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F or the most part, people assume that Jason is an alpha. Honestly, he’s found it easier to just let them assume and he doesn’t really blame them because he’s bigger than most alphas anyways. Jason has no idea what the family thinks, but he hadn’t yet presented when he’d died, and since his return, nobody had asked. It doesn’t really matter that much either since Jason pumps himself full of enough suppressants to make himself functionally a beta. No one really seems to have any idea he’s an omega and Jason is happy to keep it that way.
Having everyone assume he’s an alpha comes in handy especially when dealing with Ivy. The compounds she uses against the bats are formulated to work well against a pack made almost entirely of fully matured alphas and betas. Only Damian and Jason stay unaffected and Jason can tell that even though he’ll never say it, Damian is glad to have another person in their right mind with him while they’re trapped in the world’s most dangerous hedge maze. All the other bats who’d entered the hedge maze were collapsed wherever they were when the pollen, finer than it usually was, had made it past their rebreathers.
Jason can see Damian watching him out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the pollen to get by Jason’s helmet and render him a twitching pile of limbs overcome by sensory overload.
“Hey, kiddo, I ain’t gonna collapse on you. You can stop looking at me like I’m a time bomb.” Jason tries to reassure Damian and gets a scoff in return.
“The filtration system in your helmet is not so much more advanced than father’s that you will be safe indefinitely.” Jason can’t really blame his skepticism, but to reassure him more would mean revealing more than he’s ready to, so Jason just shakes his head and keeps moving.
Two left turns later and they come across Bruce, struggling to his feet and dropping what Jason assumes is the last replacement filter cartridge for his rebreather to the floor. The cowl is pulled back off his head, possibly in an attempt to relieve some of the sensory overload that Jason assumes must be setting in. He has what looks like one of Dick’s spare domino masks on over his eyes. Jason can see Dick propped up in a fetal position against a wall, his hands covering his ears and his face tucked into his knees. They need to stop Ivy so they can get everyone else out of here and back to the cave. Three brains is better than two and speed is more important than Jason’s secret right now, so while Bruce is checking Damian over, Jason pulls off his helmet.
Twin shouts of “Hood!” sound out at the hiss of the helmet’s air release before one is muffled when Jason jams the helmet down over Bruce’s head and presses the pouch containing filter refills into his hand.
“Hood, what are you doing? You can’t be in here with no air filtration.” Bruce’s voice is distorted by the helmet’s speakers.
“Shit, is that what the voice mod sounds like? I need to get that fixed. Come on let’s go” Jason tries to just brush it off in hopes of distracting Bruce enough with something to do that he won’t think too hard about why Jason isn’t affected. Unfortunately, he’s so wrapped up in thinking of how to get Bruce to Ivy, that Jason forgets he also has to worry about Damian and nearly trips over him.
“Hood, you are correct to assume that father will be of more help than you in our escape, but you have neglected to think of the fact that you are the most potentially dangerous in an impaired state due to the influence of the Lazarus pit.”
“Kid, I already told you not to worry about it, I’ll be fine.”
“No, Todd, you will not be. The pollen only lacks effect if you are still sexually immature.”
Just as Jason is about to make a snide comment, he sees a lightbulb go off in Bruce’s head.
“Or if you’re an omega. The toxins are most effective against mature alphas and betas, they have little to no effect on children and omegas.” Bruce is looking dead at Jason through the eyes of Jason’s own helmet. They stare each other down for a moment, Jason challenging Bruce to say anything more with an icy stare before Bruce breaks eye contact. “Robin, take the right flank, I will take point. Hood, left flank. Tag the locations of the others when you see them. We’ll pick them up on the way out.” Bruce steamrolls over anything Damian is trying to say and strides deeper into the labyrinth, forcing the two of them to follow.
Once they find Ivy, it’s a pretty quick job to get her out of the labyrinth. Jason fits one of the now nonfunctional rebreathers over his mouth before they get to her in order to keep up appearances, but she’s preoccupied enough with trying to stop her whole scheme from going up in smoke that it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyways. On the way out, they pick up Tim, Cass, and Steph. Duke meets them near the batmobile with Kate in tow, both visibly tired and pissed off about being called on their time off. The still incapacitated vigilantes are piled into seats in the Alfred approved SUV Duke and Kate had arrived in and Kate drives them back to the cave. The remaining four of them split up to take back the Batmobile, Tim’s car, and Steph and Cass’s motorcycles. Jason parks his own bike by a nearby safehouse so he can have an excuse to drive Tim’s car instead. He only speeds a little on the way to the cave.
