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Jason Todd is used to a lot of things.
He’s used to people running from him, yeah. Big guy. Red Hood. Gun. Reasonable.
But what he is not used to is a random guy on the streets of Gotham taking one look at him, turning white as a sheet, and immediately bolting to the nearest dumpster just to violently hurl like Jason’s face personally insulted the sanctity of his stomach lining.
Jason blinks.
He looks down at himself.
Leather jacket? Check. Helmet under one arm? Check. Gun holstered? Double check. Face? Still classically traumatized but not worse than usual.
“…the hell?”
He glances back at the gyy, who’s still hunched over the blue metal dumpster behind the bagel shop, dry heaving and muttering something that sounds suspiciously like “Oh my Ancients he’s hel—why is that legal?!”
Jason frowns. Mildly offended.
“I don’t look that bad,” he mumbles, scowling as he approaches. “Hey, man, you good? What’s your damage?”
He steps forward and claps a hand on the guy’s shoulder.
That’s his first mistake.
Because in exactly one point five seconds, the stranger whirls around, and—
His hand phases through Jason’s chest.
Jason opens his mouth to say “What the—” but then the screaming starts.
Not from the guy.
From him.
Because something inside him—something fundamental—SNAPS.
Like a bone that’s been out of place for years just got shoved back in with the gentleness of a toddler playing with Legos.
Jason Todd blacks out with the very dignified sound of,
“AUGHBLEHHHHHHHHHH—”
_
Danny Fenton has had it with Gotham.
He’s only been here twenty minutes and he’s already found two haunted alleyways, a demonic pigeon cult (they had matching robes), and a guy who is literally walking around with a fractured core like it’s nobody’s business.
He didn’t even mean to look at the guy. He just happened to glance over and BAM—
Soul. Shattered. Like a Fabergé egg that got drop-kicked by a baby elephant.
Danny immediately retched.
It’s not his fault! His ecto-senses are overclocked. Gotham is a nightmare! This city is like if the Infinite Realms got drunk and tried to design a SimCity level with all the security filters off.
He tried to walk it off. He really did.
But then the undead guy—some beefy biker dude in leather and guns—touched him.
And Danny?
Danny reacted on pure instinct.
Whoops. Hand in chest.
He didn’t mean to repair the guy’s half-possessed soul.
He just… put the ghost back where it belonged!
Like ghost duct tape. But, like. With more screaming.
“Oops,” Danny says blankly, looking down at the now unconscious man on the sidewalk. “I fixed your soul?”
The guy does not respond. The guy is currently unconscious. Possibly astral projecting.
Danny winces.
_
Jason wakes up in a panic.
He sits up, gasping, hands clutching at his chest like something important is missing—and then realizes it’s not missing, it’s just... not wrong anymore.
The Pit’s gone quiet.
No bubbling rage. No whispers. No background noise of kill, maim, destroy.
“...what the actual fresh hell.”
A guy is crouching in front of him. Young. Black hair. Wearing a hoodie with a suspicious green glow. Looking very sheepish.
“Heyyy,” the stranger says. “So like. Um. You might feel a little different. Don’t panic.”
Jason immediately panics.
He grabs the front of the guy's hoodie and yanks him forward.
“What. Did. You. DO.”
He raises both hands. “I fixed your soul!”
“WHAT?!”
“It was crunchy! You were walking around like someone duct taped you back in with rage magic! I just popped it back in place!”
Jason stares. “You just ‘popped’ my SOUL back?!”
“I mean… yeah?”
Jason screams again
A pigeon from the cult across the street coos sympathetically.
For a full seven heartbeats, Jason thinks he’s in hell.
Then he realises he can actually breathe.
It’s stupid, small, mundane — like the first time you notice your hands aren’t numb after holding ice too long — and it knocks the wind out of him because he’s been living with the numb for so long that feeling feels like a trick. He tests it anyway, fingers finding the place under his ribs that used to buzz with the perfect, precise itch of violence.
Jason presses harder. Nothing. Just muscle, bone, breath. No Lazarus hum, no sick push of green fury lurking like a second heartbeat.
He laughs. Or maybe he sobs. It’s hard to tell. It comes out ugly, ragged, a sound that makes the kid in front of him flinch like he’s about to get punched.
