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Excelsior

Chapter 4

Notes:

Last one!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

He managed to get down to the kitchen, which was more difficult than it should have been. By the time he managed to slump in one of the chairs around the island he was far too exhausted to consider making a sandwich, or even to pull some leftovers from the fridge to eat cold. It’d been a while, since he’d last eaten, but he couldn’t remember how long—he had gauged it to be too long, judging by Alfred’s increasingly sharp remarks. It had taken an hour to screw up the energy to make it down the stairs, and he’d done it mostly so Alfred would stop looking at him quite like that.

 

It took him a moment to realize he did not have the kitchen to himself. On the other side of the island, asleep beneath the granite countertop, stretched out on two chairs, was Tim.

 

“Tim,” Bruce hissed.

 

Tim jerked some, but otherwise didn’t move.

 

“Tim,” Bruce said again, louder.

 

“Shut up, Bruce,” Tim mumbled.

 

Bruce huffed a laugh that died somewhere between his throat and his teeth. “Hop up, son. Go sleep in an actual bed.”

 

Tim sat up, scrubbing at his eyes. “Is that a blanket?” he asked, voice sleepy and only half-audible. Bruce’s heart squeezed with fondness. Tim had always had the odd habit of preferring to sleep in the oddest of places; Alfred usually joked it was something Tim had picked up from Bruce himself.

 

Bruce wordlessly opened the blanket he had around his shoulders like a cape. Tim slid down and came around, pulled a chair close to Bruce’s side, and slipped in beneath the blanket.

 

“I was cold,” he said, by way of explanation, as if he needed to explain anything.

 

Bruce pulled him closer, so Tim was only half-sitting in his chair, mostly leaning against Bruce’s chest. It’d been a while, since he’d last seen Tim; Tim was good at keeping busy, good at disappearing, when he wanted. Some remnant of his childhood, Bruce had assumed—Jay was a bit similar, in that regard.

 

“How are you,” Bruce grunted.

 

“How are you,” Tim grunted back, in a painfully bad mimic of Bruce’s own voice. At least, Bruce hoped he didn’t sound like that.

 

“I asked you first.”

 

Tim butted his head against Bruce’s chest. “Well, I’m currently annoyed, because I asked how you are, and you didn’t answer.”

 

“I was planning on it,” Bruce said. He raised a hand to run through Tim’s hair, but his fingers caught on tangles, and Tim yelped. Bruce dropped his hand and poked him in the side. “Up, go get a comb.”

 

“I don’t want to,” Tim whined.

 

Bruce poked him again, more harshly this time. “Up, Timothy. If you’re going to have long hair it has to be well-kept, else you’ll have to cut it off.”

 

“You’re just a neat-freak,” Tim said, but he did crawl out of the chair and stomp off through the kitchen doorway.

 

Bruce dozed pleasantly until Tim returned, brandishing a comb. “Wet it in the sink,” Bruce ordered.

 

Tim rolled his eyes. “Sir, yes sir! Can I brush your beard, now that you have one?”

 

Bruce rubbed his chin absently. His palm was greeted by a thick layer of hair he’d failed to notice. “Hn,” he said. “If those tangles don’t break the comb. Sit on the floor.”

 

Tim handed him the wet comb and folded his legs beneath him, dropping to the floor with a quiet whuff. “It’s been a while since you went out,” he said.

 

“I’ve been tired. Tilt your head forward, son.”

 

Tim dipped his chin to his chest, so his voice was muffled when he said, “Are you okay?”

 

Bruce stopped. “Yes,” he said, after a long silence. “I am told I am experiencing the normal side effects of… this medication.”

 

Tim clucked his tongue. “What is it?”

 

Bruce picked a lock of hair and pinched it an inch up, tugging the comb gently through the tangle beneath. “Risperdal. I take it for bipolar disorder.”

 

“Oh,” Tim said. “Oh. Ah. I didn’t know that.”

 

“Neither did I, until a month ago.”

 

Tim hummed. “So that’s what was up, right? But you’d have to be bipolar all the time—oh, right. Okay. You make more sense now, no offense.”

 

“I am not offended.” Bruce pulled the comb through without resistance a couple more times, and then pinched an inch higher, and started tugging on another knot.

 

“Can I confess something,” Tim said.

 

“Go ahead, son.”

 

“I don’t know that much about bipolar disorder, so I’m gonna have to research it. And also I maybe like it when you call me that,” Tim said. The line of his shoulders was rigid, so Bruce leaned forward and kissed his head.