Back at the cave, he expects Bruce to air out his not-quite-secret in front of everyone, so when Bruce inevitably corners him, he’s prepared for the worst.
“Jason, I’m not going to tell anyone, but I want you to know that if you don’t want to, you don’t have to hide around the family.” Bruce has one heavy hand resting on Jason’s shoulder, and that alone is keeping Jason from falling over in surprise at Bruce not being wholly emotionally inept. Bruce seems to take Jason’s shocked silence as a cue to keep going, awkwardness seeping into his tone.
“I guess I never really thought about it because you hadn’t presented yet. I shouldn’t have missed something so important.” Jason cuts him off before Bruce can go any further into one of his weird, self centered guilt spirals.
“You weren’t looking, I wasn’t advertising. I wasn’t hiding it either though. People just tend to assume.” Jason takes a steadying breath and forges ahead. “If anyone asks, I don’t care if you tell them the truth. For now though, let’s just table this.” Bruce nods his assent and opens his arms in the stiffest invitation to a hug Jason has ever seen. Still, Bruce’s arms are warm and the gentle touch of his nose against Jason’s hair is parental comfort at its finest in spite of all the awkward.
If Jason stops wearing scent blocker patches outside of Red Hood, it’s nobody’s business except his own. Except he’s noticed all of the younger bats getting more cuddly. It may have something to do with how Bruce scents him as much, if not more, than the other members of the pack now, meaning that Jason smells enough like Brucce to be the target of some of the cuddling usually directed at him. It may also have something to do with the fact that, as the oldest (and pretty much only) omega in the pack, Jason is unofficially the “mother,” of the pack until Selina and Bruce get mated.
Honestly, Jason really enjoys all the puppy cuddles. Enough so that when Tim, Steph, and Cass drag him into a nest in the living room, he lets out a soft, distinctly omega purr once they’re all settled. Cass probably already knew and Steph doesn’t seem to really care, but Jason can see the lightbulb go off in Tim’s head. There’s a moment of tense eye contact where Jason is practically daring Tim to do something before Tim swipes his cheek over the cap of Jason’s shoulder and noses at his neck like a pup seeking comfort from an older sister would. Just like that, the tension is gone and Jason is back to purring like a motorcycle engine. They all end up passing out wrapped up in the nest and wake up well rested, but with sore necks.
Dick tries to turn it into some huge emotional discussion when he finally uses enough of his brain cells to figure it out, but Jason tells him roughly the same thing he told Bruce. Dick didn’t ask, Jason didn’t tell. Even though the majority of the drama is averted, Jason still ends up getting cuddled half to death by Dick in full “big brother mode.” After that, Dick scents him almost as much as Bruce does, which makes Jason smell even more like pack and settles a lot of Jason’s previous anxieties about how Dick hadn’t accepted him as pack when they were younger.
Duke has none of the previous history with Jason that the rest of the family has, so he doesn’t really ask any questions. He just accepts Jason as the pack omega and Jason finds himself kind of charmed by Duke’s practical nature. He doesn’t give Jason half as many worries as any other member of the pack as far as his self preservation instincts go. Jason is most impressed when Duke actually drags Damian along with him and practically throws the pup into Jason’s lap before he and Dick also wedge into the nest to block off any chance of escape for Damian. Damian reluctantly settles himself a little, shooting poisonous glares at both Dick and Duke while refusing to look Jason in the eye. Duke gives Damian enough of a push forward to get the pup’s face buried in Jason’s neck while Dick nuzzles at the other side of Jason’s neck in a way that pulls a purr from deep within Jason’s chest and makes any stiffness in his posture melt away. Damian responds to the purr the way any pup would, by relaxing into a little cuddle bug. Dick looks entirely too self satisfied, but Jason lets it slide because doing anything about it would jostle Damian out of his relaxed state.
Bruce comes back home and finds them cuddles up. Before anyone can do anything, he’s gotten pretty much the whole pack into the living room nest with the terrifying efficiency of Batman. He even manages to drag in Kate from the cave and persuade Alfred into the nest. Jason can feel the ridiculous smile splitting his face, but he doesn’t do a thing to hide it. It’s good to be home.