The Worst Matchmaker In Gotham City
Pairing: Jason todd x reader (+ batfamily )
Synopsis: Dick Grayson is convinced Jason Todd deserves to fall in love. Jason Todd is convinced Dick Grayson should mind his own business. Unfortunately for him, the Batfamily seems to have chosen its side. Between clumsy interventions, far too convenient coincidences, and a fate that insists on playing matchmaker, Jason finds himself caught up in a situation he no longer truly controls. The worst part? He probably figured out what was going on long before everyone else. He simply decided to say nothing.
The problem with Jason Todd was that he was fine.
Which, in his case, didn't mean much. But for six months, Jason had stopped disappearing for weeks at a time, had answered three calls out of five, and had even agreed to come to the manor for Thanksgiving without anyone having to threaten him. It was objective, measurable progress.
It was also, in Dick's opinion, deeply concerning.
Damian looked up from his book. They were sitting on the floor of the second-floor hallway of Wayne Manor, because Dick had decided that was where they were going to have this conversation, apparently.
"He's bored or you're bored ?"
"Him. Look at the signs, Damian. He answers texts too fast, whereas he usually responds after 2 days. He watched eighty-two episodes of a home renovation show in two weeks. He sent me a photo of a SUNSET."
Damian considered this for a second.
"That's exactly my point."
He stood up, crossed his arms, and Damian recognized in his expression the precise look of someone who had already made a bad decision and was now looking for company to share it with.
"He needs someone," Dick said. "An anchor. Someone outside of all this."
"Outside of all this," Damian repeated flatly.
"Someone normal. Who lives a normal life. Who does their grocery shopping, pays their rent, has plants on their windowsill."
"You're describing an apartment, not a person."
Dick wasn't really listening anymore. Damian closed his book with the quiet resignation of a man who knows his evening has just gotten away from him.
Three days later, Dick was standing in the fourth-floor hallway of Jason's building for entirely legitimate reasons. He was returning a borrowed book, a book he had bought that very morning for exactly this purpose, but the detail didn't change anything.
The door of the apartment across the hall opened.
The girl who stepped out was carrying two grocery bags that were too heavy for her hands, keys clenched between her teeth, with the focused expression of someone who absolutely refuses to make two trips. She bumped into her doorframe, caught a bag at the last second, blew a strand of hair out of her face, and disappeared toward the elevator without having noticed Dick at all.
Dick didn't move for four seconds.
Then he pulled out his phone and sent a message to the family group chat.
Emergency meeting tonight. Manor. Mandatory.
Tim's reply came first: your definition of emergency?
Then Jason, later: if someone's dead just say so
Dick smiled, pocketed his phone, and slipped the book under Jason's arm when he opened his door.
"Returning this," he said.
Jason looked at the book. Looked at Dick. Looked at the book again, a paperback of a novel he didn't recognize.
"That's why I'm returning it. See you tonight."
There were seven of them around the dining room table, and Dick had prepared a slideshow.
Not a big slideshow. Only five slides. But still.
"I ran into a girl today," he said. "She just moved into Jason's building. Apartment right across from his. She doesn't know anyone in the city yet, she seems nice, and I genuinely think she and Jason-"
"You haven't even heard the rest."
Bruce was staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man who had raised these children of his own free will and was now living with the consequences. Alfred, standing near the door, maintained the professional neutrality of a diplomat in hostile territory.
"All I'm asking," Dick said, "is that we give them a chance to meet. Naturally. Accidentally. Without it being weird."
"Nothing about that sentence is reassuring," said Tim.
"I agree with Drake," said Damian, which made Tim turn to look at him with a mildly panicked expression.
"The plan is simple," Dick continued, having decided to ignore the general atmosphere. "We arrange for situations to come up. Small things. She needs help, Jason's there. Jason needs something, she's there. Neighborly run-ins happen all the time."
"Not that many," said Barbara from her laptop screen, which she had brought and set at the end of the table because she had refused to make the trip but had still wanted to see everyone's faces.
"Slide three," said Dick.
Slide three contained a calendar, color-coded arrows, and the word synergy written in italics.
It was Stephanie who spoke first.
"I'm in," she said. "What do we do first?"
Cassandra looked at the slideshow. Looked at Dick, and said:
"That's the stupidest plan I've ever seen."
The first incident took place on Tuesday.
Dick's plan was straightforward: Tim would deliver a package to the wrong address, the apartment across from Jason's, meaning hers, which would force a simple, polite hallway interaction and potentially the beginning of a conversation. Tim had agreed reluctantly. Tim had also, that morning, drunk three espressos and decided to optimize the plan.
