Professor Todd's Mysterious Man

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/44589529.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: DCU, DCU (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Wayne
Family Adventures (Webcomic), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics), Batman
(Comics)
Relationship: Roy Harper/Jason Todd, Lian Harper & Jason Todd, Jason Todd &
Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason
Todd & Damian Wayne, Batfamily Members & Jason Todd, Batfamily
Members & Lian Harper, Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne (minor), Pamela
Isley/Harleen Quinzel (implied), Dick Grayson/Wally West (implied)
Character: Jason Todd, Roy Harper, Lian Harper, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Tim
Drake, Damian Wayne, Duke Thomas, stephine brown, Alfred
Pennyworth, Brucie Wayne, riddler (dcu)
Additional Tags: Jason Todd is Red Hood, Pofessor!Jason Todd, Professor!Roy Harper,
Roy Harper is Arsenal, Professor Overshare vs Professor Brick Wall,
inspired by a tumblr post, Secret Relationship, married Jason Todd/Roy
Harper, Lian is Jason’s (adopted) daughter, Harley Quinn and Poison
Ivy are part of the Batfam, Marked "T" for Jason's Dirty Mouth, no beta
we die like jason todd
Language: English
Series: Part 3 of DCU One-shots
Stats: Published: 2023-01-28 Words: 4387

Professor Todd's Mysterious Man

by Taxi_Cab_To_Slowtown

Summary

Original Prompt: “AU where Jason is the Red Hood and an English teacher and is like the
only teacher his students truly respect because he’s just cool. Also, sometimes when they
don’t want to do work all they have to do is mention Batman or Bruce Wayne and he goes
off on a rant”

I’ve also mixed this in with the (usually Good Omens) idea with beloved professor
Overshare and feared Professor Brick Wall, who are secretly married but the kids catch
them and think that Overshare is cheating on his husband (professor Brick Wall) with
professor Brick Wall.

Notes

I've been trying to write this prompt with Ineffable Husband's for over a year but I keep
 hitting a wall... for some reason I could pump this one out in two days despite it not fitting
the prompt wholly perfectly. IDK how my muse works.

Inspired by:

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/67/4f/b4/674fb4f290ee1de7251a99d7137ec308.jpg As well as a
couple other Good Omens related tumblr posts that I read a while ago and don’t want to try
to hunt down. And that one #onlyinGotham post about the Riddler.

See the end of the work for more notes

Inspired by Catch Me When I Fall by Ghostinthehouse

The English professor walked into the room with a haunted look in his eyes wearing a big black
studded leather jacket, jeans, knee-high black boots, and a red henley, not at all what most of his
class had expected when they had signed up for the class taught by the most prestigious professor
at Gotham University. They would get used to him though, they all did.

***

In the engineering department, the kids shuffled into the room to find the teacher– dressed in a
button up shirt and suit coat– which wasn’t really what they’d expected from the engineering
professor– already at the front, sitting at his desk. His red hair was a little long, granted, but it was
pulled up in a tight bun on the back of his head which, despite its length, kept him looking very
professional.

***

“Welcome to English 101,” Professor Todd said with a heavy sigh. “The first thing that you need to
know coming into this class is that the 15 minute rule is fake. I’m a very busy man and I have a
tendency to run late, so don’t expect me to always be here on time. That doesn’t, however, give
you and excuse to arrive late.”

There was a consensus of groaning from the class at large. Most students didn’t like it when their
teachers didn’t follow the same rules they had to.

“Hey, you can groan and complain all you want when you have a demanding father, a busy
husband, and a five-year-old daughter to take care of! I’m a busy man!”

A couple kids in the audience perked up at the reveal that their teacher was gay. Usually those
were the students who were also gay, and who were excited to know that they would be accepted
in the class. Jason made it a habit to always mention that he was gay so that 1) his students would
feel accepted and comfortable in his class, 2) they would know that there would be discussion of
some of the more queer elements found in literature and 3) all the assholes would know they could
either shut up or leave the class.

Of course, he picked out a couple assholes who either glared, groaned, or rolled their eyes at his
declaration that he had a husband. They were always there, unfortunately. Jason dreamed of one
day that there wouldn’t be.

