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cetaceans-pls · 5 hours

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Batman - All Media Types Rating: General Audiences

It's April 27th, and Bruce decides to go on an undercover mission at the farmers' market.

Jason is there.

They both have an unexpectedly good time.

on god i have a post that’s all my april 27th fics but i can’t find it so have this instead! thanks as always to the brujay server mods for hosting this event year-on-year, giving me a wonderful delightful excuse to really dive into the most wet-eyed sopping depths of my psyche :’)

also i deeply believe this summary is completely incongruent w the fic contents BUT i cannot figure out how better to describe what happens so take it w love and light in ur hearts lads <3

fic on tumblr below the cut:

It's that day (again). On the one hand, the anniversary of your son's death is easily the worst day of the calendar year.

On the other hand, it's the anniversary of a death that did not stick, so. Wins are few and far between for Bruce; he takes what he can get.

Doesn't mean he opens his eyes feeling Great this fine terrible day, but nothing's new about that. Today he's slated to go dark, because he can't be trusted around technology (a toss-up between calling Jason only to breathe heavy-like on his end, and obsessing over kill-kill-killing the joker or not the joker with a drone armed with teeth and knives and bullets and saws). Nothing hi-spec, his comm unit set to not connect unless his vitals indicate he'll be dead in under three hours, something easy and menial to counteract the unbearable phantom weight of the day.

He's going to dress like a regular person and go and wander around the farmers' market where a hipster pop-up bakery may very well be laundering money for Falcone. It'll be downtown, the entirety of Marmaduke Ave shut down so people can hock their wares and enjoy walking 'round with, ah, light in their hearts and honeycomb coffee in their hands.

It's the antithesis to That Day, he'll be outside on a day shaping up to be a rare Gotham beauty, warm and sunny and bright and there'll be hundreds of people around him and no one will know he's there and most most importantly

No one is waiting for him, waiting for him like their life depends on him getting a croissant in time.

He's looking forward to not mattering today. And if he'll happen across the little Thai stall with the drunken noodles that Jason likes, and if he buys enough to feed a good man a good week, and if he drops them off at whichever safehouse Jason will be in tonight because Clark respects Jason's privacy all days but this one, well.

It won't be him that does it, so it doesn't count.

Mind made up, Bruce rolls out of bed, cracks his neck, and tries to figure out who's a good person to be today.

Anyone but himself, so his apologies to all betas worldwide, but that won't be him. Omega, perhaps? He's got a new concoction that's inspired by the scent of the man he met with the spectacular hair living his best life in Belmopan two weeks ago, rum and pineapple and the back-of-the-teeth heatiness of someone in a loud shirt unbuttoned down to the belly.

Yes, yes. He'll be a ugly-shirt-wearing kind of man today, will dress the part. He has half a mind to be a woman, even, maybe, but the prospect of makeup on a day destined to be warm enough to melt tyres feels ill-advised. Pineapple rum and the most hideous shirt imaginable it is, then.

He takes a whiff of the person he'll be today, scent developed and labelled and resting in the little fridge that hosts the scents of people he's met and envied and become over the years, and pointedly doesn't think about how this in fact fully fails to make him Forget.

The nature of loss, it turns out, sticks in ways even death doesn't.

Time to face the day (god help him).

Jason wakes up and wishes he hadn't.

He's pretty sure it's all, uhm, in the head, how he can't wake up on 27th Aprils without a teeth-splitting migraine, but he also knows he winds himself up and up the entirety of the month and the release has got to come out somewhere.

Just his luck that this year it's a Saturday and the weather is glorious, the type where the sun's so radiant and warm it feels like the top of your head is growing golden wheat. Kids are laughing and birds are singing and there's barely the sound of traffic at all, not even an errant curse from a road-raging driver.

