-I've been working on this for a while. Let me know if you want more of this-
-P.S check out the last part to find out what my next "Trash book" is 🙃✌️-
"Alfred!" Jason protested. "Stop!" Alfred disregarded His protests and continued to disrobe the five year old from his costume, and lowered him into the tub. "I can do it m-bbpppssst!"
Jason gargled, thrashing as a small cup of water was emptied over his head, and the cleansing process began.
Watching the other boy's plight, Duke decided not to protest. "Please don't get my hair wet." He pleaded, going ahead to try and bathe himself before he could receive the same treatment as Jason.
"Quit it, old man!" Jason fussed as his ever gritty hair was scrubbed with Dick's favorite rose and vanilla scented shampoo. "Ow!" He shouted as his hair was scrunched. "Stop! I can wash by myself!" Jason barely closed his mouth in time as a cup was dumped over his hair to rinse it. His flare of unkept, scruffy hair flattening well over his eyes.
"Tewy, STAUWP." Dick ordered.
"Okay, just do your thing." Terry said, stepping back. "Anything I can do?"
"Shiwrt?" Disk asked.
"Uh, sure." Terry rifled through his drawers, he located a striped pyjama shirt and passed it to the toddler, who struggled to tug it over his head. Eventually, tangled and lost, Dick gave up. "You want some help?"
"Yes." He sighed.
Eyes still averted from his mostly exposed toddler-ified brother figure, Terry untangled the shirt and pulled it on the toddler. It reached the floor, which annoyed Dick.
"I wann' be nowrmal agn soon." Dick murmured.
"Dick." Bruce said, passing by. He stooped and picked the boy up, he bounced the youngest a little. "You're in different clothes. Thank you, Terry."
"Brwuce!" Dick squirmed uncomfortably.
"Shhhh." Bruce said, cradling the toddler against his hip. He really wasn't as strong as he used to be (he had barely picked up any of his boys like this for three or four years). "Lets see if Damian has found any clothes for you." He said, carrying the boy with him.
"Hey, uh, Dick. Can I maybe borrow some clothes?" The eldest boy asked.
Dick nodded, hiding his face in Bruce's shirt. If only he could compose the words to tell Bruce to quit babying him. Why didn't Terry tell him they still had their grown up brains?
"Lets get you into some jammies, huh?" Bruce asked in a relative baby voice, and took the toddler upstairs, gripping his youngest securely out of fear he'd drop Dick. "Damian, have you found anything for your brothers?"
"Here." He held up a tiny cuffed shirt he'd retrieved from an ancient looking box
"Thank you, Damian."
"Don't speak to me like a child!" Damian snapped. He took Dick from their father, and helped him into the shirt, and a pair of black overalls with silver buttons from the same box.
"Who's box is this?" Bruce asked, grunting a little as he turned the box around. After a cycle or so, he noticed a scribble at the bottom: BtW 1973-1980, clothes & toys.
Bruce exhaled thickly andriffled through the box, grabbing some clothes for the other boys.
"I c'n do it mysewlf!!" Dick exclaimed as Damian dressed him, rolling up the cuffs of his pants to account for his shortness.
"Come on, Dickie, Let's get these clothes down to your brothers." Bruce said, leading the way as Damian swept up his brother to follow. Bruce stopped at a washroom where Alfred was working away. "We have some clean clothes for Jason and Duke." He lay down the clothing on the counter and joined Alfred.
Duke squealed a little as Bruce helped him out of the bath and Alfred did the same with Jason. Bruce wrapped him in a towel and stepped back, grabbing the clothing and starting to help the boy into the almost comically outdated children's clothes.
"I see you've found some of your own clothing." Alfred remarked, drying Jason and starting to dress the child in a yellow striped shirt and brown corduroy trousers. There was no point in putting Jason in nice clothes.
"Did everyone really dress their children like this?" Bruce asked. "I barely remember any of these..."
"Your taste in clothing did dilute drastically by the age of eight." Alfred replied, aggressively drying Jason's hair in a towel. "Up until that point, Mr. and Mrs. Wayne and myself chose your clothing.
"I assume it wasn't You who bought all the corduroy?" Bruce raised his eye brows a little, surprised by his own joke. He didn't Make jokes! He had almost ten kids for that. Batman didn't make jokes anymore. "I don't remember any of this..."
"Is there anything I can help with? To feel useful?" Terry asked, emerging from Dick's room having changed into a pair of dark Jeans and a steel blue crew neck.
"Go... god, go find... uh, go find Jason." Bruce sighed.
"Jason?"
"Christ." He groaned, pinching between his eyes. "Tim. Go find Timothy."
"Oh, gotcha." Terry slid out.
Bruce moved the babies (well, children, but anyone under 23 was a baby to him. Hell, to Bruce anyone under 35 was still a child) Out and onto his bed, taking stock of the kids.
