Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dick sat on Roy’s couch, head leaned back and eyes fixed on the ceiling. In his lap, Lian wiggled and gnawed on her teething ring, making indescribably cute noises of rage. His hands held Lian to him, so that she couldn’t topple over, but he wasn’t paying too much attention, otherwise. Which was fine, since Roy was only a room away. 

“What does B think?” Roy asked. Dick could hear how he took a plate from the rack, gave it a cursory once-over with the drying cloth, then situated it in the open cupboard, overhead and to his right. 

When had Roy become responsible, anyway? 

When had his home gone from bachelor pad, stereotypical clutter and filth and all, to a child-safe environment, clean and cornerless? It wasn’t overnight, but Dick seemed to have only blinked and missed that entire development, only to step back into Roy’s apartment one day and hear his friend  vacuuming.  Lian was on his hip, wearing huge protective earmuffs (the noise-cancelling kind, like the ones worn by landscapers on industrial mowers or using other loud equipment). She had been burbling and gnawing on a teething biscuit, even though she’d barely hit five months, and Roy had been bouncing her as he vacuumed, clearly at ease and taking on the challenges of parenthood with that good nature that had been missing when Roy’d been using. 

“He won’t talk to me,” Dick sighed. “He’s pushing me away, still.” 

“I know how that is,” Roy dried off the last plate and put it into his cupboard, then ambled into the living room. He put his hands on the back of the couch and leaned over, beside Dick, to smile down at his baby girl. “Me n’ Ollie aren’t doing great, either, honestly.” How he could admit that, still smiling, was beyond Dick. 

Lian pulled the drool-covered teething-ring out of her mouth and whacked it on Dick’s forearm a few times, her baby rage expressed in a thrilled, indignant howl. 

Dick lifted his head to smile softly at her for a moment, then sighed again and dropped his head back into place on the back of Roy’s couch. “If it was just... distance? I dunno. That wouldn’t be so bad. But people are getting hurt. Whatever’s been goinging on, people are straight-up dying. Most of them are really bad people, but... but that doesn’t make it right. Or less scary.” 

“Mm,” Roy leaned over, propping crossed arms on the back of the couch. “I heard about the heads.” 

“Yeah,” Dick breathed. 

“Yeah,” Roy agreed. 

Lian tossed her teething ring at the other side of the couch. 

“But it’s not... it’s not just bad people,” Dick murmured. “This guy, whoever he is, has already gone after Tim once. And he’ll probably do it again. I can’t... I don’t know what to do. If B isn’t going to keep me in the loop, how am I supposed to help?” 

“I don’t know what to tell you, man,” Roy reached down to pick up the discarded teething ring, then walked into the kitchen to rinse it off. “Have you tried talking to Alfred?” 

“He’s not talking to Alfred, either!” Dick huffed. “Or Tim. He’s keeping things to himself and I... I don’t even know. He’s always been secretive and paranoid, but I have no idea what’s going through his head. I have no idea what he thinks it is that I can’t handle or that I can’t be trusted with.” 

“It’s probably not about trust,” Roy walked back into the room and offered the ring back to Lian, before she could quite get around to screwing her face up and pitching a fit. Lian accepted it back with a sharp, high-pitched squeal and shoved it back into her mouth. “I don’t know. Your relationship with Bruce might be rough, but like, there’s always been a measure of trust there that, uh, that I lost. With-with Ollie. You know.” 

“I remember,” Dick said quietly. “It was. Bad.” 

“Yeah.” 

“But you’re getting there, Roy, and we’re all really proud of you. Even Ollie.” Dick met Roy’s eye. “You’re different, now.” 

“Thanks,” Roy laughed, once. “Well. You have that trust, even if it’s all messed up with anger and shit. So it’s... it’s probably not that. Trust, I mean. It’s probably another of his misguided attempts to protect you.” 

They both quieted, the ghost of Jason’s violent death hanging over them. The ghost of a funeral Dick hadn’t been able to attend, to bid Jason goodbye, hanging over them. An attempt to protect Dick gone horribly, terribly wrong. Another break in their already shattered relationship. 

Lian broke the quiet with a bubbling up of giggles. 

Dick and Roy glanced down at her. She grinned back up at them, then threw her teething ring – very intentionally – across the room. 

Roy snorted. 

Dick smiled and let the previous moment pass. “She’s really beautiful, Roy.” 

“Best thing to happen to me,” Roy ambled around the couch, making for the teething ring. 

“You’re a great dad.” 

Roy snorted. “Wish I could say I learned from the best, but...” he tossed a snarky grin at Dick. “I think we both know that Ollie got himself a solid D at best.” 

“That’s generous,” Dick bounced Lian in his lap. “I wouldn’t have given him more than an F. I mean. Seriously.” 

“Having Dinah around raised his grade.” Roy said. He looked down at the teething ring. “I’m going to put this back in the freezer, I think. If she pitches a fit, you can put her in the pen, on her tummy. She’ll settle and be distracted by her other toys.” 

“No giving in to the fits?” 

“No,” Roy reached down to smooth down Lian’s unruly, dark hair. He smiled. “She can’t just scream to get what she wants, you know? We’d never be able to go grocery shopping again!” 

“Isn’t it a bit early for that?” Dick tilted his head and looked back down at Lian. She had her face screwed up in suspicion, but didn’t look like she was about to let all hell loose. Yet. 

Roy shrugged. “I dunno, honestly. Six months is enough for, like, object permanence? She knows who I am, and she sees that I’m comfortable with you, so she knows you’re safe.” He traced her little ear, then straightened. “Seemed as good a time as any to start a few fundamentals.” 

Dick blinked and took a moment to process. “You... did you read a parenting book? Like. Honest to god, a whole book about infant-rearing?” 

Roy laughed on his way back to the kitchen. “Well, yeah. More than  one.  I mean. I had no idea what to do with a baby, Dick.” He took a moment to run the teething ring under the faucet in the kitchen, then patted it dry and put it in the freezer. “The last one I read, Elevating Child Care, was given to me by one of the moms in a local... single parent support group thing. I read that. It was great. I found out the writer had a blog, now I’ll head there, first, before fucking around on Google for answers. I never once, in my life, thought I’d bookmark a blog dedicated to childrearing. But, hey. Things change, right?” 

“Wow,” Dick looked down at Lian, again. She had her fist shoved into her mouth and was oozing drool. It would have been disturbing if it weren’t unbearably cute. “Your Daddy’s serious about you, kiddo,” he whispered. “Sounds like you’re in good hands.” 

“Careful, man, you might give the little Tyrant unrealistic expectations,” Roy dropped his elbows back onto the back of the couch. 

“Hardly,” Dick raised her into the air, albeit gently. 

She squealed and bounced her limbs back and forth. 

“Roy, you’re doing great,” Dick glanced at Roy with a smile. “Really great. Look at her! She’s clean, she’s happy, she has the cutest little onesies. Hell, you apparently read parenting blogs in your spare time, now, instead of engineering manuals!” 

“I make time for both,” Roy reached out and let Lian take his finger. She did, then tried to pull it into her mouth. Everything went in her mouth since she’d begun teething. “My Little Monster,” Roy grinned. “But seriously. Janet Lansbury. If you end up with a kid, out of nowhere, I swear her blog saved my life. Or at least my sanity.” 

