Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dick's eating lunch alone (he only shares a lunch period with Wally and Donna this year, and Wally's sick and Donna's busy fucking her creepy teacher boyfriend in a supply closet somewhere), trying to finish his food as quickly as he can so that he can go finish the homework he swore to Bruce he'd finished last night before English class this afternoon, when he feels the table rock and looks up to see Tim's friend Bart, the tiny skinny one who everyone says will probably make the Olympic track team when he's 18, staring at him with his big brown eyes.

“Your brother has a knife.”

Dick waits a minute to see if a punchline or a question is forthcoming, and when one isn't he just nods. “I know.”

“Con says someone should do something about it before someone gets hurt,” Bart adds, still staring.

“What and you think it's gonna be me? I am getting into a knife fight with Tim right around never, kid.”

Bart nods. “That's fair. Do you think I should ask Jason?”

Jason and Tim have this... thing, that Dick's going to politely call 'tension'. He's actually not sure whether they're going to end up fucking, killing one another, or going on some kind of vigilante crime spree together, but definitely one of the three. “Depends whether the idea of getting shanked by Jason upsets you more than the idea of getting shanked by Tim.”

Jason doesn't always carry a knife, but then he's 6'2” of solid muscle, so that's mostly because he knows he doesn't need one any more. He and Tim come from very different but equally fucked up backgrounds, and one of the only things they'd bonded over back in the days when Jason couldn't stand the sight of his newest foster-brother was their continued resistance to Bruce's desire to disarm them.

(Bruce gave up in the end and sent them both for – separate – weapons-based martial arts training, because knowing how to pick your battles is rule one of fostering the kids too fucked up for anyone else to take them.)

“Tim is scarier than Jason,” Bart says thoughtfully, “but Jason would definitely be more willing to injure me. Also, Jason attacking me with a knife would definitely be less hot than Tim doing it.”

Dick squints at him. “Are you screwing my little brother?” he asks. He doesn't necessarily mean it to sound threatening but it sort of comes out that way anyway.

“No. He says he thinks of me as either his brother or his son. I'm pretty sure that means he's not interested.”

“Probably,” Dick agrees, although it is Tim so who knows. He does his best not to know too much about his siblings' sex lives but he knows enough not to rule out any weird kinks when it comes to Tim. “Maybe.”

“Do you think we should do anything about Tim's knife?”

Dick remembers Tim's first night with them. He'd seemed like a nice kid, no hint of why so many foster families had rejected him, right up until Bruce had explained the no weapons in the house rule. It had taken them hours to get Tim out of the closet he'd barricaded himself into and Bruce had needed seven stitches by the time it was over. “Definitely not. He's not going to stab anyone who doesn't deserve it.”

Bart nods. “Yeah, probably true. Thanks, Dick.”

As he skips away (not literally, but Dick wouldn't actually be surprised) Dick makes a mental note to talk to Tim about fucking concealed carry. If Tim gets expelled, Bruce is gonna be pissed.

Chapter Text

Jason, despite what numerous social workers, teachers, psychologists, and failed foster-parents have said over the years, doesn't start shit. He will, however, admit to escalating it.

Cass isn't even that broken up about Mr Crock getting on her case for kissing Harper in the corridor between classes. Yeah, she's pissed at the injustice of it, when straight couples never get that kind of telling off, but she doesn't want to do anything about it. Jason's really fucking bad at not doing anything though, ask anyone.

He and Roy both get detention when Ms Sullivan catches them making out on one of the picnic benches, but he spends half his life in detention and Roy's nearly as bad, so that's whatever. Plus when people hear about what he's doing, the queer kids (and some of the more liberal straight ones) are all in favor.

Connor H is a beautiful idiot who doesn't seem to want to make out with anyone, even though everyone in the fucking school wants into his pants, but he seems to get a particular kind of delight out of pushing the rules exactly as far as they'll go without breaking, so Jason spends most of the next week walking around holding hands with him.

Steph somehow persuades Cassie that it would be a good idea to make out with her in the cafeteria, and Jason gets to watch Conner K do his best not to faint from boner-induced light-headedness.

Dick, Wally and Roy do something in a broom cupboard that gets them detention for a month, and Jay can't get out of any of them what it was, but the rumors start at Roy doing coke off of Dick's ass and only get wilder from there.

Lori tells her tells her extended family about it, and for a glorious week, she gets picked up from school by a parade of different queer couples and trios, all of whom make a point of swapping spit right there in front of the school gates before they let Lori get into the car. Jason makes a mental note to get to know Lori better, because her family are awesome, and her uncle Bane (apparently he used to be a pro-wrestler and now everyone calls him by his stage name to the point Lori admits she doesn't even know what his real name is) is ridiculously hot.

Kori doesn't seem to really get what they're going for beyond PDAs, so spends the week cheerfully making out with absolutely anyone she feels like. It doesn't do much to further the cause, but it's fucking hilarious to watch Dick slowly lose his mind when she keeps not choosing him.

Vic starts just carrying Gar everywhere, like the boy doesn't have two working feet, which Gar is 100% into because he's a spoiled little princess with a really unsubtle strength kink.

Jaime Reyes, shy kid who comes along to GSA meetings but never says anything, spends the whole week with his hands in his boyfriend's pockets, looking adorably nervous and defiant about the whole thing.

Mal and Karen are like the straightest people Jay's ever met, but they're also sweethearts, so of course they spend their allowances on a load of 'love is love' shirts that they give out to everyone who wants one.

Jason has a hell of a lot of fun watching the chaos he started unfold, but he knows it's got to come to an end sometime and he wants to go out with a bang.

He tells Tim this, on one of the days when they're actually talking to one another, and Tim gives him one of those weird unreadable stares of his and says “I'd be down for blowing you in a supply closet but Roy and Wally already did that.”

“Seriously, that was what they were doing?!”

“While Dick jerked off and 'lost his fucking mind over how hot they looked'. Direct quote there.”

“Jesus, he really has got a thing for read-heads, huh.”

“After Roy, Wally, Kori and his eternal crush on Babs, are you seriously surprised any more?”

“Not really, I just think it's weird to be that picky, you know?”

“There's nothing wrong with having standards.”

Jason glares at the little freak over the rim of his coke glass. “Fucking really? Do you or do you not want to put Bart on his knees and fuck his mouth until he chokes on your dick?”

“Obviously. But I don't want to do that to everyone I find even vaguely attractive like you do. Hence, standards.”

“You're just jealous because I got more game than you. Help me figure out how we can simultaneously horrify the entire teaching staff, expose their homophobia and not get expelled. That doesn't involve taking photos of Donna and her perv.”

“Well, there go my three best ideas. Want me to walk you to class on a leash like an asshole who thinks misogyny is a kink at the mall with his girlfriend?”

Tim has Views on both misogyny and people who give BDSM a bad name. It's one of Jason's top three favorite things about him.

“I think the staff are mostly too vanilla to get that, bro.”

“Yeah, probably. Want me to a steal a cheerleading outfit and climb Conner K like a tree outside the Principle's office?”

“I mean, I'm not sure that's exactly what I was going for but if that's what you're into, go for it.”

“If I wanted to wear mini-skirts, I'd be doing it already. You probably have a point though – they'd just get hung up on the cross-dressing and miss the point. Want Roy to bend you over one of the picnic tables and eat you out till you cry?”

“Always, but I'm trying not to get expelled.”

They don't think of anything suitable, but it doesn't matter in the end. Jason gets drawn out of the cafeteria by the sound of cheering at lunch the next day and finds Mr Kord the shop teacher kissing the hell out of Jason's Econ teacher Mr Carter, while the Principle stares and nearly has an apoplexy.

Rumor is they nearly both get fired, but based on Mr Carter's shit-eating grin in class later on, they definitely both thought it was worth it.

Chapter Text

Lori's family let her invite basically anyone she wants to her birthday party, all her friends, and all her friends' friends. Lori being Lori, that means the entire theatre club, all of the other goth kids and most of the GSA, so basically everyone Jason knows.

It's at her parent's house, but her entire extended family attend, and honestly, Jason is kinda in love with all of them. There's Scandal (apparently pro-wrestling runs in the family) Kay and Lianna, who are a trio, and their adorable kid Barda, and Barda's dad Thomas and his boyfriend Floyd and Floyd's girlfriend Jeanette, and Bane who is definitely someone's Dom but Jason can't work out whose, and Ragdoll who is the creepiest person Jason's ever met and makes him want to start watching wrestling immediately, and Lori's pibling Kani, and a horrifically scarred person called Mary who communicates in angry sign language and emphatic gestures.

Lori's dad and Floyd take it in turns at the grill, turning out fucking amazing burgers at such a rate that even all the teenagers can't keep up, and her mom has alternatives for every fucking dietary requirement you can think of, vegan and gluten free and dairy free and kosher and everything else. The adults hand out beers to anyone over 16 and just laugh at the shocked expressions on the teenagers' faces.

“You gotta learn how to drink sometime,” Floyd says, “or else you'll end up as much of a lightweight as Thomas.”

“I thought you liked that I'm a cheap date,” Thomas yells from the other side of the yard. He's sitting in Bane's lap on a picnic blanket, and Ragdoll is sitting in his lap, talking seriously to Tim and Lillith about something.

“You know that just him calling you a slut, right?” Kani asks, and Floyd nods and Thomas grins and says “Hell yeah I am,” and then Jason gets to watch his face when Barda asks “Daddy, what's a slut?” and it's fantastic.

It's a weird atmosphere, half old-fashioned family party, with Mr Dibney in suit pants and a cardigan and Mrs Dibney handing out snacks like she's June Cleaver, half college party, with everyone drinking and making out, but Jason's pretty into it.

About seven, Roy asks Mr Dibney politely if he minds if they get stoned, and Mr Dibney laughs and says he doesn't care as long as they keep it out of the house and away from Barda.

Roy being Roy has brought enough for everyone (in his words “what's the point of being adopted by a super-rich ageing hippy if you don't use it to score drugs”) and by the time it starts getting dark everyone's pretty mellow, even the people who choose not to smoke getting into the chilled vibe.

Somehow Bart and Tim persuade Scandal and 'Doll to show them some moves, and Jason is taking back everything he ever thought about wrestling just being fake because they're both scary as shit and 'Doll can bend in ways that shouldn't even be possible for a human. Then 'Doll persuades Bane to fight him, which Jason is pretty sure is basically foreplay for them and honestly, Jason's pretty into that. He always gets kinda horny when he's stoned, and Bane is fucking ripped.

He's ended up on the picnic blanket with Thomas, and he must be staring because Thomas grins and says “I am a lucky lucky man.”

“Fuck yeah you are,” Jason agrees. “Is 'Doll...?” He's not sure what he's trying to say except that he's imagining all the things you could do with someone that fucking flexible.

Thomas laughs. “He doesn't fuck, but honestly when you're as kinky as 'Doll who even needs sex, you know?”

Jason can't really imagine not wanting to fuck people, but he totally gets how sometimes the kinky shit is the best bit. “What about Bane?”

“He's ace too, but he's a total service-top, so he's pretty much always up for throwing me around and fingering me till I cry,” Thomas says, sounding smug. Not that Jason can blame him. If he had a Dom that hot he'd totally be smug too.

The wrestling devolves into a weight-lifting contest at some point, and Thomas gets up to go try and out-bench press Scandal, which totally isn't happening but Jason's pretty into watching him try. Into both of them to be honest, because obviously-gay women aren't usually his speed (he likes people who might like him back) but Scandal is fucking hot, and based on the blushing, Liana and Kay definitely agree with him.

When Scandal's beaten Thomas, Floyd, Mary, Dick and Roy, Bane steps up to the plate and fucking bench-presses Scandal, while Scandal giggles like a schoolgirl.

Dick comes to flop down on the rug beside Jason, grinning and happy despite his defeat.

“This is awesome,” he says happily, leaning his head on Jason's shoulder. “It's like... like looking at our future you know? This is totally going to be us in like ten years time.”

Jason's way too cynical and way to damaged to expect much from the future, but looking around the party he can't help feeling a little bit optimistic. These people are all queer, and pretty obviously damaged, and none of them have 'proper' jobs, and they're happy. They love and support one another and they're doing an awesome job of raising Lori and Barda, and Jason wants that for his family. “That sounds pretty good.”

Dick tips over so he's flat on his back grinning at Jason upside-down. “I know. I can't fucking wait.”

And the thing is, Jason can't either.

Chapter Text

Basil looks round at the assembled kids. There are always plenty who showed up to the first couple of meetings of the semester, and once they realize they aren't going to get to play the lead, half of them will quit. Still it's a good turnout all the same.

This is going to be their last production for the seniors, and it's good to see so many of them back for one last show.

As well as the aspiring actors, which he's never short of, it's especially relieving to see so many of the stage crew back. There's Axel who runs lights, and a freshman called Harper who he's grooming as his replacement. Tim Drake, who despite only being a Sophomore is the best damn SM he's ever had. Cisco runs the sound boards, and Hiro can fix anything electronic and is great at special effects. Kyle has another year to go, thank god because he's the best set designer they had, but they're about to lose their wardrobe mistress Shawn.

“Good to see so many of you back,” he says, smiling around at them, “and some new faces! For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm Mr Karlo. Yes I was in some terrible B-movies in my youth, and don't worry if you haven't seen them, I haven’t yet figured out how to stop them being shown at every single wrap party, so stick around and you’ll get your chance.

“First meeting of the semester means it's time to pick our show. We did a musical last semester, so it's a play this time. Any ideas?”

“The cherry orchard?” suggests a nervous looking Freshman Basil doesn't know, and then blushes bright red when the older students laugh.

“You weren't to know,” Basil says kindly, “but we have a strict no Russian dramatists rule. Partly because they're depressing as hell, but mostly because teenagers liking Ibsen is a guaranteed sign they're a pod person.”

“Or a Midwitch Cuckoo.”

“Yes, thank you Tim. Or a cuckoo. Or the thing from The Thing. Some kind of alien being masquerading as a teenager. So I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt this time since you didn’t know, but I will be watching you closely for suspicious behavior. Now, do any non-aliens have any suggestions?”

“Yes!” Tim Drake says brightly, and Basil groans. “I think we should do…”

“Don’t say it!”

“Equus! It won two Tony awards and...”

“The parent-teacher association said Les Mis was too risque - they’re definitely not going to go for you, buck naked, talking about having sex with horses for 2 hours.”

“Actually I was assuming Gar would take the lead.”

“That doesn’t help.” He suggests it every single time, because the Wayne kids are, to a one, absolute little shits.

“Lysistrata?” Harper suggests. “It’s a classic.”

“We won’t get approval for anything Greek. Not after the Medea incident. It took a month for the hall to stop smelling of burning hair, and we still haven’t got the bloodstains out of the stage.”

“It’s going to be Shakespeare,” Gar says. “We’re never going to get approval for anything else so we might as well resign ourselves.”

“Oooh, Midsummer Night’s Dream!”

“We did it two years ago.”

“And Dick and Roy still aren’t allowed back in Drama club,” Jason adds, proudly.

“They’re lucky they were allowed back into the school, never mind theater club! Come on people, if no one offers me any better suggestions I’ll make you do Henry VIII, don’t think I won’t.”

“That’s not even a real play.” Cisco has no real interest in theater, he's just good with a mixing board.

“Oh sweet summer child. Treasure your ignorance, for it is your shield.”

“Merchant of Venice is fun,” Donna says.

“Portia is fun. Trying to do Shylock without being anti-Semitic is not.”

“Taming of the Shrew?”

“No way,” Courtney says at once. “I’m not getting stuck with Bianca. She has no good lines at all.”

“To get the part you’d need to audition for it,” Basil points out, but it’s not like she’s wrong. Courtney isn’t just one of their best performers, she’s one of the only blondes in theater club this year, and Bianca really does need to be blonde. “But I'm going to have to pass on the misogyny as well.”

“Oh fuck,” Kulap says, flopping back into her chair. “It’s going to be Romeo and fucking Juliet isn’t it?”

“Language,” Basil says, even though privately he agrees. Romeo and fucking Juliet. “At least if we play it safe this time we might get to do something more controversial than Oklahoma for next year’s musical.”

“Maybe we could do something different with it?” Gar suggests.

“If you say modern setting I will kill you and then myself,” Tim says.

“Future setting?” Jason suggests, but Basil knows he’s only saying it to annoy his brother. “Romeo and Juliet are part of warring alien races, battling for control of the planet Verona.”

“So who’s the Prince then?”

“I don’t know. Captain Picard?”

“I don’t think anyone’s done Klingon Romeo and Juliet yet,” Tim says. “And I’m pretty sure I’ve got a Klingon dictionary at home somewhere.”

“The balcony scene would definitely be improved by Juliet throwing things at Romeo instead of just gazing longingly,” Harper puts in. “And I know where we can get some replica Bat’leths.”

“This is going to be my last show,” Donna says. “I'm not performing it in Klingon.”

“Well we've got to do something interesting with it.”

“Make it gay.”

“That’s your solution for everything Miguel.”

“Yeah, but think about it - teenagers falling in love, but their parents would kill them if they found out… it writes itself!”

“I’ve no issues in principle, but we’re already going to struggle to find female speaking roles without you making Juliet male as well.”

“Make it lesbian?” Harper suggests, to to amusement of the others.

“I don't see what's wrong with the show as written,” Bette says.

“She's got a point,” Shawn agrees. “Potential Juliets, put your hand up if you'd like a beautiful dress?” About half their female actors put their hands up, including Duela, and Basil entertains himself with the idea of actually casting her as the romantic lead. She looks like a young Nancy Reagan decided to become a goth and join the circus, speaks with a strong Gotham accent, and if she was arrested for murder tomorrow tomorrow Basil wouldn't even blink. “Potential Romeos, how many of you want a sword fight?”

Don is the only one to not put his hand up, even though he's Basil’s personal pick for the role. He hates any kind of conflict, has to be prodded and persuaded through even the simplest fight scene, but he's a solid actor, he's decent looking, and crucially, it's his final year and he's never had the lead.

If only kicking Dick and Roy out of drama club hadn't been a condition of their remaining at the school. Dick’s good looks would make him an excellent Romeo and Roy would make a phenomenal Mercutio. At least they still had Dick’s brother Jason, who had quite possibly been grown in a vat somewhere for the express purpose of playing Tybalt.

Donna and Courtney would duke it out for Juliet, but in the end it would probably go to Courtney, who lacked the comic timing to take one of the character roles like the nurse. Rosalind would go to Kori. She didn't care whether she got a speaking part, and a really stunning Rosalind always added added bit of weight to the central love story.

No one is especially enthused about Romeo and Juliet, but they'll have fun once they get going and for one last production they have the cast and crew they need to make it something special.

Chapter Text

The Street is Tim's favorite place to go after school. It's a tiny place on the edge of Robinson Park run by expat Londoner and self proclaimed elder-gay, Danny.

It's not a coffee shop, because the one time sometime tried to order a latte Danny had told them they could have “coffee with milk, coffee without milk, or a kick up the arse”, and it's not a restaurant (although Danny will generally make Tim a sandwich if he asks, because he thinks Tim's too thin). The thing it reminds Tim of most is the milk bar from clockwork orange, although that may just be the mannequins.

Steph and Conner K both refuse to go there because the mannequins and the artwork freak them out, but Bart likes the milkshakes and Harper says Danny’s ability to correctly gender everyone who comes in balances out the creepy, and Pru is as unfazed by the decor as she is by every other weird thing in Tim’s life.

Today he's alone, but he doesn't mind. He knows all the regulars at this point, so there’s always have someone to talk to.

Danny’s daughter Casey is in one of the booths when he arrives, gazing dreamily at her girlfriend Terry while Terry talks about her latest ad campaign.

They both look round when Tim comes in, and Casey waves.

“Hey guys, how's Milkman Man?”

Milkman man is the local milkman, despite the fact that cities haven't had Milkmen since the 60s. Tim's asked around and no one remembers ever paying him for the milk he brings, but just about everyone in Midtown seems to get a delivery from him every day.

He's also, according to them, Casey and Terry’s son, even though he looks to be the same age as them.

“He's good,” Casey says. “He's gone bowling with Lotion.”

(Lotion insists he's not a furry, but Tim has never seen him not wearing the head from an, admittedly very high quality, cat fursuit. He otherwise dresses like a greaser, and seems to mostly live on Casey’s couch.)

“I didn't know there still was a bowling alley in Gotham.”

“It's members only,” Casey days.

“Very exclusive,” Terry agrees.

“Huh. Maybe I'll get Lotion to take me some time.”

“Oh, he doesn’t bowl, he just knows a guy. Milkman Man heard there was a portal to another dimension under the pin retrieval area of lane five, and he wanted to check it out.”

“Huh.” Tim still hasn’t worked out whether Casey and Terry are playing the world's most elaborate practical joke on him, or if they’re insane. The fact that Gar says they’ve told him a lot of the same things (he’s related to them somehow, in the distant nebulous way he seems to be related to everyone Tim meets in The Street) suggests insane, but the fact that they both hold down full-time jobs suggests practical joke. “I hope that goes well for him.”

“Oh I’m sure it will,” Terry says cheerfully. “Things usually do.”

There isn’t really anything he can say to that, so he just nods and takes a seat at the bar. The stools are straight out of a 50s themed diner, and the bar itself looks like part of a set from the Jetsons, avocado green with chrome trim.

“Hey Danny.”

“Boner to vada you again, Robin love,” Danny says. He calls all the Wayne kids except Cass ‘Robin’ and no one knows why, but it freaks the hell out of Dick, who's mom used to call him that when he was a kid. “What can I get you?”

“Black coffee, please.”

“Chocolate shake and a cheese sandwich coming up,” Danny says, and Tim doesn’t bother arguing. Danny’s shakes are good, and he is kinda hungry now that he thinks about it. “You shouldn't be drinking coffee, it stunts your growth.”

“I like being short.”

“C-O-F-F-E coffee’s much stronger than tea,” sings Terry. She works in advertising and has a jingle for everything.

“That's not how you spell it,” Cliffe’s voice says from somewhere in the depths of the shop, and Tim twists round to try and spot him.

He finds him in the furthest booth, half hidden behind behind a naked mannequin wearing a Toya Wilcox wig. “Hey Cliffe.”

“Hey yourself, Batboy. How’s high school?”

“Could be worse. How’s law school?”

Cliffe used to be a professional rally driver, but a nasty crash had left him with a plastic hip and pins in both legs, so he decided it was time to retrain.

“About as exciting as you’d expect. You start rehearsals?”

“Only line reads so far. Kyle’s started designing the sets, but until he’s done there’s not much for me to do yet.”

“What show are you doing?”

Tim sighs. “Romeo and Juliet.”

“You don’t sound thrilled.”

“Yeah. We’re still paying for the Medea incident. And Midsummer Night’s Dream. We can’t get approval for anything actually interesting. Not that there’s anything wrong with Romeo and Juliet, it’s fine, and it’s better than Henry VIII or the Cherry Orchard, but it would be nice to not be doing the same show as every other high school in the state, you know?”

“You could do something different with it?”

“My suggestion of an all Klingon production was sadly shot down.”

“chaH qoH.”

“vISov.” He’s not even surprised that Cliffe speaks Klingon. He gave up being surprised by the regulars of The Street long ago. “Chay'... I can’t actually remember how that goes. How’s Jane?”

“Pretty good. She’s got a gallery show next week that she’s excited about. Could be a big break for her.”

“Hey, that's great! Have you got the details? My foster dad would be interested, he likes to keep an eye on up and coming artists.” Nor strictly true - Bruce has a crush on one of Duela’s dads, and goes to all his events, and tries to cover it up by attending other people's gallery shows as well.

