The piles of documents on his desk seemed to grow bigger every time he looked up from his laptop, but those emails weren't going to write themselves. If Bruce was typing with more force than necessary it didn't mean a damn thing.

He just wanted to lie in bed and get some sleep, this was usually the best hour for him to get some rest because none of the boys were around. Not that they actually spent time on the manor, lately. He sighed.

With his elbows on the desk, he covered his face with both hands, groaning lightly now that he was alone. Always alone. The shipment had arrived two hours late to the docks last night, and though he wouldn't admit it in front of Alfred, Bruce though he might've caught a cold. The position what strangely comfortable and he felt himself drifting a bit. If he stopped paying attention he could pretend he was on his warm and fuzzy bed.

He woke up to the sound of his own snores. He had slept ten minutes. Bruce felt worse than before and his muscles felt like lead. He was horrified to find that he was at the brink of tears, for no reason at all. He cleared his throat and tried to focus again on typing the passive-aggressive email he was sending to Lex Luthor about the deal he had offered Wayne Enterprises.

"Mister Wayne?" It took him a minute to realize that voice was real and that Jean, his secretary, had probably called him more than once. He looked up slowly, feeling that he might get dizzy if he did it faster. She looked at him with worried eyes, brow furrowed.

"Yes?" Bruce almost winced at how exhausted he sounded.

"You have a call, Sir." She gestured the red light on his desk phone. "Do you want me to tell them you're not available, Sir?"

"Who is it?" He ignored her comment. Jean had been working for him long enough that she didn't take it as an offense.

"Mister Head." She commented before exiting his office.

Head? I don't know any-

He picked up the phone quickly.

"Jay?" He didn't care that he had sounded desperate. He thought he heard something akin to a cough through the line.

"Um... hi." The voice of his second eldest felt like a warm blanket for his trembling heart.

"Jay." Wonderment filled his tone. It really was him. He rarely talked to Bruce these days, he preferred having Alfred as the message man. "What do you need, son?"

Eager. He sounded eager.

"Uh." Jason sounded distracted. "I'm... ah, I wanted to tell you that I need to solve a couple of things down in Chinatown?" The uncertainty would've sounded cute if Bruce didn't know that tone was the product of years of estrangement.

"Anything you need, Jaylad." Affection filled Bruce's voice in an attempt to communicate how much he cared, how it ached every time his son refused to see him or interact with his siblings because he had the misguided idea that he didn't belong. Bruce needed to make him know. Somehow. "Just don't make a mess, okay?"

"... okay?" If Bruce didn't know him better he could have said he sounded panicked. "I'll... see you around."

"Jay?" He rushed to say.

"Yes?"

"Take care."

The only answer was the beep that signalled the end of the call.

That night Bruce changed his route slightly so he could be around the Diamond District and if that allowed him to check here and then on Chinatown, well, there was no one to call him out on it.

ᴥ

They were being dramatic, all of them. They even had the nerve to tell him he was the one overreacting. He just had a cold, he was perfectly capable of going on patrol. He had endured a broken spine and relocated it on his own, for heaven's sake. He could bear a cold.

"Master Bruce, I'm sure that thing in your hands is not a phone." Alfred's clipped voice travelled from the half-opened door of the mansion's master bedroom. "Because I remember informing you that using it would only worsen your headache."

He froze and lowered the phone slowly, as if he didn't do sudden moves Alfred wouldn't see it. And then he frowned, because Alfred had his phone between his ear and shoulder, while he carried tray with soup for him. Bruce tried to get up and help him, but the stare he got from the older man dissuaded him. The person on the other side of the line must have said something because Alfred tried to supress a smile before answering.

"Master Jason, I'm sure we've talked about your peculiar use of the English language before." Alfred didn't see Bruce's surprise, as he was paying attention to his grandson at the phone. He hummed. "I might approve of that word if you are quoting the Bard… Indeed." The old man smiled and turned to Bruce. "Well, I'll pass you on to your father… yes, Master Jason, it is necessary." Alfred sighed, although Bruce could clearly see the amusement behind the action, and finally handed him the phone. If the conversation had carried on longer without him (and he was definitely not telling anybody), he might have started making grabby hand motions.

"Hello." He hoped Jason could hear the emotion despite the congestion in his nose.

"Hey." He sounded petulant. When the silence carried on, Bruce talked.

"How are you doing?" And just before Jason could answer: "How did your case in Chinatown go?"

"Cut the bullshit. I know you were stalking me." The bitterness dripping from his son made him pause. He deduced his son had taken offense from him making sure he didn't need assistance?

"I took a small detour from my normal route in case you needed me." But now Bruce sounded unsure. He felt really tired, suddenly. Talking with Jason felt like walking around broken glass more often than not. You couldn't know when a wrong move was going to draw blood.

