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Mission Report #H1946

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Involved Vigilantes: 

Batman BW (view file)

Nightwing (view file)

Red Robin (view file)

Robin DW (view file)

Green Arrow CH (view file)

Red Hood JT (view file)

Involved Perpetrators: 

Madison Andrews - Alias: Siren (view file)

Necessary Background: 

Nightwing and Robin report tracking Andrews for multiple weeks as prime suspect of repeat jewelry theft. Howard Hill (view file) filed a report with GCPD at 0800 hours on 7/19/XX. A similar modus operandi was seen in attached GCPD reports A, B, and C. 

Mission Initiation: 

On 8/31/XX, Nightwing reached out to Batman and requested backup for he and Robin’s plan to apprehend Andrews. 

As Andrews’ powers were at the time unknown, Red Robin’s support was requested. 

As it was an uneventful night elsewhere, Red Hood accompanied them. 

As he was, in his words, “in the middle of a goddamn sleepover at [Red Robin]’s”, Green Arrow (CH) accompanied them. 

Mission Summary:

Intel from Nightwing alleged that Siren would be taking part in a low level drug deal. (Note: Further research will need to be done to determine if consistent exposure to Ivy Pollen is necessary for her health and well-being in her current genetically modified state.) Nightwing and Robin delegated tasks to the remaining members. 

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Intel Acquired From Mission: 

Andrews, in a previous life, worked as an actress and model. Upon being fired by her agent for "aging out" of the industry, she began experimenting with illegal substances in an attempt to renew her beauty. Upon her DNA’s interaction with these substances [see also: Fear Toxin 8A, Ivy Pollen 16C], Andrews developed psychoactive abilities.

Upon interaction, affected individuals perceive Andrews as extremely attractive and deeply sexually enticing. Reports indicate that affected individuals remain with their faculties intact, albeit in close proximity to “the hottest babe [they have] ever seen”, according to eyewitness reports (source).

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Jason Todd is wearing a ragged blue hoodie, hair damp from the shower - Tim’s shower - and he’s making what looks to be a four-course meal out of ingredients Tim is almost certain he did not previously have in his apartment. 

This should be a dream. This is what Tim thinks about, in the back of his mind, during stakeouts that drag on too long. Something saccharine and domestic. Carding his hands through Jason’s hair, teasing him about the way his roots are growing in. Kissing Jason slow and soft, giggling as the cat they adopted - her name is Beep, Jason’s choice - starts kneading Tim's leg.

Yeah, that's right - he's down so abysmally, terribly bad for a straight guy that he's already decided what they would name the hypothetical cat they hypothetically adopt in their hypothetical house. 

It should be a dream. Jason, in his townhouse, cooking him dinner. Instead, his eyes dart to the window as he calculates how fast he’d have to move to get away cleanly. 

“If you leave, I’ll find you,” Jason calls sweetly into the living room.

It’s uncanny; Tim hadn’t even shifted his weight. Still, he believes Jason, if only because this is the fifth place he’d tried escaping to. Jason found him at all the others, and Tim finally gave up and went home just to find Jason already there with the oven preheating. So, he isn’t going to run. He's man enough to know when he's been beat. 

Jason slides a tray of cookies into the oven - Alfred's recipe, Tim thinks - and finally, finally walks back into the living room. He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, and considers Tim closely. Tim remains in the corner of his well-loved couch, knees tucked to his chest, and stares back at Jason flatly. 

"What do you want me to say to you?" Tim asks. It comes out a bit sharper than he expects, but then again he’s not sure what Jason wants from him when he’s already been thoroughly embarrassed in front of a handful of people he respects and then hunted down like a game animal through the streets of his own city. Tim really, truly does not know what Jason wants from him.

Jason hums. "What do you want to say?"

“Nothing,” Tim says, which is such a massive lie he’s surprised lightning doesn’t strike him down. “I have nothing to say to you. Get out of my fucking house.”

