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Superboy has existed for about six months at best (five months, two weeks, and six days, but who's creepily spying on their fellow heroes and vigilantes? not Tim, for sure) and was created in a lab full of extremely niche genetic experiments whose creators very rarely bothered making any of look human or even particularly human-adjacent, which is probably why he has some weird ideas about certain social norms.
Tim assumes that's why the guy just decided to drop a very annoyed Catwoman on him out of nowhere, anyway.
"The fuck?" he says, though through his vocoder it comes out more like the incoherent screeching of the damned. That being, well, the whole purpose of the vocoder and all. Superboy grins down at him from the nighttime sky all bright and sunny and weirdly adorable, for being both a lab-grown weapon and a guy built like a brick house who is technically capable of disassembling Tim down to his individual atoms with, like, one little tap and about two seconds' worth of thought.
Not that Tim has been creepily spying on anyone or said anyone's Cadmus files, again.
Also Superboy might not even know he can do that yet, so it's probably not a smart thing to mention right now.
Or maybe just . . . ever, considering.
"Hey, man!" Superboy greets cheerfully. "She was breaking into that big museum a couple blocks over, figured you'd care about that. As opposed to, like, breaking into some rich asshole with insurance's penthouse. Figured you would not have cared about that."
"The museum also has insurance, for the record," Selina informs him sourly as she makes an art of getting off her unceremoniously roof-dumped ass and adjusting her crooked goggles while looking like being on this roof was her idea to begin with. Because, well: Selina. "And has not properly sourced any of the artifacts in their new Bast exhibit.”
I know, that's why I was on my way to the museum to keep an eye out for you, is what Tim does not say, since Robin is supposed to be a splintered aspect of a mysterious all-knowing city spirit given “human” form and not just, like, a really dedicated normal teenager surviving on semi-legal energy drinks and conspiracy-board detective work and the occasional occult ritual to summon the Batman.
What he does do is jerkily cock his head and say, "Preyyyyy?", and let his vocoder horribly mangle the word into a sound usually best described as "unholy avian screeching". Superboy beams, which is not a normal reaction to hearing Robin's voice. Selina just rolls her eyes, but Selina of course knows about the whole "really dedicated normal teenager surviving on semi-legal energy drinks and conspiracy-board detective work and the occasional occult ritual to summon the Batman" thing.
Like she's never summoned the Batman for anything, geez. Or "Bruce", as an eight year-old Dick Grayson had once upon a time decided to randomly dub him. Tim still can't call the eternal and unsleeping eldritch protector of their city that without feeling like he's going to spontaneously combust, but it is in fact a thing that the Batman will answer to.
Might as well call Pennyworth "Alfie", though.
Jason was even worse at names than Dick, Tim is pretty sure.
"Yeah!" Superboy says, sounding still more cheerful and floating down the rest of the way to the roof to land lightly in front of Tim. Selina eyes him in a way that would end very badly for anyone who was not functionally invulnerable. "I mean, she seems cool and all but I dunno, figured the Bat wasn't big on Cats in his territory. And also the criming. Definitely also the criming.”
"How . . . find Robin?" Tim asks. Superboy doesn't have enhanced senses or X-ray vision, as far as he knows, and Gotham’s old-school and dubiously-safe architecture is full of lead anyway, so . . .
"Oh, I've been stalking you," Superboy explains. Tim blinks behind his unblinking mask and feels several ways about that statement. "That's what you Bats all do when you're interested in somebody, right? So I figured you'd like it if I did it back."
. . . Tim feels several ways about that statement.
"Uh," he says. It comes out a discordant twittering that Superboy seems to take as encouragement, from the way he brightens.
"I got you something else too," he says eagerly, jamming a hand into his jacket pocket and then pulling something shiny out of it and holding it out in offering. Tim takes it on reflex, which is a stupid reflex, but Superboy just looks so excitedly hopeful that he does it without thinking.
It's a crystal-clear and faceted rock with an unmistakably heart-like shape to it, and it sparkles brightly in the smoggy Gotham moonlight. It's not a particularly big rock, but it'd be a pretty damn big gemstone.
Which Tim is noting because if he didn't know better, he'd think Superboy had just handed him a perfectly flawless fifty-carat diamond. But that would be insane, because a diamond this size and quality would be worth a good five million dollars, if not significantly more, and–
"I made it," Superboy says, his face turning a little pinker than the cold night air up here should account for with a half-Kryptonian, even one whose full powerset allegedly isn't in yet. "Like, I mean, I sat in a volcano and crushed some carbon and cut it with my TTK so it'd look nice and then–I just thought maybe you'd like that kind of thing? Maybe? Birds like shiny stuff, right? And like, you're kind of . . . bird-ish, right?”
. . . okay then, Tim thinks as he stares blankly at the custom-cut, custom-crafted diamond in his clawed gauntlet, then glances at Selina, who is no longer annoyed and is now visibly repressing laughter.
He has absolutely no idea how he feels about this situation.
