the one thing my latest fic is doing right now is making me really like the utilisation of Drake Manor after Tim is adopted by Bruce. like, if we have Tim’s parents dying before they go broke, then Drake Manor is just… sitting empty. waiting for tenants.
and i’m just saying a fresh-from-the-league Jason Todd is a perfect tenant. i want him to use his crime lord earnings to buy Drake Manor from Tim and start living next door Specifically to piss off Bruce. he is going to be the worst neighbour ever. he’s gonna call the police on Bruce on a random Tuesday night to complain about noise despite being half a fucking mile away. he’s gonna grow trees and shrubs encroaching on the edge of Wayne property. he’s gonna declare himself head of the bristol homeowners association and send passive aggressive letters about how the gates to Wayne Manor break some kind of height code by precisely half an inch. he’s gonna be the worst.
even funnier is if Bruce absolutely does not know the Red Hood’s identity. he has no idea Jason is his neighbour and Tim is absolutely not telling him because seeing Bruce’s patience with their new neighbour crumble over the course of six months has been the best entertainment since that one time he went to the circus and saw some acrobats. when asked who he sold the manor to he just has to be all vague, like ‘just some regular single dad and his son, idk.’
the son is Damian. Damian has absolutely no fucking clue what the point of him coming to Gotham was if Jason wasn’t even going to introduce him to his biological father, but Drake Manor has a pool and for the first time in his life he’s living a life that doesn’t include getting up at the crack of dawn for training or ridiculous pressure to succeed stemming from bloodlines and birthright, so you know what? he’s fine with it. he’s living his best life. life would be a fucking vacation if Jason hadn’t signed him up for school and demanded he do ‘normal children stuff’.
basically i just want suburban single dad Jason moving him and Damian into the manor next door and only Tim knowing they’re there. i want Damian being Tim’s ‘school friend from next door that sometimes comes round for school projects and happens to look remarkably like Bruce’, and i want Jason to be living his best suburbia life while being able to piss Bruce off both at home and on patrol.
eventually Bruce decides to just be neighbourly and convinces Damian to invite his ‘dad’ to the next Wayne Gala. Jason absolutely is going to attend, even if it fucks up his secret identity, and he is absolutely going to be telling an already shell-shocked Bruce that Damian’s mother is Talia Al Ghul, juuuuust to see what happens when Bruce is forced to assume his presumed-dead son is actually somehow alive and the father of his ex’s child. all while in public at a civilian gala.
