Chapter Text
Tim shifted awkwardly under Bab’s calculating gaze. Maybe if he sat still long enough she would spit out whatever she was thinking and he could get on with eating his breakfast without feeling utterly uncomfortable. (Hopefully she hadn’t worked out he was drinking the coffee she’d banned him from again, it had taken months to work out the correct balance of strength and additives to disguise it as milky tea.)
“So, you and Jason…” Tim stiffened slightly. That sentence could trigger many endings, from ‘You have a mission together’ to ‘The two of you wouldn’t happen to be the reason several Molotov Cocktail ingredients have vanished from around the manor, would you?’ Babs raised an eyebrow at his reaction and continued while Tim took a drink. “You don’t actually have crushes on each other, do you?” Really, Babs should have predicted that she’d end up wearing Tim’s spit-take before she asked the question, though he couldn’t fault her for being so disgusted.
“What! And, uhh, sorry?”
“Apology accepted, now can you pass the tissues? Thank you. Anyway, you heard the question. Crush on Jay, yay or nay?”
“Um, not anymore, but a bit of one before I became Black Bat, I think? He’s really more of a brother to me than anything, and I’m pretty sure he thinks of me in the same way. Why is it important?” Babs shrugged.
“Dick made a few inaccurate-sounding comments during the JLA meeting where he took B’s place last night. I just wanted to make certain that he was actually wrong.” Tim didn’t like the way she put the emphasis on ‘during’, it implied that Dick had done something else before or after the meeting that was also related to his relationship (or lack thereof) with Jason.
“I see, and if I were to try to hack the Watchtower’s security recordings I would have to do what exactly?”
“Officially I have to tell you it’s next to impossible. Unofficially I sent a list of all the little backdoors Vic and I have built into the system over the years to your Delphi network. Even more unofficially I already copied the files you’ll want and sent them along with the list. You can thank me after you find out what I agreed to be the neutral judge for.” Oh god, whatever Dick had done needed a neutral judge. If he’d put a bet on when and how (Never and in no way.) Jason and Tim would get together… Tim gathered up his remaining breakfast and set off for his room. He needed to find out what had happened now.
Jason grinned as he allowed himself to be backed up against the chain-link fence. Did Black Mask really think security guards of this quality would be enough to keep the Bats out of one of his warehouses? The five of them hadn’t even bothered to call for help from the muscle that would inevitably be inside to ensure the drug deal went smoothly. Still, a nice brawl would make a good warm-up to busting the warehouse…
Or at least, it would’ve, had a swarm of batarangs not come scything out of the night and knocked the guards out. Jason swore under his breath and bent to pick one up. Fucking B said he’d be on the other side of the city with Steph, not sniping one of the first busts he gave Jason full control over. Still, the batarangs had a bit more kick than B usually gave them, were they a new design? Oh wait, they were dark grey with an electric green trim, Tim’s black batarangs, not B’s plain ones. (And it said a lot about the kid that he complained about Dickie’s naming ability, then just stuck ‘black’ in front of various bat-themed-item-names to mark them as being his variation on said item.) Jason scanned the area for his Batgirl counterpart, Tim wouldn’t have interfered without a reason. Ah, there he was, on the warehouse roof giving Jason Black Batglare #3, ‘We need to talk’. A quick grapple up and-
“What’s the big problem, Babybat?”
“Partly the fact that you’ve adopted that stupid nickname from your big brother, but mainly the fact that he’s living up to his name and has managed to drag the Justice League along with him. Did you know he, well, ships us?” What. No. Jason had not known that. And now that he did he would quite like to go find Martian Manhunter and request a return to that blessed ignorance. “And that he’s managed to set up a JLA betting pool about when and where we’ll be getting together?” Closing his eyes, Jason slowly lowered his head to touch the window in roof of the warehouse and let out a long aggravated moan. “Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction.” Turning his head just enough to see Tim, Jason let out the full force of his mimicked Resting Bat-ch face.
“He does know that they’re exactly the kind of people who will try their level best to get us together when and how they bet we would?” Tim grimaced and nodded.
“On the plus side, Babs is holding the money and acting as a neutral judge, and she believed me when I said whatever is between us isn’t romantic, at least not from my end and that was a terrible way to break it to you if your end was romantic wasn’t it?” Kinda. At least Babs wouldn’t let the JLA go too far out of control on the ‘winning the bet’ front.
“Yeah, but don’t worry, I’m not interested in you that way. Platonic life partnership is the furthest we’ll- what the fuck happened to all those goons in the warehouse?!” The deal that should have been going on below had turned into a pile of unconscious bodies all bound to each other.
“Given the fact that a still-warm pie and a note appeared behind us while we talked, either a speedster or Superman.” Tim opened the note. “Superman. He says to ‘not worry about patrol, he’ll handle it’ and ‘just enjoy Ma’s pie and chat with each other, you may find you have more in common than you think’.” Seriously Clark that was your best matchmaking attempt? “At least we got free pie and a chance to see a Batman/Superman glare-off this time around. I have a sneaking suspicion that other people are going to be far more annoying.” Yeah, this was going to get really fucking old really fucking fast. Jason settled down next to Tim and made grabby hands for the pie. Might as well enjoy the good bits now, and pie was one of the areas where Alfred had a real fight on his hands to come out a better cook than the Kent matriarch.
“Ok, Mr Jordan, we do appreciate the thought, but can you understand why we reacted to being trapped in a small green bubble of air in the vacuum of space by planning to commit justifiable violence on the trapper rather than declaring our love to each other?”
“Why the fuck do you even have an arrow that turns into a bouquet of roses in mid-flight!? And don’t say ‘aesthetic’!”
“Umm, well, thanks for using your lasso of truth to work out that Jason and I aren’t interested in each other before joining the betting pool, I guess? But can I, uhh, suggest that next time you ask, or at least use a better distraction than shouting ‘What’s that behind you?’ then lassoing us?”
“And why did you think turning into a lovebird and circling our heads would get me and Tim together?”
“It worked for me and Raven, right babe?”
“No, it didn’t. And I keep telling you, they don’t have crushes on each other, listen to the empath.”
“Oh yeah, then why’d you join the betting pool?”
“It was the easiest way to get Dick to stop bugging me about it.”