Chapter Text
Bruce had figured out a long time ago that if he didn’t get up early in the morning, there was no way he was going to get everything done that he needed to get done.
To begin with, all of the kids had to be woken up, and some of them were a lot easier to wake up than others. Duke was his early bird, always popping out of bed as soon as Bruce knocked on his and Tim’s door. Sometimes he was even awake before Bruce and could be found sitting on his bed with the lamp on, reading a book.
Tim, his roommate, was Bruce’s night owl. There were mornings when Bruce could tell that Tim had been sneaky and had stayed up all night the night before. On these mornings Bruce would have to pick Tim up out of bed and carry him downstairs for breakfast.
Cassandra wasn’t much better than Tim about staying up late, although she hid it a lot better than he did. Jason was another night owl, but he loved school enough that Bruce didn’t really have to coax him to get up and get ready. Dick was more like Duke; always chatty and energetic in the morning, even if he wasn’t the earliest to rise. Damian slept as much as any six year-old needed to, but seemed to be cranky morning, noon, and night anyway.
The morning Hal Jordan moved into the house next door was going very much like any other morning. Duke and Jason were already down in the kitchen at the table. Duke was shoveling spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth, careful not to drip milk on the crossword he was working on. Next to him, Jason was ignoring his oatmeal and instead had all of his attention devoted to a book. Alfred was trying to stop Damian from feeding Ace bits of toast from the table. Dick he hadn’t seen yet, but Bruce wasn’t going to worry about him; Dick was old enough to manage himself.
Cassandra, however, hadn’t yet emerged from her basement bedroom, and Tim hadn’t made an appearance yet either. Bruce was in the middle of making lunches, so he couldn’t stop to go make sure Tim and Cassandra were up.
As he walked by the table to stuff Damian’s lunchbox into his backpack, Bruce asked, “Duke, was Tim awake yet when you came downstairs?”
Duke looked up from his crossword and shrugged.
Bruce sighed and paused for a moment by the table. Jason had pushed his unfinished oatmeal to the side in favor of the book, yet another 700 page horror novel, by the look of it.
“Jason,” Bruce said.
Jason’s eyes didn’t leave his book. After a couple of seconds, he turned a page.
“Jason,” Bruce said again.
Duke reached over and lightly pushed on Jason’s arm.
Confused, Jason looked up from the book and stared over at Duke. Duke pointed at Bruce, and Jason’s eyes followed where he was pointing, until Bruce was finally looking his second son in the eyes.
Thanks to puberty, Jason was no longer as scrawny and thin as he had been when Bruce first found him in the group home four years ago. At fourteen, Jason was packing on muscle and swiftly outgrowing his shoes and clothes every three or four months, and all of that growing took up a lot of energy.
Which was why he really needed to eat.
“Your breakfast is cold,” Bruce said, gesturing to the oatmeal.
Jason looked around his book at the oatmeal and then scowled up at Bruce.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You say that and then you text me around 10 when I can’t do anything about it and complain about how hungry you are. If you would finish your breakfast then maybe you wouldn’t get hungry so long before lunch,” Bruce said.
“Well...I’m not hungry right now,” Jason said, shrugging as he looked back down at his book.
Bruce took this as an opportunity to get a closer look at the book. On the cover, a blurry individual in red was running into some dark woods. Bruce didn’t read a lot of horror—he usually read nonfiction if he had any extra time to read—but he was familiar with this title.
He made a grab for the book, but Jason somehow sensed he was coming and jerked it out of Bruce’s reach without even needing to look up from the page.
“Isn’t that book about vampires?” he asked.
“Yeah, so?” Jason said.
“I’m not sure how I feel about you reading horror novels for adults,” Bruce said.
“It’s not that gory,” Jason said, still not looking up from the page.
Bruce sighed and picked up Jason’s bowl of congealing oatmeal, then went back to the counter and set the bowl in the sink. He didn’t have the time to tackle Jason’s perverse interests at the moment. He needed to finish making Duke’s lunch and figure out why he hadn’t seen or heard from Tim or Cassandra yet.
