Work Text:
Jason Todd never thought he'd become friends with Superboy-Prime.
But, Jason never thought about a lot of things. He never thought he'd die at fifteen. Never thought he'd claw his way out of a grave. Never thought the man who beat him to death with a crowbar would still be alive, still laughing, still wearing that goddamn purple suit.
But Superboy-Prime? That was something he'd never thought about.
The first time they actually talked, not the kind of screaming match that usually accompanies universe-level crises was an accident. Jason was running a drug bust in the Bowery, and reality did what reality occasionally does in Gotham: one second he was zip-tying a dealer to a dumpster, the next he was standing in an alley that looked familiar but wrong. The graffiti was different, the smell was different, even the rats looked confused.
And Superboy-Prime was sitting on a fire escape, looking just as lost as Jason felt.
"Great," Jason said, checking his guns. "Another crisis. What color is the sky turning this time?"
"There's no crisis," Superboy-Prime replied, his voice sounding bone-tired. "I'm just… stuck here."
"Where's here?"
"Earth-Prime. My Earth. And—" He gestured vaguely at the alley, at the city beyond. "Everything's wrong now. Everything's wrong."
They talked. Somehow. Jason had expected another fistfight, another round of "I'll kill all of you and make everything right again," but instead they just… talked. About death. About being replaced. About how the universe seemed to have a sick sense of humor, and the second chances it gave were less like chances and more like punishments.
"You know what the worst part is?" Superboy-Prime said bitterly. "Here, we're not even real. We're just characters. Comic book characters. There are stores that sell our stories for $3.99 an issue."
Jason laughed, because what else could you do? "That's the craziest thing I've heard all week, and I came back from the dead."
But it was true.
---
A month later, the gifts started.
Jason was in his Crime Alley safehouse one of them, because paranoia isn't a mental illness when people actually want to kill you—when the reinforced door received a knock. Not a kick, not an explosion, not the sound of Dick trying to pick the lock while cracking terrible puns. Just a knock.
He opened the door with a gun in each hand and found Superboy-Prime standing there, holding a plastic bag printed with cartoon bats.
"I brought you something," he said.
It was a comic book.
And not just any comic book. Jason's face was on the cover. Robin's face, specifically. His young Robin face, grinning wide, standing beside Batman in front of the Batmobile. The title read: "Batman #424: A Death in the Family—Part One."
Jason stared at it for a solid thirty seconds.
"What the fuck is this," he finally said.
"Yeah, right?" Superboy-Prime squeezed past him into the safehouse. "Worse, there are four parts, plus your earlier Robin stuff. I brought all of it."
Jason read them all that night. Every panel, every speech bubble, his entire life rendered in bright colors and sold to children for pocket change.
Probably not the best childhood memento.
The worst day of his life, packaged panel by panel on glossy paper, with toy advertisements printed in the margins.
He threw up twice.
Two weeks later, by way of compensation, a second gift arrived: a Red Hood action figure. Twelve inches tall, with a removable helmet and dual pistols. The packaging proudly proclaimed: "With Real Bullet Sound Effects!" And also, to make it up to him, Superboy-Prime had bought all of the Red Hood and the Outlaws issues.
"I had to order this from Twitter," Superboy-Prime explained, setting it on Jason's coffee table like it was the most normal thing in the world. "Shipping took forever. Some guy called @RealDCFan2010 wanted $85, but I haggled him down to $60."
"You ordered my action figure. From Twitter. From a guy called RealDCFan2010."
"Yeah. He also had a Nightwing one, but I figured you wouldn't want that."
"Yep."
But Jason kept it. Put it on a shelf next to his guns and spare magazines. Sometimes, late at night, he'd look at it and wonder what kind of world thought merchandising trauma was appropriate.
The gifts kept coming. More comics. Entire story arcs, apparently, because his life was just that entertaining to people who didn't have to live it. A Red Hood hoodie ("It's officially licensed!"). A Batman mug that changed from cowled Bruce to Bruce Wayne when you poured hot coffee into it ("I thought… you might like this, you know, because… yeah."). And then, strangest of all, something called a faton.
"Fatson," Superboy-Prime corrected, pulling the round, red-hooded figure out of a bag like he was presenting a treasure. "It's like a meme version of you. Round and chubby, red hood. People think it's cute."
Jason held the plush toy—this roly-poly little thing, an exaggerated version of himself—and felt a tingle in his chest. Not anger, which is what he'd expected, but something else. Something uncomfortably close to amusement.
