#Anyway as you can see I am very normal about Dick and Tim's relationship

[theerurishipper]

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First <- Part 18 <- Part 19 -> Part 20

Masterpost

[brucewaynehater101]

I personally am not a fan of romantic/sexual a/b/o but I do have a headcanon for Tim.

I believe that Tim, regardless of gender, wouldn’t have the scents of his parents on him since they’re gone so frequently, essentially making him packless. Maybe the elites of Gotham prefer to wear scent blockers so there would not be anyone aware of Tim being rejected by his parents.

Taking into account Tim’s distant relationship with the bats when he first became Robin it wouldn’t be a surprise is Tim wasn’t invited to cuddling sessions where they would scent each other. As vigilantes they also frequently would wear scent blockers to avoid identification.

All this is to say that I would find it comedic if one day Red Robin takes off his scent blockers and instead of smelling like the rest of the bats pack if instead you could tell that he had bonded with young justice, romantic or platonic is up to you, since many of the young justice members would have also been rejected from the other packs around them.

-abo anon

Hi!!! Definitely agree on not a huge fan of romantic a/b/o. There's some cool stuff with platonic a/b/o, but shifter and/or creature fics tend to have most of those cool features.

Let's get into the hc/au, though!!!!

Does this AU have anything to do with pack bonds or nesting? For the sake of it, we will say that it does.

You're right that Tim probably wouldn't have his parents' scent on him. In fact, he probably thinks this is normal.

Is it nice when his parents are home, he gets scented, and then he feels safe, secure, and loved for a bit? Yeah. However, that's a luxury, not a need. It's nice, but Tim can live without it. He has everything else he needs (Tim, buddy, no).

We tie this mindset into the Gotham elite one as well. Tim knows it's improper to just have proof of scents wafting around. Everyone wears scent blockers (perhaps this became a norm due to rich people having affairs, marrying for money, etc). Therefore, Tim thinks it has to be common that the upper class just doesn't scent, or doesn't scent often. It's like those weird sitcoms Tim sees on the TV.

Then he becomes Robin.

At first, due to Dick and Bruce fighting, Tim doesn't see much of the cuddling, nesting, scenting behaviors. They still do it, but not as often or openly.

As the family starts to heal, the Waynes aren't purposefully trying to exclude Tim or anything. In fact, Dick (and maybe Bruce too) want to engage in those familial/loving activities. However, it's very intimate and only done with people you consider family. Dick does consider Tim to be his brother, but Tim has his parents. Also, how would the Waynes explain scenting their son to the Drakes when the Drakes go to do a similar thing?

Even after the Drakes die, Tim has his "uncle." They can't really explain away the Waynes scenting Tim, so they keep refraining.

While all of this is happening, Tim has fond his place with YJ. He's learned what scenting really means, how it's healthy and vital to them, and how horrid it was that his parents weren't around enough to do it. Tim has complicated feelings on that matter, though.

He found YJ and, even with retired members, they make sure to visit often for scenting purposes. Everyone in YJ is part of the family.

As anon said, you can hc a romantic poly for the core four or do a qpr. Either way, they are everything to each other.

Since YJ core were the first to consistently scent and bond with Tim, Kon and Bart's deaths particularly burned.

Anyways, he gets them back and everything. The Waynes are settling down. Things are good.

Then Tim takes off his scent blockers, which, for plot purposes, he's never done in front of the Waynes (maybe something about propriety's sake and YJ being the only ones he takes them off for). Chaos ensue when the Waynes realize that Tim doesn't smell like them, not one bit. He does smell heavily of YJ, though.

Also, perhaps YJ didn't wear blockers, but the batfam didn't know what Tim smelt like (due to the blockers), so they never connected the dots.

[bitimdrake]

Someone I follow put that horrible trash post about Tim on my dash and I am so upset. I get that Tim stans are obnoxious, but why take it out on my baby? (the kids are all my babies) Anyway do you have spoons for a Tim Drake appreciation post, of times he's been good, clever and kind?

i don't even know what post you're referring to, but let's go anyway. For lack of energy, I hope instead of comic refs, you will accept brief rambling on why I like him.

I love that Tim is Just Some Guy. I like that he could have had a totally normal life, but decided to get involved in this mess because he wanted to help. I love that when he did quit for a while, he couldn't resist going back, because helping people in need was too embedded as a habit.

I love that he has the absolutely insane and unhealthy habit of seeing people much older and more experienced that him and being like I Can Fix Them. (Most notably: Bruce.) Love that he is often right about what people need yet incompetently tactless in trying to convince them, because flawed characters are fun!! He really, really wants to help, and he's not half bad at picking people apart, but he is so intent on Fixing Things that others don't always want to be fixed.

Love that he's perfectly capable of working on his own, but craves connection. Love that he never minded being a sidekick, because he loves team ups! He just wants to work with everyone!

Love that he struggles to figure out how he feels about his dad, desperately wants to make the relationship work, feels guilty for being a bad son one minute then lashes out at his dad for being a bad parent the next; it's a really interesting relationship to me.

Love that he tried to be Super Cool and Competent to his friends, and then they saw through that immediately and have mocked him ever since. Love that he goes out of his way to avoid being Known and then is absolutely delighted any time someone pushes past that to know him anyway. Like my dude!! Just let them know you in the first place!!!

I love that he's really thoughtful and intent on Symbols, and really gets what Batman and Robin mean to Gotham and the world at large, because he knows what they meant to him. And I very much love that he is, first and foremost, a Dick Grayson fan.

(Mostly, I'm surprised to realize I can write this much about why I like Tim, because 90% of my enjoyment of him is less a thoughtful essay and more [marge simpson meme] i just think he's neat!)

[scandalsavagefanfic]

Hello! I am a huge fan of ur writing. I've loved everything I've read of yours. I've read alot of what you've posted, except for a couple of the tags that are squicky for me (so I'm very thankful you tag very thoroughly). No judgement for the squick, it's just not for me. & when I'm having a bad day, I usually just go thru ur ao3 and find something to reread. I think about Therapy's Bruce & Jason every damn day. While I obvs appreciate ur darker more "problematic" content (I really vibe with some of the themes you write about bc of my own trauma, & so it's very cathartic to read about in a fictional setting), I am truly a sucker for ur more happy content. The Happily Ever After verse also lives in my head rent free. Idk more wholesome stuff just seems more special when you write it. Anyways. I would die for you. But the point of this ask is cause I'm curious as to why you don't like Urban Legends? I'm sorry if you already talked about it here or on twitter and I missed it. I was just wondering because I really enjoy your take on things and would love to hear why you dislike it. I've been enjoying it so far personally, but I am always open to DC comics criticism.

Aw thank you so much! I'm so flattered by everything you just said. You're so sweet ❤❤❤❤❤

I haven't talked about Urban Legends here or twitter (I haven't been very active in either place lately. Just a lot going on and no energy 😔) but I'm happy to do it here.

Before I start though, I just want to add a standard disclaimer and make it clear that if you like it, there's nothing wrong with that and you don't have to let me ruin it for you lol. Like what you like.

That said, since you asked...

I said this when I was talking about it on discord, that there is a difference between hope and expectation. I always hope that a new story centered on Jason (or anyone really, but things have been especially egregious for Jay for 15 years) will be good or at least treat the character with a minimal level of respect (to be honest, the bar is super fucking low). But my expectations always temper my hope, to keep it from getting unrealistic. Because my expectations are based on experience.

The long history of Jason Todd, since even before his resurrection, has been one of retroactively trying to make him "a bad seed" in order to absolve Bruce of any responsibility in his death.

I don't even expect DC or their writers to start honoring the fact that Jason was not an angry, reckless Robin (and less of the later than Dick or Tim and definitely Damian). There plenty of ways that retcon can be folded into his history and be compelling and sympathetic. And if they're going to stick with that retcon, I'm only asking that they do it in one of those compelling and sympathetic ways because Jason was 15 when he died, heroically, in one of the most selfless acts in comics, to save a woman who literally handed him over to be brutally murdered. He was 12 when Bruce plucked him off the streets, he'd been homeless and fending for himself for at least two years. I personally think that Jason's story hits harder for him and Bruce if their original, canon relationship, of Jason as starry-eyed and eager to learn and absolutely devoted to Bruce and Bruce to Jason, is preserved. But Jason's origins does leave room for a meaningful interpretation of him as angry and frustrated at the lack of meaningful results of Bruce's methods.

And that's really where my irritation at stories like Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer and Batman The Adventure Continues has it's roots.

Every time one of these stories comes out, I think (or hope, rather) that this will be the one that remembers and respects the origins of the Jason and the Red Hood, that takes into account the changed sensibilities of comics readers in the 30 years since Jason's death and the subtle, 20 year, retroactive campaign to make him the "bad Robin". The "born bad" trope is played out and literally no one likes the message it implies. That some kids are just bad eggs and there's nothing parents or the adults around them can do. Especially when it's played as the kid's fault. If Jason's time as Robin is going to be characterized by anger, then it should be rooted in anger at the social injustices he witnessed as he grew up in an impoverished, crime-ridden, area and the horrors he faced raising himself when every day was a battle for survival. There are topical, meaningful, stories to tell with that backdrop.

But those are never the stories we get.

⚠⚠ Spoilers for Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer ⚠⚠

I'm particularly disappointed in Urban Legends because for the first issue, it looked like that was the kind of story we were going to get. I was put off by the first flashback of Jason being mesmerized by Bruce's guns, and I got that feeling in my gut that it was a bad sign. Jason depicted as impatient and overconfident and the scene with the guns is heavy-handed foreshadowing that got my spidey-sense tingling. I had a inkling then (in the first three pages) of how this story was going to play out, but it was early and I could still see many narrative paths that could lead to a satisfying story. My concerns were soothed somewhat and the little flame of my hope fanned, with the flashback of Alfred scolding Bruce, with Barbara's concern for Jason. A bit of worry returned with the way Jason ruthlessly pursued an addict who didn't appear to be a dealer and with the ending of the issue. The stuff with the addict sat wrong with me but the ending was tempered some by how despicable Tyler's dad was written. The scene was clearly set so that the reader could sympathize with Jason's decision and the scene with the addict could be brushed aside as a side-effect of comics over-the-top need for constant action, so I still held hope.

Issue 2 made me uncomfortable and it's where my hope starts to take a backseat to my expectations. I can dismiss Jason's self-deprecating internal monologue as unreliable narration, except that the flashback reinforces his thought process to explicitly show that it's not unreliable narration, and should be taken at face value. Jason faces physical abuse at the hands of his mother's drug dealer and when the flashback continues later, Jason kills the drug dealer. To be clear, this is a pre-Bruce Jason. His mom is still alive. He's like... 10. He kills this guy for shoving his head into a wall and implying Jason's mother paid for her drugs with sex. This is a scene that serves a single purpose. To show that Jason has always been prone to violence.

In the spirit of full disclosure, there is the small chance the drug dealer might not be dead. But the story obviously wants the reader to think he is, and it hasn't done anything to change that yet.

Starlin already did this story with The Diplomat’s Son in 1988 and he did it infinitely better. AND that’s still technically canon. So now I’m supposed to believe that Jason lost his cool bad enough to kill two douche bags before his sweet 16? Like it’s totally normal for abused kids raised in poverty, who’ve led hard and heartbreaking lives to just... haul off and kill people? That’s bullshit, and when taken with the Jason in the third issue, who is little more than an idiot thug, this story is really doubling down on some fucked up stereotypes.

Which brings us to the most recent issue. I went into this installment with very low expectations. I thought this story was going to be about Jason, through this experience with Tyler, a young boy with a similar background to Jason's, coming to the realization that Bruce's way is the best way and that Bruce did his best by Jason.

That would be annoying (in no small part because it takes increasingly absurd levels of plot armor to keep Bruce's no kill rule relevant, let alone irrefutably right). But I can probably live with that, if only because maybe if Jason officially falls back into line with the Bats crusade, maybe I'll get stories that treat him with respect, stories that don't relegate him to comic relief, dumb brute, or a background body with no lines in a story about the Joker burning Gotham (like Jason would just fucking stand there quietly for that).

And that may still be where the story is going, Jason realizing Bruce is right.

But holy shit do I not have the right words to describe how fucking insulting and gross issue three is.

From start to finish--including the flashback--Jason is written as cruel and fucking stupid. Like straight up dumb.

The entire issue is Bruce explaining the fucking basics to Jason like it's his first day. And Jason flies off the fucking handle and terrorizes a doctor he knows isn't a part of making the Cheerdrops, beats the shit out of some random addicts, and finally, when he can't accomplish anything on his own because he's a dumb brute he calls Barbara for help and rushes in with no information where he's promptly incapacitated and must now wait to be rescued by Batman.

This panel is the least of the issues sins but I can’t screenshot the entire story but it’s representative of the tone for the whole issue (and retroactively tainted the prior two issues).

This is beyond insulting. The only conclusions Jason comes to in this issue are the ones Bruce leads him to by talking to him like he can’t make the simplest connections. And like... in this story Jason can’t make the simplest connections.

This (and the Jason throughout the entirety of this issue) is a far cry from the Jason we fell in love with in Under the Red Hood, who was competent and strategic and intelligent enough to seize control of Gotham’s underworld from Black Mask (who’s no fucking slouch, he’s the first and only person to unify organized crime in Gotham) AND elude and manipulate Bruce until the time and place of his choosing.

This is a far cry from even the Red Hood and the Outlaws Jason who is competent enough to fight the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (among very dangerous and skilled others) and smart enough to create antidotes for mind control nanotech viruses.

As he should be, by the way. Jason Todd is one of the best, most comprehensively trained fighters in DC’s stable of non powered vigilantes. He’s not irrational or hot headed. He’s pragmatic, tactically minded, and patient. He’s a detective. Right now. Has been since he was 12. Bruce doesn’t have to make him one because he already is. 

Jason is not a stupid thug who uses his fists because his brain doesn’t work. And I can’t tell you how so very exhausted I am by this narrative. 

This is actually the most egregious example of Jason’s skills and intelligence being not just undermined but dismissed entirely. Even Morrison’s Jason had some degree of competency. 

The one, single redeeming factor of this story is the art. It’s beautiful. And Marcus To is a godsend he seems to be one of only a couple of artists who remember that Jason was a child when he was Robin and I’m literally only buying this book because of him. 

Anyway, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to come out so... um... passionately lol. I’m just very very tired. My intention with this isn’t to ruin it for you, if you like it, that’s fine. 

But this issue shot this story to the top of my "Vehemently Despise” list. 1) Batman: Urban Legends (Cheer), 2) Battle for the Cowl/Morrison’s Batman and Robin, 3) Batman The Adventure Continues.

I hope the next issues somehow salvage this dumpster fire. But I’m not expecting it.

(Damnit. That sounded harsh again. To reiterate, I’m not trying to judge anyone who enjoys it, I just personally hate it and you asked me why lol 😅)

[stxleslyds]

I saw your rant about the Red Hood Movie lol (I agree DC keeps hurting my boy Jason) and you said something that interested me, you mentioned that you don’t like it when Jason is drawn with a bat symbol on him but why? Personally I feel that him wearing the bat symbol makes sense because he’s always tried to fit in with the family and it’s his way of connecting with them because he’s never had a family before. He gets along with his other siblings sometimes so I don’t think it’s ooc. I consider ‘bat symbol’ Jason an era of the past and am perfectly fine with his new Red Hood logo it looks sweet (but I wouldn’t be angry if he had the bat symbol on or not in the future). I’m curious what you’re thoughts are!

Hey there Anon, I have to be honest with you, your ask has been proven very difficult to answer, this here is my third draft. I have decided that instead of explaining my thoughts as I was trying to do in my previous drafts, I will now just link you to some of my past posts when I bring up certain points that make me think Jason should have never worn the bat-symbol on his chest.

Just a heads up, I am not a fan of Batman, the “Batfamily”, or Jason being dragged to any Bat-related content, I think it makes his character bland.

In order to make the answer clear to me as well as to anyone who reads this post, I will be separating my thoughts on how I think Jason’s relationship with Bruce has led me to think that he shouldn’t wear a bat-symbol or be involved with any Batman related content, and how Jason’s relationship with his brothers has led me to think that he isn’t part of any Batfamily or has ever been written as someone with true reasons to consider the others his brothers/allies/friends. I will separate each of those two groups in four different sections: pre-New 52, New 52, Rebirth and Infinite Frontier.

First though I would like to say that Jason as the Red Hood wearing a bat-symbol doesn’t make sense to me from the most basic of things, Jason’s vigilante name has nothing to do with Bats. Who wears bat-symbols? Batman, Batwoman, Batgirl, Batwing… All people that who have the “Bat” prefix on their names, nobody else wears a bat-symbol, Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin (Robin), none of them wear it, so why would Red Hood do it? It just makes zero sense. But anyway, that’s just me being annoying, I guess.

Jason and Bruce’s relationship.

First let’s go back in time to when Jason hadn’t died yet. You said that Jason wore the bat-symbol so he could connect with his family because Jason had never had that before, well, I see things differently, Jason had a family and that was his mother, the mother that he cared for when she was sick and the mother that he saw die to drugs after his father was put in jail. He had a family with her. And then he had a family with Bruce when he was Robin, but because Bruce started to neglect and not pay enough attention to him after he realized they weren’t seeing eye to eye in various things, Jason was pushed to act the way he did when he found that his birth mother was alive and “being manipulated by Joker”.

Jason’s father was abusive with his mother and didn’t care for Jason, Bruce wasn’t ready to be a father (even after Dick) and when Jason started to not want to follow his every rule Bruce neglected him, later his birth mother betrayed him and was one of the people involved in Jason’s death.

My point here is that Jason had a family with one person who died to drugs and then every other “family” that he found ended up betraying him or neglecting him. So, I don’t really think that Jason has much trust in the whole concept of “family” at least not when it comes to any of his experiences outside of Catherine Todd.

Now let’s move to the events of Under the Red Hood where Jason comes back to comics. Jason doesn’t hate Bruce then but he felt betrayed by him and felt like Batman’s whole crusade was not good anymore. Jason expressed several times in that book the fact that he didn’t believe Batman was good for Gotham and that he became a better version of Batman, the Red Hood.

Red Hood could do things that Batman didn’t dare do, he was better. So, why on earth would Jason wear a bat-symbol then? Well, Jason never wore a bat-symbol pre-New 52 when he was wearing his Red Hood suit. NEVER.

Jason didn’t care for Dick or Tim, he saw Dick as inferior to him because of Nightwing’s no killing ways and he was completely indifferent to Tim, his only interactions with him were when he cut his throat a little bit in Batman: Hush and when he called him “the pretender”.

So, Jason wasn’t looking for family he just wanted Bruce to kill Joker for him, and Bruce didn’t. When things got complicated and Jason realized that Bruce was too much of a coward he improvised, he told Batman that in order to stop him from killing the Joker Batman would have to shoot him (Jason). Batman didn’t use the gun, but he did save the Joker by throwing a batarang at Jason’s throat. When Joker detonated the explosives in the building they were in Bruce once again saved Joker from the rubble and didn’t look much for Jason.

That my dead Anon is the first time Bruce betrays Jason in such a big way that made me think that Jason would have never wanted to interact with Bruce in a good way. I will repeat it now, Bruce SAVED the Joker instead of letting Jason KILL the Joker.

After Under the Red Hood we got to see that Jason was alive and well in Green Arrow #69-72, where he made an appearance, there I can say with a 100% certainty that Jason hated both Batman and Bruce. He actively did things that pissed Bruce off and was searching for conflict with the man.

Jason and Bruce don’t interact much after all that because at some point Bruce “died” and that’s where Battle for the Cowl comes in. There is where we see one of the craziest Jason characterizations, there Jason took on the mantle of Batman because Gotham needed Batman (what? Red Hood was created to replace Batman!). But in that book Jason actually harmed both his brothers and left them for dead. In that book we also see a horrible message that Bruce left for Jason where Bruce told him that “Jason was broken and he tried to fix him” and that “Jason was my (Bruce’s) biggest failure”. I don’t know about you Anon, but if my father saw me that way, I would be packing my bags. And Jason didn’t look like he was looking to connect with his “family”.

After all that we don’t see Jason until Batman and Robin vol.1, where we see the weirdest characterization of Red Hood, this Red Hood hates Batman and would kill anyone just because. Jason had zero need to connect with his family there.

I just want to remind you here that Jason never wore a Batman symbol until here in his Red Hood suits, he only wore the symbol when he “was” Batman and that was OOC.

So now I welcome you to the New 52, where Jason wears a bat-symbol on his Red Hood suit for the first time. I HATE New 52 Jason Anon; you will find zero love for him here. That man wore a bat-symbol on his chest even though he didn’t believe in Batman’s ways and while he had this internal conflict about whether he hated or not Bruce. This Jason gave up a memory from his Robin years with Batman because he didn’t care enough to keep it, then he was seen acting like an ass towards Bruce and Barbara in the “Court of Owls” event.

But this whole shit show was written by Lobdell and one day he decided that Jason cared about what Bruce thought and let us know that maybe Jason secretly admired Bruce (in the post I will link here! I talk about what happened in those issues among other things). That story would be followed by Batman and Robin vol.2 #20, or what I like to call “the second time Bruce betrayed Jason in an even more painful way”. I am not going to explain what happened there, but I will like here! the post where I talked about what happened there and why I think that Jason should have never been on good terms with Bruce again from that moment on.

In that post I also discuss how much of an abusive and manipulative person and father, Bruce has and can be. He is a disgusting human being and Jason called him out about it but DC loves to write Bruce being abusive and then swiping it under the rug, Jason being on good terms with Bruce or wearing a bat-symbol on his chest is just horrifying after witnessing that issue, and it normalized Bruce’s abusive behaviour when issues later the same writer (Tomasi) had Jason interact with Bruce as if nothing had happened.

After that Jason was seen interacting with Bruce when the latter lost his memory, Jason even hugged Bruce there, it was OOC, and like I said it normalized Bruce’s abusive behaviour or at the very least made it look as something of no real importance.

Now, we are entering the Rebirth era of Bruce and Jason’s relationship, Jason was still wearing that fucking bat-symbol on his chest and this time around Jason even made a deal where he wouldn’t kill anyone while in Gotham (RHatO vol.1 #6), Lobdell even wrote them as being all buddy-buddy after the mess that was the New 52, absolutely disgusting.

Jason didn’t interact with Bruce in Rebirth that much, in fact the next time that Batman made a big appearance in the Red Hood book was in Red Hood and the Outlaws vol.2 #25, yeah, the issue where Batman beats the living shit out of Jason twice because he thought that Jason had killed Penguin. Father of the year, Jason wasn’t dying to be part of Bruce’s family, he was just brutally beat to be part of it. Bruce also ripped the vat-symbol off of Jason’s chest and told him that he didn’t “belong” with him or in Gotham any more. The AUDACITY of that bitch, can you believe? Jason belongs in Gotham as much if not more than Bruce.

Later when Red Hood and the Outlaws became Red Hood Outlaw, we saw Bruce and Jason interact again when Bruce informed Jason of Roy’s death, hugged him and also told him that he was still not allowed in Gotham, what a swell guy that Batman lad!

After that Batman went after Jason Todd when Jason came back to Gotham (without King Batman’s permission) and told the world that Jason Todd was alive and well and taking over Penguin’s Casino. Jason actually threatened Batman with revealing too much information about himself to the world (meaning, Jason threatened Bruce with revealing his secret identity) and that was that. Jason and Bruce only saw each other a few times when DC needed to make money with one of their boring ass events like Joker War and Bruce was shown “welcoming” Jason to Gotham in Red Hood Outlaw #51 or #52, I don’t remember but either way, it was absolutely hilarious and made zero sense. I am sorry, but after Bruce being a manipulative, abusive and all around a horrible person, I don’t feel anything except rage when they make them interact as if they cared for one another.

Shit hits the fan in Infinite Frontier with Urban Legends: Cheer, once again instead of explaining what happens there, I will just link you to the six posts I made about that mini. Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four, Part five and Part six.