Bruce glanced back across the room to see if Duke was done with his cereal and saw that he was.
“Duke, do me a favor, would you?” Bruce asked. “Go check on Cassandra downstairs and make sure she’s getting ready for school.”
Without complaint, Duke set his pencil down next to his crossword and hopped out of the chair to go to the basement.
Alfred was still busy with Damian, so Bruce looked to Jason and said, “Jason, put the book down for a minute and go upstairs to find Tim.”
Jason rolled his eyes and hissed out a sigh, but he did push the chair back from the table and get up. Bruce was hoping he’d leave the book behind, but Jason was too smart for that trick and took it with him upstairs.
Bruce was just tossing some extra protein bars into Jason’s backpack when Jason and Duke returned empty-handed.
“Tim’s not upstairs,” Jason said at the same time Duke said, “Cass isn’t downstairs.”
“They’re not in their rooms?” Bruce asked, turning to them. “Where are they? Did you check bathrooms?”
“Dick is still in the upstairs bathroom. Tim’s not in your bathroom,” Jason said, and Duke added, “No one’s in the downstairs bathroom.”
Faintly alarmed, Bruce dropped what he was doing and headed out of the kitchen into the hall. Both boys trailed him to the stairs.
“Cassandra! Tim!” he called.
He waited for a second, but there wasn’t any response.
More alarmed now, he turned back to the boys shadowing him and said, “Jason, go check the backyard.”
Jason groaned and headed for the back of the house.
Closely followed by Duke, Bruce traveled down the front hallway and turned into the living room. A quick scan of the crowded room didn’t reveal either of the missing children.
He was opening his mouth to shout for them again when he heard muffled voices through the closed library door across the front hall. Without a word, Bruce turned and headed for the library, opening the door to the dark room.
The blinds were open, and two thin dark figures were crouched down by the sill. Even in the dim light, Bruce recognized Tim’s messy head of hair and Cassandra’s choppy short locks. He loosed a breath of relief, the anxiety leaving him at once. It was replaced swiftly with a very familiar level of irritation.
“Tim, Cassandra,” he said.
Tim and Cassandra both flinched, one of them dropping something heavy that clattered on the wood floor. They turned to face him and Duke.
Bruce flicked on the light and took in their startled faces. There was a pair of binoculars on the floor at Tim’s feet.
“What are you two doing? You should be getting ready for school. Why didn’t you answer me when I called?”
Tim and Cassandra exchanged a look. Without a word, Cassandra pointed out the window.
“Are you spying on the neighbors again? Tim, we’ve talked about this,” Bruce asked. He went over to the window and picked up the binoculars at Tim’s feet, straightening again to put the binoculars up on top of the bookshelf where Tim couldn’t reach them. It wouldn’t stop Tim from retrieving them eventually, but it would take him a while to figure out how to get them down.
“Someone’s finally moving in next door,” Tim said, his gaze flickering up to the binoculars.
“I don’t care what’s happening, I don’t want you spying,” Bruce said.
Jason stomped back down the hall, yelling, “Dad! They’re not in the back—”
Jason went quiet when he saw them all in the library. He came in and asked, “What’s going on?”
“New neighbors,” Cassandra told Jason as he came to join them at the window.
“Finally!” Jason said. “They got kids?”
Tim turned back to the window immediately, peeking through the blinds as he said, “We haven’t seen any kids. Just three old guys, right Cass?”
“Three old guys?” Bruce said, stepping over to the window.
The bay window was at a slight angle and looked out toward the east side of the neighborhood. Sure enough, there was a moving van parked in front of the house next door. Bruce, Tim, Cassandra, Jason, and Duke watched silently as two men carried a dresser down the ramp, bickering as they went. Both of the men were tall and built enough that Bruce could tell they worked out regularly. One of them was white and had flaming red hair, and he appeared to be doing most of the complaining. The other man was black and had closely shaved head of inky black hair. Neither of the men looked “old.” In fact, they looked like they might be around Bruce’s age or younger.
“Are they the ‘old guys’ you were referring to?” Bruce asked Tim, pointing at them through the window.
Tim nodded.