Ah, the things that make you wish you were-

He groans a little bit more, and then checks his phone. No condolence texts, because this many years on people have learned Jason's Very Strong Feelings on the matter, but there's no less than 5 invitations to various goings-on across the city and beyond. He briefly toys with the idea of joining Dick counter-sniping the snipers aimed at the kids righteously, fearsomely demonstrating in front of Blüd U demanding divestment and sanctions, but looking down a scope for hours with a migraine between the eyes does not a good deathniversary make.

There is, of course, no text from Bruce. It's understandable, if a little hateful. Feels like they each got a corpse of Jason in their arms, feels like he died more than once because it's just bodies bodies bodies. He could call the man, half-suspects if he just shouts "Bruce!" the Universe (the League) will conspire to manifest him, and while Jason wants to be wanted today, Bruce will want (the corpse of) him too much to be bearable.

Roy's suggesting a waterpark on account of him definitively not dying by drowning, but he doesn't want to cover up. That said, if anyone looks askance at the sprawling autopsy scar across his chest he will Lose It. No go, no go, nothing's going and the scent of alpha agitation is getting so so wretched he can even smell himself, urgh.

He gets up. It's a godawful day, but he's up, and the day will pass, and he'll still be up when the sun goes down. This is all that matters, he tells himself.

He'll be up and kicking, he won't be kept down. He needs to remember this, he needs to remember this.

Jason sneezes, nose tickling with the scent of his ire. Get out get out he's gotta get out, can't keep feeling this way in this little room, in this little room, dark and quiet like a coff-

He coughs. Time to get up and get dressed. He's going to wear something bright and breezy and beautiful, nothing like a suit good enough to be buried in. Cute shorts, silly shirt, let's get through this.

(The only way out is through, through the veil and wood and dirt and grief and and and-).

They call it the Waterfront Farmers' Market, bustling and busy and running parallel to the clean(-ish) Big Canal, but it's not, ah, just a farmers' market, not in the classical sense. It, if anything, reminds Bruce of the night markets in Southeast Asia. There's food, of course, and produce. One woman in overalls is selling tulips out of a wheelbarrow, unbearably twee and sweet. Another man is selling his early tomato harvest, chunky glossy things like grenades about to burst, and Bruce finds himself buying a pound of heirlooms for Alfred (who may well be here, oh, god) and tucking a bunch of flowers into his tote bag, bright blooming heads of them wibble-wobbleing with the jaunty gait of Benny. He's Benny today, in his Hawaiian shirt and beach shorts and those strange shoes that have toes on them, sunglasses on, chest bared, scent heady.

People turn when he walks down, because the average Gothamite certainly doesn't dress like this, but there are so many better things to look at! Keep on walking and there's a section that's all meat, butchers competing to see who has the cutest mascot for their little mobile trucks, a cheerfully grim little aside where cartoon chickens and pigs say this guy serves me freshest! Bruce pushes on, past the meat to where the vendors are putting out clothes.

It always struck him a little odd to have clothes sold at a farmers' market, but then he spots socks that are tan on top and have black paw pads on the bottom and he thinks of Ace and he thinks of Damian and before he's done thinking he's already bought them, so maybe he shouldn't question the wisdom of it too much.

He peruses dresses just in case any come in his size, looks at some really high quality fake Ferragamo loafers, keeps an eye out to make sure that everyone's looking alright, keeps his nose out to sniff out any trouble. His steps get a little faster, just a little, because even the light hint of blood today is a little too off-putting, so the more space between him and the butchers the better.

Bruce doesn't have the sharpest nose; he's no scent-hound. It's the curse of betas, people like to say. Plain, can't smell much don't smell like much, but while these are arguments to be made, they aren't good ones.

For one, all Bruce really needed to do to make up for his nose was to make an attachment for his phone that looks like a pop-socket but is really a mass-spectrometer, a thing that feeds into an app on his phone that breaks down chemical compositions to tell him if the mood is brimming or rancid. Quite simple, really! And it's pretty sharp, as far as he can tell. It's almost as good as Cass' nose, and his little alpha's a wolf in cute clothing.