With a snap transition from his brief coming out, he got one of the students to hand out the syllabi
so they could talk about what the plan for the course was. It was hard for Jason to keep the scowl
he’d had when he came in as soon as he started talking about the class and the books, and English
in general. He hadn’t even considered coming back from the dead until after he realised that he
could become a teacher, and since then he’d realised that that was one of the best decisions he’d
ever made (the best decision he’d ever made was getting married and legally adopting his
daughter).

***

“Welcome to Engineering 101,” Professor Harper said, standing from his desk and walking around
it, trying to be as intimidating as possible. He’d learned that there were only two ways to get people
to listen to you– to make them love you, or to make them fear you– he’d chosen the second as his
mode of teaching.

“This is a freshman Engineering course, but that does not mean it will be easy. Most, if not all of
you will be able to pass this course if you put the required dedication in. I am here to help if you
have any questions…”

And so on and so forth. Roy could recite his opening speech in his sleep (his husband had actually
claimed once that he did ) so he had no problems giving it while also calculating each of his
students, memorising their faces and their body language and trying to gauge who would have a
tendency to cause problems and who would not. His husband told him often that he treated the
classroom like it was a battlefield, and that he should just relax, it wasn’t like any of his students
were hiding a bomb or something like that. This wasn’t the field.

(His argument back was to always remind him that this was Gotham that they worked and lived in
[at his insistence, because he wanted to be closer to his family and Roy didn’t really care about
that] so it would very well be that one of his students was a Gotham rogue in disguise.

(This, of course, had lead to a “genius” prank by a couple of his husband’s siblings that had
resulted in not one but three of Gotham’s rogues [Poison Ivy, Harly Quinn, and the Riddler] and
one bat [Duke, who was the only one the right age to be his student] in costume in his class one
day. Roy had begged God to kill him all through dealing with that. His husband had only laughed,
the dick).

Roy made sure that by the time all the students left the room, they knew he meant business.

***
It truly didn’t take long for Jason to become the favourite teacher among his students (who was he
kidding, among the whole school , even those who didn’t take his class loved him, he was just that
awesome). It also didn’t take long for his students to figure out one of the best ways to distract
him– bring up his daughter.

Jason could gush about her for hours, and apparently his students found it adorable, plus it allowed
them to be saved from having to actually do work in class . Jason caught himself a couple times,
but most of the time he got too far into it for him to catch himself before class ended.

The most distracting class had been the one time he had to bring his daughter with him. All of his
siblings were unfortunately busy, and their usual babysitter was out of town, so Jason had to take
her to class with him. He wasn’t really supposed to do it, as his husband pointed out, it was
technically against the rules, but last time he’d left her with Aunt Ivy and Aunt Harley she had been
a menace for days afterward.

So, Jason walked into his last period class with his hand in his daughters. Lian was wearing her
hair in two pigtails, a skeleton print (glow in the dark) hoodie, a pink tutu, and a pair of mini
combat boots, and ensemble that was almost as horrendous as something Dick might wear (but was
actually cute because she was 5 and not in her late-twenties).

As soon as he entered, every student's eyes turned on Lian, and a couple cooed at her adorableness.
Jason preened. Yes, his daughter was the cutest kid in the world, wasn’t she?

Lian tried not to be distracting, but it was so much easier for the kids to get Jason off on a tangent
when she was right there being her adorable self. They also got him to gush about his husband and
how they met. The students were clearly having a good time at it.

They said they hoped she came back again, Jason hoped that next time the babysitter went on
vacation there would at least be someone (preferably Alfred) available to watch her so he could do
some actual teaching.

***

“Uh, his husband doesn’t realise it, but he’s the luckiest guy in the world . If he wasn’t already
married, I’d marry him,” Lizzy said, popping a fry into her mouth off the tray. A couple of the
others nodded in agreement.

“Isn’t he gay?” Bridget asked, a little weirded out by the topic of their discussion.

“I’m pretty sure he’s bi,” Raphael said, stuffing a large sandwich into his mouth.

