Work Text:
“If I go to the bathroom and see another toothpaste art on my mirror, I’m gonna cry,” Tim declared and the poking stopped.
Jason grinned, and before Tim could protest, he landed on the ground, one of his legs being held up by the tangled sheets. “I’m going to get you for this,” he grumbled as he untangled himself and stood up to go to the bathroom. He locked the door and leaned his arms on the sink, trying to blink himself awake. He looked up, and was met with a white mustached-faced Tim, a pair of badly drawn sunglasses and the words “Welcome to the whorehouse” leaking on either side of the bathroom mirror.
He clenched his teeth in frustration, knowing that Alfred was making him clean it. He was so going to get Jason for this.
-----------------------------
He trudged down the stairs, then stopped to sniff the air. Then he trudged down the stairs faster.
A small figure blundered past him, knocking him off balance. Tim stopped to gather his wits, but stopped bothering when he saw Damian. No way was he going to let demon brat get dibs on Alfred’s best batch of pancakes first. Everyone knew that the first batch of Alfred’s pancakes were always the ones which turned out the best. He leaped after Damian and pushed him to the wall. If Alfred’s pancakes didn’t give him enough motivation to run fast, the utterly bone-shaking shriek of anger that erupted out of Damian sure did.
He galloped his way down the stairs while Damian thundered. They entered the kitchen, still fighting each other.
“Whoa whoa whoa, slow the hell down,” Dick said when he saw them. The two looked up, only for their blood to freeze. Right there, just chilling in the middle of the table, were the glorious first batch set down by Alfred.
Everyone in the room seemed to freeze. Alfred must have noticed the change in the air because he then said, “I’m going to make more, no need to fight. There’s more than plenty for everyone.”
But it was clear no one was listening, they were all staring at the lone filled plate. Tim glanced at his family-now-turned-rivals in the room. Jason was the closest to the table, but he could expect Steph to tackle him. Duke and Dick were already eyeing each other warily while Damian slowly inched closer to him. The big problems were going to be Bruce and Cass. He could expect them to turn against each other, but there was also the possibility that they would work together or silently slink through the chaos and try to get there first. Fortunately, he had a strategy.
Steph moving towards Jason was the opening gunshot to the race. The whole dining room erupted into chaos. Tim quickly blocked a punch from Damian and hit him in the throat. Not enough to be lethal, but enough to stun him for a few seconds. Those vital seconds were used to kick a chair in Bruce and Cass’ direction who had apparently decided to work with each other, probably with the condition that they would divide the batch.
Tim felt a brief moment of elation. Elation, because he was free to get to the table, but brief, because he was tackled by Jason and Steph who were working together???
“Sorry not sorry, Timbo,” Steph smiled.
“We would include you too, but there’s barely enough for two people as it is.” Jason turned his heel and ran toward the table. He was about to swear at him when Duke pushed him out of the way. He cheered, instead.
Rolling over to get rid of Steph, he trapped her hair under a chair leg. It was cruel, he knew, but worth it if he could enjoy the utter fluffiness of the buttery pancakes drowned in his favorite maple syrup.
He was close, he could feel it. He could nearly taste the victory and fluffiness. “YES!” he screamed with joy.
A chair slipped under his legs, making him trip. “NO!” he sobbed with dejection.
The chaos had stopped. The winner was announced. The losers rubbed their sore spots with defeat.
Bruce stepped off the table with the glorious plate in his hands. He grabbed a fork and put some on Cass’ plate and the rest on his. The bat-kids sat in their chairs, grumbling.
“Have I ever told you how much I hate you, old man?” Jason growled.
“Many times, Jason,” Bruce calmly replied.
“I’m new in this family,” Duke whined.
“You are adjusting,” Bruce smiled.
“It was your arrogance that made me leave Robin,” Dick glared at him.
“But your kindness brought you back, son.” Bruce draped the syrup on his plate.
“I didn’t have my father with me all those years,” Damian tutted.
