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If he thought about it for longer than two seconds, he wouldn’t be here right now. That’s what plays over and over in Jason’s mind when the door to the shitty place he pays some random old guy $500 cash a month to stay in slams open, a trail of teenage menaces skipping happily on into his space.
The whole reason he got into this mess is because of Dick, because Dick Grayson can be a massive…well, dick sometimes. Jason wanted to stick it to him, show him that for some fucking reason the kids showed up at his door instead of the golden child’s T shaped palace.
And well, he’s been a teenager before, even if he doesn’t remember some of the years. He knew that no matter who told them or how often, those kids were not going to stop looking for their missing friend. They would put themselves in levels of danger they didn’t even understand just on the chance that they could help Cole. At least if Jason agreed that they could help him, he could keep an eye out on them.
That doesn’t mean he has to like them.
“Yo, gramps!” The annoying pink haired shit calls as he barges his way inside. “We’re borrowing your bathroom.”
“What the hell do you need my bathroom for?” Jason demands, crossing his arms and giving his best intimidating stare. It’s like the look doesn’t even phase the kid, or the other ones for that matter, as they completely ignore Jason’s authority.
Lian holds up a white plastic bag in her hands.
“Do I want to know what’s in there?” Jason warily asks.
“See this?” Jett asks, holding out a piece of his neon pink hair.
“Your hair?”
“See the color?!”
“Yeah, it’d be hard not to.”
“It’s fading, grandpa. It’s damage your deranged ass caused with your water balloons.”
Jason rolls his eyes. The kids won’t shut up about the water balloons. Jason doesn’t know what they want from him, he used something safe, something that won’t hurt them, while yes, annoying them to get them to work on their reaction times and staying alert. Sure, maybe he didn’t have to keep pelting them with one every once in a while during the three hour training session, but the whole point was to keep them on their toes and to keep them paying attention.
They may think all of this is one big game, but it’s not. It’s life or death when you’re out in the field, no one knows that better than him. Every little slip up can result in someone dying. So yeah, he’s annoying them into learning something, whether or not they realize it.
And fine, Jason had a lot of fun doing it. The feeling he got while retaliating for how they’re going to make him go gray by twenty-five was amazing. Sue him.
“My parents don’t let me do my hair at home anymore,” Jett continues. “Something about not wanting to live in a place where Pinkie Pie blew up.” He rolls his eyes, his typical flippant look turning almost strained.
Oh, that’s where this is going.
“We’re doing it here!” Lian confirms, slipping past Jason’s giant build and into the shitty bathroom.
“This place can’t possibly look worse,” Ezra adds with a shrug.
When Jason met this rag-tag team, he thought maybe the leader wouldn’t be as big of a shithead as some of his teammates, but he can be when he wants to. It’s the same with PJ, Terrific’s kid. They are both level headed enough to make good calls, but still teenagers who chaff under authority, think they know everything, think they are the only ones who can keep the world spinning, and are very desperate to do some kind of good…it’s annoying because it’s how Jason was when he was their age–or maybe slightly younger–even if he didn’t know it back then.
Growing up is frustrating because it’s when you realize that yeah, maybe sometimes the older people do know better than you. That’s a tough pill to swallow. And it’s when you learn that grown-ups also don’t know everything even when they say they do, and they are just as capable of making shitty mistakes as you are.
Jason sighs as the three teens set up shop in the bathroom. Truth be told, he doesn’t care if they stain the place, like Ezra said, it can’t possibly get worse. It’s not like his ‘landlord’ has any of his personal details to try to fine him down the line. He’s shady as all hell, only showing up for some more cash and otherwise leaving Jason alone, which is exactly how Jason likes to do business when he’s outside of Gotham.
Although, if he’s going to stay in the area for a while, he might think about getting a real place.
God, what is he even thinking about? Why would he stay in the area? He’s an East Coast kid, Seattle isn’t somewhere he wants to stay. Besides, he travels all the time for work, so he doesn’t need a permanent residence outside of Gotham.
By the time Jason snaps out of his head and reaches the bathroom, there are products all over his sink: tubs of bleach, toner, tubes of color, giant bottles of different levels of developer, some bowls, and thankfully, gloves.
