[Tim And Jason Watching Dick As He Fakes His Death For A Mission]

I love the “Steve has good parents, they’re just not on camera.”

Steve’s dad walks in on Eddie and Steve making out, both shirtless. Eddie freaks the fuck out and Steve just sheepishly smiles at his father.

“I know I told you not to lock your door, but I take that back because I don’t want to see that again.”

“Thanks Dad!”

“Use protection!”

…

He walks into a house full of random children. The kids and Steve’s dad are just staring at each other.

“You’re paying to feed these kids, right?”

“No, you are.”

“Well shit.”

“Language, there are children!”

“Do I get to know these children who I have financially adopted?”

…

Hopper, who is over at the Harrington house to speak to Steve. Mr Harrington walks in to see the chief of police sitting on his couch. He sees Steve in the kitchen and quickly makes his way over.

“Steve! What is the chief of police doing here?”

“He’s a family friend.”

“What family?” Mr Harrington snaps back, gesturing at himself.

“He’s my friend?”

“I don’t see a world where you randomly become friends with the chief of police”

“I got caught with drugs?”

“Then why isn’t he arresting you?” Mr Harrington points to Steve’s cuff-less wrists.

“Can’t tell you?”

“Why?”

“I signed an NDA?”

“Steve, why the fuck would you do that? I’m a lawyer, you don’t just sign NDAs at a whim.”

“To be completely fair, I was concussed every time or they used a friend to threaten me.”

“It shouldn’t stand up in court then. Who did you sign it for?”

“The US government.”

“Fuck.”

Tim: Jason is essentially… Angry Bird.

Dick: Explain.

Tim: Red helmet. Used to be a Robin. Anger issues. Therefore. Angry Bird.

Dick:……When was the last time you slept?

Tim: IRRELEVANT. Can we throw Jason at things?

Bruce: *from somewhere in the Cave* NO.

But make them techno punk

The dragon appears to be currently having a tug of war with a rogue tooth fairy over the coin it meant to leave under your pillow (the academy’s been dealing with a bit of a problem at the moment so it’s become routine to check you still have all your teeth when you get up), and eventually gives up on the coin.

The tooth fairy, cloaked in cracked tooth enamel, makes the brief mistake of blowing a raspberry at your new familiar, believing to have won the fight. As it turns out, tooth fairy makes for a good morning snack, as your dragon crunches on its wings. It then tries to eat the previously abandoned coin. Ok.

The Academy is very grateful for your familiar’s help with the tooth fairy problem, and looking after it keeps you on your toes. Life goes on. Twig (named for the one food the brat refuses to eat no matter how much you insist it’s good for her fire breathing-) grows big enough to rival the average rocket of energy that is a Labrador. You’d almost thought the conversation with the Goddess was a dud.

You were telling Twig off for trying to eat your scarf, again, because you really didn’t think you’d be spending the same amount of money on winter clothes as an academy textbook, but you know, favourite chew toys and all, when in a huff, Twig takes a bite of the sludge coating the pavement, never breaking eye contact with you.

You stare as your dragon eats. It’s not snow. It’s too late in the winter for snow. The footprints in beautiful pristine perfection were replaced by grey and brown mush melting into gutters two weeks back. You don’t let her eat things found on the side of the pavement (how horrible of you, you know), so she’s doing this to be difficult. She clearly never tried sludge before, because despite trying to be difficult, her face twists in disgust, and she opens her mouth again to let the sludge fall out. It only looks marginally less appealing than before.

Twig sneezes then, and instead of her usual purple fire, violet ice comes snorting out, encasing the partially chewed sludge. Oh good. That won’t complicate things. A dragon that can breathe whatever it’s recently eaten, and that dragon is Twig, whose first instinct in every situation is to see if she can eat something. Without fail.

In the end, you really wish the Goddess of Magic could have just spouted one of those ‘the power was inside you all along’ speeches, because Goddess knows raising a multitalented dragon and preventing it from eating everything in sight was throwing you in the deep end on that front. Turns out, when you’re constantly practicing spells that track down where your dragon has wandered off to in the middle of a farmer’s market, or realising you really need that fire resistant spell after you snuck wood into Twig’s diet cause you thought she wouldn’t be able to taste it but you clearly thought wrong- well practice makes perfect, and you get a LOT of practice.

But even becoming one of the most powerful mages won’t get Twig to leave your scarf aLONE GODDAMN IT TWIG-

You are the weakest mage of your academy, so weak that you even fail to summon a familiar. After another dreamed discussion with the goddess of magic, you’re surprised to find a tiny dragon curled up on your chest in the morning.

You know all those humans are space orcs posts about how we anthropomorphise inanimate objects? Next time a computer asks me to confirm I’m human, I’m telling it about Fang, the small paper shredder at a neighbours house I met while helping her with organising and ended up feeding him different things over the course of a while bc there was that much to get rid of and if he ate too fast he overheated and had to be given time to calm down.

I cannot stress enough, he was not my paper shredder. He was the size of a waste paper bin under a desk, really simple. He was not named Fang by his owner. I have never not referred to him as Fang.

I spent a couple hours with Fang one day in the summer. It’s been years, I still think about Fang fairly regularly and consider getting a paper shredder like one might consider getting a dog. The worst part is everytime I get to that point in the line of thought, I think it wouldn’t be the same because it’s not Fang.

So I get emotionally invested in things quick.

Batfamily and their Types

At first, it’s just Jason laughing at Dick for having a thing for redheads. Conversation turns real quick when Tim says ‘Oh yeah and that thing you’ve got with Roy is casual?’ Jason is flabbergasted. Dick nearly chokes on his cereal laughing.