 

Tim was quiet for a while—Bruce worked over the ends of his hair, and was now teasing out the knots closer to roots. “My dad used to call me that. The, uh, other one. But it doesn’t make me mad when you do. You say it… nicely. Like you care.”

 

Bruce closed his eyes and dreamed of breaking every single one of Jack Drake’s fingers. “I do,” he said, quietly.

 

“Thanks. So I Googled bipolar disorder. There’s two types. Which one?” Tim asked.

 

Bruce leaned over to peer at Tim’s phone. “One,” he said. He felt skinned, vulnerable; but it was worth it, to have this moment with his second-youngest.

 

“Oh. What’s it like?” Tim said. “Or, uh, that’s only if you… want to talk about it. I can read blog posts. I’m just, I don’t know, curious?”

 

“Like being tied to the nose of a fighter jet,” Bruce said. “But only sometimes.”

 

Tim’s head bobbed. “Yeah. Ups and downs. Do you, uh, mind? If I read—articles, blog posts, the works.”

 

“No. No, I don’t, son.”

 

What Bruce failed to mention was the curious and stabbing way his heart was beating now, the flood of nameless, wordless emotion. Skinned, vulnerable, but kindly so.

 

Bruce finished with Tim’s hair and then ran his fingers through it for a while. Tim went boneless, sagging against Bruce’s leg until he was snoring softly, his phone still in his hand. After an hour, maybe two, when the sun was rising, Bruce bumped Tim’s shoulder with his knee.

 

“Hop up, Tim,” he said. “It’s time for you to sleep in a real bed.”

 

Tim made a sound that could only be described as a mewl and curled into Bruce’s leg. “I wanna stay,” he said.

 

Bruce stood, bent over, and scooped Tim up.

 

“Put me down,” Tim muttered. “I wanna sleep.”

 

“You’re going to sleep. I’m taking you there.”

 

But Tim only nuzzled into Bruce’s neck. Bruce finally got to Tim’s room, and eased him on the bed; Tim curled up immediately, wriggling until his head was hidden beneath the pillow. Bruce patted his shoulder and said, “Goodnight, son.”

 

“Good morning,” Tim corrected him.

 

“Good morning, smartass.”

 

Tim laughed, the sound blocked by the pillow, and Bruce settled in on the floor, where he waited until Tim’s breathing became low and slow. And then he waited longer, just to listen.

 

-

 

Hoofbeats thundered against the ground. A shrill whinny divided the sound, and over the curve of the hill, a golden-red horse galloped towards them, lean muscles pumping under a short summer coat, black tail flicking and batting at the air. Excelsior’s weight shifted to his front legs, and he kicked out at the sky, muddy hooves cutting up clumps of grass and dirt. Then they hit the ground and struck out, and Excelsior was off again, galloping hard down the line of the fence and tossing his head.

 

“He saw a deer,” Damian explained, pointing down to the darkened treeline far across the pasture. Sure enough, something flickered briefly in the undergrowth, before disappearing. “They tend to scare him.”

 

Jason snickered and plucked the travel mug from Bruce’s folded hands. He took a deep drink and then held the mug away from him, sticking his tongue out in disgust. “Your coffee is cold,” he hissed.

 

Bruce snatched it back. “I like it that way.”

 

“No, no, no you don’t, you hate it that way,” Jason said. “I was raised by you, I think I know your coffee preferences. Black, as hot as possible. I once watched you drink an entire mug in one swallow.”

 

“Hn.”

Jason thumped his shoulder. “That was the moment I decided you were my hero.”

 

“Hn,” Bruce repeated, but this time his heart had ached, like it’d been stabbed with a pin. It felt good, in a way.

 

Damian hopped off of the fence he’d been sitting on. “I’m bringing Excelsior into the barn. It is late,” he said, and then he folded his hands over his mouth and made a sound like a diving hawk. Hooves pummeled the ground. Excelsior emerged around the bend, slowing to a trot and then a walk and then resting by Damian. Damian jumped the fence and took the bright blue lead line hung around his neck and clipped it to Excelsior’s breakaway halter, and with his back perfectly straight, he led Excelsior towards the rusted red gate of the paddock.

 

“He’s a show-off, the little shit,” Jason said, after the two disappeared into the late shadow of the barn. Moments later, a warm yellow light flicked on, casting both the boy and his horse in deep blue shadow. “He’s been working hard with that trainer of his, to do that come-when-I-shriek-like-a-fuckin’-banshee trick.”