“Not really something I plan for, right now. What with the day job and the night job and the... B. That’s not the situation a baby belongs in.” 

Roy nodded. “That’s why I’m remote work, contracting, only,” he said. 

“And you know how bad I am when I don’t have constant movement keeping me earthbound. Well. Not earthbound. I don’t think I could pull the remote freelancing like you,” Dick slowly dropped Lian back into his lap. She was delightfully chunky, in that way that made it feel safer to play with her and hold her, and Dick was glad for it, though never more glad than when her chubby cheeks framed an incandescent smile. 

“I don’t know how I managed to collect so many ADHD friends,” Roy said. 

“Just lucky, probably,” Dick said. 

“Oh, sure. You weren’t there for KF’s failed stakeout. I mean, at least you know how to stim while sitting in one place. Quietly. I swear he needs to literally run laps, hourly.” 

“That’s adorable!” 

“Not on mission, it’s not!” 

“Ba!” Lian agreed. 

“Oh my god,” Dick just barely resisted squealing. “Roy. Roy. You have the cutest baby, Roy. Oh my god.” 

“Hear that, Lian? Gotham’s second-favourite ladies’ man thinks you’re the cutest. High praise, kiddo.” Roy laughed. “But you’re right. She’s the best. I could have had a colicky, constipated baby who doesn’t sleep, like, ever, but I got this perfect little angel.” 

“What’s colic, anyway?” 

“I don’t know. Stress, I guess? Distress, crying, unexplained misery. I read up on it, just in case, but I’m still clueless. But it sounds like everyone else is, too, so it’s whatever. And Lian’s never been colicky, so it’s a double whatever.” 

“Little Angel,” Dick cooed down at Lian. 

“Ba!” she agreed, again. 

Chapter Text

Roy didn’t hate the papoose, like, at all.  

“Not manly” Roy’s left ass cheek. Papooses were obviously a caring god’s gift to single parents who had run out of pantry staples.  Lian’s  papoose was the pastel pink monstrosity that Roy had found in the clearance section of a big box store, pretty shortly after Jade had dropped in, dropped  Lian  off, and dropped out. It was Roy’s absolute  favourite  baby-related accessory. Even if pastel pink didn’t do his ginger-ness any  favours .  

“What do you think, kiddo?” Roy murmured.  Lian  kicked out her fat little legs and continued her burbling. Roy loved her fat little legs. He loved every bit of her. He grinned down at her, snuggled into her papoose. “You have no idea what I’m asking,” he said, “no idea at all.”  

She burbled a bit louder, lifting her arms in a tiny, aborted motion. He’d become intimately familiar with that motion. It was the hair-pulling, grabby-hand motion. And she had tough little fingers. Each time she caught a fistful of Roy’s hair, he was tempted to just buzz it all off.  

“Well,” Roy chucked a few packages of Barilla spaghetti and a few packages of Barilla linguine into the cart. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes, let’s get both,’ then.”  

Roy had already been down the pasta aisle twice before, once for pasta sauce (you’d think that would clue him in on the pasta noodles, further down his list, but no...), once for nothing other than confusion, and a third time for the pasta he hadn’t gotten when he had been picking up the jars of sauce.  

Most of his cart was taken up with cans and shelf-stable stuff. He didn’t like shopping very much, so shelf-stable was his go-to.  

He also had apples, bananas, a butt-load of baby food, a weird baby thing that had a net you put fruit in, milk, orange and apple juices, V8 like nobody’s business, cereal, and several of the tins of oatmeal. He didn’t even particularly like oatmeal, but it was shelf-stable and could be done up in a gazillion different ways, so it was slowly becoming one of his go-to items.  

“I know I’m forgetting something,” he said to  Lian . (He spent the whole trip just chatting with her, which she seemed to like.) “What is Daddy forgetting, huh?”  

Lian  burbled. It was her standard reply.  

Roy nodded solemnly.  

And ended up running into a person-shaped brick wall with his cart, like a fucking idiot.  

“Oh, shit!” Roy said. “Sorry, dude. I wasn’t paying attention—I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Mia had run carts into Roy, before, so he knew it could hurt like a bitch.  

The guy glanced up from the ingredients of two different brands of couscous. Which, okay, that was a little fancier than Roy would have expected from someone built like cinder blocks and dressed like a biker gang’s too-intense reject. But who was Roy to judge? Roy talked to a six-month-old when he forgot items on his grocery list.  

“Uh. ‘M fine,” the guy said. He looked at Roy with a measure of suspicion. And was that streak of white in his hair, like, a Thing? Did Roy miss a whole Thing starting up around him or was that just what his hair did? It looked like it could totally be a Thing the hip youths were doing. The guy dragged his eyes from Roy’s face and down to the pastel pink papoose, where  Lian  gave a delighted baby scream.  

Roy glanced down. She’d managed to get part of her papoose strap into her mouth, of course. Roy smiled that smitten smile he’d had on his face since practically the moment Jade pushed the responsibility of raising  Lian  onto him.  

You know, after his panic had settled a little.  

“It was on sale,” Roy said, motioning to the papoose. “And new parents don’t get to put aesthetic over utility.” He grinned and shrugged, which was enough movement to set off another burst of burbling and giggles from  Lian .  

“Girl?” the guy asked.  

“Yep,” Roy glanced down again, smiling.  

“Mom doesn’t help with the shopping?” the guy nodded to Roy’s cart.  

Roy laughed, once, a bit sharply. “Hell no,” he said. “It’s just me and my baby girl.”  

Roy wasn’t usually one to flatter himself, but the solidly built stranger suddenly looked a lot more interested. And hey, he was hot. Roy swung wildly in any direction available, so long as the person in question was, generally speaking, not a great idea (like Jade). Tall, Dark, and Eternally Pissed Off probably fell inside that “not a great idea” category.  

Tall, Dark, and Eternally Pissed Off slowly put both packages of couscous back on the shelf. “Sorry to hear it,” he said.  

“Makes one of us,” Roy grinned.  

“Ba!”  Lian  agreed. It was her  favourite  syllable to say. Roy was still waiting on the “da” phase to start.  

A silence fell, not quite awkward, and Tall, Dark, and Eternally Pissed Off shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. He looked vaguely familiar, really. Something about the shade of teal his eyes were. Or the subtle curl of his hair. Roy couldn’t put his finger on it.  

Roy was about to do something stupid, like offer the stranger his number, when the stranger shifted his weight and rolled his shoulders. “See  ya  around,” he said. As if they’d ever run into each other again. The guy turned to walk away.  

“I’m Roy!” Roy said, hoping he didn’t sound ridiculously desperate.  

He probably sounded ridiculously desperate.  

Tall, Dark, and Eternally Pissed Off glanced over his shoulder, lips quirked in the slightest of grins. “Peter,” he offered. It almost suited him, too. Almost.  

Roy grinned stupidly and the guy continued walking. No number, sure, but he had a name to go with those rugged good looks.  

And then it hit him, suddenly. “Water filter!” He glanced down at  Lian . “I forgot about the water filter. We don’t want yucky unfiltered Gotham/Blüdhaven tap water, do we? Absolutely not.”  

