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Jason had made a mess on the large counter. He was making something with eggplant tonight, some Sicilian pasta recipe he'd searched for, because Damian didn't eat meat, and Jason had become very attentive to his needs as of late.
"You're supposed to salt the eggplant first," Damian said from the island, dropping his eyes to his phone again. "To draw out the bitterness. Otherwise it absorbs oil and becomes mush."
"Yeah. I read the recipe too."
Damian knew Jason had not, in fact, salted the eggplant. The slices were going into the pan unseasoned and too thick. He also turned the heat all the way up, which was not correct in the least.
Jason reached blindly along the spice rack without turning around, found something by feel, and shook a portion into the pan. He caught Damian's expression on the turn.
"It's fine. It's supposed to look like that."
The kitchen at the Pennyworth Manor was smaller than the one before, and it meant there was nowhere for either of them to be that wasn't within arm's reach of the other. Damian had chosen the seat at the island specifically because it put four feet of counter between them. It wasn't enough, in a room this size, with a person this incapable of cooking neatly.
To his merit, Jason did always clean up after himself.
"Who you texting? Your girlfriend?"
Damian rolled his eyes.
"I'm reading Substack," he lied.
Leaning his chin on his palm, he looked back at his phone, at the tabs of all the apartment listings he had open. He'd told himself he wasn't seriously looking for himself. Just seeing what's out there, browsing good investment properties for his future real estate empire. He was, technically, a few months off from controlling enough capital to making it real rather than an idle fantasy.
The oil popped. Jason swore under his breath but didn't turn the heat down. Next he dropped a whole glump of diced tomatoes from a can on top and it hissed even louder.
"Why are you trying so hard?" Damian said. "You suck."
"I'm not– okay. Fine." Jason set the spoon down. The eggplant continued to wither and drown in the tomatoes behind him. "Can I ask you something without you weaponizing it later?"
"No promises."
"I like cooking." He sighed. "You know I'm not trying to run anything here. Right?" He kept his eyes away from Damian. "I'm not– I don't have some plan where I start packing your lunches, or signing your permission slips, or whatever."
Damian was quiet for a moment. "Nobody thought that."
He did not say that Jason had, in some glaring and ridiculous way, oriented himself to a strangely housewife-ish role. And that he, somehow, by all standards, seemed to fit in it quite well.
Damian had never lived with Jason before this, so he had no way of knowing whether the compulsive wiping-down of counters, the constant small-scale furniture rearrangements, his grim, joyless determination to learn to cook, whether any of it was new. Or if this was Jason building a home because he'd never fully had one after he came back.
"Turn the heat down," Damian told him. "You're not braising a shoe."
And Jason finally nudged the gas down a notch.
Then, sounds came from the garage, the door lifting, car humming to a stop.
Soon, Damian's father slipped in through the connecting door, and Damian, despite himself, braced for what was about to come.
Bruce visibly brightened up upon seeing the scene he'd walked into.
"Smells good."
He crossed the kitchen, and wrapping a hand around the back of Jason's neck, gently kissed him on the cheek.
They didn't usually get more smoochy than that out of respect for Damian. Either way, Damian looked away, fought the urge to wrinkle his nose the way he might have at twelve.
He’d still not fully concieved or decided how he was supposed to act in all this.
Damian's mother had once told him that his father was a man who would clear out a minefield with bare hands, one at a time, expecting every single one to take a finger, but keep going anyway. He had a settled expectation for loss that guided everything in him, from all his habits to the way he loved.
Even mother didn't know what lengths that love had gone to now. She didn't know Damian had agreed to be a witness for the civil ceremony, and watched his dad get married to his once-dead brother, whom was now walking around under a passport with somebody else's name printed inside it, all so the paperwork would hold up if anyone ever came looking. And Damian didn't want to be the one to tell her.
He sent a silent, sorry dua her way. Then hopped off the stool and gathered his things.
"Hold on, Damian." Bruce reached into his coat. "I've got something for you."
Walking around the island, he stepped in to cut Damian’s path.
It was small enough to disappear entirely into his closed fist, and he held it out. When he opened his hand, Damian found a chess piece resting in his palm: a knight, carved from dark, veiny stone.
"It's not the original," Bruce said, before Damian could ask.
Damian's hand, halfway to reaching, went still.
"I've spent most of a year having people ask after matching pieces," Bruce said. "Ebay, private collectors, one ornery woman at an auction house in Edinburgh. Then, finally, I found the stonemasons in Ayrshire." He pushed it out to Damian now, urging him to pick it up. "It's carved to the same pattern, from a soapstone quarry not far from where the set itself was cut. It's as close as anyone's going to get."
Damian took it. It sat cold and dense against his palm, heavier than its size accounted for. His throat tightened up.
Alfred's cherished chess set.
It was one of the only things that had survived the night the manor came down, but not completely, as Damian had discovered when he had laid the board out later for a game. A piece was missing, and it had devastated him to no end.
Bruce cleared his throat.
"I don't have adequate words for what he meant for our family, still don't, may never," he said, quieter now. "But… I keep thinking, if he's watching any of this from somewhere– I wanted him to see that the missing piece got found. And that you have the complete set now."
Damian didn't quite dare to raise his head then.
Jason's hip was propped against the counter, arms folded. "For what it's worth, he made me listen to four different versions of that speech this week until it stopped sounding cheesy as hell. So if it landed even a little bit, that's my editing."
Damian turned, held the knight against the light for a moment and squinted. "It was fine."
"Good," Jason said. He took the pan off the stove and laid it on the island atop an oven mitten. "Then my work here is done. Go put it on the board, ’cuz if it goes back to his coat pocket he will absolutely lose it by tomorrow."
"I would not," Bruce said, with no real conviction.
Damian looked between the two of them as they traded a grin.
His father was happy.
He'd never seen the man this helplessly pleased, like a dog that had found something in the yard and was bringing it back before anyone could tell him to drop it. Damian thought, in passing, he ought to feel jealous.
His father's attention had always been a rather rationed thing, and here was Jason, the prodigal black sheep, pulling great fistfuls of it toward himself and somehow not being begrudged for it. (Then again: when hadn't he been pulling it?)
But Damian didn't feel it, not really.
If anything there was something like relief in it. That after so many years of havoc and destruction, whatever this was between his father and Jason, whatever ruin it had made of every family gathering for the rest of history, it at least made his father happy. And that kept something of the family Damian recognized decent, even as it had cost them, alienated nearly everyone else.
Damian stroked the chess piece with his thumb.
He didn't want to lose his father. He didn't want to lose anyone ever again.
"Ah– fuck, I forgot to set the water boiling." Jason was turning to the pot sitting empty where it should’ve been boiling with pasta ten minutes ago. He lifted it and brought it to the sink. "Thanks for that, Dames, by the way. Real helpful, distracting me with your insults while I torch the dinner."
"I'll set the table," Bruce offered.
Damian set his phone and the knight down on the counter.
"No. I'll do it."
Jason glanced over his shoulder at that and held his gaze for a moment.
"Right," Jason said. He hauled the full water pot to the stove, dumping a fistful of salt into it. "Now, I'm not sure the sauce is gonna be salvageable, honestly, but– just put enough parm on top and make it swanky."