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Jason wasn't freaking out, okay? He was reacting perfectly calmly and taking all the necessary actions and dragging along a scarily unresistant Bruce as he powerwalked like hell to his nearest safehouse. Saferoom. Whatever. He was the paragon of calm. He was being the adult, as per usual around his supposed dad.
It was just that, well, Bruce wasn't supposed to do that to him, okay, he wasn't supposed to freeze in the middle of a fight, conveniently right after a gunshot cracked through the air. He wasn't supposed to leap back to it so quickly that Jason dismissed his initial cardiac arrest that lasted 2.5 seconds but was incredibly persuasive and kept going, assuming he was fine. He wasn't supposed to then stagger and nearly fall in the heat of the fight and make Jason panic again and kick some loser in the kneecap just so he could run to Bruce and catch him before he dropped...which was awkward and annoying because while Jason was big, Bruce was....not small. So having nearly his full weight leaning on him all at once almost made Jason fall over---which would have been really embarrassing. As it was, he barely had the forethought to fumble around for a grenade, pop the pin, and toss it blindly behind him towards the lingering gang members, and he could almost feel Bruce glaring at him but he gave zero fucks. He was counting on these crooks to not be amateurs and get the hell out of dodge, and if they didn't, tough luck. He dropped down to his knees and covered Bruce as best he could as the grenade went off. Bruce's head sort of dipped over his shoulder as he lowered him, and Jason choked back fear as he closed his eyes at the loud concussive blast and at the heat that he could feel even at this distance. He glanced back only long enough to ensure that there were no bodies and no one to call an ambulance for--not that the bastards deserved it--before he scrambled back to his feet, tugging a listless Bruce with him. He tore his helmet off and dumped it on the ground beside him as he pushed his hair back in irritation, propping Bruce up with his left hand as he quickly probed his uniform with the other. His fingers found the wound fairly quickly--a tear from a knife had allowed a bullet to puncture Bruce's body armor. There was a fair bit of blood, but in the low-light of the alley, Jason couldn't tell whether it had punctured his lung or not.
"Can you breathe?" He demanded up at Bruce.
"Yes," Bruce said, hoarse and strained.
Well. That was a good sign. Jason tried to think clearly for a second. He and Bruce were in the southwest side of Gotham. The Manor was at least thirty minutes away by car. The plane would be quicker, but he didn't know that this was serious enough to warrant it, and anyway it would take a while for even the plane to get there. And in the meantime they were exposed in one of the worst parts of the city. (Not that they weren't all the worst, so much damn honesty.)
Jason chewed on his lip. He had a place he could crash only a few blocks away that was fairly low-profile and had a fully-stocked medical kit. It would be risky, but he knew the way and he had his guns. Decision made, he grabbed his helmet and replaced it, and carefully stood, looping Bruce's arm around his neck and drawing one of his pistols from its holster on his hip. He kept his right arm supporting Bruce's back while he held his pistol at the ready in his left hand. He started walking at a painfully slow pace towards the end of the alley.
"Where--" Bruce gasped.
"Somewhere secure. Shut the hell up." Jason responded tersely. To his surprise (and worry), Bruce did.
___
Bruce was mad at himself. An occasion as rare as the sunrise, as Alfred would have dryly remarked.
He supposed he really was getting old. He'd seen the shot coming, just hadn't been able to move in time, and he'd underestimated the wound. Well, maybe not the wound. Just himself, really. Because he'd always been able to push past non-severe injuries if he needed to, but he supposed he just...hadn't really needed to?
Because damn, it had hurt.
But if he had pushed past it, he wouldn't have upset Jason. The boy was bitter and harsh, but Bruce could feel how tense his son was even through his leather jacket and body armor, had seen his expression. He was scared, and it broke Bruce's heart a little bit. More than a little bit. He wished he could come up with the energy--and, if he were honest, the courage--to push past the pain and exhaustion and uncertainty and assure Jason that he was alright, ask forgiveness for scaring him, tell him it was okay to care, tell him that it was more than he deserved for failing him, that he was sorry for putting him in this position again. But because he was a damn coward, he kept his mouth shut and let himself lean on Jason and kept his feet moving, one stumbling step in front of the other. His son was decisive and steady and supported him securely as he walked straight and sure and Bruce closed his eyes against the sudden burn of tears. His son was alive. Jason was alive and solid and warm, and he was grown up. And Bruce was so damn grateful.
When he could force his eyes to blink open again without the tears trickling down his cheeks, Jason was pulling him around a corner and making a beeline for a dilapidated building surrounded by a wire fence. His son carefully ducked out from beneath him and propped him against the fence as he leaned back towards the gate and fiddled with something, probably a padlock. Dazed, Bruce glanced at the building. There was light inside, coming from the windows, along with a glowing red-and-blue 'open' sign that held a phosphorescent quality in the dim lighting.
