shh this isn’t super late, shhh it hasn’t been almost exactly a year since I last posted fic, shhhhhh I’ve been here all along
life hit me really hard, sorry! I hope everyone is well and enjoys this little bit of fic while I try to get back in the groove ♡
“This is a kidnapping.”
Tim doesn’t look up from his lunch. “No, this is a sandwich.”
His would-be kidnapper plainly watches way too many movies, because the slow, trying-to-be-menacing way he cocks his gun is straight out of every Western Tim’s ever (reluctantly) seen.
“Mr. Drake,” his kidnapper says with emphasis. “This is a kidnapping.”
One half of his (honestly incredible) sandwich finished, Tim does glance up…but only to confirm what he already knows.
“Please don’t get blood on the rug,” he requests politely. Then he attends to his (homemade!) potato chips while the idiot at the other end of the dining table splutters.
“I—I won’t get blood anywhere if you co—”
“Hey, dumbass,” Tim’s new bodyguard says, looming up behind the man like something out of a nightmare. “He wasn’t talking to you.”
Tim will admit to a bit of sympathy for the fool who came here looking to kidnap him. Jason Todd subdues him so quickly and easily, it’s hard to think of the idiot as any kind of potential threat. Sure, it’s annoying that he thought he could just waltz in here and abduct Tim, as if Tim weren’t smart enough to hire security, but…it’s like being mad at a dog for barking at the mirror.
It may get on your nerves, but the little guy’s too dumb to hold a grudge against.
By the time Tim finishes the second half of his sandwich, the whole matter is settled, and Jason Todd has returned to his guard position by the door, unruffled as always.
“Thank you for lunch,” Tim says to him and, caught in raptures over how damn good that meal was, only belatedly remembers to add, “And for dealing with the whole…kidnapping thing.”
Jason Todd shrugs it off. “It’s my job.”
“Protecting me is your job,” Tim corrects. “Making me lunch—”
“—is just protecting you from your own bad habits,” Jason Todd says, desert-dry. He’d been very unamused to discover, his first day on the job, that Tim usually only ate a granola bar for lunch. And sometimes breakfast. “Speaking of which, a little more concern when some asshole points a gun at you might not go amiss.”
“I didn’t see any reason for concern,” Tim says honestly. “I have you, after all.”
Jason Todd’s classic Bland Bodyguard™ expression flickers. Tim, being only human, can’t help but enjoy the way those broad shoulders shift in the equally classic Bland Bodyguard Suit™.
“I appreciate the faith,” Jason Todd says after the briefest pause, “but you’ve only known me a week.”
Ah, well, that’s…technically true. Tim has indeed only known Jason Todd for a week, since the man came on board as his newest bodyguard after Mike Takeda received an unexpected inheritance and quit.
“True,” Tim admits. “Still, I’ve got a good feeling about you. It’s hard to be worried with you in my corner.”
After all, Tim has known of Jason Todd since they were both kids—since he was watching Robin soar over Gotham every night. They’ve both grown up since then (and Jason Todd in particular has grown up very, very well), but even with him wearing a different cape these days, Tim doesn’t think anything will ever shake his faith in Jason Todd.
“…Thanks,” Jason Todd says.
“Again, thank you,” Tim says in return, then finally, reluctantly abandons his empty plate. “Now, I really need to get back to work. Join me in my office?”
“Of course, Mr. Drake,” Jason Todd says. He falls into step behind Tim without another word.
Jason Todd looms over Tim just like he did Tim’s would-be kidnapper, but the shiver that runs down Tim’s spine has nothing to do with nightmares. Quite the opposite, in fact.
He doesn’t know what’s motivated the Red Hood to take an undercover role as his bodyguard, of all things, but he intends to enjoy it while it lasts.
(And hopefully, with enough exposure, he might collect himself enough to get his inner twelve-year-old back under control. Really, at this rate, it’s only a matter of time before he calls ‘Pete Davis’ Jason Todd to his face, and then he’ll really have problems.)
I do still have my list of prompts and a bunch of them in my inbox, in case you were wondering! Prompt #37 was kidnapping, and it was also requested by an anon and @frozenbrimstone. I hope you all enjoyed ♡♡♡
Tim loves Hannah. Which apparently isn't nearly as common as you'd think, humans loving their daemons, or at least doing so in a way they can articulate or would admit. Apparently the statistical majority in adults is to feel "normal/neutral".
He is thinking about this, because earlier in the night he saw Jason, spitting mad that his daemon showed up out of nowhere screaming and clawing at him. Jason hadn't seen Tim, or Tim probably wouldn't have had opportunity to witness the discord between those two, Jason seems to try and keep the worst of it hidden from others, but as is, Tim saw the whole thing. The yelling, scratching, slapping of wings, and eventually how Jason'd wrangled the bearded vulture into a tight hold. Pinning down it's limbs and forcing it's beak shut.