For another, Bruce is pretty pretty sure if he'd scented his dead son, scented Jason and known his scent of death, he'd have died too, on the spot like he'd inhaled a poison even Ra's would be scared of. Or maybe he wouldn't have, maybe his own scent just would've changed, would've rotted to commemorate the event.

His scent's changed before, is the thing. He knows, because he'd done it. Had looked up the relationship between certain foods and certain pheromones, had come up with a diet that would approximate what Alfred's family would smell like, determined to not be alone at 12, determined despite how Alfred had looked a little shocked and a lot horrified when Bruce started to smell less and less like Martha and Thomas and more and more like tea and lemon.

He'd eat ash and he'd eat lye and he'd eat coal until he smelled like Jason had then, if he'd been enough in his own head to take a deep breath and hold it in his lungs for the rest of time.

So. Tulips, tomatoes. Some socks, and cheese when he gets to where the cheesemongers gather. Noodles close to the end of his jaunt, the bakery to see if they're more prone than is reasonable to using dirty cash. These are all better things to do than to envy the noses and scents of non-betas.

It's hot, and his ears are sizzling. His shopping bag's still pretty light; maybe he should've bought more tomatoes.

He can double-back, though. He's not on a tight timeline today (thank god, thank god, thank-)

Jason's instinct had been to go to the bay, first. Roy had the right shape of it, to do something as distant and untouched by the thing that happened, and even if he won't take his shirt off for a dip, just feeling the water lap at his feet as kids squeal and the waves would be nice.

Maybe the aquarium afterwards? Though it'll be busy on a Saturday, and the aquarium's pretty dimly lit to keep the focus on the fish, which is great except for when you really need the opposite of the dark-quiet. And this wretched wretched way he's feeling, man, he's gonna stink the whole place right up, and that won't be a fun Saturday for anyone.

So he does go to the bay. The water's glittering, blue and white and green, and he puts his feet in the surf while he holds an ice cream in one hand and his shoes in the other, and for the first time since the day turned over he feels a little glad to be here. It's the worst thing about the anniversary, is the somewhat powerful sense of if only I'd stayed dead. It's not a good look, is being jealous of the him that got to stop.

That got stopped, really, but when the hot hot anger at the unfairness of his situation is drained away by the surf, it's hard to keep hold of the difference. It's inarguable that he sure wouldn't have to deal with his own death day anniversary if he'd, uh, stayed dead.

Jason nibbles at the rim of his soggy ice cream cone, raspberry and dark chocolate ice cream smudging his nose in not-blood. Don't get none of this after death, too, so he just needs to remember that. Needs to remember to not envy himself in the worst way imaginable.

Ten feet away, a kid bursts into tears and shouts for her mom. No one answers her, but Jason's here so Jason does.

"Hey kid," he says, kneeling down so his knee touches hot hot sand. "Need some help?" He smells like bricks roasting in the sun, warm and hopefully reassuring, and she goes a little sweet herself when he offers her his ice cream.

(This is another thing he couldn't do, if he was still under. Can't be around for kids and the infirm and the elderly and the merely merely human if he isn't around at all.)

By the time Bruce gets to the fresh food section of this outdoor market that's a full mile and a half long, he is Laden. He's got a boba drink in hand, a horrific concoction that's blue and has cream and coconut milk and edible glitter and unbearable sweet tapioca balls right at the bottom. It seems like a Benny thing to drink, and distantly he thinks if he gets a cavity from this, it'll be another memorial, a little temple to things lost and things missing always there inside his mouth.

The thought's barely complete before Bruce throws his drink into the first trash receptacle he sees. If he's gotten so maudlin he's waxing poetic over bad dental hygiene, he knows it's time for a change. He makes a beeline for the first stall he sees, and it's scallion pancakes. The gentleman making them with great grace and speed smiles at him, a little warm and a little harried and Bruce smiles back because he gets to.

"Hey, can I get a regular, and one with egg?"