 

“He’s doing well,” Bruce said. Something in his chest swelled; he’d thought, maybe, that the implications behind getting Damian a horse might upset him. It seemed he’d been worried for nothing. He was proud of his youngest, and proud to the marrow of his bones.

 

“He is,” Jason said. He grabbed Bruce’s mug again. He took a sip, and his grimace was less severe, this time. “You ready to give us a masterpiece?”

Damian had brought them both out to the barn to help him paint the wooden sign Bruce had made for Excelsior’s stall—the horse’s name was burned into it, but then Damian had filled the letters in with black paint and insisted everyone in the family add to the sign. Excelsior is family, Damian had insisted. Yesterday he’d brought Tim and Dick down, the day before, Steph and Cass. Alfred had added a handprint that morning.

 

“I did what you asked,” Bruce said, quietly.

 

His second-oldest shrugged. “I don’t know, I think the last thing I asked you to do was fuck off an’ here you are, not fucking off.”

 

Bruce snorted. “Some of us are trying to have a conversation, here, Jay.”

 

Jason punched him in the shoulder. Even when playful Bruce could feel the leashed power there. “Shut the hell up, old man. You’ve never had a working conversation in your life.”

 

Bruce stared down at his trainers—he was still in a black jogging suit, just back from a ten mile run. He’d had to stop taking the risperidone; the half a month he’d been on it, he’d been capable of sleeping, and maybe occasionally eating, and not much else. He'd be starting something new, he was sure, after his next appointment. He was easing back into a normal workout schedule after cutting it, and he could tell from the aching soreness already curling up his muscles that he’d overdone it, today. But it was good, solid work. The kind of basic physicality he could be satisfied with, when it felt that, in every other dark corner of his life, he was stumbling forward like a fledgling with half-grown feathers.

 

“I’m trying to right now,” he said. He just barely capped the urge to grit his teeth. The indignity of being a fledgling.

 

Jason was silent for a moment. He hummed, and said, “You’re gonna have to be less cryptic. What was it that I apparently asked you to do?”

 

“You asked me to… care. And I am… doing that.”

 

Jason turned to look at him, cocked a brow. “Oh, really. Tell me. How’s that feel?”

 

Bruce grunted. “Like hell.”

 

Jason laughed lowly. “Glad to know you’re still you.”

 

Like taking off a bandaid, Bruce thought. “I’m bipolar,” he said, quickly. “That is—that was—the problem.”

 

Jason turned his head upwards, squinting at the setting sun, in all its brilliant pinks and oranges. “You look mildly inconvenienced. Like you just put salt in your coffee instead of sugar.”

 

“I am,” Bruce said.

 

Mild inconvenience was an understatement, but it was a statement Bruce liked—he liked the shape of it, the form of it, the way it settled on the tongue and cut past the roof of the mouth. It was such a nice, gentle way of describing a pattern his brain had been hammered into for most of his life; such wonderful noise.

 

“I have advice for you,” Jason said. “And what’s hilarious to me is, you taught me this. Was one of the very first things you taught me, actually, about how to be a Robin. I told you I wasn’t good enough. I told you I was street trash. An’ you told me it doesn’t matter one single ass bit where I come from, but if I kept treating me as the problem, I wasn’t going to be Robin after all. I’d get in my own way. You, you’re getting in yours. It’s not a fuckin’ problem. You’re just you.”

 

“I would argue that it is a problem.”

 

Jason huffed. “Remember when I was a kid, I ate so fast I threw up. And you had to give me dinner in half-portions, every half hour, until I got bit by the genius mosquito, gained a couple IQ points, and figured the fuck out that you weren’t about to take the food away from me. It got fixed. Problems get solved. People get treatment.”

 

Bruce furrowed his brow. “I don’t think—”

 

“Stop being so goddamn pissed you’re not the perfect Batman machine, and settle for being the best one,” Jason said. “It’s all over your face. You look like you swallowed a lemon. You’re bipolar. Sweet, now make your damn peace with it, ‘cause it’s not going away.”

 

Bruce swallowed hard. “Since when,” he struggled to say, “did all of you become wiser than me.”

 

“Like I told you. You taught me that. You’re just a hypocrite who doesn’t practice what he preaches.” Jason reached out and patted his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, B, thanks for saying something. I mean, I’m totally sure Alfred made you. But thanks.”

 

Bruce reached up and covered Jason’s hand with his own, rubbing a thumb across Jason’s scarred knuckles.

 

“Have you talked to Prince Of The Fucking Equines over there?” Jason jabbed a finger towards the barn.

 

Bruce shook his head. “Tonight.”