Next to him, Vanessa nodded, “yeah, he said something about an ex girlfriend of his once, so I
think Raf’s right. Bi or pan, or doesn’t like labels… Regardless, I don’t think he’s strictly into
dick” (Jason would, of course, argue that he “ wasn’t into Dick at all, he’s my brother for goodness
sake” If he’d heard that ) .

Yes, they were talking about their teacher, hence Bridget’s reluctance about the topic. She thought
it was just a bit inappropriate to talk about marrying their very happily married teacher, whether he
was gay or not.

“He’s not bad on the eyes, either,” Conner commented. “I bet he’s great in bed.”
Bridget gagged for two reasons. 1) she was definitely sure that they should be done with this
conversation, and 2) she was a raging lesbian, and didn’t at all like the thought of guys in bed [1].

Lizzy shook her head. “Yes, he’s hot, but that’s not the point . It’s totally his personality! He just…
get so excited about things he’s passionate about? And he’s just so in love and ugh! It’s just so
cute, you don’t understand!”

“No yeah, it’s pretty cute,” Bridget conceded. “But in a golden-retriever kind of way?” The way
professor Todd got about his family, and about the books he really loved was cute, yeah.

“It’s because you’re a lesbian,” Lizzy replied.

Bridget rolled her eyes. Her girlfriend, Tessa, who hadn’t gotten to be part of the conversation yet,
swatted her shoulder. “It’s not fair ,” she said.

Bridget turned to her, “What’s not fair?”

“That you get to go to class with Professor Todd , the brilliant puppy dog who’s easy to get on
tangents and hasn’t hurt a soul in his life, while I, the hubble engineering student, have to deal with
Professor Harper who is probably secretly a mass-murdering drug lord!”

James chuckled at that. “If one day he walked in wearing a Red Hood, I don’t think anyone would
be surprised.”

That got a chuckle out of everyone except for Clair, who noticeably paled. Seeing her reaction,
James rolled his eyes.

“He’s not the Red Hood, Clair, he wouldn’t be teaching at a school if he was making 40% of all
Gotham drug deals,” Duke (yes, that Duke, you know, Signal) reassured her.

“How do you know the exact amount?” Conner asked, squinting his eyes at his friend. Duke
ignored him.

“What do you think is his problem?” Lizzy wondered aloud.

Tessa shrugged. “He’s a great teacher, he’s just kinda… prickly? Like he’s trying to be
intimidating.”

“Well, that’s totally working.”

“Or that he has some kind of stick up his ass,” Conner helpfully added to the convo, finally turning
his scrutinising gaze from Duke, who had been sweating a little bit. “Maybe he just needs to get
laid.”

This caused a generous uproar of laughter from all the students except for Duke and Bridget, who
looked very uncomfortable (like they had since the convo began) sitting there.

***

Of course, happy, chipper, puppy Todd was partially a byproduct of enough sleep, and low
amounts of patrols. This was partially because Jason and Roy had split his patrol duties so he was
only “on” every other night, unless there was something big going down, and partially because the
Rouges hadn’t really been much of an issue lately.

(Beside Mayor Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepots’ frequent captures of “Richie Wayne” to get money
from Bruce, but those were relatively harmless, and a few actions of Catwoman, Harley, and Ivy,
but pretty much everything the sirens did was with good cause, and Batman wasn’t going to let
anyone actually arrest his finacée).

So, Jason was riding the high of getting decent sleep, grading his papers on time, and getting to
spend quality time with his family without having to worry about some big scheme going down.

That was, until they got a call. Luckily he and Roy were already at the manor with Lian, so he
could easily just give her to Alfred to take care of while they suited up and headed across the city
to meet up with the others. It was already late by the time they got there (Roy riding the back of
Jason’s bike, his arms secured around his waist) and Jason had hoped to be able to grade his
student’s papers when he got home.

Looks like that wasn’t going to happen.

They burst into the wearhouse through a window in the roof, landing in the centre of the building.
Jason already spotted Spoiler, Red Robin, Nightwing, and Robin there. (Wait, why was Robin
there but no Batman? Sure, Damian wasn’t as young as he once was, but he was still a child ). Why
were there so many of them?

