thisiswhereikeepdcthings

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

dont ask me why i made this. i wouldnt be able to tell you

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Au where Batman doesn't want to tell the Justice League his secret identity but it's because he's really embarrassed about the things he's done as Bruce Wayne.

The thing is; Batman has spent years crafting and perfecting his public persona.

'Brucie Wayne' is supposed to be a dumber than life himbo, with daddy's credit card and the maturity of a seventeen year old. He's supposed to be someone so outlandishly ridiculous no one would ever even dare to mention him in the same sentence as Batman... And Batman has been acting that part perfectly.

It's a genius plan.

But then the league begins talking about maybe all sharing their secret identities, to become closer as a group and work better together. And the only thing in Batman's mind is 'Oh. My. God. Please don't'

Superman is saying something about trust and how he has come to value all of them as friends. Batman is thinking about last year Christmas' Gala, where he took off his clothes in an improvised strip-tease, and started swimming in the fountain.

Wonder woman is talking about how she wishes to strengthen their bonds so they become greater warriors. Bruce just remembered there's videos of him fucking twerking and pole dancing to Ariana Grande all over the internet.

Flash starts smiling and telling them he already trust them with his life– Bruce once said chocolate milk came from brown cows.

'Oh. My. God'.

There's just no way he's telling any of them.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

“Superman’s suit should be Kryptonian” “Ma Kent should make Superman’s suit at home” or how about the third fun option where the suit is the Kryptonian skinsuit BUT it gets damaged by Kryptonite and Ma Kent has to figure out how to sew/mend Kryptonian cloth that seems to have a mind of its own and won’t stop SQUIRMING.

Thousands of years of Kryptonian technology vs one Midwestern mom with her favorite show on? I’m putting my money on Ma.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

I really like the whole “other members of the Batfam can mimic the Robin, report! to a degree where they actually respond as if it’s Batman,” but I raise you:

What if other Gothamites learned to do the same thing?

The first time it happens, Jim is panicking. He’s got an injured bird on his hands and no idea where Batman is. The kid isn’t responding no matter who asks questions, and suddenly the GCPD is treated to Commissioner Gordon doing a scarily good Batman impression, to the point Robin immediately responds

Word doesn’t necessarily get out right away. It happened in the precinct building, so the only witnesses were cops. But the rumors start in bars with drunk men telling anecdotes, with officers coming home with stories, and it spreads from there.

Eventually, people know that if you channel Batman and go “Robin, report!” the bird will go from gasping desperately in pain to a robotic list of injuries. EMTs learn to do this as part of their training. The Bats don’t go to hospitals, but they will let someone do emergency first aid on them.

Interestingly, it doesn’t just work on Robin. Gotham knows, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks, that their little birds grow up to become other Bats. It’s why their rivalry with Blüdhaven over Nightwing is so vicious. That’s their little bird the city is claiming. Blüdhaven did not raise him, Gotham did.

Of course, not all of the Bats were Robin. Signal flipped someone off for trying the trick, and Black Bat pulled out a sharpie and drew a sad face on a civilian’s hand when they were trying to see how injured she was after falling several stories due to a snapped grapple line. So, the trick isn’t universal.

The most surprising one was when someone found Red Hood, half-buried in rubble with a slash across his neck, and barked out the order in a panic and he immediately complied.

It wasn’t Batman who told the city he was their dead little bird. It was the panic of a passerby just trying to do the right thing.

After all, Gotham may not acknowledge it, but all of them love their birds. They are protectors, and not just from the rogues. They help with the murders, yes, but they also do small stuff. Stop muggings. Talk people down. Slip résumés into the right hands, guide people to the right clinics.

And just how the Bats protect and help the people of Gotham, Her citizens help and protect them.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Can’t properly explain it, but “I like this character”, “I like how this character is written” and “I care about this character” are 3 very different things which may or may not overlap.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Bruce Wayne panicking because he walks into a WE board meeting to see a fully suited Red Hood sat at the table spinning around in a wheelie chair and CEO Tim Drake can only shrug and be like 'well he wanted to invest money'

Bruce, frantically pulling Tim aside: he is a CRIMINAL

Tim: so is like 90% of Gotham's elite. nobody else cares.

*both of them peer through the window to see literally nobody else in the meeting acting like a helmeted crime lord amongst them is any way odd. Stacy from accounting offers him a coffee and Red Hood denies politely*

Bruce: i understand him donating money, but why is he at our board meetings!??!

Tim: oh he bought like, over half our stocks. he owns 58% of the company now

Bruce:

Bruce: but thats...

Tim: yeah. more than you. Jason's the majority shareholder now.

