Excerpts from Measures of a Man¶
Scene 1¶
Kicking back on his blessedly soft new couch after a satisfying but exhausting night of interrogating goons, collecting evidence, and bitching at Bruce—not necessarily in that order—Jason groans when his personal cell abruptly rings, the annoyance only redoubling when he snatches it up and sees the contact name listed on the video call.
He hits Accept anyways. Then hisses, “The fuck do you want, Harper?”
“Damn, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bunker.”
“You have three seconds before I hang the fuck up,” he warns, still staring at the screen of the TV rather than the phone.
“I need your help!” Roy rushes out.
Jason finally deigns to squints over at him.
The older man’s flame-red hair is loosely braided back, exposing a line of bruises on his face. They don’t look too bad, but.…
“With what?” Jason finally relents, hoping it’ll just be some light casework Roy needs help with.
“I need something to eat that’s not, like, a bowl of cereal or some shit. Also, I seriously don’t think I can stomach another can of soup over here at this point. Hot, cold, in a pot, in a bowl…Dr. Seuss can keep that shit.”
“You know,” Jason says slowly, staring the older man down, “there’s been this really amazing invention in recent decades, commonly referred to as take-out.”
Roy responds with an expression that’s half sheepish grin, half outright grimace, glancing away as he runs his thumb along his bottom lip—a stress gesture Jason would recognize even if the two didn’t know each other so intimately already. “Not, uh, sure I’m feeling the whole ‘invite strangers’ thing right now, Jaybird.”
Jason squints lightly, another glance marking the tell-tale bruises as Roy swallows. He huffs. “Fine. You have eggs there?”
“Uhh.…”
Jason scoffs, arching a brow. “Are you seriously telling me you don’t have eggs?”
“No, I have 'em, just…any chance we can do this one-handed today? Special request.”
Jason wrinkles his nose. “You’re in the kitchen, Roy; don’t be disgusting.”
Roy tosses his head back in a delighted laugh that reminds Jason a little of Dick, looking the most relaxed he has all call. “Nahhh, as fun as that would be”—he angles the phone downwards to show his right arm and shoulder encased in a sling—"I don’t think that’s really in the cards today, sadly."
“The fuck did you get yourself into, Harper?” Jason bites out, worry flaring in his gut even though it’s days too late and probably not even a particularly bad injury or Roy would be a lot more panicked, given the implications that hand and arm injuries could have for his archery.
“Oof, that’s kind of a long story?” At Jason’s unyielding expression, Roy tries another offer: “Look, I’ll tell you when the cooking lesson’s over, okay?”
Jason can feel his jaw clench even as Roy says it, but nods his head in assent. After letting him sweat a few moments more.
Roy sets the phone down on the kitchen counter and takes a seat on one of the barstools, angling the mobile so that his face stays visible as he waits for Jason to decide on / pick out a recipe.
Jason hums. “You have oats still, right?”
Roy blinks. “Uh, ‘still’ is—”
Jason narrows his eyes. “I specifically remember telling you to get some quick oats so Lian can have more breakfast variety.”
“And I specifically remember getting quick oats so Lian can have more breakfast variety. I just, uh.…” He grabs the phone up, bringing it with him as he goes hunting through a few upper cabinets and then finally a lower one.
“Eureka!” he announces triumphantly at last, brandishing a 1-kilo container of 1-minute oats.
Jason is not impressed. “Are you storing our kids' food with the fucking cleaning supplies? Exactly how stunted do you want Timbit to be?!”
“Hey, what? No! No. No chems.” He grabs up the phone again to more clearly show the cabinet’s contents. “It’s just Zip-Loc bags and shit. Everything here’s food-safe. Gimme a little credit, geez,” he tacks on grumpily.
“You’re storing food in the supplies cabinet, Harper. You deserve exactly how much credit I give you.”
Roy huffs, placing first the phone and then the cardboard tub of oatmeal on the countertop. “Okay, first of all, food is a supply, and an absolutely essential one. Second of all…fuck it, give me a minute.” He hangs up with no further explanation, leaving.Jason to work on further expanding his repertoire of precisely targeted curse words while he waits.
The phone rings a few minutes later, and when the feed comes back online, the camera is hovering level with Harper’s face as he stands in the kitchen. “Mini-drone,” he says by way of explanation, beaming. “Don’t leave home without it.”
