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Jason was suddenly pulled into the conscious world by the incessant sound of his phone having what could only be described as a seizure on the nightstand. The thing buzzed, clattered, and practically tried to crawl off the wood with how hard it was vibrating.
Jason groaned, dragging the pillow over his head. If that’s the end of the world, it can wait till noon, he thought.
The buzzing did not stop.
His voice was muffled in the pillow as he let out a frustrated growl.
“God damn it.” He flung an arm out and snagged the phone, squinting against the glow of the screen. Immediately his phone alerted him to an explosion of notifications. Thousands of them from a combination of app mentions, missed calls, and group chats exploding like fireworks across the screen.
Gotham had apparently decided to collectively lose its mind overnight.
Jason, being a responsible adult, ignored all of this and scrolled straight to Roy’s texts. Of course Roy would be up at some ungodly hour. The man had a daughter, a full-time hero gig, and still somehow managed to doomscroll more than any insomniac teenager.
Sure enough, Roy had the goods.
Roy: bro you’ve gotta see this
Roy: [YouTube link]
On the thumbnail was Tim’s face. Jason stared at it and sighed. “Right, because that’s always a good sign.” he muttered under his breath.
He tapped. The link led to a shaky clip from some random local news channel.
The video opened on Timothy Drake-Wayne standing in the Wayne Enterprises parking lot, the harsh yellow of a security floodlight painting him haggard. His tie was crooked, his shoulders slumped in the universal posture of corporate drone who just survived twelve hours in a conference room. Jason recognized the look, from first hand recounting.
A reporter shoved a mic directly under Tim’s chin. “Mr. Drake-Wayne! Can I get your comment on the recent allegations made by reporter Vicki Vale about your adopted father’s secret long-term homosexual relationship?”
Jason groaned. “Oh, it’s one of those.”
He understood.
Brucie Wayne was Gotham’s most infamous playboy. He had been tabloid fodder from the first day he could buy a yacht, which also happened to be the day he was born.
When you paraded that many scantily clad women through your penthouse, it was only a matter of time before the public would start to wonder if maybe a few men had slipped through the revolving door too.
So really Jason did understand. Honestly, it had always just amused his kids—knowing that Bruce, the most uptight, starched-collar, painfully straight-laced man alive—was being painted as Gotham’s greatest closeted Casanova by the media.
Jason was already reaching to swipe out of the video when he froze.
Because a calculating look suddenly flicked in and out of Tim’s eyes.
It was gone in an instant, long before someone that didn't know Tim personally could identify it.
But Jason did personally know Tim. He knew him well enough to be aware that Tim had all of his absolute worst– or best according to who you asked– ideas when he was at his most sleep deprived and under duress. Kind of like how he looked in the video he was currently watching.
A feeling of foreboding washed over Jason.
And just like that it started. Tim’s eyes shimmered suspiciously wet in clear view of the camera. His chin trembled ever so slightly. His entire face shifted into the perfect picture of tragic sincerity.
Jason shivered at how uncanny it was before, narrowing his eyes. “What are you scheming this time, you manipulative little brat?”
“I–,” Tim said, voice cracking with practiced fragility. “I thought this might happen one day. We all knew it was inevitable, you see…”
The reporter practically levitated with excitement. Seemingly having expected a generic reply like “no comment,” they lunged forward with a flurry of questions at Tim’s cryptic, emotional words.
“What exactly do you mean by that, Mr. Drake-Wayne!? Is this you confirming the allegations?”
At that, Tim’s brow furrowed deeply. His lips parted, and he tilted his gaze just slightly upward, letting the streetlight catch his cheekbones in the most cinematic way possible. He looked like a teen actor playing Hamlet in a school production.
Jason slapped a hand over his face. He’s doing a bit. The little psycho’s doing a bit on live TV.
“W-well,” Tim began, stammering just enough to sound authentic, “as long as all of me and my siblings have known him, Bruce has always had a very… special relationship with… someone that he sponsors. We all thought–
My siblings and I thought he just couldn’t bring himself to talk about it in public. With how complicated everything was.”
The reporter startled, nearly fumbling the mic. “I’m sorry, what exactly are you implying—”
Jason groaned as the naïve reporter played right into the palms of the brat’s permanently coffee-stained hands.
Tim raised said hands, palms out, in an almost diplomatic gesture, the picture of a young man who had really didn’t want to do this but felt duty bound to do it anyways.
A true martyr for the greater good. Jason thought sarcastically to himself. He had no idea how anyone believed a word that came out of that shady kid’s mouth.
“Look,” Tim said, voice low and heavy with faux gravity, “Bruce doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s complicated. I think the truth is that it just… hurts him too much. All the secrets and lies can be stressful.”
Jason’s jaw unhinged. What the hell was Tim talking about? ‘Hurts him too much?’ Did Tim want to be grounded for the rest of his life? What exactly was his end goal here?