“Well. I can’t leave for another…” Jason cranes his neck, checks the clock on the stove. “Thirty-five minutes. So.”

There’s a long silence. Three minutes and forty-one seconds. Tim counts it in his head, the numbers ticking steadily higher, instead of thinking about literally anything else. 

Finally, he caves. He just wants this to be over with, wants Jason to get whatever catharsis he needs so he’ll leave Tim alone to lick his wounds in peace. “What are you doing here, Hood?” 

“Hood. Ouch,” Jason says lightly, though something in his expression is pinched. "Not even a Todd? Not even a Red?"

Another silence. A minute and four, this time. Tim resolves not to break it. 

“Jesus,” Jason says, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Okay. Christ.” He sits down on the plush armchair Tim got secondhand from the Kents and looks at Tim with his too-perceptive gaze, his too-green eyes. 

“They should put some brown contacts on you,” Tim blurts without thinking. 

Something shutters in Jason’s face. Tim wants to go over there and smooth a hand against his cheek, against the stubble on his jaw, until Jason's face softens again. Instead, he sits on his hands.

"Sorry," Tim says immediately. "I shouldn't - it was a stupid joke. I'm sorry." 

“S'okay,” Jason says, a bit more clipped than before. “I just... wanted us to walk through the events of the day. Then - once we’ve talked, if it’s what you want - I’ll go. And I’ll send you all the case files I have on my hard drive, and we'll never have to work together again."

A pang of loss shoots through Tim’s core at the thought. He and Jason have been working together these past few months, one case and then two and now all of them, and it’s - nice. It’s been really, really nice. Jason is unexpectedly funny, and brash, and kind and compassionate and smart. Not to mention the way his ass looks in those cargo pants. 

Jason is still looking at him, guarded, expectant. 

“...Okay,” Tim says. He glances at the window again, but he knows it’s a lost cause. 

“So,” Jason says. “Would you like to tell me how today went?” 

“I woke up,” Tim says, ornery to his core. “Ate some toast. Cinnamon raisin. If Bruce ever had anything with that much sugar in it to start off his day, I think he’d have a heart attack for real.”

Jason raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you did anything so inefficient as eating breakfast.”

“Steph made it,” Tim says. “She spent the night.”

“Oh,” Jason says with absolutely no inflection. “I didn’t realize you two were back to…”

“We’re not,” Tim says, too-quickly, and does not elaborate. His heart pounds in his chest. He ignores it. 

“Let’s skip ahead,” Jason says, as though there’s any chance Tim might be genuinely misunderstanding the prompt rather than dragging his feet. Tim thinks of the memes Bart sends them, cats spread-eagled above the tub to avoid touching the bathwater, and feels a certain sense of kinship. “I want to talk about the mission today.”

“Bruce asked me to help,” Tim tells him. It’s true. “You weren’t on the roster.”

“It was a slow night.” This close, Tim can almost count the stray freckles dotted across Jason’s face and neck. “Oracle offered up the coordinates. Besides, Green Arrow wasn’t meant to be there either.”

“He was in town,” Tim says, crossing his arms defensively. Bruce hadn’t loved the last minute change either, but that was what he got for calling Tim and telling him he needed to gear up and be on location within a half hour. 

Tim had a life. Tim had friends. Most pertinently, Tim had Connor Hawke on his couch, halfway through Twilight: New Moon, and they were catching each other up on all the latest drama and gossip. It was unethical, really, to drag him away from that, and it was the least Bruce could do to let him bring Connor along. 

“Besides,” Tim says, “Arsenal isn’t even an option on the roster form for Additional Assistance, and he’s been on, like, eighty-seven missions with you and Steph in the last year.”

“Touché.” Jason rubs a thumb against the hem of his sweatshirt, absently. Tim tracks it with his eyes. “So, we were there to apprehend a new rogue. Remind me of her alias again?”

Another two fifty-four of silence, neither of them willing to give in. 