Jason patiently forgoes pointing out that Roy is in fact still home anyways. “Tell me you remember where the baking powder is this time,” he says instead, sighing. Loudly.
Roy winces.
Jason groans.
“No, I know this one. It is.…” The drone follows him as he wanders off, keeping a view over his shoulder as he approaches one of the cabinets he had previously scoured for the oatmeal. The precious little cardboard can of white powder proves to indeed be there, next to a bar of chocolate and a bag of oreos. “See? Vaguely…baking-related stuff, right?”
“Amazing,” Jason deadpans. “Vanilla extract?”
“Fucking.…” Roy’s eyes widen for a second before he slumps against the counter, angst written across his whole body as he begins mumbling in absolute despair. “Vanilla—vanilla extract? Do I look like the kind of guy who keeps vanilla extract at home, Jase?” He laughs incredulously, an edge of hysterical frustration to it. “Can’t we just add vanilla ice cream or some crap on top of it? Or, you know, skip it entirely?”
Jason straightens. “Is it French-vanilla ice cream?” he asks sternly.
“Uh—”
“A: Trick question. That’s the only kind of vanilla ice cream that exists. All others are dead to me. B: You’re a fucking disgrace.”
“C?” Roy asks, tentatively deciding for some reason that tempting fate is the thing to do here.
“Find the fucking extract, Harper.”
“Dude,” he whines, “what makes you even think—”
“Because I left some there, dumbass. Believe me, I’m well aware of your complete lack of culinary appreciation.”
Roy stares Jason down, and tilts his head to the side, leaning his one good hand against the countertop behind him. “You know…I used to think it was an Al Ghul thing, but now I’m starting to think it’s just a League thing.”
“I’m not gonna ask you again, Harper,” Jason warns flatly, finger poised above the button to end the call (and pretend that Roy wouldn’t just spend the rest of the night haranguing him anyways).
“All right, all right; your wish is my command, Sire.”
Jason wrinkles his nose but doesn’t bother arguing further as Roy goes hunting through the cabinets again to fetch the vanilla.
Oatmilk, sunflower butter, and a shaker of salt soon follow in rapid sequence as he finally gets to items he actually uses on a regular basis. Along with a freakishly large bag of chocolate chips, because of course he has those.
He manages to produce a small jug of maple syrup as well—this pretty much as expected given both Lian’s and Steph’s fondness for waffles and pancakes, and Jason’s insistence that they know what real maple syrup tastes like and not just the chemical pseudo-syrup he’s seen Roy literally drink straight from the bottle like a fucking/Goddamned sugar fiend.
“Okay, now what?” Roy settles back down at the counter when everything is gathered, sighing gustily as though he’s had to move mountains.
Jason instructs him to set the oven preheating to 450 degrees Kelvin[350° Fahrenheit; 177° Celsius] and talks him through portioning out the ingredients—Roy surprisingly managing to stay focused enough to actually follow the instructions accurately.
Jason’s never understood how the engineering wunderkind he can trust to follow chemical recipes that repay in death if mishandled is somehow unable to keep his eye on basic measurements of shit like salt and sugar.
(Roy goes uncharacteristically quiet and blatantly changes the subject every time Jason tries.)
After Roy’s ambidexterity helps him through wrangling the blender surprisingly well with his non-dominant hand and all the ingredients are thoroughly combined, he settles at the counter again while the oven continues preheating. The two enjoy an easy silence then, Roy half looking on the verge of sleep as the tempo and depth of his breaths gradually sync with Jason’s.
It’s not until the dish is baking away in the oven that he finally upholds his own half of the deal, filling Jason in on the details of a mission that had ultimately gone far more awry than he’d clearly wanted to let on at first…culminating in some very inhospitable hospitality that accounted for most of the injuries Roy was currently sporting.
Jason listens in a cold but still barely restrained fury, already planning ways to return the favor.
Roy must read it on his face. “No need,” he says, something vaguely amused coloring his voice. “I left 'em a few tokens to remember me by.” He wriggles his brows playfully. “Locals are cleaning up what’s left by now, anyways.” He shrugs, as if it’s just that easy.
But Jason still spots the faintly haunted look in his eye. None of them does well after shit like that. Roy even less so after his and Jason’s time imprisoned in that one hellhole.…
“Guess that’s another reason I kinda wanted a homecooked meal,” he admits with a smaller shrug this time, gaze turned to his hand as he absently toys with one of the measuring spoons he’d managed to locate (in the wrong place, but still). “Reminds me of home.”