Cliffe ambles his way up to the counter and hands over a handful of flyers for the show. “In case you know any other eccentric millionaires who like to collect art.”

“I'll see what I can do.” Roy and Connor H’s dad isn't much of a collector but he can generally be persuaded to part with money for a good cause, and Tim has had some good returns on his investments lately and wouldn't mind putting something aside for a rainy day. He'd been considering diamonds, but art could appreciate more value if you picked the right artist. It remained to be seen if Crazy Jane was the right artist.

“Hey did Gar get a good role in the play? He didn't say.”

“He's the Friar. It's the last show for the seniors so they got all the big parts.”

“Guess he can't be the lead every time.”

“He'd have made a better Romeo than Don. I think Jason may actually stab him if his stage fighting doesn't improve.”

“Romeo bleeding out on stage on opening night would at least be different from every other school.”

“Tempting. Very tempting. It’s not that I dislike Don, he’s just…”

“Wet?”

“Yeah. So wet. He doesn’t even like picking up the prop swords, and it’s not like they’re sharp!”

“Not everyone takes knife-fighting lessons,” Danny points out. “Most people aren’t used to playing with swords.”

“It’s a glorified stick. It’s not like we’ve handed him a bastard sword.”

“Pacifist production,” Terry suggests. “Replace all the fights with dance-offs.”

Tim laughs. “At this point that would honestly be an improvement.”

“I will definitely come and see it if you do.”

“You mean you weren’t going to see it anyway? I’m hurt.”

“Of course we were coming to see it,” Casey says quickly. “We never miss one of Gar’s shows. Even Lotion is coming, and you know how he feels about 16th century dramatists.”

Tim has absolutely no idea how Lotion feels about 16th century dramatists, but he just nods. If he asks, they’ll tell him, and then he’ll have to know.

“Cheese sandwich, chocolate shake,” Danny says, setting them on the counter.

“Giant snake, Birthday cake,” Tim replies, automatically.

“Green moose, guava juice,” Terry adds.

Tim turns to look at her. “You used to watch Fairly Odd Parents?”

“Don’t think so? What is it?”

“Those were the words. To the theme song.”

“Oh, then no.”

“So why did you say that?”

“These were just the words that wanted to be there. You don’t get far in advertising without learning to recognize what shape a silence is. That one was green moose shaped.”

“Has it occurred to you that you probably shouldn’t exist?”

“Have you considered that I don’t?”

He had, actually. That’s why he so often brings someone else with him when he comes to the Street. It makes him feel better to have confirmation that other people can see and hear the regulars.

“Alternatively,” Cliffe says, a mischievous light in his eyes, “has it occurred to you that we should exist but not in this universe?”

Tim looks at Danny. “Is this place a pocket dimension? Or a dimensional rift?”

Danny grins and taps his nose. “That would be telling, Robin love, that would be telling.”

Tim takes a sip of his milkshake, and is reassured that even if the patrons don’t exist, the milkshake definitely does, and is very chocolatey. Sometimes it’s the little things in life.

Chapter Text

Dick hears the wolf whistle as he's leaving school, and spins round to find Roy grinning at him unrepentantly.

“Hey sweet thing, you going my way?”

Dick raises an eyebrow. He's not as good at the expression as Bruce or Cass, but it usually has the desired effect. “Sweet thing?”

Roy shrugs. “It's an experiment.”

“It failed.”

“It's not for you .”

Dick sighs. Roy had decided that hooking up with Dick and Jay isn't enough - he's going for the Wayne family hat trick. “If you call Steph sweet thing she'll punch you.”

“What about Tim?”

“He'd stab you.”

“Getting warmer then.”

“You know if you want Tim to cut you you could always try asking him. He'd probably do it.”

“Yes,  but would he get off on it?”

“God knows. I try and keep out of little brother's sex life. But when Steph bought a copy of 50 Shades to see what the fuss was about, he and Jay ritually burned it in the back garden and Tim made a speech about how the misrepresentation of kink was the reason it didn't deserve to live.”

“Huh. What did Bruce do?”

“Well he stopped them from holding the execution inside the house.”

“I've said this before but I really feel I can't stress this enough. Your family is really weird, Dick.”

“As opposed to yours?”

“Ollie getting me high is definitely less weird than Bruce letting you execute a book for crimes against kink.”

“To be fair, it's less letting and more recognizing that there's no point trying to fight Tim and Jay when they work together.”

Roy’s expression goes a little dreamy, and Dick sighs. Sometimes he really thinks he ought to get new friends. Ones who don’t fantasize about his foster-brothers in front of him. He kicks Roy in the ankle.

“Abuse,” Roy says, but he sounds pretty happy about it. “You abuse me Dick.”

“Only when you ask nicely,” Dick says absently. “Roy, are you actually serious about wanting to hook up with Tim and Steph, or are you just trying to piss me off?”

Roy’s expression sobers. “I was serious, but I can stop if it's really bothering you.”

“Nah, it's fine as long as they're fine with it. I’m not sure they’re really the casual type though, either of them.”

“Dickie…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Just because it’s not dating doesn’t mean it’s not serious .”

"You could at least try and sound like you believe that.”

“No, I do. You know I do. I love you man, you know that.”

“I would die for you Dickie. I’d rather pull out my own teeth than date you, but it’s still making love not fucking, every time.”

God, for someone who avoids all relationships more serious than fuck-buddies like the plague, Roy can be such a sap. “And Jason?”

Roy sticks his hands in his pockets. “If I was told tomorrow I had to marry someone, I’d pick Jason.”

“So why aren’t you dating him?!”

“For the same reason I’m not dating Kori. Same reason I’m not looking to date any of your family. I mean not you, you’re a special case, I’m not dating you because you are to relationships what C4 is to bridges. But basically everyone else in my life. Right now I’m happy the way I am, and I’m not hurting anyone. I’m careful about that.”

“Yeah, I know you are. And I didn’t mean… I just don’t want them getting hurt. They’ve both had enough of that.”

Roy raises his hand, three figures extended. “I solemnly swear I will not break Steph or Timmy’s heart.”

Dick kicks him again. “You were kicked out of the Boy Scouts, remember?”

“True. Okay, how about this. I swear on Jason’s biceps and your ass that I will not break either Steph or Tim’s heart. Better?”

“And you won’t marry them.”

“Hey, I’m allowed to marry them if I want to. And they want to. But that’s irrelevant, because I don’t want to marry anyone and if I did it would be Jason and Kori.”

“You only get to marry one person, Roy.”

“Which is why I don’t want to marry anybody.”

“Does Jason know you’re doing this?”

Roy grins. “Jason advised me to buy some chainmail and get a rabies shot, but he gave me his blessing.”

Jason hates Tim about 40% of the time, but he adores Steph and would never do anything to harm her. Plus he knows Roy nearly as well as Dick does. If he thinks this is a good idea, Dick’s not going to be the one to say no. “Fine, whatever. You can see if ‘sweet thing’ works on Tim or Steph.”

Roy whoops his delight, and shoves his shoulder against Dick hard enough that he almost falls. “Hell yeah! Wayne family hat-trick here I come! Someone have better made a trophy for that.”

“I’m pretty sure Gar made one out of a solo cup and some tinfoil the first time you hooked up with Jason.”

“Awesome! Ollie will finally have something to put on the mantelpiece next to all Connor’s archery medals.”

“Any you say your family isn’t weird.”

“Your brothers executed a book for getting kink wrong, you are in no position to judge.”

“And yet you still want to sleep with them.”

“Hell yeah I do. What, were you under the impression that I’m not a weirdo? Dickie, I’m best friends with you .”

Roy manages to dodge the kick this time, but he isn’t expecting the elbow to the ribs, or the full body tackle that follows it.

Chapter Text

“Hey Roy?”

Roy looks up from his notation paper to find Connor, hovering in the doorway of Roy’s room and looking maybe the most nervous Roy has ever seen him since he first arrived at Ollie’s. 

“You okay, bro?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, I just… I need some advice.”

“Don’t drink and smoke at the same time.”

“Not the advice I meant.”

“Okay, don’t believe Ollie when he tells you food is vegetarian.”

Connor snorts, and generally looks less like he’s preparing to face the inquisition, which Roy is going to count as a win. “He tried to tell me Sloppy Joes were vegetarian last week because they have carrots in them.”

“Yeah, he’s not getting the hang of that any time soon.”

“He’s trying harder than he used to. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Roy gestures Connor to sit on the bed, and spins around his desk chair to face him. Connor looks as good in Roy’s bed as he always does (Wally thinks it’s gross that Roy is attracted to his foster-brother, but the Waynes all agree that it’s fine since they didn’t meet until Connor was twelve and Roy fourteen and also, Connor is undeniably gorgeous) and Roy allows himself a moment to mourn the fact that Connor doesn’t want to fuck anyone, especially his big brother. Not that Roy has any problem with Connor being ace - as far as he’s concerned the people who have a problem with that are just as bad as the people who have a problem with Roy being pan or poly - but Connor is absurdly beautiful, and Roy’s allowed to dream.

“So what can I do for you, bro?”

“Roy, I… how do you know when you have a crush on someone?”

“You rethinking some things about your identity?”

“I’m definitely still ace. I don’t want to have sex. But I’m wondering if maybe I was wrong about being aro?”

“Okay, well, why do you think you have a crush on Kyle? It is Kyle, right?”

“Yes! How did you know? Oh god, have I been super obvious? Do you think he knows? If he knows, why hasn’t he said anything?!”

“To quote Jason, you, Connor Hawke, are a beautiful idiot. I knew it was Kyle because he’s your favorite person in the universe .”

Connor sighs. “Yeah he really is.”

“And you want to hold his hand and take him on dates and maybe smooch him.”

“I don't know about smooching. I don't want to, you know, give him the wrong idea. But the rest of it, definitely.”

“Man, I am so not the person to talk to about this. Look, we don't talk about it cos I don't want to make you uncomfortable but you've got to have noticed I'm fucking just about everyone I care about who isn't part of this family. I don't really do non sexual relationships.”

“I'm asking because you're my big brother,” Connor says, and that, that right there, is why Roy doesn't actually want to fuck Connor, however attracted he is. He’ll always be at least a little bit conflicted over Ollie, and his own adoption, but being Connor’s brother is the best thing that ever happened to him.

“I love you, bro. I don't tell you often enough, but I really do. And I'm going to give Uncle Bane your phone number because he knows way more about this than me.”

“I love you too, Roy. Why do you call him Uncle Bane?”

“Because Ragdoll gets jealous if I call him Daddy.”

“But you're not…”

“I would totally sleep with Bane if he offered, except if he offered then he wouldn't be the good man I am attracted to so I wouldn't want to. The older man paradox. We chat sometimes. It's cool to have someone more experienced who can answer questions about being poly and kink and stuff. And he's ace, and he's dating Doll who's also ace, and they're both dating Thomas who totally isn't ace, so they can give you both perspectives.”

“That's great, thank you.”

“But?”

“But… I still want to know what you think.”

“I'm not the expert on this shit, bro.”

“No, but you're my brother, and you know me and you know Kyle. And you're good at this stuff. I gave up counting your friends with benefits when you were a Sophomore , but there's never any drama. You don't hurt anyone you sleep with.”

“Only if they ask nicely.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yeah I do.” And he has no idea what he's supposed to say. He knows he's a pretty good big brother,  even if Connor never wants Roy to do any traditional big brother stuff like buying him booze or introducing him to cute guys or girls, but it's something else entirely to hear Connor say so earnestly that he admires Roy. That he doesn't think Roy’s a fuck up, even though basically all Roy’s achievements in life to date have been sex related. Even though Roy spends half his life high, and he'd given up serious archery competitions in favour of target shooting and getting pissed with his friends. “You  always see the best in people.”

“It's easy when it's you.”

Okay, Roy absolutely has to hug the shit out of baby brother right the fuck now. Connor makes an oof of surprise when Roy lands on him, but he doesn't try to fight and he hugs back almost immediately. “I can't believe you used to hate me.”

“I didn't hate you, I was scared of you. Anyway you hated me first.”

Roy laughs and squeezes him tighter. “I was scared of you too. I was so sure you were going to replace me and I'd end up in the system.”

“I thought dad would never love me when he'd already got a son who was so much like him.”

“I'm not his son.”

“You are, you know. Just because you both refuse to admit it that doesn't make it not true. He loved you before he knew I even existed! Tell me what to do about Kyle.”

“Ask him out, you beautiful idiot. He’ll say yes, because you're his favorite person in the universe too, and then you'll get married and have beautiful babies together and look like a stock photo of the perfect family.”

“A gay interracial perfect family?”

“A beautiful gay interracial perfect family. Come on, try and tell me you don’t want that.”

“I would like to be a dad one day. And Kyle is beautiful. And really patient and gentle, he’d be a good dad. And okay, yes, I totally want to marry him and have a family with him one day.”

Roy ruffled Connor’s hair and grinned at how he still looked beautiful, even ruffled and grumpy and lovelorn. “So ask him out.”

“How? What if he wants to have sex?”

“Just ask him. It really is that easy. And ask him what he wants. And tell him what you want. And just… keep doing that. Forever.”

“Is that what you do?”

“I mean what I want usually involves a lot more nudity and spanking than you’re probably into, but basically. The only way to keep from hurting each other is to make sure you’re both on the same page about everything, and the only way to do that is to talk about it, and the only way to do that is to start by telling him you love him and want to have his babies.”

“And what if he wants stuff I can’t give him?”

“Then you agree no harm no foul, you move on, and you stay friends. It hurts for a bit, but not forever.”

Connor blinks up at him, eyes startlingly blue in his dark face. “You’ve had your heart broken?”

“Of course I have. Just cos I don’t date doesn’t mean I don’t love.” He can see Connor wants to know more, but he’s enjoying the moment too much to want to ruin it by going over old wounds. “Honestly, Kyle doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to demand sex, and if it turns out I’m wrong, Dinah’ll castrate him for you.”

Connor laughs. “She totally would too. Thanks, Roy. I told you you were good at this stuff.”

Roy is never ever going to say the words ‘aw shucks’ unless there’s a gun to his head, so he settles for giving his baby bro the kind of full-body hug that Dick would approve of.

Chapter Text

Duke hitches his bag higher on his back and takes a deep breath. So far Bruce seems nice, and the fact that he’d fostered a load of other kids and ended up adopting most of them suggests he’s a decent guy, but there’s a big difference between meeting Bruce in the impersonal dining room of the group home with a social worker supervising, and actually moving in with the guy.

The fostering thing isn't bothering Duke the way it does some of the other kids. The way he sees it, it’s no different than the home except there'll be less competition for the bathrooms. Bruce isn’t replacing his parents any more than the social workers were.

What is bothering him is the thought of the other kids. Bruce has six, three adopted, two fostered and one biological. Presumably they’re used to Bruce taking in new kids, since there are so many of them, but how can he know? They might all hate him on principle, just for being the new kid. (And that isn’t even taking into account all the risks that came from being a black kid in a white family. He could be walking right into a blacksploitation horror movie for all he knows).

But none of it is going to get any easier if he puts it off. He takes another deep breath, and raised a hand to knock.

The door swings inwards, just as Duke’s knuckles are about to make contact, and on instinct he follows it, only just stopping himself in time to keep from falling flat on his face.

He looks up, ears flushed with embarrassment, to find the person who had opened the door isn’t Bruce or any of his kids, but an elderly white man with thinning hair and a pencil mustache, dressed in vest and tie, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to the elbow.

“You must be Mister Thomas,” he says, and he has the kind of cut-glass British accent Duke has only ever heard on tv before. “I am Alfred Pennyworth. Mister Wayne is expecting you.”

He stands back and gestures into the house, and Duke obediently follows him into the entrance hall, which is bigger than any bedroom Duke has ever had, with a wide sweeping staircase off to one side and a multi-armed chandelier thing hanging from the ceiling.

“May I take your bag, Mister Thomas?”

Duke tightens his grip on the straps of his backpack. “No, it’s fine. I can hold on to it. And you don’t have to call me Mr Thomas. My name’s Duke.”

“Very well, Master Duke. Master Bruce is awaiting you in the study, if you would like to follow me.”

“So are you the butler or something?” he asks as he followed Mr Pennyworth.

“I had to honour to be Butler to Master Bruce’s late parents, as was my father before me. Since their passing, Master Bruce has not kept a large enough staff to warrant a Butler. I am whatever Master Bruce requires of me - Valet, Housekeeper, Nanny. Chief cook and bottlewasher, as my mother used to say.”

“But you’re, like, a servant?” No way is he going to fit in here, not with a load of white kids who are used to having servants .

Mr Pennyworth doesn’t turn around, but Duke can feel the disapproval radiating off him. “It is fashionable among young people to look down on those in domestic service, but it is an old and noble profession. I have known Master Bruce since he was a baby, and it is my pleasure to serve him and his family.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“I understand, Master Duke. This is all new to you. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll fit right in.” He knocks softly on a nearby door.

“Yes, Alfred?”

“Master Duke has arrived, Sir.”

“Oh, well send him straight in. And bring some coffee, would you?”

“Right away, sir.”

Duke shifts his grip on his bag and tries to look less like a man going to an execution. He jumps out of his skin when he feels a gentle touch on his arm. “You’ll be fine,” Alfred Pennyworth says in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Try not to worry.”

Duke nods his thanks, and pushes open the door. The room on the other side isn’t as stuffy and posh as he was expecting. There’s a big old wooden desk, and a lot of the books that line the walls look old and valuable, but there’s plenty of modern paperbacks as well, and Bruce himself is sitting in a low armchair by the fire, not behind the desk like Duke had been expecting.

He rises as Duke enters, and he's not smiling but his eyes are warm. “It is good to see you Duke. I hope you'll be happy here for as long as you want to stay.”

“Thank you. It’s good of you to have me.”

“Oh, it’s my pleasure. Is Ms Peters not with you?”

“I, ah, I kinda asked her to come back later. I wanted to do this bit on my own, you know?”

Bruce nods. “I understand. How was your journey?”

Okay, boring small talk. Duke can totally do boring small talk. “It was fine. We....”

He trails off at the sound of an ear splitting scream from upstairs. Bruce frowns at nothing in particular. “Excuse me.” He goes to the door, leans out into the corridor and yells, “Damian Tariq Wayne, come here right now.”

He stands back, hands clasped behind his back, and a moment later a scowling kid of ten or eleven appears. He’s carrying a wooden sword and being followed by a large dog and a grinning girl of about Duke's age.

“Stephanie…” the kid begins, but Bruce ignores him.

“He ambushed you again?”

“He was in the wardrobe this time,” the girl agrees. “He hit me in the arm.”

Bruce sighes. “Stephanie,  would you mind giving Duke the tour while I talk to Damian about why I'm cancelling his kendo lessons.”

Damian starts yelling immediately, and Stephanie wisely doesn’t try and talk over him, just nodding to Bruce and pulling Duke out of the room. The huge dog watches them go with a look of longing, like it’s as desperate to be out of there as Duke is.

As they round the corner he hears Damian say “And I wasn't even consulted about you taking in another stray!”

“Don't mind Dami,” Stephanie says. “He's more bark than bite. He thinks being Bruce’s bio son makes him special, but he an okay kid underneath it all.”

“It sounded like he hit you pretty hard.”

Steph shrugs. “It'll probably bruise, but it wasn’t that bad. I only screamed so Bruce would hear. The boys know they're not allowed in my room. Except Tim, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Duke agrees. He has no idea who Tim is.

“Ah, sorry dude. Spooky has been talking about you all week, I forgot you hadn't actually met us yet. I'm Steph. Spooky’s been fostering me for year. You've met Damian and Alfred already. I think the others are in the gym.” She sees his face and grins. “Yeah, Bruce is the kind of crazy rich person who has a private gym. Try not to think about it too much, it'll only freak you out.”

She leads the way to the gym, keeping up gentle chatter about the house and their school and the kind of food Alfred liked to cook.

“Okay, don't freak out,” she says suddenly, stopping in front of a pair of double doors, “but this totally used to be the ballroom.”

The room is stupidly big. There's machines in one corner, and racks and racks of free weights, but most of the room is taken up by mats and a boxing ring.

There's an Asian girl and a skinny little guy with a pointy face in the ring, apparently doing their best to kick each other's teeth in.

Two more guys are leaning on the ropes watching. They're all in workout gear, and all crazy shredded.

The two leaning on the ropes turn at the sound of the door opening.

“I've got three to one on Tim lasting five minutes,” the bigger guy says, grinning. “Care for a flutter?”

“What do I win?” Steph asks.

“Roy.”

“I'm good then. I don't want your leftovers thanks.”

“He’ll be heartbroken. You know he’s going for the matched set. Hey new guy, I'm Jason. Call me Jay.”

“Duke.” He holds out out a hand but it’s taken by the other guy. He’s shorter that Jason by a couple of inches, but he looks like he might be older. His skin is tanned and when he grins Duke almost takes a step backwards from the sheer force of his beauty. It’s like walking into a Calvin Klein commercial.

“I'm Dick. Yes, Dick, never Richard, Rick or anything else. Nice to finally meet you. The bossman’s been talking about you all week. Tim and Cass will come say hi as soon as Cass is done kicking Tim's ass.”

“Maybe Tim will kick her ass?” Duke suggests. It doesn’t seem very likely, since everyone else seems sure Tim will lose, but he’s not going to turn down the chance to ingratiate himself with one of his new foster-siblings.

“Give me a knife and maybe,” Tim says, ducking under a punch. “I’m not kidding myself here.”

“Getting better,” Cass says, kicking Tim hard enough to send him crashing back against the ropes. “But still distracted.”

“Wait, did you say a knife?” What the fuck has Duke walked into here? Is this some kind of White Nationalist paramilitary thing?

“Don’t tell Bruce,” Tim says, between pants.

“You know he knows, little brother. He’s Bruce. He always knows.”

“”Obviously. But as long as none of you snitch he can maintain plausible deniability.”

Duke was right, he was fucking right, he’s in a horror movie just like he feared. “This is a hell of a set up for, you know, civilians.” Oh great job Thomas, now they know you’re onto them.

Dick shrugs. “We’re a weird family. Bruce was a reserve for the Olympic fencing team, and has a black belt or above in like five martial arts. I was a professional aerialist in the circus, and I go kinda crazy if I’m not getting enough exercise so he started training me. Jay was getting into fights at school and loosing, so Bruce trained him to. Tim’s Tim.”

“He arrived with three knives in his bag and tried to stab Bruce on his first night here,” Jason puts in.

 "Yeah, that. Cass started training when she was like two, she’s the only one who can beat Bruce. Damian’s the same, but he’s only eleven so he can’t kick anyone’s ass yet except Steph’s.”

Steph shrugs. “Give me time. I’ve only been learning karate for like six months.”

“So do I have to start leaning to kick people in the face now?” Duke really doesn’t like violence, he’s not the violent type.

“Do you want to?”

“Not really? I mean, I guess if it was just karate lessons or something? I don’t want to learn knife fighting.”

“Don’t worry, that’s just a Tim thing. Kendo, arnis, bojutso and tai chi are options though. Fencing is not an option, fencing is compulsory. Also if you say you want to learn HEMA, Jay will probably kill you in your sleep, so I’d avoid that.”

“Are you all going to look at me weird if I tell you I don’t really want to learn to use any weapons? Also I don’t know what half the words you just said mean.”

“Not necessarily. What exercise do you like?”