"I'm a meme," he said flatly.
"A popular meme!"
"I hate everything."
But he kept the fatson, placed it next to the action figure. Sometimes, coming back from patrol bloodied and bruised and furious, he'd see that stupid red ball on his shelf and he'd smile. Just a little. Just enough.
Three months in, their strange friendship established, the phone came.
"Okay, this one's actually useful," Superboy-Prime said, handing him a sleek smartphone in a reinforced case. "It connects to Earth-Prime's internet. You can check news, watch videos, look yourself up—"
"Why would I look myself up?"
"Trust me, you'll want to." Superboy-Prime grinned, and there was a hint of mania in it that reminded Jason why this kid once punched reality apart. "Just… maybe don't look at everything. Some of it's weird."
Jason took the phone, turned it over in his hands. "This thing isn't going to explode, or track me, or—"
"It's just a phone, Jason. An expensive, dimension-barrier-crossing phone, but still just a phone."
"That's exactly what a stalker would say."
"You're so paranoid."
"You literally punched through the fabric of reality because you didn't like how your comic ended."
"That was different."
"Was it really?"
But Jason kept the phone. That night, alone in his safehouse, beer in hand, surrounded by his growing collection of interdimensional merchandise, he turned it on.
The internet loaded instantly. Impossibly fast. Jason stared at the search bar, cursor blinking, and typed his own name.
Jason Todd
Results loaded in 0.43 seconds. About 2,840,000 results.
"Two million," Jason muttered.
He clicked the first link.
Jason Todd
Wiki
Jason Todd is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in Batman #357 (March 1983), created by Gerry Conway and Don Newton. Jason Todd is the second character to assume the role of Robin, Batman's vigilante partner…
Fictional character.
Those two words sat in Jason's stomach like lead.
He kept scrolling.
There were wikis. Multiple wikis. Dedicated to documenting his every appearance, every story arc, every costume change. There were forums where people debated whether Bruce should have saved him or let him stay dead. There were YouTube videos analyzing his "character development" like it was a goddamn TV show.
And then there were the fans.
Jason had known, abstractly, that comics had fans. People read, appreciated, discussed. But seeing it firsthand—thousands of posts, millions of words, countless hours of discussion—was something else entirely.
Some of it was great. Actually, far beyond "great."
A digital artist called @RedHoodRising drew him in a style that was both beautiful and gritty. Their latest piece showed Jason standing on a Gotham rooftop, rain pouring down, helmet tucked under his arm, looking out over the city with something like hope in his eyes. The caption read: "He came back for this city. For these people."
1,247 likes. 389 reblogs. The comments were full of people agreeing, defending him, understanding why he did what he did.
Jason stared at that picture for twenty minutes.
A writer called @GothamKnight89 had written a long essay analyzing Jason's Robin years, talking about the joy he brought to Bruce, the love the city had for him, and how people only focusing on his death instead of his life was a tragedy. The essay had 5,000 likes.
“jaybin was like sunshine," one reblog read. "He was the joy Bruce needed. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
There were cosplayers dressed as him—Robin and Red Hood both—teenagers and adults in his colors, wearing his symbols, holding prop guns and crowbars, smiling at cameras.
One cosplayer wrote: "Jason Todd saved my life. When I was at my lowest, his story reminded me that you can come back from anything. You don't have to be what other people want you to be. It's okay to be angry, it's okay to be traumatized, and you can still be a hero even when you're broken."
Jason saved that link.
There was fan art of him patrolling with Dick, grinning like brothers, as if they'd never had years of bad blood between them. Art of him with Roy Harper, Artemis, Bizarro—looking happy, looking whole.
Art of him surviving the warehouse. Of him beating the Joker. Of him living.
And then there was other stuff.
Superboy-Prime called it "shipping." Apparently, people liked to imagine romantic relationships between characters. Pairing them based on chemistry, aesthetics, or sometimes just because they thought it was funny. After all, one website made it look like he was in an incestuous relationship with his entire family.
Jason scrolled through pictures of him kissing Dick (weird, since they were brothers), kissing Roy (okay, he could see that one, Roy was attractive, shut up), kissing Tim (absolutely not), kissing Barbara (she would kill him). Kissing—
Kissing Superboy-Prime.
Jason stopped scrolling.
The art was… well, it was good. Technically proficient. The artist had captured Superboy-Prime's face with startling accuracy, and Jason's too, masks off, foreheads pressed together, the light soft and intimate.
