#and he has a no metas in Gotham rule and fought Superman once so people tend to respect that

[mutable-manifestation]

Part 2 of The Gotham Puddle Boy: Danny Fenton

Danny wasn't too concerned about getting in a car with a stranger in what may well be the crime capital of the world. 

If he got weirdo - or Dash-like - vibes he could just slip out of sight and vanish into the wind. Being half ghost made a lot of human dangers less so.

Plus, perks of being a Fenton: riding in the car with a stranger wouldn't make him nervous about their driving. No one in the world was worse at it than his dad.

So a few minutes of trading jokes and a promise of video games was all it really took to get Danny to say "sure" to going back to Tim's house. 

The car was nice, at least, and they bantered over music even as they left city limits, which Danny chose to ignore for the time being.

Around 10 minutes later they turned to approach the gates of a veritable mansion that unfortunately brought forth the memory of his first time approaching Vlad's house. 

He was silent as Tim buzzed them in, and as they crawled slowly up the driveway he took the opportunity to ask.

"You live here?”

“Yep! Bruce Wayne is my adoptive father. Welcome to Wayne Manor!"

Not long after the building’s front door was opening before they could touch the handle, with an older man in a suit greeting them. "Master Tim, welcome home. I see you've brought a guest."

A hand clapped down on his shoulder as he was introduced, "Danny this is Alfred, Alfred this is Danny. We'll be in my room playing Damned."

"It is a pleasure to meet a friend of Tim, Mister Danny."

"Ah, you too. And just Danny is fine, Mister Alfred."

Alfred smiled and secured a promise that they'd be down to at least stretch their legs and eat something after an hour had passed before Tim was ushering them through the building to his room.

Sam was a good person, but also openly hated rich people despite technically being one. Her parents, however, were a nightmare hidden behind a thin facade of civility when in public. Vlad was also a nightmare. Axion labs had been run by some tycoon and they killed their innocent dogs. Lex Luthor openly hated Superman - which would be totally understandable if it were because he never so much as glanced at Amity Park’s issues instead of because of his incredibly Xenophobic stance on any and all non-humans. All told, Danny didn’t have a good track record with -illionaires - not the adults, at least.

'...Okay, maybe I should just avoid Bruce,' he thought, settling on the floor at the foot of the bed in the enormous room they'd entered to face the gloriously massive TV while Tim booted it up.

An hour later, Alfred was knocking on the door to herd them to the dining room where he'd prepared "refreshments." It was nice to enjoy homemade food that didn't fight back for once - he hadn't eaten at Sam or Tucker's house in a while and takeout wasn't quite the same. Even if they were unfortunately healthy snacks - the strange slices he'd learned were apricot were surprisingly good.

Alfred had them stretch their legs again two hours later - this time snackless - and Tim decided to give him a tour. The house was immaculate and the kitchen would have made the Lunch Lady greener than normal with envy.

It was also empty.

"Don't you have a bunch of siblings?" he asked on the way back to the room.

"Yeah, but they're all out doing their own things until lunch." He stopped just after closing the door behind him to grin at him. "Speaking of which. Can you stay for lunch?"

Danny blinked at the sudden manic energy starkly contrasting with the incredibly normal question. 

"Uh, I don't have to be back at the hotel until like 5, so, sure?"

"How do you feel about playing a little prank?"

Danny grinned, "What did you have in mind?"

---------------------------------

POV Jason

Jason’s patience was running incredibly thin. He had been looking at tubes of water for hours while Bruce kept asking variations of the same question. His only consolation was that Duke took up half of the attention or he might have punched him by now.

The only reason he even showed up was that he’d been told there was potential Lazarus water in Gotham - or something similar. But after hours upon hours of tests by the computer and him and Duke staring at it he was certain; that was water. Bruce had lost it.

Just as he braced himself to try and knock some sense into Bruce, Alfred came to fetch them to lunch. 

‘Finally,’ he thought, power-walking to the exit.

“I’ll be up in a minute, I want to set up one more scan to run while we’re eating,” Bruce threw after them.

“It had better only be a minute.” He paused to glower ominously over his shoulder, simmering with rage at all of the wasted time - and using that to smother the concern trying to bubble up.

“Finally,” Duke said once they were out of the batcave. “I thought we were going to be in there forever!”

Jason ignored him as he fished out his phone.

“Oh hey, group text from Tim; he has a guest that fits the family theme so he’s going to try and prank Bruce to see if he’s actually ‘lost the plot.’”

Jason grimaced, “Great, so instead of a productive lunch we’ll be playing house plus ‘guest that definitely isn’t the former Jason Todd, just a very similarly looking friend of the family’ for an hour.” He ran a hand down his face, sighing in frustration. “Count me ou-”

He froze in place, every muscle flinching to a stop. 

“Uh, Jason?”

“Quiet.” He hissed, eyes darting to the stairs as voices began to drift their way. 

Every hair stood on end as he stood there, something in his blood echoing dissonant signals of danger-run-hide-flee-don’t move-stay still-stop-stop-stop even as his conscious mind demanded he confront the problem head-on. But he couldn’t move - frozen as surely as if he’d been hit by one of Freeze’s ice rays.

As the stranger came into view his mind gave up on the danger signals, finally settling on don’t move don’t move don’t move even as near-unbearable levels of anxiety bubbled up in his gut. He barely registered Tim standing next to the guy as his head turned to stare him down, Jason’s eyes widening and shoulders hunching now that this… person’s full attention was on him.

The person hesitated a moment at the top of the stairs before smiling.

“Hi! I’m Danny, you must be Tim’s brothers?” he chirped, voice friendly enough that the anxiety uncurled just a bit. Just enough for Jason to register Tim staring at him oddly and Duke looking between the two of them.

Tim descended the stairs, done waiting for “Danny” to take the initiative, perhaps, while Duke took his silence as a cue to give the guy his cover story.

“Just me, actually,” he said. “The name’s Duke. J here is a friend of the family.” 

“Oh, uh, nice to meet you both anyway. Sorry for crashing you guys’ lunch,” he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck sheepishly before following Tim down to their level, still smiling calmly. “My parents are in town for some engineering convention and Tim kind of rescued me from dying of boredom.”

Abruptly, Jason found himself completely calm - relaxed, even. Suspiciously so; all of the rage and frustration he’d felt ever since emerging from the Lazarus Pit was suddenly swapped out for a level of relaxation he could nearly call “Zen.” 

He would nearly suspect a meta had broken Bruce’s rules, but he was the only one to react. Tim and Duke were clearly unaffected and the guy was either one hell of an actor or had genuinely only noticed him when he saw him. 

Meaning this was potentially Lazarus related - and even that thought could not cut through the sheer tranquility he was feeling to cause panic. His thoughts, at least, were unaffected.

Also, he kind of just wanted to enjoy not being angry for the first time in ages. Sue him.

So he plastered on a Wayne-family PR smile and ended the second awkward silence of the day. 

“Don’t worry about it; any friend of Tim’s is a friend of ours, at any rate. We have maybe two more minutes before Alfred actually manages to wrangle Bruce out of his study, why don’t you fill me in on this prank.”