“I used to go along to my mom’s pilates class sometimes? It was supposed to help her bad back. And I did boxing for like, a semester, because it was free through this youth engagement programme. Oh, and I like freerunning.”

“I’ll beat up anyone who messes with you at school if you teach me pakour,” Tim calls from the ring.

“You’d do that anyway,” Cass says, and brings her elbow down onto his back hard enough to drive him to his knees. “Yield.”

“I yield, I yield. Fuck, I’m going to be feeling that for a month . Why do you always have to be so mean?”

“You like it.”

“Not from my sister!”

“We totally will though,” Jason says, dragging Duke’s attention away from the ring. “You’re one of us now, for as long as you want, and we protect our own. No one messes with a Wayne unless they’re prepared to take on all of us.”

That’s mostly  terrifying, but he’s pretty sure Jason actually meant it to be reassuring, which if anything makes it more terrifying. “Wow, okay. Strong sales pitch. Just to be clear though, you’re not some kind of paramilitary organisation, and you’re not going to go all… third act of Get Out on me, right?”

Steph bursts out laughing. “See? I fucking told you guys. New kid gets it. I told you the Wayne’s are creepy as fuck!”

“Laugh it up, little sister. You’re one of us now.”

“That’s just what I want you to think. It’s all part of my cunning ruse.” She turned to Duke. “I know they seem like a lot, but trust me. You want these guys in your corner. No one fucks with the Waynes.”

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Duke says, as soon as he’s alone with Steph. “You seem basically sane and normal, and I don’t want to pry into anything that isn’t my business, but…” He leaves the end of the sentence hanging, hoping that Steph will be able to pick up what he's putting down without him needing to actually say it.

She gets it straight away. “But you’re worried the Waynes are going to kill you in your sleep and you want to know what their deal is?”

“Yes. That.”

Steph shrugs. “They don’t really have a collective deal, except that Bruce is a crazy person and they’re all way too willing to along with his bullshit. But I guess they all have pretty major individual deals, if you know what I mean.”

Duke nods.

“Okay, so Dick grew up in the circus. Yes really. I legit didn't know that was a thing that still happened until I met him. He and his parents were trapeze artists, their gimmick was that they performed as a family. Then one night there was an accident, a rope snapped, and they both died in the middle of a performance, right in front of Dick.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. He’s pretty well adjusted considering. I mean he’s insane, everyone in this family is insane, but his crazy mostly isn’t trauma related.

“Jason’s dad was a dick who walked out when Jay was like four, and his mom was an addict. Never tell Jay I said this, because he fucking worships her, but she kinda messed him up. She OD’d when he was like eleven, and he lived on the streets for a couple of years before he met Bruce. He was never, like, official fostered. Bruce caught him jacking the tires from his car, and just decided he was going to adopt him.”

“I’m getting why you think he’s crazy.”

“Yeah. Jay’s got some pretty major anger management issues, but he mostly only takes them out on assholes and Tim, and Tim can look after himself.”

"What’s his deal?” They’d all kind of wigged Duke out, except Steph, but Tim was definitely the creepiest.

“His parents were assholes who used to do shit like go on holiday and leave Tim at home with an au-pair to watch him. They were the kind of rich were no one ever calls CPS, but if they’d been poor he’d have been taken into care for sure.

“Then one day they go away on holiday, and they disappear. They stop sending money to the au-pair, their phones don’t pick up, nothing. Tim figured something real bad had happened, but his mom had fucked him up so bad that he didn’t report them missing because he thought she’d be mad if she came back and found out he’d been taken into care. So he pretended they were still alive. For nine months.”

“How?!”

“He wrote the au-pair a letter claiming to be from his mom saying that they would be coming home soon and didn’t need her anymore. Then he forged his dad’s signature to get access to his college fund, which worked fine for like two months, but then the bank figured something weird was going on and froze the account.

“The power got cut off first, and then the water, plus he couldn’t buy any food. After the money ran out he lived by himself in the dark for six months before he got a virus that turned into pneumonia. He didn’t want to go to hospital, because he thought they’d figure out what he was doing, so he just ignored it and kept going to school, right up until he passed out in class and the nurse sent him to the ER.

“Once it all got out they launched a search for his parents and found out they’d been killed but because all their stuff was stolen and no-one in the US was looking for them, nobody figured out it was them until Tim got sick.

“They tried putting him in foster homes, but his mom had had this whole Ayn Rand ‘trust no one and never ask for help’ bullshit philosophy, plus all the isolation and fear and shit had really messed him up, and he kept attacking his foster parents.”

“Except Bruce.”

“Oh, he attacked Bruce as well to begin with, according to Dick and Jay. But Bruce is a crazy person so he kept giving Tim second chances until Tim finally agreed to cooperate with a therapist.”

“And the knives?”

“His base levels of paranoia were already pretty high, and nine months of isolation did not help. His parents were assholes, but at least his mom spoke to him occasionally. Without them… He insists he had friends at his old school, but I've met them and they didn't know shit about him. They didn't even know he's queer.”

“Well not everyone wants to come out…”

“Except this is Tim. He was born ready to come out. Queerness and paranoia are the foundation stones of his whole self image.” She blushes when Duke stares at her. “Therapy speak. Bruce makes us all go.”

“Will he make me go?”

“Probably. It's not so bad really. I mean Tim now sleeps more than two hours a night, and Jason hasn't had detention for fighting in weeks.”

“But Tim still carries a knife.”

“Jason does too sometimes, because of being on the streets.

“Tim decided when he was like ten that since he was always gonna be tiny and queer, he'd better learn to defend himself. And being Tim he wasn't going to carry a weapon he didn't know how to use so he kind of taught himself to use a knife. And then when he came to live here, Bruce got him weapons lessons, because Bruce is a crazy person, and Tim realized that asking someone to teach you shit was a thing you’re actually allowed to do without it being a sign of weakness. But this is Tim, and he has to make everything weird, so instead of just focusing on his bojutsu, he ran away from a martial arts summer camp thing Bruce sent him to and spent two weeks learning knife fighting instead.”

How the fuck do you even find someone to teach you knife fighting, Duke wondered. “So has he ever actually, you know, stabbed someone?”

“I haven't asked. Maybe. He hangs out with this woman Pru, who's a mob enforcer or something, and she's totally intimidated by him.”

“Jesus.” Their insistence that they were all willing to throw down for him had been creepy, but he’s starting to see why they might think that was a normal way to welcome someone to the family. “Okay, I'm braced. Tell me Cass’s deal.”

“Her dad was like… the martial arts version of an abusive stage school mom. He'd been like the fourth best in the world at judo when he was younger and then he was big in MMA when that was first a thing, and he was obsessed with Cass doing better than him. He home schooled her and basically didn't teach her anything except martial arts. He was pretty violent as well but he'd pretend it was a fucked up kind of training.

“When Cass first arrived here she was mute. Elective mutism they call it, where your vocal chords do work but you can't speak because of stress or trauma or whatever.”

“She talks now.”

“Yeah she's still pretty quiet, and a lot of the time she signs rather than speaking, especially with Bruce, but she talks to family and Harper now.”

“What about at school?”

“She doesn't really talk to the teachers but Bruce got her all these disability permits and stuff so they can't make her. Mostly she signs, and writes notes. It works.”

It's pretty terrifying to be sharing a house with people who could probably kill him without breaking a sweat, but he's feeling a lot better about the whole thing realizing how committed to helping his kids heal Bruce is. He might be a crazy person, but he's a well-meaning crazy person, and that counts for a lot in Duke’s book. “Okay, last one. Damian seems like a real piece of work.”

“Yeah, he's hard work. He's a good kid though, underneath. He's okay with me, and he fucking adores Dick. It's mostly Tim he hates. I think it's because Tim was the next youngest before you.”

“So is he just spoiled?”

“Rotten. But he also had a really fucked up childhood.” She gives him a nervous glance. “Look, if I tell you something will you swear not to tell anyone outside the family?”

“Sure.”

“I mean it. You have have to swear.” Her expression is really intense, like this is something fucking life or death, and given what he’s been learning about this family, maybe it is.

"Alright, I swear.”

“Damian’s mom is Interpol’s fourth most wanted person in the world.”

“Seriously?!”

“They call her a terrorist, but her organisation assassinates important people instead of planting bombs or whatever. They're trying to stop global warming from cooking the planet by killing politicians and CEOs who doesn't support the environment. And, like, she's got a point, but she's also killed a lot of people and she wants Damian to take over from her when she dies. So yeah, he's had had a really messed up childhood. Like, worse than any of the rest of us. He does pretty well considering.”

"Does he go to therapy?”

“Not yet. Bruce is still working on getting him to agree.” She grins at him suddenly, eyes bright with interest. “So what about you? What's your tragic backstory?”

Duke shrugs. “My parents were on that train that blew up last year. I've been in the system ever since.”

“And you've never tried to kill anyone, or bitten a therapist, or committed bank fraud?”

“Should I have?”

“Just trying to figure out why Mr Nelson sent you here instead of to sane foster parents.”

“Well what did you do?”

“Beat my asshole dad with a baseball bat, and kicked my mom's dealer's teeth in,” Steph says with a shrug, like it’s no big deal.

“Wow. Okay.”

“You'd totally been thinking I was the normal one, hadn't you?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“The scary thing is, I am the normal one. But the standards of this family I'm practically boring . So I'm gonna ask again. Why are you here?”

Duke thinks guiltily of the bolt cutters buried at the bottom of his bag and the size of his police file. “No idea. Maybe he thought I'd be calming influence on all of you?”

Chapter Text

“Thou wretched boy!” Jason yells - not his best delivery, but they're only blocking - and thrusts with his wooden prop sword, keeping it slow to give Don time to parry.

Don takes two stumbling steps backward, trips over his own feet and ends up flat on his back with his prop sword still in his belt.

Jason raises his hand. “Permission to drown Romeo in the pool, sir?”

“Probably best not,” Basil says, regretfully.

“Permission to give him fencing lessons after school?”

“What do you know about fencing?”

“My foster-dad was like sixth best in the country when he was younger, he made us all learn.”

Basil had met Bruce Wayne for the first time during Dick’s first year, when Dick had let Roy Harper talk him into taking mushrooms during the first act interval of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bruce had at least been more upset about the whole thing that Roy’s dad, but not by much. In the end they’d persuaded Principle Waller not to expel the boys, but they’d only been allowed to stay on at the school on the proviso that they were banned from theatre club for life. (Which was a damn shame, because Dick’s performance as Puck that night had been one of the best Basil has ever seen). “At this point I'm not even surprised anymore. Permission granted, providing you promise not to stab our lead.”

“I don't think I can make that promise,” Jason says, to general laughter from the onlookers. “Maybe if I show him how it's done he’ll remember for next time.”

That seems highly unlikely, but some entertainment was definitely called for after the boredom of blocking. “You're welcome to try, Mr Todd.”

“Alright. Tim, what do you say?”

“I say thou art a wretched poxy whore-son knave, “ Tim says, vaulting onto the stage and picking up Don’s sword.

The foster brothers alternate between being thick as thieves and hating one another's guts. Evidently today is a hating one another's guts day. Jason is very sensitive to any insult involving his mother.

“Mayhap so I be,” Jason says, stepping into a fencer’s ready position, “But at least my mother loved me.”

There’s a chorus of ‘ooooh’s from the audience, and someone (probably Miguel from the sound of it) shouts “sick burn bro”.

Tim narrows his eyes and steps into a guard position. “I’ll gut you where you stand, Capulet.”

“I’d like to see you try, Montague.”

Basil doesn’t say anything - they might not be quoting the play, but it’s certainly in the spirit of the original, and maybe a bit of play-fighting will help them burn off some of the aggressive tension.

He should have known better.

The swords are at least blunt, being made of wood, but they're still just big sticks and the brothers seem determined to hurt one another.

Tim is faster, but Jason has strength and reach on his side, and they look to be pretty evenly matched. Basil has done enough stage fighting in his life to recognise that Jason’s using a pretty traditional fencing style, his body upright and his free hand held out of the way. Tim keeps low, tossing the sword from hand to hand as Jason gives him openings. Basil’s pretty sure he'd be disqualified instantly from a real fencing match, but Jason is too intent on injuring his brother to care.

He should break it up, but he's a little concerned that if he intervenes they'll gang up on him. He's not generally afraid of his students, but he is aware that some of these kids would never have been accepted into any other school, and according to staff room gossip, the Wayne kids wouldn't have been accepted by any other foster family either.

Jason leans back out of the reach of a slash of Tim's sword, and thrusts hard and true to Tim's shoulder. “First blood to me, brother.”

He starts to turn around but Tim straightens up, hefting his sword in his hand, and calls out, “Tybalt, you rat catcher, will you walk?”

Never before has ‘rat catcher’ been imbued with such hatred.

“What would thou have of me?” Jason demands, turning back, his body language filled with the banked violence that makes him such a perfect Tybalt.

“Why good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives,” Tim replies, and Basil knows he's not going to stop them, not when this is exactly what he loves about the theatre. Tim's Mercutio is so different from Duela’s as to be unrecognisable and yet both are there in the text waiting to be found, Duela’s manic grins and constant movement, and Tim's acid tongue and watchful stillness, and he wants to see how the brothers will play out the scene, how different it will be with these performers and their history. “Will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ‘ere it be out.”

Jason actually growls, which should be ridiculous and is actually just intimidating. “I am for you!”

Despite their perfect recall of the lines, there’s nothing about the fight that follows that could be mistaken for stage fighting.

Jason uses his strength and size, forcing Tim back and back until he’s nearly at the edge of the stage, a step away from falling. When Jason brings his prop sword down in a great overhand blow aimed for Tim’s head, all Tim can do was bring his own sword up to block it.

With a snap like the cracking of bone, Tim's sword snaps, splinters flying and distracting Jason just enough for Tim to dive aside, back towards upstage left.

He rolled fluidly to his feet, his expression terrifyingly blank, and when Jason comes for him again he’s ready, pivoting his weight and kicking up and out.

It’s enough to shake Basil out of his stupor as the horror of what’s happening finally sinks in, but it’s Don who moves first, his wild yell of “Hold, Tybalt” echoing through the room.

The fighters freeze, Tim balanced precariously on one leg, his foot a milimetre from Jason’s nose, Jason’s sword a second away from thrusting hard enough into Tim's stomach to cause internal bleeding.

Don inserts himself between them, eyes wide with fear, forcing them to drop back into ready positions. He turns to Tim, expression pleading. “Good Mercutio.”

It's Duela who breaks the tension, before Jason can take the cue to attack his brother again.

She leaps onto the stage, snatching up the broken sword blade and shoving it under her arm. “I am hurt!” she exclaims dramatically. “A plague on both your houses, I am sped!”

“What, art thou hurt?” Garth asks, not bothering to get out of his seat.

“Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch,” Duela says, limping towards the tableau of fighters. “Marry, 'tis enough.” She collapses onto Don, obviously expecting him to catch her. Don, who is a good foot shorter than Duela and about 100 pounds sopping wet, goes down with an undignified squawk, Duela with him.

From their heap on the floor, Duela waves the broken sword blade and says in her most commanding voice, “Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.”

“Get your own surgeon,” Lucius shouts from the audience. “I’m on my break.”

“A plague!” Duela shouts. Don manages to get himself nearly upright before she grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him back down to bellow, “A plague on employee unions!” right into his face.

The whole cast collapse in giggles, even Tim cracking a smile.

Kori joins the group on the stage, wrapping an arm around Jason’s shoulders and saying something that Basil doesn’t catch that makes him sag in her grip, all the fight going out of him.

Donna calls Tim to the edge of the stage, ostensibly to ask him something about his performance, which has the intended effect of getting Tim safely away from his brother so he can cool off. Tim bears grudges like no one Basil has ever taught when he feels someone has wronged him or his family, but he’s also a lot more likely to forgive and forget than his mercurial brother.

Basil always misses the theatre kids who graduate each year, but he knows he’s going to miss this year’s seniors more than usual. Moments like this are why he’ll always defend his kids from any malicious staff room gossip, and why he’ll always believe theatre studies are vital to a well rounded education. Kori has a file as thick as his arm, Duela had been kicked out of two schools before this one, Don is treated as a joke by most of the teachers and students for his timid nature, even high-flying Donna is considered too bossy, but they’re all such good kids, and he’s so proud of all of them.

His melancholy train of thought is interrupted by Don saying mournfully, “I can’t believe Mr Karlo is going to make me learn to kill people,” and this time even Basil joins in the laughter.

Chapter Text

Bruce juggles his parcels - flowers for Eve, chocolates for Eddie, and a bottle of something more closely related to paint thinner than wine for Jack - until he can get a hand free to ring the doorbell.

It’s Eve who answers. She's wearing a purple dress that makes her eyes sparkle, and the diamond necklace Bruce had given her for her 40th, looking both like and totally unlike the first girl Bruce had ever fallen in love with.

He kisses the air above her cheek, careful not to smudge her makeup, and hands over the flowers.

The bouquet had been arranged by Alfred, but Bruce had chosen the flowers. Delicate blooms of Rosa Mundi, the last of the summer, with their two-tone petals. Eve’s favourite.

She brings the bouquet to her face and inhales the sweet scent, and then favours him with a bright smile, made crooked by the acid scars that no amount of plastic surgery will ever fully repair.

“Eddie’s cooking,” she says, as she stands aside to let him in. “But Jack insisted on making desert since you were coming and you, I quote, ‘appreciate his creative genius’. God only knows what we'll be having. You shouldn't encourage him you know.”

The man himself has come to see who’s at the door, and hears her. “Nonsense Evie, without constant encouragement my artistic spirit would shrivel up and die.”

Jack, with his usual disregard for convention (that artistic spirit he's always talking about) is wearing an emerald green shirt with “two timing son of a bitch” written on it, trousers in a hideous orange and purple check, and six inch stilettos that add to his already considerable height.

Bruce holds out the bottle of paint stripper to him and gets a grin in return.

“Something nice, darling?”

“Horrendous,” Bruce tells him. “Tastes like turpentine and will get you paralytic in about half a glass.”

“You know me so well. Come up to the studio, I want to show you my new piece before dinner.” Her glances at Eve. “You don't mind do you dear? You've already seen it, and Lex has no appreciation for art.”

“You win a prize if you can keep him distracted and out of the kitchen until dinner time, Bruce.”

“I’ll do my best, but I make no promises.”

“He knows better than that, don’t you darling? Come on, I promise you’ll like it, and you’ll get to show off to Lex that you got to see my new piece before it was unveiled.”

“Are you and Lex speaking again now?” Bruce asks, as he follows Jack up to this studio on the top floor.

“Nope,” Jack says, pronouncing the p as a kind of pop. “It's going to be horrifically awkward.” He sounds thrilled.

Lex doesn't like anyone much, but he has a certain nostalgic fondness for Bruce, respects Eve, and at least tolerates Eddie. Jack he despises, and Jack has made it abundantly clear that the feeling is returned.

If Lex is coming tonight it means he's at least prepared to try burying the hatchet. Whether Jack plays along really depends on where he is on his wide spectrum of moods.

Jack had given up seeing psychiatrists by the time Bruce met him when the were eighteen, but Bruce knew they’d been an unavoidable feature of his childhood. He ranges from violently destructive to childishly whimsical, with no apparent pattern or triggers. Eve told him once, in a rare moment of vulnerability, that she and Eddie had go bags and safewords set up, just in case Jack ever went too far. Just in case they needed to get Duela out of there in a hurry. Bruce couldn’t imagine living like that, but he couldn’t deny that he’d at least consider it if Jack wanted that from him.

In the first seventeen years of his life, Bruce had never experienced anything like attraction. He watched his classmates fall in love with girls, with teachers, with their cousins, with each other. Even Lex always had a girl in tow, although Bruce was never sure that he actually liked any of them.

He never felt anything like that. He’d started to think that he wasn’t capable of feeling anything of the kind, and then he met Eve and Jack within weeks of one another and everything he knew about himself turned upside-down.

He’d met Eve at the library. Alfred had insisted that if all he was going to do was sit around and read he could at least leave the house for it. Angry and bitter, Bruce had marched right up to the girl reading the one copy of the book he wanted and demanded she give it to him.

She’d laughed in his face, insulted his lineage, manners, appearance, and intelligence, and Bruce had thought “oh, so this is desire.”

Things had got a little more complicated eight weeks later when he met Jack. Or more precisely when Jack, during one of his periodic bouts of voluntary homelessness, had tried to mug Bruce. Bruce had revealed that all he had in his pockets was a copy of Republic he was on his way to return to the library, and by the time Jack had finished his rant about why Plato was an insufferable prick, Bruce had learned a few more truths about himself.

He wishes desperately sometimes that he’d had access to the kinds of information about sex and love and relationships that he’s always made sure his children had. Maybe then he wouldn’t have hesitated the way he did, not wanting to admit he was attracted to Jack, not wanting to take things further with Eve when he was so in love with Jack as well. (He’s not sure his teenage self could have handled knowing that having them both at once was a possibility).

In the end, he was so desperate not to have to choose he took off backpacking around the world, with no real intention of ever coming back, and by the time his fling with Talia had scared some sense into him, Eve and Eddie had an apartment together and Jack was spending so much time there Bruce wasn’t sure why he bothered having a place of his own. And then Eve had told him she was pregnant, that the three of them were having a child, and Bruce had been too heartbroken to do anything except smile and nod.

He’s had eighteen years to get over it, and he’s not heartbroken anymore, but he’s just as helpless in the face of Jack’s laughter and Eve’s wit as he ever was. Lex says it’s cute. (Lex is an asshole).

The the top of the stairs, Jack throws open the door to his studio with a flourish.

The sculpture is… “Are those cigarette butts?”

“And the empty packets from Ed’s antidepressants. Oh and look there - it’s the bottle from that brush-cleaner you tried to tell me was wine the last time you came to dinner. I’m thinking of calling it ‘studies in coping.’”

“You like brush-cleaner disguised as wine.”

“I do, but my adoring public don’t know that. What do you think, is it a winner or what?”

“I think it’s going to sell for a small fortune, especially with that name.”

Jack does make real art, painting mostly, and some of it is breathtaking, but he never sells or displays those pieces. He’s best known as a contemporary sculptor, but everyone who he’s not trying to scam knows that the real art isn’t the pieces, which he generally puts together in about two days with no actual care or attention, it’s the sale. Con artistry as performance art. The sort of thing only Jack could turn into a viable career.

Eve and Eddie are under instructions to show his real paintings just once, after his death. (None of them question the idea that Jack will be the first to go, even though he’s one of the most vital people Bruce has ever met). After they’ve done their job, exposed the long con, then they are to be distributed among his friends and enemies. Bruce knows he’s been left a portrait of Eve. He’s only seen it once, but it was the thing that convinced him that, for all his mood swings and anti-social behaviour, Jack really does love her.

There’s an easel in the corner of the room, covered with a cloth. Bruce glances to Jack for approval before pulling off the cloth to reveal a painting of Eddie, wearing pants and suspenders but no shirt, a bowler hat perched rakishly on his head. Like with the portrait of Eve, there’s a tenderness in the brushstrokes that Bruce has never known Jack to show in real life to anyone but Duella.

“This is good.”

“Eddie hates it.” Jack grins. “He says it proves I’m a pervert, as though that was ever in doubt.”

“He didn’t sit for it?”

“I can’t get him to pose dressed, never mind topless.”

“That’s impressive, to paint him from memory like that.”

Jack scoffs. “Knowing what my babydaddy looks like isn’t impressive. Especially when I see him every day.”