Which explained why he rang the doorbell carrying a box so large he couldn't see over it, tripped on the threshold when the door opened, and spilled the entire contents, office supplies he had bought at random online to fill the box, across the hallway floor.
There was a stapler. A pencil cup. Approximately two hundred paperclips.
"Oh," said the voice from the other side of the upended box. "Oh, do you want some help?"
"No," Tim said from the floor. "No, I-"
Jason's door opened at the same moment. Jason stepped out in sweatpants and a t-shirt, coffee mug in hand, and took in the scene : Tim on all fours picking up paperclips, and his new neighbor crouched beside him to help.
"Yes," you said, because the box was really very large.
Jason set his mug on the hallway floor, crouched down, and started collecting paperclips. He didn't say a word to Tim for the entire process. Tim had the feeling that was intentional.
"Thank you," you said when the box was full. "I'm your new neighbor across the hall. I moved in last week."
He picked up his mug and went back to his door.
"Your brother ?" you asked Tim.
"My… yeah. More or less."
You nodded and disappeared back inside. Tim sent a text to Dick.
Contact made. Context: disaster. Todd was there. He picked up paperclips. That's it.
Dick replied with six fire emojis.
The second incident took place on Thursday, and it was entirely Stephanie's fault.
Dick's original plan for Thursday was that Stephanie would drop something off at Jason's, run into the neighbor, and strike up a friendly conversation that would organically end with oh you should really meet my brother. Stephanie had listened to this plan carefully, found it boring, and decided to improve it.
The improvement involved getting deliberately stuck in the elevator.
Stephanie's calculation, one that Cassandra had apparently helped develop, was that thirty minutes in a stuck elevator created the kind of forced intimacy that led to confessions, bonds, and eventual mentions of mysterious almost-brothers. It was a calculation that failed to account for the fact that the building's elevators had an alarm button wired directly to a maintenance company, that the maintenance company had a twelve-minute response time, and that twelve minutes in an elevator was too short for intimate revelations but long enough for Stephanie to start running low on air.
"Did you hit the alarm ?" you asked.
"Yes," said Stephanie, who was sweating slightly.
"Are you claustrophobic ?"
"No. Well. Maybe a little."
"Okay. Just breathe. They're usually pretty fast."
You had taken out your phone and were calmly looking something up. Stephanie watched you with an admiration mixed with guilt.
"You're the new neighbor on the fourth floor ?" Stephanie said.
"I mean. A lot of weird stuff has been happening since I moved in."
Stephanie smiled with the innocence of someone who had absolutely nothing to do with the weird stuff in question.
They got out of the elevator eleven minutes later. The maintenance technician looked at them, looked at the elevator, and said he couldn't find anything wrong with it.
"Mystery," said Stephanie.
She sent Dick a text on the subway.
Got acquainted. She's cool. She's also sharper than you think. Warn the others.
Dick replied: in what sense ?
Stephanie replied: in the sense that if we keep this up she's going to figure out something's going on.
The third incident took place on Saturday, and this time it was Damian who had taken matters into his own hands, which was itself a warning sign no one had anticipated.
Damian had not wanted to participate. Damian had said explicitly, at the manor meeting, that the plan was childish, that Todd was perfectly capable of managing his own romantic life, and that this was all going to end badly. But Damian had also, over the course of the following days, developed a curiosity he refused to name about the neighbor in question, based solely, he told himself, on the fact that he wanted to assess whether she was up to standard.
His plan was simple: he would stop by Jason's under the pretense of borrowing something, leave the door open, and observe.
What he hadn't anticipated was that walking down the hallway he would see you, standing in front of your door, keys in hand, and your cat, a grey cat of concerning size, sitting in the hallway two meters away from you, watching you with total contempt.
"He got out without me noticing," you said, more to yourself than to Damian.
Damian looked at the cat. The cat looked at Damian. There was a silent mutual assessment between them.
"What's his name ?" Damian said.
Damian crouched down. Held out his hand. Bernard sniffed his fingers, considered, and decided in his favor. He allowed himself to be picked up.
Damian straightened with the cat against his chest, turned to you, and said:
"Cats without structure develop erratic behaviors."
You looked at him, this boy of about fourteen with a monstrous grey cat in his arms, discussing behavioral structure with the seriousness of a career veterinarian, and said:
"Do you live in the building ?"
Damian paused for a quarter of a second. Handed back the cat.