Then he'd left.
Hannah is sitting on his chest, as Tim gently runs his fingertip over her velvety carapace. They've never fought before. They've never been apart. The longest time they spend not touching, is when Tim is in the shower and she doesn't want to get wet as a spider, so instead she waits at the top of the shower divider, or turns into something that tolerates water.
(Bruce had only ever once decided to 'acclimate them to separation'. Before Tim had even taken a breath to protest, Hannah, a mid size black wasp at the time, had promptly stung him six times across his hands and face. It was apparently excrutiating, there'd been screaming, a lot of it, and Tim has to this day never heard Bruce suggest something similar again. Not even to others, at least not while in Tim's hearing range. Midas never looked at them quite the same, after.)
"Doesn't feel right," Hannah mutters, her pedipalps fiddling with the frayed edge of the pyjama collar, "to just let them keep going like this."
He sighs, "Jason's not going to *thank* us for interfering."
"So we don't start with Jason."
"The vulture? I guess it's out without him often enough we might actually have a chance. But what do we even do, it- he? she? doesn't even speak, I'm not sure if it can *understand* either."
Hannah is quiet, the fiddling continues, then, "Food."
Huh, that might work. Daemons don't need to eat but some enjoy it, and the vulture acts animalistic enough as that there's a half decent chance it might be one of those. Hannah is too.
"Let's try that." Tim prods at her side,"Are you going to help, or are you going to go all shy like with everyone else?"
She whips around and clamps her fangs on his finger, just pressed to it's sides, a mock bite. After a minute she lets go, and mutters, "I will help."
---
Tim pushes open the roof access door of his apartment building with one hand, takeout bag in the other. It's 5am and he can't sleep, and he's hungry, so sunrise dinner it is.
"Hurry up, I want chicken popcorn," Hannah hisses from on top of his head.
"Yes yes, give me a-" Tim freezes mid stride, and Hannah stops tugging at his hair.
There, on the collection of shitty garden furniture that one of his neighbours dragged up, is a bearded vulture. It whips it's head over to him, hunched over and mantling the chair it's been ripping apart like a carcass, shreds of plastic fabric all around it and some still in it's beak too.
There's no doubt it's Jason's daemon, the eyes are a bright flourescent green. They've been trying to catch sight of it for over a month now with no luck.
"Uh," Tim lifts the takeout bag, "Do you want to share kfc?"
18 + jaytim for the drabble ask? or any prompt you wish you were sent!
Wow it's SUCH a good thing that I kept a note that had all the actual prompts in them 😂 Thank you for waiting so patiently for this!!! And if you're on ao3 please reply with your link so I can gift it to you! I hope you enjoy 💚
Prompt: This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve ever had. Of course I’m in.
Keep reading on ao3 or below the cut:
“Okay. Our target will be entering the theater with his date sometime between 5:28 and 5:42. Research indicates that he likes to be in the theater long enough to see all the previews, and his date likes to have time to acquire snacks. I’ve seen the movie three times already, so even though the tickets say the movie starts at 6, it’s actually going to start at 6:14, and lights will go down for previews at 5:55. We’re going to enter the theater at 5:54 — question?”
“What if I want popcorn?” Jason asks, lowering his hand back down into his lap.
Tim scoffs and rolls his eyes, turning his attention back to the map of the theater. “I’m not answering that—”
“—We’re going to sit through a two hour movie that you’ve already seen three times, I want snacks.”
Tim’s lips press into a thin line as he glares at Jason.
Jason raises an eyebrow at him, and the standoff continues as Tim assesses his opponent.
The air between them is so tense, it’s sort of surprising that a tumbleweed doesn’t blow right through the nest.
Tim breaks first, with a sigh and a roll of his eyes. “Fine, after a cost-benefit analysis in which the cost is adding time to buy snacks and the benefit is you not intentionally sabotaging our mission, I have determined it is in my best interest to add time for us to buy snacks.”
“The cost is also the actual snacks, you know,” Jason adds.
Tim very graciously decides not to throw his laser pointer at him.
“Focus up, Jason, this is a mission.”
Jason scoffs and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, looking incredibly bored, but he nods at Tim and redirects his attention to the map of the theater.
“We will be entering the theater at 5:54. You’re going to laugh at something I say right as the lights are going down, so that I can shush you and draw the target’s attention. Then we’re going to find our seats, which are here—” Tim points the laser at a pair of seats two rows in front of the seat with a target drawn neatly on it, “—so that he sees us, but doesn’t have time to corner us. After we sit, you’ll put your arm around me — what is it now, Jason?” Tim sighs at Jason’s raised hand.