Shaking his head, Bruce turned to take another look out the window. The house next door had been vacant for months, since the previous owner decided to retire and move to Brooklyn, of all places. It was interesting that he hadn’t heard about the house selling. He’d been under the impression that it wasn’t even on the market yet.
Outside, the two men finally managed to stop bickering long enough to get the dresser down the ramp. Bruce frowned as he studied them. Were they married? Roommates? Maybe they were just the movers. They were certainly both muscular enough to be movers.
They made their way up the walkway and through the front door, disappearing from sight.
As soon as Bruce couldn’t see them anymore, he remembered that he was supposed to be getting the kids ready for school. He forced himself to turn away from the window and looked down at Tim and Cassandra.
“Alright. That’s enough spying on the new neighbors for one day. Tim, where’s your backpack? And Cassandra, did you brush your teeth?"
Instead of answering his questions, Tim and Cassandra both glanced up at the binoculars on top of the bookshelf.
“No,” Bruce said, and their eyes snapped back to his. “We can go next door and introduce ourselves to the new neighbors later, tonight when you’re done with your homework.”
Cassandra, bless her, shrugged and slipped out of the room, barely making a sound as she traveled down the hall to go brush her teeth.
Tim was not as simple. Tim and Bruce had to stare at each other for a moment, and although Tim’s eyes never left his, Bruce could tell that his attention wasn’t solely on him. His mind got stuck on things sometimes and it was hard to get him to let go.
Fortunately, Bruce had a lot of experience with getting Tim to let things go.
They were still staring at each other when Jason said, “Jesus, Tim. They’re not going to move back out by tonight. You can be a creep later.”
Tim looked at Jason, but didn’t reply. There was another pause, and at last, Tim let out a little huff of a sigh and walked around Bruce, following his sister’s path out of the library.
Bruce turned to watch him go, arms crossed over his chest as Tim sullenly went upstairs.
When he turned back around, he found with no small amount of exasperation that Jason and Duke had somehow snuck into Tim and Cassandra’s place at the window.
“Boys,” Bruce said, and reached around Jason to lower the blinds. “Enough. Whoever they are, it can wait until after school.”
* * *
Bruce and Alfred had figured that somewhere between Jason and Tim that the work didn’t end just because the kids weren’t home.
There were rooms to clean, errands to run, meals to cook. The dog and Damian’s cat had vet appointments. Bruce was PTA president at Damian’s elementary school and Alfred was assistant coach of Duke and Cassandra’s baseball team. Both Bruce and Alfred volunteered weekly at the local food kitchen as well, and Alfred auditioned for roles at the local community theater. Sometimes it seemed like the list of things to do was never ending.
So as the morning went on and eventually turned to noon, Bruce never found a moment to mention the new neighbors to his adopted father. Before he knew it, hours had passed in a blur of laundry detergent, furniture polish, vacuuming, and meal prep for next week. In fact, the new neighbors slipped his mind entirely until they both happened to end up back downstairs in the same part of the house.
“I found Duke’s cleats!” Bruce called to Alfred as he dumped out Duke’s hamper.
“Miracles do occur,” Alfred said. “Where were they?”
“In his hamper.”
“Of course,” Alfred said.
Alfred was mopping the kitchen floor while Bruce was busy in the laundry room. Or at least Alfred was trying to mop the floor, but Ace wouldn’t stop trying to fight the mop.
“The house next door sold,” Bruce told him, turning to watch Alfred try to lift the mop out of Ace’s reach. Ace jumped up and snapped at it, wagging his tail as if Alfred was playing a game with him.
“I saw. I spotted the moving van when I was upstairs in Timothy and Duke’s room earlier this morning,” Alfred said.
“Did you get a good look at any of them?” Bruce asked.
“Just one. Caucasian fellow with brown hair.”
He must be the third “old guy,” as Tim had called them. Bruce grunted as he sorted the laundry, tossing Duke’s whites back into the hamper while the colorful t-shirts and jeans went into the washing machine.
“I told the kids we would go next door and introduce ourselves tonight,” Bruce said.
