which he recognises mortifyingly quickly).
Mariana lays straight like a corpse in a casket and stares blankly at the ceiling, dead to the world for anyone who asks. But then she resurrects again, with determination in her pursed lips and furrowed brows.
"Why should I feel embarrassed over my interests?" she whispers to herself, pressing her cold hands to her flushed cheeks. Then she speaks louder, addressing Percy. "Do you know what fanfiction is, Perce?"
He's slightly ashamed to say that he knows a lot more than he would like. It was Leo and Piper who first introduced him to the genre. With cheeky grins and a hint of insanity in their eyes, they pulled him under the covers during a sleepover and shoved a phone in his hands. The two demigods taught him the terminology and inside jokes within the community. There were some stories that were crazily well-written, while others were just... weird. Percy didn't read much of it since he dislikes reading in the first place (and stories with either horrifyingly bad grammar or horrifyingly long words do wonders for his dyslexia), but he knows what's up whenever they giggle with their heads together over a phone. He nods slowly in response.
"But... Robin? Really?" he questions. He can't hold back his minor frown of judgement.
"I just think he's neat!" she argues back. "I like his katana! Besides, he's the only one that could be close to me in age, so it's not that weird..."
Percy holds his hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright. I guess Robin is kinda cool..." Even though he yelled ye olde swears at me that one time.
"Y'know, Robin isn't the only one they write fanfiction about! There's stuff about the other Bats, like Nightwing, and Red Hood, and Red Robin, and Batgirl, and there's a shit ton about Batman too," she rambles on. "But it's kinda odd 'cause no one knows their identities so the authors either make up OC's for the people behind the mask, or they just use any real-life celebrities that they want, like a headcanon or something. Oh and major ew, I read one where Robin was Damian Wayne and it showed him acting all sweet to no one but the MC, which is so incredibly fake because he's the bitchiest bitch around actually. Also, he's like twelve — which is crazy because why are we in the same year, why is the nepo baby actually smart — and so like the author's kinda weird for that not gonna lie. Oh and, speaking of Damian Wayne, we need to go stationery shopping before Máma kills me."
If Percy didn't also have ADHD, that entire thread of words would have been lost on him. Whenever she gets nervous, Mariana tends to jump across her trains of thought like an impatient driver switching lanes. He mentally shifts through the jumble of information thrown at him, focusing on the most important.
"There's Nightwing fanfiction?"
She nods vigorously and Percy hums to himself. Maybe reading isn't all that bad...
Then comes the not so important issues: "Your school year has already started, what do you mean you haven't bought your stationery yet?"
"I was supposed to buy them online, but I, uh, got a little sidetracked..." She glances at her phone with a grimacing smile.
"By Robin fanfiction?"
She nods solemnly, but her twitching lip makes Percy rethink how apologetic she really is.
"And what does all this have to do with Damian?" Percy tilts his head.
He doesn't even have time to blink before her face shifts into a nasty scowl. (She scarily reminds Percy of himself, with how his own expressions are as untamable and unpredictable as his father's domain.)
"Four classes," she grits out. "Out of the eight classes we have excluding homeroom — which we also share, by the way — he is in four of them, and we're forced to sit next to each other in three since we have assigned seating by role order!"
She heatedly counts through the alphabet on her fingers. "... S, T, U, V, W! Where are the people with U and V last names?!"
Percy shrugs. "I mean, you're both the only ones in a grade above your age, so shouldn't it be expected for the school to put you two together?"
"No, something fishy's afoot, I'm telling you!" she stands up, pointing her finger at him as if it will prove her point. "I checked last month, the only class I had with him was Art!"
He raises an eyebrow. "And how did you find that out, exactly?"
Mariana's face stills and she blinks twice. "Y'know what, we should get going." (He really needs to teach her how to do a good poker face.)
He starts to grab his stuff when he quickly encounters a problem: Percy hasn't gone to a proper school in over five years. What are kids supposed to take to school? At least a pen and a notebook, right? Do they need a device? Percy only ever used his laptop in university. Fuck, do they have to buy a whole new computer? What about a ring binder, or a calculator — does she need a graphics calculator at her age?
Gods, he needs help. And Mariana notices.
"You look like you've never stationery shopped in your life," she judges while shuffling through her cluttered closet. She whips around at Percy's silence. "Wait, have you never gone stationery shopping?"
"I did, once!" he protests. "When I was like... ten. Hey, don't gimme that look, I was homeschooled for a long while."