"What is this place?" He grunted.
"Motel," Jason answered shortly, and Bruce glanced at his leather-clad shoulders. "I saved the owner from a gang rape once, so she lets me crash here whenever I want." There was a click, and Jason yanked the padlock off and shoved the gate open a crack. He stepped back over and Bruce held still so his son could maneuver him back into the supportive position to get them both carefully through the gate. Jason then repeated the process so he could drag the gate shut with a clang and lock it back up, and Bruce leaned on the fence and tried not to shiver. The exertion from the trek over had not been pleasant and he could feel the blood gathering in his suit, sticky and itchy and wet against his skin. He was sweating under the cowl, but he was starting to shiver as well. Blood loss. He hoped that Jason's saferoom wasn't far, or he worried that he'd pass out before they could get there.
Jason seemed to sense this when he came back because as soon as Bruce was practically draped over his shoulder again, he picked up the pace, and went straight for an employees-only door, which he apparently had the key for. Bruce felt himself drifting a bit as Jason kept going, and he closed his eyes, somewhat focused on the sensation of his ribs grinding together. Hmm. That probably wasn't a good sign.
He came around when a door shut, and blinked his eyes open to see an actually decently furnished room, with one king's bed and a nightstand, a chair, and a tv. Jason went straight for the bed and slowly eased Bruce down onto it, freeing himself from the half-embrace they'd been in for the past twenty minutes. Bruce was a bit disappointed at the loss of contact, but was too busy being relieved at the break to protest too much. He slowly sank onto his back, grunting in relief. He reached up and fumbled at his cowl before ripping it off, sighing at how much cooler it was without the stupid thing.
"At least prop your feet up, geez." Jason grumbled from what sounded like very far away. A beat. "Oh hell, I'm gonna have to do that for you, too, aren't I." Bruce faintly heard Jason's footsteps start heading towards the foot of the bed, but then they faltered as if Jason were doing a double take. "Shit, B, you look awful."
Bruce forced himself to open his eyes to slits, only to see Jason now probing at his wound again. "You just had to nick a vein or some shit, didn't you." Jason sighed. "I'm gonna have to wash the bedding for her."
"Sorry," Bruce rasped, and he meant it.
"Shut up." Jason mumbled, not sounding all that angry. Bruce's eyes slid closed again, and he listened while Jason walked back to the foot of the bed, and tried not to flinch while his son yanked his boots off--which wasn't strictly necessary, but he knew from experience that the tendency came from Alfred's housekeeping--and piled pillows beneath his feet.
"Damn, you're pathetic," Jason tsked, almost to himself, as he walked off somewhere.
"I'm old, Jason." Bruce croaked without opening his eyes, and Jason's feet froze on the floor.
"I....guess so," Jason said neutrally. He started walking away again, and Bruce sighed, shifting slightly on the mattress. Now that he didn't have adrenaline keeping him going, his back was aching--actually, all of him was aching--and he was quite tired. He let himself give in to his sleepiness and drift off for a couple of minutes, but he came around and blinked his bleary eyes back open when Jason dragged the chair over and sat down, dumping the medical kit on the bedside table and unzipping it to dig through it. Bruce watched Jason snatch saline, gauze, a scalpel, a pair of tweezers, suture gut, and bandages, and set them outside the kit on the table. Lastly, Jason yanked out a knife from his belt and flipped it open, reaching out with his free hand to tug lightly at the edges of the tear in Bruce's uniform. His son muttered something about 'useless piece of junk, doesn't stop bullets but you can't get it off.'
Bruce wanted to say something, but instead he just let Jason work, watching him through half-lidded eyes the whole time. Jason ignored him, slipped the knife under the edge of the tear and cut further, then grasped the edges of the material and tore it enough to open up his view of the wound. The boy drew a breath through his teeth. "Damn."
Bruce glanced down, only able to see part of the wound from this angle...but the blood covering his skin and the bruising and swelling surrounding the bullet hole was more than enough. He set his jaw and breathed steadily, trying to ignore the deep-seated heat that was throbbing in his middle.
"Never do anything by half, do ya?" Jason grumbled, reaching for the saline. He glanced at Bruce uncertainly for a moment, then quickly averted his gaze to avoid eye contact. "I, uh, don't exactly have much in the way of painkillers in here."
Bruce glanced at Jason with a confused grunt. "Why not?"
Jason's gaze was wholly fixed on the bottle of saline now, and not on Bruce. "It's, uh. S'too expensive to stock up on. At least for me, when it's not really necessary..."