Tim and Damian poke fun at their older brothers for sharing a type, making snarky remarks on comms and tossing chips at the couples whenever they meet up on patrol (from a safe distance). When Bart dyes Wally’s shampoo as a joke, causing him to go blond for a week, Tim tearfully begs him to reverse it in front of the entire JL, bawling about how Bart will break up the happy couple. Damian pats Red Robin on the back and explains to the assembled heroes it is because Wally is no longer a redhead. Dick has to do damage control for a very confused Wally that might, and replaces all of Tim’s coffee with decaf for the next two weeks and put glitter on Damian’s Robin uniform. They both agree it’s worth it.

This is until one fateful night. Tim is relaxing with Kon in the manor, watching Steph and Jason engage in a deadly round of Mario Kart (it’s banned and they have to finish before Alfred finds them) when Damian and Jonathan walk in. Kon and Jonathan leave to head back to Metropolis together, and Damian’s a little red and smiling. Jason (without looking up from the game): Ooooo, someone had fun.

Damian: Tt. It was just ice cream. (He cannot look anyone in the eyes, still fighting his smile.)

Steph: Ice cream, huh? Weird, you’re making the same face Tim did when he got a crush on…

A moment of realisation. Tim and Damian whip round to face each other.

Jason: Oh my god.

Tim: No.

Jason: Oh my GOD.

Damian: Silence Todd, it is nothing.

Jason: OH MY GOD. DICKHEAD!

Jason runs out the room as Tim and Damian bolt after him, attempting to disrupt this madness before it reaches its conclusion. They are too late.

Across the manor, Steph can hear Dick’s voice shriek: ‘BOTH THEIR TYPE IS WHAT??’ More yelling follows.

When Cass starts dating Steph, they all think she’s bucked the trend. Duke starts dating Izzy, and everyone calms down more. Pattern broken, right? Izzy still leads and takes part in ‘We Are Robin’ when needed, but has far less caped crusades since Batman returned.

It’s Izzy’s involvement in the youth group that leads to the next realisation. The Batfam have finished a tough patrol after a rough attack on Gotham, several rogues uniting to cause more chaos than average, resulting in several fires and buildings destroyed. We Are Robin members are on the scene as emergency relief and volunteers, handing out water, helping organise the injured, making lists of those still missing to coordinate with emergency services and reuniting people lost in the chaos. Izzy goes up to the Batfamily members in attendance, gathered nearby and all taking a breather, Bruce, Tim, Damian, Cass, Steph and Duke all out as dawn breaks. She checks whether they need any assistance or help, passing out food from a Batburgers that survived the trouble, and chats with Duke for a while.

Tim spits out his iced coffee in shock as he gasps, looking between Duke and Izzy staring at him and Cass and Steph eating peacefully.

Tim: Your type is fucking Robins!

Eddie graduates, finds himself a shitty job that he keeps getting promoted at, and now he’s the manager.

That’s how he found himself wearing a tie, sitting across Goddamn Dave, the district manager, being told that he has to hire one of his friend’s kids, “And the kid’s friend, they’re a pair apparently.”

Which…what is this? Chain store nepotism? It’s bullshit.

“The kid’s not all there, head injury,” Goddamn Dave tells him. “Go easy on him.”

Then it turns out the kid isn’t even a teenager looking for a summer job. It’s twenty-something Steve Harrington from high school??? With a dog. And a lesbian.

“Service dog,” Steve says when he sees Eddie looking at it. “A dog with a job.”

“More of a hobby,” his friend - Robin, Eddie recognizes her - says. “He doesn’t get paid. His name is Steve.”

“His name is NOT Steve,” Steve - human - scoffed. “His birth name was Steve. He changed it.”

“They’re twins.”

Eddie does not roll his eyes into oblivion because he’s a goddamn professional. He just rolls them to the back of his head where Gene Simmons reminds him that if he wants to rock and roll all night, he needs to be employed.

He informs them of their shift schedules and barely gets through Steve’s when Robin says, “We have to work the same shifts. It was on our resume.”

Steve adds, “Also, we need to leave early today.”

Eddie thinks, goddamn Dave.

Daycare

It’s not just Batman. All of Gotham hates magicians. Because they pull shit like this.

Some out-of-towner decides the best way to keep the Bats distracted while they kick up trouble would be to turn the family into children, thereby making them harmless without the associated alarms if they were to disappear.

Unfortunately, they’re not very good at this.

Alfred is greeted at the Batcave by the normal Batfamily, plus their pint-sized doubles. Every single person is struggling to handle their younger version.

Dick is frantically trying to keep an eye on the most adventurous nine year old. Jason is freaking out trying to responsible parent his eight year old self who’s screaming his head off about stranger danger. Tim and his eight year old double have not broken eye contact, and Tim is refusing to touch ‘it’ except with a bow staff. Steph is bribing hers with ice cream to keep her quiet and to stop her from attacking the other children again. Cass is attached to hers by child reins. Duke’s mini has already tried to escape explore three times and is over Duke’s shoulder to prevent any further attempts. Damian (in his mid teens) is trying to get his toddler self to stop grabbing everything, and failing.

Bruce had called Zatanna, but she’s on a JL mission at the moment. It’s going to be a long week.

Girl when I tell you my life flashed before my eyes

Jason: Hey Dick. Wanna see a butterfly?

Dick: Yes.

Barbara: No!

Jason: *throws a stick of butter across the table*

Tim: Fucking majestic!