Here I will only talk about the comeback of the bat-symbol in Jason’s life. Like you said Jason used (still has in some books) his own logo on his chest after Bruce ripped off the bat-symbol and told him to fuck off. That Red Hood logo was still done with the bat-symbol in mind and I just thought that it was ugly, like, there is no need for a logo if you are going to give him an ugly one along an even uglier suit. But that’s not what matter here, what matters is that the bat-symbol IS making a comeback because at the end of UL: Cheer, Bruce gives Jason a brand new (ugly) suit that has the bat-symbol again. That gift comes as a slap to the face after the disaster that was that book, from every point of view that mini should have not come out to the public. But it did because it forced the “Batfamily” down our throats through Bruce deciding to welcome Jason back to the “family” by giving him a suit with HIS logo on the Red Hood suit that kinda looks to me like Bruce saying “glad that I own you too as well”. The whole bat-symbol thing doesn’t sit right with him and sadly I don’t see it like a “Jason era of the past”, I see it like a metaphorical jail for Jason’s character, he is not free to be the character that he is supposed to be (a perfect opposite to Batman that shows that duality MUST exist in Gotham), and instead all we get is another Batman wannabe that is just as boring as the Batman himself.

Jason and his brother’s relationship.

The funny ha-ha thing with this is that we are not supposed to see Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian as four brothers (and to be honest I have never seen them four as brothers, as far as I see it, Jason hasn’t had a brother since before died). DC always makes it clear that Damian is Bruce’s only son so yeah, there is a big misunderstanding there within DC themselves, they have no problem with trying to sell us their absolutely nasty version of a family but at the same time they refuse to acknowledge any one except for Damian as Bruce’s son.

Even though I don’t necessarily believe that Jason sees his brothers as such I still call them that way because they were/are all Bruce’s children.

But this is not about Bruce so let me talk about Jason’s interactions with his brothers in the pre-New 52 era. So, as I said earlier in this post Jason didn’t think Dick was a big deal in UtRH because *just* like Batman Dick never killed and his way didn’t work or whatever (if only Jason knew what Dick did), and with Tim, Jason was mostly indifferent, he only hurt him a little bit in Batman: Hush (for the little bit that he took Clayface’s place) and then he referred to him as “the pretender”. Then we jump to the events of Teen Titans for Tim and Nightwing for Dick. In Teen Titans #29 Jason went to Titans Tower and beat the living hell out of Tim just because, now that thing was OOC and written by Geoff Johns but it existed and it further proves that DC writes this “family” through violence every time they can and then they just hope we forget it happened. With Dick, well, there was the Brothers in Blood arc where Jason dressed up as Nightwing and killed people in his name, he did it because he wanted to “bond” with Dick because he thought that Dick had killed Blockbuster, the whole arc was a mess and I can tell you this about it, Jason wanted to bond for all the wrong reasons and Dick was written as actually preferring Jason to be dead.

Then we jump right into Battle for the Cowl and even though (once again) this Jason was extremely OOC he did try to kill both Damian and Tim and fought Dick too, so, so far, I am not seeing Jason wanting to connect with his brothers, it was more like him going “be robin to my weird ass version of Batman or suffer!”. It was just weird.

Then there was Batman and Robin vol.1, where Jason’s Red Hood was just a blood thirsty and crazy and he didn’t want to be part of any family. I might not like Jason being written as part of the family but what this book had going on was not it.

Now, get ready because it is New 52 time again and this is messier than his relationship with Bruce in this timeline. The most recognizable relationship (or lack of thereof) was Jason and Dick. Lobdell just let us know one thing about what Jason thought of Dick and that was HATE. Jason HATED Dick, why, you ask? Oh, um, no one really knows, the only panel we were shown as “proof” of why Jason hated Dick was when Jason was acting like a little bitch when Dick was teaching him stuff during patrol (RHatO vol.1 #6). But, yes, Jason “had” (apparently) a good relationship with Tim. Yeah, no gracias, listen, Jason and Tim having brunch for two pages (RHatO vol.1 #8) isn’t making me believe that Jason cares or sees Tim in a good light, just throwing a brunch between them isn’t proof of them being the best of brothers but then again Lobdell loved giving Jason every character trait and relationship that Dick once had (examples: Tim, Roy and Kory). That brunch didn’t mean much because later on during the Death of the Family event Jason almost killed Tim (Teen Titans #16) to “save” his father from Joker (talk about bad writing). Jason and Damian had a very weird and forced “bonding” moment in that same event (you can include Damian to the relationships that Lobdell borrowed from Dick), all of the sudden Jason cared for Damian and he was acting all brotherly, because “they worked together” as different people in Batman Incorporated #4, this weird interaction between Jason and Damian (it can only be called weird because it looked out of place and you cannot change my mind, even Jason thinks it is weird in those panels) happened in RHatO vol.1 #17. In that same issue is where Jason tells Dick that he was trash because he didn’t want to say hi to Kory and kinda tells him that Dick “underestimates” Kory, listen, New Teen Titans isn’t a book that I enjoy reading most of the time but Lobdell needs to do some re-reading himself, Dick isn’t trash to Kory, Lobdell was trash to Kory. Anyway, at that point in time, Jason had a bad relationship with Dick, a secret admiration for Bruce, and a weird ass relationship with Tim and Damian.

Before we go on let me tell you what I think about the whole New 52 dynamic. Jason was used as a replacement of Dick Grayson. Dick was the one that had good relationships with his brothers and father, Jason up until the start of New 52 didn’t care for Tim or Damian, hated Bruce and kinda had a soft spot for Dick. In the New 52 the tables were turned. Jason’s relationship with Tim was never developed in paper, they for some reason were friends only when they stood together like they did in Robin War and Batman and Robin Eternal, there was never development or a reason as to why they “were in good terms”, they just *were*. The whole Jason and Damian thing didn’t last long because Damian died and then the whole mess of Batman and Robin #20 happened with Bruce.

Ahh, Grayson #12, the time when Jason and Tim’s last braincell died, they threw so much shit Dick’s way and for nothing. I will forever be mad at this, they really thought that Dick of all people faked his death, and because Bruce was conveniently amnesiac nobody dared say “hey, wasn’t it Bruce the one that told us that Dick was dead?”, seems to me like New 52 Jason and Tim can go be friends with that one braincell all by themselves. This is not family; this is people teaming up with whoever so DC can sell another weird comic event. Also at that time Damian was alive and Jason couldn’t have cared less about him being there (maybe it was because Jason was there when Damian was resurrected? Who knows?).

And now we jump to Rebirth because I hate the New 52. Tim was nowhere to be seen. Jason just forgot Tim existed and it wasn’t until the Red Hood Outlaw era in which we saw Jason interact with Damian again. What we did see, was a reconciliation between Jason and Dick, Jason was written as acting completely different in RHatO Annual #1, Jason respected Dick and his work and also said that Dick “had been a better brother than he had given him credit for”. Then Jason appeared once in Nightwing and they talked about Dick’s new girlfriend. And that was that for a long while.

As I said, during the RHO era Jason and Damian shared a couple of issues in the Teen Titans run, I have talked about these issues before in two posts (Post 1 and Post 2) but I will summarize what happened there here quickly.

Apparently, Jason and Damian had been working together in secret (never shown in actual comics), Jason gave Damian targets and intel of people for Damian to put in his secret prison for villains. When Damian and the Titans go after a target something goes wrong and the Titans end up hurt. Damian goes after Jason without a second thought and accuses him of betraying him, a physical and emotional fight ensues and it ends with Jason promising that if he sees Damian again, he will kill him. That’s all for Jason and Damian being on good terms in Rebirth.

But it all changes in Infinite Frontier, in August of 2021 we see the *real* comeback of the “Batfamily” in Robin #5. Dick, Damian, Jason, Tim and Stephanie appear in this issue but the only things of essence happen between Jason and Damian and Dick and Damian. Only one of them made sense, and it wasn’t Jason and Damian.

Jason was there to bring Damian back to Bruce. Listen, the last time Jason and Damian were seen together they were actively hiding their work from Batman and then they ended promising to kill each other, and now Jason came fresh out of Urban Legends: Cheer #6 wanting Damian to go back to Bruce. Damian tricks Jason into a hug, but surprise! it wasn’t a hug, Damian electrocuted Jason to get him of his back.

And that’s all.

-

I understand that there have been moments where Jason has been written as wanting to connect to one or two people from the “family” but its never developed or based on something of true essence. You might consider it actually strong family connections but I just don’t see it that way.

Jason wearing a bat-symbol after the abuse and manipulation that Bruce put him through in new 52 onwards is just dumb to me. And given Red Hood’s origin, Jason wearing a bat-symbol in the first place is absurd and goes against everything that he once was.

Jason officially started wearing the bat-symbol again in Detective Comic's back up story written by Rosenberg and will continue to use it in the ongoing book Task Force Z.

The bat-symbol is annoying but Rosenberg writes Jason beautifully so yeah, I am biased there...

We just have different opinions on the matter Anon, but don't take this post as an attack towards you and what you think, it is just that I just don't like Jason being involved with anything Batman.

I hope you have a fantastic week Anon!

[quillsareswords]

Could you do something with Damian and a really cuddly, clingy, touchy-feely reader? I feel like his brothers would be v confused about the whole situation bc Damian's just chillin and always seems neutral to what's happening while reader is just like, koala bear hugging him and stuff all the time.

Firstly. I love this concept with every fiber of my being because, oh good god, it's me. Thank you so much for bringing this to inbox, because I've been lacking on inspiration lately, and this is just what I need right now. Thanks doll!!

Prompt List // Masterlist (in bio)

Tim stops dead in his tracks, cereal bowl nearly slipping from his hand as he halts in the doorway to the huge living room. He pauses, before cautiously asking, "What is this? What am I looking at?"

Damian's arm twitches against your back, the only give away that he's been caught off guard. You seem just as relaxed, sprawled on top of him like you've been there your whole life.

You don't even look at him, eyes still glued to the phone screen shining up at you from the floor, which you're facing with your face pressed against Damian's shoulder. "You've known me for five years and you still haven't learned my name? Rude."

He blinks. "Sure, sure. Right. Because it's absolutely normal for anyone to successfully get within a foot of Damian and not get knocked out."

You snort, but it still isn't enough to pry your attention away from your phone. Damian either, as he reads a book over your shoulder, which is settled under his chin. He must be tired or in a terrifyingly good mood, if he hasn't shoved you off in hopes of hiding emotions from his family. That's what he usually does when he gets caught with you, anyway.

He's been tiptoeing around the subject of you for a solid year and half now. It wasn't exactly easy, seeing as you're also a family friend, what with being a vigilante and all. You're Damian's partner, have been for three years, and you're in the manor often enough that you have your own room, right next to Damian's.

Still, even with no clear answers from either of you, the whole family has suspected a relationship for a long time.

But Damian isn't very touch oriented. In fact, he's been known to go to nearly astonishing lengths to avoid being touched at all.

And now here he is, you laying on top of him, out in the open, absolutely unbothered by Tim catching it.

Tim decides quickly not to risk Damian's mood spoiling while he's around, so he backpedals and heads for his room.

• • •

Jason doesn't come to the manor often, but when he does, there's usually a decently concerning reason for it. This time, he's waiting out a possible kidnapping by one king pin or another. You haven't been paying as much attention as you probably should.

Now, he's trotting down the steps from Bruce's office to fix a suspicious rattling noise his motorcycle has been making for a shameful period of time.

However, he stops beside the super computer, looking a little aghast and far too dramatic for the sight.

Damian side-eyes him, still typing away, but his head doesn't move. It really can't, because you're resting your head on top of it.

You're resting your full weight on the back of the chair, which Jason now realizes isn't the tall backed chair that usual sits there, with your cheek buried in the soft looking bush that is Damian's hair. Your eyes are closed, and your arms and draped over his shoulders, hands laying on his chest.

Jason catches himself staring when Damian's side-eyeing turns into a curious glare. Tentatively, Jason points to you, and raises an eyebrow.

Lowly, Damian somewhat patiently answers, "She's half asleep."

Your eyebrows slant together. "Hmm?"

Jason's expression becomes more confused. "She sleeps standing up?"

"Apparently," Damian mumbles.

Jason, more than a little perturbed but Damian's oddly placid demeanor and your absurd sleeping habits, shuffles the rest if the way to his bike, grabbing the toolbox on his way.

• • •

Dick sitting on the floor, wrapped in a blanket—correction, three blankets, facing the rest of the living room, where Damian sits on one couch, and Duke occupies the other.

"No no, I'm not saying Bella wasn't smokin, I'm just saying that those facial expressions and life decisions were questionable enough to make a guy think twice," Dick tries to reason.

Duke makes a face. "Bro, are you kidding? If a chick stares at you from across a lunch room and you've never spoke to her, you don't even try."

Damian scoffs. Duke raises an eyebrow, and just when he's about to beg for the story of who tied him to a steel chair and forced him to watch Twilight, you shoulder the double door open.

Damian doesn't look up from his newest book, which could be deemed rude if you weren't so close and comfortable with one another. "Evening, Beloved, how was your drive?"

You say nothing. You drop your bag by his feet, crawl the rest of the way onto the couch, and collapse. Your head in on a pillow between Damian's thighs and the arm of the couch, the rest of you divided unevenly between his lap and the rest of the couch.

He glances away from the pages briefly. "Traffic?" His hand slips under your shirt to gently run blunt nails up and down your spine.

For a moment, you're quiet, and neither of the two older men know how to react.

Then, without warning, you wail into the pillow. "Who the everloving fuck drives a Winnebago through central Gotham at six o'clock going fourteen miles an hour?"

Duke barks a loud laugh, before he claps a hand over his mouth in fear of a punishment. But a man can only do so much, so he sits with his hand over his mouth, giggling like a fifteen year old listening to a dirty joke with his parents in the room.

Damian chuckles lightly, white teeth peeking through a little smile that he's trying to suppress, much for the same reason Duke is doing his best not to let you hear him laugh.

Dick is more focused on the two of you, and the fact that his baby brother has grown up and changed for the better so much—

• • •

Cassandra climbs the stairs with some difficulty, thanks to two new sets of stitches and a few too many fresh bruises.

It's nothing a few days of relaxation won't fix. It was worth it, to see Poison Ivy put back behind bars—even if it did take four of you.

Shortly after arriving back, you and Damian had disappeared up to his room, after you'd both been checked over by Alfred. Aside from some intense bruising and a fee cuts and scrapes, you'd both been spared.

She knocks on his door a few times. With no answer, she loudly turns the handle and pushes the door open slowly, giving you enough time to correct her if need be. She knows at least one of you are in here, because the light is on. "Alfred sent me to tell you that there's dinner, if you want–"

She stops. You are, in fact, both in the room. However, neither of you are conscious.

Damian is sprawled haphazardly across his bed, face half squished into a pillow.

You're flopped across his back, horizontal across his bed, likely also with a pillow, but she can't see your face to be sure.

For a moment that feels a little intrusive, she stares, eyes wide. Not because he's in only boxers and you're in shorts and a sports bra (neither are necessarily a new sight, with one makeshift locker room in the Cave and a city with way too many privacy-surpassing emergencies), but because she's never witnessed Damian allowing another person to be so close to him while asleep.

Even on week long stakeouts that confine them to one room, he claims one corner for himself and doesn't tolerate that invisible boundary to be broken, especially when he's asleep.

She wouldn't even be so surprised if you were passed out in his reading chair, or even on a pile of blankets in the floor, or hell, even if you were on opposite sides of the bed. But you're literally as close to him as you could possibly be. And he's still sound asleep.

She closes the door and backs away slowly, a little smile on her face, even though she was too tired to laugh at the joke Bruce tried to crack a few minutes ago.

• • •

Bruce sits, almost impatiently, on a stone bench by the fountain the middle of Gotham City Gardens. The whole family had come here for the day, on invitation of the organization's owners. Of course, not everyone was officially recognized as family by anyone outside the Manor, so there were quite a few plus ones—you being one of them.

Of course you were. You're always invited. Over the years, it's become a running joke. A trip to the grocery store? (Y/N) must be invited. Walking from the W.I. building to an ice cream parlor and back? I bet (Y/N) is invited. At one point, Damian became so simultaneously annoyed and amused by it that for a week, you really did join him on every single outing. No one knows how exactly you made it across Gotham in six minutes flat to help him pick up cereal but by golly you managed it.

Bruce is currently waiting on you and Damian, who swore to meet him here for a few pictures (at Alfred's request). The pair of you had gone off on your own after about an hour of meandering around with his family, and no one has heard from either of you since. He would be worried, but you were both too excited about this to get into any trouble that would risk being sent home early.

Your laughter finds him before you do. It comes from around a corner of tall hedges, and shortly after, so do you.

You're smiling ear to ear, giggling like a school girl, elbows balanced on Damian's shoulders, about as precariously as you are on his back. That is to say, quite stable. Damian is grinning as well, his arms linked around you're knees at his sides to keep you as stable as you are. You've got an ice cream cone in each hand, one obviously having had more attention than the other.

Bruce's heart swells in his chest at the absolute joy on his son's face.

Damian stops not too far, shifting your weight to free one hand. You help, carefully resituating yourself to hold yourself up easily. You hand him the neglected ice cream, resting your now free hand on his shoulder.

"Sorry, Father," Damian sounds a little winded, and Bruce wonders if the running he heard earlier had been you two. "Somebody found an ice cream bar and insisted we stop before meeting you." He doesn't sound apologetic in the least.

"Hey!" You laugh, flicking the back of his ear as payback.

As payback for payback, he takes the edge of his cone between his teeth, and uses his free hand to give the back of your knee a quick pinch, before he occupies his hand again to tilt the odds in his favor.

You squeal and jerk. "Damian! You're gonna make me fall, and if I go down, you're coming with me!"

Bruce laughs loudly.

• • •

Alfred is on his way to the library to finish the afternoon chores. All he needs to do is straighten up in there, and he can call it an evening. Just in time, too, as one of the local channels is running a Downton Abbey marathon tonight that he doesn't particularly want to miss.

He pushes open the doors to get a little extra fresh air, but pauses just inside the doorway.

Damian is stretched out in one of the plush leather chairs, his long legs propped up by his ankles on the coffee table, head resting limply on the back of the chair. You're curled up in his lap, head on his shoulder, legs folded up on either side of his thighs, arms wound around his back. His hands are folded together on your back. You're both fast asleep.

The elder man is suddenly flooded with memories of the boy's first few months in this manor. In this room, even. He was politely feral, as Bruce had once put it. He was so uncomfortable all the time, though he fought not to show it. It was so new to him, to be openly cared for the way his family tried to care for him. Most people he met back then treated him as the cold, rude, trained assassin that he presented himself as.

So many overlooked the terrified ten year old boy that shook beneath the armor and the weight of the mantels he was expected to take up in so few years.

Of course Alfred had been paying attention to him all this time, all the growing he's done and the man he's becoming. He's always been proud.

But it's here, in this exact moment, that Alfred really takes in how different he is now, compared to then.

Not only did he find the strength and the trust to forge a close bond with you, one that would arguably outlast just about anything it was forced to endure, but he'd fostered such a sweet affection for you. He's found the space within himself to make room for a great love for you, and his family, and his friends.

And you're so good for him. You remind him of the things he could be, if he wanted, and not of what he should be or could have been. You provide him a sense of normalcy when he needs it, and battle ready companion when he needs that.

You look past the blazing armor of controlled aggression and lessons learned to reach the beautiful soul he is. And most importantly, you love him for all of it. You manage to dig so far beyond what he's been taught and the walls he's put up, that you look at what was meant to be the perfect soldier and you see a pillow to sleep on. You trust him with everything, including your vulnerability, just as he trusts you.

Alfred marks the page of the open book on the floor, closes it, and leaves it in the table for you later. He leaves as quietly as he came, in hopes of leaving the two of you undisturbed.

[redhoodieone]

Welcome Home

A/N: Hi everyone! This is an old fic that I’m re-posting for those who want to read it. Enjoy!

WARNINGS: Language and Smut.

  I knew my family was different the moment I found out my adoptive father was Batman. I was just a ten-year-old girl when I snuck down the stairs at midnight for a drink of water and spotted Batman leaving a trail of blood from his study and calling out for Alfred for help. The moment our eyes locked, Bruce instantly knew that I was clearly aware of his secret. He had also confessed it was him who saved me from a shootout that my parents were involved in and that it was him, as Batman. I felt I owed Bruce my own life for saving me, and I vowed to keep my father’s secret and pray that he would return home safely every night back to me.

It didn’t help that I soon discovered my adoptive older brother Dick Grayson was Robin. Not only did I have to keep his secret as well, but it made it more impossible to not have a crush on him. I mean, Dick has such a charming personality, beautiful baby blue eyes, and a devilish smile that can make any girl crawl on her hands and knees. And that ass…

I later found myself becoming the second Robin once Dick left to assume his own identity, Nightwing. Bruce trusted me, and he saw potential in me the second I told him I couldn’t see myself being a hero forever. Perhaps he never really wanted me to be his sidekick and figured if I got it out of my system that I could resume my life as a sixteen-year-old and do normal teenager activities. As if my life was normal anyways.

But things changed as soon as I was finally embracing myself as a hero. Bruce had taken in a new kid, Jason Todd. He was a troublemaker, a rebel, and a mysterious kid, who had never even spoken to me unless he had to. I don’t think my age helped the situation either; I was a couple of years older than him and he may not have seen me as an equal. But of course, the dark haired, icy blue eyed, bad attitude boy was given the Robin title, and I was removed because of a patrol-gone-wrong situation.

Stupid Harley Quinn and her baseball bat. Who knew one hit to my knee could bench me for two months (Alfred added an additional five months of rest).

Then the unthinkable happened. The second Robin was killed by the Joker. Jason Todd’s death put Bruce into a depression, and he swore he would never put another kid’s life in danger. Our father and daughter relationship broke apart before my very eyes. I spent my remaining teenage years in the mansion isolated, except for Alfred’s loving company.

I had graduated high school on time and I quickly decided to go to Gotham University to escape the Bat family. Before I moved out, I discovered Bruce had taken in another kid, Tim Drake, who was currently the new Robin. Was I hurt? Of course, I felt I was somehow replaced. Would I miss the Bat family? Maybe. Maybe not.

I did in fact wish the new younger Robin good luck. When Tim looked up at me, his light blue eyes were so innocent and frightened about me leaving him behind. I didn’t know why he would be so upset about me leaving; wouldn’t he want all of Bruce’s attention without me hanging around the mansion?

Now I’m twenty-one-years-old, and I’m still a student at Gotham University. Alfred had just called and informed me Bruce wants me back home.

As I sit in a taxi while anxiously waiting to pull up to Wayne Manor, I honestly don’t know why Bruce wants me back at home. Alfred has kept me up to date about the Bat family incidents and activities I have missed out those few years such as:

Dick Grayson becoming a womanizer (I saw it coming) and how he’s juggling working as a police officer and Nightwing. He’s still the favorite and golden child in Bruce’s eyes.

Jason Todd is back from the dead, and he’s currently operating his own team: Red Hood and the Outlaws (who knew he was leadership material underneath that thick skull of his?).

Tim Drake is Red Robin (does the fast food chain restaurant know about his superhero name?), and he’s currently assisting the Teen Titans when necessary while simultaneously aiding Bruce with detective work.

Damian Wayne is Bruce Wayne’s unknown biological child. I think he’s about fifteen-years-old now; from what I remember the last time I spoke to Alfred. I met Damian once, when Bruce asked me to meet him once Talia al Ghul practically dropped him off at Bruce’s doorstep. The boy was a little shit: bratty, stuck up, and insensitive. Even though he is the spitting image of Bruce, minus the different colored eyes (Bruce has blue and Damian’s are green), Damian claims he is set to take over the cowl when Bruce is either dead or done. God help us all…

But I still can’t figure out why I am needed back home. Is Alfred sick? Is Bruce dying after fighting all these years? Is it one of my brothers?

