An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: DCU (Comics), Batman (Comics) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Alfred Pennyworth, Stephanie Brown, Hal Jordan, Clark Kent Additional Tags: Metahumans, Metahuman Dick Grayson, Metahuman Jason Todd, Metahuman Tim Drake, Metahuman Damian Wayne, Metahuman Cassandra Cain, Betrayal, Family Secrets, Angst, Bruce Wayne Has Issues, bruce done did a fuck up, Stress, Kidnapping, electric shock, Open Ending, Batfam Week, Batfam Week 2020 Series: Part 1 of Batfam Week 2020 Summary: Looking back, the signs are all there. But they never noticed it about themselves. They never noticed how Bruce did.
PLEASE mind the tags. This one’s massively underage.
626. in your blind spot (DCU: JayDick, 5k, E!)
Tags: Extremely underage noncon, creepy Jay, Batkids age reversal, noncon spanking, mention of murder, anal fingering, painful anal sex, loss of virginity, implied past sexual abuse, did i mention dark?
Summary: The plan is simple: slip in, play with Dickie's head, slip out. Little did he expect the runt to have witnessed something he shouldn't have.
Silver moonlight bleaches Dickie's face white as the pillow it lies on. He's restless, his expression strained, and quiet whimpers tumble from his lips. He tries to keep them inside with his fist pressed against his mouth, but some escape anyway. Some even bear the shape of Dickie's nickname for Jason.
(Read more on AO3.)
Written for Day 4 “Robins / Reverse Batfam AU” at @official-batfam-week.
When all the guests had left, Bruce brought out the old record player and danced with his kids to songs from the 50s. Some favorites include Beyond the Sea (Bobby Darin), Hound Dog (Elvis Presley), At the Hop (Danny & the Juniors), Sh-Boom (The Chords), and Rockin’ Robin (Bobby Day)!
It starts with a casual comment, one that shouldn’t bother him so much. And it doesn’t. Not right away.
“You don’t have any photo on your desk”, the new girl says. She started working at WE two weeks ago and Tim thinks her name is Kathy, or July, or something like that. He’ll pick it up eventually. Now he just blinks up at her from behind the pile of reports he’s working on.
“Sorry?”
She bits her bottom lip, now looking embarrassed at her own straightforwardness, and vaguely gestures at his desk again.
“No photos”, she repeats. “People usually have photos on their desk. Family. Girlfriends or boyfriends. You know?”
Family, girlfriends, boyfriends. Yes, Tim knows.
“Well”, he smiles politely. “I’m just trying not to look like I’m fifty and live only for my work, to the point to spend all my time in my office and need photographic reminders of what my family looks like.”
Kathy or July or something like that frowns at him.
“Beside, my family is really ugly”, Tim continues, going for less subtle sarcasm, but the joke doesn’t really comes out his mouth as a joke, and KathyJulySomethingLikeThat looks more confused than before.
“Mister Wayne Senior is not ugly”, she argues.
Tim doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or scoff at that.
“No, Bruce is not ugly, I suppose.”
“And he has a lot of framed photos on his desk”, KathyJulySomethingLikeThat points out.
“That he does”, Tim agrees weakly and there must be something in his voice, an undertone of, what?, bitter irony or hidden resentment, something Tim’s too tired to keep in check and away from other to see, and the result is that they look uncomfortably at each other for a moment and then the girl blushes.
“My apologies, Mister Wayne”, she says. “I didn’t mean to-”
“Tim. And don’t- it’s okay, really”, Tim sighs. “You do have a point, Kathy.”
“My name’s Ju-”
“July, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Jude”, the girls finishes.
“Right. Jude. Uh”, Tim feels like he’s blushing too, now. “Great talk, Jude. I hope you like working here.”
“I’d say so”, Jude agrees, settling a box full of documents against her hip to open the door of Tim’s office. “I’ve been working here for two years now.”
Tim doesn’t know how to answer to that so he just buries his face behind a ledger and wishes to never meet her again.
*
He forgets about the awkward conversation for a couple of days, until he comes back to his office and cleans out the last pile of documents waiting for his signature.
That’s when he finds out that they now bothers him, the empty corners of his desk.