The caption read: "enemies to lovers anyone? 🥺❤️"
243 comments. People discussing their "chemistry," their "narrative parallels," and how they were "literally made for each other."
Jason closed the app.
Opened it again.
Closed it again.
"No," he said to the empty safehouse. "Not touching that today. Absolutely not."
But his traitorous brain reminded him that he had been spending a lot of time with Superboy-Prime lately. That maybe the artist had seen something—
"No," Jason said louder this time. "Absolutely not. We're friends. Weird, interdimensional, trauma-bonded friends, and that's it."
He took a long swig of beer.
Opened another tab.
---
That's when he found it.
The post was titled: Let's Talk About Jason's Birth Parents: A Deep Dive
By: @BatmanTruther, posted 3 weeks ago. 2,547 likes.
Jason's finger hovered over the post. Every instinct honed on Gotham's streets told him not to click. Posts with "Let's Talk About," "Deep Dive," or any combination of analytical language and emphatic capitalization were never good news.
He clicked anyway.
Don't be fooled—Jason's favorite parent was never Bruce, it was Sheila!
Listen, I know this fandom loves to pretend Bruce Wayne is Father of the Year, and Jason Todd is his precious baby boy, or has Gotham's biggest daddy complex, just loves painfully or whatever, but let's face facts. Jason spent his entire Robin tenure searching for his birth mother. He risked everything to see Sheila. He gave up his safety for her, gave up Batman's warnings, gave up everything.
And what does this fandom do? They act like Sheila doesn't matter. Like she was just a plot device. But Jason LOVED her. It was her approval he wanted, her love, not Bruce's.
You know what that tells us? Jason never truly bonded with Bruce. He was always looking for his "real" family. Bruce was just a stand-in for him. A meal ticket.
And after he came back? He tried to kill Bruce. Multiple times. Because he never truly loved him. It was always about Sheila, about the family he actually wanted.
Honestly, Bruce should never have adopted him in the first place. Jason was obviously always going to be an ungrateful little—
The post went on. And on. Paragraphs upon paragraphs psychoanalyzing Jason based on out-of-context comic panels, out-of-context quotes, and twisted interpretations of everything he'd ever done, all to prove that he was fundamentally a terrible person who had been manipulating Bruce for years and never actually cared about him.
The comments were worse.
@GothamGirl2024: Thank you for saying this! Everyone treats Jason like a tragic figure but he literally tried to MURDER his adoptive father! That's not trauma, that's psychopathy.
@BatfamCritical: Bruce gave him everything and Jason threw it back in his face. Some people are just born bad, I guess 🤷♀️
@RobinDefender: I've been saying this for years. Jason was never fit to be Robin. Dick was loyal, Tim earned it, Damian is Bruce's actual son. Jason was just a lucky street rat.
@CrimeStalker: Honestly the Joker did Gotham a favor. Think about it—if Jason had survived, what would his eventual mental breakdown have looked like? He would've become a villain anyway. At least this way Bruce got sons who actually love him.
And on and on. 2,500 comments. Some defending him, some pushing back, but the overwhelming majority—God, the overwhelming majority—agreeing. Calling him ungrateful, calling him unhinged, saying Bruce made a mistake, saying Sheila was the parent he truly wanted, saying everything he'd done since coming back proved he never loved Bruce at all.
Jason read every comment.
Five minutes later, Jason Todd hated two things with crystalline clarity: the fact that he had eyes and curiosity.
He sat in his safehouse, phone in hand, beer forgotten on the table, trying to remember the last time he'd thought about Sheila Haywood.
Not often. The answer was: rarely. Very rarely.
When he thought "mother," he thought of Catherine. Catherine's gentle voice, gentle hands, the scent of papaya and vanilla even when the drugs made her shake. How she'd sing to him when the fighting upstairs got too loud. How she told him he was wonderful, he was smart, he could be anything he wanted to be.
Catherine, who tried. Who loved him with an addict's broken love—desperate, painful, never enough, but always everything she had.
When he thought "parent," he thought of Bruce. Bruce, who found him stealing the Batmobile's tires and instead of pressing charges, took him for burgers. Bruce, who taught him how to fight, how to think, how to be more than Crime Alley's cold statistics. Bruce, who made him Robin, who let him fly over Gotham's nights, who looked at an angry, feral street kid and saw potential.
Bruce, who held his broken body in that warehouse and wept.