Bruce doesn’t bother arguing. “You never paint Duella.” Most of Jack’s real art is portraits, ranging from the tender to the downright cruel. There’s one of Bruce at eighteen in here somewhere, one of Lex in eyeliner and platforms, some horrible ones of various psychiatrists and social workers who’d tried to help Jack over the years. None of his daughter.

That earns him a rare totally sincere smile. “I sketch her all the time. In oils… I can’t get all three of us into her. She just ends up looking like me.”

Bruce feels mean for being surprised that that’s something which would bother Jack. He does love Eve and Eddie, it’s just that Bruce is pretty sure that the only person he’s ever loved more than he loves himself is Duella. “She inherited a lot from you.”

“Too much, probably,” Jack says. All the manic energy from earlier has drained out of him, leaving him tired and worn down and older than Bruce has ever seen him look. “Eddie wants to get her assessed. Maybe medicated.”

“And Eve?”

“She agrees.”

“Maybe it’s for the best. You know my kids see therapists or psychiatrists. It’s helped all of them.”

“She inherited so much from me,” Jack says, staring down at his hands. “So if she can’t cope…”

“It doesn’t have to say anything about you. You hold down a job, you maintain fulfilling relationships.”

“I sell junk with fancy names to rich idiots and I only stopped self-medicating in the house because Eve threatened to sue for custody if I did. It’s funny, I used to like being like this. Even when I was sweating through the second withdrawal in a year or sleeping rough and mugging little rich boys to get money for paints, I liked it. Now I look at Duela and I can’t see any of the thrill.”

“We do better by our kids than people did by us. Isn’t that what every parent wants? We give them the things we never had.”

“Oh so that’s why Jason is sleeping with half the kids in school, Mr still a virgin at nineteen.”

Bruce ignores the jab. It wasn’t intended to hurt - Jack knows him well enough to do real damage if he wants to. “That’s why Eve and Eddie want Duela to get therapy.”

“Maybe. Hey, can I ask you something? If I didn’t have them, if you’d ever made a move when we were kids, would you trust me around your children?”

Bruce doesn’t say anything - there’s nothing good he can say.

Jack nods. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Give Eve the name of your kids shrink before you go. Anyone who can deal with those little monsters of yours is probably tough enough to stand up to Duela in a mood.”

Slowly, wary of any sudden movements that might provoke a violent reaction, Bruce pulls Jack into an embrace. “You’re a good father, J.”

“And you’re just as much of a sucker for a sob story as ever,” Jack replies, but he wraps his arms around Bruce and holds on tight, so Bruce is pretty sure that it had been reflexive meanness. “Don’t tell Lex I hugged you. It’ll ruin my reputation.”

“You have a kid, J, I’m pretty sure Lex already knows you hug sometimes.”

“No, he only suspects.” Jack hand slides down to grab Bruce’s ass, which Bruce takes as his queue to let go. Despite what his shirt says, Jack is loyal to Eve and Eddie. He only hits on Bruce as a defense mechanism these days. “You’re no fun anymore, you know that Brucie baby? I used to be able to get you blushing and stammering and rock hard by just looking at your ass.”

“We’re not teenagers anymore.” Thank God.

“The years start coming and they don’t stop coming.”

“Did you just quote Smashmouth at me?” Bruce only recognised it because Jason had changed the ringtone on every phone in the house to All-Star, during on of his periods of looking for non-violent ways to make Tim’s life hell.

“You ever wish we’d actually fucked once before we decided to grow up?” Jack asks instead of replying.

“Sometimes,” Bruce admits. “Not often. If we had, we never would have grown up.” He and Jack were bad for one another, Bruce was mature enough to admit that now. Jack would always be one of his dearest friends, he’d always be at least a little bit in love with him, but he knows he wouldn’t like the people they’d have turned one another into. He would never have moved on from his parents deaths, Jack would never have learned to reign in the worst of his violent impulses. They would probably have been happy, for at least a while, but they would have destroyed one another in the end.

“Growing up is overrated,” Jack says as he pulls away, but Bruce can hear that he doesn't mean it. “Come on, I want to be so shitfaced I can’t walk in these heels by the time Lex and Mercy show up, it’s the only way I can be around him without wanting to use his shiny bald head as a soccer ball.”

Chapter Text

Duke really loves that he gets his own room. He hadn’t hated sharing in the group home, but as an only child he’s been used to having his own space. He’s still not entirely sure how he feels about living in a house that is big enough for seven kids to all have their own room and there still be guest rooms left over, but he’s not going to complain.

The fact that the other kids all think it’s fine to just wander in unannounced when he’s in bed on the other hand… (He’d asked Dick what they did about masturbation when they were all in and out of one another’s rooms all the time, and he’d said to just yell that you’d got your dick out the minute the door started to move, and Duke’s honestly not sure that he’s joking).

At least he’s in bed and wearing pyjamas this time - it’s only been a couple of days and he’s already had more than one conversation with Cass or Steph that started with “stop screaming Duke, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before...”. (To which Duke began by pointing out that that might be true but they haven’t seen his before, but that argument already doesn’t work.

Even knowing he’s fully covered, it’s still instinctive to tug the sheets up to his chin when the door opens, and then he’s so confused by not immediately recognising the shape in the doorway that he forgets to say anything.

Whoever it is is tall, at least as tall as Dick, but with a definitely feminine silhouette, and given that Cass is Tim’s height and Steph’s only a few inches taller, he has no idea who is could be. Someone’s girlfriend? That Pru woman Tim hangs out with who Duke hasn’t met yet?

And then the figure in the doorway flicks on the light and he realises with a jolt that it’s Jason.

“Hey man, sorry to disturb you, I know you don’t like us all barging in…” He trails off when he notices that Duke is still staring like a creep. Not that he’s creeping, Jason’s his foster brother and he’s pretty sure that he’d have made it clear if he wanted Duke creeping on him, but he’s still just really confused, and Jason has tits, since when does Jason have tits?! “Guess you hadn’t figured out I’m trans, huh?”

“Um,” is all Duke can say.

Jason crosses his arms over his chest defensively. “You’re not going to be all weird about it are you?”

That’s enough to bring Duke to his senses. “No! No, fuck sorry, no I… I didn’t know? I mean, obviously I didn’t know or I wouldn’t be being such a freak. Sorry. I don’t care or anything, you just caught me by surprise. You’re like the manliest guy I’ve ever met.”

Jason laughs. “You obviously haven’t seen my bookshelves. But thanks. I got a lucky roll, genetically. Nature wanted me to be a tall hairy woman, turns out I’m a slightly taller than average dude instead.”

“This family is very gay.”

“We prefer queer, but yeah, we really are. What about you? Steph says she’s our token straight person but we all know she’s lying.”

“I… don’t know? I mean I’ve only really fancied girls, but I’m not like, opposed to the idea of liking a guy, you know?”

Jason laughs. “Not really. It’s hard to be Dick’s little wing and not know you’re queer. I mean, he’s my brother, but he’s also one of the most beautiful people on the planet, and he’s always been super supportive and kind. Some crushes are just inevitable.”

It’s not like Duke doesn’t get that. Dick is weird, but he’s also really great and really really handsome. “Do you still…”

“Nah, I got over that pretty quick. Like I said, he’s my brother. But by that time I’d met Roy and Kori, and when the universe is screaming at you that loud you just have to listen.”

Duke’s had the week off while he settles in before he starts school with the others, so he still hasn’t actually met the mythical Roy and Kori, but from the way Dick and Jason both talk about them (the fact that they’re sleeping with the same people really isn’t helping Duke calm the bit of his brain that’s still half convinced they’re in some kind of cult) they’ve got to be something special.

“What about Damian?”

“Too young to tell yet, but Alfred says he’s very like Bruce at that age, so whatever his thing turns out to be it’s going to be wild. Bruce has been in love like three times in his entire life, and he’s still in love with all of them, and when you tell him he should get over it he just stares at you like you’re talking Greek. Except that he speaks Greek. Bruce doesn’t really have an off switch for shit like that. Given how intense Dami is about everything, I figure he’s probably going to be the same way, and I am not looking forward to his first breakup.”

Duke totally gets that - Damian is spectacularly bad at emotions - but he can’t help thinking it could be worse. “How’s Tim at breakups?”

Jason groans. “The worst . And his exes are all terrible . This one guy he dated for like a week in Freshman year, Ulysses, is still so cut up over it that he keeps trying to get everyone Tim hits on expelled. He sent Conner K anonymous death threats for like half a semester and him and Tim aren’t even officially a thing. The only reason he didn’t get expelled is because they couldn’t 100% prove it was him, even though everyone knew it was.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. They only good thing is that he picked Conner, who’s pretty hard to intimidate and just didn’t care all that much, rather than one of Tim’s other friends.”

“So what I’m getting is that everyone at school is gay and crazy.”

“Not everyone. There’s also normal people, if you’re into that, but they mostly avoid the Waynes.” He buffs his nails on the front of his shirt. “Can’t imagine why.”

“You know what Steph would say now.”

Jason snickers. “Yeah I totally do. It’s not like we don’t know we’re a creepfest though, that’s got to count for something, right?”

“I don’t know, isn’t it worse if you know and do it anyway?”

“Secret to happiness, brother-mine. Figure out who you are and do it on purpose, even if who you are is really scary.”

“Good philosophy.”

“I stole it off Dolly Parton.” He laughs at Duke’s expression. “Told you I wasn’t all that masc. Speaking off, I actually came in to ask if you’ve seen my cock.”

“Your… cock?!”

“My packer. It’s got a life of its own I swear, and Damian is still poorly socialised enough that he hasn’t figured out that hiding it makes him look like the weirdo not me. Plus one time Titus stole my old one and buried it in the garden, and at the time it was the most mortifying thing to ever happen to any trans guy ever, but looking back it was pretty fucking hilarious.”

“I haven’t seen it, but if I find any unattached dicks i’ll let you know?”

“I feel like I should specify, given who else lives in this house, it’s a packer not a dildo, and it’s flesh tone. Anything erect, sparkly or ridged, not what I’m looking for and may not be mine.”

Duke could feel his face heating up with embarrassment. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

Jason grinned. “Don’t worry, according to Steph you get used to us eventually. Sleep well.”

“You too. I, ah, I hope you find your dick?”

“If I don’t I’ll just hold Damian over the banisters by his ankles until he tells me where he hid it. Night, bro!”

Chapter Text

“So is this my mean girls moment?” Duke asks as he follows Steph into the cafeteria.

“On Wednesdays we wear black.” She grins at his snort of laughter. “This school's kinda weird, clique wise. It's one of the best schools in the country for athletics, and they really don't give a damn about football. We do have jocks, but they don't get to run shit, and half the cheerleaders are also in the drama club.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah. Took me a while to get used to it to be honest.”

“So you going to tell me who’re the burnouts and who’re the plastics?”

She laughs and points to a table in the middle of the room. “Dick and Jason’s crew. The redhead who’s practically in Jason’s lap is Roy Harper. He will hit on you every single time you speak to him, but he won’t be creepy about it so my advice is just learn to roll with it.

“The one who looks like Nancy Reagan got real into party drugs is Duela. She’s mostly good people, but she’s a bit… unhinged. It’s best to stay on her good side when you can, things can get real intense when she decides she doesn’t like someone.

“Mal and Karen are basically the nicest people in the school. She’s head of the cheerleading squad and the mathletes, he’s the only footballer we've got with a hope of going pro since Vic’s accident.

“Vic is the guy with the crutches. He was in a real bad car accident, a couple of years back. His left hand is prosthetic, I’m warning you because he will absolutely take it off just to freak you out the first time you meet him. The kid with the green hair is his boyfriend Gar. If you think you recognise him it’s because he was on this crappy sci-fi show for a couple of seasons. Him and Jason are both Juniors, but the rest of them are seniors and no one’s looking forward to them moping next year when all their friends have graduated.

“There’s also Wally, who’s head of the track team, and Donna who runs the GSA and is a shoe in for Valedictorian, they’re on second lunch period this semester.

“That table is the social justice warriors. I mean, we’re all pretty liberal but they’re the ones who actually organise protests and shit. Holly can get scary intense, and Mouse is just plain scary, but they’re good people.

“Conner H is the most beautiful person in the school except maybe Dick. Don’t hit on him, he’ll be so nice about turning you down you’ll never recover from the humiliation.

“That's the resident Satanists. Traci and Charlotte are mostly harmless, Lori’s nice enough and Lucius is sweet. But watch out for Klarion. He's unpredictable and he's got a really nasty streak.

“That’s the Vasquez family. They’re a foster family, like us, and there’s so many of them you will absolutely lose track. They’re nearly as culty as the Waynes, although there’s more prayer circles and less martial arts.

“Everyone else is pretty much what you’d except. Boys who don’t wash enough, girls who wash too much, stoners, the weird kids who are only friends because no one else wants them, the ones who think they’re cooler than everyone else. The usual.”

“And the best people I will ever meet?”

She grins at him and pulls him over the table where Cass is already sitting. “Behold! The best people you will ever meet. Everyone this is Duke, he’s our new foster-brother. Duke, this is everyone.

The person (no-one cis got an undercut like that in Duke’s admittedly limited experience) with an arm around Cass’s chair leant forward and offered him a hand to shake. “Hey, I’m Harper. My pronouns are they/them. Cass has been telling us all about you.”

Cass signs something Duke doesn’t know enough ASL to understand, and gives him one of her huge beaming smiles. He smiles back, because it’s impossible not to.

Steph kicks the kid sitting at the end of the table in the ankle until he shifts round, and she and Duke snag a couple of spare chairs from the next table and sit down.

“Cass tells me you do parkour,” Harper says. “You any good?”

“I’m not terrible.” He actually is pretty good, but it feels weird to just come out and say that.

“We’ll have to go running sometime.”

“Yeah? Sounds good. How long have you been doing it?”

“Oh, only a couple of years. Hey, you're in my brother Cullen’s class right? Skinny kid, with hearing aids.”

Duke shrugs. “I have no idea. It's gonna be like a week before I actually remember anyone's names.”

“Yeah that's fair. Hey have you everyone?”

Everyone turns out to be Anita (“she's the scariest person in the year except for Tim”), Cassie (“she looks nice but she'll totally Hulk out if you piss her off enough”), Lonnie (“never agree to do him any favours unless you like the idea of being charged with domestic terrorism”) and Cissie (“she can kill a man at a hundred paces and she only doesn’t because it would ruin her Olympic chances”).

“Hey can I ask you guys something?”

“Sure.”

“Why is everyone at this school so terrifying?”

Harper laughs. “Tragic backstories.”

“There's a couple of group homes in the school district,” Steph explains. “So we have loads of kids who don't have parents or who have unfit parents. Plus Principle Waller will take kids who've been expelled from other schools, so we have some kids from outside the district who've got some issues.”

“I heard Duela had been thrown out of three schools before this one.”

“Yeah well I heard that Axel burned down his last school.”

“Lori told me if Principle Waller hadn't agreed to take him, Klarion was going to have to go to military school.”

“God, even I wouldn't wish that on the military,” Lonnie says. “But just so you know, I'm one of Waller’s charity cases.”

“Tim kind of is too. He wasn't formally expelled, but after… that stuff I told you about... the Principle told Bruce if he didn't move him to another school he would be.” Steph sounds proud.

“So what did you do?” Anita asks, her eyes bright with interest.

“Lost my parents, went into foster care, had to change school districts.” Got arrested a time or three, did some community service, spent a month in juvie. He didn’t actually get expelled though, so that’s probably not relevant.

Harper pulls a face. “Yeah, that sucks. Me and Cullen have been in the system since we were pretty young. Not a lot of foster parents want a bisexual non-binary kid and their gay deaf brother.”

Duke hadn’t needed another reminder that he’s been lucky to find Bruce, but boy… “That sucks.”

Cass signs something, and Harper grins. “But then you’d be my sister and that would just be weird. Anyway, your dad is a creepfest.”

“Hey!” Steph and Duke say at the same time, and Cass makes an annoyed noise at the back of her throat, and then the three of them look at one another and all burst out laughing.

“He totally is,” Steph says, when she’s calmed down, “but you don’t get to say it until you’ve done 6am fencing practise with him.”

“It’s the rules,” Duke agrees. Bruce hadn’t made him or anything, but he’d been woken up by Damian getting up next door and followed them down to the gym to see what was going on, and once he was there he figured he might as well give it a try. Turns out fencing is way harder than it looks, but Bruce had said he showed promise. He’d felt pretty good about that until he watched Dick and Tim do their best Zoro impressions. Managing to parry a couple of strikes really doesn’t seem that impressive when you’ve seen Dick fence while hanging upside down from the chandelier.

“Yeah, but I’m an anarchist,” Lonnie says. “So fuck the rules. Bruce Wayne is a total creepfest, and you’re all in his cult.”

“I haven't started to learn to kill people,” Duke points out, “So I don't think I'd fully indoctrinated yet.”

“And Alfred hasn't taught him how to make his own explosives, or how to shoot, or anything.”

Duke turns to stare at Steph. “What?!”

Cass pats him on the shoulder and signs something.

“She says ‘give it time’,” Harper translates, and Cass grins like a demon at his horrified expression.

“Hey, I’ll take those lessons if you don’t want them,” Lonnie volunteers.

“Now you have to take them,” Steph says, “if only to save Lonnie from himself. Even Waller wont take him back if he gets charged with terrorism a second time.”

Chapter Text

There’s a lot of great stuff about being fostered by Bruce. His room, Alfred’s cooking, foster-siblings who are determined to look out for him (in their own demented way). A school where he isn’t even close to being the biggest weirdo, or the student with the longest criminal record.

Some of it really sucks though.

Case in point - he knows he didn’t make a noise sneaking down the stairs. He knows because he’d done three dry runs, sneaking out of the front door and as far as the road before he turned around and went back to bed. Not once did anyone catch him. Not once did anyone hear him.

And yet somehow when Duke gets to the door, sneakers in one hand because socks make less noise, backpack in the other, Bruce is waiting for him.

“I was just…” Duke begins, and then trails off because there’s really no way to make this look any better than it is. “I was going to buy drugs?”

That gets him one of those weird little half smiles Bruce does, like he never learnt how to smile properly.

(Watching Bruce and Tim joke and play with one another makes the hair on the back of Duke’s neck stand up, because Bruce doesn’t know how to smile and Tim doesn’t make any noise when he laughs, and it’s like walking into the opening of a horror movie.)

“Alfred keeps an illegal stash of sleeping pills in the utensils drawer,” Bruce offers. “Will that suffice?”

He turns towards the kitchen, utterly confident that Duke will follow him, and Duke does because he has no idea what other options he has in this situation. He’s pretty sure he’s about to get kicked back to the group home, and he’s surprised how much it hurts. He’s only been here a few weeks, but he really likes this family, weirdness and all.

“Ah, was that a joke? Because it sounded like a joke, but this is Alfred so…”

“It was a joke,” Bruce assures him. “He keeps them in the pantry.”

Bruce’s sense of humour is warped and kind of rudimentary, but Duke knows him well enough to know that his favourite joke is gently skewering people with the unavoidable knowledge of just how bonkers-crazy he and his family are. Which almost certainly means that Alfred really does keep an illegal supply of prescription sleeping pills. “Why…?”

“Because he cares about all of you, and doesn’t like to watch you suffer if it can be avoided. If you have had a particularly trying day, it’s best to accept the cocoa and not think too much about it. There are few things not helped by a good night’s sleep.”

“You’re not going to drug me are you?” Duke asks nervously as Bruce gestures for him to take a seat at the kitchen island.

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Bruce says, agreeably. “I was going to make tea, but I can get you water if you’re concerned.”

“Tea is fine.” Honestly, Duke isn’t a big tea fan, but Bruce was raised by a patriotic Englishman, so he practically lives off the stuff.

“So you want to tell me about this drugs you’re so eager to purchase?” Bruce asks as he potters round the kitchen, making the tea.

“You know that isn’t really what I was doing, right?”

“I know. I thought I’d offer you the chance to lie about it again if you wanted though.”

“And you would have bought that?”

“Not for a second. But I’m not in the habit of prying into my children’s personal lives. You have only been here a short time, but you have proved yourself to be a level-headed and admirably sensible young man. Whatever it is you were doing tonight, and on the three separate occasions you have been formally charged with trespass or breaking and entering, and on the no-doubt numerous occasions in which you were merely reprimanded, or were not caught at all, I trust you enough to believe that it is important.” He brings the mugs over, leans on the island opposite Duke. “I want to help you, but I can only do that if you allow me too.”

“You aren’t going to tell me it’s dangerous?!”

“I have already said that I don’t think you’re an idiot Duke. I am sure that you know how dangerous it is. Racism is not the worst of the GCPD’s faults, thanks to Jim, but they are still armed police and you are still a young black man who keeps turning up in places he has no legal right to be. In this country, that story tends to end in one way, and it is not pleasant.”

“But you’re not going to stop me.”

“I am not your keeper, Duke. Some may regard that as a dereliction of my duties as your foster-father. Certainly I have asked myself the same question many times over the years. But in the end, it is the only way I know how to be a parent.”

Duke can’t stop himself from asking, “You know this is mad, right? Like, everything about your life and this family is objectively insane, but this is right at the top of the list. You’re supposed to be, I don’t know, grounding me. Yelling at me! Sending me back…”

“No.” Bruce’s voice is suddenly hard. “I have taken you into my home, and my family. I will never send you away.”

“Oh.” Duke doesn't know what to say to that. He hadn’t known Bruce cared so much, and it makes a hard lump of emotion well up in his chest to know that Bruce is prepared to take Duke's criminal record in stride the same he has Steph's attitude, or Jason's gender, or Tim's violent outbursts, or Damian's temper, or whatever Dick's damage is. “Uh, thanks?”

Bruce waves that away, like this is all no big deal. “I would like it if you were to tell me where you were going tonight.”

Duke stopped telling people after the first time he was arrested. No one ever believes him, and then they look at him like he’s crazy, or like he just hasn’t come to terms with the loss or whatever. But Bruce is an actual crazy person, so maybe… “They never found my parents bodies.”

“You think they’re still alive?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? Probably not, but if there’s a chance… There’s hardly any missing people from the attack, is the thing. A lot of people died, but they identified just about everyone. Plus…” He pauses, unsure whether he should tell Bruce this bit, but there’s no pity in Bruce’s eyes. He’s listening with the same calm focus he always does, weighing up Duke’s words objectively, and not dismissing him. “I saw my mom. About a month after the crash. They hadn’t identified all the bodies then, and I believed them when they told me they were dead, that it was only a matter of time until they found them. I wasn't looking for survivors or anything, I just wanted to see… to see where it happened. I snuck in past the police tape, and I swear I saw her. I tried to follow but she was on the other side of the tracks, and by the time I got there she was gone. It was her though, it really was. Not just her face, but the way she moved, and she had burns on one side of her face like she'd been in an accident, and I think maybe she hit her head or something, otherwise she'd have come home, she'd have..." He rubs his knuckles against his eyes, trying to will back the tears he can feel forming. "It was her."

Bruce looks at him silently for a long minute, like he’s weighing up what Duke told him, and then he nods. “Wait here.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get changed. I’m not dressed for breaking and entering.”

“What?!”

“You can refuse if you really want to, but having a partner decreases the risk of injury significantly. Plus you’re much less likely to run into trouble with the police if you’re with a white millionaire.”

Duke still isn’t going to cry, even though this is probably the nicest thing anyone’s done for him since his parents went missing. No-one's ever believed him before. “Have you ever been free-running before?” he asks, in an effort to distract himself from how much he wants to burst into tears. "Rooftops are usually the easiest way to get in unseen."