He stares at it in its entirety: files folder and memo holders, laptop and mouse pad perfectly aligned, dozens of different pens stashed in their pen pots depending on their color, the gold plate with his name engraved in it in elegant cursive and… well, nothing else without the skyscrapers of pending work.
Tim’s never had a desk so organized before in his entire life. He supposes that it marries well with his professional image, and yet it still bothers him to no end.
Also, he used to love photography. Having pictures all around like little windows on the past, familiar faces keeping him company during long nights and exhausting days. When did he lost that? When did he start to have empty corners and empty walls?
Probably when you started losing people to fill them with, he answers to himself, then shakes his head.
He asks for all the review files of their new acquisitions to be brought into his office. It’s basically half of the current year archive, enough stuff to keep an entire department busy for a month. He dismisses his secretary’s frown at the dozens of boxes now decorating his office with a tired smile.
*
The next week he’s already breaking even with the work, so he brings a photo of Stephanie for a test drive.
She’s not doing anything particular in it, just fixing her hair with one hand, barely smiling, looking like she’s a million light years away, but it’s still one of Tim’s favorite. And it’s nice to have it there. Really nice.
He keeps it.
*
He tries adding a photo of his parents on their wedding day. Has to take it off right away and hide it in the bottom drawer. It still hurts too much.
*
With Kon he doesn’t even bother to try. He has dozens of photos of him and he never even looks at them, only smiles at their memory. No way he could bear to have that painful reminder framed and displayed on his desk like that.
Beside, most of them are not appropriate to be shown in a professional environment anyway.
*
Stephanie sends him a photo of her and Cass wearing ridiculous crazy hats and laughing like mad women, and Tim smiles, prints it and adds it to his desk without thinking too much about it.
Now he has two photos of his girlfriend and one of his sister, and it feels right. Normal-right. Enough not to make him look like a sociopath to his coworkers, at least.
*
A few days later he tries again with a second set of parents. He says to himself that it’s out of obligation and not much else. Bruce and Alfred stare at him with a serious but not unkind look, and a younger version of himself smiles at Tim from his spot in the middle of them. It’s what it used to look like, long, long time ago, when Dick was often too busy for them and Jason and Damian were both still hidden threats.
He brushes the glass with his fingertips, ready to put that one away too, but in the end he doesn’t. This hurts too, but it’s a different kind of hurt, one he can bear to look at. One that he learned to live with.
*
He debates with himself about his brothers. They’re visibly missing now, but Tim has mixed feelings about it, to use an euphemism.
Also, he discovers straightaway that he doesn’t have any photo of them. The gallery of his phone is full of memes and snapchat’s photo from his friends, Stephanie and Cass, but not much else. So, even if he’s still dubious about it, he does the only sensible thing he can think about: he hacks Dick’s phone.
And Dick doesn’t fail him, for once. There are so many half-naked selfies of him that Tim could assemble three or four numbers of a new porn magazine out of them. Which sounds like a great revenge plan, if he’d ever need one. Dick better not piss him off too badly.
But looking at the photos, Tim finds himself smiling for a reason that totally has something to do with how much he used to love this man, his first and only brother for so many years. Not that Tim doesn’t love him still, but he just doesn’t remember how it feels like, to look at Dick and feel only amazement and affection, instead of the bittersweet mix of anger and nostalgia he feels now.
Lots of Dick’s selfies include Damian too. Obviously. And the brat always looks annoyed or exasperated in them, but Tim knows better. He can see the little twitches at the corners of Damian’s mouth, the soft arch of his eyebrows like he’s really trying for a scowl but can’t feel it, no matter how hard he tries. It’s... cute. It’s also weird as hell to see, because surely enough Tim’s never had one of those soft expressions ever thrown his way. That’s why, in the end, he decides to add one of those photos to his ever-growing collection: it’s not too bad to remind himself that Damian’s changed too.
Another reason, Tim acknowledges while fixing the last framed picture closer to the Bruce and Alfred’s one, is that it’s difficult for him to think of one without the other. And strangely, that doesn’t hurt as much as it used too.
*
Adding Jason is now a question of integrity.
Dick’s photos of him are all meant to be blackmail material, so Tim has no use for them. And the photo Tim himself has of Jason date back to a time none of them like to remember, even if for different reasons.