“That is a wonderful idea. I can pick up some ingredients to bake cookies for the new neighbors this afternoon when I go to the store,” Alfred said.
Bruce frowned at this and asked, “Is that still something people do? Taking baked goods to new neighbors?”
“Whether or not it is something that other people do, I have no idea. However, it is polite, so it is something that I do,” Alfred said.
Bruce nodded distractedly, shutting the washing machine. He got up and grabbed the usual lemon-scented laundry detergent he used to clean the rest of the kids’ clothes before he remembered he needed to use the special hypoallergenic kind for Duke.
“I do hope you will be more polite to the new neighbors than you were to the residence’s past occupant,” Alfred said.
Bruce stopped, the bottle of hypoallergenic detergent and its cap in his hands, and turned to look at Alfred.
“What are you talking about?” Bruce asked, frowning.
Ace had gotten his teeth into the mop. Alfred was engaged in this battle of tug of war, too busy to look up at Bruce.
“Are you pretending that you did not attempt to provoke Mr. Scott on a regular basis?”
Bruce scowled over at him before returning to his task.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I am referring to sections 12E, 14A, 28C, 33B and 33F of the HOA agreement,” Alfred said. “One does have a difficult time forgetting the addendum about lawn ornaments. And there was the memorable occasion when the local news became interested in our neighborhood’s affairs when Mr. Scott attempted to repaint his house.”
“That color green was hideous. It clashed with the entire neighborhood,” Bruce said.
“I happen to enjoy a mint green,” Alfred said.
Bruce rolled his eyes. Sometimes he thought that Alfred was contrary with him just for the fun of it.
“Well, I for one am glad that someone new has finally moved in. Now we can finally get that section of the fence fixed,” Bruce said.
In truth, Bruce could afford to have the fence fixed a long time ago. He’d inherited his birth parents’ estate after they died, and years of careful spending, hand-me-downs for the kids, sensible cars, and all but necessary upkeep of the house had allowed Bruce to keep the majority of said estate. If he really wanted the fence to be fixed, he could call somebody to start putting up a new one that very afternoon.
But he was a firm believer that neighbors should help pay for things they also benefited from. Bruce had been patching up the fence just enough to keep Ace in the yard, but now the fence could be replaced, and they could finally get rid of that gate that allowed for access between the two yards. It had remained shut but for two or three occasions while Alan Scott lived next door; there was no point in having it.
“I would let the neighbors settle in a bit before you mention the fence,” Alfred said. “Give them at least three months.”
“Three months?” Bruce said, incredulous.
“The house has been vacant since January. Who knows what needs to be fixed inside, and there was that hail storm in August. We have to give them time to fix the immediate problems before we dump the burden of the fence on them.”
Bruce sighed.
“Fine,” Bruce said, starting the laundry machine. “I can give them three months.”
He didn’t like it, but Alfred did have a point. It was a bad idea for the new neighbors to be sick of him from the very beginning.
* * *
After school and dinner that night, most of the kids helped Alfred make cookies for the new neighbors. The only ones who weren’t helping were Dick and Jason, since Dick was at practice and Jason was up in his room, glued to his horror novel.
Bruce wasn’t helping make the cookies either. Even though it was Friday, Bruce was sitting at the dinner table going over Dick’s algebra II homework, making little checkmarks next to the answers that Dick had gotten right. There were not very many checkmarks on the page. Dick was one of the state’s most talented young gymnasts, but math wasn’t his strong suit, and Bruce wanted to make sure Dick had all weekend to fix the errors before school on Monday.
He was just going over the last problem—which Dick had solved incorrectly—when Alfred slid the last of the cookies off the spatula into a plastic container.
“Alright, all done,” Alfred said. “One of you needs to go fetch Jason and tell him we’re ready to go next door.”
“I’ll get him,” Duke said, and took off out of the room before one of the other kids could volunteer.
Bruce checked the clock. It had been a cloudy September day and was dark outside, but it was still only 7:45. Hopefully the new neighbors wouldn’t be too overwhelmed by a huge crowd of children descending on them at this hour.
