While we're on the topic of De-aging AU's I wanna talk about Jason and Damian if Jason was 14 again real quick.
Do you guys think that Damian looks at this version of Jason, so different from the version he knows, nothing like the person he was told Jason was, and feels uncomfortably seen?
Damian was always told that Jason died because he was reckless, because he disobeyed orders, he was fired as Robin and he got himself killed. A cautionary tale, not a threat to his position. He dismisses Jason because Bruce does, because Dick does, because sometimes even Babs and Alfred do.
That's not the kid that he's looking at now. This Jason is happy, and smart, and full of love that has not yet soured into grief. He hangs on Bruce's every word, trains until his hands bleed and his body gives out to perfect the moves Bruce teaches him. He looks at Bruce with stars in his eyes and he calls him dad.
And Damian can't help but think, that this is the perfect Robin. The perfect son. And if Jason - sweet, loving, strong, Jason - can be fired, can die and have his room locked away and his pictures torn down, can have his last memory as Robin be as A Good Soldier, how could the rest of them ever compete? What could Damian do to stand a chance?
Jason will never grow out of the shadow of Robin, like the rest of them did. As long as Bruce, and Dick, and Babs, and Alfred look at him and see a dead kid who came back wrong, he will never get to be anything else. He will not get to be looked at through who he is now without the shadow of a dead boy looming over him.
And the worst part? Jason is exactly the same person he was back then. Bitter, sure, angry, justifiably, but he is still the boy with too much love in his heart and righteous fury festering in his gut. He is exactly the same boy who threw himself in front of an explosion to save his mother.
(The lines between the mother that betrayed him and the father that disgraced him are so very blurred. Fire or blade or crowbars or fists it does not matter. It ends the same way it always does because Jason Todd always dies, in every universe, in every timeline, Jason dies and crawls out only to be killed again and again and again.)
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for @thefreakandthehair (and @vecnuthy and @wormdebut while we’re at it) because sometimes you help a baseball player through French class so they can stay on the team and then they end up on the Savannah bananas and you decide to put the fictional men into situations about it *shrugs*
Eddie was going to have to transfer out of this class. This was one of his easiest classes and it was filled with every jock on campus attempting to fill their foreign language requirement with French.
And they were all failing. And annoying. And obnoxious.
And a few of them were also hot.
But Eddie wasn’t gonna focus on that!
He was gonna finish today’s assignment and then head straight to the advising office to find another class that worked with his work schedule.
“Hey,” the guy next to him whispered as the teacher droned on about conjugating verbs. “Do you have any idea what the fuck the homework was?”
Eddie turned to glare at the person, but his face dropped when he noticed who it was.
The campus celebrity: Steve Harrington.
Couldn’t quite make it on the college baseball team, but managed to make the sort-of professional, but mostly joke team Hawkins Hooligans.
Eddie didn’t like sports, never had. He could appreciate that it took skill and whatnot, but he didn’t care much to watch it or make celebrities of people who were just really good at one very specific thing usually involving some kind of ball. But he could appreciate a joke. And this team had jokes.
Steve was actually apparently good enough to play pro, had even been scouted by the MLB his senior year of high school. One week before his professional tryout, he tore a muscle in his shoulder, had to sit for three months and had to do physical therapy for another three, and voila! No pro ball for him. No college either since he missed spring training.
But he still had skill, and he still had a father with a lot of pull in the business, even if it wasn’t quite enough to get him on the Yankees or whatever.
So he was biding his time on the Hooligans until next year when he could try out for the college team again, maybe increase his chances of a real pro career.
Eddie definitely hadn’t watched videos of him during their first few games of the season where they faced the Indy Idols and the Chicago Charades.
He definitely hadn’t gotten a weird flutter in his stomach when Steve had been the one to lip sync to Hot For Teacher while pretending his bat was a guitar.
He definitely didn’t have a crush on Steve.
“Uh. Dude?” Steve asked him again, shaking him out of his thoughts.