“The bats and the birds!” came a highly recognizable voice from the other end of the wearhouse.
Jason let out a groan. He was missing grading papers for this ? Seriously? “Or maybe just the
birdies , where's the old Bat?”

He turned, and sure enough, there he was, the Riddler. Look, they had all known that Nigma
wasn’t locked up in Arkham, but he hadn’t actually been causing problems. See, a few months
before, Riddler had taken a hostage and told them to ask him a question, because there was no
question he couldn’t answer. The idiot (or maybe not idiot really, Jason was a little salty that he had
never thought of what they had done before) asked Riddler “what is the cure for cancer”, a clear
challenge to the declaration that Riddler knew the answer to every question they could ask. Now,
Riddler was on an exploration to find the cure for cancer, so the Gotham Vigilantes hadn’t
bothered him.

Until now. When, according to the alert, he had kidnapped another hostage to do something to
them (Jason wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, just that it was a hostage situation and his
siblings had needed his help).

“What do you want, Eddie?” Jason sighed, already done with the Riddler’s bullshit, voice echoing
through the modulator in his helmet.

“Well, see, I’ve been a bit busy of late, trying to answer a riddle placed upon me by one of the dear
citizen’s of this city.”

Jason looked up at the ceiling, letting out another highly-modulated sigh.

“We know,” Tim groaned, placing his head in his hands.

Dick and Steph giggled (actually giggled , what were they, elementary schoolers?) at their siblings’
irritation.
“But it has come to my attention that I am lacking in the funds required to finish my research. So, I
thought… well… catch Cinderella’s groom before the toll. Take his crown, reach my goal.”

“What does that even mean?” Jason demanded. He had a low tolerance for Riddler’s bullshit on a
good day, but right now he was ruining his paper grading time, and he was on such a good streak
too!

“Cinderella’s groom,” Dick said. “That’s Prince Charming.” Dick reasoned.

“No shit, Dickface.”

Robin opened his mouth, probably to say something along the lines of “no real names in the field”
but Tim held a hand over his mouth before he could. Most people would take what Jason called
Nightwing as just a plain insult, not his name, unless Damian actually said that that was his name.

“You’re the one that asked, condom-head,” Steph shot back at him.

“What was the part about ‘take the crown?’” Roy asked, the only one actually focused on the
mission.

“He’s got the prince captive so that he can take his money and use it to find the cure for cancer,”
Tim replied.

“But… What prince?” Steph mused.

Jason, remembering the absence of Batman, let out a groan.

“The prince of Gotham,” he realised, slamming the palm of his hand into the forehead of his
mask.

The Riddler cackled, then gestured behind him, where a spotlight flicked on, revealing, just as
Jason had guessed, the prince of Gotham, tied to a chair and surrounded by Riddler goons.

“Oh, finally, lights. I don’t like not being able to see,” Brucie Wayne declared, looking around at
his captor and his goons. “Wow, there’s so many of you! I didn’t realise! This is more than usual,
isn’t it? Then again, it's been awhile since I could punch my ‘frequent kidnapping’ card, everyone
seems so interested in capturing Richie now.” Brucie pouted, actually pouted. “It’s almost as
though you no longer love me.”

Riddler rolled his eyes at Brucie’s semantics. Under his helmet, Jason looked toward the roof
praying why me God? Why did I have to try to steal those tires?

The fight that followed wasn’t very hard, and wasn’t very long. They just had to also endure the
sound of Brucie Wayne giving them the worst fighting advice in the world, no wonder no one
would believe he’d Batman .

Once they got Brucie free, they let the Riddler go and Brucie told him to come to his office and
they could talk about getting him some actual funding for his project, which meant that the
Riddler, despite being beaten, still walked away victorious.

“Why didn’t he try that first ?” Jason growled. He had a bit of a headache, one of the goons had
slammed him against the wall before Roy got an arrow in the guy’s arm.

“Villains gotta villain,” Stephine declared with a shrug.

They all made it out of the warehouse, Brucie still walking and acting like Brucie and irritating
Jason beyond measure.