"Ishhhhh," he says, then sort of just . . . disappears five million dollars of "shiny stuff" into the tattered folds of his cape and inside his hidden utility belt, because Superboy seems really invested in him liking it and also he apparently literally made it, which Tim is just . . . gonna need a moment about, maybe.
Superboy's only existed for five months, two weeks, and six days. Exactly how long does it take to learn how to telekinetically cut a diamond? Much less one this flawless? Like . . . percentage-wise, how much of his life so far did Superboy just spend on learning how to make him a fifty-carat heart-shaped diamond? Just . . . mathematically-speaking and all.
Tim really doesn't know how he feels about this situation, no.
Superboy grins, which is cheaty bullshit. Tim, unfortunately, knows exactly how he feels about that grin.
"You like it?" Superboy asks excitedly, leaning in way too close, and Tim immediately panics while Selina is too busy cackling to save him from himself, absolute asshole that she is.
"Shinyyyyy," Tim intones raspily, cursing his whole stupid life, and Superboy beams at him.
"Cool!" he says. Tim suffers.
"You know, usually jewelry is a more traditional gift than loose stones," Selina mentions slyly, and Tim suffers even worse and hisses sourly at her.
"Oh, uh, you don't have to wear it or anything," Superboy says, looking flustered. "I just thought maybe you could use it to decorate your nest or something? Or, uh–if that's not weird, I mean, I don't know what kind of things you actually keep in your nest, obviously. I mean, I don't even know if you have a nest, I kinda just assumed you would–"
"Nessssst?" Tim repeats blankly, feeling increasingly mortified. Selina is back to cackling. He doesn't have a nest. He's a normal human teenager with cameras and skateboards and barely any occult nonsense at all in his bedroom, which is not a nest!
Not that Superboy has any way to know any of that, but still.
"Um, yeah?" Superboy says, jamming his hands back into his pockets and turning pink again. "Just if you like it, I mean. Obviously. Um. I didn't know, like . . . what kind of stuff you nest with or what you, uh, eat or whatever, or I would've gotten you something a little more useful, but . . . I don't know, I just thought maybe you'd like it? Like, more than flowers or whatever, you know?"
Tim is a very prepared person. That's how he keeps up with rogues and metahumans and aliens and demigods. He has contingency plans for everything.
He does not have a contingency plan for Superman's five month, two week, and six day-old clone deciding to develop a crush on one of the Gotham cryptids and give said "cryptid" a diamond about it. That was not a thing that was a thing on his radar. Ever.
Maybe Superboy is just trying to make friends, Tim tries to tell himself. Superman is one of the closest things that the Batman has to a friend, so it makes sense if Superboy wants to make friends with Robin. He probably thinks he's supposed to, right? He doesn't know that much about the world yet, and he was built to follow in Superman's footsteps; live up to his example.
But it's heart-shaped. And also Superboy just explicitly mentioned flowers. And he keeps blushing.
And Superman has definitely, definitely never given the Batman a heart-shaped diamond that he made with his own freaking hands.
Tim is pretty sure that this is not Superboy just trying to make friends.
What even is his life right now? Seriously. What is it, and how did it happen?
"Liiiiike it," he intones in chalkboard-screeching/feral animal tones, because Superboy just gave him several million dollars in heart-shaped rock after telling him he's been stalking him because he thought he'd appreciate the attention. Tim's previous fumbling experiences with awkward high-school attempts at dating did not prepare him for being romantically stalked by an incredibly powerful half-alien superhero/teen heartthrob who would just give him a cat burglar and also several million dollars via what is, essentially, his version of a handmade gift. They did not even remotely prepare him for it, in fact.
Steph hit him with a brick once and tried to figure out his secret identity a couple of times. That's about as close as he's ever gotten to being stalked down and presented with a custom-made diamond.
Jesus Christ, that's a real thing that just happened to him.
"Killer," Superboy says, lighting up again. Tim feels like a flustered idiot and kind of wishes he did have a nest somewhere, because if he'd ever thought ahead to setting up one of those as some kind of decoy or pseudo-safehouse or something, he could absolutely just drag Superboy back to it right now and just–never mind.
Oh god, he's going to have to explain how he caught Selina to the Batman after this, isn't he. She's going to explain how he caught her to the Batman after this. And she's going to tell the truth about it!
Fuck, that's gonna be mortifying. Explaining Steph was bad enough, and the Batman still didn't seem to understand when he was done and still just kinda treats her like another Robin to the point that Tim still isn't sure the Batman actually realizes that he and Steph are actually different people. Which Tim personally thinks is very unfair because according to Dick, the Batman absolutely does understand what it means when Talia al Ghul calls him "Beloved" and he definitely let Selina summon his "human" aspect for a high-society date night last Friday. So like, there's no reason he shouldn't understand this kind of thing.
This is what Tim gets for deciding to personally make sure Gotham's local protection spirit didn't get himself warped into a local vengeance spirit in his grief instead of just selling his soul or something to somebody to resurrect Jason and joining the after-school photography club. Like, that would've been much less embarrassing than explaining this situation to the Batman is gonna be.