He knocked on Jason's door, went inside, and sent a message to Dick from the hallway while the door closed behind him.
She has a cat. She's competent in a crisis situation. She asked if I was Todd's brother.
Dick sent twenty heart emojis. Damian read them and didn't respond.
Jason, for his part, had developed a fairly clear picture of what was going on.
There had been Tim's package. The elevator incident with Stephanie, which he'd heard about from the building's janitor. Damian's baffling visit, during which he had spent forty minutes staring at Jason's bookshelf without saying anything before leaving. And Dick, who had been calling more often than usual with casual questions that always ended with so how's the building? Nice neighbors?
What interested him more was why he hadn't said anything.
He had an answer for that too, but it was one he hadn't quite finished putting into words. It looked vaguely like the memory of paperclips on tile, of someone crouching down to pick them up without being asked. Like a voice he'd heard through the wall on Thursday night, singing off-key to something he hadn't recognized. Like the grey cat he'd passed in the hallway once, sitting alone in front of his door as if it were a destination.
He drank his coffee and waited for the next phase of Dick's plan, which was inevitably coming.
The fourth incident took place on Monday evening and was nobody's fault, which, paradoxically, made it the most effective of the four.
The rain had started around seven. You were coming back from the grocery store, again, two bags, again too heavy, and the elevator was out of service, which this time was a real breakdown and not the work of Stephanie and Cassandra. You climbed four flights. Set the bags down in front of your door. Reached for your keys in your coat, in your bag, in your pockets.
You looked for your keys for five minutes.
You didn't have your keys.
You sat down on your grocery bags in the fourth-floor hallway and looked up at the ceiling with the specific calm of someone who has had a long day and no longer has the energy to be upset about anything.
He looked at you. Looked at the bags. Looked at the complete absence of keys in your hand.
"I probably left them at the grocery store," you said. "Or on the subway. Both are equally possible."
Jason leaned against his doorframe.
"The super can let you in."
"He left at six. I checked."
"The locksmith down the street closes at eight."
Jason looked for a moment at the empty hallway, at the rain audible through the landing windows, at the two grocery bags that clearly contained perishables.
"Come in," he said. "While you call the store."
"No," Jason said. "But your yogurt's not going to keep indefinitely in the hallway."
You picked up the bags. Went inside. Set the groceries on the counter while he handed you his phone, the supermarket was in his contacts, for reasons he didn't explain. You called. They had found your keys. You could come pick them up tomorrow morning.
You handed back the phone, deflated. Looked around the apartment : books everywhere, the lamp a little too bright, the window open despite the rain because Jason hadn't thought to close it.
"I'll call my landlord," you said. "She has a spare."
"Does she answer at night ?"
Jason went and closed the window. Came back. Crossed his arms.
"Couch is free," he said. "If she doesn't pick up."
It wasn't a romantic offer. It was said in the same tone he would have used to announce that the weather was going to change, or that the coffee was ready. You heard it exactly that way.
"Okay," you said. "Thank you."
He opened the fridge, pulled out things at random, and started cooking without ceremony while you settled at the counter with your phone. You didn't talk much. You didn't need to. The rain kept going against the windows, and the kitchen smelled like garlic and thyme, and Bernard, who had managed to escape again, was scratching at the front door from the hallway with the persistence of a creature who knows exactly what it wants.
Jason went to let him in.
The cat entered, inspected the territory, and jumped onto the couch as if it had all been arranged in advance.
At eleven forty, Dick received a text from Jason.
Canceled movie night. she's still here. landlord not picking up. key situation.
Dick read the message twice. Set down his phone. Crossed his arms. Looked at the ceiling with the expression of a man who had just realized the universe had done more in one evening than he had managed in two weeks.
Damian, sitting across from him, turned a page of his book without looking up.
"We had nothing to do with this," he said.
"It happened on its own."
"Perhaps some things don't need to be orchestrated," said Damian.
He turned off the lamp, picked up his phone, and went to bed leaving the group chat quiet for the first time in two weeks.
In the apartment on the fourth floor, the rain had settled. Bernard was asleep in a ball on Jason's couch. You had called your landlord, left a message, and fallen asleep in the armchair with a blanket Jason had set there without comment. Jason was reading in the next room, and every now and then he heard your breathing deepen, and he kept still so as not to make any noise.
Taglist: @starrydustedwinter
Thanks for reading my fic. I think I might write about another fandom in addition to this one, but I don't know which one yet. If you have any suggestions, feel free to write them in the comments or send them to me privately.
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