Bruce closed his eyes tightly. Oh, hell, Jay. He didn't know if he was to blame for that little tendency, or if it was a result of Jason's upbringing of fending for himself. He refused to respond the way he wanted to, because he knew for a fact that Jason would resent being pitied, or would gather that his own flaws and insecurities were nothing but a spot on Bruce's conscience, another thing for him to torture himself over. He shook himself out of his internal monologue when Jason continued, "Plus, anything stronger than ibuprofen would get her in trouble if it was found here, so I just....don't have it."
And that brought both warmth and sorrow. His Jason was a deeply compassionate and selfless boy, and he always had been but had never really seen it in himself. Bruce forced himself to swallow, quietly say, "I can take it, Jay. It's just a gsw."
Jason scoffed faintly. "You're so pretentious," he muttered, but he didn't sound overly cross. He yanked the cap off the bottle of saline and leaned over. Bruce closed his eyes preemptively and steeled himself for the sharp sting of the alcohol on the exposed flesh. As it was, his breath stuttered faintly, but not dramatically. He could sense Jason pausing, probably giving him a concerned glance, but after only a second the boy kept working, patting the antiseptic around with a piece of gauze. That wasn't pleasant either, but Bruce held still and tried to suppress his cringe as much as possible. When Jason finished disinfecting the wound, Bruce heard him tearing open the plastic packaging the scalpel was kept in. He really needed to hold still for this part. He tried not to tense up too badly when he felt Jason begin to press the scalpel in, but he decided that avoiding flinching was no longer worth it, and cringed tightly. He heard Jason's breath faintly hitch as he worked, but the scalpel kept digging around.
"There we are," Jason said under his breath, and the scalpel was withdrawn. Bruce tried not to gasp in relief. Jason leaned back over with the tweezers, and Bruce held as still as he could. Jason firmly grasped the bullet and drew it out steadily. Bruce heard the faint clink when he dropped it onto the table.
"Tore a vein. I fucking knew it." Jason muttered. More package ripping. Bruce opened his eyes to slits, taking in Jason threading a needle, his sweaty black bangs falling over his face and nearly obscuring his eyes from view. He'd removed his domino and his jacket, leaving him in a t-shirt and body armor. He looked surprisingly normal this way, like a kid who would be in college; dating, working a job. Whatever the kids were doing these days. Bruce felt a pang at the reality: instead, he was here, stitching his dad up in a modest motel room after a night of beating up gangbangers. It was far less than Jason deserved.
"You're being awfully quiet," Jason remarked, not taking his eyes from the wound as he carefully secured vascular clamps onto the vein. "Run out of complaints or lectures, old man?"
Bruce shrugged very lightly. "None of them apply right now," he said a bit hoarsely.
Jason humphed, focused on his stitching.
"Jay....I..."
"Hush." Jason said dismissively.
"I just..."
"Seriously. B. Shut up." Jason glanced up. His green eyes were intense. "Don't ruin it."
Bruce closed his mouth with a snap.
Jason sighed, already dropping his gaze. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I just..."
"....what?" Bruce asked quietly, watching his son's face carefully.
Jason kept resolutely avoiding his gaze. "It's stupid."
"So am I. Go on." Jason gave a disbelieving little startled laugh at that; a laugh which quickly tapered off, but it was genuine, and Bruce smiled without meaning to at the sound.
"It's just...I..." Jason gulped, suddenly pausing in working and yanking his hands back. Bruce's brows furrowed in concern, but before he could say anything, Jason spoke, steadily but lowly, almost ashamed.
"I...I don't like when we're getting along, because it..." Jason huffed, stared down at his bloody hands, his voice dipping. "...It just makes me start dreading when I'll inevitably screw it up and we go back to hardly talking."
Silence. Bruce...really didn't know how to deal with that situation. Aside from wanting to scream, which probably wouldn't help matters.
"Jay, I..."
"It's not your fault, it's just me being a moron," Jason said dismissively. He scoffed. "You know, the old 'it's not me it's you' routine. Classic breakup line." He scrubbed at his hands and still didn't look at Bruce.
"It's not, though." Bruce blurted, and Jason's attention was suddenly fixed on him, startled. "It's a perfectly reasonable assumption. I did push you away whenever you made a mistake, and I shouldn't have. It just makes you feel like you're broken when you're wrong, and that's wrong, because you're not broken just because you messed up, Jason. I never thought you were. I just wanted to protect you." Bruce swallowed hard. "That's almost always the reason I ever grounded Robin, whether you or the others. I was scared that I wouldn't be able to protect you if you were acting unpredictably, so I tried to take you out of the field." He gulped. "And look how well that worked out," he said bitterly.
There was a beat of silence. Then Jason said, "You really have got a severe martyr-complex, haven't you."
