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Jason’s never been up to date with the current lingo or internet memes. He didn’t have much access to the internet growing up, and then when Bruce took him in he was more interested in going out as Robin and acing his English papers. And then he was dead and being brought up by literal assassins for the formative years of his life.
And then he went directly into business— i.e. running a criminal empire that dealt with a lot more micro-managing and accounting than he thought possible.
So he’s “out of touch” as the kids say. He doesn’t get what Dick means when he says “Such crime. Very danger.” or when Stephanie says “Oh, worm?” or when Duke called him a “little German boy” last month when he was doing a raid.
At least Cass makes references to actual inside jokes instead of random memes.
Even Damian called Babs “chat” once.
But Tim is by far the worst of them all.
Tim is more chronically online then Babs, it seems. He keeps up to date with current events and random internet drama he likes to tell Jason about. He knows all the latest fashion trends— even if he doesn't wear them, and once spent thirty minutes trying to explain what a “Labubu” was, as well as the concept of blind boxes, to Jason who still doesn't really get it.
He's told Jason to “rizz me up” and called Jason a “Pog Champ” when Jason had taken down a group of thugs single handedly.
He keeps saying “bet” like it's supposed to mean something.
Tim is also, unfortunately, the bat Jason seems to end up working with the most.
Ever since Tim moved down to the marina they've had a lot more overlapping cases. Tim will bring him Thai or Indian and they'll spend the night in one of Jason's safe houses working out all the moving parts of a smuggling ring together.
He helped Tim build an IKEA couch just last month.
He's met Tim's boyfriend.
They are, loath for Jason to admit it, something like friends. Brothers. Whatever the fuck. He's actually (sort of, almost) fond of the little shit.
He just wishes said shit would say things he actually understands.
Take tonight for example.
They’d done a drug bust together, a shipment that came in at 3am needed to be nipped in the bud before it got a chance to take root. They’d located the goods but the [goons] hadn’t been too happy to see them. Jason was playing nice. He had his rubber bullets in the casing tonight and he wasn’t even doing head shots. Still though, Tim had finished up his half of the group and did an annoying back flip right onto the guy Jason was about to take down. He wraps his legs around the guy’s neck and hits him over the head hard enough to knock him out.
Jason fumes. “I had him,” he gripes and shoves his revolver back in its holster, “I didn’t need your help.”
Tim visibly rolls his eyes even with the mask on, making it a full body motion. “God forbid a girl do anything.”
What.
Tim moves over to check a crate before tapping his comm to alert Barbie that they’d secured the drugs.
“What does that mean?” Jason asks, but Tim just waves him off.
“Don’t worry, old man. We should get outta here before the police show.”
“I’m not old!” Jason yells after him as Tim pulls out his grapple and zips up and away.
He was barely three years older than Tim, he wasn’t old.
Whatever.
Jason kicks a guy in the head because he’s feeling petty and then dips when he hears the sirens in the distance.
He’s thinking it’s going to be a one off. Tim picks up a lot of things from various apps that he says for like a week and then seems to forget about when the next funny thing comes along. Jason thinks this will be like that. He won’t even need to bother with trying to figure out what Tim is trying to say because it simply won’t come up again.
Except.
Two nights later they’re at a stakeout Barbie had put them on and Tim has the largest can of Red Bull Jason thinks he’s ever seen.
Jason raises an eyebrow as Tim cracks it open and takes a deep drink from the can.
“I thought your poison was coffee,” he says, because he sees Tim with a large coffee cup more often than not.
Tim shrugs, “I’m more of an energy drink girly.” He punctuates this by taking another swig. “I’ll fuck up some Zesti also if given the chance.”
Jason stares. “What. What does that even mean?”
“Oh.” Tim sets down the drink and picks up some binoculars. “If you fuck something up it means, like, you’re super down with it. Like you’re gonna devour it, but dramatic.”
“No, I know—”
Tim shushes him, flapping a hand in his direction. “They’re here,” he hisses, and Jason pulls out his scope to look.
Whatever. It probably wasn’t important anyway.
A week later finds Tim laying upside down on Jason’s shitty couch. Even though Tim has an apartment. Boat. Whatever.
Jason is trying to get some accounting done, doing his best to ignore Tim as the younger boy sighs more and more dramatically.
He lasts a respectable hour.
Tim has evolved into saying, “Siiighhh...” out loud, so eventually Jason digs the heels of his hands into his eye socks and finds his center.
