Invited In
Jason Todd x Wife!Reader AO3 Part One Part Two
Summary: Bruce hasn't seen Jason in over a week, and he's concerned. Tracking him down, Bruce expects to find his son either dead or up to something no good. Instead, he finds Jason living happily with a family Bruce never knew he had.
Part Three
Bruce didn’t expect to see Jason for a long time.
Yet, here he was in the Batcave.
Jason, rather Red Hood, had sauntered in a little after two AM. He hadn’t said much since entering the cave, just wandering about the room as he inspected everything like he was making sure there weren’t any listening devices around.
Bruce was not about to tell Jason that there were listening devices, but only that he had access to them.
Clearing his throat, he says, “You should be at home.”
Jason takes off his helmet and shakes the sweat from his black curls. Bruce briefly pictures the black curls on the little boy who giggled just like Robin. “It’ll be fine. She knows where I am.”
He doesn’t need to ask who she is. It was you. You with your postpartum belly and kind, pitiful smile. Bruce wanted to ask you a dozen questions. For instance, how you and Jason met. Was it love at first sight? A chance meeting that bloomed into something more?
Bruce doesn’t ask. He doesn’t feel like he has the right to. Instead, he almost tells Jason to go home to his wife and kids—to put Red Hood aside for a while.
He almost laughs at the hypocrisy of the situation.
Since when had Batman ever taken a sideline in Bruce’s life? Not even dead children could keep the Dark Knight off the Gotham rooftops.
“How are you?” Bruce asks, his hand pushing back the cowl covering his face.
Jason looks caught between wanting to say nothing and desperately wondering how to answer. Bruce watches as the boy continues to walk about, not really checking for anything anymore. It’s like he’s moving just to move, and there’s an obvious sluggishness to him.
Tossing the helmet lightly between his hands, Jason finally says, “Fine. A bit more tired than usual.”
Bruce has never had a newborn, so he can’t say he understands. He can imagine it, though. The pathetic cries cutting through the night, the lack of sleep—the constant neediness that a newborn comes with. A small part of him wishes he’d asked to hold the infant in that pink baby bouncer two weeks ago, just so he could see what it was like to hold something so fragile and precious.
To hold a piece of his son.
As Jason stops to check his phone, Bruce wonders what Jason is like as a father. In the half hour he was at your apartment, Bruce saw a man who loved his wife and children so deeply that there weren’t words yet invented to describe it.
But, love wasn’t always enough, Bruce would know. He loved Jason more than the air he breathed, but no matter how many times he said those three words, Bruce couldn’t do more than that. He couldn’t stop being Batman, or kill the Joker, or even stop seeing Red Hood as the mob boss that he was.
“How are the—”
“Don’t talk about them,” Jason says, voice hard. Bruce turns in his chair, looking towards the boy, and sees him standing straight, looking ready to fight. He loves his family enough to protect them from Batman. “Not here. Never here.”
“Okay,” Bruce replies slowly, like he’s trying not to scare off a cat. He turns his chair fully around on its swivel, and his hands link together in his lap. “Are you staying long?”
Jason smirks a bit and scoffs, “What? Want me to leave?”
“No,” Bruce says a bit too fast. “Not at all. I thought…Are you hungry? Alfred made some dinner, and we could eat upstairs.”
Jason stares at him, trying to determine if the question is a trap or if it’s genuine. Bruce can’t help but feel that’s a bit his fault.
“Really,” Bruce insists, standing now. Jason takes half a step back, and so does Bruce, bumping into his chair.
“I don’t want his food,” Jason says. “I’m not hungry. I don’t want to talk. I just came to pick up the case file you promised me.”
Bruce sits back down and sighs, swinging his chair around. Oh, yes, that file. The file on informants for Roman Sionis. Batman had made Red Hood swear not to kill anyone on the list, and Jason had been playing nice, so he relented. Bruce wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the informants did show up dead, either due to Red Hood or Black Mask.
Bruce cleared his throat. “Well, if you’re not doing anything this weekend, I was wondering if you’d like to—”
“Jason!” Dick’s voice echoes through the cave as he descends the stairs from the secret entrance. He’s still clad in his Nightwing suit, but his domino mask is gone. “Where have you been?”
Bruce turns and stares at Jason, who stares right back, his face serious. Dick sits in the other chair at the computer, catching the look between father and son. Subtly, he observes the quiet interaction in an attempt to dissect whatever is going on.
Jason notices and turns away, causing Dick to put on an amusing smile. “Uh-oh, did you do something to get in trouble again?”
Bruce knows his eldest isn’t asking to tease, but to get more information. When neither of them answers, it’s more telling than anything. Now, Dick knows there is something deeper going on, no doubt.
“What’s going on?” His voice is filled more with alarm now.
“I need the file,” Jason says again, keeping his gaze focused on Batman. “Then, I’m out of here.”
Dick scoffs, standing suddenly. “We don’t see you for a month, and you come in here with a demand—without saying anything about your disappearance?”
Bruce gets to work on printing the file. There’s a fight brewing, and the last thing he wants is to drive Jason away again.
“Where have you been?” Dick asks again.
“Busy,” Jay replies.
With his family, Bruce thinks. The one he didn’t tell us about.
“Doing what?”
Jason looks down at his older brother, a frown obvious on his face. The air feels thick and intense suddenly. A fight will explode before Jay mentions anything about his family, and Bruce can’t blame him. Jason had done nothing more than come in with a simple request, and suddenly, he was under a spotlight being interrogated.
“Why the fuck do you care?”