 

“How ‘bout I do it with you,” Jason said. He shifted his weight, leaning forward with his arms draped over the fence. “We Batman and Robin it?”

 

Bruce raised a brow. Jason was looking at him with an earnest, placid expression. After a breath of silence, Bruce said, “We Batman and Robin it.”

 

Jason grinned at him. The story of his lost son coming home was long and soaked in blood, and there had been no small amount of fighting; they’d shouted at each other until throats were raw, at times. As hard as it had been Bruce would have gladly lived through worse to see Jason smile like that.

 

They headed out towards the barn in a peaceful silence, Bruce’s hand gripping Jason’s shoulder, the way he used to lead Jay-lad around when he was a foot shorter and maybe a hundred and twenty pounds lighter.

 

Excelsior was nestled in his stall when they walked in, and Damian was scowling at the ceiling. “You’ll scare him!” he said, his nose scrunched in his indignation.

 

Bruce’s eyes followed his to the barn rafters, where a familiar, dark shape crouched. Cass was wearing one of Bruce’s sweaters and another pair of his sweatpants—the dangling ends that draped over her hands and feet made her look a bit like a melted shadow. She held a finger to her lips; I’m being quiet.

 

Bruce froze. This was not the intended plan. Jason glanced at him and clapped his shoulder, and said, “Two on two. Hey! Get down from there, Gremlin Princess.”

 

Cass scuttled along the rafter beam and then slithered down the wall, hitting the floor in the empty stall next to Excelsior’s. Excelsior snorted and stamped a hoof. Cass ignored him and vaulted over the stall door, stooping down to scoop Damian up and swing him around.

 

“Cassandra!” Damian squeaked. “Release me at once!”

 

Cass swung him around one more time and then dropped him in front of Excelsior; here’s your boy back. Then her wiry arms were wrapped around Bruce’s stomach, squeezing hard.

 

“Oof. Hello, Cass,” he said, stroking her hair.

 

“Excelsior,” she said, “gets mad.”

 

Bruce chuckled. “You were the deer, weren’t you.”

 

Cass smiled up at him. “No deer,” she said, eyes folded at the corners in such a way that she rather looked like a conniving, mischievous little imp.

 

“Stop doing that,” Damian hissed. He brushed dust and hay off of his back furiously, and then reached up to pat Excelsior’s muzzle, as if to comfort him. “Father, tell Cassandra she’s not allowed to scare Excelsior.”

 

“Only once in a while,” Bruce told her.

 

Cass pinched her forefinger and thumb together and twisted them in the air beside her mouth, as if she were locking something; our secret.

 

Jason reached over and jabbed her in the head with his pointed finger. “Let him go, we have to create a masterpiece.”

 

Cass squeezed his middle again, and then her arms reluctantly fell away, but she leaned her head against his arm still.

 

Damian had disappeared into the tackroom, and returned with a cup of water filled with brushes and a ceramic plate with a box of paint tubes balanced on top. He jerked his head to the sign nailed to Excelsior’s door, covered partially by a blue handprint, a searing red octopus, a purplish-gray thunderstorm, several butterflies, and TIM painted at the bottom as bright as a school bus. “Do not be afraid to cover Drake’s abomination.”

 

“Give me the red and the smallest paintbrush you’ve got,” Jason said, settling cross-legged directly in front of the sign. Excelsior, currently at the back of his stall with one hoof resting on the toe, flicked a lazy ear towards them.

 

Bruce settled in near the corner of the sign with a grunt. Cass plopped down beside him, stretching out with her legs crossed and her head pressed against his thigh, and absently, Bruce ruffled her hair, rubbing circles into her scalp. “What should I paint.”

 

Jason turned from the globs of paint he was smearing on the wood. “You can’t ask for inspiration, that’s un-artistic. It has to strike you in the moment. That’s what real brilliance is, you prick.”

 

“Bat,” Cass answered.

 

“Pass me the gray,” Bruce said.

 

Damian handed him a two tubes, black and white. “You have to mix it,” he said.

 

Bruce looked at him. “Mix it for me. A light gray and a darker gray.”

 

Damian’s responding glare was unimpressed, but he squeezed the paint onto the plate and began to swirl it around with a smaller brush. Bruce dipped his thumb into the black and then tilted Cass’s head until he could see her nose, and dabbed it with the paint.

 

“There’s our deer,” he said.

 

“Your awful jokes are infecting my raw skill,” Jason said. This time his eyes didn’t leave the swath of red he was painting (which covered TIM just slightly). “Fuck off with that.” But he leaned over to flick Bruce on the knee, and Bruce knew what that meant. He waited until Damian was done mixing the paint, and he had started in with a darker gray outline, anyway.