The man nods, chopping scallions like he's part machine (Cyborg is that you?!) while he does sums in his head. "$6.50, cash or card?"

"Cash," Bruce says, the better to be untraceable with. He eyes the pancakes hungry-like, stomach finally won over to hunger for this instead of stewing in the low-grade terror that always permeates this day.

The pancake seller eyes him hungry-like back, which is a little bit of a surprise. "I'll throw in a couple of dumplings just for you," he says, and he adds in an audacious wink for free too.

They'd make a cute couple, probably, beach-boy Benny and this hardworking pancake-maker. Bruce imagines there'd be a lot of snacks involved, them packed tightly together on a slightly-too-small couch, laughing just a little too loudly as grease drips down their front.

He falls in love, just a little. It's the point of this endeavour, to love and hold on to things to remind himself that there's good in this world.

It keeps the worst of the memories at bay, and it's also prep for the future. If Jason gets taken away again, if any of his kids become lost to him, Bruce will need to keep on going (this is his price (this is his punishment)) and he might as well start stocking up on motivation.

Benny would likely love Pancake man, with his verve as he flips them and the generosity of spirit of having two eggs be the default for his egg pancakes. It's not Bruce's place, though, even if it's his face (mostly) and his scent (not really). Same as how he doesn't get more than to just drop off food for Jason, he doesn't get his breakfast-on-couch romance with Pancake man.

Bruce is pretty good at making do with not getting much, though. And he doesn't exactly get nothing.

Pancake man hands over his order, and it comes replete with a napkin with his number on it. Bruce hands the napkin back with a little awkward smile (and a hundred dollar tip tucked inside it). "Keep it," he says, picking up his food. "I love you, though," he says with a strange grim determination, and it's Benny's mouth but it's Bruce's voice, because this is the other thing.

He wants to say i love you i love you i love you as many times as he can today, since he's so hatefully incapable of saying it just the once to just the one person.

He's filled with self-loathing (of course), but Pancake man goes from looking a little shame-faced at his gently rebuffed flirtation to laughing so hard his eyes crinkle and crisp. "Hey, man. I'll love you too," he says, teeth flashing. He holds out his hand, palm facing down, and Bruce knows this cue, will allow this cue. He reaches for Pancake man, palm facing up, and they rub their wrists together like they've maybe already spent a hundred mornings eating pancakes together.

When he pulls away, Bruce takes a deep a whiff as he can manage, but his blunt blunt nose doesn't get much more than green onions and grease. Happily, he doesn't need much much more than green onions and grease.

This is how he'll get through this, Bruce thinks a little a-flutter, a little seduced, running warm with blessedly easy affection, piña colada now tinged with copper on the tongue.

He can't help but smile (despite despite despite).

Marie is reunited with her mother pretty quickly, because once Jason had her on his shoulders they made up 7 and a half feet of creature, visible for miles around, and Jeanne had come running. It'd been a little funny, this 5 foot 2 lady shifting sand like she's Sonic incarnate to reach her little little baby.

People can get awful fast in emergencies; sometimes they're even fast enough!

He relinquishes custody of Marie and his ice cream cone both, and Jeanne offers (insists) on buying him a new ice cream but he turns her down because Marie had spent the entirety of their time together talking about all the stuff she wants to eat and now his stomach's growling and he's thinking he wants them drunken noodles the farmers' market sometimes has.

Jeanne relinquishes him with a frown and a fervent goodbye, but when he leans down to put on his shoes where sand meets asphalt he discovers she'd somehow slipped a ten dollar bill into his right shoe while he wasn't watching (and he's always watching!).

In his left shoe there's a little seashell, those baby-clam looking things that are always everywhere. He wonders if it got there by natural causes, or if Marie's as gifted a grifter as her ma. Just in case, he tucks both bill and shell very respectfully into his wallet, and figures that between his cash on hand and Jeanne's light-handed contribution, he's going to eat like a king at the market.