“Why don’t we just tell them we’re dating?”
Jason thinks he sees Tim’s eye twitch.
“Are you insane?”
“Are you? Look at this fucking plan, Tim.” Jason waves a hand at the map of the theater. “You saw the Barbie movie three times for this, and you’re going to see it a fourth.”
“This is Dick’s eleventh time seeing it.”
“He’s Dick.”
“Yeah, but it’s worth it! And I actually think you’ll really like it too, it has excellent commentary on—”
“—Not the point, baby,” Jason interrupts, shaking his head.
Tim scoffs, getting that tilt to his mouth that only comes out when he’s really irritated.
“So what, you wanted to sit them all down and tell them?”
“Ugh, no!” Jason huffs. “I figured we could just, like. I don’t know. Kiss after a briefing or something.”
Oh, Tim’s eye is definitely twitching.
“In the Batcave. Where we can be locked in?”
“Oh, fine, yeah. I see that, alright. After a mission, before the briefing, then?”
“So you want to be interrogated publicly.”
“We can run!” Jason scoffs.
“From Dick, Damian, Stephanie, Cass, Duke, Babs, and Bruce?”
“Well, Duke might not be there, we might have a chance if—”
“—Cass.”
In the following silence, Tim crosses his arms over his chest and raises an eyebrow at Jason.
“Fine. Fine!” Jason sighs, “Not that. One at a time, then?”
“You want to have the same conversation six times?”
“Why does everyone think I hate talking about feelings?”
“Because you do hate talking about feelings,” Tim says, looking slightly amused.
“I value my privacy, there’s a difference. Plus, in this family, you give an inch and they take a mile.”
“Fine. Let me walk you through what happens if we don’t do my plan.”
Oh, here we go, Jason thinks as he spots that one look in Tim’s eye that he gets whenever he’s setting a trap.
“Where do you suggest we start?”
“Oh god, Bruce last.”
“Fine, give me the order you would want to do it in.”
Jason tilts his head to the side for a second, before settling on: “Duke, Cass, Dick, Steph, Damian, Bruce.”
Tim opens his mouth, a glimmer in his eyes, and Jason adds, “Actually, switch Steph and Dick.”
If anything, that malicious look in his eyes only gets worse.
“Okay, fine. Starting with Duke is smart. Since he has the whole ghost vision thing, he probably already knows. He’ll have some questions, and he’ll probably tease us a little, but it shouldn’t be totally unbearable, right?”
Jason winces.
“Next, Cass. She definitely already knows, but she’s been waiting for us to tell her because either she’s being kind, or because she’s also waiting for the opportunity to tease us. But again, we can take getting teased by Cass.
“Now, switching Steph and Dick. Either way, we’ve already fallen into a trap, because Steph will be offended if we tell Dick first, and Dick will be offended if we tell Steph first, and either way, both of them will be offended that we told Duke and Cass before them. Steph already knows we were sleeping together—”
“—What?”
“Oh, yeah, I told her ages ago,” Tim says, swiping a hand through the air like he can just wave away Jason’s surprise. “So us dating probably won’t be news, strictly speaking. But she’s going to squeal and hug us and be excited and so happy for us—” he drops his voice back down from the higher pitched tone he’s been using to mock his best friend, “—until she finds out that we’ve been hiding it from her for three months, and then this is going to be an actual, physical fight.”
“No, it won’t,” Jason scoffs, kicking at the coffee table.
“Jason,” Tim says, crossing his arms over his chest. “She hit me in the face with a brick the day we met. She is going to punch you, and it is going to hurt.”
It wouldn’t hurt that much, Jason thinks. But he knows better than to try and stop Tim now that he’s really going, so he keeps his mouth shut and lets his head fall to rest on the back of the couch.
“Now, Dick. He’s going to be so emotional. He’s going to be so happy for us he could cry, and he might, and he’s also going to be indignant that we didn’t tell him first. And once he gets past that, he is going to have a thousand questions, some of which are going to be invasive and personal and deeply uncomfortable. And he’s not going to understand that they are invasive and personal and deeply uncomfortable! It’s going to be an interrogation, Jason. One where he asks us about our sex life.”
Jason refuses to wince at that. He does sigh, if only to voice his displeasure with everything about this situation.
Well. Everything except getting to date Tim.
That’s been pretty great.