Bruce:

Bruce: why did you let him do this

Tim: well you WANTED him to be part of the FAMILY again-

Bruce: SO YOU APPROVED HIM BUYING MY COMPANY?!

Tim:

Tim: shouldnta' benched me from fucking patrol.

Bruce:

Red Hood, knocking on the glass: can y'all wrap it the fuck up? i have other meetings to attend to after this

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

when jason died, they buried him with the possessions that he carried on him all the time. there was a pocket knife tucked into his sock, the bracelet on his wrist from catherine that he never took off, a tangled pair of earbuds in his back pocket, and, in the top pocket of his jacket, the cellphone that bruce bought for him after he was adopted.

that cellphone stayed with jason in his grave. went with him when he dug his way out. somehow stayed on his person when he was taken by the league, and he managed to convince talia to let him keep it throughout all his training.

he doesn’t know why, maybe as a grief thing or maybe just because bruce forgot and it’s not like the bill effected him in any way, but he never stopped paying jason’s phone bill. his number’s still active, still working after all this time. even weirder, but dick started adopting the tradition of adding his dead brother’s phone number to each and every family group chat any of them created after ethiopia. again, jason doesn’t know why. maybe it was dick’s way of carrying his memory with them; including him in family conversations even if they all thought the number was connected to a long buried phone in the pocket of a long dead boy.

the point is that jason wasn’t dead any more. and all throughout his time at the league, he gets to watch the family chats. the mission statuses, the arguments, the rapid spiral every chat went through where they started off using it as a serious bat communication centre only for dick or tim to send a meme and instantly spiral into nothing but chaos that bruce would neither take part in or attempt to stop. jason spectates it all, always fingering the keypad but never actually typing out a message. he came close when there was a heated debate between steph and dick about the best donut types and he knew they were both absolutely fucking wrong, but luckily tim came in to educate them on the right choice last second and jason was saved from having to reveal himself.

the closest call was when little damian got a hold of his phone, attracted to the bright colours of the block game jason had been absently playing out of boredom while ra’s droned on about whatever had pissed him off that day. he’d let the kid play, sat on his lap and eagerly jabbing at the screen, and jason had only looked away for at most a minute before he’d turned back to find the screen open on the family chat, damian having accidentally clicked on the camera button and taken a selfie of the two that he’d been about to send through. luckily, jason deleted it in time, but he became much more careful about letting the kid play with his shit after that.

this is all just a long winded explanation and backstory for and au i think would be funny where jason’s reveal is literally just him deciding to fuck with his family by randomly dropping in through text like:

-in the chat-

bruce: status report.

dick: hungry :( but good!

steph: seconded, im fine

tim: drug bust went to plan, on way back to cave uninjured

cass: ^ same answer

babs: everything seems calm from what i can tell

jason: a little claustrophobic but the coffin’s kinda homely so ig no complaints from me

.

.

.

several people are typing…

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

You're about to close on your very own, suspiciously affordable and comfortable house. Just before you sign the contract, the realtor shows you the required legal disclosure: your new house is haunted by the type of presence you'll get from this spinner wheel.

Of course it is.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

imagine you and your wife get poisoned by a cult and when you wake up not only do you find out your wife didn’t make it but also billionaire playboy philanthropist Bruce Wayne is actively stealing your son. your boy’s not even home half the time when you get back because he’s always at Mr Wayne’s place. getting picked up by his butler. Bruce Wayne knows your son’s school life better than you do. pretty sure he’s got his report card hanging up on the fridge and everything.

“oh you’re just being dramatic Bruce Wayne isn’t actually stealing your son—”

wrong! not even 2 seconds after your death and guess who’s getting adopted by Bruce Wayne. that’s his son now. dude straight up stole your son.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

i genuinely think boats are such good places to set a story because it automatically gives you a set of really interesting circumstances -- boats are transitory, you are not meant to stay on them forever, there is an automatic assumption of ending up somewhere different from where you started...characters are forced into close proximity, stakes are higher, etc. boats also just look cool, so that's always a plus

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

him

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

Yeah, I know, but then I wouldn’t KNOW which ones were being chosen lmao

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

It's always funny to me that Jason, Tim, and Damian all have personal beef with Ra's al Ghul and meanwhile, Dick is kinda just like

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

not the bad vibes 😓

tim is so done

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

jason comes back to gotham as red hood and the batfam have no idea who he is or that he has anything to do with the league of assasins until during a wayne gala theres a hostage situation and before bruce or anyone can figure out a way to go suit up a crime lord appears and saves everybody only to have a publically friendly catch up session with.... damian wayne.

