InsaneJournal

You like pizza pockets right?

Between a bunch of overactive bat boys and a werewolf, they got through food pretty fast in their little apartment. Which made trips to the grocery store pretty frequent. Enid's favorite time to come was after dinner. There were less people around and generally more room to have fun. Like pushing the trolley fast and then jumping on the back of it, or demanding Jason push her down the aisle.

With her pink and orange fuzzy sweater and the fresh pinks and blues in her hair, they made quite the odd couple walking the shelves together.

The trolley already had an assortment of brightly colored cereal boxes, some more sensible foods like pastas and different canned things and all the protein a growing werewolf could need.

"Ooh ooh ooh! Jay! Pizza pockets!" She enthused when they got to the freezer section. "You like pizza pockets right?"

"Who doesn't like pizza pockets?" Jason was incredibly serious about that question. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to eat a goddamn pizza in a pocket? "Get two," he suggested, "if you want to make sure no one eats them all before you get any."

Jason guessed they did probably look like a funny combination, him tall and, he had on good authority, brooding while she was bright and sunshiney. He liked shopping with Enid though. He liked doing the shopping in general, actually, but at least when he brought Enid he knew that they had a better chance of actually ending up with the things that they'd come for.

"Can't forget the fake meat for Damian," Jason reminded her. While they were in the freezer section, anyway...

Enid grinned brighter, putting two boxes in the trolley to add to the fast growing pile of food. This was what she loved about her new almost-guardian (Dick being the real-actual-guardian but also that was still so funny), he encouraged her whims but in a totally serious way.

At the reminder about the fake meat, she pulled a face she couldn't quite avoid because she was a carnivore through and through. Still, she dutifully bounced over to the right section, choosing a few different options she knew Dippy liked. "Do we need to get vegetables?" She wasn't the best at remembering to eat her greens but she didn't actively avoid them, either.

Before they carried on she grabbed a third box of pizza pockets because on review that felt like the right thing to do. "If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?"

"Burgers," Jason answered without even a little hesitation. "With the works. Just... loaded down with onions."

He wasn't a fan of the fake meat either, but it was important to Damian so he made sure that the kid had plenty of options for protein, even if it meant making something different for him than they made for everyone else. Usually Jason could fake it close enough when it was his turn to cook to make it seem like he was eating sort of the same thing, but...

"Yes vegetables. We have to at least pretend like we're trying to feed you guys something healthy once in a while, you know?" Jason was kidding. Mostly. He did actually think it was pretty important for a growing kid to eat their veggies, but he'd never been the kind of kid that tried to duck his when he was growing up either. Jason ate whatever Alfred put in front of him and he usually asked for seconds.

"Yuuuum. I love a good burger. We should get one after we're done here!" She liked a classic herself, none of the weird fancy sauces. "For me it would be a meat lover's pizza. One hundo percent. Oh, or steak. Oh no. Jay Jay I can't decide don't make me," she laughed.

She might have pretended to gripe about it, but Enid didn't actually mind vegetables. Just maybe not the super green leafy stuff like kale. She was so not a kale person. "You make sure we eat healthy food!" She gave his arm a playful shove. "You're the serious pensive parent to Bobbin's silly one. Everyone needs both!" Sure, Dick was technically her guardian, but Enid loved them both. They'd stepped up and made sure she was okay when she'd lost Bucky and she'd never forget that.

"You know what I do really like? Corn. We used to have it at our family picnics. My uncle grilled it on the barbecue and it was so good, let's get some."

"We can do corn. Hey, do you think we should get a grill? We could put it on the balcony," Jason suggested. That way they could actually grill the corn. And honestly, he didn't hate the idea of putting a big slab of meat on over some burning charcoal, once in a while. There was some kind of primal satisfaction to it, at least in his head. They'd never really done the whole grill thing before but... he could be a grill guy. Right? "Do you think I could be a grill guy?"

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tousled her hair playfully before letting go. Show her who was the serious pensive parent...