It's a tram ride (free on the weekends and from 7 to 7 on weekdays, and only the belligerence of the city council is stopping Bruce from making it all-free all-the-time) and a short walk to get to downtown, a mass of people milling about enjoying the sun and enjoying themselves. He joins 'em, breathes in deep and heavy and lets the smell of food and the scent of people having a mild-to-marvelously good time get in and settle.

He's okay, he's okay, he's okay. Jason wishes there'd be another kid for him to rescue low-stakes like, just so's he can feel a bit more settled, but everyone's got everyone else firmly in hand, so no such luck.

He walks by a jolly woman roasting out-of-season corn, and her mastery of her little charcoal grill and her Jeanne-like diminutive height has him a little charmed. "How much for some corn, ma'am?"

"Two fifty," she says. "Two for four for you," she adds on afterwards, the concerned frown of a motherly lady in the face of a child(?) who isn't eating enough. "With extra cotija for a growing boy."

Jason snorts, and makes big blustery eye contact as he drops a fifty-dollar note into her tip jar. "Two for four's way too generous, you're gonna get run outta business," he chides her, even if his chest is a little puffed up, mood a little buoyed. He is, still growing. He is, still getting better.

He is, getting corn on the cob from a woman who looks morally outraged enough to potentially brain him over the head with her tip jar.

She smells warm and smoky, salty-sweet like cheese-and-corn, a base of something that's between cinnamon and cumin. She looks at him with half a scowl on now, though her hands never stop turning the corn to stop 'em from burning.

"Are you here by yourself, baby?" she says sternly.

Jason looks around, feeling almost awkward, before he remembers that he's been some type of alive for close to 30 years now so he is in fact allowed to go on excursions by himself, and he is in fact not a waist-tall boy looking for his, uhm, dad. "Yeah?"

She beckons him over, has him leaning over the grill, chest warmed by affection and charcoal. She keeps eyes on him and gently taps at his neck, and when he nods she goes to town scenting him, rubbing her wrist 'round his neck like a wreath to be proud of. Cinna-cumin, sweet and not, rests on his skin like a scarf.

"Go on then," she says, looking pleased with herself after she's done scenting him and righting his collar and getting his hair to stick down (somewhat). "Sweet pup like you, going to eat all of us out of business."

Quite despite himself, Jason feels himself go bright bright red.

It's like being scented by one seller brings out the feral in all the rest of them. Gothamites are famously a pretty frosty lot, but are also contrarily pretty loose and easy with physical affection. The running theory is that because everyone's tugged someone out of harm's way when a rogue comes barrelling by in a car on fire, because everyone's shielded someone in a hostage situation or twelve, people instinctively look after each other physical-like.

At a little booth selling ice cream, an older gentleman with a beard that'd put Santa to shame takes one good hard look at him and offers his wrist for a quick swap (better-than-Santa smells like cream and chocolate, with something buttery to him like a really really good waffle cone). The two young girls with their table of sun-catchers are really pleased when he buys one of their larger pieces, a rearing zebra with Gotham bay in cut glass in the background (their creative vision is startling), and when he hands over his card they both waggle their fingers for permission and they press their fingertips together sweet and brief. One's a little jasmine and a little lead, the other smells like cedar and horse. Further down, at a café booth, a barista makes him an unsweetened matcha au lait, and when she's handing it over she asks "Hey man you okay?", and when he can't do much more than smile badly and shake his head, she slowly reaches out and gently rests her hand over his shoulder.

She leaves a smudge of cocoa powder and something like cayenne and nicotine on him when he leaves.

This happens, over and over and over again. His bag gets heavier and heavier, and his sense of self gets more and more muddled as people lay themselves on him in layers and layers like they're building a shield for him without meaning to. He's heard, of course, that there's something hard to describe to the scent of deep deep distress, that it doesn't actually smell of anything but you'll Know it when it hits you, and maybe that's what's happening today.