“You had your mother to train you.” Bruce neatly cut his first bite.
“I was neglected,” Tim stated.
“Now you are not.” Bruce closed his eyes as he chewed with contempt.
Cass smiled.
------------------------------
Tim’s eyes scrunched in concentration as he read through the results Google provided after he searched “What does a CEO do if he doesn’t have anything else to do?”. He clicked on a link that said “Is You CEO A Leader— Or A Loser? Here’s How To Tell”
“Ken is such an asshole,” Tim whispered to himself.
For the first time, in like, forever, he had finished all his cases and no new ones had popped up for him to do. All he had for his vigilante work was patrol, but that was only at night. So he had no idea what to do during the day since he had made sure to catch everything up last week. And he couldn’t just wait a whole day for the monthly WE report to arrive tomorrow.
He scrolled down to the section labeled “Ten Signs Your CEO is A Loser”. The first point read:
Your CEO has little to no interaction with regular employees, spending his or her time with a few senior executives.
Tim sighed and pushed back his chair. He stepped out of his office and saw an employee waiting anxiously at the printer. He smiled and waved at her. She waved back, then grabbed the papers and ran.
Rude, Tim scoffed. He grabbed his coffee cup and went out in search of other employees to interact with.
It had been an hour and Tim had said hi, waved, or had small talk with around 15 people. Item 1: check, he smugly thought to himself.
He scrolled to the second point:
You have heard your CEO’s name, but don’t know anything else about him or her.
Tim spent the next 30 minutes creating a paragraph about himself and sending it to the chief of the advertising department, asking him to put up a page on the WE website. Item 2: check.
He spent the rest of the day going through the items on how to not be a loser CEO. Because despite his siblings’ taunts, he was not. And no, he was definitely not insecure about those taunts being true, thank you very much.
--------------------------
He stood in front of Damian’s school, scrolling through a Red Robin Tumblr fanpage on his phone. Damian would say that he was being narcissistic, but he had seen his demon brother grumbling grumpy praise at a fanart of Robin, and had then proceeded to try and draw it himself.
The bell suddenly rang and a storm of children thundered outside. Tim shuddered when he thought back to his own days at school. Shoulders touching, bags knocking together, books being spilled, people being tripped. A true nightmare.
He put away his phone when he saw Demon Spawn walking towards him with a frown on his face. Wait. That was his resting face, never mind.
“Where’s Grayson?” Damian demanded.
“With your mom.” He opened the car door.
Damian frowned as he got inside. “What is he doing with her?”
Tim turned to look at the idiot with exasperation, then decided not to bother. “Never mind. It was a joke.”
“Not a very humorous one.”
“No one asked.” God, he hated the brat. Brotherly love was the only thing stopping him from tying him up and setting the car to run off the edge of Gotham Harbor.
-------------------------------
This was not ideal at all. Tim had two hours. A whole fucking two hours to himself before preparing for patrol. What was he supposed to do then? With no new cases and missions to do, he clutched his hair in frustration. Letting out a groan of disappointment, he collapsed on his bed. He glared at the ceiling, challenging it to an eye stare competition. He failed.
With a sigh he dragged himself to the bathroom. The remnants of Jason’s stupid prank was still there. Suddenly, he had an idea.
The toothpaste-mustache gleamed as a sly grin creeped its way onto his face. It was time to get to work.
First, he sneaked into Jason’s room (because all his safe houses and apartment were being repainted due to a previous prank by Duke, Babs, and Steph) and unscrewed the showerhead in the bathroom and put a bunch of bloodworms he got from the garden pond in it. He replaced lotion with tanning cream, then started plastering his ceiling with googly eyes.
“Tt”
Tim swerved a full 180 to see the cursed Demon Brat leaning against the doorway.
“That’s a stupid prank,” he stated.
Tim blinked. “Thank you for your opinion, oh wise sage.”
“If you want Todd to not get on your nerves you should be less annoying.”
“The advice that spills out of your holy mouth can deafen thousands.”