"Uh, me too?! I've never had to stationery shop for school!" she cries, a sudden look of panic overtaking her face. "I thought you would know what you're doing!"
They stare at each other in slowly dawning horror.
"Y'know who could help?" Mariana says suddenly. "Dick, he'd be great help."
Percy nods along, with a long drawn out 'aah' of understanding. "Right, 'cause he can get Tim to help us since he's actually in high school right now."
Mariana smiles stiffly. (It almost makes him believe that he hadn't understood her as well as he thought.) "Yeah... sure, Perce." (Yeah, he's definitely wrong.)
He leaves to call Dick while Mariana changes out of her pajamas. Two rings later, he picks up.
"Hey Percy, what's up?"
"Hey, Dickie." Percy can imagine Dick's cheek-splitting smile, like when they were younger. It's really the only reason why he sticks to that nickname. "Can I borrow Tim for an hour or two?"
"Tim's a little... out of sorts at the moment." The wince in his voice is evident. "I can wake him up, but you'll probably have to buy him some coffee on the way. What do you need him for?"
"Mariana needs to stationery shop — yeah, we know it's a bit late for that — but we're both homeschooled, so we need a high school expert, I guess."
Dick snorts. "Tim can't be considered a high school expert when he's barely in class."
"Little genius Tim Drake hates school? That's..." he thinks for a second. "Actually not a surprise. If he doesn't even have the energy to fall asleep in his bed, then I doubt that he'd have the energy to handle the obnoxious rich kids in GA." Percy shivers, hellish memories coming to his mind.
Dick laughs over the line. "Yeah, he says that school is 'a mindless prison where the grades get lower and the students get higher' or something like that."
"Hear, hear!" Percy holds his hand up like he's raising a toast and Dick laughs again.
"Just send me the address of the shop and we'll be over."
"We? Wh—"
Dick hangs up before Percy can finish his question and he's forced to answer with the embarrassing truth: he just wants to spend as much time as he can with his old best friend. He has to go back to Blüdhaven tonight, because even if he zetas back to patrol his city as Nightwing some nights, he does have a civilian job to maintain. But cramming in ten years of lost time within a few weeks proves to be increasingly difficult when most of Percy's time is spent with Mariana. So he'll take every morsel of time offered, like a starved animal scavenging in the Gotham sewers.
(He doesn't want to think this way, but some traitorous, paranoid, Bat-influenced part of him is waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Percy to pack up and leave through an open window instead.)
He nulls these thoughts by scanning through his walk-in closet. Maybe he spends too much time perusing through his clothes, holding up outfits against his body as he scrutinizes the mirror. But there's no one around but himself to criticise him, so he ignores it. Deciding on chinos and a tight, white tank top under an unbuttoned light blue Cuban collar shirt, he heads out to wake Tim.
Passing the living room, he sees Damian cross-legged on the couch with a book in his hands and Titus resting in his lap. He pauses to take in the sight of his baby brother being peaceful and finally looking like a child his age. He stops before leaning back to stick his head through the doorway. "Hey Damian, didn't you say you wanted to buy new art supplies?"
Damian looks up and nods once. He agrees curtly to Dick's invitation of going to the stationery shop (which lacks some very key details), then goes back to reading.
It'll be good for Damian to talk more to kids his age, Dick thinks while knocking on Tim's door. Maybe they’ll become besties, despite their rocky start, and have hangouts that Dick and Percy have to supervise. First impressions are meant to be changed, after all. (Dick is deluding himself, he knows it, but nonetheless it would be good for Damian to have friends who aren’t superpowered and/or generally indestructible.)
There’s a noise of neither objection or approval from Tim’s room, so Dick pushes on the door and peeks in. A lump of a teenager sits on the bed, ruffling through case notes. When he glances up and merely grunts in greeting, Batman-style, Dick knows it’s time for an intervention.
He sits on the bed and shuffles the pages into a neat stack, keeping them far out of Tim’s reach. “Two hours,” Dick barters. “Just two hours, and then you can go back to whatever cold case this is.”
Although Tim grumbles and gripes in protest, he realises very quickly what Dick is doing and collapses back into his pillows with a groan. Tim knows there’s no winning against his older brother. (Dick glances at the framed Flying Graysons poster on the far wall. He knows this too.)
"Why are you dressed so fancy?” Tim side-eyes the chain jewellery draped across Dick’s collarbone. “You going somewhere?"
"Yup! And I'm taking you with me."
"What? Why?"