And it’s still stupid, but it’s also a project, now. One that Tim’s liking because he’s doing it for himself, even if it didn’t start that way. So one night after patrol, when they’re hanging out in their civvies in Jason’s apartment, drinking beers and playing video games, Tim just takes his phone out of his pocket and gestures for Jason to get closer.
“What?”, his brother asks, tilting his head to get a look at what Tim’s doing, and when he sees him open the camera app, flip it and hold the phone as far away for them he gives Tim an incredulous look.
“Are you serious now?”, he asks again.
Tim only shrugs.
“It’s what cool kids do nowadays, didn’t you know?”
“Tim, you’re not a cool kid.”
“Neither are you, Jason.”
“Excuse you, you are the one begging to do a selfie with me”, Jason taunts him, but his grin is more full of fondness than mockery.
“I’m not begging”, Tim retorts. Just shut up and try not to look too emo.”
He pays the photo with a cuff on the back of his head and twenty more minutes of teasing. Overall is not too high of a price.
*
“You’re running out of space here”, a known voice says, and Tim looks up in time to spot the smile on the new girl’s face. Jude, he remembers to himself. And she’s not new.
“My family takes up a lot of space”, he agrees, shifting his gaze from her to the collection of framed photos in front of him. There are at least ten now, standing on his desk. Barbara, Duke, Harper, Titus… they are all there now. Turns out that once you start, it’s difficult to stop. The walls are getting crowded too.
Most of the new photos Tim took by himself, and nobody protested his renewed interest in photography. Well, he had to pay Damian in photos of his pets in order to make him not smash his camera, but even that wasn’t so bad in the end (and Damian’s pet are better behaved than Damian himself anyway, so win-win).
“Can I?”, Jude asks and Tim nods at her with half a smile. The girl steps around the desk to get a better look, and she’s silent for a few minutes, examining the pictures one by one.
“I have to say that they’re not ugly at all”, she comments eventually. “You actually look like a family of super models.”
“That’s what we do at night”, Tim agrees solemnly, finding it very difficult to suppress a laugh. “Just don’t go tell it to anyone, okay?”
Description: Batfam week day 7: Father’s day. Damian doesn’t know what father’s day is, so there is only one person to ask…because there is only one persona wake.
Note: This is the last day of Batfam week! But, I’m having fun, so I’m still accepting requests. Please feel free to send them my way!
“Damian…I have an alarm clock,” Tim said, his face pressed into his pillow. He slowly rolled over to see the kid perched on his bed frame like an actual bird. Tim wished this was the first time he had woke up like this since the kid came to stay. At least he no longer worried about seeing a knife in that little hand. “You don’t have to wake me up?”
“I learned from the truly appalling number of commercials that today is a holiday known as Father’s Day. Explain.”
Tim sat up, rubbing his eyes. “So…couldn’t get in touch with Dick, could you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s early in the morning, why would I wake up Grayson?”
The older Robin glared but shook his head. He sat up. “Okay…so, what is Father’s Day? Basically, it’s an overblown commercial holiday meant for people in happy family’s to brag obnoxiously about their father while people with more complicated feelings are guilted into buying cards with vague sentiments.” Tim paused when he saw Damian’s narrowed eyes.
“You’re the one being obnoxious at the moment, Drake.”
Tim sighed, “Look, it’s just about appreciating your Father. It’s all in the name, really.”
Damian frowned, silent for a moment. “What does our family do?”
“Oh no, no, we Wayne’s don’t do Father’s Day.”
“Why?”
“Well, because Dick, Jason, and Bruce lost their fathers and my father is…” Tim paused, considering how to explain to the pint-sized assassin the complicated nature of his biological family. “…is fine.” He shook his head, “So Jay, Dick, and Bruce spend the day brooding and we all go about our day collectively pretending we have developed cultural amnesia about what day it is.”
“That sounds…”
“Painfully repressed and deeply unhealthy? Welcome to the Wayne family.” Tim laid back down and rolled over, expecting Damian to just leave. Instead, he received a poke of Damian’s boot against his back. Tim groaned. “What?” he asked, sitting up again.