“What, Tim?” He asks, because he’s a good older brother he cares about his siblings and isn’t going to commit fratricide just because he’s trying to get some work done.
“Bruce found out I was dipping into the batarang budget again, and he took me off of inventory and assigned it to Duke even though I’m the best at it.”
Jason stares down at the swimming numbers on the screen before him before bodily turning to star at Tim. “Again?” He asks. “What happened— no, wait. Why are you embezzling from Bruce? Not that I don’t support you or whatever but you literally have your own money.”
Tim sighs again, loud and long. “It hits different,” he says. “I’m literally just a girl in the world, Jason. Can’t I have a little fun?”
Jason drags a hand down his face. “You know I don’t know what you mean when you say shit like that.”
Tim rolls his eyes. Brat.
“Why don’t you just get Duke in on it.
Tim somersaults off the couch and bounces to his feet. “You’re so smart, Jason. Who doesn’t want their own Batmobile?” What. “I gotta go talk to Duke. Later, Jace!”
Jason is staring intently at two separate cuts of beef. One is a better cut, more expensive but he’s sort of been craving a good steak lately. The other is cheaper and would probably be good in a stew or something. Which he could pull way more meals out of. Sighing he places the steak back.
“Why don’t you just get both?” Tim asks, he’d followed Jason to the store even after Jason had explicitly told him not to come.
“I don’t need both,” he tells Tim. Then: “Get off of the cart, idiot. You’re gonna make it tip over.”
Tim gets down from where he was standing at the end of the cart.
“Don’t you have the money for it?” Tim asks, and then starts reaching for his wallet.
Jason slaps Tim’s arm. “I don’t need your fucking charity you weasel. It’s called budgeting. Learn it.”
“Oh.” Tim shrugs and slides his wallet back away. “But if you buy this that means you won’t eat out, right? Isn’t that cheaper?”
Jason resists the urge to smack this stupid rich kid up the head. “Yes, making your own meals is cheaper than eating out. If you can afford the ingredients.” He doesn’t have time to get into a lecture right now, he has a business meeting in two hours.
“Yeah, exactly!” Tim sounds excited now. “By not going out you’re saving money! So you use that saved money to buy both meats you’re still technically in the green, and really, you didn’t spend any money on the meat. Bam. Budgeting.”
Jason stares at him. “What?” He asks, “what are you talking about?”
“It’s girl math,” Tim tells him, and slides the other cut of meat into the cart.
Jason honestly doesn’t have it in himself to argue any further so he ends up buying both packs of meat as well as some tic-tacs for Tim.
After that, Jason feels like maybe this has gone on long enough that he should actually learn what Tim is talking about. Apparently this “girl” thing was going to stick around.
So he went to his number one source of information.
“What?” Stephanie laughs at him. “He’s saying what?”
“He keeps saying girl!” Jason tells her, throwing up his hands. “I don’t know what it means. He’s a “Zesti girly” or he’s a girl in the world or something. Last week he said something about girl math?”
“Ohhhh,” Steph says, and laughs again, “The emphatical girl. The omnibus girl.”
Jason stares blankly at her.
She scrunches up her face. “Like, you don’t have to be an actual girl, it's just like. Sayings that include the word girl? Like you can tell anyone “go piss girl”, because that's just what you say. Or you can say “fuck it up white boy” even if they’re not a boy. But not if they’re not white, you feel me?”
No, in fact. Jason does not.
Steph rolls her eyes. “Just google girl memes or something, I don’t know. A Gen Z lexicon would do you wonders, zombie boy.”
Jason flips her off in way of thanks and then makes his way to the closest public library
Rogues should really start scheduling their breakouts. Instead of all breaking out at once so it’s a horrible cacophony of a mess. Dr Freeze is in Somerset, raving about his wife and the injustice. Poison Ivy is in Robinson park, ranting about pollution and global warming and is about five seconds from ripping Dr Freeze’s head off for throwing the temperatures out of wack and bringing harm to her babies. Nightwing and Damian and trying to keep the two of them apart while simultaneously bringing them both in.
Steph and Cass are in Old Gotham, having pulled the short end of the stick to deal with Mad Hatter and Condiment King. Batman is taking care of Two Face in Burnley which leaves Tim and Jason down in Tricorner trying to reign in Riddler before he can get too excited.
He’s got some sort of Saw Trap device that he’s strapped around their ankles, and Jason is trying to pry it off before it explodes on him. Tim is across the street, yelling insults at Riddler’s wordplay and trying his best to punch him in the face.