“What you need is a better prank that—”
“Seriously. Have you considered a job in counseling? I heard your school’s quit cuz you were too wise for her.”
The devil’s child glared, as if considering whether today was the day Tim was to finally die by his hand. But he shook his head and tt-ed again. “What you need,” he continued, “is a prank that will make Todd stop making toothpaste art on your bathroom mirror everytime you oversleep.”
Tim considered his words. Damian could genuinely mean to help, but they hadn’t come up to that level of trust yet. Not when one of them kept trying to kill the other. But then again… the brat loved to cause suffering to everyone, especially his family. Maybe he might genuinely mean it this time. “What do you propose?” he asked, using his business persona.
The brat smiled. “Ice cream.”
“Ice cream,” Tim repeated.
“Ice cream,” Damian confirmed. “We use his favorite food against him. Turn it into a weapon.”
“Hood would be hella mad,” Tim said. He smiled. “Let’s do it.”
They convinced Cass to come on board.
And soon, it was ready.
“Oh Jason!” Tim called into the Cave.
“What?” Jason frowned at the video game controller he was fiddling with. Recently, the batkids and Barbara were competing in an intense competition of who can pass all the levels of a game first. It was rumored to be the hardest game to beat by all the kids in Damian’s school.
“It’s nearly time for patrol.”
“Oh shit,” he cursed and paused the game. He shoved Tim into the wall as he rushed upstairs.
“Hey!” Tim protested, flicking a rubber band from the many ones he had hidden under his sleeve at Jason. He missed. That didn’t bother him too much though. Jace had a much better surprise waiting for him.
Upon a certain deadly incident involving the League of Assassins, everyone in the household was forbidden to lock their rooms for long periods of time. So it took a huge trust factor for the rule to be upheld. Tim, Damian, and Cass were about to ruin that trust. And they were willing to risk not eating Alfred’s cookies and first batch pancakes for a month just to see the big bad Hood’s face when they played the prank.
But they couldn’t see his face. Because as soon as Jason opened the door, a massive scoop of half-melted ice cream went splat across the room, accurately landing on its target thanks to Tim’s calculations and Damian’s insistence of pointing out every mistake.
Jason froze, as did the other three. He wiped some of the ice cream off his eyes and slowly turned to them.
“Before I break every single one of you guys’ necks and hack your limbs with the dullest knife I can find, where are the other ice cream launchers?”
Cass looked up innocently, “What ice cream launchers, Jason?”
“You know what I mean you little shi—” before he could finish, he was pushed by all three of them, landing in the middle of the room.
First, there was silence.
Then, Tim said, “Let there be ice cream!”
And ice cream, there was.
All 6 big containers, dumped on a single, flailing, poor Hood.
The four of them all landed in major trouble, despite Jason’s whines that he was the victim. Alfred and Bruce decided that Tim, Damian, and Cass would clean Jason’s room and fix the stains on his bedsheets and pay the owners of the ice cream tubs the exact money they had originally paid. All four of them, however, were banned from Alfred’s cookies and first batch of, not only pancakes, but waffles as well for two months. It was enough to make Tim feel guilty, but it was clear that none of them felt any remorse at all.
Because seeing the great and terrible Red Hood, try to get up from the mound of ice cream, only to shriek in fear at the hundreds of googly eyes on the ceiling, then screech as he opened the shower to wash himself, only for bloodworms to fall onto his skin, then applying the tanning-cream-disguised-as-lotion after using Tim’s shower and scream when he found out and headed to Damian’s shower only to find a toothpaste top hat and long toothpaste bearded Jason staring at him in the mirror, was hilarious and to be remembered for eons to come.
The news spread fast and hard among the bats and even a bit to the Titans, League, Young Justice and Roy. And thus, the Great Bat Prank War came to an end.
—-------------------------
“You know what we need?” Nightwing suddenly bursted on the comms.
“No,” Batman replied. Shutting down any suggestion of what Nightwing was planning to do.