I jump in surprise once the taxi comes to a hard stop. After paying the man, I grab my duffel bag and I climb the front steps that I suddenly remember jumping off them as a kid. Alfred scolded me many times, and I still did it because being bad was fun.

I scoff loudly, and I jump down the five steps that would have given Alfred a heart attack. Maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought.

I find the wooden front door unlocked, which is odd considering Alfred always makes sure to lock it. As a matter of fact, Alfred hasn’t greeted me like he always does when I come home. Where is Alfred?

After I unwrap my scarf, I pull my hoodie over my head to be more comfortable in the warm house. Sadly, I forgot to do laundry yesterday, so I came home in just my black yoga pants and red tank top. What would Alfred say?

I kick off my shoes and walk to the kitchen barefoot. Pulling my long hair into a ponytail, I notice a note on the counter that’s written for me. I unfold the note and stare at the nicest, well done cursive handwriting only one man can do here.

 Dear Lady Y/N,

I sincerely apologize for not being there to greet you properly. Master Bruce had wanted me to take my holiday to London early, and Lord knows I can use a week to myself after stitching up countless wounds, tidying up bedrooms and Bat caves, and playing messenger between you and your father. I have a cooked roast with garlic mash potatoes in the refrigerator if you are hungry. Do heat it up and perhaps show your father and brothers how to use the microwave.

I dearly love you and the boys,

 Love Alfred Pennyworth

P.S.

Look into the highest cabinet above the refrigerator, and you will discover a jar of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies just for you.

 I grin widely, and before I can turn around and find the cookies, I’m stuck between the counter and a tall, hard body behind me. I freeze.

“Welcome home, Y/N. I missed you so much,” Bruce whispers in my ear. I can feel his hot breath above my shoulder and neck. The familiar smell of his expensive cologne fills my nostrils. His large hands rub my legs and grip onto my hips very hard. “Did you miss me?”

“H-hi dad. W-what are you doing?” I ask softly, but I know it came out like a whisper. One of his hands is holding my waist, while the other caresses my abdomen. It feels strange considering Bruce is supposed to be my father, and we shouldn’t be this close or even touching each other. But a part of me wants to keep feeling his hands on me and see what he does next.

“Holding you. Smelling you. Touching you,” he answers, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He breathes harder when I press my backside against his front by accident. “It appears you want this too. Am I correct, Y/N?”

His hand pulls down my yoga pants enough, so he can reach into my underwear. Bruce continues to breathe hard from his nose when his fingers find my core. His thumb rubs fast circles on my clit, while he pushes two fingers inside me. I bite my bottom lip to stop a loud moan from coming out of me, but he appears he’ll have none of that. He stops fingering me.

“You better be loud, or I won’t let you cum, Y/N.”

Before I can beg him to keep going, he turns my face, so I can look him in those cold, pale blue eyes. “Please tell me you’re…not a virgin.” Bruce’s face is twisted in pleasure from just fingering me, but I can tell his lips are trembling and there’s a soft but pleading look in his eyes. This must hurt him as much as it’s hurting me.

“I-I’m not,” I confess, and wonder if he would change his mind if I said I was.

“Who was it with?” Bruce demands. He kisses along my shoulder to my neck before he bites on my soft spot. I hiss in pain and I grind into him again.

“Josh Mitchell. I was sixteen,” I answer harshly.

“Was he any good?”

Before I can answer, Bruce shoves the front of my body onto the counter, while he pulls down my yoga pants. My adrenaline is rushing, and I can feel myself wetting the counter from just his roughness. I can feel him unzip his pants and I can already imagine this thick, hard cock fucking me into oblivion.

“No, no he wasn’t good at all!” I cry out.

“Good, I’m actually relieved to hear that,” Bruce says, as he starts to stroke himself. “Do you want me to fuck you, Y/N?”

I want to turn around and watch him jack off. Hearing him pleasure himself isn’t enough. Bruce then jams two fingers back into my pussy and I whimper loudly. It has been too long since I’ve been intimate with a man. I need his cock now!

“I asked you a question, Y/N. Do I need to remind you who you are supposed to answer to?” he says seriously before adding a third finger inside me. I grip the counter and I breathe harder. I find myself rubbing my pussy on the edge of the smooth countertop for more friction, but he grabs my hips and stops me. “Now, do you want me to fuck you, Y/N, or should I leave you here, so you can dry hump the countertop alone?”

I growl louder, while my nails scratch the counter top. “YES! Yes, I want you to fuck me, Dad!”

As soon as those words left my mouth, I immediately wonder if I killed the mood. Why would I call him ‘dad’ when we’re about to have hot, rough sex in the kitchen? I need to apologize. I push myself up on my elbows and I shift my head to the side to apologize. I open my mouth to speak but stop when Bruce’s eyes darkened, and he growls as he slams his thick cock inside me.

I moan louder than I have in my entire life. His cock fills me up so much that I fear I won’t be able to walk straight for the next week or two. Bruce lifts my legs up and continues to shove me against the counter with every hard thrust. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to fuck me. The man is practically drilling into me with no kindness at all.

“Oh fuck! You’re so fucking tight. So wet and so hot,” Bruce groans out. With each thrust, I can feel he wants to let go and fuck me like he owns me.

“Go ahead, Dad. Fuck me. Fuck me like I’m yours and only yours,” I tempt him playfully.

Bruce growls and rams his cock faster into me. He keeps knocking the air out from my lungs, and I can feel my body pulsating against his. I grip the countertop harder each time, and I know my knuckles are turning white and becoming numb every second. With one hand on my hips, Bruce moves his other hand up my tank top to hold my tits.

“No bra? You’re a bad girl,” Bruce says in between panting.

“I forgot to do laundry,” I choke out.

“Excuses,” he manages to say, as he holds me up more, so he can penetrate me deeper. His cock is hitting a deeper spot in me. It must be my g-spot, because I have read about it but never actually felt it to know. I can feel myself clenching his dick tightly, and I know I’m getting closer to release. “You wanted me and your brothers to see your tits, huh?”

“Maybe,” I cry out louder than what I intended to. Fuck, what if one of my brothers hears me? They’ll really think I’m insane for fucking our father and for loving it every second. Bruce readjusts our position once more, so he can hit that spot continuously. “I-I think I’m going to cum!”

“Not yet, you better not!” Bruce growls, and drills into me harder and faster. With his powerful thrusts and the constant friction from the countertop on my clit, I know for a fact that I can’t last longer. His hands hold onto my hips while he fucks me harder than before.

I become a moaning mess. I can feel my mouth drop open because I feel liquid coming out from my core. Did I just squirt? What the hell is happening to me?

The sounds of skin on skin is louder because of my mess. I drop my head onto the counter while Bruce continues to fuck me. Before I can catch my breath, Bruce chuckles and lifts me up. “I just made you squirt. That has never happened before, has it?”

“No, that was my first time,” I answer breathlessly. He kisses my neck.

“You’re so wet,” Bruce grunts into my ear. Breathing heavily, he lifts my hips again, so he can rub my clit with his fingers. “You’re making a mess all over my cock. You’re such a bad girl.”

“I’m your bad girl,” I moan out, as I can feel another orgasm threatening to take over my body.

“Fuck yes, you are!” Bruce groans, and continues to shove his cock into my soaking wet pussy.

With every rough thrust, I know Bruce won’t last. I whimper once more when my pussy clenches his dick as he fucks me through my orgasm. A few more hard thrusts, Bruce pulls out and turns me over onto my back. He jacks himself off as I watch his cum spurt out all over my stomach.

Just seeing his hard, veiny thick cock before me turns me on once more. I lick my lips at how the tip of his dick glistens with his cum.

Bruce sighs heavily, and just when I think I should try to get up and clean myself, he pulls me up and kisses me. He shoves his tongue into my mouth, and we explore each other’s mouths as if this was our last chance to. He pulls away from me and rests his forehead against mine.

“You’re mine, Y/N. You belong to me, and the Batfamily. I don’t care who wants you, because you will never give them what you have given me. Do you understand?” Bruce asks, before giving me his famous bat glare.

“I understand, and I promise,” I swear before he kisses me once more.

“Good, now go wash up,” Bruce instructs before he helps me off the counter.

I grab a paper towel and wipe Bruce’s cum off my stomach before I pull up my yoga pants. As soon as I toss the damped paper towel into the trash, I immediately notice Dick Grayson is standing there at the entrance of the kitchen staring at me with fire in his eyes.

[incoherentbabblings]

Hi!

I love your content, your love for TimSteph, and I was actually going to ask what you love so much about them. I, for extra credit for English, decided to write an analysis of Stephanie (and why I love her so much), but I just got into comics, and cannot really put my feelings for her in words ... which is odd, considering how much I love her and writing. Also, I was going to do a section on why TimSteph is narrative genius, and I needed help elaborating on that too.

Could you help me out, please? Thanks!

(I feel the need to mention that I have read quite a lot of comics with Stephanie in them, though not all. I'm not much of a comic book fan, but I'm really interested in the Batfamily!)

I'll be very happy to write out bullet points that you could talk about, and feel free to go through my ask and I'll babble/TimSteph meta tags for anything that you think may be worth discussing in your own words - there's like four or so years of stuff there to spark your brain.

HOWEVER!!!! Keep in mind though that much of what I have written is half based on textual evidence and half me just writing what I like/wish would crop up in canon.

For example, yes I like to draw comparisons between Tim being cold and Steph being warm, moon and sun and so on, but there's genuinely nothing in text to hint as this being an actual character trait or symbolism. If anything Tim's stated to be warm several times, more than Steph.

So, and I am sorry to be so blunt, but if I take your request in bad faith for a moment, don't use either directly or indirectly what I've written for your work. Especially without actually going and reading the arcs I talk about. A lot of the time it doesn't hold up under genuine textual scrutiny, and we want to be good academics here! There's Death of the Author and then there's me making crap up because I want to include it in a fanfic. Not the same thing! My blog is called IncoherentBabblings for a reason after all!

I will therefore say this: If you want to write about Steph as a character, I would use the below video as a point of reference. Using the below, you can then go into why she resonates with you the way she does, or why her relationship with Tim is so interesting to you.

If I were you: focus on her dynamic character development: cynical to idealistic. And use three points in her publication history to do this: her introduction in Detective Comics, War Games, and Batgirl. I am sorry to recommend War Games as something to read but it is important to her character. Use the Stephanie Brown Wiki to help!

That lends itself to a biography of her character, a look at her motivations and values, her role within the batfam, and so on. You can also use this to make comparisons with her peers, specifically Tim moving in the exact opposite direction development wise; Babs and Cass in their approaches to Batgirl; and the other Robins through her similar character progression as Dick, which in turn allows her to be a good mentor to Damian, and finally how her character arc runs perpendicular to Jason's. Does that make sense?

Anyway, let's get going! If I were to write an academic piece on Stephanie, these are the main points I would work through. In other words, this is what I would do. You probably will not need nor want to go into this level of depth, and you will want to make it much more personal about why she resonates with you, which may be different to why I love her. So don't worry about touching base with all of them. This is like... 10,000 word essay level stuff. And don't get overwhelmed. I've taken your request far too seriously is all.

Again, I can't write it for you! You gotta do the reading and writing I'm afraid.

...But I still wrote 1,500 words anyway. Gosh darnnit.

Steph’s Character Development

Always keep three points in her character history in mind – her aged 14/15 in her introductory arc in Detective Comics, her aged 16 in War Games, and her aged 18/19 in her Batgirl run.

How does she change? How does she grow as a character? What events caused these changes? Compare that angry 14-year-old trying to choke her father, to the 19-year-old crying happily on the roof. A lot happened between those two points! Outline the main plot beats.

Steph's Role as a Batfam Character:

Protagonist or Antagonist: Supporting Protagonist

Static or Dynamic: Dynamic (think of her character development - angry to alturistic; she softens in her life outlook and in the way she treats others as the years go by)

Minor or Major: Minor and we all mourn that fact :(

Foil or Symbolic: A foil to Tim Drake (and to a lesser extent the other Robins, specifically Jason Todd)

Importance of the character/Position in Society: Fourth Robin, third Batgirl, own superhero. Tim's girlfriend, Cassandra's best friend, one of many of Bruce's 'children'. Initially introduced just as a one-off character for a small arc in Detective Comics, brought back with the intention of being a supporting character to Tim Drake, and eventual love interest. Eventually gained enough popularity on her own terms to support her own solo comic, but has since returned to a supporting role. The character she supports, at the end of the day, is Bruce Wayne.

Motivation

What influences their decisions?: Stephanie's dynamic characterisation comes in here. Compare her motivations during her introductory arc, versus why she does what she does in War Games, versus why she dresses up at Batgirl - Stopping her father, getting Batman's approval, need for redemption.

What do they value?: Values emotional openness, vulnerability, second/third/fourth chances.

Goals/Hopes/Dreams: No long term goals/hopes/dreams in the domestic sense... Continue to be vigilante. Be respected by her peers. Continue to improve self worth through deeds. Graduate college?

What are their views: Views the justice system and police as corrupt, but still trusts in the inherent goodness of people. Focus is usually on the individual, rather than societal or structural.

Actions

Behaviour, Attitudes, Impact on Story and other Characters, Internal Struggle (Wants versus Needs): This is why I think you are best to look at three points in her story - Intro Arc, War Games, Batgirl. Focus on her Wants versus Needs - Steph's take a very long time to align, but they finally do in Batgirl.

Character development is usually driven by the conflict between what a character wants. The plot forces them normally to confront the fact that what they want is not gonna work out, and what they needed instead takes priority.

Everything usually goes tits up for Steph when she is in the driver's seat of the narrative because what she wants from a situation is rarely what she actually needs to happen. See every time she seeks Bruce's approval. She wants it. She absolutely does not need it. And only as Batgirl do we get that acknowledgement, which coincides with her being at the healthiest point in her life emotionally. Look at what she wants as Spoiler during her introductory arc, as Robin/Spoiler during War Games, and then as Batgirl. Why is she so unhappy in the former two? Why have her wants finally aligned with her needs with her time as Batgirl?

Character Traits

Personality: Cynical but perky. Sardonic but sincere. Think about how she changes over the time. This can be attributed to her different writers, but - for example - is there a universe reason for why Batgirl Stephanie is so much more socially awkward than Spoiler Stephanie?

Strengths & Weaknesses: Link these two together because Steph is a very good example where her strengths as a character can simultaneously be a weakness. Her determination can lead to her making ill conceived decisions. Her empathy can lead to her putting her trust in the wrong people. Her forgiving nature can lead to her being taken advantage of. Her temper, whilst landing her in hot water, can also just as often get her out of it.

Relationships

How do they interact with others: Focus on which characters pop up in all three arcs – Steph and her parents; Steph and Bruce; Steph and Tim. I am chucking Cass out the window here, sorry Cass, but if you’re focusing on these three arcs, Cass doesn’t really fit in.

How others view them: Conditional love/affection from her father and Bruce. Unconditional love/affection from Tim and her mother (though both are not without serious pitfalls).

How they view others: Stephanie has explicitly never loved her father. She has also never explicitly hated him either. What does that say about her? Look at her changing closeness with her mother. What changed between them, and again, what does that say about Stephanie? Crystal got sober, supported Stephanie through her pregnancy, Arthur was removed from their lives, Stephanie makes a conscious effort to be closer to her after returning ‘from the dead’, though continues to lie consistently to her. Stephanie admires Bruce, whilst also right from the get go insisting she does not answer to him. She never quite lets go of wanting that approval.

How does society view them: Her outsider role within the Batfam. She never quite belongs, and at points her closest relationships are actively discouraged from seeing her. Which Tim specifically never entertains. This outsider nature bites literally everyone in the butt during War Games. Her outsider status is still in place by the time Batgirl concludes, due to its largely self-contained nature as a book, but this is less being an outsider more having earned to right to operate independently. Trust has been given and earned.

Dialogue

What does she say and how: A teenage girl in New Jersey from a working class background has a very distinct voice. She does not mince words, nor does she hide what she is feeling. If she is happy, she will say so. If she is annoyed, she will say so. What she won’t do is ask for help when she needs it, due to her background formulating a need for her ‘to do things on her own’.

Think of famous/important Steph quotes from the three arcs I keep talking about – the excuse me if I don’t jump when you bark, the I really was part of the legend, the only variable you can control is yourself. These show how Steph views others and herself.

When I was writing I Would Have Loved You, I literally made a spreadsheet where I have picked out what I think are pertinent quotes from every New 52 issue featuring Tim or Steph along with a synopsis that explained what they were up to/what the main theme of the issue was. Not saying you should do the same because I’m just that goddamn anal when it comes to this sort of stuff, but the point is – look for quotes by/about Steph which highlight the above things we’ve talked about. You have thirty years to go through!

Author Intention

What purpose does this character serve?: A character that young female readers could get attached to – the every girl/girl next door archetype or a character that young boys could have a crush on – the kind of girl who’s into the same sort of stuff as you, I think Chuck Dixon once said of her, from her initial appearance. Fodder for Bruce and Tim’s man pain in War Games. Batgirl it’s a combination of filling the void for a female lead solo character in the batbooks, but also tonally taking on a much lighter and self-contained book that new readers could jump into very easily, directly compared to the more lore heavy Batman, Detective Comics, and Red Robin books.

What is the author trying to communicate: Steph’s character shows that determination can only get a person so far, a support system and doing things for the right reasons (again remember that want versus need argument) is the only way a person will genuinely succeed.

What is her main theme?: Balancing cynicism and idealism – doing acts for the right reasons, and discovering what these reasons actually are.

...

Is this even usable for anyone but myself? Possibly not!

Still... Go write! And good luck!

[ectonurites]

My least favorite type of fic!Tim is when he’s portrayed as depressed/very mentally and emotionally unstable, but also at the same time as someone who is like lauded as being super dangerous/the most skilled or something like that?? Those fics where Tim is chugging caffeine and barely sleeping, but characters are still like “oh I wouldn’t wanna piss off Tim he is Dangerous” and that’s annoying enough but then there are fics that at the same time as that portray him as like on the edge of a breakdown. It’s very irritating even if I’m not sure I can articulate exactly why, it just really rubs me the wrong way. Like, I definitely do think Tim has some issues with depression and stuff, but in fics like those it’s treated more like a quirk sort of instead of a serious issue

LMAOO I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT i’m not a fan of that either. I’m apologizing in advance if I sound mean in any of this critique i’m about to give of that fanon version of him. I want to preface this by saying that people can write whatever the hell they want, like, they’re allowed to! And I’m not referencing/calling out any specific works here. Just trends. But I’m gonna bitch about some things I’ve noticed that annoy me, personally. (so again, not saying other people can’t enjoy this stuff! just. not for me)

so like sorry if im mean but this is just me ranting and also this is my blog anyways so:

(nobody take this as an attack on them please because it’s really not)

The problem is a lot of those fics seem to interpret Tim’s behavior in Red Robin (& especially like that last whole arc of his Robin run also by FabNic) as if that’s his normal, rather than the result of a few years of CONSTANT traumatic incidents pushing him to a breaking point (because while all the shit he went through with his Dad, Steph, Kon, Bart, and then Bruce dying was spread out over several years for us as readers, it’s regarded as like within two years in canon! It all happens when he’s 16 and 17. According to the Batman comic right after War Games, Jack was murdered only days after Steph died.

(Batman #634)

That’s a LOT to process for one kid jesus christ) 

I love Red Robin honestly, I do, but it is about Tim at the lowest points in his life. It’s the grand finale of Tim’s story, and everything crumbles, that’s kinda the point! The end leaves him in a position to either rebuild himself or fall apart. It’s all about how he chooses to continue after this point!

(Red Robin #26)

The way he acts and the things he does in that comic should be regarded as such. He can’t live the way he does in Red Robin forever or he will literally burn himself out/become something unrecognizable, like, jesus it’s kinda even acknowledged in the comic when he thinks about what his potential futures would be if he keeps it up like he’s doing:

(Red Robin #25)

He sees himself as dead, as Batman (which he has countless times said he doesn’t want to be and at this point in his history almost every time he’s seen a future he became Batman in he had become a killer), or needing to retire and taking over an Oracle-esque role, likely because he exerted himself too much to continue. 

When you look at him around this same timeframe when he’s not isolating himself/too deep into the mission and is instead working with his friends back on the Titans, you can see that he is starting to heal and work in a more positive direction. He’s choosing to work on coming out of this rough period by being together with his friends who he loves.

(Teen Titans (2003) #100)

Not to say that you can’t write about situations in which he doesn’t start to come out of it, but if you are doing so it’s something you should be taking seriously because that’s the idea you want to explore, not just acting like it’s perfectly okay or normal? (And again, there are a lot of works that do explore it in good ways, there’s just also a LOT that don’t)

Like, so much content I see just make any sadness and depression and tendency to over-work himself that’s rooted in his traumas (which! those do have a basis in canon!) into a quirky personality trait rather than a response to trauma. Acting as if he’s always been this way and it’s normal for him. That’s what bothers me. If people want to seriously explore the effects of all these incidents and how that plays into his ability to do his job as a hero, then hell yes do it! But when it all gets brushed off as ‘oh thats just tim, he just doesnt eat or sleep or feel any happiness but like its fine he’s just always been like that’ I feel my blood boil. 

This also often strikes me as related/tied to fanon’s seemingly never-ending quest to make Tim into this victim of so many things he really wasn’t. They make his childhood 10x worse than it actually was (yes he was lonely because he was sent to boarding schools rather than having his parents around, but he was NOT just left home alone all the time as a child. 

(Batman #441)

He snuck away during a school vacation week to follow Bruce one (1) time and to then track down Dick. This is established in his introduction story! PLEASE read Lonely Place of Dying!) and it just... going with those fanon assumptions as being true changes so much of how people characterize him! 

Some people will also (not to call out tim/kon shippers especially because I  literally am also one but) vilify the shit out of Steph and make their relationship out to be some abusive thing rather than just... a messy teen relationship between vigilantes because they had really complicated lives and baggage with one another? Which they both acknowledge they made mistakes in!

(Red Robin #10)

Or people will vilify the shit out of Dick in regards to the situation at the start of Red Robin, or literally just make anyone who Tim ever had a disagreement with out to be the bad guy despite the actual situations always being way more complex and multi-faceted than that.

And then on top of all that, aside from making him into this ‘im broken 24/7 and not doing anything to fix it also everyone around me is terrible to me’ type of character, because he’s a lot of people’s favorite, they also want him to be as cool and strong as he is at his high points. So they’re projecting all this stuff onto him that makes him what should be a barely functioning person but then also act like that’s fine and he’s able to be a dangerous badass on top of it. 

Like I’m sorry but someone who is going out and actively acting as a vigilante like that which is incredibly physically taxing is NOT surviving on coffee alone and no sleep. That’s literally not possible, he’d fucking collapse. (And like, again, if you want to explore him pushing himself to that point, that’s one thing! but acting like he can manage all of that for more than a few days at a time/maybe while working on one really tough case is nuts!) and like, even canon can be a little guilty of this type of thing particularly since the New 52 (Detective Comics 2016 had more than a few references to him barely sleeping, but at least they also made references to him eating normally/healthily and he wasn’t completely self isolating or anything) (and also that comic had him be so self sacrificial he was ready to die to save everyone and only didn’t die because of Mr.Oz’s interference, he’s definitely not in his best place there) but usually it’s still within some realm of possibility.

Also like. The fanon ‘chugging coffee to survive thing’ just annoys the shit out of me because, like, yes there’s a few moments in canon where he’s under a lot of pressure and pushing himself further than he normally would and had some coffee (one of the only times I can even remember him having it on panel is... oh... during that last Robin arc I just mentioned a little while ago shouldn’t be where you source your normal characterization of him because it’s a very difficult situation that pushes him further than he normally would go! huh!) But the thing is like, people play it off for laughs, or like it’s a normal thing he would do at any time in his life! If you want to explore him pushing himself and using coffee as a crutch, like, there’s ways you can write it that takes it seriously, but almost every time I see it come up in fics it is like a core part of his personality and just ‘oh haha silly tim always with his entire pot of coffee he must chug every morning or he’ll die :^)’ And that bothers the hell out of me. 