Reminds me of you, is what he doesn’t say aloud.
Jason hears it anyway, and in some ways it hurts even more, because it’s rarely a good sign when Roy has regressed to the point that it’s this difficult for him to open up, like he’s forgotten the raw, bleeding-edge trust he’d long ago chosen to place in Jason’s and Kori’s hands.
A timer startles them both and Roy goes to extract the dish from the oven with a soft curse, fortunately remembering to set it down on top of an actual pot holder rather than leaving it to sit directly on the bare countertop.
The pan is stainless steel anyways, so at least it won’t fracture outright at a rapid temperature change, but it’s still best practice not to build bad habits. Besides, the countertop itself has to be accounted for, too.
The success almost ends there as Jason has to spend the new few minutes keeping Roy occupied with cleanup so he doesn’t do something stupid like try to eat something that just came out of the oven.
Again, the multidisciplinary fucking engineer that Jason trusts the lives of his loved ones to on a regular basis.
Oy vey iz mir.
“Hey, um,” Roy hesitantly pipes up after loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher, “think you could pick up Li from the Allens tomorrow? It’s cool if you can’t, but I kinda want to let a little of this”—he gestures broadly to his face—"fade before I get her."
The bright little girl has already had more than her fair share of seeing her family injured, truth be told, disconcertingly aware of the dangerous jobs and callings the Bats and Flashes and Titans and Arrows have all found themselves drawn into.
Still, Roy does what he can to shield her from the worst of it, and neither Jason nor Kori has any real objections to that.
“Don’t want her to worry too much,” Roy adds, though Jason is already on board before he says it.
“Sure thing.” He leans back against the couch easily, adding as if in afterthought, “We oughta just head to the villa. I’ll take the kid, and you can take a few extra days in Star to unfuck yourself before you come join us. Kori’s almost back from the conference already, so I’ll let her babysit you 'til then. The two of you can head down after.”
Roy’s eyes brighten then at the prospect of heading to one of their favorite retreats. And even more, Jason knows, at the prospect of the family being together again.
“Sounds like a plan,” he says with a grin before grabbing a spoon to finally steal a taste of the oatmeal bake, having foregone the topping but doubled the vanilla in order to make the stripped-down version that Jason himself favors. “Oh. Oh, fuck, that’s good,” he mumbles through his first mouthful.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Jason chides instinctively, his Alfred-instilled manners running up against the half-feral upbringing Roy’s had—has had to give himself—since Ollie kicked him to the curb in a fit of anger and disgust and severed what little trust had existed between them.
Roy looks at Jason seriously for a moment at the rebuke before slowly licking the spoon off, the spark of mischief in his eyes unmistakable as he gazes at the camera. “Oh, really?”
And Jason groans at the many stupid jokes he can already anticipate Roy choosing between now.
But he is right about one thing. This—the cooking, the fussing, the convos about their kids?
Even the terrible jokes spawned by Roy’s equally terrible sense of humor.
It all feels exactly like home.
Scene 2¶
All three of them had been dripping wet. Absolutely drenched. Naturally, this didn’t stop them from coming inside and getting it all over the tile floors. Jason will be having words with them he thinks, as he goes to town with a mop.
“Oops,” he hears a non-too apologetic voice say, just as he’s finishing up.
Jason snaps his head up to glare at the voice and is met by a cheeky smile that, yep, doesn’t look particularly remorseful. He glares even harder as he realizes the owner of both smile and voice is currently draped in one of Jason’s hoodies.
This asshole had the nerve to make a mess like that and then steal Jason’s clothing after?
“Whaaat?” Roy asks, as though reading his mind. “Your stuff is comfy. And it’s basically the only thing all of us can wear.”
“All of—?”
“Roy Harper is correct,” a soft voice chimes in as Kori floats up behind him.
She touches down ever-so-gently, her arms full of a wriggling bundle she sets on the floor in a lump.
Said lump rises dramatically from the floor, revealing itself a grinning little girl with midnight-black eyes.
“Et tu, Lian?” Jason gasps out, a hand clutched to his breast.
She giggles and nods, arms flapping in his jacket like clumsy wings.
“Betrayed by my own family, my own kin! I stand alone this day.” Jason hangs his head, his shoulders slumped.
