#jaytim

xo

At some point Tim gave up trying to predict Jason's behavior.

Years of evidence suggested that Jason Todd operated according to a single guiding principle: if there was a normal option and a significantly weirder option, Jason would choose the weirder one immediately. The truly irritating part was that it kept working.

Tim should have learned this after the rubber ducks.

The mission had been simple. A human trafficking ring was using Gotham Harbor as a transfer point, and the Batfamily needed eyes on three warehouses simultaneously. Bruce had distributed assignments with his usual efficiency. Dick got the rooftop overlooking Warehouse One. Tim got the shipping office overlooking Warehouse Two. Jason got Warehouse Three.

Everything had been proceeding normally until Tim switched to Jason's camera feed.

Warehouse Three appeared to be under attack by rubber ducks. Tim blinked. Then blinked again. The floor of the warehouse was covered in them — bright yellow, hundreds, possibly thousands, spreading wall to wall like some deranged tide had rolled in off the harbor.

"What am I looking at?" Tim asked.

There was a pause on the comms. Then Jason answered.

"Diversion."

Tim stared at the monitor, watching the criminals mill around in various stages of bewilderment. They were indeed distracted — mostly because they were standing ankle-deep in rubber ducks. One of them appeared to be kicking them out of the way with increasing frustration. Another was holding one up and looking deeply, philosophically confused, like a man confronting something that had shattered his understanding of cause and effect.

"How is this a diversion?"

"They're discussing the ducks."

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. Bruce's voice came over the comms a moment later, carrying the particular flatness it got when he was trying very hard not to ask a question he already knew he wouldn't like the answer to.

"Jason."

"What?"

"Where did you get that many rubber ducks?"

Another pause. A longer one.

"...That's not important right now."

It turned out to be extremely important later.

Three months afterward there was the raccoon incident.

The normal plan had involved stealth — careful infiltration, a two-person entry through the east loading dock, minimal contact. Jason had arrived with six raccoons. Nobody knew where he got them. Nobody knew why he had them. Tim had made the mistake of asking, which had seemed like a reasonable thing to do at the time.

Jason had looked at him like he was stupid.

"For chaos."

That was not an answer. It contained no logistical information. It addressed no aspect of the actual plan. It was simply a two-word declaration delivered with complete confidence, as though Tim had asked something obvious.

Unfortunately, it had also been correct.

The raccoons had successfully infiltrated the compound, stolen food, opened several containers they had absolutely no business opening, triggered three separate alarms, and caused a complete building evacuation that emptied the place faster than any tactical breach could have managed. The mission was accomplished in under twenty minutes. Tim hated everything.

Then there was the library. That one had almost broken him.

A criminal accountant had hidden evidence somewhere inside a private library, and the building contained thousands of books — floor-to-ceiling shelves across four floors, no index, no obvious organization system. Tim had prepared a search strategy. Bruce had prepared a search strategy. Barbara had prepared a search strategy from the Clocktower, cross-referencing the accountant's known organizational habits with common concealment methods. It was thorough. It was methodical. It was exactly the kind of careful detective work the situation called for.

Jason had disappeared for ten minutes. Then he returned carrying a ladder.

"What's the ladder for?" Tim asked.

Jason shrugged. "I'm going to ask."

Tim felt immediate dread settle into his chest like cold water. "Ask who?"

"The librarian."

"The criminal accountant's librarian?"

"Yeah."

"Jason."

"What?"

"Jason."

"What?"

"You cannot solve every problem by talking to random people." Tim said it slowly and clearly, because it felt like the kind of thing that needed to be on record. Because evidence gathering required careful investigation and years of accumulated detective methodology, because—

The librarian had immediately told Jason exactly where the evidence was hidden. Apparently she hated her boss. She had, by the sound of it, been waiting for someone to ask.

By that point Tim had started keeping a notebook. It was labeled, in his neatest handwriting:

Times Jason Todd Was Wrong And Things Worked Anyway

The notebook remained empty.

Not because Jason was right. Jason was frequently wrong — wildly wrong, spectacularly wrong, wrong in ways that should have been catastrophic and somehow looped back around to functional. But reality, for reasons Tim could not explain and deeply resented, seemed to bend itself around him like water finding a drain.

The breaking point came during a hostage situation.

A heavily armed gang had barricaded itself inside an office building in midtown. Negotiations had stalled. SWAT had stalled. Batman had stalled, which was the part that quietly terrified everyone, because Batman did not stall. The whole operation had gone still and tense in the way that meant the next move was going to matter enormously and nobody could agree on what it was.

Then Jason disappeared.

Ten minutes later he walked through the front door of the building carrying three pizzas. Tim stared. Bruce stared. The assembled police presence stared. Somewhere inside, presumably, the hostage-takers stared.

The comms exploded.

"JASON!"

"Relax."

"You walked into a hostage situation!"

"I brought pizza."

"THAT DOESN'T HELP."

"It might."

It should not have helped. There was absolutely no tactical framework in which showing up to an armed standoff with a stack of pizza boxes constituted a viable strategy. The criminals had taken the pizza anyway. Jason had somehow convinced them to surrender. Tim still didn't know how — the after-action report had been suspiciously vague on the specifics, and whenever he asked directly, Jason gave him the same answer every time:

"People make better decisions when they're eating."

Which sounded fake. It sounded like something printed on a motivational poster in a breakroom where good ideas went to die. Except apparently it wasn't fake. Apparently it was just true. Apparently Jason Todd had accidentally stumbled onto a principle of criminal negotiation that no one at Quantico had thought to write down.

Months later Tim found himself staring at another successful mission report, the details of which still made no operational sense no matter how many times he read them. Jason had once again ignored the sensible plan. Jason had once again done something completely absurd. Jason had once again succeeded.

Tim closed the file.

Across the Cave, Jason looked up from whatever he was pretending to read.

"What?"

Tim sighed, long and slow, the sound of a man setting something down he'd been carrying for a while. "Nothing."

Jason narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "What are you doing?"

"Accepting reality."

Jason looked genuinely concerned, the way he only did when something was actually wrong. "Are you sick?"

Tim threw a pen at him. Jason caught it without looking — without even glancing up, fingers closing around it with the easy reflex of someone who had been having things thrown at him his whole life and had simply decided to be good at it.

Unfortunately. As always.

I sadly do not have any recs anon. I only recently started getting into JayTim so i can’t tell you much 😭🫶

But if anyone knows please leave your recs💙

Anyway, Jaytim making out and Jason getting really embarrassed about getting a stiffy over it. Tim has to reassure him that it's cool and they get back to making out and cuddling. They don't go any farther. They just keep on cuddling, occasionally rolling around, occasionally making out. At most, Tim slips his freakishly cold hands into Jason's shirt. They fall asleepnintertwined, happy to be together.

They then get in an argument that next morning because of something that will hardly matter in five minutes time. But they're both hit with such fondness that neither expected to ever feel for the other. So fond... that they start beating the shit out of one another in the livingroom... and rolling around... and fighting... and I don't think they're fighting anymore, oh lord....

aw anon dw <33 i broke up with my ex in a mutually good way. i'm much happier now!!! it isn't as romantic as jaytim titty fucking bc simply i don't do romance as im aromantic xD i do enjoy romance with the lens of my blorbos or others around me :))

my inbox is filled with both jaytim and brudick asks which i love :DD thank u

It’s not Tim’s fault if Jason mysteriously get injured after.

Jason confused: “What is this? Cookies?”

Tim: “Yeah, I overheard Roy telling Dick how bad you wanted my cookie. So I figured I’d share. They’re double chocolate chip.”