In general it’s just... people treat Tim so weird. They want him to be so many different things that he’s shown himself to be at different times for very specific reasons, except they want him to do all of it at the same time which just doesn’t work. A person can’t function like that, and it’s not even close to who he is in canon. 

Again, people can do what they want, and this is just my opinion obviously, but yeah. My two cents on the matter.  Read Lonely Place of Dying, read Young Justice, read his Robin run. Read his comics and get a feel for who he was before all the rest of his trauma, and see how he canonically reacts to it along the way. I know reading comics can be tough for some people but so much stuff just echo chambers and becomes barely recognizable in this fandom and it’s just... a shame when it happens with a character ya love. 

[dork-empress]

Singing in the Dead of Night Pt 3

Lucy and Damian visit Metropolis.

Past chapters are under my tag 'lucy quinzel' and the whole fic is on my AO3 (url in my description). Please reblog and leave comments.

Flock of Robins

Timtiminey:Guys. Guys. Guess what???

Jason: I thought I deleted this chat.

Timtiminey: Ha funny you think I’d allow you to do that

Timtiminey: And you didn’t guess.

Dickbutt: Tim I’m on a mission.

Dickbutt:.....

Dickbutt: TIM CHANGE MY NAME

Timtiminey: You’re still not guessing.

Dick Grayson’s name was changed to DickiestButtiest

Stephaluffagus: Whatever Is It, Tim?

Jason: Why is Stephanie even on here?

Stephaluffagus: I was a Robin!

Timtiminey: And she asks the questions. Well, you SEE

Timtiminey: DAMIAN GOT A GIRLFRIEND

Stephaluffagus: WHAAAA?!:?HSLHFADSKLJFKL?????

Dick Grayson’s name was changed to DatAssTho

DatAssTho: Awwwww, that’s so cute!!!

DatAssTho: Our little hellion is growing up

DatAssTho: It’s like it was just yesterday he was threatening to stab us all

Jason: That was last week at dinner.

Jason: Who the hell said yes to go out with him?

Timtiminey: That’s the best part! The old man set them up.

Stephaluffagus: ALKSDAN LFKSNDAFLKNDASKLF

DatAssTho: Well thats just not fair. He never set up me on a date.

Jason: He put you on the Titans.

DatAssTho: Watch it, Todd

DatAssTho: Also, you type like an old man

Jason: With proper punctuation?

Stephaluffagus: Guys, we’re straying from the topic: Who is it??

Timtiminey: Harley’s niece, she’s got some like, clown ballerina thing going

Jason: QUINN?!?!?!

Jason: LIKE JOKER’S GIRLFRIEND????

DatAssTho: Dude, they broke up ages ago

Stephaluffagus: Yeah, she’s basically more hero than you are

Jason: You really want to go down THAT route Brown?

Timtiminey: OOOOHKAYYY

Timtiminey: Rest assured, the old man vetted the girl. She’s…..unique? I’ve only seen her file, or part of it anyway

DatAssTho: Bruce has secret files doesn’t he

Timtiminey: I think I made it through the first encryption, but I’m working on the next between other cases.

Timtiminey: After all, we have to make sure she’s alright for our little Dami-kins

Stephaluffagus: Isn’t he on this chat?

Timtiminey: He’s had this muted for ages

Jason: YOU CAN DO THAT?!

Timtiminey: I mean, YOU can’t. I will turn it off for you

Jason: …….

Jason: Well you know it’d be a shame if I

Jason: @DamianWayne

Timtiminey: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Damian: You’re dead Drake

DatAssTho: RIP

Stephaluffagus: He will be remembered

Jason: Prick.

“Get on already,” Damian said, exuding as much disinterested and grumpy energy as his body could manage.

Lucy skipped over to him, and looked at the seating arrangement on the Robin Cycle. “Hmm”, she said, “I don’t know if I’ll fit.” She climbed up to the back of the cycle only for her tutu to spring her backwards.

“What the hell is in that thing?” Damian asked, scowling. whatever had hit him was way more solid than fabric.

“Oh all sorts of things!” she said, “It’s my utilitutu!”

Damian really should have been used to this by now. “Your what.”

“Utility Tutu. I’ve got my balloon animals, my gas bouquet, my tamborine…”

“Well get rid of it or something,” Damian said, and was somehow surprised she did as was asked. Left in just a leotard, she hooked the tutu around her arm and jumped up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

Luckily, he was wearing his helmet, so no one could see him blush.

He revved up the motorcycle to try and drown out his thoughts. They’d been particularly loud ever since Tim said what he said...and, maybe since Lucy said what she said.

Were they dating? Is that what was happening? Lucy had called it a date, but Lucy was weird. It wasn’t like Damian understood how these things were supposed to work. This was super not in the training regime for the League of Assassins.

Did he...want it to be a date? He was even less sure. Lucy was...odd, but she had grown on him. She was the exact opposite of him, cheery where he was brooding, she was peaceful, he was violent. She was...kind and funny and playful. He was super not. they were both smart, but that seemed to be where the similarities ended.

And yet, it kinda worked. She was pretty, in a girly way, or at least thats what he could tell from under her makeup. He’d never been...really interested in girls or anyone. He didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like. If this was how it was supposed to feel like.

Well, he wasn’t going to be forced to be in a relationship with anyone. If she tried anything, he would tell her no, in no uncertain terms. Then he could get Tim and the others to shut up.

Once the decision was made, of course, he was left to ruminate for the remainder of the ride. He might have welcomed some of Lucy’s chatter, just to get his mind off things. Damn Bruce, not letting him use the batmobile…

Finally, a blur appeared beside him. “Need a lift?” Jon asked, rushing along beside him. Damian couldn’t help a smirk as he followed him through the city.

They came to a stop in an alleyway, though it didn’t hide much. “Whoa,” Jon said, eyebrows raised, “Hello, who’s this?”

Lucy stood on the top of the motorcycle, slipping her tutu back on and giving a deep curtsy, “Greetings! I am Commedia, The Dancing Delight, Columbina of Gotham and--”

“She’s Harley Quinn’s niece,” Damian said, cutting her off, “Lucy, Superboy, Superboy, Lucy.”

Lucy jumped down, eyebrow raised, “Now, come on. Surely you boys know how hard it is being defined by those who came before you.”

“Yeah, Robin,” Superboy said, holding out his hand for her to shake, “Honestly, no manners. Nice to meet you, Comme...Colum..um.”

“Lucy’s fine,” she said, “Aunt Harley said it’d be good for me to go and see some of Metropolis, maybe get some shopping done.”

Jon smiled, “Well, there’s plenty to do around here, and you picked the perfect tour guide! Come on, Mom and Dad are working today. I’ll show you around.”

Damian followed the pair of them around at a pace where you could just barely tell he was part of the same group. He was in his black outfit again, with sunglasses so that Lucy couldn’t tell who he was, and all of Metropolis wouldn’t know Robin wasn’t in Gotham.

Jon took them on the full tourist tour, going to see the many wonders of Metropolis. Though, a few stops Damian was pretty sure weren’t on the main route, like when they went to the top of the Daily Planet building. Other than that, though, it was a lot of pretty buildings, old buildings, the Superman memorial/dedication (they just left it up when Superman came back) and other sites that were considered important.

Damian sulked, having seen all these before and not finding them any more impressive than the first time or any time after that. What did surprise him was that Lucy didn’t seem any more impressed than him. He would have thought she’d go Gaga over the tourist trappings, considering she react to abandoned (allegedly) mines like a family at Disney World.

But she looked at each one, nodded in appreciation, and went onto the next thing.

Jon was kinda weirded out by it too, Damian could tell, not that Jon was ever subtle. He kept looking to Damian as if to try and explain her behavior, not that he was ever going to be doing that.

“Ok,” Jon said, as they sat outside the capitol, “Is there anything you WANT to see?”

Lucy shrugged, “To be honest, buildings don’t really interest me that much. But I’m glad to have gone with you, of course.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Damian said, “What’s the point of going around like this if you don’t even like it? We went around all damn day for YOU!”

Lucy tilted her head, “We went so that Superboy could show us things and we could get to know him.” She smiled at him, “You clearly admire Superman a lot, and you’re clearly like him. I’m glad you get along with your dad so well.”

Jon smiled, confused, but appreciative, “Thanks?” Damian grumbled. “But, I’d like to get to know YOU better as well. So if there’s something you like, the city has everything.”

Lucy hummed, “I honestly mostly just like to people watch in my free time.”

Jon beamed, “Oh man, I have the perfect place then.”

With a hop, skip, and a kryptonian-powered jump, the three of them were in the rafters of the Metropolis Subway station, looking down at everything and everyone as they went by. Damian was just glad they were inside, and being underground had him feeling a bit more at home.

Lucy practically sparkled, leaning way too far over to look at everyone. “What are they saying? Can you hear them?”

“Uh, which ones?” Jon said. She pointed aggressively. “Well, that one’s a family on vacation, the dad there is going over the itinerary, he’s got it printed out. The daughter there is trying to get him to skip the museums so they can get to the aquarium faster.”

“Ohh, what’s at the aquarium?” Lucy asked, kicking her feet like a child.

“Some fish, jelly fish are cool...Oh, they got a new shark there, I think.”

Damian groaned again, “Ugh, who CARES? If you wanted to go to the aquarium, then lets go to the aquarium! Instead of just watching someone TALK about it! These are all just normal people!”

“Robin, dude,” Jon said, “If it’s what she wants, why not? We are here for HER after all.”

That in of itself would have been enough to shame Damian, but Lucy was staring at him. She stared unblinking, and unsmiling. It was actually creepy. Like she was staring through him.

“Nobody’s normal.” She said, very seriously, her voice no longer taking on the cheery affectation. “Not a single one that I’ve ever met. Many of them TRY to be normal, but it is an illusion. A moving target, an ideal that doesn’t exist and people are shamed for not attempting to achieve.”

Damian could feel himself resist leaning away from her. “Uh, Lucy?” Jon said, “Something you want to talk about?”

Lucy blinked like she was remembering she was supposed to. “I suppose it is personal to me,” she said, “My…mother was always a little scared of Aunt Harley. First scared of her success, then scared of her villainous career. She always wanted to be normal. She wanted…me to be normal. She was scared of what I’d be. Who I’d be like.” She smiled, an echo of her previous smile, “It’s not quite the same as being a disciple for a great hero like Superman or Batman.”

Jon was suddenly looking very awkward. “Well,” He said, “I mean, having Harley Quinn as your aunt isn’t that bad. And you’re good anyway! So, no need to worry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lucy said, “It doesn’t matter if I was good or bad. It just matters that I was strange.” She tilts her head, looking down at the mass of people rushing back and forth. “Ever since I was little, people didn’t feel…real. They’re just. Stories. I couldn’t relate to my peers, as my teachers would say. I don’t know how to explain it. The only time I tried, my mom was so scared she sent me to a camp. One of those meant for bad kids to help them behave.” She tilted her head, “But they weren’t bad. They all had different stories. I realized there were no normal people. Just people with stories.”

Damian couldn’t have spoken if it was to yell for help. He stared at Lucy, trying to decide if he should be concerned or sympathetic.

Jon cleared his throat. “Well, I think you’re nice. And that’s what’s important. No problem with learning more about people and helping them.”

Lucy smiled, “Thank you.”

Jon’s head whipped to the side. “Ah, shoot, Dad’s calling me. I’ll be right back.” Lucy’s cheery attitude was back and she nodded, as Jon took off.

Lucy looked over at Damian for a moment. Damian felt he should say something. Apologize, maybe? He wasn’t sure what would be appropriate, and if it was appropriate, would Lucy want it. She worked on a whole other level, that was clear.

Lucy went back to watching people below her.

“My mom,” Damian started, not sure where he was going to end his sentence. Rule one of being in his family was to not reveal details about himself. But it was Lucy and she…she was his friend. “She was a…she’s a villain. I was supposed to be too. Maybe would have been if I didn’t go to live with Batman.”

Lucy nodded, “That sounds like a very interesting story,” Lucy said, “Thank you for telling me.” She tilted her head towards him. “Hey Robin, there’s this comedy place here in Metropolis I looked up. I was hoping maybe we could go tonight? I’m kind of a comedy nerd, and it’s always good to support people at an open mic. Maybe you’d even laugh once.”

Damian braced himself. This was a date. She was asking him on a date. He had prepared himself for this. “I can’t,” Damian said, the words practiced, “I don’t think of you that way. We can hang out and…be friends, but no.” There. No question about it.

Lucy looked at him, and tilted her head, thinking. “Ok,” She said, simply. Didn’t seem too heartbroken. It was a relief. “Hey Superboy,” She said, voice raise just slightly on the sounds of trains, “Do you want to go on a date to a comedy club tonight with me?”

There was a brief pause, then with a burst of wind, Jon jumped up back to the rafters. “Yeah, that sounds good,” and they shared smiles, “Robin, I can get her back to Gotham if you want to head home.”

Damian blinked, trying to process what exactly was happening. “I–,” technically, he wasn’t supposed to leave Lucy, for reasons Batman hadn’t been overly clear about. But if something was going to happen, she’d be plenty safe with Jon. Still, he wanted to argue this, even though he had nothing, and he knew he had nothing. “Sure, that sounds fine.”

Jon held out his hand to help him down, but he could easily get out by himself. And so, alone, he went home. And he didn’t understand the strange feeling in his gut.

Bruce stretched his neck coming down to the batcave, seeing Tim on the computer. “Commissioner Gordon has kindly invited Batman and Robin to the Wayne charity Christmas Party on my behalf,” he said, “I’ve got Dick coming down to wear the Batsuit for me. I’m going to work to have Damian as Robin, but would you and Steph take on patrols that night? At least some of us should actually be doing work.”

Tim didn’t answer. He stared blankly into the computer. Bruce sighed, most likely he didn’t hear him. “How long have you been down here? You’re going to ruin your–”

“Are you planning on telling Damian?” Tim asked.

Bruce paused and looked at what Tim was staring at. It was medical records of Delia Quinzel, specifically of her pregnancy.

Specifically the fake pregnancy records that Bruce had made. “What are you talking about?” Bruce asked.

“Please don’t insult me,” Tim said, face stoic, “You really think I can’t recognize your digital fingerprint all over these files?”

Bruce took a few deep breaths. “Have you told anyone?”

“Hell no,” Tim said, finally looking up, “And I cleaned up your mess. But I don’t know if anyone else has looked into this before now.” Tim glared at Bruce, “So I ask again, are you planning on telling Damian that you’ve put him in charge of protecting Joker’s biological daughter from her own father?”

Bruce came over and looked at the corrected records. They were, in fact, cleaner. Bruce’s were too normal. Tim added in complications that could have happened, just enough to make people think they’d already found what was wrong. “We don’t know what Joker knows.”

“Oh, and he just happened to escape Arkham and disappear at around the same time a teen starts hanging around his ex-girlfriend.” Tim said, dryly.

“If he does know,” Bruce said, “Then its our job to stop him. If he doesn’t, then we still stop him. But Lucy has a target on her back one way or another.”

“Which is why you put Damian in front of it?” Tim said.

“I trust Damien,” Bruce said, “To protect her. But I don’t want him to be biased against her because of her parents.”

“So, you’re putting him at risk, so that he can make friends?” Tim demanded, arms crossed.

Bruce took a deep sigh. “One day,” he said, “Lucy is going to have to confront where she’s come from. And the rest of us are too. I’m trying to give us all the best chance.” Bruce said, “Besides, Damian needs more friends other than Jon.”

Tim screwed up his face, then snorted. “Alright, old man,” he said, “I’ll go with your plan for now. But if something goes belly up, I reserve the right to at least one ‘I told you so.’”

“A fair compromise,” Bruce said, “What have you found about Joker’s movements?”

“He’s going quiet right now, which isn’t much like him,” Tim said, “But I think I’ve tied him to this fancy surgical robot that’s gone missing from Gotham Hospital.”

“Well, I’m sure there’s nothing mind-breakingly awful he can do with that,” Bruce said, sarcastically. “Let’s take it to the streets.”

Tim jumped up and followed him to the batmobile.

[not-from-the-absence-of-violence]

On assumptions, understanding, belonging and love.

Moments in Martin's journey understanding other people and finally himself.

or

Martin's journey in understanding, accepting and loving his asexuality.

a/n: some quick notes: Jon is sex repulsed, Martin is somewhere between neutral and favorable. While Tim and Sasha dont exactlty say they are aro they are! Jon is non-binary and uses he/they pronouns and i desperatly wanted to explore that but this is already twice as long than intended-

also while I am (half) Bolivian and speak spanish I am not at all fluent in Tamil so if there is any mistakes lmk! hope you all enjoy!

-------------------

Sasha had convinced them to go get drinks together, as it had been a rather stressful couple of weeks since Martin came back from the siege of his apartment by Jane Prentiss.

Sleeping in the archives was not exactly helping the situation for Martin, or Jon for that matter.

So they decided to go to a pub and try to force a sense of normality everyone really needed.

Martin was having a great time, with the relative calm and safety he hadn’t had in a while, even Jon had something like a smile playing on his lips as Tim told a story from one of his university mates that had accidentally thrown his roommate's engagement ring down a drain. 

Martin zoned out for a bit, enjoying the pleasant buzz of the alcohol and his friends laughter and Jon’s animated movements that indicated that he was talking about something he actually found interesting.

 Jon was apparently telling his own story with some relation to engagement, something about a girl at a wedding that had acted strangely, Martin caught something about “purposely spilling wine on her dress”, which Martin agreed was quite wierd. 

“She was totally trying to woo you, Jon.” Sasha said as Jon got to the bit where they had to help her find some clean towels in a storage closet. 

 “I assumed she was just having a rather hard time,” Jon said, seemingly only now thinking of the implications of spilling wine on your dress and then faking needing help, to be fair to Jon that was a very weird tactic to pull and Martin would not have put two and two together either.

“Well what did you do in that closet then?” Tim asked with an incredibly over the top suggestive look. 

Jon pulled a face then, Martin thought it looked rather endearing really with his nose all scrunched up and his eyes narrowed, but he was clearly uneasy. 

“I don’t- I don’t really do… that sort of thing.”

Martin snapped back in the moment, feeling a weird but familiar anxiety in his stomach as the conversation lulled. He felt rather protective for a moment, instinctively knowing this seemed important. This turned out to be rather unnecessary, as Tim spoke up again quickly.

“Oh,” He and then, earnestly, ”I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Jon.” 

And then Jon smiled, properly, like he didn’t often and waved his hand dismissively but pleased.

“Thank you, well it's not like you could have known that, but anyway as I was saying-” 

 It was but a moment, but it stuck with Martin for a bit, mulling it over and not really understanding his own reaction.

 Eventually Martin settled back into the pleasant buzz, enjoying his friends chatter and Jon’s over exaggerated hand gestures.

-

It was an uncharacteristically slow day in the archives, not a worm in sight and Martin had only a bit of boring research to do for a very clearly fake statement.

Martin usually tried to be nice about it but this one featured a guy named “Richard Dickson” and was entirely about a fever dream someone had about a haunted accordion, he had listened to the recording that Jon had emailed him and it sounded like even he was having a very hard time trying not to laugh at it.

“Who comes up with this stuff?” Sasha said as she handed him back the statement. “Sure, I know we are being attacked by a worm woman but I really hope we can draw the line at haunted accordions that play spooky renditions of High School Musical and a prophetic dream guy called Dick Dickson.”

She was laughing too and Martin thought that she looked better than she had in awhile, it was nice, seeing her like this. 

“Well at least I won’t have to stay extra time for the research of this one, I would go home early but.” he shrugged and gestured in a you know the whole staying here cause of a worm woman situation, she gave him a sympathetic look.

“Well I am leaving early, got a very fun evening planned.” she said with a wink.

She had looked really rather excited and somewhat giddy all day, Martin realized. 

“Oh,” Martin said, “Who is the lucky person then?”

Sasha looked at him puzzled for a few seconds, slowly blinking at him, then the penny dropped.

“What? Oh no, I mean- Tim I guess, we usually have a sort of movie night every once in a while, this one is extra special though, because I found this book about the categorisation of demons, it’s partially in latin? Tim said he would help me look into it. ”

Martin felt his face heat up, feeling the urge to profusely apologize, Sasha continued however:

“It’s not like that though,” she said with a rather annoyed look, and then somewhat softer, “I am not really a dating kind of person, you know?”

Martin wasn’t sure he fully understood what she meant, but that was fine and she was clearly still very excited, so he relaxed.

“Sorry, shouldn’t have assumed, I do hope it’s not one of those books Jon goes on about, they aren't exactly...friendly.”

Her eyes lit up once again.

“Oh it's definitely not a Leitner! I do look out for that sort of thing, the interesting thing about the book is though-”

And she went on for a bit, the moment somewhat unimportant in a way but it still churned in Martin’s mind. 

-

Things with Sasha...shifted after the Jane Prentiss attack, everyone had different ways to cope with trauma of course, Martin knew that.

Maybe that was the thing really, while Tim, Jon and Martin himself were having a hard time processing (even if Tim and Jon refused to properly acknowledge it) Sasha seemed fine, a few weeks of being shaken maybe and she was now back to her regular old self. 

She even had a new boyfriend, Martin had no idea why that irked him so much.

He’d said as much to Tim, who was sitting next to him while both slacked off from their jobs on the stairs to the back courtyard of the institute (why there even was a courtyard was one of the great mysteries of this place).

Tim looked uncharacteristically solemn, seldom did he let his walls down like this. 

“I thought I was in love with her you know,” he said rather suddenly, “I mean we’ve been friends for years now and there was- is no one I would rather spend time with, so I mean if not her then- then who?”

He sighed and Martin made comforting noise, trying not to break whatever spell had made Tim genuinely speak about his feelings. 

“I mean I figured out I wasn’t in love with her before this whole...thing, we talked about it, I think? Some stuff is hazy. Just- I shouldn’t be jealous you know? She is allowed to have a boyfriend.”

“Your feelings are valid no matter what they are.” Martin said seriously.

Tim sighed and leaned into Martin, who enveloped him in his arms.

“Sure, doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck though.” 

And well there wasn’t much Martin could say about that.

After a bit of comfortable hugging silence Tim spoke up.

“Maybe her boyfriend is a vampire though, I totally get to be jealous about a vampire.”

“Tim don’t say that.” he said, trying to hide a smile. 

“What?” Tim said, pretending to be serious, “Everything is possible Martin, worm women and all that, I could obviously not compete with a vampire and their sexy glittering skin.”

Martin shook his head, not able to contain his laughter anymore.

“Can’t believe you are exposing yourself as someone who watched Twilight.” he said.

Tim smiled wickedly up at him from where he was still half cuddled into him.

“The fact that you got that reference exposes you in turn,” he said, sticking his tongue out, “Check mate.”

“Touché.” 

Then Tim stood up and said: 

“Well, Time to go back to our trans containment zone.”

“The fact that we just happen to be trans and were transferred to the archives is a coincidence.”

To that Tim only answered: “Trans-ferred Martin, can’t you see? You cannot call that a coincidence.” winked and back in through the door he went. 

Martin let out an exaggerated long suffering sigh.

Back inside they walked to their respective desks.

“Well lets hope work gets lets shit.” Tim said. “That’s such a low bar, and yet.”

“Paciencia y fé.” Martin said, which was in his repertoire of spanish phrases that just didn’t pack the same punch in english along with “ya pasara” and “digamos que si”.

Tim shrugged.

“Don’t think whatever grandmother made up that phrase could have imagined it being applied to our situation.”

“And yet we still have to hope for it to get better don’t we, see it works.”

Tim flashed him one last smile as he sat at his desk and Martin went to put on the kettle.