Finally, Tim rolls his eyes. “Siren.” He’s - not sure why he’s being so difficult, except that he feels like he’s in trouble, and he feels like it’s cruel of Jason to come all the way over here and rub his nose in his stupid mistake. An honest mistake, too. Everyone’s done some stupid shit under a dose of Ivy’s pollen. Hell, Jason got whammied once and immediately propositioned Killer Croc. 

“Right,” Jason says, snapping his fingers like he’d forgotten. “Average Gotham sob story. Former model, spurned by her agent because of the unfair patriarchal expectations of beauty for women, took a shit-ton of drugs about it and became a walking hallucinogenic compound. All she did was steal a few jewels from some rich assholes, I don’t know why Bruce had his panties all in a wad about it. Guy's an asshole. I stole like eight grand from the mayor just last week.”

"He owed Jim a favor," Tim says absently. He'd asked the same thing, albeit in a more tactful way. "Probably bad for the GCPD brand if the mayor fucking beefs it at the hands of some D-list rogue."

"Probably," Jason echoes, sounding amused. “So we get there, and you’re up on the roof solo to run outside surveillance, and I'm with Dick and Damian, and Bruce and Connor are together for some godforsaken reason."

"Bruce wanted to keep an eye on him," Tim says, rolling his eyes. 

"Right. Like he does. So we get eyes on this Andrews chick, and I see Dick go - kind of slack-jawed, just for a second, but a second for Dick is like ten years for the rest of us. And Damian sees it too, with his freaky Al Ghul skills, and he’s like what’s wrong, do you know him, and I’m staring at this older woman with a phenomenal set of breasts, and then Connor says, eugh, slimy.” He levels Tim with a look. “Which is some insane shit to say about anyone.” 

“In his defense,” Tim protests. “Her natural form was needlessly slimy.”

”I do not think that woman chose the slime level she got going on,” Jason says, “but I digress. So I’m like, why the fuck is Tim’s guy insulting this ethereal woman to her face, and then Dick says - still hadn’t moved, by the way, and never told me what he saw, so I guess it’s none of my business - but anyway he says, hey, so what we’re seeing is not what she really looks like. And I blink, and I blink again, and the lady I thought I saw was gone.”

Tim says, petulant, “And she was slimy.”

“She was an above-average level of slimy,” Jason allows. “So I said, oh shit, Siren, she’s like - a mermaid. It’s mermaid rules. Y’know.”

”I know.”

“And that’s when you came back downstairs. So I’d like you to just take me through that one, from your perspective.”

”We don’t have to talk about this,” Tim says, his voice carefully neutral. Because they don’t. 

He would never have pegged Jason to be the type to make him talk about his feelings, but he guesses Jason didn’t want it to be awkward, or whatever, that Tim spilled his guts to the whole team entirely on accident. He must want to hear Tim say it, admit that he’s attracted to Jason, so that Jason can assure him his feelings are okay and let him down easy and say he’s flattered and there’s nothing wrong with being bisexual or some other weird therapizing bullshit like that. 

“Just the once,” Jason says, placating. “Just tell me about what happened today, as a favor to me. And then I’ll never bring it up again. Scout’s honor.”

”You were never a Boy Scout.”

”Hood’s honor,” he amends. 

Another silence - the longest yet, six and sixteen, but Jason just sits there and patiently waits him out, and Tim knows there’s no getting out of this one. 

“Well,” he starts. “It seems to me that our team came into contact today with a metahuman whose abilities allowed her to distort the perception of individuals interacting with her, making them see her as…” He purses his lips. “The subject of their ideal sexual fantasies.”

Jason nods, expression neutral. Tim kind of wants to bash his face in with a rock. Tim kind of wants to kiss him, just once, just to see what it feels like before it sets in that he fucked this friendship up forever and he’ll never have Jason again, not like he wants and not in any other capacity either. 

“Can we talk about Bruce,” Tim says, half to change the subject and half because Young Justice will be hearing from him about this tonight. “Because that man froze in his tracks and said - “ He deepens his voice. “‘Talia?’ And Damian was right there and it was so fucking messy. Can we talk about that for a second.”