“Wow,” Roy observes dryly, “I can feel the sadness from here.”
Lian cranes her head to look up at her father where he stands behind her. “What should we do, Daddy?”
Roy folds his arms, leveling Jason with an appraising gaze. “I think…Operation Jungle Gym.”
“Jungle gym, jungle gym!” Lian squeals, wasting no time in hurtling herself in Jason’s direction (because of course Roy Fucking Harper’s kid would still be at full energy after literal hours in the pool).
Jason leans down to catch her, pretending the momentum is enough to whirl him around in a circle. Lian squeals in delight as they spin, giggling like mad as he dips and swoops her through the air.
He stops just long enough to check in after the first few turns. “Dizzy enough yet?” he challenges.
“Nuh-uh,” she answers, shaking her head with vigor.
Jason lifts a brow. “Guess we better go again.”
He goes even faster this time, Lian breathless with laughter by the time he slows and Jason himself unable to stop the grin splitting his face from ear to ear.
He’s so caught up in their shared joy that he almost doesn’t notice Kori primed to pounce, having taken advantage of his distraction to creep closer as Roy looks on smugly.
He notices the impending attack but resigns himself to it, planting his weight as Kori playfully hops onto his back, encircling his neck in a chokehold not quite snug enough to actually choke anyone.
She knows how to do the move correctly, of course, but she’s never really been a grappler; her skills work better at a distance, and it rarely makes sense for her to give up that kind of overwhelming advantage by allowing an enemy to close in. And even for hand-to-hand, her long limbs and the added power of her starbolts make her far more of a striker than anything else, and Jason’s already had the opportunity to watch her deliver some moves worthy of Mortal Kombat. It’s kinda fascinating, if mildly horrifying, to watch the human spine bend that many directions at the same time.
“I will not allow you to escape until you release my compatriot,” Kori hisses lowly in his ear.
“You weren’t gonna release me anyways,” Jason shoots back in defiance. “I know all about your Operation Jungle Gym.”
Lian gasps, then squeals. “Papa, hurry up! Don’t let him escape!”
Roy takes his sweet time getting there, anyways, because he’s a dramatic-ass showoff. eyeballing Jason for a moment before promptly scaling him like a particularly annoying squirrel, his position overlapping with Kori’s as he weighs him down to one side.
Jason just growls. “You think that’ll stop me?” he demands, holding Lian out in front of him as he glares her down.
“Yep,” she replies simply, bobbing her head like a little doll.
“Oh, yeah?!” he demands in mock outrage.
“We will not release you until you are in a more cheerful mood.”
Jason scoffs at Kori’s new ultimatum. “Already moving the goal posts, I see.” He twists around to look, eyes landing on their large, nest-like sectional couch, the middle spaces providing the perfect amount of space to land.
He begins shuffling nearer to it, even as the two adults cotton on to his efforts and make their own (semi-)best efforts to halt his progress.
Kori’s locked her legs around his waist now in the standard posture for any number of grappling maneuvers, forcing him to bear her entire weight as he walks, as he was doing already with Roy, who while not as heavy as either Jason or Kori, is still nowhere near actually being light.
It still doesn’t stop Jason. “You,” he pants, “can’t stop me. Batman can’t stop me. Not even Red Robin can stop me.”
“What about Agent A?” Lian pipes up.
Jason holds her out again as he pivots with annoying slowness to finally put his back to the couch, Roy incredulously mumbling something about his workout routine. “Do you see Agent A here?” he points out.
Lian shakes her head.
Jason grins sharply a moment before letting himself fall.
The adults detach just in time and scatter away from him like startled cats.
Of course, they swarm him again almost as quickly, crawling back over to flop down near (or in Kori’s case, on top of) his legs.
“Okay,” Jason starts, as he sits up again, doing his best to maintain the illusion that he isn’t currently winded as fuck from the effort, “I think I’ve earned some explanations. Why—” He pauses as Lian clambers up onto his shoulders, because apparently someone must still carry on the legacy of Operation Jungle Gym. “Comfy?” he asks dryly.
“I like your hair,” Lian declared in answer as she rested her cheek against the crown of his head.
“Oh, yeah?” He craned his neck back to look up at her.
“Mm-hm. It’s soft…and pretty…and it goes up and down and up and down and up and down! Like a roller coaster!”
Roy chuckled warmly in the background.