"If you don't trust me when I'm in your part of the city you could at least tell me. I'm not eleven anymore." Bruce looked at Alfred searching for advice but the old man just arched a brow. "Look, Alfred insisted that I had to talk to you personally about tonight's patrol."

"Uh?" Eloquent, as always.

"Dick insisted I go with him to do your route, because two of us somehow equal a Batman." He spat.

"He didn't say that." Bruce answered without thinking. He winced. That might make things tenser.

"So you won't have to worry about what I might be up to when you're not here making sure I don't go on a killing spree." Jason kept on, ignoring his comment. The sarcasm was almost palpable.

"Jason, I would trust you with my life." And by God, that was the truest thing he would ever say. He loved Jason with all his heart, so much that sometimes it hurt. It hurt like nothing before, because he'd lost him and then gotten him back, but not really. Sometimes it was like Jason didn't want to be back. Like he didn't want Bruce back.

"Yeah, but you wouldn't trust me with your city." The anguish in his son's voice paralyzed him, not letting him contradict the statement before the call ended.

ᴥ

"Hey, what's wrong?" Superman closed the distance between them in the training room.

He'd gone to the watchtower as soon as Alfred let him get out of bed. They were all helping in another cities. The world seemed to grow more chaotic in the days Bruce had been sick. He tried not to think about that, not to go down that spiral.

Instead, he looked down at his phone, where a selfie of Jason greeted him. Flipping him off. He assumed that was a negative to coming to the family dinner on Saturday.

Bruce sighed and saved the photograph in a folder named Jason, where he kept all the pictures his children managed to take of him. There weren't many. That alone made Bruce feel a familiar throb in his chest.

"It's Jason." He explained, looking up at Superman. His friend cocked his head, not really understanding. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to act around him, or how to talk to him. Every time things get better between us, I manage to drag things back to the start." Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose, although the cowl made the action pointless.

"You should talk to him, B." Bruce knew that was technically true, Clark being the best example of good parenting and communication. But Bruce's family was complicated. Mostly because of him.

"I don't- I'm not good at expressing how I feel. And I know Jason needs that." Bruce was a mess. Intelligence couldn't help him when he couldn't get out the words that were flooding him, the truths that would make him vulnerable but would show his son he was somehow human. "I don't know what the main problem is, either."

"Well, I do." Both of them looked at the doorway, where Diana was leaning watching them like they were some really dumb creatures.

"Please, explain." Bruce wasn't even irritated. If there was someone who hated how incapable he was of understanding emotions, it was himself. He just wanted to be able to be a good father.

"Bruce," she took a deep breath, pondering how to explain herself. "You shouldn't mistake compliance for respect, neither obedience for affection." She nodded to herself, ignoring Bruce's sudden intake of breath. "I used to give my mother hell. I would run away from my tutors, jump off cliffs, take up lessons she didn't approve of. The reason I was able to test the limits," she looked directly into Bruce's white lenses. "The reason I risked angering her doing what I liked, was because I had no doubt she loved me, and would continue to do so no matter what I did."

She approached them in calm steps, clearly not done with her insight. Bruce felt as if he was being dissected.

"Think about this, Bruce. You took a brilliant boy in, and he had only known abandon. I bet he was ready to leave at any moment, wasn't he?" She kept looking at him, searching for an answer.

Bruce remembered those first months. The food stashes hidden around the mansion, as if Jason feared he may be denied food someday. The bag Jason hid in his closed, packed with the necessities to survive on the streets. The weary looks whenever Bruce closed the space between them. The panicked eyes when Bruce raised his hand to ruffle his hair.

"Yes." His voice was but a whisper, something weak and pained. But Diana heard him.

"And when he realized you were giving him the opportunity to stay, I bet he did everything to please you and assure you wouldn't abandon him too." She gave him a sad smile. "So the moment he thought you really loved him despite everything, he started testing the limits. And you took it as offense, thinking he was disrespecting you, when in fact, he was trying to find himself."

Bruce didn't like to think about that often. How Jason started disagreeing with him and breaking the rules. How the anger in his young son grew and seemed to consume him. The death of Felipe Garzonas was something that weighed on Bruce's conscience, as did Jason's death. In the end, he had run away because he thought Bruce was going to take Robin away from him. Because he believed Bruce was somehow going to abandon him. His son.

And Bruce had been paralyzed just like he was now, because he wasn't good with words. He worried easily and needed to be in control. So, baring his soul and making himself vulnerable felt like an actually bodily challenge.

He really didn't deserve any of them.

They deserved a father that wasn't afraid to show his love and told them how vital they were, how he could die if any of them suffered any further because of him. How having them was the only thing stopping him from going too far, taking too much, caring too little about his life. How they were what kept him alive more often than not.

"He'd had no opportunity to find out what type of person he was. He had only been able to be what the world pushed him to be to survive." Diana placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed, demanding his undivided attention. "To you, everything has to be ordered. You need patterns and statistics and numbers. He changed the pattern, and you went into shutdown mode, trying to figure out what was wrong with him."