“Bruce, hurry the fuck up, I have essays I have to grade,” Jason said, grabbing his father under his
arm and practically dragging him from the building. Not that Jason was going to actually be able to
do his grading whether Brucie moved faster or not.

Altogether, it was a tiring night, and Jason’s headache didn’t make it any better.

Luckily, when they got home, his husband cuddled him on the couch until he kissed the pain away.
Which made everything so much better.

The papers still didn’t get graded.

***

Jason’s class was a little worried when he walked in the next morning carrying an XL coffee with
bags under his eyes. He made his way over to the desk and slumped in his chair. A couple students
who had taken his class before, or who had older friends who had warned them of Jason’s ‘bad
days’ were not surprised, but they still worried what could possibly leave their energetic teacher
looking so done with the world. The rest of the class was in shock at how different he was acting.

Jason slumped forward a little. “I haven’t finished grading your essays,” he confessed. “You can
blame Bruce Wayne for that.” He said the name with a kind of venom that most of the kids hadn’t
ever heard used before. What did Professor Todd have against Bruce Wayne?

***

“What could anyone have against Brucie Wayne?” Tessa asked the friend group after they told her.
“I mean, sure, he’s an airhead, but he actually does a lot of good for Gotham.”

“Yeah, I didn’t get it either.” Lizzy agreed.

“Bruce Wayne’s his father,” Duke Thomas informed them, his attention almost fully on his
homework in front of him open on his computer. “We’re supposed to be studying guys, not
gossiping about the English teacher… again .”

No one really paid attention to the last part though. Conner turned to him with wide eyes. “ Bruce
Wayne is Professor Todd’s father ?”

Duke sighed. Why was it always like this? “Yeah. He’s adopted, obviously, like the rest, but he’s
Bruce’s son.”

“Wait.. Todd…” Bridget said, eyes widening as she made a connection. She opened a new tab on
her computer and quickly typed something into the space bar. “Todd as in Jason Todd-Wayne?”
She turned the screen around to show an article from a few years back about Bruce’s second son–
who everyone had thought was dead for about half a decade– had been found alive and returned
home.

Duke glanced at the screen, but really didn’t need to see it to know what she’d pulled up. “Yeah.”

“Wow,” Tessa said, leaning over the screen to get a good look at what was on it. “Cool.”

“Wait, if Professor Todd’s a Wayne, do you know who his husband is?” Lizzy asked excitedly.

Bridget scrolled through the page, but shook her head. “Can’t even find anything on whether or not
he is married, let alone who he’s married to.”

“Probably to keep his spouse out of the spotlight.” Conner offered, which made sense, it would
take a special kind of person to be openly married to one of the Waynes. Someone like Brucie’s
Finacée, Selina Kyle. Jason wouldn’t be the only Wayne to keep his marriage hush hush, rumour
had it that Richie Wayne was also married, but he lived in Blüdhaven, so it was harder for the
Gazette to get any information on him.

“Speaking of his husband,” Vanessa said suddenly. “You ever notice that he never comes with the
Professor to any parties or anything? You’d think he would, wouldn’t you?”

That was the day that sparked it all, and Duke was an unwilling watcher to the whole chaos that
was the school trying to figure out who the other Mr. Todd was, there was a beetle pool and
everything.

(When Duke found out that the odds against Roy Harper were incredibly long, he may have
cheated in order to rake in a huge profit from his classmates).

From then on out, every clue about Jason’s spouse was meticulously recorded, and the game was
afoot.

***

Then, things took a sharp downward dive. During the school Christmas party, one young freshman
walked out the backdoor for some air, and accidentally caught Professor Todd making out with
someone against his car. At first, he had felt elation, because surely this was his mysterious
husband, but then they’d pulled apart and she’d seen who it actually was.

She’d rushed into the building and whispered to one of the other freshmen, a friend of hers, what
she saw, and that friend passed it to another, and then to another. Before the next semester, the
whole school had heard it:

Jason Todd, sweet, loving, Professor Todd, was cheating on his husband with the nasty, evil,
Professor Harper.

***

“Odd,” Jason reflected, looking down at his class list for the next semester on his phone as he
placed himself to sit in his husband’s lap. Roy wrapped his arms around him and placed his chin
on Jason’s shoulder.