Lian  squealed in agreement.  

Chapter Text

Dick was back on Roy’s couch, maybe a week later. This time, though, Lian was asleep in her bouncer (not to be confused with the big-ass yellow activity center/jumper situated in the corner of the living room), head lolled to the side. The only reason she was in her bouncer was because she’d woken Roy at around midnight, diaper a mess, and Dick had shown up on Roy’s doorstep before he’d gotten Lian back to her crib. 

“You sure it’s okay to talk around her when she’s asleep?” Dick whispered. 

Roy shrugged. “It’s fine.” He didn’t whisper, but he also didn’t lower his voice uncomfortably. He did, however, unfold his crossed arms and walk over to the radio and turn it on. Lian stirred at the first snap of static and noise, but then made a sleepy noise and kept on snoozing. “Consistent noise levels are fine. It’s sudden drops or peaks in noise that mess with babies. I guess. I mean, she has one of those... pink noise machines, you know? For her room.” 

“Do you mean white noise?” 

“No,” Roy shrugged. “Ollie sent it. I dunno, I think he and Dinah talked about white versus pink noise and decided the pink noise was better, and they knew I was just running a fan in her room because Dinah visited, like, two days before the sound machine arrived on my doorstep.” 

“Just Dinah?” 

“Yeah. I mean. I spoke to Ollie, since last week, and it went. Fine. But we’re taking things slow.” 

They both quieted. Roy desperately wanted to know what brought Dick to his doorstep smack in the middle of his patrol times, but knew it was better to wait him out. Dick had trouble sticking it out through a conversational silence. 

Dick fidgeted. “That’s good.” 

Roy nodded. 

Dick fidgeted again, looking around. “Uh.” (Roy just barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes.) “Did you... tell him? Ollie, I mean?” 

“About him being me n’ Lian’s emergency contact?” 

Dick turned back to Roy and nodded, subdued in a way that always made Roy sad and uncomfortable. What happened to the eternal ray of sunshine he’d been as a kid, anyway? Besides, uh, Jason dying, he supposed. Besides Jason’s adoption without Bruce even thinking, “Hey, maybe I should tell my other kid he’s about to have a brother,” in advance. Besides... everything in the last few years, really. 

“I told Dinah. She passed it on.” Roy shrugged, smiling. “Dinah said he cried.” 

Dick smiled softly. 

“Yeah, he’s secretly a mush. We all knew that, though.” 

“Yeah,” Dick agreed. 

Silence fell between them again, except for the Kansas on the radio. Dust in the Wind. Depressing. 

Dick cleared his throat. “Alfred, uh. Alfred found out that.” He quieted and hunched in on himself. “We-we uh. He.” He cleared his throat again. Roy was suddenly blisteringly aware of the fact that Dick was on the verge of tears. Or hysterics. Or both. “It-it-it's Jason,” he managed. 

“What?” Roy awkwardly stopped mid-step on his way to sit next to Dick on the couch. 

“Jason,” Dick choked out. He looked up, his expression equal parts pained and stricken. “B thinks... that—that it’s Jason.” 

“What is?” 

“The Red Hood!” Dick said, much too loud. He clapped a hand over his mouth and glanced at the table, where Lian and her bouncer sat. Lian grumbled and shifted, but remained asleep. Dick looked back at Roy, who was entirely unconcerned about the brief spike in volume. “He thinks. That. The Red Hood. That-that the guy  killing  people. Is-is-is Jason,” Dick said. He gave a sort of hiccup noise and put his hand back over his mouth. He looked shellshocked. 

Roy managed to get his feet moving and walked over to plop down beside Dick on the couch. He pulled Dick into a hug, more than aware of how tactile Dick was. “Do you... believe him?” 

“I don’t know,” a few tears slipped out of the corners of Dick’s eyes. “I don’t want to.” 

Roy had to pause at that. He bit back the why, though. He could see why Dick wouldn’t want that to be true. Not least because of the “murderer” part of everything the Red Hood did. Guns, blood, drugs, and a battlefield of bodies left in his wake. 

“He thinks it was Talia,” Dick whispered. 

Roy felt himself go rigid. “No.” 

“The Pit,” Dick pushed on. 

“Oh my god,” Roy covered his own mouth and let himself feel sick for a moment. His mind’s eye gave him a vision of the boy Jason used to be, in one of his rare moments of happiness. No, it wasn’t fair to even think— “Oh my god,” Roy repeated. The things he’d heard about the Pit. The things it could do to people. No—it just. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t Jason’s tragic death enough? Without forceful resurrection? 

“The Pit and Talia,” Dick spat. His muscles started to tense under Roy’s arm. 

Roy didn’t have it in him to try and redirect Dick’s energies, get him out of the angry mindset he’d entered. Not with the situation he was trying to process. Not when his little brother – someone he’d always thought he’d failed (especially after he’d died) – was apparently back from the dead thanks to Al Ghul intervention. Back from the dead as a murderous crime lord. 

Dick deflated, though, without prompting. All the tenseness fell away until gravity dragged at his limbs instead. “Tim,” he whispered. “He’s trying—he's trying to kill Tim. He’s trying to get B to abandon his morals, to  kill.  I—I don’t know what...” 

Roy rubbed his hand up and down Dick’s spine as Dick spluttered into something that was almost hyperventilation, but just shy of it. 

“He thinks we replaced him,” Dick’s voice was barely audible. “He thinks we never loved him. Never  valued  him.” 

“You can’t know if he—” 

“He calls Tim ‘Replacement,’” Dick cut in, vicious. He froze at his own volume. 

Both Dick and Roy held their breath and listened for Lian. She made a sleepy wheeze and burbled a little – a flood of soft consonants pushed through her drool-covered mouth – but stayed asleep. On the radio, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts were singing about how much they loved rock n’ roll. A bit of a tonal shift from Kansas, but no less classic. 

Dick dropped his head and sighed. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. 

“What can you do? It’s not like ‘dealing with dead relatives coming back to life and murdering drug lords’ is part of Vigilante 101, now, is it?” Roy curled around Dick a bit more. Another time, before Roy was a dad and before he’d ever touched any drugs, there were other ways in which he would have considered offering to comfort Dick. The Roy of the present, though, knew it wasn’t a good idea to get tangled up in Dick’s gravitational pull, not again. They didn’t mesh right. It wouldn’t last. 

(Lian deserved better than Roy going after something he knew, for sure, would only ever be temporary.) 

“He’s gotta be in there,” Dick said. “He has to be. It can't be  all  anger and hate, can it?” 

“You can’t save everyone,” Roy said. 

“I don’t believe that.” 

Roy let that sit in the air between them for a long moment. He let it roll around, inside his skull, and tried to think his way around it. 

Roy felt his expression steeling. How had Dick ever made it this far – from Robin to Nightwing – without learning that hardest of lessons? He’d always been hopeful to a fault and short-fused. Hopeful and angry, in equal measure. But— 

“You  can’t,”  Roy emphasized. “No one can. Not even Superman. Not even B. Not even Flash. No one can. We—I know no one wants to believe it, no one wants to acknowledge it, but we can’t and it’s only going to hurt us more to try and fight that.” 