Gotham senses blood in the water, and in response she's doing all she can to bury that under this crushing, unbearable warmth.

A large smiling man selling deep-fried spiral potatoes hands over his order, and takes a second look at him with his hangdog eyes and rumpled hair and overlay of half a dozen people, and frowns. "Hey. You want a hug?"

This is not an offer frequently offered to men his size and build and face, but it's been a weird enough day already, and potato man smells like starch and the sun, and he finds he doesn't want to say no, so.

He doesn't.

Bruce is on his third croissant go-around, back in line for Here Wheat You to see if maybe this time he can get a pinhole camera stuck on the roof of the foodtruck, because he'd caught a glance at the cash register during his second croissant and spotted far more hundred dollar bills than seems reasonable, when something catches his nose, his eyes.

It's Jason (it's Jason!).

For a moment, Bruce is frozen. He doesn't have his own hair on, his own eyes. Unlike Dick, Jason's got a better sense for sussing out Bruce undercover, but he likely won't notice him when he's not paying attention, like this.

He looks... well. He looks, ah, alive. A little mussed and ruffled, reminds Bruce of how Alfred the Cat's fur gets all out of sorts if a couple of Manor inhabitants are feeling more affectionate than usual. Bruce thinks he might look the same, too; does seem to be that everyone's feeling more affectionate than usual.

The line moves forward by one, and he's jostled out of his reverie. Jason's already passing by the bakery, will be engulfed by the crush of people soon enough, and Bruce thinks if that happens when he's got eyes on him today it will make him Explode.

"Jason!" his mouth goes even as he lurches out of line with his horde of precious purchases. "Jason!"

Jason turns, sees him, and frowns in non-recognition. Bruce wants to curse himself just a little, for having on the scent of someone else, for not being able to produce enough of himself that his own own son can tell it's him, maybe Jason wouldn't even want to see him, god, why would Jason want to see him, today of all days-

But recognition dawns, somehow, and Jason goes a little cool and a little awkward, looking a little over Bruce's shoulder. "B," he says, and it's a good nickname to go for. Bruce doesn't think it's much of a secret that when he's being like this, playing some nondescript man, some sense of humour and some sense of self always has him going for names that start with a B. "Fancy seeing you here."

"It's for work," Bruce tells him, milder than he feels, and he's not meeting Jason's eyes either but that's because he's roving all over to check-check-check he's okay, he's alive, he's in one blessed blessed piece. "Are you... enjoying your day, Jason?"

This is an objectively insane thing to ask today, but Bruce doesn't know what else to ask, has already finished the taquitos he'd bought 4 stalls up so he has nothing nothing to offer up to Jason but some inane conversation.

Understandably, Jason looks at him like he's insane. "I've had worse," he responds at length, and he doesn't say it meanly. If anything, he sounds a little startled himself.

Bruce can concur. "Yes," he says. He sneaks a little inhale, wishes he could bring out his phone so he could measure the air between them and assess if Jason's happy or sad or angry or distressed, but he can't tell anything beyond the fact that Jason's here and Jason's alive, so. He catches all sorts of hints, flowers and herbs and metals and sun, like a thousand hands have lightly and lovingly passed along Jason, and Bruce can understand that too, today. He can't tell for himself, of course, can't tell very well at all, but he's pretty sure the farmers' market has done a number on him too. "Do you... would you like to get something to eat, Jason?"

He can't stop himself from calling Jason's name over and over and over again.

Jason looks a little hesitant, and Bruce wants to know, goddamn but he wants to know what words he can use, what words he should use, to make it so that Jason will say yes, will let him look after him, will get to be by him today today today-

Jason has no damn idea what to do with the fact that Bruce is here, in front of him, today of all days. They usually keep well away from each other, on account of generally being unable to see one man without seeing one dead dead boy for free!. But here Bruce is, undercover in a dirty blond wig and the ugliest shirt imaginable (is that a print?? of pineapples fucking??), smelling like a tropical drink instead of what he is, which is mostly a whole lot of nothing with a side of sad bitter desperation.