When he thought "father," sometimes he thought of Willis. Willis before the drugs and the rage—the Willis who taught him how to hotwire cars and pick locks, who told him Todds always survive, always come back, no matter what.
Sheila Haywood—
A blur. A ghost. A woman he'd known for a total of three hours before she sold him out to a psychopath for drug money.
He'd wanted to find his birth mother. That part was true. What kid doesn't want to know where they come from? But wanting to know someone and loving someone are two different things. He'd just been curious. He was fifteen and naive and hopeful the way all children are before the world grinds it out of them.
He'd thought, maybe, maybe she'd have answers. Maybe she'd explain why she'd given him up. Maybe she'd be proud of what he'd become.
Instead, she'd betrayed him and handed him over to the Joker.
And here was the thing—the thing those people online didn't understand, couldn't understand, because they weren't him and never would be—he didn't blame her. Not really. She'd been desperate, trapped between the Joker and her own survival. He understood that. He'd been desperate too.
But he didn't love her.
He'd never loved her.
You can't love someone you don't know, and he didn't know Sheila Haywood. Not really. He knew her DNA, that he had her cheekbones and her mistakes, her temper.
The post was wrong. The comments were wrong. But Jason couldn't argue back, couldn't explain to 2,500 strangers who thought reading a comic made them experts on his life.
And the worst part—the absolute worst part—was the whisper in the back of his mind: But what if they're right? What if you never really loved Bruce? What if everything you did proves you're just a—
"No," Jason said aloud. "No, fuck that, fuck that, fuck—"
But he couldn't finish because his throat was tight and his eyes burned and he was not going to cry over a goddamn Tumblr post by someone who probably lived in their mom's basement.
He wasn't.
He wasn't.
---
That night, Jason went on patrol.
He hit harder than usual. Not hard enough to kill. He had his code, most of the time now. But hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to make the dealers, smugglers, and street thugs think twice before they got back up.
"Jesus Christ," one of the dealers gasped, spitting blood. "What's wrong with you? PMS or something?"
Jason punched him again for misogyny.
Then zip-tied him to a lamppost and moved on.
The night blurred. Gotham's rooftops, Gotham's alleys, Gotham's endless parade of scum that needed cleaning up. He worked until the blood on his knuckles seeped through his gloves, until a knife got too close and nicked his ribs, until the sun started painting the eastern sky.
And then, instead of going back to his safehouse, he went home.
Wayne Manor looked the same as always. Stately. Grand. Warm light filtering from inside, almost cozy if you didn't know better.
Jason landed on the grounds and slipped in using his old access code—because Bruce never changed it, never locked him out, no matter how many times Jason told him he should.
Alfred was in the kitchen, because he was always in the kitchen at dawn, preparing breakfast with a precision that made cooking look like martial arts practice.
"Master Jason," he said without looking up from the eggs he was whisking. "You're early. And bleeding."
"It's not my blood."
"You always say that."
"This time it's true."
"Whose blood is it?"
"Some dealer's. Maybe two dealers'. I wasn't keeping track."
Alfred sighed, the kind of sigh that came from a man who had raised multiple vigilantes and was long past being surprised by anything. "Master Bruce is in the cave. He's been expecting you."
"I didn't call ahead."
"You never do. He knew anyway."
Jason found Bruce where Alfred said he'd be: in the Batcave, still cowled, analyzing something on the main computer's screen. He looked tired. But then, Bruce always looked tired.
"Jason," he said without turning around. "You're early."
"Yeah." Jason pulled off his helmet, running a hand through sweat-damp hair. "I need to talk to you."
That got Bruce's attention. He turned, and even with the cowl on, Jason could see the set of his jaw.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Are you in trouble?"
"Maybe? I don't—this is stupid." "This is really stupid and I shouldn't be bothering you with it, but—"
Jason pulled out the phone.
Bruce read the post. All of it. Jason watched his face, which looked like his features were being squeezed together.
"Jason," Bruce said quietly, setting down the phone. "Look at me."
Jason looked.
Bruce raised a hand and pulled down his cowl.
"Do you remember what I said to you the day I adopted you?" Bruce asked.
Jason swallowed hard. "I just remember you said—you said you wanted to make it official."
"Do you remember what you said?"
"I said—" Jason's voice caught. "I said you didn't have to. That I was happy just being Robin."
"And I said that wasn't enough. That you deserved everything I could give you, including my name." Bruce leaned forward, and it was the look Jason only ever saw when Bruce was being Batman. "You are my son. Not because I needed a Robin. Not because I wanted to save you from the streets. Not because I needed to assuage my guilt over my parents. You are my son because I chose you and you chose me, and that's what family means."