The teens have all their jackets off and stand in shirts that they very obviously use for their hair, based on the fact that Ezra’s blue shirt is nearly white in spots, Jett’s gray shirt is bleach stained and very pink, and the top of Lian’s Green Arrow tee is blue.
“Are all of you doing your hair?”
“Yeah,” Ezra replies. “Easier for us to all do it at the same time.”
“Team bonding,” Lian adds with a smile.
Jason’s tempted to pick up the phone and call Roy to tell him to get his daughter before her and her friends make this place look like a shitty Little Mermaid set, but he remembers when she suffered a bad cut on her arm during the show down with Ascend and he asked Roy how it was healing a couple days later, only to find out she never told him and got pissed at him for ratting on her to her dad, then proceeded to give him the cold shoulder for days.
She only started talking to him two days ago when she gave him a bottle of Zesti like an olive branch, an act that shouldn’t have made Jason feel as happy as it did. It’s not like he likes the kids, but he doesn’t like the feeling inside him when they’re angry with him. It’s annoying.
Jason sighs, watching them fight over bowls, bleach packets, and developer levels. “Do you at least know what you’re doing?” He asks, hating that he has to be all adult about everything now.
“Yeah, grandpa,” Jett meets his gaze in the mirror to give him a ‘duh’ look. “Been doing this for years.”
“You don’t go to a salon?”
“Half the fun of having dyed hair is doing it yourself,” Lian informs him, squirting developer into a bowl.
“If you’re using bleach, use gloves,” Jason demands, not wanting to have to drag the shits to urgent care because they gave themselves chemical burns by being dumbasses.
He’s met with three different levels of a sassy: “Yes, Mom.”
Because he’s annoyed, he hits them with a: “If you get hair dye on the floor, you’re licking it off.”
“Dude!” Jett yells at his retreating figure.
Jason retreats to the only barstool in his apartment, scrolling through his inbox, looking through potential jobs all over the states, boring himself while reading through them. The door to the bathroom is open, and Jason can hear sounds coming out, Jett’s loud laugh, Ezra’s smooth voice, Lian’s joking tone. He wonders again what it would have been like to be on a team like that.
Dick had the Teen Titans, he had many different close friends from those years, friends that he still teams with, even over a decade later. Tim had Young Justice, who eventually also became the Teen Titans, all of them attached at the hip, even though they don’t do missions together anymore. Even Damian had his thing with Superman Junior before Jon went and got old. And Cass joins the Birds of Prey sometimes, although she’s a year older than him, so that's not really a young thing.
The closest Jason got to a group like that is The Outlaws, when he found himself teaming up with Artemis and Biz. He loves the hell out of them, and they worked for some odd reason.
But part of him will always be a little sad about missing out on that teenage team stage of life, one that seems pretty popular and one that forms bonds for life.
He looks at the bathroom again before pulling up DoorDash. He doesn’t like the shits…but if they’re here and not going away…
Five minutes later, Jason gets up to check on the wrecks to make sure they didn’t blow anything up or cause any property damage. Jett is sitting on the floor, Ezra kneeling behind him, sectioning his bright pink hair and putting bleach on his dark roots. Ezra’s short hair already has bleach in it. Lian is standing in front of the mirror, half her hair down and white bleach on those roots, while she spins around to get better angles to make sure she’s not missing a spot.
Jason holds out his hand. “Give me the brush.”
Lian eyes him for a moment. “Are you going to fry off my hair?”
“Do I look like I have a death wish?”
She smiles, placing the brush into the bowl of bleach mixture. “Fine, you can get the back part.”
Jason pulls on some of the gloves and gets to work, painting Lian’s short roots with bleach, careful to not let the new bleach touch the previously lightened hair. This is nice, helping the kid with her hair. Despite being pretty close with Roy, he doesn’t know Lian all that well, as he met Roy during the part of his life that she wasn’t in.
Roy had been devastated by her loss, turning more flippant and jokey to mask his trauma, but deeply, deeply heartbroken and traumatized by losing his five year old daughter. He got her back, many years later, after she had been affected by what seems to affect a lot of people nowadays–time stream problems.
Roy’s been soaking up every minute with his daughter, which was why Jason was surprised to see the girl in Seattle, hanging out with a bunch of kids at an arcade. Jason likes her, she reminds him of her father while also being very teenage and Gen Z. As much as he should probably hate it, he is kind of happy to see that she got her father’s sarcastic genes. With them, she fits in great amongst this group of hell-raisers.