“We’re not doing that this year.” Damian raised his fist, a familiar look of determination in his eyes. “We’re going to go make four cakes…” Damian put up a hand, “With Alfred’s help. We’re going to give one to Father, one to Grayson, and one to Todd with nothing on it. Why can’t we both not acknowledge what day it is and still do something? Then the fourth cake we will decorate and give to Alfred because there no reason he should suffer because his family is this traumatized.”
“Jay and Dick aren’t fathers…”
“No, but they are sad,” Damian said.
“You spend too much time with Alfred…”
“You aren’t saying no.”
Tim smiled, slightly, “I’m not.”
“Come on, Drake. It is up to us because we are not adults and thus we still have a chance of breaking old habits unlike the others, who are far too old.”
Tim smirked, “I like this better already.” He stood up. “Come on, Dami. The Robins have a mission.”
“Damian, what are you doing?” Bruce asked, wading through the pool of cloth that was surrounding his youngest.
“Tt. I am sewing, Father.”
“Don’t you *tt* at me,” Bruce seethed. “What are you sewing?”
“A costume for myself.” Damian stood up and guided his father to a chair, sat him down, and then climbed onto his lap and took Bruce’s face in his hands. “I want you to listen to me, Father. I am making my costume for when I shall pass on the mantle of Robin and adopt another identity.”
“Huh?”
“It is tradition to adopt another persona before finally stepping into the shoes of Batman. Grayson did it, and practically everyone else has their own superhero identities. I am getting on in age, Father - I am ten years old now. It is high time that I started planning for my future.”
Bruce held back the biggest grin throughout Damian’s speech, and adopted a faux serious expression to address him. “I see. Which persona will you choose?”
Damian held up a black, skin tight outfit with blue highlights that was clearly inspired by Wayne Manor’s resident sentimental blob. “I shall be the second Nightwing, and I will strike fear into the shriveled hearts of evildoers in my city!”
Bruce sat, shaking with silent mirth at Damian’s new identity. He pursed his lips and forced himself looked suitably sad. “Oh, I see. Very well, Damian,” he sighed theatrically, “I will let you go. I’ll have to just fly solo from now on. No Robin, no son, no…” Bruce trailed off sadly and stared into space. “I’ll be fine. It’s just…I thought that I would have a son who wanted to be with me for longer. But I guess I’m just going to have to get used to the fact that I’ll have to patrol alone now. All alone in Gotham, with no partner, no one to watch my back…oh well.”
Damian’s eyes widened until they looked more like coins and shook his head violently. “No father! I didn’t think of that! I can’t simply leave you all alone; after all, you are getting older-”
“Hey, now-”
“-and I cannot trust your deteriorating senses. No, I will stay with you until you inevitably get another child. What with Drake and Todd being virile males, and your compulsion to pick children up off the streets, it shouldn’t be that long, another three to four years at most-”
“It’s not a compulsion, that just makes it sound wrong-”
“-yes, yes, I see now what must be done. Don’t worry, Father, I won’t go anywhere,” Damian said, patting Bruce’s cheek tenderly. “I will find Todd or Drake and tell them to find potential children, either for you or for themselves to adopt. Don’t hassle yourself,” Damian said decisively, jogging out of the cave.
“What about Dick?”
Damian looked at Bruce like he had lost his mind. “Grayson will not be having any more children, not until I’m through with him. That will be for another eight years, and after that, he will be so fulfilled, he won’t want another.”
Bruce sat in his chair, slightly disturbed, as Damian ran out of the cave, yelling for Jason and Tim to gather quickly, as he had life changing plans for them.
————
“Bruce, why as Damian being leaving these pamphlets on my desk?” Tim asked tensely, smacking a stack of papers on Bruce’s desk.
Bruce picked one up and read, “Your Life with Children - Find Fulfillment in Adopting a Child and Embracing Motherhood,” Bruce muffled a laugh and laid down the pamphlet. “I guess Damian really wants to be an uncle.”
“Bruce!” Jason stormed into Bruce’s office, dragging a small, squeaking, redhead behind him. “What is this!?” He cried, pointing at little Colin Wilkes, who was looking adoringly at Jason.
“Damian said that you were gonna to adopt me, Mr. Hood,” Colin said in awe of the gun toting anti hero.
Bruce groaned and slapped a hand down his face. “Damian!” He roared. “Get in here now!”