“Thanks, Sweet Pea. I like your hair, too.” Ever so gently, he gave a little tug to one of her ponytails. “It’s soft, and shiny…and such a cool color.” He stuck his tongue out at Roy, who was watching the exchange and gave him a dirty look in return.
Lian nodded. “It’s black, like yours and Mommy’s.” She reached up a little hand to touch it. “My hair doesn’t have white, though.”
“My hair didn’t always have white, either.”
“So I’ll have white hair one day, too?” she asked excitedly.
“Nope,” Roy said quickly. “Not until you’re really, really old.”
“You mean like you and Uncle Jay?”
“…I walked into that one, didn’t I?”
Lian blinked.
“No, your daddy means like your Grandpa Raymond. Or Grandpa Ollie.”
“Ohh. I like Grandpa Raymond’s hair,” she declared with a determined nod after a moment. “It smells nice. And it’s long, like Daddy’s and mine. Not as long as Aunt Kori’s, though.” She frowned suddenly. “But Grandpa Ollie’s hair is yellow, not white!”
“Nah,” Jason answered, grinning, “that’s just what he wants people to think. He just uses special stuff on his hair to make it turn yellow again so people don’t know how old he is.”
“But why?”
“Because he’s silly,” Roy answered firmly. “Very silly.”
“Lots of grown-ups are, remember?” Jason chimed in helpfully.
“He’s still your grandpa, though, so try and be nice, okay?” Roy finished.
Lian hummed. “Okay. I can be nice.”
“Good,” Jason declares firmly. “Now can I ask my questions?”
Lian’s chin knocks against Jason’s head as she nods, before standing up on his shoulders.
Jason tilts his head back again to look up at her in question—a question she promptly meets with one of her own.
“Can you spot me?” she asks, the request something drilled into her by Roy, who’d long ago given up on expecting his assassin-born, Bat-raised Arrow kid not to attempt daring feats of gymnastics and instead focused on training her to ask for help first when she inevitably did.
“Yup.”
She follows up the confirmation with a half flip, half fall forward that she definitely learned from watching Dick.
“Now—” Jason catches her easily, holding her upside for a moment as he takes the opportunity to squint at her accusingly and ask, “Why are you all so obsessed with stealing my clothes, hmm?”
“Leading question, Your Honor! I object.” Roy, naturally.
“Objection denied.” Jason promptly dumps Lian back onto his lap before she can add her own answer, flopping back onto the bed himself a moment later.
“We’re not stealing,” Lian corrects as she sits up to stare at Jason, sounding almost annoyed in her firmness. “We’re borrowing. You can have 'em back when we’re done, Uncle Jay-Jay,” she assures, patting Jason on his chest soothingly.
“Oh, I’m definitely stealing them,” Roy mouths out of sight of his daughter, conscientious adult that he is.
“All right, then,” Jason says, knowing better than to get into it with a hyperactive toddler. Or Lian. “Why are you so obsessed with < em>borrowing my clothes, then, huh?” He gently pokes and prods at her ribs until she wriggles free and scampers over to her father for safety.
Helpful as he always is, Roy simply hoists her up and begins munching on her tummy until she’s screaming with laughter yet again and he can smugly hand her off to Kori, who actually does provide safe harbor…this time.
(Her alliances are ever shifting.)
“Hey, your stuff is the only clothing that actually fits all of us,” Roy argues, finally addressing Jason’s question, arms crossed behind his head as he stares up at the ceiling.
“Define fit,” Jason asks dryly as Lian continues flopping around in what’s too long to even be a proper dress for her.
“Besides…” Roy continues, ignoring his very good point, “I’m pretty sure sharing clothes is how you mark your territory at this point. And compared to the other options I know of for that…I figure it’s pretty chill.”
And there’s no denying it, if Jason’s being honest with himself. There’s something…comforting about it. Reassuring, maybe—knowing that if push comes to shove, this is another thing he can share with them, another way he can help. Memories flash before him of times he’s had to do exactly that: Sheltering Roy when they were stranded out on a snowy mountainside, drying Kori off after Black Manta had nearly drowned he during a rare mission to Atlantis.
And he remember having only thin, meager articles of clothing from his own wardrobe to offer when Cath had been too out of it to look after the laundry.
Or the heating.
He swallowed, sensing both his friends and his Goddaughter watching him at the sudden turn of mood.