“No. But I’ve climbed a few mountains, and I used to climb the manor when I was a child.”

The manor is certainly climbable, but it wouldn’t be easy, and that’s with the reach of a fifteen year old. “How young?”

“Ten? Possibly eleven.”

Given everything else he knows about Bruce, the fact that he was tall and strong enough to make the climb at ten really shouldn’t be surprising. Duke's seen his morning exercise routine, and watched him spar with Dick, and he knows how crazy fit he is. Apparently he’s also fearless, but again that really shouldn’t be surprising given how out of wack all of Bruce's other emotional reactions are. "Don’t you have work tomorrow though?” Bruce has Wednesdays off so he can take Dami to his therapy appointments (and catch him when he tries to escape out of the therapists window, which happened pretty regularly accordingly to Jason), so he works most Saturdays instead. Duke still isn't clear what a CEO actually does, but it's apparently a full time job.

“It certainly won’t be the first time I’ve shown up half asleep. And Tim can go in my place if we get arrested.” He says it without any particular inflection, like the prospect of being arrested just doesn’t bother him. Duke doesn’t know how much of that is being the kind of rich and white where the law doesn’t really apply, and how much is just Bruce’s general weirdness.

“Tim’s sixteen.”

“That’s never stopped him before.” Bruce gulps down the end of his tea. “I’ll only be a minute.”

Duke watches him go, and wonders if Mr Nelson had known this would happen, whether that’s why Duke’s here instead of a normal foster family, or whether getting placed with an actual crazy person was just Fate.

Chapter Text

One of Lori’s top five favourite things about Ralph and Sue is how easily they've accepted her weird cobbled together family as their own.

She can text Doll from the bath that she needs him and know that they will let him in without saying a word about it, because she’d only needed to explain once that there was nothing sexual there for them to accept it.

She feels guilty for interrupting his day, however many times he insists he doesn’t mind, and even guiltier for still having bad days when there's so much good in her life, but Jeanette keeps telling her it doesn't work like that and she's usually right about that stuff.

She'd been thirteen when she met Doll. She was living on the streets after running away from a foster home, trying to convince herself not to go back, but it was getting harder and harder as the weather turned wintry.

He'd walked past the shop doorway she’d staked out for the night, and she'd tried not to stare but it was hard when he looked nothing like any person she'd ever met.

His long angular body and the strange slightly jerky way he moves had made it impossible to mentally pigeonhole him as male or female, and even from a distance his scars were visible. And so was his smile. He’d looked honestly happy, in a way she thought only people on TV ever did. 

He’d felt her staring, had come over and she’d been terrified, she’d learnt the hard way that being noticed was dangerous, but he hadn’t said anything creepy, or hit on her, or even given her the names of any charities. He’d just chatted. Asked her about what her favourite animal was, and whether she’d ever watched a wrestling match, and if black was her favourite colour. He’d told her about how his boyfriend was going to be a dad, and how conflicted he felt about that. He’d spoken to her like an equal, and it was the first time anyone had ever done that.

It was full dark by the time he left, and by that point she liked him enough that she’d almost been hoping he would offer her a bed for the night, even though she’d known how dangerous that was, but instead he’d scribbled his phone number on the back of a business card he’d stolen from his doctor and told her to call him if she needed help.

She hadn’t seen him again after that, but she’d thought about him a lot. Plenty of people were awful to homeless kids, but there had been kind people too. The folks who ran the soup kitchen down by the bus station, people who’d give her the cost of a hostel for the night rather than just pocket change. But that strange spindly person had been the first to talk to her like she was a normal person.

She tries not to think about the night she was mugged. It’s all too horrible and too real still, even four years later, but afterwards, when she’d been curled up on the pavement trying to find any position that lessened the pain from her ribs, she’d thought about the business card still tucked into her shirt where no one would find it, and she’d thought “even if he’s a creep, it’s got to be better than this,” and she’d asked the owner of a bodega who’d always been kind to her if she could use his phone. She’s pretty sure he was expecting her to call CPS, or her foster-parents, and she very nearly did. But in the end she called the number scribbled onto the business card.

A voice she didn’t know, with an accent she didn’t recognise, had answered the phone, and she’d realised that she had no idea what the strange spindly person was called, or even if they were male or female.

“Someone gave me this number,” she’d said, hoping the man who answered wouldn’t just hang up on her. “They said to call if I needed help.”

“This person was very thin, with no hair?” the man had asked.

“Yes! They didn’t give me a name.”

“His name is Ragdoll. Tell me where you are, we will come and get you.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“It is no trouble.”

She’d told them the address of the bodega, and nearly talked herself out of waiting five times before they actually arrived.

The man with the accent turned out to be the biggest person she had ever seen, with muscles on top of his muscles, but he looked at Doll so tenderly that she hadn’t been able to be afraid of him. And Doll had greeted her like an old friend, had seemed so genuinely happy to see her that she hadn’t been able to think of refusing when Bane bundled her into his car.

They’d stopped to get McDonalds from a drive through on the way back to their apartment, and she’d sat in the back of the car and listened to them bicker over Doll’s refusal to eat any of the fries Bane had bought him, and felt safe for the first time in years .

She hadn’t wanted to see a doctor - the idea of being examined freaked her out, and the idea of Bane footing the bill freaked her out even more - but Bane had persuaded her to come to practise with him, and the on site nurse had looked her over and bound her ribs free of charge, with the kind of brisk professionalism that made it impossible to be afraid of her.

She’d lived with them for four months, getting to know their large extended family and falling in love with all of them, before she felt secure enough to let them introduce her to the foster parents they had found for her.

At first she hadn’t been able to imagine living with Ralph and Sue after her time with Doll, but then she’d watched them talk to Doll, and Kani, and Kay, and realised that even though they looked like the most boring conventional people in the world, they were actually very strange indeed.

“Of course you don’t have to live with us if you don’t want to dear,” Sue had said, smiling her perfect Betty Crocker smile. “But if we’re going to stop people asking too many questions, you’re definitely safer with the straight white cisgender people.” She winked. “If you look like you vote Republican, you can get away with anything.”

Leaving Doll had been a wrench, and so had saying goodbye to his pet monkeys, but she didn’t want to get him in any trouble, and like Sue said, people were a lot more likely to be suspicious of the non-binary contortionist and his brown pro-wrestling boyfriend than they were of the Dibneys. And even though she didn’t live with them anymore, she still saw Doll and his family loads, and when Barda was born everyone started calling Lori her cousin without even thinking about it.

She’d been pretty sure she wasn’t going to live to see fourteen, and now she’s sixteen, she’s doing good in school, she’s got this huge crazy loving family, she’s got friends, and when her brain decides to be an asshole and try and undermine all of that, she can text Doll and known he’ll always come. Even when she can’t make herself feel it, she knows she’s lucky.

That doesn’t stop her past fucking with her, or keep her brain from dropping her right back into the bad times at the worst moments. Klarion is at least used to her freaking out on him, but in some ways that makes it worse . Her friends shouldn't have to be used to her having flashbacks for no good fucking reason. She should be able to get through a day without some stupid tiny thing reminding her of all the shit she wants to forget. She should be able ...

Doll interrupts her spiral by pushing open the bathroom door without bothering to knock. He’s seen her in much worse states than this, and she knows he won’t read anything sexual into the situation. 

“ You okay, sugarplum ?”

“Been better,” she says, and holds up the razor-blade she’s been holding since she got home from school.

“ You use it yet ?”

“No.”

“ Mind if I get in ?”

She shrugs, and Doll strips out of his clothes so quickly and efficiently that there isn’t time for it to feel weird, and slips into the bath to sit opposite her.

Her eyes slip down to his dick, small and soft and strangely naked with no pubic hair and no balls, but they’ve done this often enough that he knows it’s only curiosity, not anything sexual, and he doesn’t mind. He’s more comfortable in his own skin than anyone she knows except maybe Thomas, and it’s one of the things she loves about him. Society insists his double jointedness is creepy, and his scars are ugly, and his being non-binary is stupid, but Doll doesn’t care one bit.

“ I ate an entire sweet potato yesterday ,” he tells her. “ And the big man barely had to force me at all .”

She doesn’t know if Doll’s ever had an eating disorder diagnosis, but it’s pretty clear to anyone who knows him that he’s anorexic. She thinks it’s probably a control thing, since he seems so generally happy with his body, but she’s never asked.

“That’s great.”

“ Thomas told Scandal I’d skipped a few little meals, and now Kay keeps turning up at practise with the most awful ‘snacks’. Have you ever had a lunchable ?” He shudders at the memory, and despite how crap she’s feeling, she can’t help grinning at the mental imagine. Kay in her purple lycra unitard trying to hold on to a squirming Doll still long enough to feed him processed ham and crackers.

“They’re gross.”

“ The grossest. Bane promised to call her off, but only if I consumed an entire baked potato .”

“Guess he’s sleeping on the couch, huh?”

“ He’s sleeping on Scandal’s couch. I’m not letting him back in the apartment until he apologises, and he’ll have to give in soon because I have all his spare uniforms .”

“Like he wouldn't just turn up to practise naked.” She's seen all her family naked except Kani and Mary, and she doesn't know if it's a wrestling thing or if they're just weird, but none of them seem to care. “What if he turns up to practise naked, and you still haven’t forgiven him, and then you’ll have to pretend you don’t think he’s hot.”

“ There is such a thing as a hate fuck you know dear. ”

“If you forgive him, I’ll give you this.” She gestures with the razor blade she’s still holding, and Doll frowns at her.

“ We’ve had this conversation, muffin. You can’t put your recovery onto someone else. You have to want it .”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her until she feels her cheeks heat with embarrassment. “Sorry.”

“ You’re not cornered ,” he tells her. “ You don’t need to lash out. If you want to use that I’ll stay right here and I won’t stop you. But I don’t think you called me here because you wanted to do it, did you ?”

She does want it, but she doesn’t want the part of her that wants it. She wants to get better, and she knows that even if it makes her feel better in the short term, cutting isn’t any kind of healing. The real reason she needed Doll here isn’t because he’d stop her, because she knows he’d never stop anyone doing what they wanted no matter how self-destructive, but because having someone else there reminds her that she’s accountable to herself .

Jeanette told her once that self-destruction is just playing into what the patriarchy wants. The true act of rebellion against a world full of things like sexism, and homophobia, and homeless teenagers is self-love. That living out loud is a bigger fuck-you to the system than self-hatred could ever be.

“There’s a red sharpie, in the bag by the sink.”

He stands up, unashamed of his nudity and uncaring that he’s dripping water all over the floor, and retrieves the pen for her.

It takes her a long moment to swap him the razor for the pen, her instincts warring against themselves, but she manages it. With shaking fingers she marks out the lines she would have cut, the red ink stark against her skin, and it’s not the same but there’s a different kind of relief to it. Cutting had brought temporary relief, but it had also made her feel small and helpless and very alone, had reinforced all the feelings that had made her want to cut in the first place. Looking down at the lines of ink she doesn’t hurt any less than before, but she also doesn’t feel helpless. She feels like she’s exactly as strong as Ralph and Scandal and Bane and all the other people who love her think she is.

It’s a good feeling.

“ Want me to wash your hair ?” Doll asks, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

She nods, and turns around to give him room, but before he begins he presses his forehead to her hair and says very softly, “ I’m proud of you, pumpkin .”

Chapter Text

“I bet… Ollie talks Dinah into having a threesome with Hal.”

Jason grins. “She’ll have to give in eventually, if only to make him stop asking,” he agrees.

The game is one Dick had come up with years ago, to try and help Roy through one of his bad patches. Roy doesn’t need the incentive to live these days, but betting on the events of the next 12 months still make a good way to pass the time while they wait for Kori to arrive.

“I bet… Tim and Bart will finally hook up.”

“Wait-” Roy rolls over enough that he can make eye contact without having to actually sit up “-they’re not screwing?”

“Everyone says that. No, they’re not. Not according to Tim anyway, and he’s not generally shy about that sort of thing.”

“Man, that’s crazy. I really thought they were. Okay, I bet that you will get top surgery.”

Jason sighs happily. “That would be awesome. No more binders. No more binders in the middle of August.”

“I am going to kind of miss this though,” Roy says, snuggling into Jason’s chest. They’ve got the house to themselves for a while, so Jason has swapped his binder for a cheap sports bra, old and soft enough from washing that it offers almost no support. “You know I respect your masculinity, and I’m still going to be at least as attracted to you after surgery as I am now, but your tits are really good for cuddling.”

Kori has an adversarial relationship with gravity, and her boobs, like her hair, are way perkier than should logically be possible for anything that big.  As a result they look very impressive but don’t squish down for cuddles as well as Jason’s do, so Jason can see why Roy would miss them. “Dick hasn’t got boobs, and you still like cuddling him.”

“Oh obviously, and I love cuddling you when you’ve got your binder on, and I promise to go appropriately insane with lust the first time you go out in public topless. I wasn’t complaining or anything, just, you know, generally commenting. You know I’m here for you getting any and all gender confirmation procedures you want.”

Jason kissed the top of his head. “If I get top surgery, I promise to let you fuck my tits at least once before they go.”

“You’re so good to me Jaybird. Okay, I bet that your dad will start dating someone.”

“Like who?”

“Lex? They tolerate each other.”

“If Lex Luthor becomes my step-dad, I’m emancipating myself and coming you live with you.”

“Probably a good call. One of Duela’s dads?”

“Nah, I asked Eve one time when I was young enough to think it was okay to just ask adults you barely know stuff like that, and she said they don’t do the whole polycule thing, there just happen to be three of them in the relationship.”

“Sucks to be Bruce.” They lie in silence for a minute, and then Roy asks softly, “Do you ever want that? For you, me and Kori?”

It sounds like it’s important to him, so Jason takes a minute to think about his answer before he speaks. “Sometimes. Sometimes I see you with someone else and I’m so jealous I can’t breath. But then I’ll see someone hot, and I’ll be really glad that we’re open. And if we did try to be, you know, exclusive, I’d just worry the whole time that you and Kori were unhappy, and I guess you’d feel the same about me because it’s not like I’m Mr Chastity over here. I’d like it if we were more official, one day. Doesn’t have to be today, or tomorrow. But eventually I’d like to be able to tell people you’re my boyfriend, and then when they tell me you’re sleeping around I can say ‘who cares, he comes home to us’.”

Roy buries his face in Jason’s shoulder, but Jason can still make out the blush. “You’re such a big softy, Jaybird.”

“Don't tell anyone, but I heard a rumour I might be in love with you.”

Roy pushes himself enough to steal a quick kiss. “I love you too. Who's turn is it?”

“Mine I think. Okay,  I bet… Shit, this is hard. I bet Klarion stabs someone.”

“Is Klarion the skinny goth kid who hangs out with Lori?”

“That could describe all Lori’s friends. He’s the one who looks like a rejected Japanese horror monster design.”

“Yeah, I thought so. You don’t get anything good if that one comes true, it’s way too obvious. I bet Tim stabs someone.”

“Also obvious. I bet Tim stabs you .” He pokes Roy in the side of the head. “I bet Tim stabs you and you enjoy it.”

“Does play piercing count as stabbing? Because if so I am so taking that bet.”

Jason considers. “I guess it does? It wasn't what I meant though, so no deal.”

“Meanie. I bet Connor and Kyle get engaged.”

“They're 17 and they've been dating for like a week. I bet Mal and Karen get engaged.”

“Ooh good one. I bet the Princess finds out about Mr Long and Donna and murders him.”

“That would solve the problem of what to do about him. I don't want to fuck up Donna’s life, and you know it would come back on her if we told anyone, but we can't just let it continue.”

“The minute he looks at anyone else I'm going to Waller. The minute .”

“I can never work out if it's more or less fucked up that they seem to actually like each other.”

“I don’t think it’s either,” Jason says. “I think it’s fuck neutral. In that it doesn’t really matter if he likes her or not, because either way he’s still an adult man screwing a teenager.”

“Of all of us, I never thought Donna would be the one to get in that kind of trouble. I mean, she’s Donna! She’s basically perfect. I always thought she’d never date seriously until college, and then she’d fall in love with some other brilliant driven woman and they’d have brilliant driven children and like, solve climate change or something. Bring about world peace. End hunger. Something better than getting trapped in a toxic relationship with a creep twenty years older than her.”

“We’ll figure it out.” He doesn’t know how, but they all know they can’t just let it continue forever, and their group includes some crazy smart people. There’s got to be something they can do. “We’ll ask Kori when she gets here. She’s better at this stuff than us.”

“I hate not doing anything,” Roy says morosely, and it’s not like Jason doesn’t know how he feels, but he doesn’t want Roy to be sad, so he asks “Who did you think was going to get into trouble?”

“Honestly? Dickie. I know the whole concept of daddy issues is fucked up and crazy sexist, but it takes one to know one and Dick has some daddy issues. The first big strong man with even a passing resemblance to Bruce who hits on him had better be prepared for it to turn into a thing, is what I’m saying.”

“Unlike you.”

“Obviously. I’m totally different. My big strong man would need facial hair.”

“Oh you mean like Bane totally doesn’t?”

“I don’t actually think I could fancy him any more than I already do, but if he grew a goatee I'd be willing to try. He gets a special pass anyway for being an actual out and proud daddy dom. And you know he’s got to be good at what he does because there’s no way Thomas or ‘Doll would settle for anything less.”

“Remind me why Dick’s higher than you on this list?”

“Because I know how to negotiate the weird stuff properly. Dick’s just vanilla enough that he’d jump straight in without bothering to figure shit out first.”

“That’s probably fair. Should we be worried? Because there’s a lot of Mr Longs out there, and Dick is… you know…”

“The platonic ideal of masculine beauty?”

“Nah, that’s your brother. Dick’s too femme for that. You know what I mean though.”

“Baby, which of us is dicking your big brother on the regular? Of course I know what you mean. You probably don’t need to worry too much though, definitely not until he goes to college anyway. No one’s going to try anything with Bruce Wayne breathing down their neck.”

“The Princess is way scarier than Bruce.”

Diana Parádeisos is Donna’s legal guardian, although she’s technically Donna’s big sister rather than her mom. She’s also the closest thing to trans royalty Gotham has. The first time Jay had been to their house he’d ended up ignoring Donna to spend the whole evening talking to Diana and he doesn’t even feel bad about it. She has a photo of herself with Sylvia Rivera on the wall. She got arrested for meeting Regan at an official dinner and threatening to break his teeth if he didn’t do something about the AIDs crisis. She started the first Gotham pride. She’s Jason’s hero, and the fact that he has now seen her staggering through her living room still wearing a sleep mask because she’d decided she needed to prove that she could out-drink Ollie the night before and is now paying the price doesn’t change that one bit.

“The Princess doesn’t own this town though.”

“Nor does Bruce, he just likes to think he does.”

Roy rolls away and stares up at the ceiling. “I fucking hate feeling this helpless.”

There’s nothing they can do, and all they’re achieving is depressing themselves, so Jason pulls out of Roy’s arms and rolls over to straddle him. “Kori’s gonna be mad if she arrives and finds us moping.”

That gets him a smile, one of the slow hot ones that mean Roy’s thinking with his little head right now. “You going to cheer me up, big boy?”

Jason is surrounded by people who care about him and respect his gender, but it’s still special every time Roy sees him with his binder off and doesn’t even slip. “I fucking love you.”

“Well that’s one way to cheer me up,” Roy says, and leans up to press a quick kiss to Jason’s lips. “I can think of others.”

“You’re such a man-slut.”

“Yeah I am. What are you going to do about it?”

“Kind of feels like you’re angling for me to put you on your knees and tell you you’re a good boy.”

Roy grins at him. “Always, Jaybird, always.”

Chapter Text

“Hi,” Conner calls, as he lets himself in. There’s no response, but that’s not exactly unusual. CEOs of cyberpunk megacorporations don’t exactly keep sociable hours, and Hope and Mercy will be wherever Lex is. Technically there are servants, but he’d been living here for nearly six months before he actually saw one of them. Lex pays them an extortionate amount of money to do their work during hours when he and Conner are either out or asleep.

The only member of the staff (Hope and Mercy don’t count, they’re basically family) Conner sees with any regularity is the cook, Eva, but he does what he can to avoid her. She seems to be genuinely fond of him, but she’s weirdly intense about it and also keeps a meat cleaver the size of her head in her apron pocket. She’s from somewhere in Eastern Europe, he’s never been able to establish exactly where, and according to the tattoos Conner’s caught glimpses off when she rolls her sleeves up, she’s spent quite a bit of time in a Russian prison. He’s about 90% sure she’s actually part of Lex’s security, and just happens to have a talent for cooking. He tried asking Lex about it, but Lex just laughed at him and refused to confirm or deny anything. That’s probably a yes.

Fortunately Lex can be surprisingly accommodating if you catch him in the right mood, so there’s now a mini-fridge full of snacks disguised as a globe in the living room, and another one in the library, to help Conner avoid the kitchen as much as possible.

Eva won’t have shop brought snacks in the house, and they’re all terrified of her, even Mercy, so the contents of the globe are always a surprise.

Today it’s crackers with cheese and some sort of fancy ham. The cheese will be courtesy of Ma and Pa, and he knows before he tries one that the crackers will be flavoured with black pepper and rosemary, because that’s Lex’s favourite. He makes himself a triple decker stack of ham, cheese and crackers, and then sends a picture of it to the group chat subtitled ‘rich people lunchables’ before he eats it.

What he really wants to do is fire up his xbox and kill some time playing single player games while he waits for Tim to log on, but he has a ton of homework to do and Lex will absolutely find out if he doesn’t do it and snitch on him to Ma and Pa.

He makes himself another couple of lunchables and takes his bag into the library. He used to make a point of studying in Lex’s study, just to be annoying, but it’s not actually that comfortable. Lex’s chair is designed for someone of Lex’s height and build, and he keeps way too much stuff on his desk for Con to be able to spread out the way he wants. Mostly though he avoids it now because one time he went through Lex’s desk drawers just for the hell of it and found lube and condoms, and he is definitely not okay with sitting in a chair his bio-dad has had sex in.

The library is comfortable, and crucially, he has no reason to think that Lex has ever fucked there. And he’s never ever telling Lex that this is why he started doing his homework in here, because Lex would definitely start telling him about all the places in the Penthouse that he’s fucked someone, and never mind that he only bought the place when Con decided on Gotham for highschool.

There are days when he’s not sure that was the right decision, when he thinks he should have been happy just going to Smallville High and living with Ma and Pa full time, but then he remembers that that would mean never seeing Bart and Tim and that would be the worst.

He’s known them since he was 12 - Clark and Bruce have been friends for years, and when Bruce decided Tim needed to be socialised (which he absolutely did, but still makes him sound like a badly behaving puppy) naturally he turned to Clark, and since Clark knew from Barry that Bart was having the same kinds of problems, setting up play dates was the logical next step.

He guesses he should probably resent the fact that his best friends were basically picked out for him by his deadbeat dad, but that would be easier if they weren’t the best things in his life. He’d got on pretty well with quite a few people in highschool, but there was no one he’d have called a best friend, not really. He hadn’t even understood how lonely he really was until he arrived in Gotham that first time.

They’d both been so fucking weird he didn’t know what to do with them. Bart was the closest thing to a puppy in human form anyone had ever been, so excited and enthusiastic about everything, totally lacking in any kind of impulse control. Tim had stayed in the corner of the room, always keeping a wall to his back, and watched Con with silent suspicion, apparently convinced that he was going to do something to hurt Bart the minute Tim took his eyes off them.