Startled, Bruce glanced up at him. Jason looked vaguely angry. "First of all, you don't have to assume that I'm mad because I feel like you've selectively treated me like shit and not the other Robins. If coming right after Dick had not taught me what a colossal asshole you can be when you're scared, ten seconds conversation with Stephanie makes the picture pretty clear. Secondly, did I or did I not just fucking tell you that the problem is in my own head and not with you? I know I was wrong, okay? I know I was wrong about you not giving a shit. You do, you're just damn terrible and contrary about showing it in a way that makes any amount of sense. It's just me wanting to avoid having to work to interact with you, and you being your usual brand of distant as you puzzle things over helps me justify it to myself. That's it." Jason glanced back down at his hands again, picked at some of the dried blood. "That's all."
There was another long beat of silence as Jason squirmed uncomfortably and as Bruce puzzled over what he'd said.
"I..."
"If you say 'I'm sorry' one more time, I swear I will punch you."
"I'm...." Bruce stuttered to a stop in the middle of the sentence. "....alright, Jason."
Jason glanced up, an unreadable emotion in his eyes.
"I'm alright." Bruce said, and he meant it. He looked directly at his son. "And I don't mind waiting. After..." he swallowed, uncertain of how the boy would take it. "...after living without you...I don't care if it takes you your whole life to puzzle it over. I'll wait."
Jason's head dipped a bit. He snatched the needle and thread back up. "Be careful what you ask for, you old geezer," he said. "I might just take you up on that offer." The words were gruff, but there was a hint of a smile playing around Jason's lips and his eyes looked suspiciously shiny. Bruce took that as his statement being somewhat accepted, so he let himself go limp and let Jason move on to stitching the skin. He couldn't quite fall asleep, what with the consistent stabs of pain, so instead he closed his eyes and let his mind drift off into quiet nothing.
He startled out of his doze for an unknown reason some time later. Jason was nowhere to be seen in the room, and his wound was dressed in gauze and bandaging and medical tape, the skin surrounding it scrubbed clean. Bruce rolled slightly onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow to glance around for his son, but then he registered the sound of the water running and realized that that was likely what woke him. He noticed a bottle of gatorade on the bedside table, and took it and popped the cap off before draining it. He set the bottle back on the table when he was done.
Satisfied that Jason was still there and safe, he eased back down and closed his eyes again, wanting to go back to sleep. He hadn't gone to bed from patrol this early in a long time, and he planned to enjoy it for as long as possible.
Except that he was almost asleep again when the door to the bathroom opened with a loud whoosh and a click, and his eyes opened of their own accord. Mildly perturbed, he turned his head just slightly to glance at Jason. The boy stepped out casually, toweling off his wet hair. He was wearing a plain, worn t-shirt and shorts, and his feet were bare. He threw the towel haphazardly on the table with the tv, and strode towards the bed. Bruce continued to watch him expectantly.
Jason came right up and spun on his heel, and then promptly pitched over onto the bed. Bruce barely managed to pull himself just out of range in time, with a slightly embarrassing yelp of surprise--and more than a bit of pain. Jason showed no concern and just lay there, half on the bed and half off, his legs still dangling over the side.
"Shove over."
Bruce stared. "Excuse me?"
Jason snorted. "If you think I'm sleeping on the floor, I'll shoot you myself."
Alrighty then. Bruce dragged his legs back to give Jason just enough room to swing his own feet up onto the bed. The boy promptly snuggled down and curled on his side, his back to Bruce. They had a few inches between them--it was a big bed, but only so big.
Bruce glanced at his son. His hair curled back up when it was wet. Bruce hadn't noticed that before. His hair wasn't quite in the tight ringlets he'd had as a child, but it was flopping everywhere in loose waves that ended at his neck. His posture was familiar, too. He was one of those people who always slept curled like a spring, generally with a blanket wrapped around like a second skin.
He was quite literally reaching out and only a couple inches away when Jason said, "If you start stroking my head or some shit, I'm going home to the Manor without you."
Bruce froze. He was kind of warring between being impressed and simultaneously concerned at the threat and internally singing that Jason had referred to the manor as home.
He settled for patting Jason's shoulder. "Thank you. For the patch job."
Jason shrugged. "S'nothing. Or not much. I dunno." Seeming uncomfortable, Jason curled back up. "I'm going to sleep now. No more deep, philosophical conversations until after you feed me with something other than a free 'waffle.'"
Bruce nodded, even though Jason couldn't see him, trying to stifle a worn but genuine beam. He was patched up and mostly safe with his second oldest, who was alive and safe and his own sarcastic but good-hearted self. Even sore and more than a little hungry, he'd be content to just lie here quietly for the rest of the night. "Alright," he finally said. He nestled back down himself, closed his eyes. "Good night, Jason."
After a pause, he heard Jason mutter an awkward little, "Good night, B." Bruce smiled with his eyes closed and let himself succumb to his exhaustion.