“I’m not giving up on him, Roy.” 

Roy let that sit for a while, too. He mulled it over. That one was a lot less self-destructive than the other, but it was still an obvious set-up for failure, disappointment, and pain. 

“Okay,” Roy said, before he’d finished thinking it over. 

Dick’s head shot up and he met Roy’s eye with a suspicious look. “Okay?” 

“Yeah. Okay. But you don’t get to go it alone.” 

Dick opened his mouth to retort, but snapped it back shut. His suspicion turned to wariness. “What about Lian?” 

“It’s about time Ollie pulled grampa duty,” Roy shrugged awkwardly. 

Dick pursed his lips. 

Roy let the silence stretch, but Dick honestly seemed to be at a loss, so Roy shrugged again. “With you n’ B fighting, and with Tim being off patrol after the last fiasco—” 

“How did you know about that?” 

“—someone needs to watch your ass. And that might as well be me.” 

“You don’t have to.” 

“No, I know that. But you stood by me. And Lian. You’re still here, you know? I might as well be there for you, too. How else are we fuck-ups going to get backup when we need it?” 

Dick snorted and dropped his gaze. “Thanks.” He shrugged out of Roy’s embrace and made to stand. 

Roy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You look pretty beat. ‘Haven will still be standing when you get back. You should just stay here tonight. You don’t have to take the lumpy secondhand couch, either. There’s more ‘n enough room for both of us.” 

Dick hesitated. And, okay, maybe that came out a bit more suggestive than intended. 

“Just  sleep,” Roy said, gently. “I think that ship has sailed, man.” 

“Me too,” Dick relaxed. “Yeah, okay. But if you hog the blankets, I’m kicking you out of bed.” 

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

Chapter Text

Roy (and Lian, situated in his arms like a drool-coated angel) went to fetch the mail one morning, only to find that the elevator was out. Like it was every other week of the goddamn year. 

Singing a ridiculous nursery rhyme about hot cross buns, whatever those were, for his baby girl, Roy made his way down the four flights of stairs, to the mailboxes. He kept a bounce in his step, more for Lian’s amusement than as any indication of his own mood, and made sure to leave a wide berth for incoming foot-traffic, up the stairs. 

Getting the mail was boring. Roy almost never got anything other than bills and junk mail. So, naturally, Roy only got the mail once or twice a month. It meant that a bag of some sort was kind of necessitated, in order to transport his mail, and that he’d be spending some short amount of time just prying the letters out of the little box they’d been shoved into. He had the bag, he had the baby, and he was ready to attempt the one-handed mail prying (for the fifth time since moving into the apartment building). 

Roy greeted each of his downstairs and upstairs neighbours that he passed, on his way down, attempting to be amiable, even though he almost never talked to any of them. In turn, the Blüdhaven natives almost all gave him suspicious looks, as if he were a conman ready to pounce. But what right-minded conman went around with a baby in their arms, exactly? 

It was a relief to actually hit the ground floor. Gotham and Blüdhaven were both so... suspicious. Of everything. It was a big change from Star. 

“Star City,” Roy sighed, talking to Lian once more. “Pretty nice place, actually. Even when I was living on her streets.” He laughed, albeit in a self-deprecating manner, “Here’s hoping no one decides to tell you all the sordid details of Daddy’s past, huh?” 

Lian blew a raspberry at him. 

Roy shook his head fondly, then looked up in time to catch sight of an unexpectedly familiar face. He lit up, more than was really warranted, and jogged over to the mailboxes, where a brickhouse shaped like a person was just pulling their key out of their mailbox lock, junk mail already in hand (as well as a roughed up pack of cigarettes). “Peter?” Roy asked. 

Tall, Dark, and Eternally Pissed Off – also called Peter – froze for a moment, then glanced over. “Roy,” he drawled. 

“Small world,” Roy grinned. 

“Mm,” the guy glanced around, eyes hitting every exit the room had to offer (Roy would know – he'd mapped them out enough times, himself). “Just moved in.” 

“No shit!” Roy said. He glanced down at Lian, whose big baby blues were fixed on the stranger. “Look, Princess, it’s the nice man we ran our cart into, when we were out grocery shopping.” 

Lian gave Peter a wise, thoughtful look, then shoved the whole of her fat little fist into her mouth. 

Roy glanced back up, in time to catch the tail end of a tiny smile on Peter’s face. Peter seemed to catch him looking, though, and doubled down on the constipated, pissed-off look. “Don’t suppose I could ask her name?” he asked. 

“Lian,” Roy said, immediately. “The only thing worth living for.” 

“Lot of pressure, there,” the guy gave a startled laugh. Roy decided that, actually, ‘Peter’ didn’t fit him that well, after all. 

Roy shrugged. “I dunno. She’s worth everything, to me. I didn’t even know she was—sorry, too much information, probably. She was a surprise, is all. And now I can’t imagine life without her.” 

“Man, it’s weird seeing a good dad in fucking Gotham,” the guy shook his head. “I thought they were all just deadbeats and losers.” 

“Don’t count me out yet,” Roy snarked. But it occurred to him that the guy said Gotham, instead of Blüdhaven. “You from Gotham?” he asked. 

The guy froze up again, gaze turning calculating. He searched Roy’s face for a long moment. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Must have slipped up. Blüdhaven’s so... Gotham, honestly. Maybe grungier.” He wrinkled his nose. “Haven’t been to Gotham in years, though.” 

“Travel a lot?” 

“You could say that, yeah.” 

Roy nodded. “I know what that can be like.” He moved forward and unlocked his mailbox. Immediately, he could tell that the stash of envelopes staring back at him was more of a two-handed job. Jesus, it looked like every credit card company in the fucking country had sent him something. He didn’t need another card, though, which made all of that trash. “I only decided to put down roots, really, for my baby girl. Figured it would be better n’ all.” 

The guy stepped forward, without so much as a ‘let me,’ and began divesting the crowded box of envelopes of its overstuffing of mail. 

Roy stepped back, blinking a few times in surprise. Particularly when the guy turned and offered the bulk of the mail to him. Somehow, Roy thought it would have been more Blüdhaven (or Gotham) of him to steal the mail and go, regardless of whether or not he and Roy lived in the same building. But no. He stood there until Roy had turned his brain off and on again, at which point Roy sheepishly offered the reusable bag he’d brought down specifically for his mail. 

“Didn’t know Gotham made decent folks,” Roy joked. 

“They don’t,” Peter gave him a sharp, almost predatory grin. Belaying the insincerity of the grin, though, Peter locked up Roy’s box and offered him back the key. “Take care, Roy.” 

“Yeah. You too. Thanks,” Roy managed. 

Peter headed out, thankfully. Otherwise, Roy would have had to walk up who knew how many flights of stairs with him, dazed by the simple act of kindness. 

Chapter Text

Another week on and Roy was in Gotham. Not that that was new or anything – he and  Lian  lived close enough to Gotham, on the Blüdhaven side, that Roy made relatively frequent forays into Batman’s city.  

Tonight was different, though.  

Ollie and Dinah had  Lian  through the weekend.  

Well, Ollie and Dinah and the hoard that had taken over the house in frequent years (Mia, Connor, Emiko, and Baby Robert).  