At least he probably won't mistake Superboy for another Robin.
. . . probably.
Fifty-fifty shot, maybe.
. . . . . .
Tim should maybe teach Superboy how to summon the Batman later. Like. Just in case.
It'd just be for the best if he did, probably. The Batman gets stressed when a Robin can't summon him. Especially after what happened to Jason. It makes him . . . fretty.
Specifically, it makes him the eldritch protection spirit version of "fretty". Which sure is an experience, in Tim's experience.
"Super . . . boy," Tim says, resisting the urge to pull out the diamond to look at it again. It's really not the time. Superboy blushes again and Selina sniggers into her claws. Tim is in the world's weirdest possible romance novel right now, he's pretty sure.
How does a cryptid protector of a city like Gotham flirt back, anyway? That's really not a concern Tim took into account when he was crafting his version of the Robin persona. He was worried about looking like a smaller and brighter and more distracting version of the Batman, not potential bird-cryptid courting behaviors!
Normal birds dance, or offer food, or preen each other, he thinks. Like–for their courtship behaviors, he means. Those are the basics, anyway.
Tim considers trying to convince Superboy to let him run his clawed gauntlets through all those windblown curls he's currently sporting and feels the urge to just go lay down for a week or ten. Or twenty. Or–forever, maybe. Just all of forever. Forever would be good, right now.
He'd die of even worse embarrassment dancing with him, he's sure, though maybe, like . . . they could go get Batburger together or something? Just like . . . normal people, kinda?
Right. Yeah. The "normal" thing. That's what Robin would do. And totally equivalent to a hand-crafted (telekinetically-crafted?) multimillion-dollar diamond, too.
God, please don't make him have to dance to convince Superboy he's reciprocating this whole diamond-making situation. Tim cannot dance and he is not about to learn. Well–he can waltz, technically. Very, very badly, though. There is absolutely no way that his waltzing skills are going to make Superboy think he's into him. Actually, they might just chase him off altogether.
“So like, are you doing anything this weekend?” Superboy asks, looking hopeful. Tim tries to figure out how to do . . . literally anything here. Just anything, at this point.
Anything but waltz, he means.
“Huuuuuntinggggg,” he says, and seriously considers just leaving Selina to do her own thing and break into that stupid museum all over again. Maybe if he drops her off at the GCPD, though, they could just, like . . . not have to worry about her robbing the Bast exhibit blind. At least not tonight, anyway.
Technically it isn't properly sourced, which the museum should absolutely know better than anyway. So maybe taking Superboy to Batburger and letting them learn their lesson the hard way wouldn't be the worst idea.
No, no, going to Batburger would definitely sell out the whole “not actually a cryptid” thing, and that'd be an issue. Superboy is five months, two weeks, and six days old and Tim barely knows him; he can't out himself like that just because the guy's romantically stalking him with cat burglars and multimillion-dollar diamonds. That's just not a good idea. Also, a terrible precedent to set.
If an admittedly tempting one.
“Do you want, um, help with that? The hunting, I mean?” Superboy offers, and Tim despairs.
“Oh, do Robins hunt in flocks? Is that a thing, little birdie?” Selina asks with a smirk. Tim shoots her a dirty look. He knows she can’t see it through the mask, but it’s the principle of the thing.
“Helllllp,” he says, resisting the urge to flip her off. Cryptid protection spirits don’t flip off the criminals, even if it’s tempting.
Really tempting.
Really, really tempting.
“Really?” Superboy says, grinning widely at him. “Cool! Yeah. Okay. I’m free whenever, I’ve got the whole weekend open.”
Tim wonders if Superboy specifically made sure he’d be available all weekend before asking what he was doing this weekend, since the guy obviously didn’t know his allegedly-eldritch schedule. Then he decides not to wonder that anymore, because if the answer is “yes”, he’s not going to be able to be normal about it. Like, at all. Not after the catnapping and romantic stalking and custom-made diamond.
. . . then he wonders what Superboy thinks a Robin would nest like instead. Just–he could set something up, probably. Like, he could figure something out. And it could be useful to have an established "nest" or two around.
Definitely would be, if he can drag Superboy back to one sometime.
Like . . . he could, that’s all. It's an option. Like, a thing that he could do.
“Come . . . sunset,” Tim tells Superboy, who turns pink again. “We hunt . . . flock.”
“Okay!” Superboy blurts eagerly, grinning wider and half-floating in obvious excitement as Selina muffles snickers. “Um–yeah, sure! Sunset's good for me. Any sunset. All the sunsets! Um.”
God, he's so cute. And so ridiculous. Tim really wants to take him to Batburger, and also stalk him even more than he has already. Like, stalk him all the way unto the first scribbled notes of his design levels of stalking.
Maybe takeout and a fake nest decorated with a telekinetically-crafted diamond will do, though.
At least for now.