"Percy and Mariana need help for back-to-school shopping." Dick pointedly stares at a lava lamp on the shelf, but still shoots his little brother a look when he huffs out a laugh.
"Ohhh... So that's why you're dressed like you're going on a date," Tim smirks.
"No, I'm not!" He looks down at his outfit, at his expensive sneakers, pyramid studded belt, and shiny silver rings. "This is a perfectly respectable outfit for some light shopping!"
"Uh huh..."
Dick, ever the mature adult, sticks out his tongue to which Tim laughs. After making the boy promise to come down to the garage after getting ready, Dick makes the journey down first. Damian is already there, leaning against the door of Dick’s navy blue Toyota Corolla. He’s on the driver’s side, making Dick raise an eyebrow.
"Grayson, I am in need of particular assistance." Dick perks up at Damian's words. Is this it, the moment when the youngest of the family finally asks his older brother for help? Damian holds up his hand, noticing Dick's wide, hopeful eyes. "But I will only ask it from you if I am allowed to drive."
Dick nods vigorously, readily ignoring the implications of Damian at the wheel. "What's up, Little D?"
"Call me that wretched name again and I will cease from ever considering you as my brother."
"Fine... Wait, you consider me as your brother?"
"Moving on to my issue—"
"Awwww, Dami!"
"Unhand me, Grayson!"
Dick releases his baby brother from his deathly bear hug, allowing Damian to slide into the driver's seat while Dick takes shotgun. Damian leans back and crosses his arms, inspecting the clean glass as if he can see the dirt on a microscopic level.
"It has been a week of school and my homeroom teacher is urging me to join clubs."
It isn’t a question, but Dick knows Damian well. "You don't know what clubs to join?" he deducts.
"I understand that it would be beneficial for my cover, but I can find nothing of interest." Damian’s hands are now interlocked on his lap. His fingers tighten, turning his knuckles pale.
"What about Mariana?” he asks, hoping that the girl could either be a point of reference or someone to relate to, thus inciting a budding friendship. “Maybe she hasn't chosen anything either."
Damian clicks his tongue. "Trenche has joined every single music ensemble and choir offered, secured her future place in the senior orchestras, made it onto the junior premier lists for the track, archery, and swim teams, and has become class captain for our homeroom."
"All within the span of a week?!"
Damian nods, his frown souring further by the second.
“Gosh, she really is just like her mother,” Dick remarks softly.
“What do you mean?” the boy snaps. “I have Coraline Trenche as my art teacher, and she is much more tolerable than her daughter ever will be.”
Dick hums, pocketing that snippet of information for later. "Back in my day at GA," (gosh, he sounds old), "Ms. Trenche was known to be the biggest extrovert on Earth. If you knew anybody, she probably knew them too."
"Oh yeah, a couple guys in my year tried to call her out on lying about it by asking her about fake people," Tim pipes up after sliding into the backseat. "But it backfired pretty soon when she actually knew people named Jeremiah Markova and Valeria Dallas. Called them up too, to prove it."
Tim tilts his head questioningly at Dick’s seating arrangement. The two reluctant brothers spot each other in the rearview mirror.
"Fuck, Demon is driving?"
“Why is Drake here?”
In all honesty, Dick somehow forgot to consider Tim and Damian’s animosity, despite having a front-row seat to their daily shouting matches. He was just too concerned over seeing Percy, and Damian and Mariana being friends, and getting Tim out of the house, as separate issues and didn’t think about how they would work out together. It’s fine. It’s just another bonding experience after all. Before he can coerce them into getting along, Damian sniffs haughtily.
“I will not be convinced into doing anything with him after what he did.”
Dick pouts. “Oh c’mon, is this still about the cookies going missing? We still haven’t found the culprit, so no need to point fingers now, Damian.”
“It’s not about the cookies,” Tim informs, dragging a limp hand down half his face. “Damian thinks I hacked into the Gotham Academy system to change his timetable to have five classes with Mariana Trenche, as retaliation for being accused of stealing the cookies — and I didn’t do either of those things, by the way.”
“That sounds exactly like what the culprit would say,” Damian glares. (It seems he’s been getting interrogation lessons from Steph.) “Last I checked, I only had one class with Trenche. And how else would you explain the sudden security measures surrounding Gotham Academy’s student timetable information? It reeks of your meddling, Drake.”
Dick thinks twice about believing Tim’s loud objections, the boy fully capable of lying to Batman himself and having done so before. But it doesn’t really matter who the culprit was, as long as the deed had been done. It’s a blessing in disguise, really. The more time he spends with Mariana, the closer they are to friendship (and the more he gets to see Percy, hopefully).