(And, oh god, Roy never wanted to have another conversation about Emiko and Robert and Ollie and who was related to who and how, because it hurt his head and he hated everything – long story short: Robert Sr., Oliver’s dad, made Emiko with an assassin ninja lady, and then Oliver somehow managed to meet the same assassin ninja lady and, through distasteful actions on the assassin lady’s part, made Robert Jr., which means Emiko is half-sister (paternal) of Baby Robert, but also half-aunt (maternal) of Baby Robert.)  

Anyway!  

The Hoard had  Lian  for the weekend, which thrilled absolutely everyone on the Queens’ side of things, while also leaving Roy free to enter Gotham in a more vigilante-related capacity. He did so, beside one of his best friends, to look for said best friend’s once-dead, now-murderous kid brother.  

...Yay!  

“So, what’s the plan?” Roy asked.  

The  comm  line stayed silent for a long minute.  

Roy sighed and glanced to the next rooftop over, where Dick sat on the edge of the roof, scowling down at traffic. “You didn’t come up with a plan, did you?” Roy asked.  

”No, I have a plan,”  Dick said.  “There’s a drug deal going down—”  

“At the docks?”  

“You know Gotham. The villains just love being as stereotypical as they possibly can, even knowing that the Bat could descend on their heads at any moment. But yeah. Drug deal, docks, whole shebang.”  

“And this is Hood’s gang?”  

Dick turned to glare at Roy, from across the divide between their respective buildings. In the back of Roy’s head, he could hear the exasperated voice of Dick telling him that, no, Hood didn’t have a gang. Hood just controlled all the gangs. Never even mind that that was tantamount to gang ownership, right there.  “No. And there’s  rumours  going around that these  guys’re  dealing to kids.”  

Roy winced. He remembered that, too. Hood didn’t need more than a  rumour  to rain unholy hell down on a dealer’s head. The Red Hood didn’t tolerate dealing to kids. “Okay, so... what? We stake it out and wait for the party crasher, then crash  his  party?”  

“Yeah, pretty much.”  

Roy let the silence stretch, incredulous. “Seriously? That’s it?”  

He watched for Dick’s bodily response. Yup. There it was. A shrug. How comforting.  

“That’s all  Nightwing  has,”  a new voice broke in. Feminine, but hard and uncompromising.  

Roy would have jumped or startled at the suddenness of the  comm  intrusion, except that he’d long become used to the way Bats seemed to pop up, out of nowhere, and stick their noses into other folks’ business.  

“I, however, have times and exact locations, as well as a working theory on the paths Hood takes, when he’s traveling under the Bats’ collective radars.”  Tapping could be heard in the background.  “I’ve also got the start of a handle on his tech, what it is and what it’s made of and how to get into it. I’m nowhere near getting into his  comm  lines, yet, if he even has them, but it helps. I can pin basic locations of where he is, when he’s actively using his tech. It’s not exact enough to give a street address, but I can tell you when he gets in the basic area of the docks, without too much margin for error.”  

“Hey, BG,” Roy greeted.  

“It’s Oracle, now.”  

“Okay. Hey, O,” Roy amended.  

“Hey, Speedy.”  

Roy snorted at the turnaround. “It hasn’t been Speedy in a while, now.”  

“I know. Wasn’t it Red Arrow for a bit?”  

“I toyed with it, sure. But, for the sake of not turning the Arrow name into a Christmas card layout, I’m thinking Arsenal might be a better fit,” Roy said. Across the way,  Nightwing  was back on his feet and getting very obviously antsy.  

“Got it, I’ll update your file. I take it you picked up the bow because of the Red Hood situation?”  There was a subtle sound of turning wheels as Babs moved from one computer terminal to another. Or something.  Roy’d  never actually been to the  Clocktower , though he’d heard a bit about it from Dinah.  

“Yeah,” Roy said.  

“So, not out of retirement. Good to know.”  The key-tapping resumed.  ”I’ve sent you and N the information on time and precise location. I’ll keep you both updated on whether or not the Red Hood is in the area, whether through tracking his tech, watching the feeds, or sightings on social media.”  

Roy whistled. “You don’t leave anything to chance, do you?”  

Instead of answering, Babs laughed.  “I’ll keep B off your tail, a bit. I know that... I know N wants a chance to see if he’s still in there. I can give you that. But just this once.”  

”Thanks, O,”  Nightwing  said.  

“Cool, let’s head out, then,” Roy said. He pulled up the information Babs had sent along, skimmed it, then put the gauntlet computer away, once more, and looked over at  Nightwing . Except that  Nightwing  was already on the move. Roy cursed to himself and made to follow.  

Chapter Text

No luck.  

The deal seemed to go down fine and Roy and Dick both were ready to jump in (because obviously they couldn’t let the deal  actually  go through), when suddenly there was a hail of gunfire, without any Oracle heads-up.  

It was over before Roy would have been able to recite a nursery rhyme for  Lian’s  amusement. Not half as showy or dramatic as the Red Hood hits had been, up until that point. It was quick, precise, and left a lot of dead bodies on the docks.  

It bore noting, though, that not all the people at the deal ended up dead. Some got away. Roy didn’t think that was an accident, particularly when it was only the youngest gang members who seemed to get out alive. It was a second chance. And a message.  

“No survivors? Then where do the stories come from, I wonder,” Roy murmured.  

Dick glanced sideways at him. Not like Roy could tell, behind the mask lenses that all the Bats employed, but he knew Dick well enough to recognize the twitch and head tilt.  

Roy turned and gave him an apologetic smile. “Just. Everything I heard seemed to say he always killed everyone who crossed him. But if he did that...”  

“No stories,” Dick nodded. “Okay, fine. But maybe don’t go into movie quotes of a sudden, when—O?” Dick stood and turned slightly away. “Yeah, I noticed  th — no. No, we didn’t actually see—” Dick frowned and waited for Babs to finish saying whatever she was saying. “No, that’s super weird, I agree— Yeah. Yeah, definitely... yeah, I get that.”  

And so it went on.  

Roy was a bit peeved that Babs wasn’t sharing with the class, but decided not to impose himself on Dick’s conversation with her. Instead, he surveyed the damage once more and let the cogs turn in his mind. It was almost like a magician’s trick, somehow. Misdirection. He couldn’t place exactly how, but... it felt like they had been misdirected. But where?  

Roy shifted in place and sat more comfortably on his perch.  

Fact: Red Hood liked to make his point, loud and clear. He was usually dramatic in that way that all the Bats seemed to be, but also dramatic in that way that the Bats’  villains  seemed to be. Almost a showman.  

But counter-fact: This docks business hadn’t been done showily, at all. It was in and out, done in a matter of moments (a minute or two at most). It was efficient and cruel and achieved the ends with as little  resistance  as possible. If this was the Red Hood, it was a drastic break in pattern.  

Theory...? Roy couldn’t really place it. Maybe Hood was just... aware of his patterns. Maybe it was intentional. And if his patterns  were  intentional, if the showmanship – the whole show he always seemed to put on while making his point – was something he did deliberately, maybe the break from it was deliberate, too, though Roy couldn’t think why he’d make such a sudden break from his patterns.  