Damian slunk in and stood next to Colin and nodded approvingly. “Ah, good, Colin’s adoption has been competed. Colin, from this day forward, I am your uncle. We will, of course, remain best friends forever.”
“Damian, you can’t decide who Jason decides to adopt, and even if he wants to adopt. He’s legally dead, for Gotham’s sake! Who let this happen?”
“Jason Todd may not be able to adopt, but my older brother Mason Podd, accountant at Wayne Enterprises certainly can. The press will easily accept that you’ve gone and adopted another child, Father, this will easily pass scrutiny. Now, Colin can begin training as Robin, and I will slowly transition into the role of Nightwing II.”
Jason and Tim gaped at the declaration while Bruce sat stunned. Colin looked as pleased as punch, and hugged Jason’s leg. “I’m going to get a family! This is so cool!”
Jason cleared his threat and looked pointedly at Damian. “Ok, let’s get something very clear. No kid of mine is going to be fucking Robin,” he said, glaring. “I don’t want Bruce giving them any ideas, like righteousness and shit. Any kids I have are going to be trained by me.”
“I’m not an adult yet, so I can’t adopt,” Tim chimed in.
“You can procreate and produce a child, can’t you?” Damian asked vehemently.
Tim shook his head. “Naw. I’m sterile.”
Bruce looked shocked at this information. “What?”
“When I rescued you from that time warp thing, the radiation basically killed my nads,” Tim shrugged. “I’m testing whether I got any meta powers from the radiation of time and space. So far, tests look promising.” Bruce looked apoplectic, and Tim continued. “That means that Damian can’t have anymore paternal siblings, because I’m pretty sure that you’re sterile too, Bruce. You didn’t even test positive for a meta gene, so you suck double now.”
Bruce glared at Tim and then at his own feeble testes. He was Batman, he should have been able to withstand a little radiation from the fabric of time and space, damnit! “You’re not a meta.”
“But I might get cool powers!”
“No.”
“Bruce, you’re so-”
“Silence!” Damian cried. “Cease your useless banter! It matters not that father cannot have another child of his loins! I told you that Colin will train to replace me, and I shall become the second Nightwing!”
Bruce looked at his tiny, seething, son, and picked him up. “What if I don’t want you to?” He asked.
Damian stopped flailing and looked up at Bruce in shock. “W-what?”
“I want you to be my Robin,” Bruce said softly. “Me and my little boy soaking across Gotham, watching each other’s backs and fighting crime together - that’s what I always thought we would do.”
Damian frowned. “But if I do not become Nightwing, how can I become Batman? The day is not far off when you will be too decrepit and old to carry the mantle-”
“Hey-”
“-which means that Grayson will take over. That means that I have to become Nightwing, and after Grayson retires, I have to be Batman.”
Bruce looked down at Damian and burst out laughing. “Being Nightwing isn’t a prerequisite to being Batman,” he laughed. “Dick was the ideal candidate at the time, but he hates the cowl. He just indulges his old father too much, bless him,” Bruce said with a smile. “Any one of my chidlren can take on the mantle if they so choose. Jason-“
“Hell no,” Jason scoffed. “I ain’t touching that suit. It’s probably got Bruce cooties on it.”
“Bruties,” Tims supplied helpfully, high fiving Jason.
Bruce silenced his sons with a glare. “Or Tim…”
“No thanks, I’m good,” Tim mumbled. “Angst isn’t a good look for me. I like a bit of colour in my outfits. You look like a smudge every night, B. It’s not a good look,” he informed his father.
“Fine, then, Cassandra!” Bruce decided. At that moment, his phone pinged. He opened up a new message from his daughter to a text that simply said, “No.” Bruce flung his phone down and looked at Damian. “What I mean is, you can be Batman if you can handle the weight of the cowl.”
Damian sat up straighter on Bruce’s lap, and looked him in the eye. “I will. I will follow in your footsteps and take over the cowl when my time comes, Father. I will make you proud!”
Bruce smiled down his son and ruffled his hair. “That’s my boy.”
———–
“Am I still being adopted?”
Jason looked incredulously at the small red headed child that had followed him home and sighed. “Kid, I’m nineteen, I ain’t adopting no one. Tim can fudge some paperwork and you can be my ward, if you really want to.”
Colin beamed at his new guardian. This was going to be the start of a wonderful new era.