Oh, God. He had, hadn't he? He really couldn't fathom the possibility of him being at fault. Of him being the one that was wrong.

"He needed you. He needed to know that you loved him. He needed to make sure that in finding himself, he wouldn't lose you." She cupped his face. He wondered if the tears had run down his cheek, where the cowl should have stopped them. But maybe she just knew him too well, knew the rising and the falling of his chest, identifying how his whole body ached. "Bruce. Those fights, the anger, Jason lashing out." She pressed their foreheads together and let the air get out of her lungs slowly. He felt Clark's hand on his back, as if he was supporting him in case he fell. Maybe he was. "He saw you distance yourself from him a little more every day. He saw you recoil at the person he was becoming."

He heard a sob, and distantly, his mind registered it as his. He was blind. He was so fucked up, and stupid, and blind.

"Diana," it sounded like a plea. It was a plea. "What do I do?"

She took a step back and wiped her eyes, squaring her shoulders. She met his torn expression with determination.

"You go to your son and apologize." She gulped. "You have to let him know how you feel and how much you love him and appreciate him for who he is."

"Okay." He whispered.

Okay.

ᴥ

Bruce let himself fall to the ground, where Jason was tying up the gang members he had knocked out. His whole body tensed when he saw the caped figure behind him. Sometimes, Bruce really was mesmerized at how loud his son was about his emotions with his body and words. With his entire being.

"Jason." And it was his name, not Red Hood or Hood. He had come to talk to his son.

"I really don't want to do this tonight, okay?" He got up and wiped the inexistent dust from his cargo pants, looking at some point over Bruce's shoulder. "I didn't kill anyone, I didn't steal anything. You can go and sleep well tonight." Bruce hated that monotone voice. It was what Jason did whenever he was trying to distance himself from a bad memory or an unpleasant situation. When he was too exhausted to fight back.

Just like Bruce had sounded when Jason had died. When he felt too tired to live but too cowardly to die.

That thought alone scared him right out of his bones.

No. Not him. Not my boy.

He moved in a flash, driven by panic and desperation. He saw Jason tense, preparing for a hit and Bruce wanted to die a little bit more, but he needed to do this. Before it was too late to try. He crushed Jason in a hug, embracing him with his whole body, shielding them behind his cape and pressing his cheek against Jason's neck (not the top of his head, Jason had grown up so much he was almost Bruce's height). He wished he could have him like this forever, secured within his arms, just for Bruce to love and cherish.

Bruce needed to say so much, apologize for so many things. He should start telling Jason how proud he was of the young man he had turned into. How lucky he was to have a son that cared so much for people, who was brilliant and kind and too good for Bruce. He gulped.

"I-" He choked on the words, tears falling down his face. His shoulders were shaking violently and he was starting to panic, because Jason needed to hear him say all those things and understand how thankful Bruce was of being his father, and Bruce just needed to actually say the words. He was hyperventilating.

"Bruce?" Jason sounded panicked. When he tried to step back Bruce just tightened his grip around him. He just needed him to hear- "Bruce, oh my God, you're hyperventilating." Panic turned to terror and Jason tried to step back again. "Please, let me call Alfred. You're freaking me out." Bruce shook his head against Jason's neck and Jason fisted his hand on his cape, inhaling waveringly. "Please, let me help you. Please, Dad." And just like that, Bruce broke down into ugly tears and desperate sobs.

"I'm sorry." He made sure Jason could hear him, although he still sounded muffled against Jason's leather jacket. "God, I'm so sorry. I don't deserve you. I'm a terrible father and I know you hate me. And I'm sorry for everything."

"Hey, slow down, B." Jason was still trying to step back.

"I love you." That made him pause. Bruce took the opportunity. "I love you so much. And it hurts all the time. I- I don't know how to not say the wrong things or do the wrong things. I just want to protect you and. God, I'm sorry." He was choking a little on the snot. Alfred would probably curse him when he cleaned the cowl. "I need you to know." He leaned back and grabbed Jason's helmet between his hands. The young man was frozen in place. "I'm so proud of you, Jason. I'm so happy that I got you back and I'm so proud of the man you are."

He heard the heavy breaths his son was taking through the voice modulator. He wished they were anywhere else. He wished their masks weren't there. He wished he could keep Jason inside his heart, where he could feel all the good things he made Bruce feel.

"Please, let me try." Bruce bit his lip, trying to find the words among the hurricane inside of him. "Let me try to be a better father."

A huff of air left Jason, making a weird noise through the helmet. His hands were trembling and his chest was moving up and down.

"I" Jason stopped talking, he brought a hand to his chest and rubbed the material there, absentmindedly. "Okay." Jason conceded. And Bruce knew there was so much more to do to get things right.

Bruce engulfed him again in a soul-crushing hug. He felt like never letting go.

Okay.