Chapter Text
For the rest of the week, Jason came back to the library each day, on schedule. She was always there, reading, or typing or (once) sketching what looked like a very accurate picture of Jason sprawling on one of the library chairs. She put that away quickly.
It quickly became a favorite source of gossip for the librarians in the break room as they rebound and catalogued. Jason had been coming to this library for a while, and they were all very fond of him.
For his part, Jason liked y/n. She was the nerdiest nerd he’d ever met. He got her started once on this Sherlock show she liked, and she didn’t stop for what felt like an hour. (He went home and watched it after patrol. He loved it. Not that she had to know.)
He always came in and sat down next to her, just talking. Jason hadn’t talked like that in, well, forever. With the bats, it was always about work, or some deep emotional baggage. Nothing could ever be simple with them. With Roy, and the Outsiders, it was always so dark . Like they’d seen so much in their lives they just needed to get it out. And that was great. It was. Sometimes, though, all that Jason wanted was to be his closet nerd self.
But that first day should have been enough. To talk, converse with a random stranger, a stranger who didn’t even swear, was NOT a Jason Todd thing. In fact, he kept waiting for the day it turned out she was a secret serial killer or something. At this point, nothing would surprise him. So he watched closely. He even did a background check (a nagging voice in his head said Exactly what Bruce would want you to do; you swore you’d never make someone feel like they had no privacy like Bruce, didn’t you? ) but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. That was the weirdest part. Every Gothamite had done something illegal. Heck, Jason knew literal 90 year olds who robbed their local convenience store.
By the next Thursday, Jason was convinced she must deal drugs on the side, because there was no way in the horrible pit of a world Jason lived in that she was this pure .
He had come to the library like normal. The established routine was for him to be there at 8, on the dot, and for her to scurry off at nine. Normal.
That day he'd brought coffee for the two of them. She'd actually gone ahead and gotten hot chocolate, so he figured he should return the favor. It was the only reason, he swore. No other motives at all. It wasn't like they were friends, or anything. It was that Jason thought she must be a drug dealer on the side and wanted to gain her trust. Obviously.
She was there, perched in a chair, typing furiously on a small laptop decorated with stickers from various shows. All around her were stacks of books, new ones, suggesting she’d been there all day. She looked cozy, head nodding along to some song pumping through headphones.
Jason settled into a chair next to her. She didn’t notice. Slowly, slowly enough that Bruce would have been proud, his hand creeped out. It hovered right next to her laptop, but she kept typing like her life depended on it. Click clack click clack clickity click clack click- Then Jason stuck, slamming her laptop screen down.
“..What?” Finally her head lifted and Jason chuckled. Her gaze settled on him and she gave him a death stare. “Hey! I was on a roll!”
“Sorry, but your face… That was priceless!” He kept laughing as her eyes narrowed.
“Well.” she grumbled. “Not like I’m getting much done now. What did you want?”
He eyed her laptop curiously. “What were you writing?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“That sure didn’t look like nothing. It was a flippin’ 47 pages long.”
“It’s… just an assignment for my Creative Writing class.”
".....ok, if you say so, shortstack."
"I'm not that short. I mean, I'm five foot. That's not… ok, so maybe I'm short, but you Mr. Six Foot Giant are just jealous."
"You do know I've seen you jump for the books on the really high shelves, right?"
Her eyebrow raised. "The you must be aware I've seen you struggle to sit on the little kiddy chairs."
"Touche. I've brought coffee."
"Er… I don't drink coffee, thanks though."
And that was it. The world stopped, the planets spiraled out of orbit, and Bruce finally smiled. It was the end.
"You don't… drink…. coffee."
"Nope. Thanks though, it was nice of you."
"Wait, you're serious? You don't drink coffee? How are you alive?"
She looked at him hard. "I'm not. College ate my soul long ago."
"But… I mean… how do you stay awake?"
"Chocolate. It's the duct tape of food. It fixes everything. "
"But…" Jason's mind tried to wrap around the fact that coffee was not, in fact, necessary to stay alive. He didn't drink it like Tim drank it, true, but the absence of it was unthinkable. "But why?"
"Caffeine. It can be addicting, you know. I try to avoid it."
Jason's internal gears slowed to a screeching halt.
"No caffeine? So no… tea? Or pop?"
"Basically, yeah. Hey, you ok? You look a little pale. "
Jason just looked at her, lost. She must be a drug dealer. Thats how she dealt with the absence of caffeine. By getting high.
"Nope, no drugs, only hugs."
Oh. He'd said it outloud.
“Jason? Jason? You there?”
“I- yeah, sorry. One question- what do you do when a guy asks for you out for coffee?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Bold of you to assume that someone would actually ask me out.”
His brow furrowed. “Who wouldn’t? You’re a motherfu-”
“ Jason .”
“I was trying to compliment you, jeez. Anyway, you’re the weirdest girl I’ve ever met, and you have these crazy strange stories, and you’re obsessed with this niche stuff, and-”
“These are supposed to be compliments.” She stated.
“Ok, good point, but what I was trying to say is that you are a wonderful person and there’s no way someone hasn’t asked you out by know.”
“Are you trying to ask me out?”
“No! No, no, no, no no. I don’t.. Like you that way.”
“Good, ‘cause I don’t either. Things would get awkward real fast. Jason, what are you getting at?”
“I-”
“Wait.” She held out a hand, and fished out a pen and a notecard from her backpack. She quickly scribbled something on the card, and held it out for him.
“My number. So you will stop being so awkward about it. Honestly, how do you even get dates?”
He bit back his answer of I only act the way I do around you.
“Anyway, I gotta get going.”
“Do you need-”
That’s when he looked closer at the books. They were seperated in piles, with sticky notes on them. And on every sticky note, along with a note, was written Jason .
“What the he- heck is this?”
“I was going to recommend a book to you, and then I saw something else I thought you’d like, and then, well… yeah. Kinda went down a rabbit hole.” she said sheepishly.
“Oh.” He wasn’t blushing. He wasn’t blushing . “I’ll just take a picture, then. And-”
His phone started to blare and they both jumped. He grabbed it, stared at the notification, and paled.
“Hey, look, I’ll be right back, K?”
He didn’t stick around to hear her answer, but rather sprinted away. It couldn’t be. They couldn’t have found him. He’d done nothing to garner-
“Little Wing!”
Shoot.
Dick peeked around the bookshelf and engulfed him in a hug. His arms snaked around like an octopus, trapping Jason in an inescapable cage.
“What the he-heck Dick? What are you doing?”
His brother released him- small mercies - and stared straight into his eyes. “I was lonely, and I haven’t seen you in forever. Who was that girl by the way?”
“Do you have a tracker on me or- no, you probably do. Stupid Bats.” He grumbled. “And you don’t need to know.”
“Oooooooh Jason’s got a girlfriend!”
“Jason’s got a girlfriend?” Oh no. The Replacement peered around the corner, holding some thick nonfiction book in his hands. “I knew he couldn’t have come to the library simply to read.”
“Wooooah. Now that’s insulting.” He stalked over to the Pretender and lifted the book out of his hands. “What are you reading, any way? Forensics in the 20th century? Nope. Come on, let’s go find something you’ll like. Maybe the Dr. Who novelizations.”
He persued the shelves, pulling out the sought after book, and then another, and then another. He might hate the kid, but that’s no excuse to neglect his reading choices.Pretender looked confused, but interested. Good.
That’s when he realized-
They’d left Dick behind.
______________________
“Why hello there.”
You lifted your head up, to see a young man, tall and lithe staring down at you with a sharp grin.
“Let’s talk about your involvement with Jason.”