It had taken time, and a whole lot of effort, to get them to open up to him, and he hadn’t realised until later how much he’d been opening up to them at the same time. How much he’d needed to open up.

When Lex offered, fucking casually like it wasn’t a fucking huge gesture, to get an apartment in Gotham so Con could be at the same highschool as the two of them he’d leapt at the chance, even though it meant leaving Ma and Pa and moving in with his semi-estranged biodad who he barely knew.

As it turns out, living with Lex isn’t so bad. They have a weird relationship, more like roommates in some ways than father and son, and he can be really fucking scary when he wants to be, but mostly he’s pretty chill. The being a billionaire thing probably helps, because it means that apart from moving to Gotham, Lex’s lifestyle hasn’t changed all that much. He pays someone else to clean up after Con, and cook for him, and give him lifts places. They see each other at mealtimes, and Lex makes a point of spending at least one evening a week at home, and sometimes they go out and do stuff at the weekends, but mostly they just sort of co-exist. His friends think it’s weird, especially Tim who has a lot of good reasons to be suspicious of parents he thinks are being neglectful, but Con’s honestly okay with it. He has way too many parents as it is, between Ma and Pa who actually raised him, Clark who birthed him, and Lois who doesn’t know what to do with him but does her best to be a step-mom anyway. Lex being more like a weird Uncle than a dad is totally okay in Con’s book.

He settles into one of the weirdly comfy futuristic chairs that dot the library. The room was originally designed to be a sunroom or a gym of some kind. The roof is glass, and most of the walls are made up of huge windows. There’s some sort of treatment on the glass that’s supposed to stop you getting cancer, and Con likes to spend time in there just basking. There’s climate control of course, but on hot days he tends to leave it off and let the room heat up like the giant hothouse it is. He doesn’t hate the cold, but the weather in Gotham is depressing as fuck and it’s nice to pretend he’s somewhere warm for a bit. Tim likes to tease him that he’d probably happily crawl into an oven if he could find one big enough, but then Tim is a weirdo who actually likes freezing fog and rain cold enough to chill you to the bone, so his opinion doesn’t really count.

It’s one of the things he definitely inherited from Clark. Despite Lex’s dark colouring, the childhood illness that cost him his hair and eyebrows also means that he has to be incredibly careful about exposing himself to too much UV light, while Clark will follow a patch of sun around the room like a cat, looking for the warmest place to sit.

It’s always easier to think of things he inherited from Clark rather than Lex. He’s darker skinned than Clark, but not by much. His hair, the shape of his nose and mouth, the way he talks, they’re all from Clark, or from Ma and Pa which is the same thing really. The colour of his eyes is apparently from Lex’s mom, and they have the same shaped ears, but apart from that…

It’s not that he minds exactly, Clark might be kind of a deadbeat but he’s the one who’s been around. He’s the one who made sure Con had good people to raise him and a safe home. He can’t really imagine what Lex would have done if he’d had to look after him as a baby, but he’s pretty sure he’d had ended up a whole lot more like Tim than the person he is now.

Lex tells him, with a certain pride, that he’s inherited his intelligence, but it doesn’t feel like that. Lex is book-clever, to a pretty scary degree. There’s basically no topic he doesn’t have an informed opinion on, he reads science journals for fun, he can do a crazy amount of math in his head… The only thing Con can see that they have in common in that respect is that they’re both good at people. Con might not have had any close friends growing up, but he still got along with basically everyone. Lex is a lot more likely to use it for evil (“business, Conner, it’s just business”) but he can make anyone like him if he wants them to. Even Mercy and Hope like him, and they really don’t like anyone. He’s pretty sure they’re both actual, medically diagnosed, psychopaths.

He’d like to have more in common with Lex, honestly, and not just because he’d be getting way better grades. Lex might not relate to him like a father, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is his dad, and of his biological parents he’s the one who’s disappointed Con less. No one ever asked him to be a dad, including Con, but he’s sure as hell stepped up all the same. He didn’t have to uproot his life to Gotham, especially since he fucking hates Gotham, but he did it anyway because it was what Con wanted.

And he knows why Clark hadn’t felt equipped to raise him, he doesn’t resent him for giving him to Ma and Pa, but he does resent him for all the times he didn’t visit. He never forgot to send something for Con’s birthday, but he didn’t feel the need to be there every year. He came home for Christmas, but he never really tried to do much father-son bonding. Hell, he didn’t even really manage to be Con’s big brother, and he would totally have settled for that!

It wasn’t until Lois finally agreed to be seen in public with him that he really started trying to connect with Con, and much as he appreciates Lois always being in his corner, it doesn’t really count for much if Clark’s only being nice because he’s scared of his girlfriend.

Lex honestly doesn't seem to be afraid of anyone except maybe Mercy, and Mercy couldn't give a flying fuck if Lex is nice to Con or not. If anything she'd prefer it if Lex never had anything to do with him again, because people getting physically close to him makes her job harder. Lex is also apparently completely immune to any and all guilt, which sucks when Con’s trying to get something out of him, but is also really comforting. There's no one in the world who could make Lex do something he doesn't want to do, which must mean that he genuinely wants Con around, which is kind of amazing. Most people's parents didn't choose them, they had a kid so they had to look after them. Lex could have walked the fuck away and instead he looked at Con and saw someone he wanted in his life. 

Admittedly the other people Lex wants in his life are all murderously insane, so Cons not sure what that says about him. If a man who honestly enjoys spending time with Hope , and who's closest friend who doesn't work for him is Tim’s nutso dad, likes him that probably isn't the best endorsement.

Actually thinking about it, the fact that he's best friends with Tim and Bart isn't either. Lex actually approves of Tim as well, which is even worse.

‘Am I crazy?’ he texts Cassie.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Lex likes me and his best friends are all psychopaths.’

‘Your best friend is Tim.’

‘And Bart’

‘Who thinks it's a good idea to do what Tim tells him so my point still stands.’

He tries to think of a response to that, then gives up and just calls her. “Should I be worried that everyone who likes me except you is violently insane?”

“I don't know, should you? Diana approves of you and she's like the sanest person i know.”

“She just likes me cos I'm queer.”

“And because you're a good boyfriend, even if you do keep talking about other people you fancy on our dates.”

He winces. Being a poly person dating a monogamous person is fucking hard. They make it work, mostly because Cass is amazing, but he still fucks up sometimes. “Sorry babe. You know I love you best.”

“I'd have kicked you to the curb a long time ago if I didn't.” She laughs. “Maybe I'm crazy as well.”

“It would explain why you like me. Shit, do I know any sane people?”

“Principle Waller?”

“She barely counts as someone I know. Anyway, she let Lonnie and Klarion into the school, that’s definitely not a sane thing to do.”

“Um, Anita’s dads are pretty normal. Actually Anita’s pretty normal, really.”

“Except she hangs out with us. And she dated that kid who called himself Slo-Bro for a bit.”

“Oh Zeus, yeah I’d forgotten about him.” Cassie's family are all pretty anti-Christianity, and Cassie wasn’t allowed to say God or Jesus or stuff when she was a kid, so she decided to make up her own blasphemy. After a while hearing her say stuff like 'oh Zeus' or 'fucking Hera' doesn't even seem weird anymore. “You might be right, actually. But I guess if everyone you care about is crazy, it doesn’t really matter if you’re crazy too. I mean, it just means you fit it.”

Despite having pretty good social skills, Con’s never been great at fitting in. He’d never quite fit at junior school, he’d never quite fit with Clark or with Ma and Pa. He likes Lex, but he doesn’t really fit there either.

But with Cass, and with Tim and Bart and Cissie and Anita and all their other friends… Maybe that’s somewhere he fits, after all.

Chapter Text

Vic sits on the hard wooden bench and tries to ignore the fact that they're being stared at.

He doesn't mind so much for himself, or rather, he's trying to learn not to mind. He's got bad scarring down one side of his face, plus the prosthetics - left hand and leg - and the cane that goes with them. Staring is something he's had a lot of chances to get used to since the accident.

Rita's had even longer to get used to the stares, but Vic knows they still bother her.

The plastic surgeons who reconstructed her face from almost nothing did an amazing job. According to Larry, there'd been a point where they really thought she'd never eat or drink without a tube again, that she'd be on pain meds for the rest of her life. The fact that she can live a normal life is damn near a miracle.

Rita knows this, has said as much to him more than once, but she'd still taken the loss of her looks hard, and no matter how often Gar and Larry and Cliff and even Danny tell her she's still beautiful, she's still deeply self conscious about her looks.

Without looking, he reaches out and takes her hand and squeezes it gently. She's been a rock for him, the one person who understands some of what he's been through, and he wants to somehow give her back some of the confidence she'd given him, back when his scars were still fresh.

He's the only teenager he knows with a colostomy. He's the only teenager he knows with tinnitus so bad it keeps him awake at night, and the only one who has to worry about loosing his driving licence because of being partially sighted. But Gar's family accepted him without question, and there's things he's told Rita and Cliff especially that he's never told anyone else. He knows it's a weird thing to say about his boyfriend's mom and uncle, but he really doesn't know how he'd have got through it all without them.

Rita squeezes his hand in return, and turns to give him a soft smile.

She looks so brave and so tense, and he wants do to something to make this better for her.

"You think Gar will get the part?" he asks, making small talk to distract her.

She smiles like she knows what he's doing, and plays along. "He's plenty good enough, but auditions are always a roll of the dice."

"It's tough." He's talked Gar through enough rejections to know.

"That's showbiz, honey. And being neurotic is practically a requirement for actors, so god knows where we'd all be with job security."

"Accountants and lawyers."

She shudders delicately. "What a terrible idea. I'd go quite mad with boredom."

Vic's pretty she - and all the rest of Gar's family for that matter - are mad already, but he doesn't say so. He has a superstition that if anyone actually tells them how weird they are, the whole thing will collapse, like they’re the schrodinger's cat of weird and knowing they’re being observed, opening the metaphorical box, will collapse the wave-function. He likes the fact that he's basically married into the Addams Family far too much to risk it.

"Cliff manages okay," he points out.

"Cliff has a rather different gimmick from the rest of us.” He’s never been entirely sure whether the way she talks about her family like they’re sitcom characters is performative or genuine, and there’s no way he can find out without opening the box. “Can you really imagine the rest of us with real jobs? I posed for some cheesecake shots dressed as a naughty secretary in my youth and that was quite enough like real work for me, thank you very much."

Vic is absolutely not the sort of guy to flirt casually, especially with older women, but there's something about Rita, the vulnerability maybe, or the vampiness, that absolutely demands at least a little flirting.

"I bet they sold like hotcakes."

She makes a little moue, pretending to be scandalised while her eyes dance with amusement. "You're such a charmer. Really, if Gar hadn't seen you first…"

She's joking, and Vic is much too fond of her and much too comfortable around her to take it in anything but the spirit in which it's meant. "If I were ten years older…"

That finally gets her to laugh for real. "Make that thirty, and I'd still have to fight Gar for you." That’s probably true, and if he wasn’t so used to them he’d be a little disturbed by the fact that she knows about Gar’s thing for older men. But they’re every stereotype of a queer boy and his mother, right down to the living slightly too much in one another’s pockets, and he got over being weirded out by that a long time ago.

“I haven’t got any hair to go grey enough for him,” Vic points out.

“For you, darling, I’m sure he’d make an exception.” She pats his cheek fondly with the back of her hand, one of those strange old fashioned affections she has so many of. “He’d never be able to say no to a face like this.”

He’s determined that he’s not going to be bothered by his looks, or buy into any of the stupid insecurities society wants him to have, but determined and successful really aren’t the same thing.

Rita must see it, because she presses his scarred cheek affectionately and says, “You didn’t see him pining before you got together. He likes this face just fine, scars and all.”

That's as good an opening as he's going to get, and he’d prefer that they change the subject anyway. Plus if he doesn't ask her today like he planned, it'll take him weeks to get her alone again.

"There's something I wanted to ask you, actually. About Gar."

His words must come out more seriously than he intended, because she gives him a concerned look, blue eyes searching his face. "What's up, honey?"

"It's, ah, I… Look, I know we're way too young, and I'm not going to actually do it until he's at least 18, but I've been thinking… that is…" He takes a breath, bullies his thoughts into some kind of order. "I know it's premature, but I wanted to ask your permission to marry Gar. Not now," he adds quickly. "Not for years yet. I don't want him to make a commitment he's going to regret once he's an adult. But he's it for me. I'm certain of that. So I wanted ask now, before I lose my nerve completely."

Her expression goes soft and she cups his face, tilting him towards her she that she can lay a careful kiss on his forehead. “You sweet boy. Not until he’s finished a year of college. And no wedding until after you both graduate, you hear me?”

First year of college, that’s… God, two years. In two years they could be engaged, and that’s amazing and terrifying in equal measure.

“If I had my way you’d both date other people for a bit, just for the experience, but I know you’re both too stuck on each other to try that. But maybe have that threesome the nice boy with the freckles wants so badly, huh?”

Vic can feel his blush, knows he’s not dark skinned enough that she won’t be able to see it as well. Roy doesn’t know Gar’s family especially well, but he flirts exactly as much and as casually as Rita does, so the few times they’ve met they got on like a house on fire. He shouldn’t be surprised that that was enough for Roy to start telling her about their sex life. “He told you about that, huh?”

“Gar did, actually. You know he likes to tell me everything. Well,” she added, seeing Vic’s blush deepen, “not quite everything. Some things a mother doesn’t need to know.”

“That’s good,” he manages, his voice coming out about three octaves higher than normal. It’s not like he and Gar are into any super weird kinky shit (although he’s pretty sure being friends with Kori and the Waynes means that his concepts of weird and kinky are pretty skewed at this point) but still… Like Rita said, some things a mother doesn’t need to know.

“Breath, honey. You have to breath. If you keel over from shock, Gar will never forgive me.”

“Never forgive you for what?”

Vic looks up, and there’s Gar in his audition clothes, the beret that Gar insists is just a normal beanie, and the v-neck shirt that is Vic’s absolutely favourite look on him. His emerald hair, which had been artfully tousled when they left the house this morning, is now for-real tousled, and his eyes are shining.

In two years, he could be engaged to this boy. The knowledge feels like a butterflies where his heart should be and a warm blanket on a cold day all at once.

He reaches for him, not caring that Rita is watching, not caring that they’re being stared at by a dozen disapproving stage school moms, and pulls Gar close enough that he can kiss him, slow and sweet like he deserves.

“What was that for?” Gar asks when they part.

“Because you’re beautiful,” Vic tells him. “And because I wanted to. How did it go?”

“Oh! Really good I think! I mean…” he lowers his voice, and Rita and Vic both lean in to hear him whisper, “I said yes!”

Rita’s eyes crinkle with fond amusement as she catches Vic’s expression. “That’s wonderful, darling. We should celebrate.” She bounces to her feet, skirts swirling as the air catches them. “Ice cream I think, on me.”

Gar’s eyes light up, the way they always do when sugar is on offer. “Ooh, can we go to the place by the Arena? Their vegan chocolate flavour is really good.”

“Of course we can darling.” She turns just enough that Gar won’t see it when she winks at Vic. “Say, doesn’t your friend Roy live around there? You should see if he’s free to join us.”

Marrying into the Addams family isn’t at all like Vic would have expected it to be, if he’d known in advance that that was what he was doing the first time he held Gar’s hand, but he wouldn’t trade it, even with the knowing look Rita is giving his blush.

Chapter Text

Pru leans against a tree outside the front of Bob Kane Memorial High and lights her cigarette.

She’s not normally a big smoker; to avoid talking to colleagues, or on a night out, sure, but she hasn’t smoked regularly since she was in high school herself. But she’s got a shaved head and a motorbike and a criminal record, and she’s here waiting to meet a boy 8 years younger than her, so she feels the cigarette is pretty much required.

Plus there’s always a few parents and teachers hanging around, and it’s funny as shit to see their faces, especially when they realize who she’s waiting for.

None of them can ever work out what her connection to Tim is. She falls into the exact age bracket that no one ever believes they’re just friends, even though they are, but he could probably convince some of his more credulous classmates that she’s his girlfriend if he wanted to. He doesn’t, because he’s got more than enough sexual weirdness of his own without making shit up, but that just means people are even more confused about why the hell they spend time together.

She’d wondered herself, back when they first knew one another, when she was mostly tagging along to see what the hell he was going to do next. That was two years ago, and while seeing what crazy shit he’s going to take it into his head to do next is definitely still a large part of the appeal, she’s prepared to admit she does actually like the kid.

Her own social circle is just as confused, and she's pretty sure Z is the only person who actually believes her when she says she's not a cradle snatcher. But her boss hadn’t argued with her demanding four hours off every Thursday afternoon, which is all that actually matters. If Owens and the rest want to think shes fucking kids that's their problem, not hers.

She’s finished one cigarette and flipped off three suburban moms when Tim finally emerges, surrounded by a gaggle of friends and siblings. The little one, Bart, the one Tim refuses to introduce to her because he’s a complete mother hen sometimes, is talking nineteen to the dozen, hands gesticulating wildly to emphasize whatever point he’s making.

The big guy she’s pretty sure Tim has a crush on, Conner, has his arm around his girlfriend’s waist and Tim’s sister - the Asian one - is leaning companionably against her partner.

He’s not the only one not paired off, his other sister is by herself and so’s Bart, but there’s something about the way he’s holding himself that makes him look more alone than either of them do.

He spots her and she waves, and a couple of his friends and the Asian sister wave back. She’s met most of them, but only briefly. Tim likes his life to be as compartmentalized as possible, and it’s not like she doesn’t get that. She does everything she can to keep Tim as far away from the people she spends most of her life with as possible.

He says goodbye to his friends at the curb, hugging Bart and getting hugged by his sisters before he makes his way over. She gets curious looks from a couple of them and settles for giving them her most enigmatic smile. If Tim hasn’t chosen to explain their relationship to his friends, she’s not going to do it for him.

“Hey slim. How was school?”

“Frustrating,” he says. “How’s the Bratva?”

“Boring.” Things are pretty peaceful right now, so apart from collecting some protection money, there’s really nothing for her to do. “Want to blow this popsicle stand?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She passes him the helmet she’d picked out a year ago just to annoy him and grins at the way his nose wrinkles. No matter how many times he sees it, he never stops being horrified by the airbrushed and extremely inaccurate red falcon decorating it, and that never stops being funny. One day she might tell him that she’d picked it on purpose, that he’s always reminded her of a bird of prey, something domesticated but never actually tame. Someone you can work with, but never own. But probably not until he’s stopped pulling that face every time he puts it on.

She pulls on her own and swings her leg over the bike, waits till she feels him slide into place behind her. His hands rest lightly on her hips. He’s a lot more mature than most teenagers, but he still never holds on properly until she gets over 30, and she hasn’t got the heart to tell him that holding her hips is a lot more intimate than just wrapping his arms around her waist.

They peel out, and she makes sure to gun the engine extra hard as they pass the disapproving adults waiting at the gates.

He hadn’t said where he wanted to go, but she heads for the Finger river anyway. They generally end up in Midtown, because that’s where the creepy Clockwork Orange milk-bar Tim loves is, and the park, and the Wildcat Gym where they go to spar.

She takes the corner onto Robinson too fast and grins behind her helmet when it makes him finally hold on properly.

She slows down as they approach the corner with Goode street and Tim taps her right arm, so she turns that way, heading towards Wildcats.

There's nowhere to leave her bike that isn't just on the street outside, but everyone knows what happens if you steal from Ted Grant, so she doesn't worry about leaving her bike out there.

The gym’s as deserted as it ever gets, a guy lifting weights and another working over the heavy bag while Ted holds it steady for him. The blonde woman who basically lives here - Dina or Dinah, Pru's never been sure and she can’t just ask because she’s pretty sure they were at school together - is running through some truly terrifying stretches at one of the benches.

There's a couple of old school lockers in one corner where Ted lets regulars keep some stuff, so they've got kit at least. There's no changing room but they take it in turns to change in the bathroom.

"You mind if we take the ring?" she asks when they're both in workout gear.

"Knock yourself out," Dinah says, and Ted grunts agreement, so Pru ducks between the ropes.

She rushes through a cursory warm-up because she knows Tim will fuss if she doesn't, but when she turns to face him, he's just standing there, looking nervous.

"Would you… I'm going to do something. Don't laugh."

"Never." That's a lie but she's generally laughing with him, not at him.

"Okay." He takes a breath and shakes out his arms, and then steps into the middle of the ring. He closes his eyes, and when he speaks, his voice is very soft.

“I see Queen Mab hath been with you.” He opens his eyes, staring at nothing at all. “She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes, in shape no bigger than an agot-stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomi over men’s noses as they lie asleep.”

Ted holds up a hand to stop the guy at the bag, and Dinah straightens up, everyone watching Tim as though he were standing in a spotlight, instead of in the middle of an ancient boxing ring.

The words don’t make a lick of sense, at least not to her, but there’s something about the way he says them, something urgent like they’re important, something they all need to hear.

“Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, time out of mind the fairies’ coachmakers. Her wagon-spokes are made of long spinners’ legs, the cover of the wings of grasshoppers. Her traces of the smallest spider web, her collars of the moonshine’s watery beams, her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film, her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat not half so big as a round little worm prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid.”

He’s speeding up, the words taking on an almost panicked intensity, tripping over themselves to make it out of his mouth, and he’s got the look in his eye, the one that means he’s about to something really stupid, the one that makes even Pru nervous.

“In this state, she gallops night by night through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; o’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on cur’sies straight; o’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees; o’er ladies’  lips , who straight on kisses dream which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues because their breath with sweetmeats tainted are.

“Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose and then dreams he of smelling out a suit. And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, tickling a parson’s nose as ’a lies asleep, then he dreams of another benefice.” He looks at Pru, smiles a mean little slash of a smile. “Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck and then dreams he of  cutting  foreign  throats , of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom deep; and then anon -  drums  in his ear, at which he starts and wakes and being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again. 

“ This ... is that very Mab, that plaits the manes of horses in the night and bakes the elf-locks in foul  sluttish  hairs which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.” The words are frenzied now, almost shouted, and he’s still staring at her, still maintaining eye contact, and the part of her which has kept her alive this long is itching to reach for her piece but it’s in her locker. She knows this is only acting, some scene from that play he’s doing, but the only play she’s ever seen was Guys and Dolls when her junior year girlfriend was in the chorus and no one in that stared at her like they knew they were going mad and she was the only one who could save them. “This is the  hag , when maids lie on their backs, that  presses  them and learns them first to  bear , making them women of good carriage,  this is She -”

He freezes, and no one in the gym makes a sound, all of them staring at Tim, waiting on him to break them out of this strange fearful moment.

Incrementally he relaxes, looses some of that wild panicked air until he only looks a normal Tim level of hunted. “Sorry.”

“Fucking hell, kiddo,” probably-Dinah says. “That was something else.”

He snorts. “Yeah. I just… I like being stage manager. I’m good at it. But sometimes it’s… They’re out there, in the spotlight. Being heard and seen. And I’m in the wings, making them heard, making people listen to them, and never…”

“Never saying anything,” Pru finishes softly. “Damn, Tim.”

“It’s just egotism. I’ll get over it. Duela’s much better suited to play Mercutio than me and most days I’m fine with that. Today was just… today wasn’t a good day, is all.”

Outside of bike rides and spars, they don’t really touch, but there’s no way Pru can see him standing there and not hug him. “I see you.”