“It’s a quiet night tonight, at least for the past four hours, I think we need some music,” he continued, ignoring Batman. “Oracle?”
“On it,” she replied. Red Robin could hear the smile in her voice. He could also hear Alfred pointing out suggestions.
“Do we really need a song playing through our comms as we beat up criminals at night?” Robin grumbled.
“Shut up, Demon Brat. You’re ruining the fun,” came Red Hood’s voice as the lyrics of Sunroof blasted through the comms.
Red Robin nearly stumbled and lost his grip on the grapple as the sudden loud music blared in his ears.
“Maybe tone down the volume, Oracle!” he screeched.
“Then how will the bank robbers be able to listen to the music as you bust them up in the bank a few meters to your left?”
Red Robin sighed.
“I’m close too, Red. I’ll meet you there,” Nightwing said.
They didn’t bother with the sneaking. The music would be giving them away anyway. So, that’s how a group of seven or so criminals met the vigilantes of Gotham City. With Nightwing singing “You got me stuck on the thought of you” and Red Robin replying with “You’re making me feel brand new” as they kicked a goon each.
“This song’s catchy,” Spoiler said.
“Why don’t you introduce it to a couple harassers coming up in the next alley?” Oracle directed. “Hood, do you think the very discreet drug dealers on main street have heard the song?”
“If not, then I’ll introduce to them the pleasures of my singing,” Hood replied.
“Bats—”
“I see it, Oracle. Robin and I will handle it. Mute me.”
“Not a chance, Father. If I suffer, you suffer with me.”
Jason’s laugh mingled with the song.
Red Robin and Nightwing punched, kicked, and fought all while singing the lyrics.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up. My favorite part’s coming on!” Oracle snapped.
Red Robin laughed as he added his own voice to the rest of his family’s. Duke and Cass joined in too. Batman was probably punching someone, but with a slight smile on his face. And Demon Brat was most likely huffing, trying to hide his smile.
Red Robin swept one of the robber’s feet and put a foot on his chest and screamed the chorus with his family and their voices in his ears,
I got my head out the sunroof, I’m blasting my favorite tunes,
Punch.
I only got one thing on my mind,
Hi-five with Nightwing.
You got me stuck on the thought of you,
Kick.
You’re making me feel brand new,
Shove.
You’re more than a sunshine in my eyes,
Poke.
Wrapped up in the song, one of the criminals landed a hit right on his jaw. He was kicked back and his head bumped against a desk. Red Robin groaned as he sat up, his vision blurry. The goon was still stomping towards him. He reached for his staff, but it was in another goon’s hand. The staff was about to smash onto his head when an escrima stick flew straight into the goon’s gut, causing him to double down and drop it.
Nightwing flew in and landed another two punches on the man, marking him unconscious. Red Robin snatched his staff and pushed it into the guy who was in front of him’s gut. Nightwing punched him and he dropped too.
“You good there, Red?”
“Peachy,” he grinned.
“Good. Yeahh, we’re driving down—”
“The freeway at night.”
“I only got one thing—” Jason.
“In the back of my mind!” Steph.
“I’m feeling like this might be my time.” Duke.
“To shine with you—” Babs.
“With you!” Cass.
“With you.” Bruce???
They all laughed and sang the lyrics. Tim could hear a small voice which he thought could belong to Damian.
“I only got one thing on my mind!”
“To finish this patrol.”
“Shut up Devil Spawn.”
“Sucker.”
"Lmao."
“Babs, you’re more than a sunshine in my eyes!”
“Yeah, I’m a laser.”
They all joined in on the last part. And Tim knew, despite his stupid self-worthless thoughts the monster in his mind told him, his family would never let them get to him. As chaotic and troublesome as they were, they were his. And no one, not Ra’s, not the Talons, not even freaking Darkseid, could get in their way. You can’t mess with the bats. Cuz they always seem to multiply and come back. Always. He laughed as Dick ruffled his hair and they grappled away, still humming and singing.