Slipping Dick’s assignment into his binder for him to look over again later, Bruce went through Cassandra’s notebook trying to find her English homework. Bruce was still digging through the huge stack of wrinkled paper Cassandra had stuffed in said notebook when Duke returned with Jason.
“Ah, Jason, very good,” Alfred said.
“I don’t want to go meet the new neighbors,” Jason complained. Bruce glanced up and saw he had his hands tucked into the pockets of his ratty jean jacket.
“Well, that is unfortunate, but we’re all going,” Alfred told him.
“Dick doesn’t have to go!”
“Because he is at practice,” Alfred said, ever patient. “Now, someone go fetch your father’s shoes.”
Bruce looked up from Cassandra’s binder.
“Actually I’ll stay. I’m still going over the kids’ homework,” Bruce said.
“Ten minutes, Bruce, then you can return to the homework.”
Bruce looked up and made eye contact with Alfred, who had one eyebrow raised.
Sighing, Bruce put the binder down and got up. A couple of minutes later his shoes were on and he and Alfred and the kids were walking up the path to the dark front stoop of Alan Scott’s old house.
Damian got there first and hit the doorbell two or three times too many. Bruce got there second, picking up Damian and removing him from the doorbell. Alfred, Cassandra, Jason, Duke, and Tim came up shortly behind him and Damian, Tim in the rear, peaking around the rest of them curiously. Bruce stepped to the side, getting out of Alfred’s way.
“Hold on!” someone in the house yelled.
There were footsteps inside. The porch light flickered on and then the front door was being wrenched open.
It was a man. He was a bit shorter than Bruce, and Bruce suspected younger than him as well. Even wearing a loose t-shirt, tan bomber jacket, and jeans, Bruce could tell he must work out regularly. One light brown lock of hair curled down over his forehead.
He was extremely attractive. For a moment Bruce was stunned by it, unable to think of anything to say. The man didn’t seem to be able to know what to say either. His brown eyes widened at the sight of Bruce, Alfred, and the kids.
For a moment they all just stood there, until Alfred finally said, “Hello.”
“Oh,” the man said. “Hello.”
Bruce didn’t realize he was staring until the man’s eyes, having flickered between all of the children, met Bruce’s gaze. Bruce looked away, accidentally examining the interior of the house instead. There were still boxes all over the front entryway, piled on top of each other by the stairs.
“My name is Hal. Jordan. Hal Jordan,” he said, and Bruce looked at him again, finding that Hal was already looking at him.
Bruce cleared his throat and turned toward the rest of the family.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Bruce Wayne and this is my son Damian,” Bruce said, lifting Damian a little. Then he pointed to each of his children one by one. “Duke, Cassandra, Jason, and Tim. I have another son as well, but he’s at practice right now. And this is Alfred, my father. We live next door.”
Bruce pointed at his house. Hal looked where Bruce was pointing, taking it in. There wasn’t much to see, since it was so cloudy, and the trees in the front yard concealed most of the house anyway.
“Huh,” Hal said. “Wow. Next door. Ok.”
“We came over to introduce ourselves and welcome you to the neighborhood,” Alfred said.
“Oh, thanks,” Hal said.
“And we made you these cookies,” Alfred said, holding the plastic container out.
Hal leaned out of the doorway a little bit and took the container of cookies.
“Thanks,” he said again, eyes taking them all in again before his gaze returned again to Bruce.
Bruce felt that this was the moment where he should say something, make polite conversation. However, he’d never been great at all of the social niceties like Alfred was, and the fact that Hal was conventionally attractive only made it worse. The longer they stood there, staring at each other, the more Bruce felt as if he was out of his depth.
“So, Hal,” Alfred said, saving Bruce for the second time. “Are you new to this part of the country?”
Hal looked to Alfred, and something about his posture seemed to unwind.
“No, not at all. I grew up here in town, actually,” Hal said. “I moved out to California for a bit when I was in my early twenties, but I moved back a couple of years ago.”
“Oh, I see,” Alfred said. “Do you still have family in the area?”
Hal shook his head. “Not really, no. One of my brothers lives upstate, but my dad died when I was a kid and my mom moved out of state with my younger brother and his wife a few years back.”