"But the post said—"
"I don't care what the post said." "I don't care what 2,500 strangers on the internet think they know about our relationship based on comic book panels." Bruce's hand was suddenly on Jason's shoulder, heavy. "You wanted to find your birth mother. Of course you did. Any child would. But that doesn't mean you didn't love me—it just means I didn't handle our relationship well enough at the time. And it doesn't mean what we have isn't real."
"But I tried to kill you," Jason said, and he hated how small his voice sounded. "When I came back, I—"
"You were traumatized." Bruce's jaw tightened. "And I should have done better. I should have found you sooner, should have explained, should have done a thousand things differently."
"I'm not—I'm not trying to make you feel guilty."
"I know." "But parents feel guilty regardless." Bruce pulled him closer, and Jason let himself be pulled. "You can be angry at me. You can even hate me sometimes. But that doesn't mean you don't love me. Relationships—families—are complicated. Messy. They're not neat stories where everyone always does the right thing and always feels the right way."
Jason managed a laugh. "You sound like you're reading from a psychology textbook."
"I actually took parenting classes when I adopted you. Did you know that?"
"You're joking."
"I'm not. The social worker insisted. She said I needed to understand childhood trauma and attachment theory." The corner of Bruce's mouth twitched upward, almost a smile. "I failed the first exam. I argued with the instructor about whether vigilantism was an appropriate coping mechanism."
"Oh my God."
"Alfred made me retake it." "I passed the second time, though only because I didn't tell them you were already Robin."
Jason was actually laughing now, laughing until tears pricked his eyes. "You're a terrible father."
"I know."
"But I love you anyway."
"I know."
They sat like that for a while—Jason leaning against Bruce's chair, Bruce's hand still on his shoulder, the hum of the Batcave filling the silence.
Finally, Jason spoke:
"You can't even imagine. Someone wrote a fifty-thousand-word fanfic about me and Superboy-Prime falling in love."
Bruce was silent for a long moment. "You and Superboy-Prime—you know I wouldn't care—"
"No. God, of course not, we're friends. Weird friends."
"If you were, I wouldn't judge."
"I'm not."
"I just want to say, if you can forgive him after everything he's done, if you can build a friendship with him, that says something about your…"
"Bruce."
"What?"
"Stop." Jason was starting to blush.
Another pause. Then Bruce said: "Jason, I don't need anything from you in return. You know that, right? You're not a Wayne Foundation investment. I'm not expecting returns. You're my child. I've loved you since the moment you handed me a tire iron and told me the Batmobile's security system was garbage."
"I said the tires were garbage."
"My point stands." Bruce swiveled his chair—thankfully it was oiled since last time, not like that time Red Hood tried to do a villain-turn and it jammed.
Batman faced Jason directly. "I just regret not adopting you sooner. I regret ever making you feel like you weren't my son."
Jason wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "When did you… when did you start loving me? Actually loving me, not the 'here's a kid who needs help' kind of love, but…"
Bruce didn't hesitate. "The moment you snatched that tire from my hands. You were so small, so angry, so alive. You looked at me like I was just another obstacle in your path to survival, and I thought, this kid has more courage in his pinky finger than most people have in their entire body. Then you ran like a rabbit and I chased you, and you led me through Crime Alley on this insane chase like every corner belonged to you." He smiled—soft, sad. "I was afraid you'd get hurt. Afraid I'd lose you before I even got to know you. That's when I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That you were already mine. I just needed to convince you of it."
Jason had to look away. Had to focus on the stalactites in the cave, the computer screens, the glass cases with old costumes—anything but Bruce's face, because if he looked at Bruce he was going to completely fall apart.
"So," he said finally, after a while. "Those people online. They're full of shit?"
"Completely."
"And I'm not an ungrateful psychopath?"
"You're one of the most loyal people I've ever known. Too loyal, actually. That's why you can't forgive yourself for dying."
"I didn't—that's not—" Jason stopped, started again. "You know what, I'm not touching that piece of psychoanalysis."
"Perhaps wise."
"I'm going upstairs to eat Alfred's food and pretend this conversation never happened."
---
Jason was eating his second plate of Alfred's eggs when Bruce emerged from the cave in civilian clothes and joined him at the table.
"So," Bruce said, pouring himself coffee. "I should tell you something."
"If it's more feelings, I'm out."