Maybe their little family was complicated and spread out over two apartments, but Jason couldn't help but think again how much he liked the life he'd built here. The family that he'd found and the family that had become real family now instead of in name only. If he sometimes had to ask himself 'What Would Alfred Do' then... you know, that was pretty normal, considered Alfred was the best parental figure he'd ever had.

"Ohmygod yes!" Enid immediately latched on to the idea. "That would be perf! Imagine being able to stand out on our little balcony and grill steaks whenever we want." She smiled indulgently at his question. "You could so be a grill guy, Jay Jay. Just don't let Dick near the flames. That seems like a terrible shortcut to our new building being our old one." She was only teasing, she knew he wasn't actually incompetent. But the teasing was fun.

She squawked in mock protest at the hair tousle but she did lean back into his side for a second afterwards, giggling as she did. It was moments like this that reminded Enid why she needed a pack, and that even if it wasn't her family, that didn't matter. She was surrounded by people who cared about her and she never doubted it for a second. And unlike her mom, they never tried to make her do things at anything but her own pace. They just gave her advice and sent her on her way.

She really did think the world of them. "Do you ever think about what else you want to do here?" She asked him, adding a few more things to the cart from their list as they continued down another aisle. "Like, if we're going to be here forever?"

"If we're going to be here forever..." Jason shrugged, then ducked his head to hide a hint of a flush in his cheeks. "Okay, you can't tell anyone else this..."

He hadn't even admitted this one out loud to Quentin, just kept it to himself as he turned it over and over in his head. "I never finished high school. You might have heard this one already, but I kind of died first, and the people that brought my back didn't really give a fuck about that kind of education."

Just the kind that turned Jason into a perfect killer, a weapon against Bruce Wayne.

"I sort of want to get my GED, if we're going to be here a while. Maybe take some college classes on the side after that. Get a degree in English lit." It was stupid, what was Jason going to use that degree for? But... he couldn't shake the idea, either.

The more Jason spoke, the more incredibly touched Enid felt that he was sharing this with her. And unlike juicy gossip like Timmy getting a boyfriend, she knew she'd keep his promise and not tell a soul.

"I don't like the part where you died, but that is such an awesome idea! And you know you'll absolutely kill it, you're so super smart." He didn't need those people who'd treated him that way, and he didn't need to listen to anyone who told him he couldn't do this if it was what he wanted. Even himself.

"Iiiii could just casually on the side sort out what you need to apply?" She offered without really offering, considering she was already planning to do exactly that. "Oh my god Jay Jay yes you can get your degree and then become a tweed jacket wearing pipe smoking English professor!" She bounced in place behind the trolley before continuing their path down the aisle.

"With the leather elbow patches, right?" Jason laughed, more willing to make a joke out of it than he was to actually seriously consider that he might do it. It was a dream, and one that he'd only just now thought about seriously enough to actually put words to it, but that wasn't the kind of life that Jason led. Never had been.

It was nice that Enid thought he could though. That she was definitely planning on looking that information up whether he wanted her to or not.

"I mean, if you want to do that, go for it. I know I'll have to start with the GED." Which meant studying for the test, which meant reviewing things that he'd learned a very long time ago when he was working with Bruce. A whole other life ago.

"Totally," she grinned at his joke, happy to play along. "But don't worry about the pipe, we'll get you one that blows bubbles instead. We don't want to stunt your growth by starting you on pipe tobacco." She was pretty sure there was no way known he could get any taller, but that wasn't the point of the joke.

"That's just a technicality." Enid made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "You'll get that no troubles you big smarty pants. Oh! We can study together! It'll be so fun, yes okay good I like this plan. And Thing has totally got your back, he organizes notes like no one else." World's most underrated study aide.

"If it's what you really really want Jay Jay, you'll make it happen." She spoke a bit more sincerely this time, because she didn't want him to be dismissing the idea if he really did want it.