The reporter, now practically vibrating with adrenaline, launched into a flurry of questions about Bruce’s extensive, documented history as Gotham’s most notorious playboy. “How could he be in a long-term relationship with anyone if there’s a literal public record of all his past… exploits?”
Tim waved the reporter off with the air of someone dismissing a waiter who brought the wrong wine. “The Wayne kids have always known ‘Brucie Wayne’ was just a show put on for the cameras. He acts so differently at home. You know he never even slept with most of those women? It was just a performance– a distraction really. So no one would dig deeper and see the real him hidden underneath…”
Jason let out a startled laugh. He had a hard time believing his eyes and ears right now. All the crazy things Tim was saying and implying were going to get him into so much trouble with Bruce later.
Not to mention with that last mysterious comment he basically just killed ‘Brucie Wayne’ for good.
Tim had always thought the ‘Brucie Wayne’ persona was ridiculous. ‘Transparent, and painfully easy to see through’ in his own words. His proof? If he had seen through it at the age of nine, then surely anyone could. Whenever he argued this with Bruce, trying to convince him to change it, Bruce would just scowl and dismiss him. Tim was, as Bruce put it, a “special case.” Changing the public persona now, Bruce insisted, would be far too suspicious.
Apparently, Tim had finally decided to just change it for him.
The old man was going to have a coronary.
Many aspects of this video were starting to seem suspicious now. There was no way this was just a random lucky reporter. In fact, Jason wouldn’t have been surprised if Tim had pre-planned this entire encounter down to the very minute it would start. This poor reporter had just been the lucky fool chosen to be the initiator of his plan.
“...the one only his most secretive, and trusted friend gets to see.
The reporter nearly fell over himself to ask the next questions, seemingly finally realizing he just got the biggest scoop of the year.
“Wait—wait, are you really implying Bruce Wayne is romantically involved with— with Batman!?”
God, he only just picked up on that? This must be why Tim selected this specific reporter. He clearly wasn’t the brightest. He wouldn’t sense something was suspicious about this random bombshell parking lot interview with a reclusive celebrity, previously proven for being incredibly tight lipped.
Tim tilted his head, face shifting again into a pitiful child caught between two divorced parents fighting in the kitchen expression. His lips trembled just enough to sell the heartbreak.
“All I'll say is… this is a sensitive topic for Bruce. Things are very complicated in his personal life right now. He would appreciate some privacy as he figures out… what to do from here on—”
Jason slammed his phone face-down on the table. He told himself he had seen enough for today.
Which was, of course, a filthy lie, because not even a full second later he was picking the cursed device back up again.
He opened Twitter.
And yep. The internet was already a raging bonfire of speculation and memes. Hashtags stacked on top of each other like dominos:
#BrucieWayne,
#TheGayKnightRises,
#BatWayne,
#DoubleLifeCoupleGoals
…and most horrifyingly of all… #BatDaddy, were all trending.
Jason stared in horror. The first thing under “#BrucieWayne” was a wedding picture.
Someone had photoshopped Bruce Wayne in a tux and Batman in full cowl, both holding a bouquet between them, smiling tenderly at each other. And the worst part? The quality was incredible. The shadows and lighting matched perfectly. Anyone could believe it was real if it wasn’t so completely and utterly absurd.
Jason blinked at the upload timestamp. Tim’s little disaster interview had dropped about seven hours ago, just before midnight. Meaning someone had stayed up all night to craft this monstrosity.
“Don’t these people ever sleep?” Jason grumbled.
He sat there for a long moment, staring into the endless abyss that was the internet.
Then, suddenly, clarity hit him like a divine ordnance.
Tim had been just vague enough, had left enough unanswered questions in his insinuations, that Jason could say anything right now, and it would have to be treated as the honest, irrefutable truth.
There was only one thing left for him to do.
Jason silently thanked his past self for spending months doing paperwork to resurrect himself as legally alive again, despite all the headaches that came with it. Because deep down, he had known.
He had known there would come a moment like this.
He wondered, for a brief truly horrifying moment, if this might even be the real reason that God, or Satan, or whoever had brought him back to life.
Was this his calling?
Was this exact moment why he had been put back on this earth all those years ago?
Jason opened up the posting tab. His thumbs hovered consideringly for only a heartbeat over the phone screen before he started typing to his over 10 million followers.
@DeadJayWalking: Still can’t believe Batman cheated on Bruce with Superman. messy af.
#WeLoveYouOldMan #StayStrong #SelfCare #PrayingForYourHealth
Then he hit send.
With a satisfied grin, Jason silenced his phone, and threw it back onto the nightstand with little remorse. Then, he simply rolled over, and settled his head gently back onto the pillow. Determined to get at least one more hour of sleep before he had to get up again.
Outside. Gotham burned.