-

Martin had assumed Jon’s I-don’t-do-that-sort-of-thing included dating as well and it hadn’t bothered him really, he enjoyed clinging to his crush to Jon like a small steady comfort, even if he knew it wasn’t actually going to amount to anything, there was no harm in day dreaming after all and Martin was perfectly capable of caring about him as a friend too, it was harmless.

Of course the fact that he now knew Jon had been staying at his ex-girlfriends place and the fact that Jon might actually date people didn’t really change anything.

At least that is what Martin tried to tell himself as he shakily poured two cups of tea and mustered the courage to walk to Jon’s office. 

And he was at least a little right, even if Jon dated people, even if Jon would return his feelings (which Martin really did not let himself dwell on), these were particularly unfavourable circumstances to start a relationship, there was the matter that neither of them was able to string together a conversation, because the mundane ones sounded so inane and hollow and the important ones required being genuine and vulnerable and they might just be somewhat allergic to that. 

And there was the matter of the impending apocalypse they had to stop.

Martin knocked on the door and he heard a soft: “Come in, Martin.” from the other side of the door. 

The office was a mess as always and Jon looked like he hadn’t slept in a week and had aged about ten years in the last few months. 

But Martin’s breath caught in his throat anyway because, as was usual for Jon now, he also looked just a little more...comfortable, as you could anyway. They were wearing a hoodie with cats on it that was just slightly too big and a long flowy patterned skirt. 

Jon clearly caught martin staring because he ran his hand through his hair a bit self-consciously and said: “I know it goes against dress code, but I think you get a pass after you get kidnapped by an evil circus.” 

“Oh I mean, you look nice, I mean it looks nice on you. I didn’t mean to uhm, stare?”

“It was- I was just joking.”

“Oh.” 

They just stared at each other, painful silence falling over them. 

Jon broke the silence clearing their throat.

“So... you brought tea?” They said.

“Yeah, it's for you.” Martin said and immediately cringed because who else would he have brought Jon’s favorite chai exactly the way he always takes it.

Jon smiled though, reaching out to take the cup from him. Their hands brushed just a little and Martin's brain briefly shut down and he realised that maybe he should admit to himself he was really hopeless and too far gone.

That is though, how he ended up stupidly staring at Jon’s hands and how he spotted the shiny black ring on the middle finger of his right hand. 

“Thats a nice ring, don’t think I have ever seen you wear jewelry before.” 

That seemed to snap the tension out of the moment a little, Jon looked down at the ring and smiled a little.

“It's an ace ring,” they said, “I used to wear it a lot a while back, not sure why I fell out of the habit, but now I guess I think I am allowed whatever small comfort I can get.”

They were looking at the ring and then at Martin. 

Martin wanted to freeze the image right there, at the small not quite guilty smile Jon had as he looked up at him, at the feeling that things were OK, good even just for a bit.

Then something fell off Jon's desk and they both startled, flinching at the sudden loud noise. 

All the worry and tension flooded back into the room immediately.

“Right.” Jon said. “Did you need anything else?” 

Martin wasn’t sure how to even answer that.

So he just shook his head and started to leave.

Just before he was about to turn around Jon called his name, Martin turned around to face Jon that seemed to be fighting for the words he wanted to say.

“Yes, Jon?”

“Thank you.”

Martin smiled a sad smile.

“Anytime.”

-

It’t not that Martin had never heard the word asexual before, or that he didn’t know Jon was ace, he’d just never dwelled much on the actual meaning of it.

He had however never heard of ace rings before and he gave it a google for curiosity's sake. 

A black ring usually wore on the right middle finger to indicate the wearer is asexual (“ace”). 

It seemed nice to Martin, small token of your connection to a community, of course his curiosity did not end there, he had assumed previously Jon didn’t do relationships at all, and if he did, what did asexual mean then?

He found out rather quickly that asexuality was about sexual attraction, and aromantic was another thing all together, he also found out that asexuality didn’t mean a person couldn't have a libido, or like sex.

And maybe he just stood there staring at his laptop screen for a while knowing that sexual attraction had never really made sense to him, maybe it felt like something clicked.

And so knowing he definitely did not have the time or the emotional energy to deal with it he quickly closed his laptop, he had an apocalypse to stop and a boss to dispose of after all.

-

Martin was trying very hard to read Hija de la fortuna by Isabel Allende, every other sentence he sighed and grabbed his phone to look up a word the meaning of which he didn’t know.

It was frustrating, he once had been almost fluid in spanish as a child, but then his dad had left and his mother wasn’t able to and didn’t want to maintain his fluency. He hadn’t exactly had time or money for classes either and so now he attempted to regain some of it by watching movies and reading books.

It was not just the language of course that made it hard, Martin was so entirely full of worry. It was rare he got to spend a day in his flat these days, usually cooped up in the Institute hiding from something, or at the side of Jon's hospital bed talking to him, reading to him on occasion.

The anxiety, the fear, the pain, it had festered into Martin, the tiniest sounds made him jump and even when he got tiny little moments in which he wanted to, needed to, rest he still felt like a watched prey animal, or the full force of grief threatening to crush him.

Today he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, nothing remarkable had happened in a handful of days and it made him uneasy, he was waiting for Melanie to call him about a new attack, he was waiting for Peter to summon him with a weird cryptic request. 

And you would think that with all this other worry he wouldn’t be fretting about his sexuality.

But apparently there was plenty of anxiety to go around for all the areas in his life and he just couldn’t get that moment, months ago now, out of his head.

He sighed at set the book aside, grabbing his phone and opening google.

He felt like he was 14 again asking his mother what gay meant and getting only a nasty look in return, or 17 and anxiously looking for a book about being trans in the library. 

It was silly to look it up and read articles about how to know you were ace, because he already knew somewhere, but he desperately needed the confirmation.

The third or so blog post he opened was about a woman in her 50’s that had recently figured out she was ace.

Its freeing  the article read it’s freeing to be who you are and to understand yourself better, even if you aren’t sure, its OK, it will be OK.

Martin was only crying a little, he laid down his phone and stared at the wall.

He thought about how he had never quite fit, he wasn’t quite english, not with the people asking him where he had come from or asking his mother as a child where she had gotten him from. He wasn’t Bolivian either, he had never been there, his spanish was limited, he could only cook about three and a half recipes that the internet had taught him.

He had never been a woman and he would never fit what society thought of as a man. And what that exactly meant for his relationships.

He never understood other people, but he never thought he was bad enough to seek help for it.

Sexual attraction was vague and he didn’t get it, but in the few relationships he had had in the past he hadn’t minded sex, he enjoyed watching a nice movie together just as much but there was a nicety to it, especially taking care of someone else, having them unravel infront of you. And he had found it weird that he didn’t want anything back, that he felt uncomfortable sometimes.

He imagined he meant he was wrong, like with everything else Martin Blackwood also couldn’t do that right. 

But maybe there was something here, in Martins corner of human experience, in the small stack of books about Bolivia that he read, in the trans pin on his backpack and patches he sewed onto his clothes, in calling himself gay man even if that didn’t cover the nuances because it felt good, in the chew necklace that hung around his neck because it eased his anxiety.

Just like all of those things, Martin was ace, he wasn’t wrong or broken he was just different and there were all those other people who were different too and it was nice. 

And Martin was crying because of the overwhelming sense of belonging, and because he finally understood Tim when he had once asked “But what does romance even mean, Martin?” and he would never get to tell him, because this is yet another thing he and Jon could have talked about if the world had been kinder to them, this is something he could be talking about to Jon if he wasn’t in a coma.

But even in these miserable circumstances Martin made sense to himself a little more and no one could take that away from him.

-

The past week in the safehouse had been a whirlwind of emotions, but both Jon and Martin were trying, trying hard to heal, to learn how to feel safe again, to love each other.

For all that trying they hadn’t talked about it much, it was hard still, but Martin was quietly holding on to the hope that they would get there.

Today had been quiet, with the biggest setback being that Jon had found it hard to find all the ingredients for the sambar he wanted to make for dinner. 

“I know it won't be like my Pāṭṭi (பாட்டி) taught me, but you would think they would at least have coconut.”

Martin found their grumpiness adorable, reveled in the mundaneness of this worry. And he hadn’t been able to contain his laughter when they finally had found coconut and Jon had held it up triumphantly.

The food had been delicious and now they sat on the couch, it was hard Martin craved touch so dearly but it was like stepping into hot water after standing on ice for a while and Jon flinched so often, not used to not being hurt and sometimes Martin’s unnaturally cold skin brought up unpleasant memories. 

They could have wallowed in guit and yearning, but they were both stubborn, and so even if it took a while and millions of slow movements and asking if something was OK they managed. 

So it was that Jon had his legs draped over Martin's lap, enough to bring comfort, not too much as to be overwhelming, and their hands were lightly on top of eachother.

Jon seemed pensive, but not worried, Martin shot him a questioning glance.

“We went at this in such a sideward way,” Jon said, “I mean we live together now but we haven’t really...talked about it. We never- we never asked?”

There was a beat of silence where Martin just looked at Jon and then a smile spread over Martin's face.

“Jonathan Sims do you want to ask me out?”

Jon averted their gaze in a way that meant even though Martin couldn’t see it they were definitely blushing.

Martin just couldn’t contain his delighted laughter.

“Must you laugh at me,” Jon said, faking offence, he was also smiling now.

A bit of seriousness returned to his voice as he spoke up again.

“I don’t care that we have done it all backwards Martin,” they said, “But, I love you.”

And as he said that Martin stared at him, mouth agape and his heart thundering in his chest, he lost his ability in any language. Jon said it firmly and securely and Martin really didn’t know what he was supposed to do with all the feelings he had, Jon continued however. 

“And we don’t have to do anything but it just feels like we are dancing around several conver- Martin? Are you alright?”

It was only then Martin realised he was crying and he could only ask:

“You love me?” 

Not because he didn’t know, but because sometimes you just need the confirmation.

Jon squeezed his hand gently.

“Of course I do.”

Martin wanted so badly to answer him, to reproach but he couldn’t, not yet, instead he blurted.

“May I kiss you?”

Jon smiled, a tad nervously.

“That's sort of what I wanted to talk about,” they said, “boundaries?”

Martin understood the necessity of such conversations he really did, but it did not mean he was going to enjoy them.

It did come as a surprise however that Jon suddenly got very nervous and said.

“I mean- I just- I am ace, Martin.”

Martin cokced his head in confusion and said:

“Yeah, I know.”

Jon mirrored his confused look.

“You do?” and then more sour, “You listened to the tape?”

And fine Martin admitted to himself, maybe they should talk more.

“No? You told me, like ages ago.”

Jon laughed, relieved, happy.

“Sorry,” he said, “Ironically my memory is foggy. It has been a rough couple of...years.��

Martin hummed something of affirmation, because he also knew this seemed like a nice moment to come out, and he felt the very familiar anxiety in his belly. Idiotic anxiety because Jon was also ace and there were no stakes in this situation at all. 

Maybe it was just the fact that he had never said it aloud.

Martin heard himself speak:

“I think I am too,” and he could hear how stupidly nervous he sounded, “ace, I mean.”

There was a vague ringing in his ear and if he had been in the position to he might have just run out of the room, apparently facing down unknowable monsters didn’t make coming out easier.

His fear was cut down by the fact that Jon was absolutely beaming at him.

“That's great!” they said, “I mean not that I would have minded if- but it is nice to have someone understand, that's all.”

It was, it was amazing to have Jon here smiling up at him holding his hand and understanding him.

“It really is,” Martin said, then gently bringing the back of Jon’s hand to his cheek and leaning into it, “Doesn’t mean we don’t have to talk boundaries though.” 

Jon smiled at the small gesture and then said serious:

“I don’t want to have sex, ever.” 

Martin knew it sounded like people had tried to debate them on it before and it made his chest ache.

“I know,” he answered and then because honesty was key, “I am not adverse to it, but obviously if you don’t want to, we won’t, ever.”

Jon sat up a bit then, lifting his hand from Martins and gently cupping his cheek. Martin's pulse quickened, his hand moving almost automatically to Jon’s arm.

“How do you feel about kissing?” he asked.

“It's nice,” Jon said, smiling a bit cheekily leaning forward,  “So long as it isn’t tongue kissing that is.”

Martin leaned forward until their breaths mingled at their lips where all but touching.

“May I kiss you then?” He asked, breathless.

Jon could only nod and they both leaned forward the last inch.

Time must have stopped for a bit as they kissed, gentle and full of a thousand promises. 

They both moved away from the kiss gently, they were both tearing up a little, Martin felt so much so strongly and he pulled away from Jon completely.

“Just need a moment.” he said and smiled at Jon's reassuringly if a bit shaky. 

“Take all the time you need,” Jon said and then softer, “Anything you need.”

And Martin was sure he had never loved anyone more. 

-

On the fourth day of their third week in Scotland Jon had gone to run some errands in town and had come back with an incredibly nervous air about him they were sitting across from Martin at the table twirling their hair and checking his pocket every once in a while.

It was making Martin incredibly antsy and by the third time Jon had looked like he wanted to say something only to then go back to the crossword he was definitely making no progress on Martin had had enough.

“Sol mio,” Martin said, very much enjoying Jon’s wide eyed flustered he always got when Martin called him pet names. “Will you please tell me what is wrong.”

Jon looked at him sheepishly.

“There is not something wrong, per se.”

Martin gave him a look.

Jon sighed and stood up, grabbing a small box from his pocket. 

“Nothing is wrong I just… bought something for you beloved.”

Martin very nearly had a heart attack when Jon opened the box and there was a ring inside. Upon closer inspection it was a beautiful black ring and Martin understood. 

There was silence as Martin could do no more but stare at the ring and then at Jon.

“I see how a ring might come over as a gift now,” Jon rambled nervously, “it is not like that- I mean that is something we will have to talk about. I was afraid it would be too much? It is engraved too and I just hope I didn’t-”

Martin cut him off: “Jon let me see it properly.” 

Jon handed him the ring.

Martin lifted the ring out of the box and saw the engraving on it.

 நான் உன்னைக் காதலிக்கிறேன். I love you. Te amo.

Martin promptly sat down again, it was so sappy, just a tad ridiculous and stupidly cute. It hurt in his chest and tears stung in his eyes.

“How did you know I wanted one?” he asked, because he didn't know what else to say.

Jon rubbed the back of his neck self consciously and said:

“You were talking a few days ago, about how you would like something like a- like a token, to remind you and I thought an ace ring might be nice.” 

They lifted their right hand.

“We match now.” 

Martin silently moved to put the ring on, it fit perfectly. He ran his fingers over the tiny groves of the words on it. 

An anchor. 

A small reminder that he belonged, here in the world, here with Jon. 

Martin stood up and gently enveloped Jon in a hug.

“Thank you,” he murmured into Jons hair as he placed a small kiss on top of their crown. “It’s perfect.”

[boyy-wonder-grayson]

Request: hi! could you do something with #46, #50, and #58 where you’re part of the batfam and the boys are all concerned about the relationship you’re in(being the only sister for the sake of the story) but dick is the most concerned so you argue about whether this guy is right for you and you confess you true feelings for him in the end? i’m so sorry if this is a lot 

Parings: Dick Grayson x  Reader.

Word count: 1940

Warnings: some swearing, mentios of abuse

A/n:  hey guys! i’m not sure how i feel about this one but hopefully the person who requested it will like lmao, anyway sorry for any mistakes and always thanks for reading :)

Based on prompts from this list!

46. Does he loves you the way you deserve?

50. What are we fighting for?

58. I'm forever yours whether you have me or not

Y/n groaned when her body collided with the wet floor. She tried to stand up but moving was too much of an effort, so she stood there listening the cries of the others trying to reach for her. Seconds later Jason was kneeling on her side, tearing her mask off of her face to see if she was okay.

"What the fuck happened to you?" He asked looking for any sign of injures on her face and found nothing more than a few scratches. 

"Nothing,I'm fine. Just help me up" y/n said groaning once again when Jason help her stand up. She was not dangerou hurt, just a few scratches here and there but the force of the fall knocked the wind out of her lungs. 

"Seriously tho, you've been off lately" Tim, who arrived just short after Jason, pressed making the girl rolled her eyes. 

"It's nothing Tim, I said I'm fine" she insisted but the boys knew her better that she thought.

"Is it about Toby? Because you know I can give some piece of min-" 

"Just drop it okay!? Nothing happened I was just distracted and I fell, period" she said glaring at both of them, signaling that she was done with the interrogation.

"Okay, don't get your panties on a twist sis" Jason replied trying to cut some of the tension off.

After a successful - apart from her minor accident - mission the team returned to home longing for some sleep. Y/n walked into the manor feeling a little better than before, but her back was still killing her. Sleep was going to be a bitch tonight. She made her way into her room looking for some fresh clothes to change after taking a shower. She grabbed her phone ready to look for something music to play while showering when she saw that she had five new texts messages and a few missed calls from none other than Tony. She sighed knowing what the texts would probably be about but opened them nonetheless.

'where the fuck are you? I've been trying to call you all night!"

"Seriously y/n answer me right now, you bitch"

"Are you with him? I'm sure you are you fucking bitch"

And the next messages were more or less the same. Every night was something like this. She would go on patrol only to come back home to missed calls and abusive text messages from her boyfriend. Of course she did not tell him what her nightlife was like. Scared to put an innocent person in danger, she kept her secret identity to herself. But as the time passed it was getting harder not to just tell Tony the truth. Tony was a sweet guy, she really liked him at first, but even since he met the boys he's been a little...weird. he became possessive over her, insinuating things that never happened, and he had a special hatred for Dick, for some reason. It didn't help that y/n was closer to Dick than the others. 

But things have been out of control ever since Tony saw them interact together one time over dinner. For Dick and Y/n it was normal to joke around and be touchy with each other,but Tony didn't like that one bit. 

That day was the first time they fought. And god it was awful. She tried to reassure him that they were just messing around like they always did,but Tony was so angry that he could care less about what she had to say.

She didn't bother answering the texts knowing that it would end in a fight, instead she took a long shower and when she was done she got into bed ready to sleep the pain off.

A soft knock on her bedroom door startled her. She was about to fall asleep when Dick entered the room quietly.

"Hey y/n, you up?" He asked softly.

"Well, I am now" she chuckled making the boy smiled sheepishly.

"Sorry, I was just checking in. Tim told me what happened." He said sitting at the foot of her bed.

"I'm fine Dick, just got distracted that's all" she didn't want to tell him about what she was distracted enough to get her ass kicked in the battlefield. She just wanted to sleep it off,like the always did.

Dick hummed in response not really sharing what was on his mind. 

"So...if that's all I'm going to sleep now" she said turning around so her back was now facing Dick.

The brown haired boy didn't moved nor did he answer her. He remained sat and waited a while before speaking again.

"Does he loves you?" He asked in a small voice. Y/n tense up after hearing those words, this was not the first time they have discussed this and to be fair she was tired of it. 

"Dick, we've talked about this…" she said not looking at him.

"Yeah,but does he loves you the way you deserve?" He pressed making the girl pinched the bridge of her nose "I've seen the way you act together, he doesn't care about you y/n, you deserve better than this."

"And what  do you know about love huh? No offense Grayson but I haven't seen you with anyone for a long time. So you coming here and telling me how am i supposed to handle my relationship it's out of place, really." y/n scoffed.

"I'm just trying to make you understand! You're so much better than this! I know how often you and Tony fight,I know you've been distracted these past few weeks because you think it's your fault that you guys fight every day!" He said getting closer to her. " But it's not, he's just an asshole."

"You know nothing about my relationship Dick. You don't get a say in how I feel or what I'm doing. So shut up and please leave. I'm tired and I want to sleep."

Dick sighed, frustrated with this whole situation. He was trying to look for her, but they were not going to see eye to eye anytime soon.

Y/n didn't sleep that night. She spent the night tossing and turning in her bed trying to find a position that would help her sleep,but after five a.m she gave up. It was useless trying to sleep. She grabbed her phone and unplugged it from the charger. She changed her pajamas for some sweats and a hoodie and grabbed her headphones. If she couldn't sleep then she was going to go for a run. 

The cold air of Gotham hit her skin and she welcomed the sensation. She run at least for an hour before coming back to the manor. Before she set a foot on the front porch her cellphone rang indicating that she had an incoming call from Tony. She sighed answering the phone. 

"What the fuck are you doing? Why didn't you answer my calls or my texts. Do you think I'm joking or something?" He screamed at the other side of the line.

"I'm sorry I came late from work and I just passed out on the couch. I saw the texts this morning" she lied, trying to avoid a fight but she was too naive to think that this time it would be different.

"Yeah right, I'm sure you were fucking that guy you call your friend. Honestly how stupid do you think I am?"

"Very" y/n answered without realizing what she said. She cursed under her breath when she heard Tony go off at her on the phone. She blocked it all out. But this time she did not waited for him to stop calling her name's and insulting her family, this time she stood up for herself.

"You know what Tony? Fuck you. I'm tired of you treating me like shit for nothing. I'm deserve more than this, and you deserve to fucking end up alone. I'm done with your bullshit and you. We're done" she hung up not waiting for an answer and entered the house fuming. She was angry, she was furious. She spent so much time trying holding herself back that she was going to explode.

"Hey y/n can we talk?" Dick appeared in the kitchen just after she entered.

"What do you want Dick? Are you coming to tell me I told you so? Are you here to tell me how much I wasted my time with Tony? Because you know what you were right! I wasted a fucking year of my life with an asshole that the only thing he did was tell me I was a shitty girlfriend when I was out every night trying to keep this fucking city safe!" The girl cried out in frustration, tears were welling up in her eyes.

"That's not what I want-" he was interrupted mid sentence when she laughed at him. A bitter laugh that made Dick frowned in concern.

"Oh right, you're above all that right? You're  Dick Grayson! The guy who has it all figured it out. C'mon Dick just say it, I know you're dying to say 'i told you so'" y/n was fuming. She knew deep down that it wasn't fair to lash out at Dick but she couldn't stop. Dick tried to remained calm but the more she talked the more frustrated he got. Before he realized it they were participating in a screaming match. Trying to get the other to shut up.

"Stop y/n! Stop it" he said grabbing her shoulders to try to calm her down. When she took a look as Dick's face she saw the worry and the hurt in his eyes and couldn't help but start full on crying.

"Hey, it's fine" Dick said pulling her closer to his body. Caressing her back to try an sooth her.

"Why are we fighting for?" Y/n asked in between sobs.

Dick just pulled her even closer to him. She rested her head on his chest. "Because we're both too stubborn to see what's going on" he said softly.

Y/n looked up at him. Her red puffy eyes were still wet from the tears and her stained cheeks were tinted with red. She didn't like to cry in front of others but she's been holding herself for far too long. She was confused about what Dick said.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"I mean...I loved you for the past few years. But I was afraid to say something, and the Tony happened and well... here we are" Dick said scratching the back of his neck.

Y/n breath hitched. She couldn't believe that Dick had just said that he loved her. She looked at him for a moment before kissing him. He was shocked at first but reciprocate the kiss immediately. The kiss was sweet and full of all the unsaid things they kept to themselves all this years. Dick pulled away from the kiss first and rested his forehead on hers.

"I love you too Dick. I'm sorry it took me so long to figure it out. But I always knew deep down that I did. But from now on, im forever yours whether you have me or not"

Dick smiled and dipped his head to capture her lips once again. Tasting the salt of her tears. 

"Good, cause I'm not planning on letting you go"

[queerbutstillhere-writes]

Mutual Pining

"I'm going to literally put my head through a wall."

"Pftt, why?"

Cissie shot a glare at Cassie, then turned, pointing at Bart.

"So? He's just . . . What is he doing?"

Bart was sitting on the beanbags in the corner of Cassie's room, just . . . Staring into space. He never sat still. Ever. Not for this long, anyway.

"He's been like this for weeks, Cassie."

"Why?" Cassie asked her girlfriend, shifting to look at her phone better.

"Take a wild guess."

Cassie sighed and set down the device, looking up at her fellow blonde, thinking. What could have Bart Allen literally moping.