Hey, for the first time saying it out loud, this hadn't gone that bad. Jason grinned at her, incredibly touched by how wholeheartedly she had his back already on just a vague idea. "You know I'll always be your study buddy, right? Even if I don't end up going through with the whole college thing, we can definitely put Thing to work organizing notes."

Enid was probably the best thing that had happened to their family, if Jason was being honest. None of them were very good at communicating, no matter how good Dick tried to pretend to be at it for the sake of the rest of them. Enid though, was sort of a breath of fresh air among the Bats.

"What about you? What's your plans for if we're here forever?" They hadn't really talked about it before. Jason didn't know how you were supposed to ask a teenager what they wanted to be when they grew up when the answer wasn't something about fighting criminals. Actually, that was why he didn't ask, usually. They'd all known what their future was from the second that Bruce had picked them, or at least they'd figured it out when they got a little older. There wasn't any quitting once you started. Not really.

"Yesss," she enthused. "Because I am no good at interpreting poetry. A glass jar is just a glass jar. I feel like you've got my back there." It still hurt, thinking about Bucky being gone. Her Bucky, the one who had been here before and knew her. But she was so grateful every day to have wound up living with Dick and Jason. And yeah, technically Dick was her guardian but she felt a bit like she'd ended up with two of them by default. And Enid wasn't meant to be a lone wolf. She needed a pack, and somehow she'd gotten lucky and she would never take it for granted.

"That is the question. I feel like maybe I want to do something with my writing? I love my blog. Maybe journalism! I could be a travel journalist and go traipsing around the world and see exotic sites and get us all free accommodation in five star resorts. But maybe something with fashion? I have lots of ideas. I don't know if I'm ready to pick just yet. Making up my mind in a hurry feels too much like doing what my mom expected of me and nooo thank you." She really did love her mom, they were just very different people. As much as she needed pack, she also needed to know she could do her own thing. That was important to her. "I figure I've got time to decide, anyway."

"All the time you need," Jason assured her. "You know we've got your back for as long as we're all here, right?"

Because now that Enid was part of the family, it didn't matter how old she got. She was going to stay part of the family. She was sort of his niece now, right? His brother's ward? It worked out somehow, he was pretty sure, but the important thing was that it made her family and you didn't just stop supporting family just because they hit an arbitrary number mark where you were supposed to suddenly be an adult.

...Jason thought, from his lofty perspective of the ripe old age of twenty-one.

"No reason you can't try a little bit of everything out until you figure out what feels right." And in the meanwhile, yeah, Jason would help her with interpreting poetry and finding the symbolism and motifs in novels and whatever other lit help she needed... and the rest too, but he figured Tim would probably be helping with the bits that were his specialty.

"Right!" She agreed with a smile. "Just like I've got yours." They were a team, and in the same way that she and Wednesday looked out for each other, it was the same with her new found family. Or not so new anymore, but whatever. Lucky.

"That's so true Jay Jay. Besides, I'm still young. I've got time." And she wasn't going to let something silly like worry about things happening in this place stop her. Or leaving this place or not leaving this place or any of it. Your destiny was what you made it, and she was going to make hers epic.

It was... nice. Touching, that Enid didn't need any convincing of Jason's loyalty. He'd won his brothers over, eventually, but with Enid there wasn't any echoes of the guy he used to be before he ended up in relative safety here in San Francisco. That angry guy, the one that just wanted to make the world hurt like he had.

So yeah. Nice.

"Okay, I think that's about got it, unless you can think of anything we missed?" Jason looked the cart over, making a mental inventory of everything already there and comparing it against the stock of food they still had left at home.

"Uhm…" Enid looked over the cart as well, but it seemed like they'd hit all the main things. It was a good balance of fun and sensible, which seemed right for their little household. "I think we're good. We can sneak in some last minute treats as we check out." She said it casually, as though she wasn't pointing something out that wouldn't actually be sneaking, since they'd both be in on it.

"This is so a standing date, for the record. You make an awesome shopping partner." And if her eyes had a gleam in them that suggested maybe she was thinking of other shopping trips she could drag him on, that was neither here nor there.