He’s stiff and awkward in her arms, but he hugs back. “Thanks, Pru.” He pulls out of her grip, shifts his shoulders like he shirt isn’t sitting right. “I like being in the shadows. They’re comforting. Just, sometimes they’re kind of lonely too.”

“You need to get laid,” Dinah says. Ted makes a noise like a cat with a hairball, and she grins at him. “You know it’s true. You want someone to look at you and only you, getting naked generally works pretty well.”

“Or pull a knife on ‘em,” Pru suggests, since she tries not to know anything about Tim’s love life if she can avoid it. “That also works pretty good.”

Their eyes meet over Tim’s head, and Pru notices how Dinah’s nose wrinkles up when she smiles. She’s kind of stupidly pretty. “Or both?”

It’s just possible that Pru is blushing.

“Take it outside,” Ted grunts. He gives Tim a concerned look. “You okay now kid?”

“I talk of dreams which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy,” Tim says, and smiles. “I’m good. Thanks. For being an audience.”

He’s probably talking to all of them, but he’s Pru’s weird little friend, so she’s the one who punches him gently in the shoulder and says, “Any time, man. That was pretty cool, honestly. Are the guys in the play as good as you?”

“Ah, better, mostly.”

“Well, maybe I’ll get tickets after all. See what a well-managed stage looks like.”

"Little culture couldn't hurt you." He smiles at her, soft and fond and kind of stupidly cute for such a fucking weirdo. "Thanks Pru."

"Any time. Now enough of this mushy stuff." She steps back into a ready possition. "Hurry up and fight me."

Chapter Text

Rose surreptitiously checks her lipstick in the window glass, then pastes on her very best bland professional expression. The door is open, but Waller is apparently engrossed in paperwork, so she settles for knocking on the doorjamb. “You wanted to see me, Principle Waller?”

Waller scowls. “Mr Occult…”

“Miss.”

“Dr Occult, come in, and please shut the door behind you.”

Rose does as she's told, sweeping her skirt under her as she sits.

Waller makes a show of finishing what she's reading, leaving Rose with nothing to do but sit and stare at the faded photograph of the first graduating class that hangs on the wall accross from her. There's nothing else to look at, no personal touches, no photograph on the desk, or ornaments. There's a calendar, but it had obviously been a free gift from a stationary firm. The picture for February is of ballpoint pens, arranged in neat rows. Even the empty coffee mug on the desk is plain white with no decoration. Nothing in the room to tell you anything about Waller's personality, which ironically tells you a lot about the sort of person she is.

Eventually Waller sets down the paper and gives Rose a long cold look. “I’m sure you know why I asked to speak to you.”

Rose has found the best way to deal with incidentally transphobic people in professional settings, the kind of people who wouldn’t attend anti-trans protests but thought saying things like ‘it’s a free country, I just don’t see why they need to flaunt it’ made them progressive, is to completely refuse to acknowledge there is anything out of the ordinary happening. Either they show their true colours and say the kinds of things you could report to their superiors, or they back down, and either way it makes them easier to deal with. “I’m afraid I’ve no idea.”

The look Waller gives her suggests she knows exactly what Rose is doing. “When you accepted the position to teach at Bob Kane you agreed to abide by certain codes of conduct. This does not look like abiding by those codes to me.”

She isn't going to allow herself to be lead. If Waller wants to play the fool, well, two can play at that game. “In what way?”

“We do have a dress code, you realise?”

“In what way am I breaking that exactly?” Her skirt reaches to mid-calf and her blouse is buttoned to the throat. She’s seen nuns less covered up. She’s even covered her hair, if you can count a wig as a hair covering.

“You’re wearing a dress.”

“A skirt, technically. The dress code requires only that I be dressed professionally. Is there something about my outfit today you find to be unprofessional?” Say it. I dare you.

“Dr Occult, you were hired as a male teacher.”

“I was hired as a teacher. I don’t think I was ever asked what gender I am during the interview.”

“Biologically-”

“I’m sorry, are you asking me to disclose personal medical information? You are not my doctor. What chromosomes I may or may not have is none of your business. This is about my gender, not my biology.”

“Your gender which you chose not to disclose during your interview.”

"Again, you didn’t ask. You looked at the fact that I had short hair and was wearing a suit and assumed. The fact that you assumed wrong is hardly my fault.”

“So we were just supposed to guess?”

“I’m still unclear on why you think it matters either way, but if you were going to guess, well, my legal name is Richard-Rose Occult. I’m not sure how much clearer I could have been when I chose it.”

“Unusual middle names are hardly unheard of for men.”

“It’s hyphenated.”

“Alright, a different question. Why now?”

Because if the kids get to be openly and proudly non-cis, why shouldn’t I? Becayse if there are kids who are openly non-cis, don’t they deserve to see adults like them? “It just seemed like time.”

“It will confuse the students. Some of them may even find it distressing. That is not conducive to a supportive learning environment.”

Finally. Rose has been hoping that Waller would go there, ever since she walked through the anteroom to Waller’s office and saw who is waiting there.

She stands, enjoying the way the fabric of her skirt moves as it catches the air, and pulls open the door.

Lonnie Machin looks up from his phone at the noise. As far as she knows he's straight, but she’d been the one to break up the fight he started when someone misgendered his friend Harper within his hearing and refused to apologise, so she knows he’ll be on her side in this.

“Lonnie, just the man! Tell me, do you find the existence of gender-fluid people particularly confusing?”

Understanding dawns on Lonnie’s face, but he manages to hide his smile. “No ma'am.”

That's the first time any of the kids have called her ma'am instead of sir, but now isn't the time to get distracted. “What about distressing? Are you distressed by the fact that I’m wearing a skirt today?”

“No ma'am. It’s a nice skirt.”

“Thank you.” Rose turns back to Waller, doing her best not to look too smug. “Principle?”

Waller sighs. “Sit down , Doctor.”

Rose does as she was told. As she shuts the door, Lonnie gives her a surreptitious thumbs up.

“That was extremely unprofessional.”

“Really?” Rose gives her a bright smile. “Was it more or less unprofessional than your blatant attempts to discriminate against me on the basis of my gender, would you say?”

“You realise this isn’t about my personal feelings. Quite frankly I couldn’t give a rats ass if you call yourself a man or a woman or a goddamn three toed sloth. But I’m answerable to the governors. The board won’t like this, and believe me, they will find out. Most of them have children here, and nobody gossips like parents. All it takes is one of the little brats to tell their mommy how Mr Occult was in drag today and they’ll all know within a few hours. Even if you were to find the entire student body as liberal minded as Mr Machin, do not count on their parents agreeing with them.”

Rose makes a concerted decision that she is going to ignore the blatant transphobia for now, even though ‘drag’ makes her wince. She needs to look at the big picture, and as Waller says, the big picture is the governors and the school board, not whether Amanda Waller personally likes or accepts her. For one thing, she already knows Waller doesn’t actually like anyone. “You know that I used to work at Midtown High? I’ve seen Duella Dent’s transcripts. Employing a highly qualified teacher who also happens to not be cisgender is hardly the most controversial thing you have asked the board to accept.”

“Troubled students are not a novelty. You are.”

Rose ticks off on her fingers. “Michael. Ted. Helena. Barbara. Brian. Randy. Hartley. Pam. I am hardly the first openly queer teacher you have employed.” White cis gays of her generation are depressingly inclined to play respectability politics, so there's a very real chance if she actually called on most of them they’d throw her under the bus just to prove they weren’t like those degenerate queers, but Waller almost certainly doesn’t know that. For once, straight people thinking of queers as a monolith is working in her favour. “I’ve seen the prospectus. Diverse and vibrant is right there on the front page, in nice big letters.” If Waller were a different woman she’d appeal to her experiences as a woman of colour in a position of authority, but you might as well try and engender fellow feeling with a mountain lion as Principle Waller. The woman is a wall. “Do you really want to risk the publicity if you push this? Because there will be publicity. Court cases tend to attract it.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Absolutely. You’re threatening to fire me if I don’t closet myself, how exactly did you think I'd react to that?”

Waller sits back in her chair, arms crossed. Maybe it's Rose’s imagination, but she thinks she looks grudgingly impressed. “Alright, Miss Occult. I have expressed my reservations. You have chosen not to heed them. So we let this play out. I hope you’re prepared for what happens next.”

If there's one thing Rose has learned in her life, it’s that no one is ever fully prepared for the really bad stuff, even if they know it's coming. But on the other hand… “This job was the only part of my life where I didn’t dress according to my gender. I have been living openly as a trans person for a decade. I don’t know what you think being publicly trans is like in this country, Ms Waller, but there is nothing the students or the board can throw at me that I haven’t deal with before.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’m a teacher, being right is my job. I’ll see myself out, shall I?”

She doesn’t wait for a reply.

Lonnie mouths a silent ‘how did it go?’ as she passes him, and she gives him a discrete thumbs up and makes a mental note to do something nice for him in their next class. She's pretty sure she’s burned through most of Waller’s fuse, so the poor kid is in for an explosion.

On the other hand, she’s read his transcripts as well and by all accounts, explosions are kind of his thing, so he’ll probably be fine.

Chapter Text

Alfred makes the most insanely delicious tuna fish sandwiches Duke has ever eaten.

The others all get school lunches, except for Cass, for reasons Steph had summarised for him but which mostly boil down to ‘tragic backstories’.

It’s one of Steph’s favourite phrases, and he’d never have predicted before he met Bruce Wayne just how useful it would be.

Why does Cass have the eating habits of a fussy toddler? Tragic backstories.

Why does Dick’s easy smile sometimes freeze on his face just when you thought he was really happy? Tragic backstories.

Why does Bruce flinch when Jason talks about the shooting range? Why does Tim spend his nights shadow boxing and writing chess problems instead of sleeping? Why does Damian always position himself with his back to a wall and sightlines on all the doors? Why does Steph sometimes give up on training and just punch the heavy bag until her knuckles bleed?

Why does Duke have nightmares about his mom looking into his face and not recognising him? Why did he have a panic attack when Bruce took the train to Metropolis instead of driving?

Tragic fucking backstories.

But he’s never been the sort of person to only see the worst in the situation. His new foster siblings are all in therapy, and have friends, and healthy outlets for their aggression. Alfred makes Cass whatever she wants for dinner, and Dick’s smile is usually just a smile, and Steph says Tim sleeps way more than he used to. Steph punches the bag instead of other people, and Jason goes to the shooting range instead of destroying stuff. Damian lets them all get close, even if actual touching is usually not okay. Bruce and Alfred are doing their best, and even though Duke privately suspects that they’re both just as fucked up as the rest of the family (Bruce doesn’t try all that hard to hide it, but Alfred is so poised all the time that it’s hard to know what he’s really thinking) they’re doing their best to help. There’s always good to be found.

Case in point, tuna fish sandwiches that taste like the kind of food you pay hundreds of dollars for. Not that Duke’s ever eaten a hundred dollar meal, but Bruce probably has at least once. A week. For the past thirty-something years.

Duke hadn’t even known you could make tuna take like anything other than, well, tuna. His mom used to make him tuna sandwiches sometimes, and they were fine, but they never tasted anything like this. There’s little bits of chopped up red onion mixed in with the fish, but against all logic and reason the onion is sweet. Not like candy sweet, that would be gross, but sweet like corn is sweet. He knows for a fact that the mayonnaise is homemade, because he’d found a jar of it in the fridge and hadn’t even known what was it was until Jason told him. He’d felt kind of stupid because, well, mayonaise doesn’t look like anything except mayonaise, but the idea that there were people who made their own and kept it in a mason jar in the fridge had honestly never occurred to him. He’s pretty sure even food bloggers don’t actually make their own, they just put the store-bought kind into little bowls to make it look like they do. But Alfred, who cooks and cleans and manages a massive house, seven kids, and one semi-feral billionaire, somehow has the time to make his own, along with just about everything else they eat. Duke’s pretty sure that the only reason he buys ingredients from a store at all is because Damian would pitch a fit if Alfred started ranching cattle in the gardens. There’s no labels or brand names to be seen in the fridge, just home-made everything in neatly labeled jars and boxes.

He’d been seriously intimidated by Alfred’s fridge at first (and it is definitely Alfred’s, not Bruce’s, and certainly not communal) but Alfred says he doesn’t mind them helping themselves as long as they don’t eat the stuff he’s labelled not too, so he’s allowed himself to be persuaded into raiding it a couple of times. It helps that Jason eats an amount of food that should not be physically possible even for someone as big as him, and Tim does things like drink a pint of milk straight from the carton, and then put the empty packaging back in the fridge. Compared to them, Duke figures him helping himself to sandwich fixings now and then isn’t a big deal.

He’s eating his (ridiculous, possibly even transcendent) tuna sandwiches outside. It’s not warm, but it’s not really cold either, and he’d wanted some fresh air. Some space.

It’s not that he doesn’t like his new foster-siblings, he does. He really does, actually, and he’s fully aware of how amazingly lucky that makes him. They’ve all gone out of their way to welcome him and make sure he doesn’t feel lonely or left out, and it’s great. They’re great. They’re also kind of a lot .

Steph is nearly normal most of the time, but she’s also one of those people who’s not afraid to take up space in the world and make people notice her, which is great, but not always restful. Jason has really weird ideas about what constitutes tmi with your new sibling, and Duke’s happy for the guy he really is, but Jason is screwing a lot of people and Duke really doesn’t need all the details. Cass can do this freaky thing where she knows what you’re thinking based on your body language, which makes Duke feel like he has no secrets. Tim is… Tim. Duke’s never met anyone like him and he likes the guy but he’s also pretty frightened of him, honestly. Dick is just on , all the time, like that guy from the Asterix cartoons who got dropped in strength potion as a baby, except someone dropped Dick in a whole lot of cocaine, or maybe speed. Damian hasn’t tried to physically attack him yet, but he’s pretty sure it’s only a matter of time.

Plus, they’ve all got friends, and they’ve known each other long enough that they have inside jokes and ‘remember when…’ jokes, and it’s hard not to feel left out, even when they’re going out of their way to include him.

So rather than sitting with Tim, Cass and Steph, or Jason and Dick, he’s sitting by himself in the semi-cold. He feels like he should be having a moment of realisation about how family is the most important thing or something, but actually it’s just restful. Relaxing even.

So he’s not super thrilled when someone sits down opposite him.

Alright he’s a little thrilled, because she’s gorgeous, but he really did just want to eat his lunch in peace.

“Hey, you gonna eat that sandwich or fuck it?” She blows to bubble with her gum and then pops it, like she’s the bad girl in a John Hughes movie. “Because honestly it looks like it could go either way.”

“You like tuna?”

“Sure. Not at much as you do though.”

It’s a big sacrifice, but this girl looks like she might be worth it. He breaks off a piece of his sandwich and holds it out to her. “Tell me that isn’t the best tuna sandwich you’ve ever tried?”

She studies him for a minute before she takes it, like she thinks he might have poisoned it or something. When she takes a bite it’s very small and careful, and Duke doesn’t know if it’s because she’s trying not to get lipgloss everywhere, or if that’s just how she eats.

“Holy shit, that’s a really good tuna sandwich.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, it’s just tuna and bread, how’s that so good?”

“I have no idea. Alfred’s just magic I guess? I mean, he doesn’t dress like a wizard, but I’ve pretty much run out of other ideas.”

“It’s a good sandwich, but it’s probably not sell your soul to satan good,” she agrees. “So probably magic.”

Duke considers his new family. “I don’t know. I don’t think Alfred would sell his soul just to make really tasty sandwiches, but I wouldn’t rule out demon deals in general. I’ve been living with them for two months now and I’m still not 100% sure they’re not in a cult.”

“Oh, so you’re the new Wayne.”

He blinks. “I guess so? I’m not like, adopted or anything. Bruce is just fostering me.”

“Is it true that they do, like, military drills every morning before school?”

“Just fencing practise. Bruce was super into it when he was younger, he won championships and stuff, and now he makes his kids all learn.” And the martial arts, and Jay’s target shooting, but if he says that bit out loud she’ll definitely think he’s in a cult.

“What, like Zorro shit?”

“Not as exciting. And no one wears masks except those weird over the head ones that make you look like a beekeeper.”

“That’s kind of a let down. Next you’re going to be telling me Dick isn’t a model.”

“I’m pretty sure he isn’t.” Not that he doesn’t get why people would think that.

“What about Jason being a male prostitute?”

“Why would he need to? Bruce is loaded. Plus if everyone he was sleeping with was paying him for it, I’m pretty sure he’d be, like, a millionaire.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of a slut.”

“Hey!” It’s kind of true, but Jay is his sort-of-brother and he feels like he needs to defend his honour. Even though he’s seen Jay spar now, and he definitely doesn’t need anyone else to defend his honor.

When she smiles her eyes crinkle up, and the gem in her lip piercing catches the light. Duke’s pretty sure this is how people who are into guys feel when they meet Dick . “I never said it was a bad thing. I’ve got no problem with him, I’m just saying. Getting detention for fucking in school once is one thing, but after the third time, people definitely get to call you a slut.”

“He didn’t.” Although he has now met most of Dick and Jay’s friends, and it wouldn’t actually surprise him.

“He did. Well, not like full on sex I don’t think, but there was this whole thing where the gay kids were protesting one of the teachers being homophobic and him and his boyfriend both got detention for like a month because someone caught them like, basically fucking on a picnic table.”

Duke leans away from the picnic table.

“Not this one. Or I don’t think this one, my friend Shug said she saw from them the library so it’s probably one of the ones closer to the building.”

“And she just watched them?!”

“Nah, she moved to a different seat. But if it had been me I’d totally have watched.” She gives him a big lascivious grin. “Your brother is fucking built man.”

All the Waynes except Tim and Bruce have kind of a non-committal relationship with clothes (and he’s pretty sure the only reason he hasn’t seen Bruce’s underwear is because Bruce is worried Duke will report him to CPS for, like, exposing himself to a minor or something) so he’s well aware of how buff Jason is. At least being trans means that he’s usually wearing something on his top half, even if it’s just a binder. Dick would almost certainly come to school in nothing but short-shorts if he thought he could get away with it, because he fucking hates wearing shirts, and Cass seems to feel about clothes pretty much the way Duke feels about ties - there’s a time and a place for them, but they’re not really for every day.

"I guess."

“Oh come, don’t pretend like you haven’t noticed.”

“I know I haven’t know them long, but they’re still my foster brothers. Even if I was into guys, I wouldn’t be looking.”

She shrugs. “Your loss. I’m Izzy, by the way.”

“Duke.”

“Hey, so my friend Dax is having a party next weekend, you want to go?”

“Like, with you?”

She blows a bubble with her gum, bigger and bigger, until it pops, and then says, “who else?”

Holy shit. “Uh, yeah, sure. I mean yes, that would be great.”

“It’s not gonna be a party , just some friends. We’ll probably just order some pizza or something, maybe watch some movies.”

“No, yeah, that sounds really good. I’m not really a big party kind of person, you know? Small is good.”

“Yeah? Awesome. What’s your number? I’ll text you.”

They swap numbers, and Duke does his best to look cool and like this kind of thing happens to him all the time, even though it definitely doesn’t and he’s absolutely freaking out on the inside.

He puts his phone away again and picks up his sandwich, but doesn’t actually eat any. If he blows his chance with the cutest girl who’s ever willingly talked to him because he has fish breath he’s never going to forgive himself.

She leans across the table, and just as Duke’s trying to decide if he’s okay with her kissing him - she’s really hot, and she seems nice, but they don’t actually know each other at all, and also fish breath - she takes a massive bite out of his tuna sandwich.

“Demon deals,” she says, and grins at him. “See you around, new Wayne.”

Chapter Text

Duke long ago gave up trying to predict what his foster siblings would do in any given situation, but even knowing that they’re all well-meaning lunatics he would never in a million years have expected them to react to him getting a date by trying to give him the god-damned Talk.

There’s a power point. Duke has no idea if it’s better if they made it specially, of if they already had it prepared. Has Steph had to sit through this? Damian? Jesus, was anyone actually brave enough to try and do this to Tim?!

“I appreciate the thought, I do, but I’m fifteen man. I know where babies come from.”

“Bully for you,” Jason says. “Sex education in this country is fucked, and it was fucked for our parents generation as well. I’m not letting you out on the assumption that you somehow beat the odds and actually learned anything useful.”

“Fucking hell, Jay, isn’t this supposed to be Bruce’s job?” Not that he wants to talk about sex with Bruce, ever. That would be horrifying on so many levels.

“Dude, you’ve seen how Bruce goes about being a person. What makes you think the way he goes about having sex is any less weird?

“Is it?”

“Two of Duella’s parents, and yeah, they’re exactly as bizarre as you’d expect them to be, Damian’s mom the wanted terrorist, Selina … Trust me, you do not want this from Bruce.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t mean I want it from you either.”

“Tough. It’s me or Dick, you have to pick one.”

“Why?”

“Because Roy would hit on you and Kori would scare the life out of you, and anyway we try to keep things in the family. I guess there’s Tim, but he has even less idea how to person than Bruce does. Also he’s terminally kinky even by the standards of this family, and this isn’t a crash course in BDSM. So it’s me or Dick, up to you, but personally I’d pick me.”

“I really don’t see why I have to pick anyone.”

“Okay look, real talk. Maybe your parents did everything right, told you everything you needed to know. It happens. Not often but it does. But they told you everything you needed to know for the you in junior high, and that’s not the same as everything you need to know now. Plus it’s way easier asking one of us about this stuff than it is parents or Bruce. You’ve seen some of how I live my life, you’ve got to know I wouldn’t judge, not inexperience, lack of knowledge, bad past experiences, weird kinks, nothing.”

“Did your mom tell you everything you needed to know?”

“I mean, yeah, pretty much. She was a hooker, so between her and her friends I learned a lot of stuff pretty young, but not in a damaging way. Just that they would talk about sex, and I’d ask questions, and someone would generally answer them. Plus she saw enough stupid adults that she wanted to make sure her kid grew up smarter than that.”

“And you decided that meant it was your job to spread the word?”

“Spreading the good sex gospel, whether people want to hear it or not.”

“You know this is really fucking weird, right? Like, even by Wayne standards.”

Jay shrugs. “I know we’re nuts. I know that, however fond you are of us, you don’t have any variety of empathy or attachment disorder and it’ll take you longer to really love us than it’s taken most of us to love you. That’s totally cool. But you’re my little brother now and I’m gonna look out for you whether you like it or not.”

“There’s no way I’m getting out of this, is there?”

Jason grins. “Me and Roy made Connor sit through this, and he’s basically as ace as they come and isn’t even interested in having sex. I said man, I don’t have a prostate, doesn’t mean it’s not important for me to know the symptoms of prostate cancer. We don’t live in a bubble. Even if you never intend to have any kind of sex, doesn’t mean it’s not useful to know this shit. And if you’re sure you’re not going to have sex yet, great! If you only start trying to learn self defense when you’re in the process of being mugged, you’re not going to do a good job. You haven’t got time, emotions are running high, you’re probably not thinking straight. But if you already know this shit, your instincts know the right thing to do even if your brain is kind of fucked up, you know?”

“Have you ever been mugged?”

“Twice. First time I beat the shit out of the guy. Second time… skinny little kid about my age, who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week. I gave him fifty dollars and told him to scram and he did.”

“You’re lucky that worked.”

“Yeah, but I was sixteen and I thought I was invincible.”

“You’re only seventeen,” Duke feels compelled to point out.