“I see,” Alfred said. “And you are not married? No children?”
Hal shook his head and said, “No, not for me.”
Hal glanced at all of the kids again, almost like he couldn’t help it.
“So you’re just going to live in this big house alone?” Duke asked.
“Duke,” Bruce said, frowning at the newest member of the Wayne household.
Hal just chuckled and said, “Well, that’s the plan for now I guess.”
This, Bruce thought, was interesting. The majority of the other homes in the neighborhood were owned by husband and wife pairs, and most of them had children. Diana was single, but even she had her two nieces living with her. Bruce wondered what Hal did for a living, if he could afford to live in a four bedroom two story house by himself.
As if thinking along the same lines, Alfred asked, “And what do you do, Mr. Jordan?”
“I work for Ferris Air. I’m a test pilot,” Hal said.
Bruce looked closer at the bomber jacket and saw the Ferris Air patch on the front.
“How fascinating,” Alfred said.
From the back, Jason said, “So like, you fly airplanes?”
“Jets, mostly,” Hal said.
“Jets,” Jason repeated, sounding faintly awed. “Cool.”
Bruce checked on his children and noticed that along with Jason, Tim, Duke and Cassandra too were staring at Hal with intense interest.
“That sounds extremely dangerous,” Bruce said sternly, hoping to discourage his children’s daredevil tendencies.
“Well, yeah, but it’s better this than a desk job, right?” Hal said. He grinned, flashing a mouth full of bright white teeth at the kids. Jason smirked back, and Cassandra had her small catlike smile on her lips. Tim and Duke laughed warily.
Damian was starting to squirm in Bruce’s arms. Perhaps it was time to leave, before Hal said anything else about the appeal of life-threatening careers.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Hal, and it’s good to know that the house isn’t going to be sitting here vacant anymore,” Bruce said. Then he added, muttering, “For a while there I was starting to think Alan was going to let it fall apart just to spite me.”
Hal’s grin blinked out of existence, replaced by a perplexed expression.
“I’m sorry?” Hal said.
“Oh, sorry. Alan Scott. The previous owner. He and I...didn’t always get along,” Bruce explained.
Hal frowned and cocked his head, and then he said, “Yeah, I know Alan. He’s my great uncle. He gave me the house.”
Cold dread formed in the pit of Bruce’s stomach.
“I...wasn’t aware that Alan had any family,” Bruce said, looking back to Hal.
Hal was still studying Bruce, eyes narrowed. Recognition seemed to occur to him suddenly, and he pointed at Bruce.
“Wait, you’re not the guy who freaked out when Uncle Alan tried to repaint, are you?” he asked.
Bruce almost sighed.
“It wasn’t the fact that Alan repainted that I took issue with,” Bruce explained.
“He told me about you. I should have made the connection when you introduced all the kids,” Hal said, and then looked Bruce up and down, still smiling and eyeing Bruce in a way that Bruce couldn’t decipher. After a beat he added, “You do not look how I imagined you when Uncle Alan told me about the paint thing.”
“Well,” Bruce said, and it took all of Bruce’s willpower to keep annoyance from creeping into his tone. “Like I said, it was nice meeting you, but Alfred and I should get the kids home.”
“Yeah, of course,” Hal said. He was still giving Bruce that odd look.
“Goodbye, Mr. Jordan,” Alfred said.
“See you,” Hal said, finally looking away from Bruce to wave at Alfred and the kids with his free hand. “Thanks for the cookies.”
“You’re welcome,” Alfred said, and then he and Duke began walking back down the path to the sidewalk.
Tim and Cassandra eyed Hal and then bolted, cutting across the yard to the house. Jason didn’t take his hands out of his pockets, barely acknowledging Hal at all as he turned and followed Duke and Alfred.
“See you around,” Hal said to Bruce.
Bruce nodded and turned as well, following Alfred, Jason, and Duke. He and Damian had just made it to the end of the path when he heard Hal’s front door shut behind him.
Alfred lingered behind the kids and waited for Bruce to catch up to him.
“Don’t say it,” Bruce said, walking right past him, and followed the kids back into the house.