"Okay. I'll get some blood samples, and then you're all going to bed." He sighed. He headed to a set of drawers, and rifled through the miscellaneous items the top drawer, removing a handful of untouched needles and syringes. They used to be kept in the washroom, but he didn't trust the boys around them (he didn't even remember why anymore, they've done so many stupid things).
"You can't send us to bed." Damian argued. "I was twenty-four this morning. There's no need to coddle me."
"Here. Look away and don't tense." Bruce said, snapping a needle onto a syringe and rolling up Damian's shirt— another of Dick's shirts, a button up— and readied the needle, sliding it into Damian's shoulder as gently as he could. "...look away, it'll be easier."
"I don't need to."
Bruce with drew a minuscule amount of blood, capped the syringe, and hurried back to the drawer for a swab. Next, he headed down to Jason. Jason, for all he's worth, has always been a bold Son of a bitch. He bit his lip and let his blood be taken.
Duke was a little harder, he was a more recent addition to the bats, and his comfort with Bruce was still forming. He had to close his eyes the whole process. "Don't worry, I'll be careful, Duke." Bruce promised, more gentle than Duke had ever hear him speak.
"Okay." The six year old forced himself to breath slowly until he felt the swab being rubbed against his arm. Finally, he scurried out of the way, letting the bat at his youngest.
Dick, used to all this, screwed his eyes shut and stuck his arm out. Bruce did routine tri-annual blood tests on them, Dick didn't like it, but he could handle it.
"Shh. It's okay. I'll be quick." Bruce whispered. "Don't be scared, Dickie, I'll be careful."
Impatient, Dick squeaked out: "Do it!" The shot seemed to take forever, Bruce was trying not to scare him, so he was moving slowly, painfully slowly. Finally, the cotton pad covered the prick mark and Bruce got a bandaid for him.
"Blood work?" Terry asked, carrying in an impatient little Tim, freshly dressed in a pair of very dated children's jeans and a tiny, white cable-knit sweater that bruce vaguely remembered owning when he was about five or six.
Jason began giggling uncontrollably as thee remaining two had their blood drawn. "Tim looks like a hippie!!" He fell backwards giggling too hard, almost toppling off the bed if it weren't for Damian's fast reflexes and keenness to let Jason keep bullying Tim.
"You look like a preschooler!" Tim replied grumpily as Bruce went about his faire of trying to withdraw blood without scaring the child.
"You both look like children!" Damian snapped. "We all look like children! We have to fix this! We can't continue our lives like THIS!"
"boys." All seven froze, as they did every time Batman let out that icy order for silence. Bruce quickly fixed himself, not wanting to scare the children too much this time around. "Alfred is getting you some food, as soon as you've eaten, all of you are going straight to bed."
This was met by immediate objections.
"No way!"
"I don't need to sleep!" Tim told his father, standing on the bed to get slightly closer to being face-to-face. "I did it awll the way home!"
"I'm not tiewd!" Dick protested.
"boys. I mean— boys, You're all little again, you're not old enough to stay up late; it's not healthy for young children."
"But we're not little!" Tim argued. "I told you! We're just small, we're still smart!"
"I know you're still smart, Tim." Bruce said, uncomfortably gently, placing his fingers under Tim's chin so they could make eye contact.
"They just made us small." Jason cut it, impatient with the misunderstanding. "Don't treat us like we ARE babies! We just look small now, We're still normal!"
"Shshshh. I hear you fine Jason." Bruce reached over and gently pushed Jason back onto his butt.
"Quit it! We're still grownup!" Jason snarled, more than a little red by this point.
"Shhh. I know you're still grownup." Bruce said, but his voice was just patient enough to come off as patronizing; he really didn't get what Jason was saying. "Younger children need more sleep, so after you eat you snack head to bed so we can work on this tomorrow morning."
"I mean, Damian and me are solidly older." Terry justified himself. "Like, okay, Damian regressed to a kid, but I regressed to barely younger than Dick, I can handle this easily."
"I was younger than this when I started as Robin!" Damian almost sounded betrayed by Terry throwing him under the bus like all the little kids.
"bo—hmg— Boys." Bruce cleared his throat. "Everyone is going to bed right away so we can try to get this fixed tomorrow. No objections, I don't care. Dickie, Jay, Duke; Alfred and I will get you into bed. Tim, I'll help you too if you are having trouble."
"You won't tuck me in!" Jason spat, arms crossed.
"I can do it by myself!" Duke pleaded, this was way too much for him— no way he'd be able to look either Bruce or Alfred in the face ever again...
"Let's feed you and get you all ready for bed, then." Bruce lifted Dick onto his back (OW, he's really aging faster than he thought...)and grabbed Jason and Dukes hands to ensure compliance.
His children assembled, he headed for the kitchen downstairs.
Social justice stuff :
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/44255/Facts-about-water-resources-and-rationing-in-Egypt