Jason doesn’t punch him. Jason doesn’t even know if he can. His hands are shaking too bad.
“You—” He tries to point but ends up making a vague stabbing motion at hoodie-boy’s chest. “You don’t just—fix people’s souls on the street!”
The kid frowns. “Would you rather I didn’t?”
“Yes! No! I don’t—fuck, man, I don’t know!” Jason buries both hands in his hair, tugging until it hurts. “I’ve been living like that for years, and you just—what? You saw me and thought, oh, guess I’ll patch this guy up like a flat tire?!”
“Uh.” The kid scratches his neck. “It was more of an accident. But that's pretty much it.”
Jason stares at him. He can’t even muster rage—the pit’s silence is so absolute that it feels like standing in a cathedral after the choir’s gone home. Empty. Sacred. Terrifying.
He swallows. “What’s your name.”
“Danny.”
“Danny what.”
Danny hesitates. “…Danny don’t-worry-about-it.”
Jason narrows his eyes. “That better not be your legal last name.”
“Depends on the state,” Danny mutters.
Jason lets out another sound—half laugh, half groan. He tips his head back against the dumpster and closes his eyes. He should drag this kid to the Batcave. He should call B, or Dick, or someone who knows how to deal with whatever-the-hell-just-happened.
But the truth hits him like a bullet in slow motion:
He doesn’t want to share this.
For the first time since crawling out of his grave, his chest is his own. No chorus. No bloodlust. Just Jason.
And he’s not ready to let the Bats poke at it. Not yet.
Jason opens his eyes again. Danny’s still crouched there, chewing his lip like a nervous intern who just realized he formatted the boss’s hard drive.
“You’re coming with me,” Jason says, finally.
Danny blinks. “Uh. No thanks? I don’t do kidnappings.”
Jason grabs him by the hoodie again and hauls him up. His grin is feral, unhinged, free.
“Too bad. You broke me, you bought me.”
Danny splutters. “That’s not how that works!”
“Welcome to Gotham,” Jason says, shoving him toward his bike. “That’s exactly how it works.”
_
Danny did the most logical thing any reasonable person would do when manhandled by an armed biker who’d just screamed himself back to life.
He bolted.
Danny yanks his hoodie free of grabby biker hands, mutters something that might’ve been “sorry-sorry-sorry,” and books it down the alley like his life (death?) depends on it. (Which, honestly? It might.)
He doesn’t go ghost. Too flashy. He just runs, sneakers slapping wet pavement, lungs burning even though he doesn’t technically need them to. He’s good at this—bolting after causing chaos was basically his extracurricular back in Amity Park.
But this guy—this giant leather-clad undead problem child—apparently didn’t get the memo.
Because the second Danny risks a glance over his shoulder, there he is.
Helmet under one arm. Gun at his hip. Murdery expression locked on like Danny’s a wayward puppy instead of a human disaster who just accidentally restructured a soul.
“Oh come on,” Danny groans, cutting left at a stack of trash bags. “Why are you fast?! You’re not supposed to be fast!”
“Kid!” the biker bellows, pounding after him with way too much stamina for someone who was literally unconscious sixty seconds ago. “Get your ass back here!”
“Nope!” Danny yells, vaulting a chain-link fence like he’s late for gym class. “Nopenopenope!”
He hears the metallic clang behind him as the guy doesn’t even climb the fence—just tears through it like the Kool-Aid Man.
Danny shrieks. “That is illegal! Property damage is a crime, officer!”
“I’m not a cop!” the biker snarls.
“Oh Ancients, you’re worse!” Danny huffs, dodging past a shopping cart and bolting toward the streetlights at the end of the alley.
For one shining second, Danny thinks he’s lost him. He bursts out onto the sidewalk, bends double to gasp, and mutters, “Okay. Okay. Just blend in. Be normal. Pretend you didn’t accidentally soul-duct-tape Gotham’s angriest biker—”
A large hand clamps down on his shoulder.
Danny squeaks.
“Gotcha,” the biker says.
Danny glares up at him, eyes glowing faintly green. “This is harassment.”
The guy just grins, all teeth and too much relief. “Kid, you have no idea what you just did for me. You’re not getting away that easy.”