“Yeah, and when I told Tim about what happened he decided it was his job to show my why you don’t fuck around when there’s a knife in the mix even if you’re twice the size of the other guy. Hurt my pride some, but it knocked some sense into me. Taught me that no matter how well prepared I think I am, that doesn’t excuse taking risks. Eh?” He wiggles his eyebrows, which makes him look so much like Dick for a moment that Duke can’t help but snicker. “Thank you. I’m pretty proud of that segway myself. Now come on, I’m not letting you leave, so you might as well just get it over with.”

“I’ll be honest, I’m still not sure why this has to be you and not a grown-up.”

“You want to do this with one of Duella’s parents? Or Lori’s uncles? I am fully prepared to call Bane, don’t think I’m not.”

“I have no idea who that is.”

“Shit, no you don’t do you. Sorry, I was forgetting you’ve only been here a couple of months. Lori’s like a friend of a friend, and her extended family are all aggressively queer pro-wrestlers. Roy and her uncle Bane have this thing where Bane tries to supportively mentor him and Roy pretends he’s not getting off on it.”

“That seems kind of... fucked?”

Jason makes a ‘little bit’ gesture. “Bane definitely knows what’s happening, because his partners have definitely pointed it out to him. He could say something if he was uncomfortable. And Roy’s only into it because he knows Bane’s a good guy who wouldn’t ever actually take advantage. It’s still weird, because they’re skirting real close to the edge of some full-on non-sexual ageplay daddy kink, but we’ve talked about it, and I’m pretty sure him and Bane have at least talked around it. I don’t always trust Roy to make good decisions, but he’s generally good when it comes to sex stuff. Would he get high and try to ride a shopping cart down the hill outside Ollie’s house? Yes, absolutely, he’s done it twice now and the last one landed him in the ER. But would he scene with a creep? Probably not.”

“So my choice is you or the guy your boyfriend does but also doesn’t want to fuck?” He shakes his head. “Who taught you this stuff then?”

Jay shrugs. “My mom, like I said. Dr Harley. I tried to talk to Bruce’s best friend Clark about sex one time when I was younger, because he’s been kind of a mentor for me, and he went absolutely scarlet and basically threw me at his wife, but she was pretty good at answering questions. She’s like the most stereotypically cynical hard-bitten journalist you’ve ever met, looks like someone dressed up a Raymond Chandler character in modern clothes, so she’s basically unshockable. Kori taught me a lot. Her culture has a totally different attitude to sex and stuff than America, sex is… kind of sacred to them, but in a cool celebrating love way, not like a creepy cult way. Her first language doesn’t even have a word for shame, not in the way we use it, so she helped cut through a lot of the bullshit.

“Also though? I learnt by fucking shit up and having to figure out how to fix it, and everyone should do some of that shit, but it should be stuff like forgetting you put rum in the chocolate frosting you were about to lick off your boyfriends dick, not something that’s going to land you in the ER, or in therapy, you know?”

“Hey, look, I know you’re into some wild stuff, and that’s totally cool, but that’s not my jam, okay?”

“Yeah, see, this is why we need this talk. Most people, even total morons, figure out you need some kind of safety when you’re playing with the heavy stuff, even if they don’t always know what that safety should be. People know about the concept of safewords, most people will instinctively check in when they’re trying something on the edges of their comfort zone. And I’m not going to pretend like kink can’t fuck you up, because it absolutely can, but in my opinion it’s the normal stuff that’s more dangerous, because people get complacent. Not to mix my metaphors, but they look at the kid holding the knife and think ‘he’s just a skinny little thing, no way could he hurt me’, and forget that he’s still holding a knife.

“It would probably make life a whole lot easier if you could neatly divide sex into ‘normal and safe’ and ‘weird and dangerous’, the way straight people try and divide it into ‘sex’ and ‘foreplay’, but it doesn’t work like that. Like, okay, say you get a girlfriend who’s really into sexy cop roleplay? Why wants you to be the big authoritative officer telling her she can get out of being arrested if she just does you a little favour…?”

Duke does his best to hide his shudder, but he knows he doesn’t manage it from the sympathetic look Jason gives him. He hasn’t told anyone except Bruce about his past, but Jay’s smart, he knows how to listen, and he’s got black friends. He’s probably figured out some of it, even if he doesn’t know the stuff about Duke’s mom. “Most people, most white people at least, would think that was maybe a little bit autre, but nothing wild. They wouldn’t think that was in the weird and dangerous category. But for you, that’s gonna be at the very least real fucking insensitive, yeah? And if you’re not smart, if you haven’t been taught this shit by someone who knows what they’re talking about and has your best interests at heart, you might think ‘I don’t like it much but it’s not like this is something weird and dangerous’, and best case scenario you just have bad sex you don’t like much, and that happens to everyone sometimes, worst case scenario it turns out you’ve got triggers or trauma you didn’t know about. Trust me. That’s one of the things I learned the hard way.”

“I gotta say no when I’m not okay.”

“You’ve gotta talk about it, about all of it, including saying no, and if you’re not prepared to talk about it you probably shouldn’t be doing it. That doesn’t mean you’ve always gotta spend two hours planning the sex you’re going to have, but it does mean that even if you’re pissed and hooking up with a stranger in a club bathroom you’ve still gotta be prepare to say ‘I don’t like it when people call me pretty’, or ‘can you not touch my shoulders’, and you’ve gotta be prepared for your partner to do the same, and if they don’t, you’ve got to be prepared to ask them.”

“Doesn’t it kind of ruin the moment though? Like, asking before every little thing?”

“Really? You think saying to a girl, ‘I really want to kiss you’, is going to ruin the moment? You think a girl asking if she can suck you off is going to make things less hot? Hell if you know someone well, if you trust yourself and you trust them, you don’t have to say it out loud if you don’t want to. But you’ve still got to be prepared for them to say no, or slow down, or ‘I’m not sure’. And pro-tip, sometimes ‘I’m not sure’ means ‘convince me’ but mostly it means ‘I want to say no I’m worried how you’ll react’ so if you hear that that should be your cue to stop whatever the fuck you’re doing.”

“And just… stop?”

“If that’s what she needs, or you need, then yes. Sometimes sex is going to end with you jacking it in the bathroom, and sometimes you’re not even going to need to because it’s you that’s not into it, or because the moment just passed and neither of you are into it anymore, and that’s totally cool. It’s still sex.”

“It’s not though. I mean, if it stops before…”

“Pentration is a type of sex. And thinking it’s the only type is the best way to disappoint every woman you fuck, believe me. Sometimes sex is two hours of slow romantic fucking, sometimes it’s a quick handjob. Sometimes the point is orgasms and sometimes it’s getting to be intimate with someone you love. Hell, sometimes the point is to get someone else off because you like doing that for them but you’re not interested in reciprocation. It’s all sex, man. Also thinking like that is how you end up with people who think you only need to take precautions for penis in vagina, and that’s how you end up with the stuff that really itches. Which is slides ten and eleven on the powerpoint.”

“That’s really not selling it,” Duke points out, but he’s mostly joking. Jason has been talking a lot of sense, and more importantly, Duke doesn’t feel like Jay’s calling him stupid, and he doesn’t feel like his entire brain is trying to cringe the way he does in health class. Maybe he’s got a point about it being better coming from one of his foster-siblings. He can’t imagine talking to Bruce about this stuff full stop, never mind it feeling this easy. “Okay, sure. I’ll sit through your powerpoint.”

“Good call. It’s not as awful as you’re thinking, promise.”

“Hey,” Duke asks suddenly, an earlier question popping into his head. “Did you do this to Tim?”

Jay laughs. “Dickie tried to, got as far as ‘we need to talk about…’ and then chickened out. We made Babs do it. She won’t tell us what she said to him, but he called her ‘ma’am’ for like three months afterwards, so I’m pretty sure she just dropped him right into the deep end. Probably for the best anyway, kinky little bastard.”

“Who’s Babs?”

Jason stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “Holy shit, I keep forgetting how new you are! I hadn’t realised we hadn’t introduced you to big sister yet. Oh, you are in for a treat .” He says it with a kind of mixed fondness and awe, like Babs is someone incredibly intimidating, and given what he knows about his new siblings, that’s a little bit terrifying.

“Why do I feel like that’s a threat?”

“Because it totally is. Don’t worry though, I’ve got two whole slides on genital herpes, after that even the Clocktower won’t be able to scare you.”

“Oh God. Is it too late to change my mind?”

“Oh yes. I told you, preaching the good sex gospel is my calling. Prepare to be evangelised!”

Chapter Text

“No Queen boys this year?” Lilith asks, climbing over Bette’s legs to get to the beanbag John has claimed for them.

“Ollie’s been dropping really unsubtle hints about Christmas being a time for family,” Rachel says, from her spot by the door. She’s one of those people who can’t bear to sit still all through a movie, so she always gets first dibs on the seats nearest the door, so she can get up and wander around without disturbing everyone. “Connor fell for it, and of course, if Connor and Mia were going to be doing family Christmas, Roy was going to as well.”

Kori grins. “He enjoys it, really. He used to do it all before Connor came to live with them, but Ollie forgets about Connor being Buddhist, so Roy feels like he has to make a big fuss about also not being Christian, on his brother’s behalf.”

“It must be strange, having family who are a different religion from you,” Khalid says thoughtfully. “ I can’t imagine it.”

“It’s alright,” Bette says. “I don’t usually see them at Christmas, but Auntie Kate will go over to the Waynes today, and I see them at Easter. Then they all come to hers, or here, for Rosh Hashanna and Passover.”

“That sounds nice,” Megan says. “I think it’d be quite fun, having extra holidays in the year.”

“Like this one,” Kori says.

“This isn’t a holiday. Not-Christmas isn’t a holiday.”

“Yes, it is. It’s Chinese food and movies day, that’s definitely a holiday.”

“She has a point,” John says. “Anthropologically speaking…”

Lilith hits him, but only gently. “Don’t you start. If you go off on one of your tangents, we’ll run out of time to watch any movies.”

“What are we watching, anyway?” Kulap demands.

Khalid, who doesn’t know her well, flinches, and Mouse pats him sympathetically on the shoulder. Kulap isn’t actually a particularly aggressive person, but she’s not always good at judging tone, and people who aren’t used to her tend to assume she’s absolutely furious about everything all the time.

“Not a horror film,” Bette says, immediately. “I’m taking the opportunity of Klarion not being here to make that a rule. No horror movies on Chinese food and movies day.”

“What about bad horror movies that aren’t really scary?” Shawn asks. “I brought Dracula 2000.”

“Nope, my house, my rules. No horror movies.”

“Picnic at Hanging Rock isn’t  really  a horror movie,” Lilith says hopefully.

“It’s barely a movie, Lil, nothing happens! I vote Ferris Bueler.”

“I brought Cruel Intentions and Charlie’s Angels,” Megan offers.

“So only horny movies.”

“I also brought Coyote Ugly.”

“That doesn’t disprove my point.”

“I don’t know why you’re all arguing,” John says. “We all know we’re going to watch the Matrix.”

“Do we have to?” Bette asked. “Just once, we could watch something else.”

“It’s tradition,” Megan says. “It’s important to have traditions on holidays.”

From the hall outside, Duella yells, “Chinese food and wheels coming through, make way, make way.”

“Traditions,” John says with a grin, while everyone near the door squashes up to make room for Drew’s chair to get in.

Most of the food is balanced on Drew’s lap, but Duella has a bag as well, which she’s carrying with one hand under the bottom of it because it’s so full that the plastic is starting to split.

“We met the delivery guy on our way in,” Duella says, climbing over Khalid and Bette to reach the coffee table. “And the dads send their best and a bottle of vodka. Well, Ed sends his best and Jack sends the Vodka, but you know what I mean.”

“What did your mum send?”

“Alkaseltzer and a lecture about underage drinking. Shove over, Shawn, I’ll share your beanbag.”

“You’re too tall, go and sit at the back or no one will be able to see.”

“That’s their problem,” Duella says, and sits down in Shawn’s lap. Shawn shoves her off but moves over so there’s room for Duella to sit beside her.

From long habit, they’d left a space near the back for Drew’s chair, so she puts the brake on and starts passing food down to be added to the pile on the table.

“That one’s for Khalid,” Bette says, when she spots a box with F written on the lid. “They didn’t have halal chicken, I asked, so I got you fish with ginger and spring onions. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s fine, thanks, Bette.”

“You can have some of mine as well if you like,” Lilith offers. “It’s vegetarian, so that should be okay, right?”

“Oh no, I don’t want to deprive you.”

“That’s alright, I never finish it anyway, and none of these carnivores will touch it.”

“I’d offer to swap some, but you don’t eat fish, do you?”

“No, I’m completely veggie these days. Really though, I never finish the whole tub. If you don’t mind leftovers, you’re more than welcome.”

“Alright, thanks.”

“I asked them to mark anything that has got pork or prawns in it,” Bette says to Drew, “but I don’t think they’ve remembered. We might have to get one of this lot to taste-test things for us.”

“I volunteer!” Mouse says, immediately. “I always wanted to be a royal food taster.”

“Which one of us is royalty,” Drew asks.

“Bette,” Rachel, Lilith, John, and Duella all chorus at the same time. “Obviously.”

Bette sits up as straight as it’s possible to, on a bean bag, and nods regally at them all. “My loyal subjects. By royal decree, I charge thee, Shawn Tsang, mistress of the wardrobes, to put the movie on.”

“Matrix?” Shawn asks, pushing herself forwards so she’s kneeling with her legs still crossed. “Anyone know where it is?”

“I brought it,” Drew says. “Rachel, can you get it out of my bag? I don’t think I can reach it without elbowing you in the face.”

Rachel unzips the backpack hanging from the handles of Drew’s chair and passes the DVD to Khalid, who passes it to Shawn.

She nearly topples forward into the TV putting it on, but Duella grabs the back of her sweater to balance her.

When it’s in, Duella tugs hard and Shawn tips backward, landing more or less back on the beanbag. “Ouch. Thanks, Duella.” She passes the PlayStation controller to Bette. “Here, your majesty, your scepter of office.”

“Very good, peasant. You shall be rewarded for your loyal service this day.”

“Extra egg rolls,” Shawn says immediately.

“So shall it be done. Does anyone want subtitles?”

“Me, I’m afraid,” Drew says. “If that’s okay with you Mouse?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? I can’t read them anyway so it doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“In that case, yes, please. Sorry, everyone.”

“That’s alright. We don’t mind.”

“I mind,” Duella says, but they all know her well enough to recognize when she’s being difficult just because she likes causing trouble, so Bette ignores her and starts the movie.

They pass around paper plates and food while the opening of the movie plays. Bette passes Mouse a container of fried rice to check, which he confirms to be just chicken.

“Who’s drinking?” Duella asks, when most people have got the food they wanted. “Khalid, I know you won’t. Anyone else?”

“I can’t,” Kulap says. “It interferes with my meds.”

“Interferes with mine too,” Duella says, dismissively. “I don’t care.”

“Well, I do.”

“Alright, suit yourself. Anyone else?”

“I’ll have a small one,” John says, “But I’m driving everyone home.”

“God, you’re so responsible, it’s nauseating. Bette?”

“Yes, please. There’s some coke over by you, Lil, pass it across, would you?”

“Is anyone scared of rats?” Mouse asks, suddenly.

Kulap groans. “Oh god, Mouse, I  told  you not to bring them!”.

“I only brought one,” Mouse says defensively. “And he can stay in my pocket if anyone minds.”

“I don’t like hamsters,” Bette says, “but rats are alright.”

“Who’s scared of a hamster?!”

“Charley tried to show me his when we were kids, but when I picked it up we realized it was dead. He was so upset, and I was sure it was my fault. I know it wasn’t really, but now whenever I see one all I think about is what if I do something and it dies.”

“Professor Dickens won’t die, he just wants to watch the movie.”

“Do you really keep rats as pets?” Khalid asks, fascinated. “Don’t they carry diseases?”

“Not pet ones,” Drew says. “I looked it up, when I first met Mouse, to make sure. Pet rats are pretty clean animals. It’s only wild ones that are dangerous.”

“Still, though. I don’t want to say white people are weird…”

“But white people are really weird,” Kulap finishes. “You get used to the rats after a while.”

“They’re nice really,” Mouse says earnestly, fishing a sleepy-looking grey rat out of his hoodie pocket. “See, Professor Dickens is a nice clean rat.”

“If you say so,” Khalid says, doubtfully.

“You can hold him if you like.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Khalid says, and then asks, “Can I pet him though? My sister will never believe it if I tell her I petted a rat.”

Mouse obligingly holds out Professor Dickens, and Khalid very carefully runs his finger over the top of the tiny animal’s head. “Weird. It looks like a cartoon rat.”

Mouse beams, apparently having decided that’s a compliment, and tickles the rat under the chin before setting it on his shoulder. It’s clearly used to this treatment because it snuggles down into the folds of his hoodie and immediately goes back to sleep.

Duella and Shawn pour out drinks and pass them around, cola for Kulap and Khalid and vodka and cola for everyone else, except Duella who has her vodka neat. 

Most people are only half watching the movie, paying more attention to chatting. Neo takes the red pill, and John perks up in that way people do when they’re about to tell you something they think is really clever. “Did you know, this is actually based on…”

“Plato’s Republic,” his friends chorus.

“You always say that,” Lilith reminds him, and John grins.

“Yes, but it’s important to have holiday traditions. Bette makes us watch Ghost and then cries all the way through, Drew gets drunk and runs over someone’s foot, and I bore you all senseless. We’re creating new cultural practices.”

“I can’t wait till you go to university. You can find some new test subjects and stop doing sociology on us.”

“Never. I’ll come back every winter break to experiment on you all.”

“Ah,” Khalid says. “Now that’s the true meaning of Chinese food and movies.”

“Being experimented on?”

Mouse clutches Professor Dickens to his chest. “He’s not experimenting on my rats.”

“Would you rather he experimented on us?”

“Yes,” Mouse says, immediately.

“Fair enough. John, you’ve got one willing test subject.”

“Amazing. Mouse, how do you feel about Skinner boxes?”

“I don’t know what one is.”

“Even better.”

“Bozo,” Lilith says fondly, bumping her head against John’s like an affectionate cat. “Khalid, I’m stuffed, do you want any tofu?”

“Yeah, go on then. Do you want… no, we had that conversation already.”

Lilith laughs. “Thanks anyway.”

"If we're passing around leftovers, does anyone want any of my noodles?" Megan asks. "They're way too spicy for me."

"Me," Kori says, immediately. "I'll swap you. Mine isn't nearly spicy enough."

"Yes, but is it not spicy by your standards, or by other people's?" Rachel asks. "I've eaten your cooking, don't forget."

"No idea. Does someone want to taste test for me?"

"Me!" Mouse says, sticking his hand up and nearly dislodging Professor Dickens from his shoulder.

"No, you're the only white person I know who eats real Asian food without complaining about the chilies, you're no better than Kori at telling what's spicy."

"I volunteer as tribute," John says and takes the container from Kori.

He picks out a piece of beef and eats it thoughtfully, everyone turning to stare at him as though he might be about to explode. Eventually, he says, "Bit spicy, but not too bad."

"Oh, that's alright then," Megan says. "I like a bit spicy."

They swap plates, and the room goes quiet as everyone focuses on their food, the film playing mostly unheaded in the background.

“I didn’t get my extra egg rolls,” Shawn says suddenly, around a mouthful of noodles. “I just remembered.”

“Mine’s got plum sauce on it now, but you can have it if you like,” Bette offers, holding it out to her. "I haven't licked it, promise."

“Don't care if you have,” Shawn says cheerfully. “When it comes to take-out, I have no self-respect. Duella can you pass it over? I can’t reach.”

“Pass it yourself,” Duella says, and then reaches for it anyway and drops it onto Shawn’s plate. “You need arm extensions.”

“Not all of us can be elastic freaks of nature. You and Dick are quite enough, thanks.”

“I’ve learned to dislocate my shoulder. Do you want to see?”

“No! Why would you even want to do that?”

“Freak people out,” Duella says, with a shrug. “Jack-dad taught me. Oh, I love this bit.”

The others go obligingly quiet, as Neo and Trinity fight their way through the lobby of the Agent’s building.

When it’s over, Duella sighs happily. “I want to learn to shoot. Roy said he’d teach me, but mom won’t let me. She says it’s bad enough wondering if Jack’s going to be arrested, without worrying about me as well.”

“She’s got a point,” Rachel says. “I wouldn’t trust you with a gun.”

“Probably fair. What are we going to watch next? This is nearly over.”

“Not horror,” Bette says. “I don’t care what else. Is anyone still hungry? Dad bought ice cream for us.”

“If I eat anything else I’m probably going to vomit,” Drew says. “But I’ll have some anyway if everyone else is.”

“Can Professor Dickens have some?” Mouse asks.

Bette shrugs. “It’s probably not good for him, but he’s your responsibility, so sure. I’ll see if I can find an egg cup or something.”

“Do you want me to get it?” Rachel asks. “You’re pretty well blocked in there.”

“Drew?”

“Oh, go over me. I don’t mind as long as you don’t damage my chair.”

“I might damage you, though.”

“I heal. The chair doesn’t.”

“Fair point.”

She does manage it, though it requires standing on first Khalid and then Rachel’s thighs, one hand braced on Drew’s shoulders to keep her balance, and Rachel goes to help her carry things.

She and Rachel come back with tubs of ice cream and plastic bowls and spoons, and an egg cup in the shape of a chicken.

There’s heated debate about what flavor to give Professor Dickens - chocolate is ruled out as probably being poisonous, and John insists they shouldn’t give him anything with caramel in it either. In the end, they scoop a tiny bit of peanut butter ice cream out of Kulap’s dairy-free tub and put it in the egg cup.

Professor Dickens sniffs it suspiciously, and then squeaks excitedly and sticks his whole head into the egg cup to eat it, coming back up with melted cream covering his face nearly to his ears.

“Alright,” Khalid says, in the tones of one making a grudging surrender. “I guess he is kind of cute.”

“Your face is kind of cute,” Kulap mutters.

“Thanks.”

“Like you didn’t already know that. What are we going to watch next, someone choose something quick.”

“I haven’t drunk enough to tolerate Ghost,” Duella says. “I brought Clueless and Doctor Caligari.”

“You know we were never going to watch that, right? German silent horror movies really aren’t the right vibe for Chinese food and movies day.”

“One day I’ll make you all watch it.”

“Is that a promise or a threat?”

“Both, obviously. Well, if we’re not watching horror movies, it’s got to be one of Megan’s horny movies.”

“They’re not horny movies. Well, Cruel Intentions is, but not the others.”

“You are so straight,” Shawn says, sounding almost impressed. “How are you so straight?”

“Too many barbies,” Bette suggests. “Uncle Nate used to say that was why Auntie Kate was gay.”

“What, too many barbies?”

“No, not enough. He thinks it’s because her parents let her play with boys' toys as a kid.”

“Yep, that’s exactly how it works,” Shawn says. “I got exactly equal amounts of boy toys and girl toys in my happy meals, so now I’m bi.”

“You’d better be writing this down, John. This is a whole research paper right here, you don’t even need college.”

“Well, that’ll save some money then.”

“You’re all dicks,” Megan says cheerfully. “I vote Cruel Intentions.”

“All in favor?” Bette counts the hands and nods. “That’s a yes.”

“Did you just implement democracy, your highness?”

“I’m a constitutional monarch. The real power is in the Senate.”

“If you’re calling the votes though, doesn’t that make you the speaker?”

“To be fair, I never said it wasn’t a corrupt democracy.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“You see,” John says. “This is the spirit of Chinese food and movies day, bringing people together.”

“And rats!”

“Alright, and rats. Bringing people and rats together.”