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Jason never gets sick.
In the years Jason and Tim have floated around each other after Jason's revival, Tim had never seen Jason so much as sneeze in his direction. He originally chocked it up to the Lazarus Pit's healing properties supercharging his immune system, letting Jason go by generally unscathed from what Tim could see. From Tim's understanding, one that he would soon learn was terribly flawed, nothing could get Jason sick anymore.
So, seeing Jason like this was something so genuinely baffling to Tim that he was sure that he was in an alternate universe somehow.
Tim was the one checking the trackers on the Batcomputer this time around, benched because of fractured ribs from the previous throwdown with the Penguin and his goons, wondering what the hell happened to Jason. He'd never went off the grid unexpectedly like this unless it was a super important mission, never so still and unmoving, but even then he'd tip off someone about what was happening---even if it was in vague as hell terms as to not compromise his Outlaws missions.
Tim stood there, staring at the computer, hoping to see any kind of movement but not seeing anything at all. It worried him, to be frank, seeing Jason's tracker unmoving and still. Normally, he could see Jason's slight pacing around in the safehouse; small little movements from the kitchen to his room and back again, sometimes multiple times a day. Jason's patterns always had movement and Tim knew as such from all the times he's stared at the tracking system lately. Little stalker, he could hear in his head. It oddly sounded like Jason's voice, but the worry still never went away.
The tracker had been absolutely still. Like Jason was dead. Tim rushed over as soon as the thought entered his head. It would be their luck that they lost him again after reuniting that the worry ate away at Tim.
Now, he's surprised that he could get through Jason's safe house security. Jason Todd wasn't known to make it easy for any of the other Bats to encroach on his space, needing a place to properly unwind without their oversight, but Tim managed to get through rather quickly. He makes himself known with a quick Robin call, listening out to hear Jason's call faint and weak, accentuated by sneezes and sniffles coming from Jason's room.
He opened the door, seeing Jason in a pile of blankets. There's a mountain of tissues in a plastic bag hung haphazardly on the post and empty tissue boxes cluttering his nightstand. "Whoa what the fuck?" Tim says, "Are you okay?"
Jason looked him square in the eye from that pile of blankets, squinting at him like he was seeing things. "Hey. How're you doing? Why the fuck are you here and how did you get in, Tim?" Jason says sarcastically, nose clogged up. Tim took in his surroundings rather quickly, noticing the general state of disarray everything was in, and a thought enters his head.
Jason had to have been unwell for everything to be like this. He's a genuinely tidy guy, all things considered, so for his safe house to look like a run down hospital room had to mean something wasn't right.
"Are you-" Tim prods, wondering if he's overstepping. But he had to know.
"Yeah." The this fucking sucks thought goes unsaid, but Tim could infer it from how unenthusiastically Jason answered him.
"Is it serious?"
"No, it's not serious, Tim. What the fuck are you thinking?" And that question is complicated really because--when Tim got here--he originally thought Jason was bleeding out half to death and he was too late to save him, so seeing him with the common cold of all things made him want to laugh at even thinking such a thing in hindsight.
They stood silently for a few minutes before Tim's thoughts about the situation came spilling out. "I thought this couldn't happen to you," Tim points out, "Ya know, Lazarus Pit goo revival and all that."
"Welp, I don't take regular dips in green revival goo like a certain old fart," Jason says, "So I got the super boost once immediately after being dipped like some fucked up Achilles but never again. So I'm not immune to illness. It just happens less often than normal people." And Tim supposed that made more sense than what he'd been thinking, to be honest. The reason Ra's was practically immortal wasn't because he took a dip in the green spa water once to be brought back to life and that's it like Jason had; he made it a habit to dip in just for shits and giggles every other Tuesday and made it the world's problem, so the basis of the knowledge Tim had was meant for superhuman levels of Lazarus Pit exposure.
Jason was a quick dip and never anything more than that after Talia got to him. There was no way that the situations were the same, now that Tim thought about it a little more.
"Have you eaten? Or even moved in the last 48 hours?"
"Nope. Body aches," Jason answers honestly, "I could eat though, honestly."
"Do you want takeout? I can go grab some Chinese food from the place across the street if you want."
"If you're paying, rich boy," Jason laughs, before quickly grabbing a tissue to wipe the snot very clearly running down his nose, "Im gonna take a nap in the meantime, Birdie."
"Okay," Tim replies. He's tapping at his phone, placing an order through a mobile app for pickup with all the food he knows Jason likes. Once Tim makes his way across the street to pickup the order, everything is alright.
He comes back quickly, setting the food out on the table and gently shaking Jason from his nap to let him know to go and eat, and it's comfortable. They're sitting at the small table eating
Jason looks up at him every so often, like he's pondering what to say. He's quiet about it, sure, but Tim already knows what Jason's thinking in that head of his. He just needs Jason to say it and get it over with.
"You shouldn't be here, Tim," Jason finally says, carefully slurping down some wonton soup. "If you go down, it's gonna take infinitely longer for you to get back up considering you have no fucking spleen."
"Don't worry about me, Todd," Tim replies, "I'll be fine. I'm benched for six weeks. Fractured ribs. I can get sick and get over it in the time it takes me to heal from the original wounds."
Jason looked at him with an incredulous look on his face, one Tim knows all too well. It's the look of Jason trying to tell him to stop being an idiot before he gets his ass kicked, one that he's had tested on him many different times before. The look of you're such a brilliant mind, Tim, but you're so dense and unwilling to care for yourself that it's baffling you're still alive. "You bozo," he says, "If you get sick with fractured ribs the healing might take longer from all the coughing you're gonna have to do to clear it. That mixed with the fact that you already don't have your spleen and your six weeks turns to twelve or longer, easily. Go home, Tim."
And Jason's got a point, but he's missing one crucial detail that blows a hole the size of Jupiter into his argument. "I'm already here, Jayce," Tim points out, "Without PPE or whatever the fuck you'd have me wear to make sure I don't get the common fucking cold. If I'm gonna get sick, I'll just stay here and wait it out with you since you'll already have the antibodies built up from recently having it. I don't mind since I've got a whole bunch of nothing to do other than monitor whether or not people are moving in the right direction alongside Barbara, something I can do on my phone easily." Tim turns to Jason, handing him a cup of water. "I'm not leaving you by yourself when you're not feeling good, you wouldn't do that if it were me or anyone else."
"You're too nice to me for your own good, replacement," Jason says candidly, shifting food around on his plate like he was thinking too hard about something.
"I know. But I genuinely don't care so you're gonna have to deal with me helping you out," Tim replies, "Sorry but not really."