“And if we ever escape Dick, then we’ll have Damian. He does care about us and he will find a way to shovel talk both of us, but he probably won’t care that we waited so long to tell him. He is definitely going to be mad that he was the last to know, though. Actually, no one is going to be happy about not being the first to know. But revisiting shovel talks, Bruce.”
“Hey, I’m actually dying to see the look on his face when he finds out,” Jason says, a malicious grin pulling across his face. “That vein in his forehead is going to pop out, it’ll be funny.”
“Oh?” Tim raises an eyebrow, stepping towards the coffee table. His palms press to the table as he leans down to look Jason in the eyes.
The whole thing would probably be as intimidating as he was going for to someone who hadn’t seen imprint of bedsheets pressed into the side of his face this morning as he tripped on the sheets getting out of bed.
But he’s a professional, so he carries on like Jason hasn’t noticed the intimidation isn’t working.
“It’ll be funny? It’ll be funny when Bruce handles it by telling us we need to break up because he doesn’t have any time to process what it means for us and not what it means for the mission?”
“He’s not going to do that, Tim.”
Tim narrows his eyes at Jason.
“Are you sure?”
Suddenly, Jason’s throat feels a little dry.
“Okay, fine,” he concedes. “B doesn’t always respond well to emotional situations under pressure. But he won’t demand we break up—”
“—No?” Tim interrupts. “Then what, we’ll get a lecture on how we’re endangering ourselves and each other and everyone else with our feelings?”
“We won’t—”
“Even if we don’t, you think Dick’s interrogation was going to be bad? That’ll be the warm-up for Bruce. He’ll take each of us into his office alone and ask a million questions, and if, if he approves, it’ll still be exhausting and uncomfortable and—”
“Okay, okay!” Jason stops him, putting his hands up in surrender. The motion makes that one look ripple through Tim’s eyes that he gets whenever he wins, the one that’s always a little bit of a turn on when it’s not Jason who’s lost. “You made your point. We’re not going to tell them all individually.”
“And you still want to tell them all together? You want to handle all of those reactions at once?”
“Not really,” Jason sighs.
“Okay. In that case, hear my plan out: We let Dick see us on a date. He starts to suspect that it’s a date, and he follows us. We get dinner after the movie and let him follow us, and then you take me home, and we let him see us kissing through the window. He won’t interrupt because then he would have to admit he was spying on us, and he won’t want to walk in on us, but that’s key, because it gives him time to process it. And because he’s a horrible gossip, he’s going to tell everyone for us. And he’s also going to tell everyone to keep it quiet and not say anything to us, because he doesn’t want us to know it came from him. And that is going to give everyone else time to process it. And eventually Dick is going to get sick of trying to subtly ask us questions and he’s just going to blurt out a question about whether or not we’re actually dating, and we’ll say yes, and then he’ll be so smug about having ‘figured it out’ that he won’t ask half of the questions he would have if we’d sprung it on him, and by then he’ll have figured out that he doesn’t actually want to know the answers to those questions.”
“One flaw in your plan.”
“No, there isn’t,” Tim scoffs.
“Everyone’s going to be mad we hid it for this long anyways.”
“But we did hide it for this long, so it’s a little too late to avoid that. And if anyone gets mad, we just tell them that we were worried that they weren’t going to accept us and that’s why we didn’t tell them, and then they’ll stop being mad because it won’t look good for them.”
“That’s kind of manipulative, Tim.”
Tim shrugs at him. “And? Look, are you in or not?”
“So, your plan is to let Dick see us on a date at the Barbie movie and then let him follow us home so he can see us kiss?”
“Yes. Weren’t you listening?”
Jason sighs and rubs his thumb and forefinger against his eyes. “This is the stupidest plan you’ve ever had—”
“—Hey!—”
“—but yes, I’m in.”
“That’s more like it. But for the record, it’s not stupid. It’s incredibly well thought out.” The little red dot of the laser pointer circles around the map of the theater, as if Tim’s proving his point.
“That’s what makes this so stupid, baby. This is way too much work. You saw that movie three times for this.”
“You’re going to want to see it again, too, Jason. I promise.”
“Wait, wait, one last question, though.”
Tim sighs, “Yes?”
“We are actually going to fuck after Dick sees us kiss, right?”
Jason ducks just in time to dodge the laser pointer soaring over his head as he cackles at Tim.
“You’re lucky I love you,” Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes.
The last of Jason’s laughter dies down as he fishes the laser pointer out from behind the couch and tosses it back to Tim.
“Every day, baby. Aw, don’t pout, come on. You can walk me through your plan again, if you want.”
“Fine. Now pay attention, and hold all your questions until the end, please.”