“Yeah. It was the study guide for the first quiz. Not due until next class though,” he whispered back.
“Oh. Thanks.”
Eddie turned his attention back to the professor, not really needing to pay attention since he already knew quite a bit of French.
A tap on his shoulder made him yelp, and the entire room turned to him. He waved apologetically before turning to Steve with a murderous look.
“What?” He hissed out.
“Do you understand this?”
“Yes and you probably would too if you stopped talking to me.”
Eddie was ignoring the voice in his head screaming at him to let Steve keep talking to him for as long as he wanted.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Steve huffed before sitting back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest. He mumbled something else that sounded like ‘I’m just stupid’ but Eddie couldn’t be 100% sure.
“A lot of this stuff is just English spelled a little differently.” Eddie sighed. “You could almost definitely figure it out if you took some notes.”
“Yeah, probably.”
Eddie’s brows scrunched together as he glanced at Steve’s red face.
Hm. There was definitely something to unpack here.
“You can borrow mine if you want,” Eddie offered as he watched the professor switch slides on the presentation. “I don’t really need them until the final.”
“Oh!” Steve sounded genuinely surprised by his offer, like he hadn’t been basically asking for help only a moment ago. “You don’t have to do that. I mean, it wouldn’t do much good for me anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Steve had Eddie’s full attention now.
“I’m. I-“ Steve sighed. “I’m dyslexic, man. Reading’s hard for me.”
Well, fuck. Eddie felt like an asshole now.
“Oh.” Eddie looked down at his scribbled notes, cringing at the thought of someone else trying to read them, let alone someone who already struggled with reading from a printed page. “Yeah, my handwriting is shit so it’d probably be useless to you. Shit, it’s almost useless to me.”
Steve snorted, immediately covering his mouth to avoid any more noise from escaping. Eddie could see he was still smiling though. His eyes were very expressive.
“Don’t you have accommodations?” Eddie asked him.
“Nah, my dad doesn’t believe it’s a problem.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Said I just need to focus more and it’ll ‘work itself out.’”
“He sounds like he’s a lot of fun at parties.”
Steve snorted again. “Yeah, a blast.”
“So you aren’t a natural at French?”
Steve shook his head. “I’m barely a natural at English.”
“I could help you?” Eddie was an idiot. An idiot with a crush on someone who would never be interested in anything he had to offer except tutoring.
“Help me? You’d help me?” Steve seemed eager, maybe a little desperate.
Eddie kinda liked that.
“I mean, yeah. If you’re actually willing to put in the work and not expect me to just do the work for you.”
Steve smiled. God, that was a nice smile. Eddie was absolutely fucked.
“I work well with a reward system,” he smirked. “If you’re willing.”
Eddie’s eyes widened momentarily as the realization sunk in that he’d just been flirted with.
By Steve Harrington.
“Oh, I can definitely work with that.”
Steve nodded once, grinned at Eddie as he picked up his pen and ripped off a small piece of his unused notebook paper. He scribbled something down and folded it once before handing it to Eddie.
“Let me know when I need to show up, Eds.”
Eddie unfolded the paper and nearly dropped it.
Stevie H. 555-555-0086 My dorm at 7? No clothes required
When Eddie looked back up, Steve was facing the front, seemingly paying attention to the lecture.
Eddie quickly pulled his phone from his pocket and put Steve’s contact info in. He could wait until after class to send him a text. He could.
Instead, he typed out something quick to hold them both over until later.
Studying naked is my favorite thing 😉
Steve’s knee nudged against his in response.
Maybe Eddie wouldn’t take that trip to advising after all.
And if he was featured on the next TikTok for the Hawkins Hooligans, with Steve fake serenading him in the stands, nobody had to know he didn’t really like sports.
He liked Steve, though. Even when Steve actually managed to play real competitive baseball. Even when Steve managed to get a spot on the Cubs.
Especially when Steve proposed to him during a game in maybe the worst recorded French of all time.
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