Danny, deadpan: “Great.”
_
Jason’s not letting go.
The kid’s wiry, squirmy, quick on his feet—he almost got away twice before Jason managed to pin him proper—but Jason’s bigger. Stronger. And now that the pit is quiet, his body feels… different. Lighter. Like moving through air instead of mud.
So when Danny twists in his grip again, Jason just growls low in his throat, hooks an arm around his waist, and hauls him flush against his side.
“Quit fighting,” Jason snaps. “You’ll just tire yourself out.”
Danny kicks his shin. Hard. Jason doesn’t even flinch.
“Dude!” Danny yells, glaring up at him, green glow catching in his eyes like some kind of radioactive alley cat. “I am not going home with the scary biker who kept chasing me across the city!!”
Jason bares his teeth in something that isn’t quite a smile. “Yeah? Too bad.”
Danny tries to wriggle free, but Jason just tightens his arm, steering them toward his bike parked by the curb. He swings a leg over with practiced ease, then shifts Danny forward until the teen's planted right between his thighs on the seat.
It’s ridiculous—Danny’s almost grown, maybe just a couple years shy of Jason himself, but he’s compact, lighter, like trying to wrangle a particularly mouthy crow.
Jason cages him in with one arm on the bars and the other braced around his middle, close enough that Danny can’t slip away. He feels the sharp intake of breath when Jason’s chest presses flush against his back.
“See?” Jason rumbles near his ear. “Fits just fine.”
Danny sputters, twisting his neck to glare at him over his shoulder. “I am not a lapdog! You can’t just—just stick me on your murder bike!”
Jason huffs a laugh. It feels alien in his chest, a warm punch of amusement instead of pit-burn. “Relax, Spooks. Not gonna hurt you.”
Danny goes rigid, then mutters, “That’s what all kidnappers say.”
Jason kicks the bike into gear, the engine growling to life beneath them. He leans down, helmet dangling from one hand, close enough for his voice to cut through the noise like a promise:
“I’m not kidnapping you. I’m just keeping you.”
Danny’s head snaps up at that, eyes wide, mouth open with another protest—but the roar of the engine swallows it whole as Jason guns the throttle and peels into Gotham’s streets, holding Danny steady between his arms like something too fragile—and too important—to ever let go.
_
Danny is panicking.
Like, full-on, heart-in-his-throat, “oh Ancients I’m going to end up on the evening news” panicking.
Because he’s trapped between Gotham’s angriest biker’s legs on a murder motorcycle, the guy is driving like he owns the streets, and every time Danny shifts like he might wriggle free, an arm bands tighter across his middle like nope, stay, mine.
Danny’s not an idiot. He knows what this is.
Well. Okay. He knows mostly what this is. He’s got theories. Ghost science, Amity Park Special™, thank you very much.
See, when the biker grabbed him earlier, Danny had shoved his hand straight through the guy’s chest and accidentally fixed his core. That kind of metaphysical emergency surgery? Not subtle. Not temporary. That’s a bonding event.
Danny groans, slumping against the handlebars. “Oh no. Oh no no no no no.”
“What?” The guy's voice rumbles against his back, half amusement, half gravel. “You seasick?”
“No!” Danny blurts, ears going hot. “You—you’re ducking me!”
The guy blinks audibly. “...what the hell does that mean?”
Danny twists enough to glare at him over his shoulder, words tumbling out too fast. “It’s ghost science, okay?! When you repair someone’s core, they—uh—they imprint! Like a baby duck! You wake up all shiny and whole, and your instincts go, ‘hey, that one, that’s the one that fixed me, better glue myself to them forever or I’ll die!’”
The apparent Baby Duck™ squints. “…are you calling me a duckling?”
“Yes!” Danny says, then immediately shakes his head. “No! Maybe? Ugh, Ancients, you’re gonna be clingy, aren’t you?”
The guy just smirks, leaning forward until Danny feels the weight of him, solid and smug. “Dude, I’m already clingy. Get used to it.”
Danny makes a noise halfway between a whine and a growl. “This is so not in my job description.”
He chuckles low, the sound vibrating through Danny’s spine. “Good thing you don’t get a choice.”