It's a surprise, that Bruce had called out to him. Jason's pretty sure he wouldn't have noticed him if he'd stayed quiet, what with the outfit and his general distractedness (someone selling satay a little further down has him floating on the high of brown sugar and lemongrass). But Bruce had called for him, is here with him, reaching out in his stupid messy fumbling way, laden with what looks like purchases from every other stall down the road.

For a second, he thinks about Corn Lady asking if he's here alone (where's your parent where's the person who's meant to look after you) and he'd said that he was, and turns out he was wrong. Turns out, there is someone here with him, and Bruce hadn't texted him but has called out to him, and if he'd still been as burningly hateful as he was this morning, angry enough that he'd stunk up his own damn home, this would have gotten explosive. You think this is enough, he would scream, maybe. You think you get to call for me today? You think you get to be too late and still look me in the eye?

But the sea had sapped out a lot of his heat, and he'd leaked more and more with every light touch, with every delicious bite. More than angry, he's a little sad and a little glad, and a dozen strangers and loves of his life have checked in on him, and here's Bruce, checking in on him, hands clenching-unclenching like he wants to reach for him and scent him and hold him and bite the throat outta anyone that tries to take him away.

Bruce had called out to him, and that counts for something, right? He's not-a-kid not-lost in the streets, he's not calling for his dad, he's not a 6-year-old summer-scented Marie, but he wants, so badly right now, to have his father. Wants this even more than satay, good fucking lord.

He's just not sure if he's got it in him to give (Bruce a break) or receive (care from the best/worst person in the world), goddamn-

In the end, it's a loose chunk of scallion wedged in a filling coming loose that gets him, it's Pancake man that drives Bruce, and he's half-sure if he sees him again he'll kiss him on the lips.

He'd said it earlier, hadn't he? Said it a half dozen more times to other people in the market, said it easy-like because he can as Benny in his terrible shirt and his pomegranatey-pineappley splendour. It's so so so much harder to say it as Bruce, but the bone-snapping heaviness is what makes it so so important that he says it.

So Bruce emulates his idol. "Is this okay?" he asks really really gravely, holding his hand out palm down, wishing he hadn't bought quite so much junk and food that things go cling-clang in the bag hanging from his elbow in this terribly delicate little moment.

Jason starts at his hand like it's on fire, blinks a time or ten, and then holds his hand out, palm up.

And now they're both staring down like they're on fire, but they're clasping hands and Bruce wants to throw up a little bit that he's he's he's scenting his miracle of a son today today today, and he wants more but he has to ask but he's asked once so maybe it's okay to ask again.

They're holding each other so tightly they're both shaking. "Would a hug be alright?"

Jason nods, still not looking him the eye, but they meet in the middle like the surf smashing into a sea wall, both of them going cling-clang-smash from a good good morning's worth of shopping, and Bruce breathes in like he's just surfaced after a long long drowning and it's Jason, who smells like wood varnish and the hearth and a little gunpowder, and he blinks back the wet in his eyes.

(They're holding each other so tightly they're both shaking).

"I love you," he says, desperate to show that he's learned how to be better, over the years, over this morning. "I love you," he says again, because saying it once makes it easier to say it a second time. "And we're just in time for lunch." Just, just in time, this once, on this day. "Come have something to eat with me?"

Jason doesn't say I love you but he does say yes.

(These two things mean exactly the same thing).

#whale writing #1900BRUJAY #title inspired by the chicken farmer i still love u rock which is on my must visit list #and also by my friend and i having a weird/wonderful day out last week that ended w us buying flowers and scallion pancakes #gotham broadly inspired by chicago (i love chicago) bc ive never been to new jersey (i love chicago)#on the regular i ask myself will THIS be a fic in which u dont talk long and loving about food?#on the regular i gotta say no no no it's another one of those where every 10th word is edible

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