“‘Cause when you go fucking around, it comes back on us,” Dick says. Because obviously, he couldn’t have been doing anything good. “If you were—”
“I wasn’t,” Jason says, tone cool. He’s trying his best to keep his temper under control, but it’s obvious it’s waning. There’s a faint blush on Jason’s cheeks, and his mouth is pressed tight.
“Whatever, little wing,” Dick relents, throwing his hands up in surrender. Fortunately, Jason doesn’t take the bait. Bruce slips the papers into a manila folder, ready to end whatever is about to start.
“Here’s your list.” He stands with a grunt, holding the folder out.
Jason takes it quickly and puts his helmet back on. He takes a couple of steps towards the exit before he stops. Bruce watches as Jason battles with whatever thought is plaguing him for a minute before he turns back around.
“Bruce, don’t come by uninvited again.”
With that, Jason leaves. —
You’re awake when Jason gets home, and he’s not surprised.
Since your daughter was born, both your sleep schedules have been out of whack. It wasn’t like she was a particularly colicky baby, but, like any infant, she needed to eat on a near hour-by-hour basis, or else she’d break into a shrieking cry. And, the last thing you both needed was an angry toddler.
With your back against the headboard, you’re in nothing but a pair of underwear, your shirt discarded somewhere so you could more easily nurse the baby. Around Jason, you were never self-conscious—Especially after he’d seen you push out two of his kids and still called you the prettiest woman in the world. Jason begins to strip, though he pauses to kiss you.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he says to you. Then he presses a kiss to your daughter’s head. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“How was your night?” You ask, words running together as they slurred with sleep.
“Uneventful. Mostly. Went by the manor.”
You cock an eyebrow, but don’t say anything more. Jason knew you knew that Bruce, his family, and the manor itself were a touchy subject that he’d either divulge in or shut down. As Jason pulls on an oversized shirt and a fresh pair of boxers, he lets out a long, exhausted sigh.
“Bruce was…” Jason tries to think of the word. “Desperate? To do something with us.”
“And?” You ask, shifting the baby a little in your arms. Your daughter is suckling softly, not disturbed by the movement at all. It’s a little wonder she’s chubby.
“And nothing. I told him to stop bringing it up—to stop bringing you guys up.”
“You actually think he will?”
There’s a sound of disbelief in your voice, a knowing disbelief that leaves Jason amused. Even after meeting Bruce once, you already know he’s the kind of man who won’t stop.
With a sigh, he crawls into bed next to you, settling on his stomach and hugging the soft pillow close to his face. Jason lies there for a minute, just sinking into the feeling of being home. The feel of your warm skin pressed against his leg, the baby that’s cooing softly as she eats, and even your humming, off tune as it is, drag him back from the cave.
After a minute of just listening, he manages to fall back into dad mode. Jason pushes himself to sit up, rubbing the exhaustion away from his eyes. “Alright, give her here. Get some sleep.”
You push away the hand that’s already wrapping around your daughter’s back. “Stop. I’m about to put her down; she’s drifting off anyway.”
Jason knows better than to fight with you, so he stops. He watches as you detach yourself from the baby, cradling her against your chest as you carefully walk her over to the bassinet two feet away. After you settle her down, you slink over to the bed and sink into it with a quiet sigh.
“Tell me more about your night,” you mumble against the pillow.
Jason falls back onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. His other hand reaches out and rubs a soothing line up and down your spine. You make a noise that’s between a moan and a gratified hum; nonetheless, it lets Jason know he’s doing something right.
“You’re gonna fall asleep, babe,” he says softly.
You don’t have the energy to lie. “Yeah, but tell me anyway. I like hearing your voice.”
That gives a subtle boost to Jason’s attitude that he didn’t know he needed. Pressing a kiss to the back of your head, he relents to your request.
“It started fine. The usual. It’s the manor visit that’s bothering me most.”
“Don’t be bothered by it. Imagine if you found out your kid had a secret family,” you slur, already being pulled in deeper by sleep. “Wouldn’t you wanna know everything?”
Jason lay there with that for a minute, thinking how’d he react if he was in Bruce’s shoes—which would never happen because, as far as Jason was concerned, his kids would never don a mask or ever get near the Joker. He’d never doubt his kids or call them criminals, because they’d be good and sweet like you. Like he used to be.
“Sure, but I wouldn’t treat our kids like he’s treated me.”
Jason doesn’t even believe himself when the words come out of his mouth. He wants to pull Bruce in yet push him as far as he can at the same time.
“No, and thank goodness for that,” you say, reaching up and laying a hand on his chest. “Whatever you decide, Jason, I’m here for you.”
“What would you do?” Jason asks. He knows he shouldn’t, because it’s an unfair question, but he’s genuinely so lost.
You sigh and open your eyes, finally. “I’d make him work for it.”
“Work for it?”
“Yeah, I mean—I’d make him show if he was gonna be better, if not for me, at the very least my kids.”
Jason sits on that for a second. There’s a bitter sweetness to the idea. He may not have been good enough, but his children were. The kids were good. Bruce could be good to them.
“What about Batman?” Jason whispers, not really to you but to the universe.
You move closer, pressing your body against his. Jason latches onto you, his arms go around your middle, and hauls you closer—almost to the point where you’re lying completely on him. He needs your weight to ward off the anxiety crawling around in his chest.
“Give him an ultimatum. He can just be Bruce and be around the kids, no Batman, or he can be content not being in the kids’ lives.” After a second of silence. “My kids won’t be superheroes, Jason.”
Jason holds you tighter. “They won’t be. I promise.”