Li pipes up helpfully before he has to explain it away. “I like your clothes because they’re—because they’re like big, really soft blankets, and they smell nicer.”
“They smell nicer?” he repeats, raising both brows.
She hums, crawling back over to flop down on his chest, chin pillowed atop folded hands as she thinks. “They smell…like guns…and…like fire…and…like that white stuff Papa uses!”
Roy makes a violent choking noise at that, shooting upright with a look of abject horror on his face.
Lian continues, oblivious as her little face scrunches up in concentration. “See…see-somethiiing.…”
“C-4, baby?” Roy just barely manages to rasp out.
“Yeah, that’s it! C-4!” she confirms, attention purely on Jason as her father collapses facedown in the background, sounding halfway between laughing and crying as he says what Jason is pretty sure is technically a prayer but with a whole lot more profanity than usual. “It kinda looks like clay,” she adds, beaming. “And you can make all kinds of shapes with it! It’s really cool,” she finishes, tone almost a dreamy one.
She’s definitely every bit Roy’s child as much as Jade’s. …And then some, really.
Jason smirks over at the young father in question, who’s clearly too relieved by the near-miss to be overly concerned by the fact that his five-year-old knows what C-4 is. And has been around it enough to pick out how it smells.
Equally amused, Kori fills in as Adult In Chief to say, “Perhaps she is spending too great a time amongst the weapons.”
Jason could of course respond that they all are weapons at this point.
He could also point out that the other main option their little girl has is a literal assassin who lacks even the relatively laissez-faire rules the Outlaws tend to operate by (despite also being assassins, albeit on a more part-time basis, really).
But he does neither, instead opting to smirk and note, “I think Arsenal’s just happy she’s a connoisseur of a more…enlightened set of substances.”
Lian crinkles her brow at him, twisting around just in time to catch her father making a very rude gesture. “Daddy,” she gasps, “that’s not nice! Aunt Dinah and Uncle Damian both said so! You should say sorry to Uncle Jay-Jay.”
“Do I have to?” Roy whines, as though that tactic ever works with Lian.
Actually, that might explain why he’s never gone for that from her, either. Mutual immunity.
Probably genetic, Jason muses.
“Yes,” Lian says firmly, staring her father down.
He sighs. “Okay. I apologize to His Royal Thighness for my very incredibly rude gesture that he totally didn’t deserve.”
Jason harrumphs, definitely not about to let him off that easily.
“Kori? Does that mean Operation Grumpy Cat’s a go?”
“You are late,” Kori answers easily from her sprawl atop Jason’s legs. “I already commenced some time ago.”
“Dang. Okay, better catch up, then.” He crawls up from his spot near Jason’s feet and then flops crossways across Kori herself, ragdolled across her midsection where he can get a clear view of Jason’s face. “Extra perk of borrowing your clothes,” he pipes up, apropos of fuck-all. "You get to pretend to be grumpy, which means we get an excuse to tackle you into happiness. And trust me, the Titans used to do that, but it’s totally more fun when there’s enough real estate for this kind of coordinated effort. Way more rewarding.
“Also, your legs are, like, super comfy to nap on,” he adds.
“See if you get to do that any time soon,” Jason retorts, sliding a leg free from the cuddle pile to then soundly shove him off.
“Aww, c’mon. That was gonna be like the whole pièce de résistance to our Boys' Night Out!”
“Oh, yeah? And what was the rest of it gonna entail?”
“Oh, not much. I was just picturing a moonlit evening…you, me…Luthor’s office.” He wriggles his brows like the idiot he most definitely is. “A couple pounds of Semtex. C’mon,” Roy chides. “We both know you wanna.”
Jason just growls in response. Even if he does, in fact, very much want to, that doesn’t mean he has to give Harper the satisfaction of hearing him actually say it.
…Not yet, at least.
Lian distracts him from the internal debate by flipping over to look at Roy again. “Daddy, what’s sin-tech?” She cocks her head. “Is that like robots to do bad stuff?”
Jason can hear the frown in her little voice and holds back a snort. The kid’s fucking precious.
“Semtex, sweetie,” Roy corrects gently before launching into an enthused explanation of the chemical and performance similarities and differences between Semtex and C-4.
For his five-year-old. Who’s listening in rapt fucking attention.
This kid’s definitely either gonna save the world…or kill them all.
Jason makes a mental note again to keep an eye on her with Tim.
And Damian.
And Tim.