Dick manages to convince Damian to come along with them by promising to become his accomplice in sneaking another pet into the Manor, as well as giving up his credit card. (It’s Bruce’s loss twice over, anyway.)
They park in front of the shop and spot Percy and Mariana waiting at the entrance.
Percy wears baggy blue jeans with an even baggier grey Nirvana shirt overtop a black and blue striped long sleeve. A matching blue skateboard is gripped loosely at his side, and Dick delights in knowing that he's still the skater boy he was in their youth. While he's all covered up, Mariana is the exact opposite. Regardless of Gotham’s chilly, recent Mr. Freeze attack influenced weather, Mariana is seemingly unaffected in her cropped yellow T-shirt, pink athletic shorts, and flip flops. The outfit is tied together by large, silver, crab claw shaped earrings and a matching necklace.
Maybe it's the older brother of a family of vigilantes in him, but he immediately hones in on the scars riddling her brown skin. Gothamites, especially those born and bred, are no strangers to scars. But the sheer number of them at her age is more than concerning. (He really doesn’t want to, but he considers doing a background check on Coraline Trenche when he gets back to the ‘cave.)
Dick’s gaze flicks back to her babysitter. He's wearing his silver earrings again. He wore them once before at that fever dream of a dinner, but Dick was too preoccupied by the fact that he's back, he's back, and he's going to make him stay, to notice how deliriously good he looks in them.
But Percy’s first action is not to return the favour and appreciate Dick’s (slightly overdressed) figure. Instead, he steps in front of Mariana, tense and wary and protective, as he glares down at Damian. The girl herself jolts in surprise, but goes back to scowling at Damian as well. (Well, there goes Dick’s fruitless wishes of a friendship between them.)
“Wayne,” she states coldly.
“Trenche,” Damian greets in equal tone.
Mariana looks up questioningly at her babysitter to find him doing the same to Dick. The older man looks away, rubbing his neck. A deliberate blankness washes over Percy’s face as Mariana pipes up.
“Why is he here?” she asks Dick. “Why would he come along when he hates me and Tim?”
“Grayson, you didn’t tell me neither Trenche nor Jackson were going to be here,” Damian hisses.
Dick, ever the master of ignoring the glaring problems caused by his own habit of withholding information, picks and chooses the part of their questions which is easiest to answer: “Damian doesn’t hate Tim. It’s fine now that the problem with the cookies has been resolved, mostly.”
“The cookies?” Percy and Mariana ask simultaneously, with an innocent lilt in their voices.
“They were fighting about someone stealing Alfred’s cookies last week. Tensions are still high, I fear.” It takes every ounce of self-control for the criminal and her accomplice to not smirk triumphantly at each other.
Mariana turns her face away, muttering so quietly that no one but Percy can hear. “¿Están preocupados por las galletas, pero no por el collar de perlas?”
Knowing that she only switches languages whenever she’s upset and doesn’t want him to know it, Percy tears his eyes away from Damian’s bitter glower and leans down to ruffle her blue hair. “It’s okay, he can’t Wayne on our parade.”
An exasperated eye-roll over a poorly hidden grin replaces Mariana’s initial dirty looks, and even Dick can’t help but chuckle (what can he say, he’s a slut for a good pun). The laugh soon morphs into a cough under the weight of Percy’s amused glance and Damian’s stare, heavy with disdain. Before the kid can accuse him of treachery against the family name, Dick herds them all into the shop and grabs a little shopping cart.
"You came along," Percy says as Dick slides into his usual place next to him.
"What, you didn't want me to?" Dick pouts. Percy has to stop his mind from calling him cute. He looks away swiftly, unable to see the genuine hurt weaved in the other man's face.
“No, I’m glad you’re here, but…” He glances at Mariana and Damian, where they inspect the aisles while ignoring every fibre of the other’s being. “It’s fine, it’s nothing.”
“Are you sure?” Dick asks, not-so-sneakily taking Percy’s coffee from his hand. Percy warns him off his little side quest, but Dick just raises an eyebrow in challenge. Percy makes no other moves to stop him — he knows he'll regret it soon enough. Maintaining eye contact, he takes a sip. Percy watches on, his eyes momentarily flickering down to where his lips touch the lid.
The moment is very soon ruined when Dick makes a face and holds the coffee far, far away from himself (Told ya, Percy thinks.). "Gosh, what's in here?! You're just as bad as Tim!"