Jason blinks once, twice, before he allows, “It was pretty fucking messy.”

“Right!” Tim laughs. “That’s going to scar the kid for life. He’d better make goddamn sure that Selina never finds out about it or she’s going to break every bone in his body.”

Jason’s lips quirk up in the faintest hint of a smile. “He really does know how to pick ‘em.” A pause. “And, Mister Drake, what is your hypothesis as to how one Connor Hawke was able to evade this nefarious villain’s clutches?”

”She wasn’t nefarious,” Tim protests. “She just did, like, a shit-ton of laced drugs and ended up twisting her genome slightly to the right. But, to answer your question, it must have been an effect based purely on sexual desire.”

His words pick up speed; he has been thinking about this, the same way he’s always thinking about everything, and it’s interesting that Connor was unaffected. It’s interesting! Tim likes things that are interesting, which are few and far between these days. He pointedly does not think about the most interesting thing within city limits and the fact that it’s sitting on his favorite chair, smiling at him. 

“Because it could have turned into someone objectively good-looking, right, or it could have given off the aura of someone kind or intelligent or whatever Hawke’s into. Or it could have taken on the appearance of someone he liked romantically in the past. His girlfriend, or something.”

“It?” Jason furrows his brow.

”The glamour,” Tim says, like it’s obvious, because it is. “Obviously she’s not doing it consciously, not - not making these choices to look like Talia or - “ He falters. “Or whoever. Because that would make her a much bigger threat, if she had access to that info. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t even have the power to control how she appears, or the power to manipulate emotions into false romance, or the ability to keep the ruse up once an individual cognitively realizes they must be seeing something fake.”

“Right,” Jason says, something soft on his face Tim can’t quite put his finger on, and Tim flushes when he realizes he’s been rambling. 

“So,” he concludes lamely. “Yeah. It’s something - like that. Or whatever.”

“So you came down from the roof,” Jason prompts. Tim flushes a deeper shade of scarlet. 

“Yes,” he says tightly.

”And…”

”And I saw the target standing in the middle of the open room, where she had not yet spotted any of the surrounding vigilantes.” 

“And you said…”

Tim buries his head in his hands. Jason is the nefarious one, for making him do this. For making him say it out loud when he could not be making it any clearer that he doesn’t want to. He could leave, he supposes, and Jason might even let him, now that they’ve gotten this far. Or he could go out of town, have Kon fly him somewhere in space where he’ll be unreachable for a few months. He could do it short-notice, too; he’s got protocols set up to enact themselves if he doesn’t complete the mandatory check-ins, delineating his current responsibilities evenly among the rest of the Bats.

But he realizes, with sudden, stark clarity, that he does not want to keep lying to Jason. Jason’s a good guy. He won’t laugh. He won’t be disgusted. He already knows, he knows how Tim feels, and all he’s done is be kind and ask if they could talk about it. Because he’s good, down to his core in a way Bruce doesn’t understand, in a way that draws Tim like a moth to a flame. 

Tim draws in a sharp breath. “I said, Hood, quit fucking around, she’s going to be here any minute.” 

“Mm,” Jason says. 

“Because I - “ His voice cracks. “…Saw you.” 

“Right,” Jason says, tone and expression infuriatingly, inscrutably blank. 

"So," Tim says, trying so hard for casual that he ends up out in left field. “I think you’re hot. I’m - sorry, for making it awkward, or whatever. I don’t want to stop working with you, I really don’t - Unless you do! Need some space, I mean, in which case I can totally - we can - “

“Tim,” Jason says, still in that maddeningly calm tone. “Shut the fuck up for a second.”

And it - it makes Tim ache, to be spoken to like that, like he’s nothing, like he’s no one, like he’s a useless child with some sort of puppy-dog crush on his teacher. He saw the way Bruce had looked at him, after, the sort of unfiltered pity he’s spent his whole life trying to avoid. 