"It's not. Not directly." Bruce sipped his coffee. "You remember last month? When several media outlets suddenly ran coordinated hit pieces on Justice League members?"
"The Superman-and-Wonder-Woman affair thing? Yeah, that was obviously bullshit. Why?"
"We traced it back to LexCorp. Luthor's been running an organized disinformation campaign, trying to undermine public trust in the League."
"Shocking. Lex Luthor is still despicable. What else is new?"
"It's how he's doing it. Clark finally got clearance to raid one of Luthor's black sites yesterday."
"And?"
"They found five hundred monkeys."
Jason stopped mid-bite. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Monkeys. Actual monkeys. Macaques, specifically. Luthor has been training them to type."
"You're joking."
"I'm not. They're in a warehouse in Metropolis, each one seated at a computer terminal, programmed to generate social media posts. Fake accounts, inflammatory comments, coordinated harassment campaigns." Bruce pulled out his phone and showed Jason a photo: rows upon rows of monkeys, all wearing tiny headphones, tapping away at keyboards. "Clark is calling them the 'troll monkeys.'" "Each monkey generates approximately one hundred comments per minute."
Jason stared at the photo. At the monkeys. At their tiny hands on keyboards.
"So what you're telling me," he said slowly, "is that the post I read last night—the one with 2,500 comments calling me an ungrateful bastard who never loved you—might have been written by Luthor's monkey army from a parallel universe."
"It's certainly possible."
"Because you're friends with Superman."
"Because I'm friends with Superman, and Luthor is petty enough to think attacking my family will hurt Clark."
Jason laughed. He couldn't help it. He laughed until his stomach hurt, until Alfred came out of the kitchen to check if he was choking, until Bruce was laughing too.
"I was upset," Jason gasped, "because of a post written by monkeys."
"Possibly multiple monkeys. It was likely a collaborative effort."
"A monkey told me I don't love you."
"And you believed it."
"Well, when you put it that way—" Jason dissolved into laughter again.
Jason took a deep breath, wiped the tears away, and looked at Bruce. "So what happened to the monkeys?"
"Clark is working on finding them a sanctuary. Somewhere they can live freely without being exploited for corporate disinformation." Bruce's expression softened. "They're innocent in all this." "Just being used by a man who can't accept that being rich doesn't make him important."
"Can we keep one?"
"No."
"Why not? We could train it to fight crime. Bat-Monkey. It'd be amazing."
"We're not getting a monkey, Jason."
"But think about how much it would annoy Damian."
"That's not a good reason to adopt a monkey."
"That's the best reason to adopt a monkey."
Alfred cleared his throat. "If I may suggest a compromise. Perhaps Master Jason could volunteer at the sanctuary once the monkeys are relocated. This would allow him to expend energy while ensuring no primates enter the Manor."
Jason considered. "Can I teach them to throw batarangs?"
"Absolutely not," Bruce and Alfred said in unison.
"Fine." "But if one of them figures it out on their own, that's not on me."
---
He opened his phone and sent Superboy-Prime a message:
Jason: Did you know Luthor has a monkey army?
Clark: What?
Jason: Long story. Also, some of your internet people think we should kiss.
Clark: I know.
Clark: I haven't looked at that tag in weeks.
Clark: Why were you looking?
Jason: Curiosity killed the cat.
Clark: Did you see the 50k slow-burn enemies-to-lovers fic?
Jason: WHAT?!
Clark: Oh no.
Jason: How long?!
Clark: Don't read it!
Jason: I'm definitely going to read it, aren't I?
Clark: Jason, DON'T!
Three hours later, Jason finished the entire fanfic. All fifty thousand words. It was actually good—he'd give it that. The author had clearly done their research, nailed his voice, and made the relationship almost plausible through a series of increasingly dramatic encounters involving multiple universe-ending crises and one very detailed scene where—
No. He wasn't going to think about that.
He sent another message:
Jason: That was the most disturbing and well-crafted thing I've ever read.
Clark: I told you not to read it!
Jason: You know what the worst part is?
Clark: You can't unread it?
Jason: They made you the little spoon.
Clark: I'm blocking you.
Jason: I'm three inches taller than you, babe.
Clark: I'm blocking you right now.
Jason: But you won't.
Jason: Because then who would you give all those weird merch items to?
Jason: I know you ordered the fatson keychain too.
Clark: I hate you.
Jason: No you don't.
Clark: …No, I don't.
Clark: But I'm NOT the little spoon.