“How often do you have to touch up the stunk stripe?” Jett asks.
“The what?” Jason mutters after he realizes the kid is talking to him.
“Y’know,” Jett motions to the front of his hair. “Skunk stripe.”
“No one calls it a fucking skunk stripe.”
“Everyone calls it a skunk stripe,” Ezra says, pulling Jett’s head lightly backwards so he can get at more of it. Jett grins up at him, and Ezra smiles down.
“That’s stupid,” Jason argues, because it is. Skunk stripe?
“You’re the one who got it,” Jett replies.
“I don’t touch it up.” It’s something he got somewhere between dying, being resurrected, and being thrown into the pit. It’s a part of his natural hair growth now.
“Damn, gramps, are you really that old?”
“Drop it, Wildcard,” Lian says, meeting Jett’s gaze with an intent look. Jett only blinks at her in confusion.
“It’s fine,” Jason tells her, because it is. If someone made a comment about it a couple of years ago, back when things were still too raw, he might have flipped his shit. But it’s fine now. And it’s not like these kids are judging him for having hair different than the norm, as they are all currently bleaching theirs and about to slap some color on top of it.
“Oh. Well,” Jett shrugs and points to the plastic bag. “I got you some orange hair dye. You should be festive for Halloween.”
“Like a pumpkin? Really?”
“Yeah, dude. Don’t be boring.”
“Orange is his thing,” Jason nods towards Ezra. “With the off-brand anime kid look.”
Ezra rolls his eyes. “Haven’t heard that one before,” He replies sarcastically.
“Fine, what about green? Purple?” Jett prompts.
God fucking no. “I’m not dying my hair. I’ll leave you three to keep Sally’s in business.”
“Boring, boring gramps.”
It takes a little while to correctly get Lian’s hair covered. Jason doesn’t realize she never stopped him to finish it herself until he’s done, and that makes him feel a little good inside, that she trusted him enough to let him do nearly all of the bleach on her hair. And yeah, that is some serious trust, because if there’s something teens love, it’s their damn hair.
Ezra’s short hair cooked long enough to be ready to wash out when he finishes Jett’s, so he steps under the spray of Jason’s shower. Jason, who’s lived here long enough to know how little hot water there is, tells him not to waste it, only to be met with a ‘don’t you know anything about hair?’
Whatever the fuck that means.
Jason starts cleaning up the bleach packets and leftover trash. The other two teens predictably make an escape the second cleaning comes up and immediately run out of the bathroom. When Jason finishes gathering everything together and turns to the door, he sees Jett leaning against the ‘crusty’ wall of the apartment, looking intently at something behind Jason. Curious, Jason turns around to see Ezra with his head dipped back, water making his shirt stick to his skin, his eyes closed, a peaceful look on his face. Getting a little internally happy and petty, he turns back to Jett and raises his eyebrows.
Jett notices he’s been caught staring, and bares his teeth at Jason before pulling his phone out and tapping on it to pretend to be busy.
Jason doesn’t tease him, not yet. Not with Lian and Ezra around. Besides, he doesn’t know what’s going on in the kid’s head, whether or not checking out a boy is something he’s fine with or not. Jason’ll never judge someone for their preferences, his brother is bi, and he’s definitely had a few less-than-straight thoughts himself, but he’ll need to watch Jett to make sure this isn’t something he’s struggling with.
Him not beating himself up internally is important for the team to function properly.
And fine, Jason does care.
Sue him.
Jason puts all that away for now to throw the trash in the kitchen garbage. Lian’s rooting around his fridge and comes out triumphantly with his pack of strawberries. Amused, Jason watches her smile as she opens his cabinet and pulls out a bar of chocolate.
“Aha!” She hums and opens the microwave, sticking the wrapped chocolate bar inside. As she’s closing the door, Jason jumps forward to stop her and take the candy bar out.
“Whoa, don’t do that. You’ll burn yourself.”
“It’s just chocolate.”
“Yeah, you melt it in a bowl, not the damn wrapper. Just give it here.”
He melts the chocolate on the stove, the correct way, and lets her cover the strawberries in chocolate while Jett takes his turn in the shower to wash off the bleach. After Jason puts the strawberries in the freezer to cool, Lian hops in the bathroom.