“What’s odd?”

Lian came barreling into the room, foam sword in hand, shouting something along the lines of
“perish you dirty scum, for I am you reckoning!” giggling all the while. Both her father’s followed
her with their eyes.

“I hope you weren’t referring to that.”

“She’d probably been spending too much time with Damian.”

“Oh, definitely.”

She slashed her sword through the air with perfect precision, her uncle had definitely been teaching
her a few moves. She jumped away from her “attacker,” doing a neat little flip (Grayson had been
teaching her gymnastics) and landing on the toes of her ballet slippers (a gift from Cas).

Jason smiled at the sight. Seeing the way that his family and his daughter had connected warmed
his heart. Sure, things between his family hadn’t always been great, but they were getting better,
and Lian was really pulling them all together again. (He just hoped that Tim didn’t decide to teach
her how to hack stuff, they definitely didn’t need that).

“No, Lian’s not the odd thing,” Jason said, getting back to the situation at hand. “It’s that the
number of kids for my class this semester has gone down, but the other English teachers’ classes
are full.”

Roy took the phone from him and looked at the same thing Jason had been. It was true, the
numbers for his class had gone way down.

“Weird.”

“Yeah.”

***

Both Jason and Roy experienced a strange amount of animosity from their students the first day
back. Some of the glaring Roy was used to, the kids never really liked him, but Jason was shocked
speechless by it.

After about 30 minutes, Jason gave up on teaching and rounded a bat-glare at the class. The
students, who were not prepared in the slightest, were shocked still by the look.

“Okay, what’s up? You guys haven’t stopped glaring the whole period! Is there something on my
face? You didn’t even react to my latest story about my family?”

“Why are you doing it?” Bridget, who had signed up for Jason’s second-semester class regardless
of her friends’ insistence that she shouldn’t, what with the news passing through the school.

“Doing what?” Jason asked. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Cheating on your husband!” a girl in the front row shouted at him.

 Jason was struck shocked. They thought he was cheating on Roy? With who?

“Uh… who am I supposed to be cheating on my husband with? ‘Cause I assure you, I have not
been cheating on anyone.”

“Professor Harper,” one of the boys said, crossing his arms across his chest and glaring at Jason as
though he were some cop who was interrogating him (Jason should know, it would not be the first
time he’d been interrogated).

His attempt at intimidation, however, did not work, instead it sent Jason into a violent laughing fit,
complete with tears streaming down his face. The students watched him in horror, they couldn’t
see anything funny about this situation.

“You think…” he wheezed. “You think I…. You think I’m cheating… cheating… with Roy?...”
his laughter became heavier at those words, he belt down toward the floor, folded in half with
laughter. “You think I’m… I’m cheating on… on my husband… you think I’m cheating on my
husband…” his laughed grew louder and he threw his head back. “With my husband.”

“I’m sorry?” One of the kids in the front row who had caught most of his words but not their
meaning asked in confusion.

Jason continued to laugh for another minute or so, before it eventually fizzled out. He reached
behind his back to pick up one of the extra syllabi and hold it up.

“Roy, sorry, Professor Harper and I are married,” he pointed to the top of the sheet where his
name was clearly printed:

Professor Jason Peter Todd-Harper.

Boy did the school feel like idiots after that revelation. They hadn’t even considered the
possibility!

(Well, except for Duke, but he was at the wedding).

Fin

End Notes

11 The writer must comment here that they are not a lesbian, so they don't know exactly
what lesbians think about relationships between non-females. They are, however, ace, and
so projected their disgust at any sort if discussion involving sex onto poor Bridget here.
[return to text]

This was so much fun to write despite not being at all what I originally wanted to write! I
kinda love this idea with Batfam and think I might do it with a few more ships. I hope you
liked it! comments and kudos greatly appreciated!

Also, the work that inspired this one actually follows the original (Good Omens) prompt,
but I thought I'd link it regardless because I was inspired by that, even if I didn't write what
 I had wanted to (lol). So, if you're a Good Omens fan, I 100% suggest you go check that fic
out. If not up to you.

Please drop by the archive and comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!