“No, fuck you,” Tim says, and then he stands up and tries to punch Jason in the face. It doesn’t land, the blow casually deflected, but Tim didn’t expect it to. It’s the principle of the thing. It’s the making sure Jason’s aware that Tim is mad, embarrassed, humiliated enough to swing on him. 

“Tim - “ Jason tries, his blank expression cracking at the edges. He looks almost - guilty. Good. Tim tries unsuccessfully to punch him again, this time in the ribs. 

“Sorry for being creepy, I guess!” Tim yells. “Sorry that I’m so fucking smitten by you that love spells are making me see your mirror image, and you just saw some blonde babe in a bikini, because apparently you’re the epitome of machismo over here with your boobs and beer and guns - “

“I like tits,” Jason allows. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”

Tim blinks.

Blinks again.

Stops moving for a second to squint down at Jason, who is still holding one of his fists in a single hand.

“...What." 

“It was purely sexual,” Jason continues. “And she wasn’t in a bikini, I’ll have you know. It was a two-piece suit and a pair of Oxfords. Sue me, a sensibly dressed older woman turns me on.”

“What,” Tim says. Because it sounds like - Well, maybe, it seems like Jason could be saying that he - 

“But it’s certainly not the only thing that turns me on. You of all people should know that. Stephanie Brown, I am decidedly not.”

“I don’t know,” Tim says, only half-paying attention to the words. His mind is whirring, but at the end of every potential thought, it’s sort of flatlining out into a repetition of Jason? Like you? Doesn’t mean? Like you? “Got the same accent.”

Jason sighs, but it sounds kind. “Connor has a boyfriend, but Siren didn’t make him see anything. It’s just lust, Tim."

“You like me,” Tim says. He’s pretty sure his face has gone numb. He pinches himself, just to make sure, but it does indeed hurt. 

“Well,” Jason says, but he sounds like the cat who got the cream. 

“But you're straight,” Tim says, and Jason -

Jason fucking laughs in his face.

“What, is your gaydar broken?” he says between giggles. It’s terrifying, actually, and worst of all it’s kind of making Tim more attracted to him, if such a thing were even possible. “My costume is, like, leather harnesses and guns.”

”If our costumes were any true indication of our sexual preferences, I know some things I don’t want to know about Bruce.”

Jason is still laughing. “Red Hood LLC donates 25 million each year to the Pride parade. I am chief operating officer of every gay bar in Gotham city limits, even the one in Bristol.”

“Allyship is important,” Tim says weakly. 

“I brought Roy on eighty-seven missions last year,” Jason says, like Tim’s stupid, and fuck, he might just be. 

“You’re fucking Roy?” Tim says. He can feel himself staring, eyes wide, 

“Well, not recently,” Jason says. “It was a pretty casual thing, best friends with benefits, and another guy came along that I was interested in pursuing more long-term.”

Tim frowns. “Who?”

Jason stares at him, then looks him slowly up and down before making eye contact again.

”Oh,” Tim says, breathless. “Right, yeah. Right.”

Jason shrugs. “I didn’t see you when we got hit by the freaky porn beam. Big whoop. You’re more than that for me, Tim. You’re more than sex.”

“Oh,” Tim says dumbly.

Jason laughs again. Tim wants to hear that laugh for the rest of his life. “Yeah, oh. Dumbass. So, do you?”

“Do I what?” Tim says. He’s having a hard time following the conversation. It feels like every single one of his nerve endings is being rewired as they speak. 

“Like me,” Jason says. "Being your type physically doesn’t mean anything long-term, and I don’t think I can do casual. Not with you.”

Which is just about the most insane shit Tim has ever heard, because he’s been doodling Tim and Jason Drake-Todd in the corner of his case notes for going on two years, and now the guy is looking at him with an expression like he’s really not sure if Tim wants him. Oh, does Tim want him. Tim wants to crawl into his skin and nestle in there and never come out again. 