Unless—  

Roy looked over at Dick, who was still talking to Babs over the comms, though quieter and a little further away. Clearly it was Bat Stuff, though Roy still felt a little bit of resentment at being left out.  

Roy returned his gaze to his hands, where he’d let them drift while he was thinking. But. Roy couldn’t think of a reason that the Red Hood would make such a sudden break from his usual patterns... unless the purpose of the patterns was precisely because breaks from his patterns would be harder to track.  

Red Hood’s violent calling card was all over the crime scene, which meant it would be big news the next day. Everything about it still screamed Red Hood’s name in violent, bloody letters. It was just that there was no showmanship to the actual actions. In hindsight, Roy would be able to read in that showmanship and consider it about the same to all the other actions the Red Hood had taken (and how many other Red Hood cases were done with that subtlety, but with such a scene left behind, anyway?).  

Maybe that was part of what made the Hood so hard to track.  

But what about his tech? Babs had said—  

Oh.  

“Hey,” Roy said.  

Dick didn’t respond immediately.  

“Hey!” Roy waved him down.  

“What?” Dick looked at him with all the weariness that his previous adrenaline had been hiding.  

“What if he’s using his tech to make you guys think you’re starting to get him?” Roy said.  

“I don’t understand,” Dick sighed.  

“Go on,”  O said, suddenly willing to share with the class, again. Or have the class share with her, Roy supposed.  

“What if, I mean I know it sounds dumb, but what if you only think you’re getting a handle of it? He could totally be pinging his signal around the city, right? Maybe? Or he could be tamping it down when he doesn’t want that information out there,” Roy said. He felt a little nervous, his words a little  rambly , but he soldiered on. He didn’t have to feel dumb just because he was trying to theorize with so little information, even if it was with one of the best hackers in the country. Probably the world. “What if he’s specifically dropping bits of that tech stuff like breadcrumbs, for  you  to pick up, or for B to pick up, so that when he really needs the Bats out of his hair, he could just... turn it off? Or send his signal elsewhere?”  

Babs hummed.  “It’s a theory,”  she agreed.  “But it wouldn’t answer for the security cameras or social media dodging.”    

“Why not? He’s probably aware of that stuff, too. All he’d have to do, to escape notice, is leave the ‘hood’ at home. A guy on a bike isn’t nearly as easy to pick out on cams as a guy wearing a full-face, bright red helmet.” Roy felt his confidence building a little. “If he’s Jay,” he winced at the nickname. “Jason, I mean,” he muttered. “If he’s Jason, he’s a Bat, and you Bats are hyper-aware, like, paranoid-hyper-aware of everything. Security cams and social media aren’t excepted from that.  And if he knows you know who he is, the pattern breaks could be intentional, so that he can get shit done – the way he thinks it needs to be done – without a Bat-interruption messing it up.”    

“Okay, it’s a good theory,”  Babs said.  “Might hold some water. Hyper-awareness of his routines and patterns sounds a lot like something Bruce might teach—”    

“He does,” Dick cut in.    

“—which makes the rest of that plausible. I mean, he was never as good as me, at hacking, but he also had the groundwork for that down. And he’s been trained since then. Decoy signals... I hadn’t really thought about that, honestly. I should have. I’ll look into it.”    

“In the meantime,” Dick shifted from foot to foot and cast his eyes down. “Will you... keep this between us, O? I just. I want a real chance, you know?”  

Babs was silent for a long minute.  “We’ll see,”  she finally said.  

Even as she disconnected, Dick was sighing in relief. Then he looked up at Roy, “That was good,” he said.  

“Just because B’s  World’s Greatest Detective  doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t up to scratch,” Roy gave an awkward grin, shrugging. “And it might be wrong.” He looked away.  

Dick squatted down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “It was good,” he repeated, firmly. “I think you’re onto something."  

Chapter Text

Dick and Roy parted ways shortly after that. Dick was going to wait for the GCPD to show up to the crime scene ( somehow,  they hadn’t shown up after, like, almost an hour, and that was just... bad, man), but Roy didn’t want too much public exposure, since he wasn’t really a mask, anymore. Just for emergencies, or friends in need.  

So, yeah. They parted ways and Roy headed homeward.  

It was quite a skip and a jump from the Gotham docks to the part of  Blüdhaven  that Roy called home, and he went a bit into autopilot as he grappled between buildings. It was all rote to him, anyway. Practically the same as breathing. He didn’t need to put his full attention into it, particularly because of how quiet the rest of those parts of Gotham seemed to be. It wasn’t really a good sign, per se, but it also wasn’t a bad sign. And it meant it was okay if Roy’s thoughts and awareness turned a bit inward, so that was what he did.  

Which was why he wasn’t expecting it when his line was  cut.  

Roy swore.  

Habit had him immediately lining up a new grapple shot – and praying he’d grabbed the right arrow (rather: programmed the right arrow head )  – before full awareness of the situation hit him. He was a bit rusty, and got a bit closer to the streets than he would have liked before he had a new line, but he made it. In the end, that was what mattered.  

Roy made it to a rooftop, slamming into the side of the building a bit on his ascension, his trajectory a bit more off than he’d actually been expecting. The trajectory error was enough that, had he been partnered up, he would have thought there was a line tangling or that he’d been bumped, but he was solo, so he figured it must have been from flailing around as he got onto a new grapple line.  

He rolled onto his back, hat getting knocked off, as soon as safety was reached, panting.  

He didn’t get out more than one and a half anxious breaths before a boot came down (thankfully not too hard) on his chest. Roy’s hands shot up and he grabbed the ankle, eyes snapping to the combat boot. For the briefest second, he thought he’d been caught by Batman, except that Batman didn’t  cut lines . Batman was a bit of a taskmaster, sure. And an absolute  hardass  about all things Bat. But he wasn’t outright homicidal or unnecessarily life-endangering.  

Roy’s brain hadn’t quite caught up before his assailant spoke.  

“Stay out of Gotham, Speedy,” the modulated voice said, hard and uncompromising. “This isn’t any of your business.”  

Roy’s eyes snapped up and. Shit.  

Like...  

Shit.  

The red of the Hood’s full-face helmet glinted in the rare bit of moonlight, peeking through the extremely normal overcast Gotham skies.  

Roy gaped, then rebooted his brain and used his hold on the Hood’s ankle to try and topple him. A stream of “danger, danger, danger” ran through his mind, and he knew he couldn’t just lay there and let a bullet get put into him. He had to go home! He had to get back to Lian!  

He knew he wasn’t processing. He  knew  he was missing something. But it was more important to act first, right then.  

(But what was he missing?)  

The Red Hood skittered away from him, twisting out of his grip and getting out of reach. “Go home, Speedy!” the modulated voice sneered. “It’s not your fight. It’s not worth it!”  

Roy rolled over and shot into a crouched position, bowstring pulled taught and arrow loaded up. Except the point of the arrow was wrong somehow. Roy glanced down at it, then back up at Hood, who still stood out of reach, but hadn’t moved otherwise. It wasn’t that the point was wrong, it was that the point hadn’t attached. But Roy knew he’d done it right, his quiver should have given him—  

The Red Hood tossed an object at him,  

Roy flinched, even though it landed in front of him, obviously not intended to actually hit him. “My fight’s not with you,” Hood sneered.  