damian covers to the press afterwards that its because of red hoods 'i dont hurt kids' rule and that he'd met the guy a few times in crime alley before he was dumped on bruce's doorstep. gotham's citizens are slightly concerned but honestly? the scary stabby child that's been glaring at them from the corners of parties since he got here with absolutely no backstory or history in gotham turning out to have a past with crime alleys most infamous protector/crime boss? it's a little comforting.

it's less comforting to the bats.

damian, getting out the car after the gala: I don't know what hood was thinking, making me his public ally. he's lucky the simpletons of this city bought that, don't you agree father?

damian: *turns to see the rest of the family staring at him with hard eyes*

damian:

damian: ...what did i do?

everybody's less than pleased that damian withheld the info that red hood is trained and from the LOA, but damian simply maintains that they never asked. when further questioned about why his relationship with hood was so familial and about what his identity is... they get

damian: hood was perhaps my favourite tutor back home, the only one i didn't kill. he taught me many things, from how to poison somebody to famous quotes and sayings from classic literature.

bruce: what. is. his. name.

damian: you know what one of those sayings was? 'snitches get stitches'

dick: *slams his face into the wall*

tim: well you did want him to be more childlike.

they eventually have to move past it because damian won't budge, unfortunately jason is finding this whole scenario fucking hysterical because holy shit he'd thought about coming back and pissing off his family through their secret personas but he hadn't even considered the beauty of coming back and pissing them off through their public personas.

and from then on the entire batfamily has to deal with pretending to be nervous or wary every time the red hood comes and crashes their very real wayne public events. it's fucking incredible. jason can't believe that he was gonna try and beat the shit out of tim to freak out bruce when all he had to do was grab a glass of champagne, walk up to the dude, and ask politely how stocks at WE are doing. 'brucie wayne' has no fucking clue what to do, and jason just poured the champagne against his helmet and let it all fall to the ground and everybody's too scared to say anything.

nobody else bats an eye when red hood becomes an occasional presence at these fancy events, apart from the people who know for a fact they could be on his shitlist. mostly because this is gotham, but also because they know he's a crime lord so like... riches and business running wise he kinda fits the bill for these things anyway? and if the stoic kid of brucie wayne eases up around him then the whole 'i dont hurt kids' thing must ring true so it's not like he'll cause too much trouble. also the guards are too scared to tell him he's not allowed in, so there's that.

the bats hate everything about this. they don't even know what red hoods game is, they have no idea why they're being tortured and they're getting paranoid about it. damian's absolutely no help because he's just happy to 1. get to see his brother on a regular basis again, and 2. get to see his brother find a less self-destructive outlet for the pit rage he's watched jason struggle with for years.

it's also just really fun to watch tim accidentally fall asleep against a wall mid-gala, wake up to red hood's helmet 2 inches from his face, and then almost break his own hand trying to punch it because he forgot that he wasn't in-mask and had to hold back last second.

dick is mostly just indignant because every time red hood shows up and hangs around near damian, damian immediately becomes a picture perfect public persona, interacting with the elites of gotham with the same expertise of tim or bruce. he's so mad that a crime lord can wrangle HIS little brother in public but he can't, that he completely disregards the whole crime lord thing and starts bugging red hood both in and out of mask about how to be a better older brother to damian. at one point he corners red hood on a rooftop mid patrol.

nightwing: ok, seriously, when I asked damian not to be rude to the new investors he told a woman her coat looked like it would hold up in a fight against two-face, but when YOU ask he becomes a model citizen, what is UP with that?

red hood, being an asshole: *gasp* y-you're.... YOU'RE RICHARD GRAYSON?

nightwing:

nightwing: ....oh my god you didn't know?

red hood: no i fucking knew you're just an idiot. and damian listens to me because I'm the only tutor he could never kill and he knows i'll beat his ass with my magic swords.

nightwing:

red hood: and also im the only one at the league who played Just Dance with him so i get special privileges, like telling him what to do.

dick asks damian to play Just Dance with him that night and damian just looks at him all forlorn, like 'it wouldn't be the same without the exhilarating thrill of knowing if anybody catches us hood will be stabbed and thrown in the lazarus pit again as punishment for corrupting me... it was really an unfair punishment considering he replaced grandfather's bed with a plastic pool covered by a sheet once, and the only punishment he got for that was being banned from the family dinners for two weeks'

dick stares at him. damian just adds 'he used to sit outside the window like a dog. watching and occasionally yelling about the injustice. mother gave him a plate of roast potatoes through the window once. grandfather disapproved.'

nobody knows quite what to do about red hood becoming a gotham elite, but they are becoming more concerned about damian's family's dynamic every goddamn day.

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

They may be fully trained vigilantes, but they are also brother's at the core.

Commission Info / Kofi (members get comics a week early)