After the bleach is all gone, they all reconvene in the bathroom to color their hair-pink, blue, and yellow dye all being mixed in separate bowls. Lian adds two different blues to achieve the color she wants.
PJ and Eugene show up halfway through the color application process. PJ holds up multiple Target bags. “These were outside, are they yours?”
Jason smiles. “Yes. They’re for training later.”
“I swear to God if there is a pack of bunch-o-balloons in there, I’m putting Nair in your shampoo,” Jett threatens.
Again, whatever the fuck that means.
“This is a training I think you’ll like.”
“Gee, that’s not worrying at all.”
“Shut it, Strawberry Shortcake.”
“Oh, grandpa, you’re gonna—” Jett lunges towards Jason, but is stopped midair, and placed back down in front of Ezra.
“Jett, stop moving,” Ezra tsks.
Jason sends Jett a superior grin. Jett curls his lip up in response, but dutifully stays sitting.
“You need more seats in here,” Eugene complains as he ends up nearly smashed into the glass shower wall.
Jett pats his lap. “You can sit right here.”
Ezra snorts behind him, an amused uptick to his lips.
“Yeah thanks, but I’ll pass,” Eugene replies.
Jason checks his phone and sees a text from Babs asking how it’s going with the kids. She found out from Dick about the new Teen Titans team and the fact that they’re hanging around Jason. She reached out and told him she has some experience with dramatic teenagers, as she took Steph under her wing a few years ago, and can give some advice if he needs it.
Tim found out too, even though he’s supposed to be running off into the sunset with the blonde dude he’s dating and not sticking his nose into hero business, and sent him a Parenting for Dummies book in the mail (though how he got Jason’s current address isn’t something Jason wants to know).
Even Steph texts him every few days asking if he’s still alive or if the teens killed him yet. She said she’ll be more than happy to come help with the kids, she’s good with them after all, but Jason declined. There is something appealing about keeping these kids separate from his ties to Gotham and that…life…he has over there.
Bruce predictably hasn’t said anything about it. Jason would like to keep it that way.
Knowing that Babs’ll show Dick whatever he sends, because he knows Goldie is curious, Jason gets the kids to take another selfie, dye still in Lian, Jett, and Ezra’s hair, their shirts still wet because the idiots forgot to bring an extra. He sends it, knowing Babs will like it, and Dick’ll stew over it. Plus, it’s not a half-bad picture.
The teens demolish Lian’s–Jason’s–chocolate covered strawberries while they wait for the dye to take hold, talking and laughing about internet memes Jason only half understands. Despite what they think, he is good with tech. He has to be, being a vigilante and taking jobs that involve finding people. Not to mention, he’s watched Babs work her magic before, even if she moves quicker than he can keep up with sometimes.
Still, he’s not good with the TikTok slang, drama, and trends they all bring up. But hell, are they enjoying themselves.
Later, once the dye is all washed out and they guilt-trip Jason into loaning them new shirts, Jason brings out his Target order. He got Nerf guns, half with the intention of showing them how to get out of situations where guns are in play in a completely safe way, and half because maybe he still does have some teenager left in his heart and wants to start a Nerf gun fight with kids that will take it entirely too seriously.
And that’s what they do for the night: shoot each other with foam bullets in Jason’s shitty apartment, the ratty couch cushions used as a makeshift shield covering Eugene, because the kid’s resourceful and grabbed them first. They’re in teams: Ezra and Lian vs PJ, Jett, and Eugene vs Jason. It’s good, watching the kids debate battle strats and watch their minds working like this is a real war, taking this entirely too seriously while still yelling: “take that gramps!” when they tag him with a bullet.
Jett cheats with his chaos powers and messes up the probability of misfires. So Ezra cheats back and pelts him with bullets that change course midair. And Jason is sure he sees a mother box lurking under the couch.
Overall, it’s exactly how you’d expect a Nerf war with this group to go. Jason is glad he never gave in to Jett’s continuous whines about a T.V. when bodies end up rolling around on the floor, knocking into everything.
Still, Jason enjoys his night, particularly enjoys dual wielding and hitting targets from around corners without even having to look to know where they are. And hey, the kids do learn situational awareness, and to watch corners and areas where Jason could be lurking, which indicates a training session gone right.
That still doesn’t mean he likes them…