It was the bottom of Roy’s quiver, the part he took out to load up with arrow points, then loaded up so that his quiver could actually give him the type of arrow he needed, when he needed it, with only a few obscure motions between him and any given arrow. Roy glanced at it, then back up at Hood again, eyes wide behind his mask.  

The trajectory error. Could Hood have gotten his hands on that part of his quiver when Roy was still trying to get back on track, after his line was cut? No, that was— but how did he even know about the quiver anyway? About the arrowheads?  

Wait.  

Jason.  

It was Jason, and Roy himself had shown  Jason  how his quiver worked. Years ago.  

“Jason,” Roy said out loud. He didn’t know where he was going to go with that—  

Hood was moving again, immediately. “Get out of Gotham, Speedy! It’s none of your fucking business!” he took a swipe at Roy with the knife that had probably been able to cut Roy’s line, a swipe that would have definitely gotten him had he not already been moving to dodge out of the way.  

“Jason!” Roy tried again, yelping it out as he rolled away and back into a defensive position. This time, he dropped the arrow and brandished his bow as a weapon, which it could more than handle, even if Roy definitely preferred using it to perform ranged attacks. Roy caught the next knife swipe on his bow, though it sent him from his crouch onto his knees. “Jesus, you got big,” Roy muttered.  

“I’m not after you!” Hood shouted. Jason shouted.  

“Jason, please—”  

“Leave and don’t come back! Don’t make me the guy who orphans some kid just because you can’t keep your nose out of other peoples’ business!” the pure venom in his voice was enough to tell Roy that he meant it, too.  

And there was a chill running up and down Roy’s spine. He knew. He knew about Lian.  

Roy just about fell forward when Jason jumped back, removing all the weight behind his blow. Roy regained himself, panting more in anxiety than exertion, and kept sharp eyes on his assailant.  

He knew about Lian.  

“If you go after—”  

“I don’t hurt  kids,  Harper,” Hood spat. And that confirmed it, didn’t it? This really was Jason. This guy who had tried, with too much intention for it to be a feint, to get his knife in Roy. Had tried to kill him. Had cut his line.  Knew about Lian.  “Get the fuck out of Gotham,” he said, lowly. “Let  Goldenboy  deal with his own shit, for once in his life.”  

Roy bristled at that. “All he wants is to get you back!” he snapped.  

Both men stopped in surprise at what Roy had said without thinking. Roy blinked to himself a few times. He looked down, then back up. Jason looked no less hostile, but also didn’t seem to be rushing back in, knife brandished.  

And no gun.  

That was what Roy was missing. Hood had his guns holstered. He’d only ever had his knife out, the whole time he was facing off with Roy, even to that first moment when he’d put his boot down on Roy’s chest – which he could have done harder in order to have Roy more at his mercy.  

“You—don’t actually want to hurt me, do you?”  

“I don’t care if I hurt you,” Hood managed to tense up even more, which wasn’t efficient in terms of making an attack or staying properly on guard, actually. Too tense and the body didn’t respond as quickly, in Roy’s experience. Kind of like making sure you weren’t locking your knees straight and stuff, so that your body was ready for whatever and not trying to get over itself before doing things. “I don’t want to kill you. You’re not like them. You don’t deserve it. But I’ll kill you if I have to.”  

“Who’s ‘them’?”  

Jason turned and made his abrupt escape.  

Roy cursed and tried to make it to the other side of the roof, to see which way Jason went, but he wasn’t fast enough.  

‘Them’ was probably the Bats, but Roy couldn’t... he didn’t get it. If Jason was far enough gone that he thought his former family had to be,  what?,  if Jason thought they had to be  put down  or whatever, why didn’t he think the same thing about Roy? If he was just a crazy murderer, why didn’t he just shoot Roy when Roy was unawares? Why was he warning Roy off, instead of just getting rid of him?  

Roy huffed, then turned back to the roof. He had a quiver to put back together and a hat to stick back on his head.  

Chapter Text

Roy woke the next day in an okay mood.  

Until he remembered that his baby girl was off with the grandparents and that he had the day all to himself. Sure, to some parents that probably sounded great, but Roy hated the feeling of aimlessness and  abnormalcy  that such days always seemed to have.  

So, it was a grumpy Roy that ended up clomping his way down four flights to – aimlessly, as he expected – check his mail. And, equally aimlessly, wonder what to do after having checked his mail and thrown it all out (junk mail, every bit of it).  

It was also a grumpy Roy that received Peter’s “Hey,” when said sort-of  neighbour  went to his own mailbox.  

Roy grunted in response.  

“No kid, today?” Peter asked.  

“No, she’s back home,” Roy said. Peter looked at him sharply, but Roy only caught the tail end of it and decided not to question it. “Back with my... dad, I mean. And his girlfriend. Wife? Ex-wife, current girlfriend, possibly back to  fiance .”  

“Sounds complicated,” Peter said. He shoved his key into his mailbox’s lock and tried to turn it. It caught and wouldn’t turn. He pulled the key out, put a different key in, and tried again. This time, it turned, creaking open in that obnoxious, loud way that made Roy want to get his own damn oil can and oil all the stupid little mailbox hinges himself.  

“Mm,” Roy hummed agreeably. “My whole family is. Complicated, I mean.”  

“And she’s ‘back home’ because...?” Peter pulled two slips of mail out of his box, one was a big manila envelope (folded in half) and the other was a junk mail postcard. He shoved the manila envelope into an apparent pocket inside his leather  jacker . Roy didn’t think leather jackets usually had inner pockets like that. And, sure, Peter was clearly fishing for information, and Roy figured he should be more aware or careful or something, but it was nice that someone was interested in him, you know? Interested in knowing the “why” instead of just the basic “what.” Even if it was just casual conversation over their mailboxes.  

“Uh,” Roy mulled possible answers over and leaned up against the block of mailboxes. Which answer would preserve his whole ‘secret ID’ thing best? “My friend... he wanted to, uh, reconnect with his brother. Estranged brother, I guess. Very estranged,” Roy quieted and felt a droop of sadness pulling at him, curving his shoulders down and pulling him a bit more inward and towards, just, the ground in general. “It didn’t go well, obviously,” he motioned to himself.  

Peter was very quiet beside him.  

Roy glanced over, feeling suddenly awkward. No one wanted family drama, right?  

Peter was glaring at the ground, clearly lost in thought. Roy immediately felt bad, wondering if he’d brought up bad memories or something. Peter locked his mailbox and jerked his key out, pissed-off look never wavering.  

“Uh. Sorry, that was a bit heavy, I guess. What about you? How’ve you been, Peter?” Roy asked. No, ‘Peter’ felt all wrong rolling off his tongue. He still couldn’t put his finger on it, but the name didn’t quite work. Too many edges, maybe. Or not enough. Something.  

Peter scoffed. “Dodging estranged family,” he said. He smirked in dark  humour , his eyes glinting dangerously as he glanced sideways at Roy. “I’m not  livin ’ at home for a reason.” He leaned up against the block of mailboxes, as well.  

Out the corner of his eye, Roy saw one of their  neighbours  begin to approach, hesitate, then scurry in the other direction, clearly intimidated by the two muscular men bracketing the mailboxes.  