Oh.

"Is it because of Tim?"

Cassie had overheard Bart talking to Cissie once about his crush on Tim. It sounded like he was in pretty deep, but no one knew Tim's sexuality.

"Close."

"Close? How can I be wrong, is there anything else that boy thinks of?"

"Yep. Well. Two things. Food, and . . ."

"And what?" Cassie asked, narrowing her eyes.

Cissie seemed less annoyed and more just amused now. Amused at holding this over Cassie, watching her struggle for the truth.

"What is the one thing, everyone on this team, has all been head over heels for?"

Cassie blinked at Cissie. Then she slowly turned to look at Bart. Then back at Cissie.

"OH MY GOD, KON?!?!"

Tim tapped angrily at the edge of the desk, scowling at his computer screen, then looking down at the case file.

"What's got your bat-panties in a twist?"

Tim didn't bother to respond. Nor did he bother to look up at Dick as the older vigilante walked over and ruffled his hair.

"Hey. You're tapping, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just tap."

This was true. He would bounce his leg or drum on surfaces or two against his collarbone. He just did that. It wasn't even something he thought about or noticed anymore.

"Okay. That's fair. But why are you glaring at the computer screen like it personally wronged you."

"It has. This case isn't panning out like I thought."

Dick was silent for a bit.

"Kon called earlier."

"Oh?"

Dick nodded, still reading the monitor. "He sounded worried. Said something about you missing a meeting?"

"They had training drills today. I couldn't make it."

A few beats of silence.

"Why not? You weren't doing anything. It's summer break."

"I was working on this case."

"So you skipped training with some of your only friends because of a case?"

Tim scowled deeper. Why was Dick questioning him? Why couldn't Dick just mind his own business? Tim didn't want to discuss it anyway. Besides, it's not like he was avoiding his friends or anything. No, nothing like that.

"It's an important case."

Dick snorted. "No offense Tim, but I don't really think the theft of those two paintings are really all that important. Besides, you know Bruce was just going to ask Selina."

Tim neglected to answer, leaning forwards and hitting a few buttons to run a program search.

"Why are you avoiding them."

To his credit, Tim didn't react, just watched code run across the screen as his program worked. Then he slowly looked over at Dick. His question had not been worded as a question. It had very much been worded as a statement. You're avoiding your friends and I want to know why.

"I'm not."

"You are. Normally when I would mention Kon, you'd at least grin or something, but just now you sat there and scowled like Bruce. Oh god are you becoming Bruce? Oh no, we need to get you help, quick-"

Dick grabbed Tim by the armpits and started pulling.

"Quit!" Tim said, but did laugh a bit, smacking at Dick with one hand as he grabbed onto the desk with the other, holding himself in place.

"Come on, Timmy, what's wrong?"

Dick asked, going serious once more as he sat on the desk, facing Tim.

Alright. Time to take a calculated risk. Talk to Dick, your kind of older brother who definitely has more relationship practice, and also practice with this certain issue, or continue to be harassed by him.

Then again, telling him could lead to more harassment.

Does Dick know he's gay?

Never mind, just don't mention genders and he'll probably assume you mean the girls.

"Okay. Okay fine. Don't tell anyone about this."

"My lips are sealed," Dick promised, smiling and pulling a leg up, knee against his chest.

"I thought I had a crush on one of my friends."

"Okay."

"Except now I think I have a crush on two of them."

Dick was silent for a moment, head tilted at him, considering this.

"Kon and Bart?"

Tim scowled, crossing his arms, facing Dick fully.

"Why did you immediately assume them?"

"I'm a detective the same as you are, Tim. I have eyes. I see the way you look at them, the way you act, posturing and showing off. I know how to recognize teen boys with crushes."

"Except when you're the teen boy with a crush."

Dick snorted, shaking his head. "Yeah, unless it's me. So am I right."

Tim hesitated, then nodded.

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know! I really like them both, but Kon's so straight and Bart . . . Bart just doesn't talk about relationship and things so I have no clue what he thinks."

Dick nodded distantly, and Tim really hoped he was thinking of ways to help and not ways to mock.

"Have you, and this just an idea. Have you considered asking them?"

"Why would I do that?"

"To find out?"

"Dick they don't even know I'm not straight!" Tim exclaimed, feeling more annoyed than anything.

"So tell them." Dick shrugged.

"That's not how this works."

"Tim. They're your friends. I highly doubt either of them have a problem with it. . . Now the crush thing, that may be an issue.

Tim groaned and dropped his head to the desk, banging it a few times.

So what if he had a crush on his two best friends. It didn't matter. He wouldn't say anything. It's not like he wanted to hold their hands and kiss them and cuddle and- no, it's not like he absolutely craved any of that.

Besides, even if he did come out to them, he'd have to pick between them, and he didn't think he could.

He'd have to pick, right?

"Why are you moping, kid?"

Kon glanced up at Kyle, scowling.

"I'm not moping."

"Oh you soo are."

Kyle easily picked up a huge piece of cement debris with his ring and spun, putting it on the big green truck full of other debris.

"I'm not!"

Kyle snorted, floating down to be level with Kon, who had done a third of the work Kyle had done so far.

"Sure. No moping, got it. So what is the cause of your Not-Moping?"

"None of your business," Kon muttered, picking up a piece of cement tangled with steel and turned, placing it on Kyle's construct truck.

"Okay okay. Do you want me to go get Supes then because-"

"No! Don't you dare!"

Kyle cracked a grin, creating two chairs with his constructs.

"Sit down and tell doc Kyle."

"I hate you."

But Conner sat down in the chaise like construct, glaring at the Green Lantern.

"I'm having relationship issues."

"Oh god that's a fucking mood. What's happening."

"There's this guy I really like. . . "

"Oh."

"Except, it's not just one guy."

"Oof."

"Yeah. And I don't think either of them know I'm not straight and that I like boys too, and I don't . . . Liking both of them is a problem."

"Ah, a classic love triangle. Alright, you want help cracking this?"

Kon took a deep breath, ready to yell at Kyle and tell him to piss off.

"So step one, you gotta come out to them. If one is like "ew, gross" then they're off the table," Kyle started, not even waiting for permission. "Two, see who you fit better with, personality wise, who do you get along with more. Three, make a decision. Probably regret it later."

". . . Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Kyle."

"See, I do know things! Like I know that you're way behind on clean up so you better get your ass in there!"

Kon scoffed as Kyle shoved him forwards, toward the debris, but he just returned to picking up, thinking as he worked.

Kyle was right. He should come out first. He'd been meaning to for a while, anyway. He'd only dated girls so far, but he still very much liked boys. Especially, as he had recently realized, Tim and Bart.

He was so screwed.

Why did he have to fall for both of them?

Bart was going to vibrate out of his skin.

The problem literally wasn't with him this time.

For once.

See, where he had come from, relationships were just whatever you made of them. Sexuality was more fluid and open, gender was just weird, standard relationships weren't necessarily between two people, sometimes there was as many as five people in one relationship. Sometimes there were even more. But. That's not how things worked here.

But he was going to vibrate out of his skin because he wanted to date his best friends and that's not how things worked here.

He just wanted cuddle piles and kissing and holding hands with both of them. Because he was in love with both of them.

And right now he was stuck, watching them flirt, and realizing that if anyone was going to get to date them, it would be each other and he wouldn't be involved. He'd be lonely.

Cue "All By Myself" by Celine Dion.

It was obvious Kon and Tim liked each other. They did all the typical flirty things, showing off, trying to one up each other, so on and so forth. They grinned at each other and touched each other and stared fondly at each other from across the room. Bart saw it all. And he knew he would never be the receiving end of all those looks and little things.

Only he was. And for all his speed, he never saw it.

He never saw how Tim fondly smiled and shook his head when Bart zipped off to do something silly. He never saw how Kon would just space off staring at him, a stupid grin plastered on his face. He never noticed the fond comments and nudges and smiles. He never really paid attention to how Kon often threw an arm around his shoulders as he traded him. And he never really noticed how Tim was always checking on him first after the team got hit hard. He didn't notice these things.

And boy, he would have gone into this conversation a lot different if he had.

They were all three just hanging out, laying around in the lounge area of their headquarters, Bart was laying half off the sofa, playing a video game on his DS. He wasn't really paying attention to what the others were doing because he was focused for once. Then Kon spoke.

"Hey, can uh. . . Can you two listen for a moment."

"Yup," Bart responded instantly, even as he moved so his feet were on top of the sofa and his head was dangling off.

"No like. Really listen, Bart."

So Bart sighed and paused the game, setting it down and looking back at Kon. Once he had Tim's attention, he spoke again.

"I'm . . . Uh, I'm bi."

Tim blinked at him, Bart scowled.

"What's that," he asked, and then gave a little wave. "Bye?"

Kon snorted and shook his head. "No, imp, bi. Bisexual. I like boys and girls."

"Oh. . . Huh. Neat."

Kon seemed nervous. Why was he nervous? Did he think they would accept him? That would be dumb if him, Bart was pretty sure he had mentioned how things worked in the future. So maybe he was worried about Tim? But why would he worry about Tim? Tim was their best friend. Why would Tim judge?

Kon was, in fact, looking at Tim now.

"Okay. Thank you for trusting us," Tim said with a smile.

A forced smile. His face was carefully controlled, even Bart could see that. Kon could definitely see it.

"Sorry if this uh, makes anything weird?"

Tim just shook his head. "No, you don't need to apologize, Kon. We want you to feel comfortable with us."

Kon nodded once, but stayed quiet. Bart glanced between them, as they were staring at each other, then sighed sadly, picking up his DS again.

Loneellyyyyy, I'm so lonnnellyyyy.

Ohmigodohmigodohmigodohmiodohmigodohmigodohmigodohmigodohmigodohmigodohmigodohmigod

Tim's brain had been screaming that for hours now, ever since Kon had come out.

So sue him for going to Blüdhaven instead of Gotham.

He banged on the window that he knew Dick climbed in and out of, waiting until the other vigilante slid it open.

"You know I have a front door, right?" Dick asked, leaning on the window sill.

"I know but I need to talk, are you free?"

"Not particularly."

Dick pointed behind him and Tim looked past to see a couple of the Titans inside, eating pizza that he could just now smell. His mouth started watering.

"Let him in, Dickiebird! We'll stay quiet!"

Dick squinted at Tim, but he knew it was directed to Roy.

"Yeah, fine, you can come in if you still want to talk with them here."

Tim found himself sat on the only free armchair, pizza in hand. He looked at the Titans, and then shrugged, taking a breath.

"You know that guy I was telling you about," Tim started warily, not wanting to out Kon to all of his brothers friends.

"The one you liked?"

"Yeah. The one with the dark hair."

Dick nodded. Thankfully he had picked up that Tim was trying to avoid names.

"He just told me that he's bi."

"Hey! That's great!" Dick exclaimed, grinning.

"Yeah. . ."

"You gonna tell him, or?"

Tim was silent for a bit, munching on his pizza.

"Should I? But what about the other . . ."

"Oh you're right," Dick scowled at the floor.

The Titans exchanged looks.

"What's going on?" Donna asked finally.

"Tim here has a crush on two separate guys, who are pretty close friends," Dick explained vaguely.

"Oh, classic. That sucks dude," Wally said, nodding and looking thoughtful.

It was Roy who shrugged and said the words that would be stuck on Tim's mind for the next month.

"Date them both."

Well step one had failed ultimately. Or well, rather, it went amazing.

But he was still stuck with having crushes on both Tim and Bart.

The problem is - as Tim had also previously complained about, unbeknownst to Kon - Tim is like, straight straight, and Bart just doesn't seem interested in relationships.

So he was so fucking screwed.

He was just laying in bed, moping and feeling sorry for himself, when there was a shout from downstairs.

"Kon! There's a girl on the phone for ya!"

Kon scowled at the ceiling. Phone? It was probably Cassie. But what could she want. With a sigh he pushed himself out of bed, grabbing a shirt and putting it on as he walked downstairs.

"Ma, where's the phone?" He asked as he got downstairs, stopping in the kitchen where Ma Kent was aggressively kneading dough.

She pointed at a wireless phone on the counter so he grabbed it, stepping out onto the back deck.

"Hello?"

"Hi. I'm tired of playing babysitter, come pick Bart up."

"Cissie?"

"Yep. Hi."

"Wait, babysitter? What's going on?"

Cissie paused, speaking to someone else on the other end of the phone.

"Yeah. Max left Bart in my charge for the day and I can't handle his moping anymore."

"Moping? Bart, moping?"

"It doesn't sound believable, but come get him and you'll see."

"Okay, let me to ask Ma."

40 minutes later, Kon was landing outside Cissie's house, knocking on the door out of courtesy before walking in. He first thing he noticed was one Bart Allen laying on the sofa, staring at the tv.

"Bart?"

"Kon!"

And just like that the ginger was hugging him tightly, eyes squeezed close as he squeezed around Kon's stomach. Kon just grunted lightly and hugged Bart back.

"Hey, imp. What's with you? Sis said you've been moping?"

"I-" Bart pulled away, scowling. "Not moping."

Kon snorted, but scooped Bart up, tossing him over his shoulder easily. Bart squealed in protest, grabbing Kon's belt loops.

"Where's Cissie anyway?"

"Dunno."

Kon carried him through the house, not even bothered by his weight. He weighed like maybe a 100 pounds anyway. They found Cissie in her bedroom, painting her nails and listening to music.

"What are you doing? Leaving a child unattended like this?"

Cissie looked up, eyebrow raising.

"What are you doing? Carrying a child like a sack of potatoes?"

"He's not a child."

"You just called him a child!"

Kon just grinned at Cissie and she rolled her eyes.

"Anyway, feel free to take him home."

"Really, you're just gonna do that?" Kon asked, feeling shocked that Cissie would just dump Bart, one of her best friends, on him like this.

"Yeah. It's you he wants to hang out with anyway."

"Cissie!" Bart complained, bracing his hands against Kon's back.

"Am I wrong?!"

"Shut up!"

Okay what was going on here?"

"Just have him back by like, I dunno, what time was Max coming to get you?"

"Nine."

"Okay. Have him back by eight thirty."

So Kon ended up leaving with Bart.

They raced back to Kansas, causing sonic booms and destroying a few fields along their way, but Bart was laughing and having fun, so that's all that really mattered.

When they got back to the farm, Ma Kent immediately had some chores for them to do, so they spent a few hours doing that and then stumbled inside, crashing on Kon's bed, side by side, still giggling from something Kon had said. Bart looked over at him, going quiet, smiling softly.

"What?" Kon asked, not knowing that he was also smiling back.

"Nothing. I just missed you."

"Oh."

Silence. Bart's eyes were really gold.

Why were they gold?

Who knows, but they're gorgeous. Kon really likes his eyes.

And then he was leaning in and lightly kissing Bart.

There was this slight pause, before their lips met, where he was leaning in. They were just inches apart, breath mixing, noses almost touching. Kon looked up at Barts beautiful golden eyes, as they both hesitated. It would have only been a mere second for anyone without speed based powers, but for them, the moment stretched out for a while. Kon was waiting, giving Bart the opportunity to pull away, to set down boundaries.

But then Bart's eyes slid shut and he tilted his face up towards Kon. This was permission if Kon had ever seen it, and he closed the small distance, lightly pressing their lips together.

It was soft and sweet and timid. Bart's lips were slightly chapped, probably from all the running in the wind - could he get Tim or Wally to make a super hydrating chapstick formula? - but Kon couldn't care less, because he was kissing Bart.

Kon pulled away first, pulling back far enough to look at Bart, who was steadily grinning more and more, slowly pulling his eyes open.

"You-"

Then he giggled, and kept giggling, rolling away and pressing his face into the sheets.

"What?" Kon asked, confused. But Bart kept giggling and Kon frowned. "What?!"

Kon rolled over so he was practically laying on top of Bart, tickling him, causing him to laugh harder, squealing and trying to get away from Kon. Obviously he didn't actually want to, or he would have been on the other side of the room by now.

By the time Bart finally stopped laughing, they were both in stitches, just grinning at each other as they gasped for air.

"Okay, what was so funny?" Kon asked finally, once he could breathe properly.

Bart took a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling.

"I thought you were in love with Tim."

Kon blinked at him. "Oh."

Bart didn't respond, but did look over. Kon was silent for a bit.

"Which is. . . Honestly totally fair, because-"

Bart was rambling, but Kon was starting to realize that maybe, maybe, Bart had been in love with him.

"Bart-"

"And like, he's really pretty and I totally understand-"

"Bart."

"Because like, I'm kinda in love with him too."

"I like you both."

They had both spoken at the same time. There was about two seconds and then Bart was sitting up quickly, looking down at Kon.

"Could you run that by me one more time?" He asked, eyes wide.

"Uh. I like you both?"

Bart blinked at him, then grinned, flapping his hands slightly in excitement. Well, slightly for Bart. They were going slightly blurry.

"Oh my god I thought I was insane."

"What?"

Bart dove at him, and Kon grunted as Bart landed on his chest, chin on his breastbone.

"I thought I was crazy for being in love with both of my best friends. Well. Actually it's not that crazy for me. The future is like, super chill about relationships and stuff. But like, nowadays people think things like that are weird and-"

"Bart, what are you talking about?"

Bart scowled, looking away as he thought.

"Urggh, what's the current word for it?"

He scrunched up his nose, and Kon felt this pang of just pure emotions.

"Oh! Polyamory!"

Kon blinked once, then twice, then a third time. And it was clear Bart realized he may have made a mistake.

"Kon-"

"Wait. Like. Dating both of you?"

"Yeah, it's a thing in the future, I know a lot of people aren't comfortable with it and-"

Bart slid off of Kon, standing and starting to pace slightly.

"I just, I really like both of you and I want both of you and-"

Bart kept talking, but Kon was just staring at the wall now, thinking about this. Why had he never thought about this. Dating both Tim and Bart? It might be a little strange at first. And as Bart said, a lot of people probably aren't comfortable with it.

Bart had apparently out-worried himself and collapsed on the bed next to Kon, their legs touching as Bart looked up at him.

"Kon?"

"Yeah?" He asked, looking down.

"Can I kiss you again?"

Bart's golden eyes were wide and pleading. Puppy dog eyes. Who had taught that boy puppy dog eyes. Kon just ducked his head and pressed his lips to Bart's lightly. Bart sighed softly, pressing up into him.

"Boys?! Didn't Bart have to be back by eight thirty!?"

......

Tim was probably going to cry.

Okay not actually but he was kinda sad now so that's fine.

Reason for his sadness? Bart and Kon had gotten together two days ago.

Yup, you read that right. His two best friends who he's being incredibly gay for pretty much since he met them are now dating.

It's fine.

He's fine.

He's not.

When he had found out it felt like a knife through his chest. His breath had been stolen and he had wanted to cry, but he had to smile and fake that he was happy for them. They grinned back and would cling on each other and kiss each other and it was painful.

It was so painful.

And he didn't see the frowns and side glances and every little hint that they were doing this for his attention, to see how he'd react.

He was just heartbroken.

It would have sucked if had just been one. It had sucked when Kon and Cassie dated, but not quite like this did. Because he hadn't been in love with Cassie and he hadn't been in love Kon back then. But no  he was in love with both Kon and Bart and now they were together .

He kinda felt like crying.

He had gotten out of there as fast as possible, and sat on a gargoyle, staring off the roof and pretending he was patrolling.

He may have ended up avoiding Bart and Kon for the next few days, just because he can't. He couldn't be around them, and be with them and yet not with them.

It hurt so much because he thought that he and Kon had actually had something. He wasn't that dumb, he could tell when they were flirting. He knew that. He knew it happened a lot. And yet Kon had gotten with Bart.

He was jealous.

He was so jealous.

He hated how jealous he was.

He hated this so much.

"Why is he so difficult?"

"He's a brains over emotions, person, Bart. Patience."

"I'm not patient."

"I know," Kon said with a laugh, pulling Bart down into his lap.

Bart huffed, putting an arm around Kon's neck and pressing his forehead against Kon's head.

"What's wrong?"

They both looked up at Max as he walked in, raising an eyebrow at them.

"Tim."

Max raised an eyebrow, looking from his ward to Kon.

"Still trying to get him to date you two?"

"Yeah. He's avoiding us now."

"I think we should just go and talk to him," Bart grumbled.

"And I think we should give him space. He's clearly upset by us dating."

Max just nodded for a moment, sipping from the glass in his hand.

"Conner, I think I have to agree with Bart here. He's not going to realize what you want from him if you don't talk to him. Those Bats boys are like that."

The Max turned and walked out. Bart grinned at Kon smugly, and he just sighed

"Fine. Talk to him," he agreed. "Do you want to do it, since you did so good with me?"

"Yes! I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Wait, Bart-"

Bart kissed him and then disappeared in a shower of sparks. Kon sighed and shook his head, standing and picking up his backpack, calling a goodbye to Max as he walked out.

Tim nearly screamed when Bart appeared with a shower of sparks and a burst of wind, sending his papers flying.

"Oops!"

In another burst of light, the papers were gently replaced in their rightful spots. Tim sighed and looked up to Bart, who was now standing at his elbow, just in civilian wear.

"Bart?" He asked by way of a greeting, setting down his pencil.

"Hi! Watcha doing?"

"Homework."

"Oh. Boo. Homework is boring."

"Don't you have homework?"

"Technically yes, but Kon was over so I did it all super fast, don't tell Max though, and now I'm here because I want to talk to you!"

Tim raised an eyebrow, turning his desk chair to face Bart.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, I just wanted to ask you about something."

Bart hopped up on his desk, his little legs swinging. He was grinning, but he looked a little nervous, all the same.

"Okay. Shoot."

Bart hesitated.

Bart Allen hesitated.

This should have clued Tim in on what Bart was wanting to ask. It was apparently a very serious topic if Bart Allen hesitated to speak his mind.

"You know how Kon and I got together the other day?"

"I'm aware," Tim bit out, teeth clenched, trying to keep the scowl off his face. He wouldn't snap at Bart.

Bart bit his lip, looking down at the floor. He was hesitating again. And suddenly he looked a lot more nervous. Then he looked up, made eye contact with Tim, and then slid off the desk.

Before Tim could register what Bart was doing, the ginger had leaned down and was kissing him.

Tim shoved him off quickly, and was up, out of his chair and several steps back.

"What the hell?!"

"What?" Bart was staring at him with wide, worried eyes.

"Bart! You can't just do that! Not when you're dating Kon! What the hell?!"

Bart sighed, hanging his head and stepping back.

"I'm doing this wrong. Don't- just wait."

Tim scowled at him, putting his hands on his hips.

"What the hell is going on?"

Bart shoved a hand into his poofy hair, then turned to face Tim.

"We want you. We both want you. We want to be with each other, but we want to be with you, too."

Bart looked so sincere, and he looked scared. He was giving Tim this mixed look of fear, hope, love, and longing.

Tim went silent.

He hated to admit it, but his brain immediately went logical, examining all of the things Bart had just said to him, taking them apart word by word and making sure he fully understood what was happening. He looked at this with a very cynical thought process. And he ignored the part of his mind that was freaking out because of what Bart's proposal had meant.

"Tim?" Bart's voice asked, and now he mostly sounded scared. "If you don't- just let me know and I'll never mention it again."

Tim didn't respond.

They wanted to be with him. Clearly they had discussed this, and apparently quite a lot, if it had reached the point of actually bringing it up to Tim. Bart wanted to be with Tim, Kon wanted to be with Tim. Tim wanted to be with both of them. They could all date. Yes they'd have to hide it from the public, because people wouldn't approve of this type of relationship. But what did it matter. Tim already knew Dick would approve, and he suspected Bruce wouldn't have a problem with it. Maybe the Kent's would. But it's not like Kon cared what Clark said, Martha and Jonathan on the other hand. . .

Bart was still staring at him, wringing his hands, and Tim remembered that he needed to give some kind of reaction. Something. Anything before Bart started getting upset.

"Bart."

