prodigaljaybird | (no subject)

It's been two weeks since Lux gave him the news. Two whole weeks, and Jason's been able to think of little else, all his thoughts consumed with what might be. He thinks, after a lot of deliberation, that he hopes it's a girl. A boy would be great, too, and Jason would love a little boy with equal fervor, but when he looks at Lux, with her soft hair and her beautiful blue eyes, he just. He can't stop thinking about how beautiful her daughter would be, with all of Lux's kindness, and maybe some of Jason's energy.

Either way, the kid willl be a handful. He's learned that much sneaking books from the shelf, about what to expect when expecting and afterwards, what babies need, what toddlers need. Holy shit, Jason can't wait for when the baby can talk, he's going to do nothing but read it stories, the kind he always wished his own mom had had time to read. Make it sandwiches with the crusts cut off like Alfred made. Tell it things, everything, the way everyone always refuses to do for him. This baby will want for nothing, the truth least of all.

And clothes. Surveying the pile he's secreted away in his old cave, Jason thinks he might've taken too many babyclothes from the box, but that's all it will give him.

With an inward shrug, Jason deposits his latest finds - a bib that reads #1 Baby and a onesie that proclaims Jason the greatest father in the world - and exits the caves quickly, startling to see a familiar face as he emerges.

"Oh," he says, pausing, but he brightens. "Hey!"

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Tim's brows lift, face betraying none of the satisfaction that comes with catching Jason off-guard. The longer they stay here, he thinks, the easier that's going to become, maybe for both of them.

The thought shouldn't disappoint him.

"Are you still sleeping in there," he asks, disappointment smothered with concern. Sleeping at Bucky's might not be that easy anymore, but between Tim and Lux, Jason should have nicer places to crash.

"N'aw, got used to a bed," says Jason, pushing his hand through his hair with a grin. It's still pale compared to the other one, but it looks better every day, the sun browning what the cast had hidden for long and irritating weeks.

"And Bucky's girlfriend got her own place, so there's no reason to leave. I just like having somewhere my own sometimes." Issues aside, Bruce had plenty of good ideas mixed in with his bad ones, the Batcave included.

"I never could figure out if that was a teenager thing or a Bat thing." It certainly wasn't something Dick or Bruce had grown out of, but consideration of their psychological profiles only further muddies the evidence.

"Your mood seems pretty good for someone who wants to be alone, though."

"I don't want to be alone," Jason replies, "Just need somewhere to put things." Tim might have a point, Jason is certainly in the throes of a teenage need to secret things away, but Bucky and Natalia are both spies. He can't exactly stuff things under his mattress and get away with it.

Recalling what's behind him in the cave, Jason stands there a moment longer, beaming at Tim. "Wanna see?"

"Sure," he says, brow raised skeptically. There's a lump in his throat, one he's sure is misplaced even after the last experience he had in one of Jason's hideouts, but it's all the more reason to check. With Jason, there's equal likelihood that he's stockpiling explosives or cake. A higher likelihood that it's both.

Or...or it could be baby clothes. For a moment Tim just blinks, then accepts that what he's seeing is really what he's seeing, and his gaze slides sideways to Jason. "So...are congratulations in order, or have you guys just decided to try?"

"We didn't try," says Jason, kneeling by the pile to fish out his favorite onesie. In reds and greens, it's probably meant to evoke Christmas, but Jason just sees the uniform. "It just happened. Check this one out!" He pushes the tiny garment into Tim's hand, a smile tugging nervously at the edges of his mouth.

"It's pretty awesome though, right?"

Tim sucks in a breath through his teeth, holding it a moment while he resists the urge to whistle, then fails. He takes the onesie with a raised brow, the colors not even sinking in yet. When they do, his expression just flattens, then stretches into a frown. Awesome is definitely not the word he wants to use right now.

"Somehow I doubt Lux is this excited about it," he says, stretching the fabric between his hands and staring down at it.

Jason's smile fades. "She thinks her dad will hate her," he says, and he'd been terrified of that, too, but then he calmed down and thought about it. "He won't, though." Who could hate Lux?

"So she doesn't want to tell anybody yet. It's gonna be obvious though," he adds, kneeling to dig through the clothes pile with a shrug. "Eventually."

He's quiet for a while after, sorting needlessly through the onesies and bibs, the tiny socks that do something funny to his heart. "I never even had brothers or sisters. I've hardly been around babies. But I'm gonna figure it out."

"Did you ever think it was weird," he says, still holding the little red and green onesie, so like the original uniform. Just add a yellow cape and some gauntlets, a pair of pixie boots. Dick would like it. Dick would probably be happier about it, know how to just be happy, and reflect Jason's enthusiasm back at him until it became necessary to do anything else. "That we were all only children? Knowing him, it was probably intentional."

Hero-worship, maybe even love, didn't stop him from knowing just how manipulative their mentor was. Dick could reflect Jason's happiness back at him, but he thinks Jason's the only one of them who could be this genuinely happy about it. Who won't carry too much of Bruce over into this kid's life. "I think you'll do fine."

"We didn't have anything," he says, repeating something it'd taken Talia's prompting to make him realize. "Just him. He could control us." Not Tim, though, Tim had a family, did, at least, when he started out.

"It'll be yours, too," he says, looking up. "Your family. You're my brother, you're its uncle."

She's out for a walk, headed nowhere in particular when she nearly runs into Jason. She hadn't been planning on going into the caves herself-- not alone, anyway-- but sometimes she likes to walk near them, to imagine that somehow they'll become some kind of way home. It may be a bit silly, but really, it's just as likely as the stage taking her back, or a wardrobe, or a pair of ruby slippers.

What she doesn't expect today is for Jason to come quickly walking out of them.

"Jason," she says, a bit startled, a bit sad to have her illusion shattered, but glad to see him, nonetheless, "Hi."

"Hey," he says, already smiling, but he brightens even further at the sight of Grace. However the rest of that day might have gone, he remembers his first party with an intense fondness, all the moreso for the friend who made it happen. "What are you doing all the way out here?"

"Oh, you know... just wandering," Grace replies, thought it's only part of the truth. She would feel a bit silly admitting why she's really standing near the mouth of one of the island's caves.

"Even the compound can get a bit boring; just going there day after day, I suppose."

"Totally," agrees Jason, because he can remember that feeling, right up to the point that Lux got knocked up and everything went insane. Now he goes to the Compound for clothes, for baby...things and books to tell him what those might be, for forgotten strollers and playpens and anything else he can get his hands on.

"Do you know anything about babies?" he asks, motioning her forward to the mouth of the cave.