There’s a gaggle of Riddler goons and Jason doesn’t care enough to remember what they call themselves. They swarm around him, striking every time he gets distracted by the ominous beeping from the device on his leg. It’s getting annoying, trying to swat at them like flies. The rubber bullets he’s got are doing a good job at deterring them but for every one he takes down, three more seem to pop up.
Tim is yelling something at Riddler across the way and when Jason glances over he sees they’re fighting over some controller, hopefully the one to get this thing off his leg.
A goon gets a lucky hit in and he turns to deck them across the face, but then another one is hopping on his back, and two are grabbing his arms and he’s trying not to lose it because Bruce gets this constipated look in his eyes whenever Jason kills someone, especially if Red Hood is working with the bats.
“Red!” He calls, and doesn’t feel bad when he gets a goon in the face with a close range rubber bullet. “Could use a little assistance!”
“One! Sec!” Tim yells, and then Riddler is yelling about rules.
Jason manages to take down another five goons but then ten more pop out of the woodwork and the thing on his ankle starts beeping like crazy and he’s honestly a little concerned about it exploding. “Red!” He calls again.
“Be right there!”
Honestly.
A goon gets a taser in his ribs and he’s about three seconds from slitting throats. “Girl help!” He yells at Tim. Maybe that’ll get Tim to—
Red Robin flies in with a series of kicks. Pulling guys off of Red Hood and managing to disarm and remove the device on Jason’s ankle in about thirty seconds.
They manage to make quick work of the rest of the goons and when Jason risks a glance Riddler is slumped, unconscious, on the sidewalk. Wrists already zip tied together.
“Damn,” Jason says, “that got you to move.”
Tim doesn’t answer, he’s just staring at Jason with his mouth slightly open.
“You, uh, good?”
Tim closes his mouth for a moment, and then opens it if to speak before—
“Red Hood, Red Robin,” Batman barks from the comms, “report.”
Tim turns away, whatever he was about to say lost in the moment. “Riddler is taken care of, Arkham has been notified and is sending pickup. Where do you need us?”
And then they’re off again, splitting up to help take care of the remaining rogues.
It’s not until hours later when Jason is heading back for the night that he catches sight of Red Robin, perched next to a gargoyle looking out over the city.
When Jason lands on the roof behind him, Tim doesn’t even look up.
“You good, kid?” Jason asks as he sits, letting his legs dangle over the edge.
“Yeah,” says Tim, but still doesn’t look over at Jason.
Jason ruffles the kid’s hair. “You did good today. Thanks for the assist.”
Tim hums thoughtfully. “What you said, earlier. Could you say it again?”
Jason tries to think back. “What did I say? With Riddler?”
“Yeah,” Tim says, then hunches in on himself, “the, uh, the girl thing.”
“Huh?” Jason wracks his brain. “Oh! The ‘girl help’ thing? I asked Spoiler about the memes you kept saying. Thought if you were gonna keep sayin’ ‘em, I should learn what they actually mean.”
Tim breathes out, sitting as still as the gargoyle next to him.
“I mean, I don’t have to if it bothers you. But usually you move on from one thing to the next quicker, so I was just—”
“I think I’m a girl,” Tim says in a single rush of air.
He— she?— hunches her shoulders up, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Oh,” says Jason because he’s the worst big brother in the world, “Oh.”
“Is that... is that okay?” Tim risks a glance over to him.
“I— yes, Tim. Of course. Why wouldn’t it be— is that why you were— this doesn’t change anything. You’re still my, I mean, we’re still— I’m fucking this up.” He drags a hand down his face. “You should’ve told dickhead, he’s better at this stuff than me.”
“I was sorta testing it out,” Tim says, “see how I liked it. And then when you said— when said “girl help” I just... it felt good. Right.”
Jason throws an arm around Tim’s— his little sister’s— shoulders. “Jesus, kid. There’s easier ways to come out than with memes. Maybe I would’ve gotten it sooner.”
Tim shrugs, a smile playing on her lips. “You know they’re not really memes. I’m just quoting things. A meme is when something is reproduced and spread across—”
Jason covers her mouth with his hand. “Okay, alright. No internet history lesson right now. This is a nice moment, let's not ruin it.”
Tim licks his gloved hand and then makes a face at the taste so really, who lost there.
She leans against his side. “Thanks Jason,” she says, “low-key I was kinda freaking out about it. I didn’t know what the vibes were gonna be.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Jason tells her, and then gives her a noogie when she tries to explain.