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English
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Published:
2025-09-13
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Eating Green

Summary:

Jazz attends a family Barbecue to meet Jason's family. As a liminal, she needs ectoplasm to survive, so brings along a water bottle full of the stuff. It'll be OK.
Right?

Work Text:

Dick liked Jason’s new girlfriend. Sure, the whole psychology major thing was a point against her, but she and Jason had been dating for a whole month now and she hadn’t shown any signs of going crazy and trying to kill them yet, so hey, nobody was perfect, and having an interest in psychology was an eccentricity the family could probably live with. This barbecue was her first time meeting the entire bat family at the same time and Dick thought she was doing an amazing job hiding how overwhelmed she was by having to make a positive first impression on the collection of chaos that Bruce had somehow collected. Of course, Jazz didn’t know that there was absolutely no pressure, since she didn’t know about the nightlife yet and therefore had no idea that they’d all more or less stalked her after the second date to make sure she wasn’t a villain and had already decided she was alright. What could he say? Lack of boundaries was practically a love language for bats!

That being said, they hadn’t looked too deep out of respect for Jason. A cursory background check seemed to show a normal civilian from a small town with poor internet access and they had tailed her just long enough to make sure she wasn’t having any midnight rendezvous with the big name Gotham rogues, but unlike some people Dick knew, Jazz Fenton actually seemed to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Jason had actually managed to find and date a completely normal civilian. Alfred was so proud. 

Dick hid a proud grin as he watched Jason squeeze her arm in reassurance. She smiled at him, taking a moment to breathe and take a sip out of her ever-present water bottle before returning to their current conversation with Tim. Dick needed to ask her where she got those water bottles from. They were the fancy kind that had a lock so that they wouldn’t leak and looked like they could probably survive the apocalypse. There was no brand name printed on it, just a plain silver water bottle with some lime green accents, and Dick hadn’t been able to find anything similar online, but Jazz apparently collected them. Jason had once said she even had a whole mini fridge of them in her apartment! Of course, when he’d said that, the group chat had immediately burst into chaos thinking she was making her own moonshine or something, but she drank it at every time of day and never acted drunk, so either it was water and she really was stone cold sober, or she held her liquor better than Constantine, which Dick was pretty sure was scientifically impossible. 

She was doing a good job at handling their family, especially considering that all of Bruce’s attempts at taming down their family for the event had backfired and somehow made things more chaotic. B had already confiscated at least three knives and a sword from Damien, who was currently trying to train Titus to fetch more from his room, but the dog was more interested in the bone he was gnawing on than the treats Damien was offering. Surprisingly, Jazz had just laughed and acted like having far too many swords was a normal thing to happen at any family barbecue. Jason must have warned her about that one and probably Cass’s ability to sneak up on anyone too, considering that Jazz hadn’t even flinched when she suddenly showed up beside her. 

Alfred watched all the chaos with a slight smile as he finished grilling the hot dogs and transferred them to a serving plate. Dick jogged over to help, barely avoiding Stephanie, who had stolen Titus’s bone and was running all over the yard with it. Titus was playfully chasing her, as was Damien, albeit his chasing was a little less playfully and more murdery. 

After Alfred finished loading the plate light with hot dogs, Dick took them and started toward the table, doing small leaps and acrobatic moves as he walked, just to show off. He pouted a bit when he realized that Jazz’s back was turned and she wasn’t even looking, even as he got closer to her. He was so busy trying to catch Jazz’s attention that he didn’t notice Stephanie run past him, or Titus right in front of his feet until it was too late. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Titus passed in front of him just as Dick went to take a step forward, making him knock into the dog and stumble forward uncontrollably. To make it worse, since he’d been looking at Jazz, he fell straight towards her and slammed into her before he managed to catch himself. The hot dogs went flying, as did Jazz’s fancy water bottle. Jazz’s eyes widened in pure panic and Dick dropped the plate to try and catch it, but it was too far away and his hands closed on air. He watched as if in slow motion as the water bottle fell to the ground, landing right on the locking mechanism and spilling its contents all over the hot dogs strewn across the grass. 

Dick had planned to make some joke and laugh it off, no use crying over spilt milk, right?

Spilt lazarus water, however, was a different story. The entire family fell eerily still and silent as they tried to process what they were seeing in front of them. Jazz’s girlfriend had access to lazarus water. And apparently a large amount of it if she had a full mini-fridge full of those water bottles. And she’d been drinking it! What in the league of assassins was going on?!

Jazz, for her part, was also staring at the spilled lazarus water in horror, “I need a knife. Now.”

Jason was the first one to blink himself out of his stupor, “What?”

“A knife.” Jazz repeated, looking around frantically, her eyes locking on Damien. “You’ve got another one, right?”

“Yes.” Damien answered slowly. “Why?”

“No time.” Jazz was becoming more frantic as the seconds ticked by. “Quickly, before they come back to life!”

A low, animalistic growl filled the air and Jazz blanched, “Too late.”

She fell into a fighting stance and Dick followed her gaze to the puddle of lazarus water and hot dogs on the ground, falling into his own fighting stance as he saw the hot dogs start to stand up. In the seconds that Dick had looked away, the hot dogs had grown beady eyes, white teeth, and spindly little arms and legs. The teeth were the most concerning. They looked sharp. 

“Damien.” Jazz didn’t look away from the rabid hot dogs. “The knife. Now.”

To his credit, Damien only hesitated a second before pulling out one of his hidden knives and tossing it toward her. She deftly caught it with all the skill of a trained vigilante and slashed down on the first of the hot dogs that had jumped up to attack, cutting them neatly in two. 

“Ow!” Dick felt a sharp pinch on his ankle and looked down to see one of the hot dogs biting into his leg. A second later, the offending hot dog was blown to bits by Jason, who’d taken out one of his guns. Thank goodness Jason had good aim. 

Dick didn’t carry his escrima sticks on him in civies, but he did carry a small taser that would probably be enough to stun the hot dogs long enough to smush them. He defended against any hot dogs that came his way, but he kept half an eye on Jazz, who was taking out twice as many hot dogs as anyone else. Her movements were fluid and obviously second nature. She must have been fighting since she was little. If it wasn’t for the whole drinking lazarus water thing, Dick would say that she’d fit right into the family. With Jazz’s help, they made quick work of the hot dogs and soon enough they were all out of breath and surrounded by minced mystery meat, but no longer being attacked, which was better than it had been five minutes ago. 

Jazz turned to them with an awkward smile that looked more like a grimace, “I don’t suppose you'll let me get away with saying that was some weird, new-fangled energy drink, would you?”

Jason raised an eyebrow, “Not a chance.”