“Does it hurt?” Conor asked quietly. And, shit, now he had to look. Scott forced his gaze down and saw them—spurs of bone splitting his knuckles. It wasn’t just swelling from the few punches he’d thrown. That was bone. This was happening.

"Being a star athlete changes you." And just when you think you're done, you become the face of an expansion team. Playing a winter sport in a desert. OR A (Dragon)Flower in the Desert

Being a star athlete changes you.

Look, the Batman may be an eldritch inhuman cryptid, but he still needs an emotional support sidekick, and Tim Drake still doesn't have any consistent adult supervision in his life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A cryptid!Batman AU where Superman has explained to newly-cloned Superboy that the Batman is a terrifying eldritch horror given human(-ish) form and Superboy is therefore under the impression that Robin is going to be into weird shit like being brought damning evidence and deadly criminals and dangerous problems to solve and will appreciate being slightly stalked. The Bat-cryptids stalk everybody, right? So it’s like their love language, Superboy figures as he’s collecting a bunch of random shiny trinkets to leave out for Robin like he thinks he's a magpie or a crow or something, and maybe also some nice pebbles to cover the penguin angle just in case. Just stuff he might like to decorate the cryptid-nest Superboy is assuming he has with. Superboy is fully correct about Robin appreciating the weird shit and shiny trinkets and being reciprocally stalked, actually, but now Tim has to figure out how to explain that he's actually just a normal human teenager who just decided that his local protection spirit needed an emotional support sidekick before it could get corrupted into a local vengeance spirit. Though he does like the shinies, please don’t assume this means he doesn’t like the shinies or wants a normal relationship with, god forbid, boundaries about not stalking each other or whatever.