Tim coughs. They look over at the boy to see him inconspicuously pouring his black coffee into his half-full can of Zesti. On the side, Mariana and Damian watch him with equal parts intrigue (to see if his heart would finally stop) and disgust (because that is fucking vile).
"I don't think anyone is as bad as Tim," Percy says, and Dick has to agree. He leans over to whisper conspiratorially, fully aware that a hand covering his mouth won't block his half-whispers.
"Apparently he said adding Zesti makes coffee taste better." He makes another face that Percy has to suppress his smile at. "But I think the lack of sleep is getting to his taste buds now, because I don't understand how he could defile such a glorious drink with his bitter bean juice."
"Hey! This bitter bean juice keeps me functioning, alright?" Percy snatches back his coffee cup and takes a long swig, if only to hide his relentless grin at Dick's theatrics.
Damian and Mariana advance through their respective shopping lists with ease, thoroughly making sure that their hauls stay separated in the cart. Tim lags behind the rest, giving Mariana the occasional piece of advice that ranged from how to colour code her notebooks to which GA teachers are easiest to prank (Ms. Trenche is at the very bottom of that list).
Percy keeps quiet during most of their conversations about Gotham Academy, knowing his experiences with the school were wildly original.
(Mariana thinks for a second after Tim asks her for which teachers she has this year. “Uh, I can’t remember most of their names… Mrs. Vaughn is one of them, I think?”
"Oh, Millie?” Percy snaps his fingers in recognition. “I remember her!"
"What subject did she teach again?" asks Dick, tilting his head.
Percy's face screws up. "Uh... Detention?"
"Nah, she taught math, right?"
"Isn't that what I just said?"
"She's still the main detention teacher, actually," Tim says.
"You're on a first name basis with the detention teacher?" the two youngest ask simultaneously. Damian's tone is judgemental as usual, but Mariana's eyes hold a very dangerous glint of awe. They glance at each other, clicking their tongues and turning away, all still in perfect unison.)
The (inaccurately dubbed) high school graduate duo push around the shopping cart, each with one hand on its handle. But the cart has one problem: it is tiny. The handle was made for two normal sized hands with a centimetre of wiggle room. But Dick and Percy's hands are massive, made larger by the hard skin grown over their scars and callouses, so their pinkies press together at every swerve in the cart's path and their forearms knock whenever they stop.
Tim glances skeptically at them — obviously going to suggest the better option of choosing just one person to handle the cart — when Mariana's withering glare (that she without a doubt learnt from her mother) promptly shuts his mouth.
"You know, there's someone who's worse than Tim, actually." Dick presses his shoulder into Percy's. They both ignore the pulse of familiarity smouldering under their skin.
"Who?" replies Percy, in the same hushed voice. He was well acquainted with catering to Dick's melodramatic nature as kids, so he’s more than happy to oblige once again.
Dick glances around them in slow and painstaking sweeps, like he’s about to divulge a world-altering and universe-shattering secret. Percy bites the inside of his cheek, too committed in his act to let his face fall into his usual easy smile. (He’s doing that often now, he notices in the back of his mind. He mentally thanks his therapist.)
Dick's warm skin squashed into his wrist pulls him back from the clouds in his head. His sapphire blue eyes hold a glint that Percy recognised in seconds.
"It's Babs, can you believe it?"
Percy raises his eyebrows to the sky, matching Dick's expression, and gasps with all the dramatics that the information deserved. "No, really?"
"Yes, really." Dick nods, lips pressing into a solemn frown. But the glint doesn't disappear. "Tim drinks anything that keeps him awake, but Barbara? Oh gosh, she chugs coffee like it's her life blood. She's the one who introduced Tim to coffee in the first place!"
“At least she doesn’t mix coffee and soda,” Percy shrugs.
“She drinks black coffee straight up!”
“This,” he holds up his cup, “is black coffee, Dickie. It’s not gonna kill you.” Deep dimples bracket Dick’s beaming smile, and Percy feels the irrational need to press his thumb into the divots of skin. “But you know what might kill someone? Coffee infused Zesti.”
Tim, who can obviously hear their conversation, scowls in their direction. “I’m telling Babs you said that.”
“I’m pretty sure Barbara would agree that your taste buds are broken, Timbuktu,” Dick counters while Percy smiles at the nickname.
“I’ll tell her that you insulted her taste instead.”
Even Percy winces on Dick’s behalf, but a single glance at his comically pale face makes him snort with laughter. Dick looks between the both of them, expression betrayed and scandalised.