The ginger's head snapped up and Tim realized he was too late, Bart was already upset.

He walked over and grabbed Bart's hands, squeezing them, then moving his hands up to his face.

"Bart."

Bart blinked at him, his eyes weren't quite wet yet, but they were certainly close. Tim didn't know what to say. He wasn't good with emotions. So he leaned in and gently kissed Bart again. There was about a half a second of a pause and then Bart was eagerly pressing into him, hands grabbing onto Tim's arms, squeezing as they kissed. Squeezing as they backed up until Tim's shins hit his bed and they were toppling over, lips parted as their kiss deepened.

"Does this mean?" Bart breathed out, their breath mixing as he had just barely pulled away.

"I want it," Tim confirmed, and pulled Bart back in for another kiss.

Kissing Bart was exciting and new. It was like jolts of electricity running through him and yet soft and sweet and practically frustrating with how gentle it was. He wanted more and yet didn't want to lose this soft perfect kiss.

"Kon's gonna be so stoked," Bart mumbled, kissing Tim's jaw lightly.

"Tell him tomorrow," Tim told Bart, keeping his arms hooked over Bart's shoulders, keeping him down.

"Tomorrow."

Kon wasn't that surprised when Bart practically accosted him the moment he walked into the headquarters. He wasn't surprised when Bart leaned up and kissed him. He wasn't surprised when Bart pulled him away, into a side room they rarely used, that seemed a bit like an office.

He was surprised when Tim was sitting in front of a table, reading a book. And he was surprised when Bart zipped over to their fearless leader and bent down, kissing him gentle.

"Oh," Kon said, pieces falling into place. "Talk went well then?"

He shut the door behind him, and watched as Tim closed his book, standing.

"If you still want me," Tim said softly, glancing up and down over Kon.

"Of course, I do."

Kon walked over, grinning. He was happy. This was what he wanted. This was good. This was perfect. He put his hands on Tim's hips, tugging him in.

"Can I kiss you?"

"Please."

Kon bent down and gently kissed him, and Tim was immediately pressing back into him.

"We're really gonna have to talk about sharing, aren't we?" Bart asked, and they both pulled away, laughing.

Yeah. This was going to be good. Kon could feel it. They would have their fights, and their bumps in the road. But it would be good. It would be worth it.

@core-disaster-week-2020

[becausewerebatfam]

Our Future (3)

Jason Todd x Reader

Long gone was the memory of the time-traveling boy as Jason continued to f*ck up his chances with you.

Warning: Language and suggestive content.

The occupants of the cave took a collective sigh of relief when you strolled into the cave. Many thought you would not show up when you found out everyone was being called in, including your ex-boyfriend.

Said ex-boyfriend was cooly leaning against the cave wall cross-armed and left leg propped against the wall making the other leg carry the entirety of his weight. It was obvious he was looking your way despite his signature red helmet. This caught a few concerned glances. 

“Behave,” was all Bruce said to him knowing very well that the case rested on his shoulders. If he said or did anything to piss you off then they would lose you. This mission relied on your particular set of skills.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Yet,” Bruce deadpanned.

Jason’s eye narrowed watching Bruce walk away towards you and the others who seemed to quickly embrace your presence. It seemed no one had any sympathy for him. “What am I, the bad guy?” he muttered to himself before getting closer to hear what Bruce had to say about the mission.

For the most part, it seemed Bruce was trying to keep the peace between you two, He managed to plan things out so you only had to deal with Jason a handful of times.

But when you are dealing with a new threat, a new villain, things can get complicated fast.

+++

“Where’s Y/N!” Jason shouted as he narrowly escaped the crumbling building. Ashes littered the shoulders of his jacket as well as Barbara and Dick’s hair.

“I don’t know,” Barbara coughed looking all around. “I lost sight of her.”

Tim and Damian came from opposite sides of the building sporting similar disheveled looks. 

“Did any of you see Y/N?”

Damian’s brow furrowed with worry as he looked at the pile of concrete.

Explosives were your area of expertise. Where to buy them, how to make them, components, arming, and diffusing. 

“That blast came from the cellar,” Tim deduced as he studied the remains of the building. According to the plan you were supposed to have disarmed the bombs starting from the lower levels and working your way up.

Their attention quickly shifted behind them at the sound of a loud gasp followed by violent coughing. You struggled to get a firm grip of the dock with your leather gloves.

In an instant, Jason was pulling you up onto the weathered wood boards. He kept a firm grip around your waist as you leaned into him struggling to catch your breath. 

“Guess I- missed one.”

“Tt, is that all you have to say?” Damian masked his pouting with anger as he yelled at you for being so sloppy with your work. “You could have killed us all!”

“I’m sorry,” you bowed your head forward. The action caused your soaking wet hair to fall forward shielding your face from them. Thankfully it hid the guilty tears that followed as you apologized to the group knowing very well this was all on you.

Jason sighed, “Idiot.” He straightened you up to face them all. “We’re all fine, it’s you we were worried about.” He turned to Damian, “the demon child was worried too.”

“Shut up Todd! I was only concerned-”

“Concerned is another word for worried,” Barbara pointed out. “Besides we got what we came for.” She held out the disk she had managed to take with her. 

Tim pulled out a similar one as he expectantly looked to you. 

With a cheeky smile, you lifted the bodice of your costume to reveal that you had indeed collected the third one.

“I knew we could count on you,” Dick hugged you. “Even in a life or death situation.”

Jason not so subtly pried The older male off of you as you told the others how you managed to jump off the roof and into the stagnant waters of the pier just as the building was toppling over. 

“Stay away from her,” Jason warned just loud enough for him and Dick to hear.

“Relax little wing, at least now you have an excuse.”

Jason couldn’t help but smile thinking he was right. This was the excuse he had been waiting for. 

As everyone began to head back you handed your disc to Barbara with no intention of going all the way back to the cave. You were too tired and needed to check for cuts and bruises if you were going to even think about going to work tomorrow. Not to mention the ache you felt at your ankle whenever you put your full weight on it. 

You figured some bandages and a good night’s sleep would do.

This is when Jason took action and swiftly picked you up. His movements were swift and careful minding your injuries as he held you over his shoulder. “If you can’t walk just say so.”

“I can walk,” you pointed out before elaborating, “it’s just mildly painful.”

Jason chuckled, “stubborn as always.” A small smile of victory as you did nothing to stop him from taking you home.

“You’re one to talk.” 

Your apartment was nearby but the location was very normal. In order to keep your identity a secret, you tended to sneak in through your own window through a back alley. 

When Jason climbed onto your balcony with you on his back you had to commend him for managing the scale. “That was impressive I have to admit.”

“Impressive enough for you to invite me in?”

He had always respected your boundaries and kept his distance from your home despite clearly being able to sneak inside himself.

You smirked, “Nice try but this isn’t one of those near-death experiences where I suddenly realize I want nothing more than to be with you.”

There were plenty of times when you two ended up making up over the rush of a near-death experience. Nights when all you wanted was to be in each other's arms appreciating that you got to live another day. 

Although you had to admit your heart did skip a few beats knowing that he still cared enough about you to notice the small signs of you concealing your own pain. Or the fact that he put aside his pride to reach out to you first this time around.

“Besides I-”

You were cut off when his big muscular arms wrapped around you nearly crushing all the air out of your lungs.

“Maybe not for you,” he shakily sighed. It was hard to swallow the lump of emotion in his throat. The possibility of tears was very much present. “When the building collapsed and you weren’t there I thought-” 

Emotions were contagious. Your arms wrapped themselves around him running soothing circles on his back to assure him you were fine. “Jerk!” You blamed him for the fresh batch of tears.

The thought that he still had feelings for you was more than enough for you to start hoping once more. The shift of his chin from the top of your head to your shoulder started a fire in your belly.

Jason couldn’t hold back much longer. He turned his head pressing his lips to your cheek. “I love you Y/N.” His lips went lower kissing along your jawline down to your neck sending a shudder down your spine.

“I love you too Jason.”

The next day you didn’t go to work. Cuts and bruises be damned, even your ankle couldn’t keep you away from work but it was hard to ignore the ache between your legs. Your thighs and hips burned as you felt the accumulation of three months away from Jason imprinted on your body. 

+++

Too bad Jason always had to do something to ruin a good thing.

“Hey!” Roy nearly shrieked as he dodged the fist that came straight at his face. “I’m just saying you might want to start thinking of an apology Jaybird.”

Jason bit down the urge to swing at his best friend a third time. It wasn’t his fault this was happening. Roy’s only fault was pointing out the obvious, a repeat offense on his part but nothing worth injuring him for.

“Don’t you think I know that!”

Roy put his arm around Jason’s shoulders in an effort to relax him. “She really gets to you, huh?”

“I f*cking quit smoking! What else does she want from me?”

Yeah, it was just as Roy thought. Jason was experiencing the symptoms of withdrawal. He couldn’t tell before when he was silently brooding and violent. It took a lot of pestering until he finally hit the nail on the head. “Maybe she just needs some space to- sorry.” Roy quickly backed off knowing how annoyed he was by those particular words.

“She asked me to move in then asks for a break?” Jason’s voice begins to rise at the turn of events. “Who does that?”

“In Y/N’s defense, you did turn her down.”

“All I said was we should think things through.”

“You turned her down Jay,” Roy pointed out matter-of-factly. “Women are complex and read into every word.” The only reason Roy was so confident in confronting his friend was thanks to his knowledge on the subject, not of experience but he had already talked to you when he saw you earlier that night. “By the way, she said if you even go near her, she’ll kill you.”

Jason suddenly became interested in Roy once more taking a step in front of him to stop him from retiring to his room for the night. “She talked to you?”

Roy nodded smugly, “Our relationship is as strong as ever.” The grin turned into a smirk as he thought of a way he could add fuel to Jason’s fire. “We mostly talk sh*t about you behind your back anyway. Now that she’s giving me some juicy details it’s twice as fun.” His eyes went south to Jason’s thighs. “Heard you got a nicely hidden beauty mark and that size truly does not matter.”

Oh, Jason was not amused.

+++

Dick approached you with all the intention in the world to help you out of your mind. Lately, it seemed you were only physically present while your mind wandered. He didn’t need confirmation from you but he knew what particular red hooded person had invaded your mind to the point of madness.

He pulled you out of your thoughts by placing a comforting and supportive hand on your shoulder. “I’m always here if you need to talk.”

Your lips curled into a sheepish smile knowing you hadn’t been on your a-game lately. “Thanks Dick, but I...” You sighed, “it’s complicated.”

“Your relationship or Jason?”

“My relationship with Jason.”

Dick’s arms motioned to a nearby bench offering you a seat and a moment to unpack the emotional baggage.

Another sigh escaped as you settled into the cold concrete bench in the middle of the night. Not a single streetlight seemed to function in a three-block radius shrouding you both in darkness. It wasn’t the best of places to have a heart to heart with a friend or your on and off significant other’s brother.

“Tell Dr. Nightwing all about your troubles.”

“We’d be here all night.”

“Luckily for us, our job requires us to be here all night.” Technically you two were supposed to be patrolling the city and unless you got a call from Bruce or Tim then it would be fine to stick around for a while.

“Why is your brother such an as*?”

Dick shrugged, “I think he died once and came back super murdery... might be related to the problem.” You giggled which is what Dick intended with the joke. “I’m glad that worked. I was going to go with- which brother at first.”

“You know I asked him to move in with me.”

Dick’s eyes widened knowing how particular you were about having your space. It was one of the reasons you and Jason fought. He was very forward, touchy, flirty- had no problem with invading your personal space from day one. Often Dick would hear Jason’s complains of how you never allowed him to stay the night. The times when he was allowed past your threshold were rare.

All you wanted was to confirm that your relationship could turn into something more serious.  It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, however, you had a lot on your mind lately.

“And the jerk said NO!”

Dick gasped not minding your sudden change of volume rather reacting to the context. “He really said no?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly say no. He said we should think about it.” Whenever you thought back to that moment you almost wished you could take back the vulnerable position you had put yourself in. It was the one time you had lowered your walls and quite literally invited someone into your life. “If Jason doesn’t think it’s a good idea then I don’t see the point.”

Dick was startled by your downcast somber look, he had never seen you this way before. Whenever you and Jason fought it seemed fun. You two seemed to enjoy the back and forth banter never taking it seriously. “The point?” he asked rather cautiously.

“The point of holding onto something that isn’t there.” A deep exhale cleared your resolve. “I always thought we fought because we cared too much about one another but now I’m starting to think they were just warning signs of how incompatible we are.”

“Woah, hold on.” Dick stopped you from walking away. “If anyone is compatible with Jason it’s you Y/N.” He wasn’t saying that for his brother’s sake. He truly felt you two were a perfect match. And what’s a match without a little fire?

You did not look back.

“I don’t think I can patrol Gotham anymore.”

“What?” Dick was dumbfounded by the statement. “So you weren’t talking about ending things with Jason?”

You shrugged, “Perhaps.” If you were right about your suspicions of the past few weeks then... “I won’t be sure until I check... the sooner the better.”

When Dick informed Bruce of your decision to end your patroling of the city he was met with understanding. 

Dick gave Bruce a pointed look. “I’m disappointed I thought you would put up more of a  fight.”

“What is there to fight over?” Bruce tapped away at the batcomputer without sparring a look. It was only the two in the cave now with Damian and Tim out on patrol and Jason off as an outlaw with Roy. 

The screens all showed information on Jason and what he had been up to lately. He was monitoring him, most likely looking for his location.

Aware of Dick’s wondering eyes Bruce let him in on what he was up to. “Jason has taken on a dangerous job. I haven’t been able to locate him in three days.”

“You think he’s in trouble?”

“I won’t know until I find him.”

“I see so you’re in Dad mode, keeping an eye on your baby birds.”

Bruce froze momentarily, “Not exactly.” Before you made your decision to stop patrolling Gotham you had gone to Bruce with your suspicions asking for his help. If you were right and needed to speak to Jason then he would help you find him. 

“Then why are you looking for him?”

“Precaution,” he simply answered. 

“Why do I feel like you know something I don’t?”

+++

“And the pregnancy test was indeed positive.” 

“Aw sh*t...” you muttered. This was one suspicion you hoped would not end up being true. You had put off an official test at the doctor’s hoping the random bouts of sickness would be some sort of flu that came and went but when it came and never went you had to do the responsible thing. 

The doctor didn’t quite catch on to your words. To her, it looked like you were simply shocked. Your nervous grin was simply a nervous smile to her. “Congratulations,” she offered reassurance in the form of stats. Letting you know how your unborn child was completely healthy, as were you.

“Thanks,” was all you could offer in exchange.

You walked out of the doctor’s office looking down at the papers you were handed by the receptionist full of information. A smaller black and white glossy strip with three images held securely by your thumb atop the stack.

Engrossed by your new reality kept you from realizing you stepped past the awaiting figure.

“Hey!” Damian shouted following you with a scowl. He wasn’t sure if this was one of your jokes where you pretend not to see him because he’s too short or if you genuinely missed him. When he called your name once more it became obvious it was the latter.

“Huh?” You turned around to face the angry teenager who every day seemed to grow. “Dami I didn’t recognize you.” With his busy schedule and you not being on patrol anymore, there were hardly any chances for you two to meet. This was your first sighting of him in weeks and you were positively glowing at the sight. “You got taller.”

He smirked, “I know.” He wasn’t as comfortable in his normal clothes walking around the city. He didn’t like that he wasn’t being told what was going on with Jason or why you had stopped showing up. “I heard Jason might be in some foreign prison and wanted to check on you.”

“WHAT!?”

“So you didn’t know.”

“THAT STUPID-” you sighed as a line of text flashed back in your mind stating how stress affected the baby. “Dami, how did you get here?”

“I drove,” he jingled his keys in your face.

“Take me to the manor.”

Damian obliged, he drove you straight there in his incredibly expensive sports vehicle. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride but it beat public transportation at this point as you suddenly became paranoid about anything happening to you for the sake of the helpless life inside you.

It wasn’t until you two were in the cave looking for Bruce that Damian thought of asking, “Why were you at the physician’s office?”

“How old are you Damian?”

A single brow rose in question, “Sixteen.”

You decided that was old enough for you to tell him but not as bluntly. “Your stupid brother is going to be a father.”

Damian stopped in his tracks, “Todd!?” 

He had nearly forgotten all about the time he met that annoying kid from the future. The way things had been going he thought perhaps the possibility of that future had ended but he was wrong.

“Tt-” Damian eyed your stomach with a scowl, James Todd was indeed going to be born.

Bruce stepped almost out of nowhere, the shadows most likely, at the sound of Damian’s voice. “So it’s true.”

You reluctantly nodded, “Guess so.”

At the moment you were a mess of emotion. It was hard to feel happy when you weren’t on the best of terms with Jason. Yet, you didn’t hate the idea of becoming a mother. All things considered, Jason was physically attractive and intelligent so your child would have that going for him. You did begrudgingly love him as well so perhaps it was time you end your silent treatment. 

“I know I told him to f*ck off but...” you shook your head no real ending to your statement in mind.  “Do you know where he is?”

Bruce nodded in understanding, “I’ll go get him.”

+++

“Jason,” Batman sternly called out to the red hooded individual before he could run away. The night did little to hide his reluctance to stop. Bruce already knew there were plenty of other places he’d rather be than there.

“I don’t even need to turn around to know that’s you,” Jason turned around to face the man that had been monitoring him from afar. “Am I now going to know why you’ve been breathing down my neck?”

The silence had Jason defensively raising his hands. “I’ve been good, honest.” Well, he hadn’t killed anyone, only bled them near death so they would talk.

Batman gave him a knowing look, “We’ll talk about that later.” He took careful long strides towards and past him leading him out of the jungle. “For now, follow me.”

“What, you don’t think I have better things to do than follow a grown man dressed as a bat through the jungle?”

Batman fetched a remote out of his utility belt. With a press of a button, the sound of an aircraft starting up could be heard. “Do you have any other means of escaping this jungle?”

Jason did not.

“Guess it beats public transportation.” He nonchalantly rubbed the back of his neck feeling slightly relieved. “The subway system here must be crazy.”

Once they were seated in the Batplane Jason took his helmet off allowing himself to relax a bit. His mind wandered off to Roy wondering if he had been successful in his solo mission. 

He would have to contact him later.

When there was no more work to be done his mind went straight to the source of his unrest. You were the only reason he was going crazy overworking himself. Allowing Roy to keep him busy with sh*tty jobs was in a way essential to him keeping from going crazy with thoughts of you.

“Thinking about Y/N?”

Jason straightened up looking over at Batman’s smug grin.

“Suddenly got the urge to parent your orphan?”

”She asked me to find you.”

The sass was gone as he became genuinely interested in his reason for helping you find him. It wasn’t like you couldn’t do it yourself. “Why would she ask you?”

He could think of one too many times where you would suddenly appear only to drag him out of a dangerous situation. He could be in the most remote of places yet you would somehow find him. A part of him always wondered if you had secretly implanted some sort of tracking device on him.

“Why would you eve help? This doesn’t seem like something Batman would do.”

“You’re right,” Batman nodded. “It’s something a father would do for his son’s sake.”

Jason’s eyes widened startled by the confession. He quickly looked away to hide the hint of emotion. 

“You two need to have a serious talk.” Bruce knew Jason’s feelings for you were strong he just hoped he was mature enough to finally admit once and for all.

“I don’t know if you know this or not but you’re not exactly the best person to be giving love advice.”

Silence.

“Playboy Bruce Wayne aside, Batman isn’t doing so well either when it comes to relationships. You have that thing with Catwoman then, of course, there’s that demon child with your baby mama-”

Batman turned giving him a pointed look. We’ll see how well you do then.

+++

“Oh, the joy!” Starfire beamed at you as she finally got to see you for the first time after finding out your situation from Roy. “How long do human females gestate? I can not wait to meet the little one.”

Roy hushed her not knowing when exactly Jason would be back.

You had gone looking for him when Tim informed you that Bruce had brought said Outlaw back to Gotham but it seemed your timing was off. When you arrived it seemed Jason had gone out.

“It’s going to be a while Star. It takes about nine months, by the doctor’s estimations I’m only 12 weeks along.”

Starfire giggled as she continued to stare at your abdomen. When you first entered she thought nothing of your attire but now that she knew your secret she realized the oversized hoodie you wore was meant to hide your protruding belly. “I like the cute belly, may I see it again?”

You nodded grabbing the hem of your black hoodie to pull it up to just under your bust line. Perhaps you were grouchy from the hormones but you did not find anything to be cute these days. To you the “cute belly” as Starfire called it, only seemed like you had one too many beers the night before. 

“Thought of any names,” Roy asks.

“All I’ve thought about is telling Jason... I’m worried he might not take it so well.”

“Jason?” Roy asked before breaking out into a fit of laughter. His best friend was so madly in love with you that he was sure this would not be a problem. “You do know he’s whipped right?”

The question was met with an unhappy distant grunt.

Star immediately removed her hand allowing your hoddie to fall back in place while Roy pretended to look away. “Well guess that’s our queue to go. Come on Star.”

You gave them a smile and an appreciative nod knowing they were giving you some privacy so you could hash things out with the father to be.

Star couldn’t help but hug Jason repeating her excitement. “Oh, the joy!”

This left Jason angry and confused but it was quickly forgotten when his eyes met yours. There was something about seeing you in casual clothes that just took his breath away. It made him feel special knowing the you that wasn’t in the suit, the you that wasn’t a vigilante. 

“I heard you hung up the cape.”

You nodded, “Doctor’s orders.”

His face sunk as he began to think the worst. “What’s wrong, are you sick?”

“No, not really... it's complicated.” The doctor hadn’t really banned vigilantism but it required many risks that you knew a pregnant woman shouldn’t be taking. If he knew what you did for a living then you were sure he’d be against it. “First I want to apologize for, well-”

Jason knew how hard it was for you to apologize even when you were wrong. In this case, he did not think you had anything to apologize for. He took a few steps forward testing how close you would allow him to get since you were being apologetic and all. 

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he teased.

“Shut up!” Your hands went to your cheeks as you felt a warmth spread across them. With Jason so close you realized how much you missed him. 

Jason smiled, your voice was music to his ears after being deprived of it.

It had been nearly a month since your lover’s quarrel that resulted in you two taking a break from one another. Although he busied himself he hadn’t forgotten it. “I went to look for you as soon as I could but I guess you beat me.”

You nodded, thankful for his explanation to why he wasn’t here. 

“I have something important to tell you but I don’t want to say it until I know where we stand.” You had decided to pour your heart and soul into raising your baby preferably with Jason. However, you wanted to give your child stability, something you two seemed to lack. “I don’t want to keep doing this on and off thing we keep doing.”

You didn’t want to make him feel obligated to stay with you because you were pregnant. You wanted him to stay only if he loved you.

Jason’s heart sank, this was starting to sound too much like a breakup. 

“You know I’m not good with expressing my emotions,” you began to feel your eyes glaze over. “But I just need to know-” You cut yourself off as you choked back a sob.

Jason panicked at the sight of your tears wondering if it was okay for him to comfort you. His instincts told him to hold you close, to kiss away your tears, and assure you that he loved you.

Before he knew it his hands were on your cheeks, his thumbs clearing the stray tears. Briefly, he let go to remove his domino mask leaving no room for error as he conveyed his feelings. “I love you Y/N.” His rough lips pressed against your softer ones in a loving chaste kiss. Jason didn’t know how he was holding back from just devouring your lips but it was important for him to show that he could be more than just a passing passion, he could be a reliable loving partner. “I always have and always will,” his lips brushed yours with every word.

“I love you too,” you smiled now dry-eyed.

Your eyes glanced down at how closely you were pressed against Jason. Thankful for the armor that prevented him from feeling your concealed bump. When you tried pulling away Jason only held on tighter trapping your arms at your sides where they had been.

“Just stay like this a while longer.” A hand at the back of your head urged you forward into his chest. He then rested his chin atop your head feeling all the more at ease. He had missed this, the way you fit perfectly against him.