They make it about as far in to the plan as they did last time when Jason raises his hand again.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Characters: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne (Mentioned)
Additional Tags: POV Tim Drake, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Toxic/Complicated Relationship, Sexual Tension, Implied/Referenced Sex
Summary:
Tim knew exactly what Jason brought out in him — truth, heat and every mistake he swore he'd stop making.
Jason just finished making pasta, a meal full of carbs and protein, with only enough sauce to make all the ingredients stick together, just the way Tim liked it. He wouldn’t eat it otherwise. He added some extra sauce to his bowl and left the kitchen.
“Any progress?” Jason asked, sitting next to Tim on the couch, mouth full of pasta and fork dripping with his properly sauced food.
Tim’s eyes flickered over, before almost immediately returning to the computer
Hook.
“The budget is almost illegible. It’s definitely on purpose but I don’t have proof of which shareholder is responsible for it.”
Tim has been chasing a shareholder through botched paperwork for a few weeks. It was a string of issues that they were not used to. Most situations they came up against could be dealt with through well-placed violence, but this was a game of cat and mouse. Which if it were an actual game, Tim might have enjoyed. But as it stands, he has a shareholder stealing money from the company and botching projects for insurance scams. The difficulty Tim was running into, the reason the investigation has been going on so long, has been because corporate scum bags fight in paper work and contracts. So, Tim has had to dig his way through red tape, new and old contracts, current budget meeting and previous budget meetings, all to match up numbers that claim to have been lost in the shuffle.
There have been a few of his ‘board of old men’, Tim’s words, that he had cleared. Each cleared shareholder lightened the load, but sniffing out one specific pompous asshole at Wayne Enterprises was taking its time; and a toll on Tim. He hasn’t been able to take time to patrol as Red Robin, and his team have had to manage a few cases without him at the helm because of the near quadrupled amount of paperwork he’s had his nose in lately. It was making him antsy, his mind had been busy, but Jason could feel Tim’s body aching to move. The way he shifted constantly lately, or got up just to walk around, the lessened patrols were definitely getting to him. When he had been able to go out, he wasn’t even working on investigations, and had taken to the role of simply beating assholes senseless.
But Tim wouldn’t let anyone help. His pride wouldn’t let him.
“So, no progress?” Jason said through another mouth full of sloppy, wet pasta.
“Not in this specific file yet,” Tim sighed, “but I was able to eliminate one more suspect today.”
Tim began chewing on his thumb nail, eyes still glued to his computer screen.
“Well,” Jason grunted as he stood up, “you have like, three extra jobs at WE now, so no one can blame you for it taking time.”
“I blame me,” Tim grumbled, “I have to wait for every new edition of every new contract and every new budget, and then having studied those, I have to wait for the board meeting, which I then spend most of that time trying to catch someone slipping, but these guys lie, cheat, and steal through their whole lives. It just feels like the progress is so slow its non-existent.” Tim pulled the laptop into his lap, slouched against the couch and scrolled through another page of gibberish on his computer that seemed to make sense to him.
“Of course it does. You’re climbing a wall of old man greed with bricks made out of million-dollar budgets and legal jargon.” Jason spoke up louder, so his voice could be heard from the kitchen.
He made his way back to the living room, taking a bite of pasta with not enough sauce, before sitting back down and staring intensely at the computer. Tim looked over at him as he entered.
Line.
“Wait.” Jason said, grabbing the computer off Tim’s lap, and putting the pasta where the laptop had been.
“What?” Tim said, leaning in. Jason held up his hand to pause Tim, and scanned the document on the computer.
“Nothing.” Jason said, looking over at Tim, then at the bowl, and back at Tim with a smile.
It was boring, and Jason had to reread every line twice for any of them to make sense. Beside him, Tim took a bite of too dry pasta.
Sinker.
Tim looked down at the bowl of pasta, made with just enough sauce for everything to stick together and extra parmesan cheese, just the way he liked it.
Tim’s glare meant nothing, as it was followed by an eye roll and a small smile. Jason closed the laptop, and Tim moved closer, another forkful of pasta in his mouth, once again reminded that, yes, he did need to eat.
I'm coming back with more sad stuff. I decided to write a hanahaki jaytim fic. Which, in hindsight, might not have been the best idea, but ALSO I tried my best and bled raw into this one.
anyway, if you like:
tragic gay flower diseases
emotionally constipated ex-vigilantes
love that is both doomed and fixable
me, spiraling
then pls consider giving it some love 🥺👉👈
it was a gift for @podficsandplayfulness, and they recently posted a fic for me as a part of DCU first kiss exchange, so pls consider giving it some love, too
Linking the series here.
Right now, with jaytim week approaching, I'm putting my brain in airplane mode. notifications? other wips? never heard of them.