“You wouldn’t.”
His little brother’s narrow blue eyes are a visual portrayal of ‘try me’. While Dick laments, Percy tries to negotiate his way out of certain doom.
“I defended Babs’ honour, you can’t tattle on me.”
Tim scoffs. “You made fun of my drink!”
“Tell me, can you even taste your drink?”
“Not really…”
“Wonder Woman or Superman?” questions Mariana abruptly, cutting into their parley. She whirls around to hold up two pencil cases, each emblem patterned on the clear plastic. In quick succession, Tim and Dick answer Superman while Percy votes for Wonder Woman. She shoves the Superman pencil case back onto the shelf.
Damian grouches on the other side of the cart. “Batman is so much better than either of them.”
Mariana scrunches her nose. “Ew, how could you say such atrocities?”
“Atrocities?! My—”
“Who’s your favourite Bat, Mariana?” asks Tim, pointedly eyeballing Damian and the very sharp pencil clenched in his fist.
“Didn’t you say it was Robin?” Percy teases, remembering the events of the morning.
She shakes her head vehemently. “No way, I just like his sword. He’s the only Robin with a sword and I respect the gremlin vibe he has going on out of solidarity, but if I had to pick a favourite Robin, it would be the second one. He gave me candy on Halloween, when I was like, eight.”
Tim and Damian glance at each other as Damian’s blush recedes from his neck (maybe there’s hope for a Damian-Mariana friendship after all). Dick knows that the first thing they’ll do on patrol is tease Jason for his tenure as Robin being accentuated by giving little kids candy.
“But having Batman as your favourite is actual bullshit,” she spits at Damian. “The only overgrown furry I respect is Catwoman!”
“Of course you would rather respect a thief than a hero!”
“She’s an ex-con! Besides, the Gotham City Sirens are so much cooler than the Bats!”
“How could you compare criminals with the protectors of the city?!”
“Again, they’re ex-cons! Except for maybe Poison Ivy… but she does it for a good cause!”
“And Nightingale is retired, and Harley Quinn is turning over a new leaf,” Tim chimes in, despite the warning glare Dick sends him.
“Yeah! And I’m pretty sure Batman has slept with Catwoman, while she was still a criminal! So does that really make him any better?!”
“Batman wouldn’t do such a vulgar thing!”
“The streets don’t lie, pendejo!”
As their voices get louder and higher, the pain in Percy’s head cuts deeper. Fuck, I hate being a demigod, he thinks for the umpteenth time. Letting go of the cart, he brings both his hands up to massage his temples. He can hear the pipes of the nearby bathroom creaking. Di immortales, is he really losing his grip on his powers through a mere headache? The water feels far from his reach. He makes a mental note to visit New Rome University and coax one of his friends into a powered sparring session, something to get used to the no longer familiar tug in his lower stomach.
His eyes flutter open for a moment to look past the aisle. From the looks of the store clerks, they are just seconds away from getting kicked out.
"Hey!"
It’s Dick’s voice, wedging himself between the two twelve-year-olds. Always the peacemaker. He’d do the same thing whenever Percy and Bruce got into their rare arguments back then. (Bruce was never in the house enough for arguments — or conversations as a whole — to be a common occurrence.)
He doesn’t pay attention to what Dick is saying while kneeling in front of Damian, but the sound of his voice is enough to mitigate the stinging behind his eyes. He gains enough mental clarity to place a hand on Mariana’s shoulder and tug her back from the brothers. Instantly, she relaxes under his hand and takes a deep breath. He can feel the migraine retreating, and the plumbing’s tantrum ceases.
“Oookay, let’s go to check out, yeah?” Tim titters nervously, peeking at the staff behind the counter. “Before we get kicked out of the third store this month.”
“It’s only the tenth of September,” says Percy.
“Yeah…”
They load the stationery supplies onto the conveyor belt, still careful to separate the kids’ items. Dick takes out his credit card (in spite of Percy racing to the counter, he somehow manages to slip in first) with Damian at front and Mariana behind Percy and Tim, the kids themselves are separated as well. On Mariana’s insisting, since plastic bags are bad for the environment, they pack everything into two 50-cent reusable bags, when Tim turns to Mariana.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he says. “Who’s your favourite Bat?”
“I think Red Hood is pretty cool,” she says after a while, placing her hand on her chin. “But what about that new one, Riptide?”
Percy’s head snaps up. “Riptide is not a Bat.”