“But I still have something to tell you.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t just casually say it.” 

“Why not?”

You sighed, “Fine have it your way.”

Jason looked down at you expectantly when you shifted to look up at him. The unreadable expression on your face holding him captive.

“I’m pregnant,” you quickly admitted before in a much louder tone adding, “And I’ll kill you if you ask who the father is, even as a joke!”

Jason’s lips turned into a huge grin. “Are you serious?”

“About killing you? Yeah.” You were finally able to wiggle out of his hold as he subconsciously loosened his hold to accommodate the new situation.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment?!”

You weren’t exactly shocked by his reaction- more taken aback. It wasn’t like your getting pregnant was intentional. You had both been careful but of course, birth control and condoms could only do so much. (Remember Kids: Nothing is ever 100% effective.)

“What do you mean?”

He smirked, “You said I wasn’t Daddy material yet here I am.” 

You rolled your eyes in annoyance, ”Is that all you have to say after knocking me up?” Soon you would be subjected to the worst baby daddy jokes ever by the father of your child. But it was all quickly forgotten with the lively laughter of said jerk. 

Jason once again held you, this time much more gently than before. “I think this is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“Me too.”

*BONUS*

You thought it was funny how everyone managed to guess the gender of your unborn child correctly.  At first, you thought perhaps Jason had failed at keeping his mouth shut when the whole manor correctly guessed you were due to have a boy. Even more, suspicious when they knew your son was due in mid-August.

“Don’t lie Jason, you told them!”

“I swear I didn’t Babe.”

Damian rather enjoyed seeing how you two fought. Of course with you being pregnant the fights were much less intense with Jason trying to make sure you didn’t get too agitated, for the baby’s sake.

“Do not lie to the mother of your child, Jason.” Damian decided to put the final nail in the coffin. “He even told us you decided to name your son James.”

If looks could kill Jason would be dead... again.

You had only decided the night before to name your son after the charismatic child you had helped years ago. Not once had you admitted to Jason that James was the reason you looked forward to having a son. 

Jason had shown a much more caring and mature image in the short time you cared for James. Even back then, it made you think Jason would be a great father.

“That’s enough.” You held Jason’s shoulder as he pinned Damian to the wall. “You and I have to talk.”

“Babe I really didn’t-”

Your index finger lightly pressed against his lips silencing him. 

Even Damian got chills from the fake smile you used to mask your anger. He never knew pregnant women could look so threatening. A small part of him wondered if he had gone overboard.

“Let’s go.”

As soon as you turned your back Jason dropped Damian. “You’re  having fun aren’t you?” Jason knew all too well that Damian was acting much braver around you these days knowing there wasn’t much he could do without you getting angry at him. 

Damian was provoking him. 

“But once that baby is out...” Jason smirked leaving the threat to Damian’s imagination. 

Damian returned the smirk. “Won’t you be too busy drowning in diapers?”

Jason nodded, “perhaps.” It was true, a baby would make it difficult for him to enact his revenge but the baby would eventually have to sleep. “But did you know babies sleep a majority of the day?”

The two were about to go at it again when your voice echoed the cave.

“Sh*t! My water broke.”

-end-

A/N: I hope the flow was good despite the various time skips. Let me know if you liked it ^^ I’m off to work on my next creation.

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[dailytimdrake]

how do you think Tim copes with failure? Something big that is his fault (or at least, he thinks it is). Does he keep trying or collapse in on himself?

This response turned out to be pretty long, so I’ll keep it under a read-more so as not to clutter your dash. Please remember that these are my opinion, and I am in no way telling you what you, personally, should believe about Tim!

I think Tim doesn’t exactly cope with failure well, if at all.

I’ve mentioned previously in passing on Tim possibly suffering from “gifted kid syndrome”, which ties in especially with this inability to cope with failure. An excerpt from a post by thingofthings on Wordpress:

“At the same time, if you define yourself as Smart, there is going to come a time when you’re Not Smart. When you meet people who are smarter than you, or you have to suddenly start working at a class. This can induce low self-esteem, depression, and general emotional crisis, because if you’re The Smart One what happens if you aren’t smart anymore?”

Tim is so used to picking up on things fast, and being right, and doing things perfectly, so much that when he does fail, it hits him particularly hard.

A lot of his identity is built on being capable. He becomes Robin because he’s good enough to be - because he proved himself by figuring out their identities, and getting Dick back to Gotham, and saving their asses. He had to prove himself worthy of being Robin. And the same thing happens in a lot of his relationships: he feels the need to be capable of something, to provide something, to be a good team leader, to give the other person a reason to stick around. So: failure? Not really an option.

It’s even more emphasised when you consider who he works for: Batman. Bruce is notoriously strict with his Robins, especially when it comes to personal failings. It’s not that he does it to hurt them, but because he wants them to be better. He wants them to improve. Nevertheless this method, applied to Tim, only really ingrains the idea that the only way to get someone’s approval/love is to perform well. I’m not going to get into his upbringing with his actual parents, but I imagine his experience with them was along the same lines as well.

In this context, Tim as a child might come to see failure as a surefire way to lose the regard of the people he’s worked so hard to keep. He might also view it as a personal failure - if he can’t do this one thing, if he isn’t always right, then what is he? A failure.

Side-note: I think he doesn’t see success (as in opposition to ‘failure’) as something to be particularly proud of, either. It’s his normal, an expectation that he should fulfill effortlessly, and to break this normal is to be lesser. This excerpt from chapter 2 CaptainnAustalia’s fic The Replacement illustrates this particularly well: 

“I wasn’t ready to go yet. I wanted to see if the replacement was really as good as everyone whispered.  When Tim finally landed the mark, a good ten minutes later, I felt the overwhelming urge to clap, or whistle, but instead I just leaned forward on my knees and watched for Tim’s reaction.

Nothing.

He just kept throwing, like he hadn’t noticed that the mark had landed. I was literally holding my breath, waiting for him to notice, to react. But he didn’t. He just kept going – landing more and more until there was a pile up and he couldn’t possibly hit the target any more. He collected his weapons wordless and put them in a small bucket off to the side. He looked over then and I could see it in his eyes.

No pride. No accomplishment.”

(Yes, it’s a JayTim fic - I highly recommend it despite the use of first person interjections and other nitpicking that i’m guilty of, because I really really love Jason’s and Tim’s characterisation here. It’s one of the few fics that portray Jason and Tim as I see them.)

Anyway. When Tim does manage to fail, he kind of panics, because he’s just shaken the entire core of his being. A big part of his identity and ego is “I’m right and I can prove it”, and this has just been questioned. There are a few ways failure can go for Tim:

a) Tim fails to do something he set out to do, through no fault of his own. For example, he wants to catch this one criminal tonight. Not only does the criminal get away, but all Tim’s leads or contacts on him turn up dead ends as well afterwards. Tim’s first response: to blame himself. He did a sloppy job.Never mind that there were unforeseen circumstances - it’s his fault, because he could have factored them in, and yet he didn’t. Next: he fixes it with double the drive. Because if he can do this more than perfectly, it balances out the earlier failure. It’s all quantitative - if he scores a B on the set-up, he needs to work extra hard to get enough points in the execution to get an A overall for that particular mission. And if overall he does it well, then no one will have to know that he failed.

b) Tim fails to do something he set out to do, because he overestimated himself or his plans. An example of this can be found in Red Robin.. somewhere, where Tim has a few elaborate plans running, and one of them fails. He loses the criminal he took into his custody, and finds himself the target of an assassination tournament.

What does Tim do? He forms a new plan to put him back on track and to fix his mistake, but he is humiliated. There’s an underlying anger at himself for not getting it right.

“Too clever by half.” Are you even hearing yourself, Tim? His tone is simultaneously full of self-praise and self-blame. What he’s really saying is, “I should have seen this coming, and it’s my fault I didn’t, because I thought I was too good at this to slip up.”

This is similar to (a), but the emotion is more intense here. He’s more upset about it than he would be if he’d factored in the obvious fallacies in his plan: it’s very easy to lose someone in a sea of bodies. (Note that I say “more intense”. Much of Tim’s emotions are repressed behind a wall of “logic”, so they don’t seem to show a lot of the time, especially in his narration.)

Let me be clear: I do agree that Tim has insecurities, as does every other human character, but Tim is an arrogant know-it-all. He thinks he’s right, and you’re wrong, and he can and will be a smartass about it, because he’s been right so many times it’s inconceivable that he isn’t. So when it turns out his plans came out wrong, not only is it a blow to his identity, it’s also a blow to his ego. It’s incredibly upsetting to realise that your genius intellect doesn’t make you immune to being wrong.

Scarab puts this into words really well in RR#24:

Tim is so full of himself sometimes, it gets annoying.

What does he do next, though? He moves on. He improvises on his original plan, he jumps to the next related topic, he finds a way to fix this new problem that he’s got on his hands.

He finds out more about the assassination tournament. This pattern repeats itself throughout the RR run: Tim messes up, and then he just moves on. But of course, by virtue of being the main character and also a power fantasy, everything works out for Tim in the end, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Back to Tim’s relationship with failure.

c) Tim fails to do something someone else asks him to do. Whether by personal failings or by circumstance, Tim takes it the same way. This is an embarrassment to himself. Of course, his first instinct is to fix it, but sometimes you just can’t fix things. Now his response will depend on how important he views this expectation of him.

c)i) If it’s something he doesn’t take very seriously, or someone who’s not as important to his identity/ego/peace of mind, eg. at the beginning of RR when he first associates with Tam Fox, and he doesn’t really show much care about how she’s obviously traumatised by her experience with his RR work.

He doesn’t really care! Words are just words, especially so when it comes to Tim, and he’s not offering to do anything to make up for it.

c)ii) But if it’s important, if it’s someone whose approval he desires, eg. Batman and the no-kill rule, he gets defensive of himself, but internally he reacts very similarly to (a). Not anger or humiliation, but self-blame. “What is wrong with me?” is the operational self-accusation here. “Why can’t I fulfill his expectations?” A lot of the time this external expectation may be something Tim expects of himself. Thus failure, or even something close to failure, triggers this response in Tim.

After he attempts to kill Captain Boomerang in RR#26 and ultimately decides not to, he’s faced with Bruce’s disappointment:

And he defends himself. You can hear the denial and self-blame in there. He has to keep emphasis both to Bruce and himself the fact that he didn’t do it in the end. To be fair RR is more of an exploration of how far towards the deep end Tim will go, so it makes sense he’d be kind of ‘rebellious’. But still the defensiveness implies a certain kind of insecurity, that’s just it: Tim doesn’t want to disappoint Bruce, but he has, and it upsets him that he did. (Because Tim does need the approval of those around him, no matter what he tells himself.)

So, overall: Tim is a perfectionist. Not in the stereotypical manner of “I have to become perfect”, but in the sense that perfection is his natural state and any deviation from that is a failure. It’s simply not acceptable.

His first response to failure is usually to fix it immediately, and when that proves to be non-doable, or doesn’t work out, he flounders. And then he shoves it to the list of failures in his head that motivate him not to fail again, and moves onto other things. But his failures are always in the back of his mind, and he consistently (whether consciously or subconsciously) thinks about them, how he could have done things different, how he could have prevented that failure. He gets hung up on them, but it’s not debilitating.

You bet he remembers that one time when he was 5 and considered for a hot second the possibility of, say, Lex Luthor being Batman. He will never let it go. But that failure doesn’t cripple him - he learns from it, and now here he is. Better.

Hope this response made sense! And yes, all my canon examples are from RR because.. guess who hasn’t read much else? I’m starting on Robin, I promise.

[violetsmoak]

Pieces of April [11/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099044/chapters/50202530

Summary: On the anniversary of his death, Jason’s second life takes an abrupt new turn and he’s faced with a challenge that neither Batman nor the All-Caste prepared him for.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Warning(s): Past Jason/Isabel, kidfic, minor canon character death (pretty sure you can guess who), I’ll add more warnings/tags as I think of them.

Canon-Compliance: Takes place in between the two RHATO series, so after Roy and Kori and before Artemis and Bizarro. Jason and Isabel Ardila

First Chapter

________________________________________________________________

As expected, Jason doesn’t sleep that night.

His eyes remain trained on the ceiling of the guestroom while his subconscious drags him along a tilt-a-whirl of anxious and circular thoughts. He can barely process what they are with how fast they manifest and vanish again to be replaced with new ones. And before he’s really aware of it, the sun is streaming through the window that he forgot to pull the shades over, and he hears movement outside the room.

Figuring he might as well get up, he heaves himself out of bed and ambles down the stairs, skirting the piles of baby supplies he somehow forgot about while drowning in his night of circular thinking.

Tim is standing in his kitchen doing up his tie, nodding and humming with a frown on his face. Jason’s about to ask until he notices the hands-free earpiece in one ear. That could be either for work or to cover the Bat-issue comm; he probably has the latter plugged in permanently the same way Bruce does.

Tim notices him, and his mouth quirks upward in a not-quite smile of greeting.

“I’ll be in shortly, Lucius,” he says distantly. “We can discuss it before the meeting.” He taps the earpiece, hanging up, and then addresses Jason. “Good morning. You look like shit.”

“It’s the ‘I-didn't-sleep’ chic, which you should recognize since you invented it.”

“You’re just jealous you can’t make it look as good as I can,” Tim quips, and maybe if Jason were well-rested, he’d have a better retort for that. Instead, he narrows his eyes to study the younger man.

Tim Drake is polished and put-together, the epitome of perfect Wayne heir. Damian might throw around the words ‘blood son’ at every opportunity, and Dickie might be the first and favorite son, but Tim’s the one actually carrying on the Wayne legacy. From what Jason’s heard, he does it better than Bruce ever did.

Goddamn workaholic. And that suit probably costs more than rent for one of my legal apartments.

“I’m heading out,” Tim announces needlessly, taking a sip of what must be coffee from a travel mug. “I’ll try to get home before four o’clock, but it really depends on how much work Lucius decides to pile on while I’m still in town.”

“Because it sure as hell won’t get done if B is the only one around,” Jason agrees, earning a sharp grin in reply.

“Exactly.”

And there’s the cocky little bastard Jason’s been waiting to re-emerge after a day of being hidden by the scarily competent functioning adult façade.

“Feel free to stick around here and play the game system or raid the fridge or whatever. It’s up to you. The security system’s biometric, but I can give you an override code—” Noticing Jason’s disgusted and somewhat insulted look, he huffs, “Or not. Whatever. You’ll figure it out.”

He leaves without saying anything else, and suddenly Jason is well and truly alone for the first time since waking up on the anniversary of his death with his only thought being to get black-out drunk.

Funny how much twenty-four hours can change.

Except it’s really not.

Jason doesn’t want to spend another day thinking over all of his problems and the infinite possibilities of how the situation can become even more screwed up or confusing, so he busies himself with breaking into Tim’s hideout.

That occupies him for a little while, figuring out the security codes to the false wall and then to the locks on his computer system. He spends the morning wandering around, getting to know the frankly sweet set-up of the place, testing out the training room and looking under the hood of the cars in the garage.

Wonder if Timbers would help me outfit my bunker.

He’s been squatting in an old subbasement beneath GCPD headquarters for a few weeks now; the place was cut off from the main building during the Cataclysm a few years back and for whatever reason, everyone seems to believe it was caved in beyond repair.

Jason’s cleaned the place out and set up his own operation, but it doesn’t have the tech or necessities of an actual Cave. Which, frankly, isn’t fair, since everyone else has their own Batman-free getaway to hide in when the old man gets in one of his moods. Hell, even the new kid has a place beneath the Fox center.

As soon as the thought enters his mind, Jason scowls.

What the hell am I thinking?

None of this is even going to matter for a while anyway, now that he’s about to be benched. Might as well say goodbye to the state-of-the-art vigilante tech now and spare himself the disappointment.

He leaves the Nest (was Drake born without the ability to be original or something?) and returns to the living area, examining the place with a more critical eye this time around.

He still ignores looking at the pile of baby supplies.

Jason’s first impression the day before was of a barely lived in space, meant to show any would-be-intruders how a normal local celebrity might live. He learns he was only half-right when he spies smaller, more personal touches in the décor as he wanders through the house. There are photographs arranged along most of the walls, which on first glance he assumed were the kind you picked up at Ikea to make a place look classy, but he realizes as he studies the black-and-white images that they are shots of various locations in Gotham.

Locations a normal person can’t actually get to.

Which means Tim must have taken them himself; it’s just innocuous enough that a regular visitor would only admire the clarity of the shot. To someone like Jason, it’s impressive for completely different reasons; not least of all the danger inherent in achieving just that right angle. Two pictures he knows could only have been taken by hanging one-handed off a Gotham Trade Centre gargoyle.

The whole thing says more about Tim’s personality than any human detritus or strewn personal belongings could.

Though he does have those, too.

The shelf beside the television has a copy of what might be every video game known to man, across three different platforms. The study is filled with vintage board games and robot figurines and piles of tech magazines. Everything is scary neat—the professional, unnatural Stepford kind of neat that speaks of someone paid to clean it—with the exception of Tim’s bedroom. Jason pokes his head in there for like a second before shuddering and walking away from it.

How has Alfred not murdered you yet, kid?

Back downstairs, he studies the faux mantle above the electric fireplace where he sees artfully placed personal pictures of other recognizable personages. Tim with his Kryptonian and speedster friends, then him along with his generation of Titans. There’s one of him as a child with two people Jason assumes are his parents at a high society event of some sort, as well as a wedding photo of him much older; the man beside him is the same, but the woman in the veil is different. Stepmother, probably.

Jason pauses to smirk at the one of Tim and Dick on a beach somewhere, both ridiculously sunburned; it’s in the same folding frame as one with them both sitting beside Bruce on a beach chair. The older man is asleep, or at least pretending very well, and they’ve used sunscreen to write ‘I hate this place’ on his chest. Alfred obviously took that one.

The family butler is in the next image, standing beside the entry stairway of the manor with a thoughtful expression on his face. It’s so clearly staged to seem as distinguished as possible.

Guess Alf never did get over his dislike of having candid pictures of him taken.

Moving on, there’s a four-strip photo of Tim and Blondie stuck in the frame of a larger one with all three Batgirls past and present in what he supposes is Barbie’s apartment, with them trying to show Cass how to make a duck face. Beside it, one of Tim and the Thomas kid arguing over what looks to be a disemboweled computer; judging by the thumb shape in the corner it was taken sneakily and probably by Dick. Hell, there’s even one of the demon brat there, conked out on a couch in Bruce’s study with a black and white cat curled up on his chest.

Family’s all here, he thinks with a grim sort of humor. All except yours truly.

He’s not sure if he would have expected different, given his and Tim’s relationship. They might partner on occasion, and he works better with Tim than any of the other Bats he sometimes teams up with, but it’s not like they’re actually close. He doesn’t go out of his way to spend time with him outside of the mask, and then there’s a chasm of tense history between them.

He’d actually be surprised if—

Something catches his eye as he turns away from the fireplace, if only because next to all the gleaming frames its’ ordinariness makes it stick out. There’s a faded paper propped up against the wall behind a decorative clock, and when Jason reaches to pick it up and examine it, he finds himself staring down at his own grinning face.

Sort of.

It’s him from years ago.

The Jason Todd before Bruce stopped trusting him; before finding out his entire life had been a lie and before the Joker destroyed him. And it’s not so much a picture as a clipping from a newspaper.

Little Jason grins up at the photographer, missing his right canine and the same side of his face slightly puffy. Jason vaguely remembers the fight with Two-Face the night before, faster than he recalls sitting for this photo. He’s wearing a school uniform, can now recall the harried little man asking if he was sure he didn’t want to wait for picture retakes so they could get a picture when his face wasn’t bruised (“Bruce tried to teach me to ride a horse. They need to make those things closer to the ground!”) and him refusing because he earned these colors, thanks very much—

Jason can’t figure out how this photo ended up in a newspaper, though; the only pictures of him still extant in public are the ones they drag up on television every few years when Bruce does some bit of charity for orphans. Reminders of the poor dead orphan.

But this one—no, now he remembers.

This was the photo the press used during the custody case when Bruce was publicly battling Natalia Knight for guardianship of Jason. It’s not a copy, printed off the internet or digitally finished as a photograph. There’s yellowing around the edges and the paper quality is thin and grainy the way an actual newspaper is when it ages.

But why the hell does Tim have this?

He’s been back from the dead for years now, and with the Bat propensity for stalking and surveillance footage, if Tim wanted a photo of him, he could certainly have gotten all manner of material. Why this one? And why include it here at all, if it’s hidden away behind the others like a dirty secret?

The whole thing is vastly unsettling, and as he remembers Tim’s words from yesterday—

“We’re too complicated to be family. But we are Robins. And in a lot of ways, I think that’s stronger than us being part of the Family.”

—his chest starts to experience that vicelike pressure he’s been having on and off since learning about Isabel and the baby.

He’s struck by the very pressing need to get out of here.

Fleeing the apartment for the hidden Nest once more, Jason finds the exit protocols and manual overrides for Tim’s system, then borrows one of the bikes in the garage area. Tim did say he was free to do ‘whatever’ and though Jason doubts that includes absconding with his wheels, he doesn’t entirely care. He doesn’t even bother looking for the tracking beacons he knows are hidden on them.

He’s not running away, he’s just…clearing his head.

Or clearing it as well as anyone can while navigating the construction and traffic-infested roads of Gotham.

An open highway would be the most ideal way for him to lose himself and avoid his complicated feelings, but he supposes that option has its own dangers. Like just driving straight to California and pretending the past day has been nothing but a bad dream.

Instead, the constant roadblocks and detours Jason’s forced to take through the corners of the city jog his brain back into thinking. Back into reasoning and solving problems and improvising like he usually does.

First of all, he needs to stop letting Tim do everything for him.

Jason is capable—has survived on his own his whole life; it’s time to get his shit together. And to do that, he has to find someone who can take care of the baby.

His daughter.

He needs to get used to saying it, whether he stays in her life or not.

Jason isn’t entirely sure what he’s looking for in terms of the plans Tim suggested to him the night before. There’s merit to all the ideas, but he’s stuck between getting her out of Gotham or finding someone here who knew Isabel.

Or at least someone who knew she was expecting a kid. Any kind of connection to her mother would be better than nothing.

In theory.

Jason’s pretty sure that it’s a rare kid—himself included—who would have been better off without knowing anything about their birth mother. But Isabel is not Sheila, and the situation isn’t anything like that one.

He’s not even sure where to start looking for potential guardians.

Though Isabel’s friend Safiya said she would be looking into it, it’s once again putting Jason in the position of letting others deal with the consequences of his own actions. If only he knew more about what frame of mind Isabel was in before all this started…

Jason didn’t live with the world’s greatest detective for three years of his life without learning how to build a profile on someone. And the best starting point for that is where she spent most of her time.

He pulls over in the parking lot of a Bat Burger to unlock the fancy computer hidden within the bike’s dash (obviously one of Tim’s own design) and linking to the Bat-network’s backdoor to Gotham General’s patient records. Then it’s a simple search to bring up Isabel’s personal information, including her latest address.

Turns out she moved a lot closer to Gotham General than she was before; as he revs the motor and takes off again, Jason wonders if that was pre-emptive.

Isabel’s place is on the edge of Midtown, where the business district turns residential. The condominium itself seems well taken care of, especially in contrast to the fixer-uppers Jason’s used to in his own neighborhood, but in Gotham, that means next to nothing.

Though clearly Isabel’s been doing well if she’s able to afford a place here.

He’s not entirely sure what the average flight attendant’s salary is, but maybe she was just good with money.

Her apartment is on the highest floor of the apartment building, reachable by the fire escape. He scowls a bit at the idea that just anyone could get in here if they so choose, and if she thinks that’s a good enough deterrent than—

Jason has to stop and shake his head and remind himself that Isabel is gone. She’ll never have to worry about break-ins again.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he jimmy’s open the window and slips through.

⁂⁂⁂

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