 

“Alright,” he said, and that was the only word he managed for about half an hour of painting. By the time he spoke again, he’d started filling in with the lighter gray, and dabs of white here and there for lighting. Jason’s painting had taken the form of a pair of lips.

 

Bruce washed off his brush in the cup, wiped the water on his pants, and then dipped into Jason’s pool of red. As he swiped it over the wood, he said, “Alright,” again.

 

“You have to say words in order to say words,” Jason said.

 

Bruce nodded, gulped. “Damian. Cassandra.”

 

He was given a, “Yes, Father?” and a poke to the chin in return.

 

“I caused a scene. Recently. You should… know the one.”

 

“I hit you,” Cass said, softly.

 

Bruce poked her in the cheek with his paintbrush, leaving a splotch of red behind. “It’s fine. What I needed to say is, I have… discovered why.”

 

He glanced down at Cass, who blinked up at him with warm eyes. “I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder,” he said, very quietly, half-hoping neither of them would hear him. As it were, Damian went very still and looked at him oddly, and Cass squinted at him.

 

“There are phases,” he explained, looking down at Cass. “Fast, and… slow, I would say.”

 

“Sometimes hummingbird,” Cass said. “Very fast. Sometimes vulture.”

 

Bruce nodded. His throat felt tight and he could barely speak, but he managed to say, “Yes. Like that.”

 

Cass poked him in the chin, again.

 

“Fast and slow,” Damian repeated.

 

Bruce nodded, tightly. It took him a few minutes to be able to say, “Can I have the yellow,” and when he did, Damian tripped rushing over, and Jason’s bellowing laugh sucked the tension out of the air.

 

They finished not long after that, and stood back to survey the damage.

 

“What is that, Jay,” Bruce asked.

 

“A master does not reveal his secrets.”

 

Bruce leaned over to look. “The lips. From The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

 

Jason groaned. “Oh, fuck you. And you just had to show off with yours, huh, what the hell. C’mon, Gremlin Princess, I need you to hide behind the door and scare Alfred when I demand we make sugar cookies, and he tries to tell me no.”

 

Cass grinned and took his hand. Over her head, Jason met Bruce’s eyes, and jerked his head at Damian, who was still sitting with his back against the wall, looking like he was about to start shouting any minute.

 

They left. Bruce stood there until he couldn’t hear their footsteps hit the dirt path any longer, and then he knelt in front of Damian, and lifted the boy’s chin to meet his gaze.

 

“You’re angry,” Bruce said.

 

“No,” Damian said. “I do not know. I do not… know what bipolar is, Father.”

 

Bruce let his hand fall to cup one of Damian’s folded knees. “Let’s say that brains get sick the way bodies do.”

 

“Okay,” Damian said. His brow was still scrunched together, so Bruce leaned forward and, with his free hand, smoothed the wrinkle between them out with his thumb.

 

“It is hereditary,” Bruce said, slowly. “We’ll have to watch, for you. If you ever experience anything out of the ordinary, especially as you get older… Damian, son. Please do not hesitate to come to me. I made that mistake, and it was dangerous.”

 

Damian finally looked at him, but it was that wide-eyed, desperately young look; the look of a child, trying to find his father. “Out of the ordinary how?”

 

“You’d be reckless. Impulsive. There is… a deep sense that you are moving very quickly, and the world is not,” Bruce said. “And then, after that ends, you would feel exhausted. Sad. A deep sense that you are moving very slowly, but you don’t care how fast the world is going any longer.”

 

“And I would have you,” Damian said, flatly. But it was a question all the same.

 

Bruce squeezed his son’s knee. “Yes. You will always have me.”

 

Then he stood, and offered Damian a hand. With some reluctance Damian gripped it and Bruce pulled him up so he was carrying him, forearm braced under Damian’s thighs, and Damian’s arms around his neck. He was getting a bit too big, to be able to do this.

 

“Why’d you paint a robin?” Damian asked.

 

“Sometimes robins are smarter than bats. But only sometimes.”

 

Damian growled wordlessly, but he was smiling. “You mean always. Yours has spots.”

 

“It’s a fledgling.”

 

Then Bruce pulled the barn door shut, and carried Damian over the winding dirt path that led to home.

Notes:

I had to ask someone if it was okay for Bruce to carry this many sons in one chapter

I hope you guys enjoyed it! Lmk if you have questions!

Notes:

I hope you enjoyed!