“That’s stupid,” Tim blurts out. “You - are so fucking stupid.”

Jason’s expression crumples.

”We’re so fucking stupid,” Tim amends immediately. “Jason, I have a list of baby names picked out to run by you. What do you think about Carlyle.”

”We are not naming our baby Carlyle Todd-Drake,” Jason says, but his tone is relieved, and he’s smiling.

”Drake-Todd. It’s alphabetical.”

”I do not give one single fuck about the alphabet.”

Tim casts a meaningful glance at Jason’s bag, contents scattered across Tim’s kitchen table, which contains no fewer than three novels. “Categorically untrue.”

“Okay,” Jason says, sounding out of breath. “Okay. So we’re doing this.”

Tim laughs nervously. “Too late for that now, I think. We’re already doing something.”

“I don’t - “ Jason chews at his bottom lip. “You should know I’m not easy to stay with, I don’t - settle down well, and there’s a lot that’s fucked up - like, inside, and outside too, a lot of shit that didn’t heal right or came back wrong, and I just - just want to put that out there now, before you even say yes to any of this. I just want you to know - “

“I kissed Kon exactly once and then tried to clone his decaying corpse ninety-nine times,” Tim says. “The sticking around will not be a problem for me.”

Jason’s eyebrows raise to his hairline. “Hey?”

“It was a bad year.” He waves his hand in the air. “We don’t need to talk about Kon right now. Let’s go back to the part where you’re into me and then proceeded to not do anything about it for God knows how long.”

Jason is still staring at him. “Where did you keep the - did it work?” 

”Oh my god,” Tim says, “shut up about the cloning thing for two seconds.”

Jason does, but he says, “We’re revisiting this.”

"God, I’m not prepared, I hadn’t expected to initiate any of my plans to ask you out. We haven't - " Tim rambles, feeling a little lightheaded. "I should have prepared, I don't even have flowers, or, or - I haven’t even showered - “

"I think there's a dinner that's just about finished cooking," Jason says with a shit-eating grin.

A silence, forty-five seconds, while Tim’s brain takes a second to reboot from where Jason has systematically taken it offline. 

"…You planned this," Tim says, incredulous. 

"I thought maybe we could work some things out," Jason allows, still grinning. "You know. If you're looking into the mirror of Erised and seeing my dick."

"Come here," Tim says, "come here, you fucking idiot, you dickhead," and Jason lets out a soft oof as Tim throws himself bodily into Jason's lap, and then they're - 

And then they're kissing, a mess of clacking teeth and spit, vicious and desperate, and Jason makes a soft noise into Tim's open mouth and Tim wants to use every ounce of his detective skill to figure out how to make Jason make that noise again and again and again, until Jason pulls back for breath and says, "I'm not going anywhere, Tim, Jesus." He takes advantage of the split second it takes Tim to open his mouth for a reply to kiss him slowly, sweetly, chaste until he nips at Tim's lip and licks softly into his mouth. Like they have all the time in the world, like there's nowhere he would rather be than here, exploring Tim, getting to know his body. 

Tim startles, just the slightest bit, at the feel of ice-cold fingers tugging gently, questioningly, at the hem of his shirt. And he wants - God, does he want - but he also knows himself well enough to know that he needs to take a bit of time, get his head on straight, and go about this properly in a few weeks. Or a few days. …Or, like, a few hours is also fine. 

“Not without buying me dinner first,” Tim says, light and teasing. He draws Jason in for one final kiss before drawing away. His skin feels cold in the absence of Jason’s body pressed up against his. 

Jason cocks an eyebrow. “Will homemade dinner do?”

Tim pretends to consider it. “Depends on how good it is, I think.”

”Well, it’s a good thing I was taught by the best, then, if the stakes are this high,” Jason smiles, and then he gets up to plate the fettuccine alfredo with silverware Tim definitely did not own this morning. Tim stares after him for a moment, awestruck, before standing up and following him.