Work Text:
Jason's problem (fine, one of Jason's problems) is that he thinks he's too cool for school.
Dick gets it. Dick was too cool for school, too. He didn't have all that much of a formal education back in the circus: they were always moving, and even when his parents tried to weigh him down with books it was easy to skip out. He needed to move his body more than he ever wanted to stimulate his mind.
The thing is this, though: not going to school when you're in the circus is fine. Not going to school when you're a punk kid who's most comfortable on the street is also (sort of) fine. Dick gets it. Dick gets why Jason is defiantly gleeful when he blows off Bruce's attempts to nail him to a desk. He gets that walking into a rich dude's mansion and then being told to do homework is pretty much just asking for teenage rebellion. "Screw you" might as well be graffitied all over the Cave walls at this point.
None of this stops Dick from slamming the book Jason'd thrown at his head five seconds ago back down on Jason's desk. Dick is pretty sure it's the same desk he used to use back in the day, dug up from whatever museum Bruce stores this stuff in. (He tries not to think about that too much.)
Dick knows he's lost the game Jason is playing with him when he points finger in Jason's face and snarls, 'You don't get to blow this stuff off just because you think you know everything there is about going out on patrol. You might have street smarts, but those are pretty much the only smarts you do have, and it's going to get you killed one day.'
Jason kicks his feet up on the desk so that Dick is left staring at the dirt on the bottom of his shit-kickers and leans his chair all the way back. 'Oh yeah?' he asks, taunting. 'Then how come you're the one who got kicked out and I'm the one wearing the green spandex?'
The shine of Bruce having swallowed enough of his stupid pride to ask Dick to come functionally babysit Jason and make him do his homework is rapidly wearing off; Dick wishes he'd told Batman to shove it and stay in Gotham.
'Yeah, well,' Dick says, going cold, 'I'm the one Batman thinks can go off on his own and not be a risk to himself. You're the one who can't see the value in knowing basic chemistry when you might face off against the Scarecrow one night.'
He turns and heads for the staircase back up to the manor proper. If Jason wants to be a liability, that's his problem. The kid thinks he never misses a beat when he has no idea what the tune even is.
Dick has a foot on the steps when Jason calls out after him, 'Fear gas is mostly hallucinogens. An anxiogenic, it can fuck you up either by you breathing it in or if you get injected by it.'
Dick can taste the smirk on Jason's face. He sighs, turns around, and walks back into the Cave and his future developing eldest child syndrome. 'Yeah? And what do you do if you get exposed to it, smart-ass...?'