Roy nodded. “Left home to get away?”  

“You could say that... I was dying to get out.” Another smirk.  

“Same. I’m from Star.” Roy gave a commiserating smile.  

“Didn’t you say your little girl was ‘back home’?”  

Roy shrugged and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. He glanced down. Man, Peter wore some heavy-duty work boots. You could crush a skull with those, probably. “Me n’ my, uh, dad never got along great. It got really bad, but we’ve been working on it lately. And besides, just because the two of us have issues doesn’t mean I don’t want  Lian  to know what family she’s got, right? She’s more important to me than whatever beef I’ve got with Ollie.”  

“That’s...” Peter mulled it over, visibly. His eyes travelled slowly to the ceiling and traced one of the many patterns of water damage that the building had acquired over the years. Every floor had them.  Roy’d  even tried to paint over the one in his apartment, once. It was no use. “That’s... very mature of you,” Peter settled on. He dropped his gaze back to Roy’s.  

Roy shrugged awkwardly. “Her mom isn’t around, and the  grandad  on that side is... I’d rather jack the Batmobile than acquiesce to letting my baby girl anywhere near that bastard. No, that doesn’t really compare. I  dunno , I’d rather take a shot to the nuts, I guess.” Roy gave a  humoured  grin.  

Peter winced in commiseration. “ Yowch .”  

“Yeah.”  

“Lucky girl, you got. I mean, if you’re really willing to put the family jewels on the line rather than her,” Peter’s lips quirked into a softer grin, less sharp and dark and dangerous. It was a much better smile. Roy decided he liked it best, though he didn’t mind the other grins, either. Each had character and unknown depths that he kind of wanted to explore.  

Except that he and Peter were basically just strangers. Passing ships in the night, or whatever. Ships passing in the night? However that was supposed to go.  

Roy shrugged again. “I’d do anything for  Lian .”  

Peter nodded slowly. “Would you kill?” he asked. It was weirdly serious.  

Roy smirked. “You think I haven’t?” It was Blüdhaven, one of the few places you could actually get away with implying past murders without getting into too much trouble. Even so, Roy was a bit surprised at himself for saying that. It wasn’t exactly “passing acquaintance” approved conversation material.  

Peter quirked a brow. ”You have?”  

“Not everyone can have the moral steadfastness of Batman. Some of us get into scrapes where there’s only one way out,” Roy shrugged. “Besides, some people kind of deserve what’s coming to them, you know?”  

That seemed to please Peter. “I’ve been saying that for years.”  

Chapter Text

He had Lian back in no time, and it was such a relief to have her familiar weight back on his hip. It had only been a three-day weekend, but he’d missed her more than he thought he could miss someone. More than he thought he might miss his dominant hand, even, should he ever lose it. 

Naturally, that meant he spent the next few days spoiling her (though not by compromising what boundaries he’d already set, like “thou shalt not return a toy just because the baby cries for it” and “thou shalt not return toys when they are thrown for the express purpose of having the parent return them to the baby”). But beyond that, he let her have all the cheerios she wanted, and all the little kinda-sorta star-shaped banana-flavoured cereal-like snacks. And all the juice she wanted. 

Basically, it was a normal day, but Roy didn’t bar Lian from another handful of cheerios when she reached her grubby little hand at him and opened and closed (and opened and closed) her little hand in request. 

God, he’d probably tear stars from the heavens if he thought they’d make Lian happy. 

It had been a while, but he still hadn’t heard from Dick, since the night they’d tried to confront the Red Hood. Somewhere along the line, Roy also realized that he’d never actually told any of the Bats about his cut line or the boot on his chest or the lack of a gun or— 

He hadn’t told any of them about the confrontation he’d had with the Red Hood. Jason. 

He’d gotten a few random selfies from Dick – who liked to preen and selfie whenever time allowed, and then force his ridiculously photogenic selfies onto anyone even vaguely willing to tolerate them – but that didn’t count as actual communication. That counted as “hey, I’m not dead, look at this special edition green cereal from last St. Patty’s I found in the back of my cupboard.” 

Yeah, so, Roy hadn’t gotten proper communication from Dick, yet. But he was still in a good mood, and spoiling Lian. 

He also took her to the park. 

Rather, he was taking her to the park. 

He had her papoosed, a little hat on her head, little booties on her feet, and a diaper bag twice as big as his actual child over one of his shoulders. The elevator was still out of order, so he meandered down the stairs as he rifled through said diaper bag, looking for the pediatrician/dermatologist approved infant sunscreen (some pretentious brand boasting natural something or other, also sent to the Harper Homestead by Ollie and Dinah). 

On the second-floor landing, turning to go down the last flight, he ran into Peter. Of course. 

Lian squealed and kicked out her fat little legs at the impact. 

“Sorry, Squirt,” Peter smiled down at Roy’s baby girl. 

Roy tripped over his words, seeing Peter look down and address Lian, smiling like that. That smile was suddenly Roy’s favourite, of all the smiles Peter had shown over the past few weeks. And had it only been a few weeks since Roy’d rammed his cart into the other man? Geez. 

“Sorry,” Roy managed. “Was a bit...” he motioned to the diaper bag, “preoccupied.” 

Peter took that as an invitation to filch the diaper bag. Which was totally weird, but also insanely heart-melting. “Heading out with the little lady?” Peter asked. 

“Yeah,” Roy breathed, grinning. “Going to the playground. She, uh, she loves the swings.” 

“Fancy. What’s the occasion?” Somehow, Peter didn’t make it sound sarcastic, like he actually thought that a bit of father-daughter time at the playground was somehow tantamount to being fancy or “for a special occasion.” And he was still smiling. In a good mood, then. 

“She’s back from her foray into the world of Grampa Ollie and his Hoard of Misfits,” Roy said. “Granted, that was probably a blast for her. So, I guess the special occasion is me having my baby girl back. Man, it’s crazy how used to the noise you get, when you have a kid. I can’t stand my apartment without her.” 

Peter and Roy headed down the final flight together, just about in step. Peter reached over to offer his hand to Lian, which was so big next to her tiny form. She redoubled her kicking efforts and reached for him, taking his forefinger in her hand and puffing out her cheeks until she was also blowing a sort of inverse raspberry. 

“Mind if I tag along?” Peter asked. “I’m headed for the coffee place on the corner. It’s just past the playground, unless you’re headed to some other playground in this godawful city.” Peter let Lian keep his finger, hooking it lightly around her little fist in an approximation of holding hands with her. 

“Sure,” Roy said, much too quickly. “I mean, yeah. Uh. Walking distance, you know? It’s not like there’s a  nice  playground anywhere in Blüdhaven, so there’s not really a point trekking further abroad to a playground that might not even have a proper baby swing.” 

“And she likes the swing,” Peter nodded. 

“You catch on quick,” Roy smiled at him, then glanced down at Lian. 

Lian blew a bubble in her saliva, then gaggled into something that was half a laugh and half a screech. God, he loved her. 

Peter and Roy were just outside the apartment building, on the grungy sidewalk of the grungy Blüdhaven street in the grungiest city outside of, like, Chicago. Or was that offensive? He could have just compared it to Gotham, but Roy was getting tired of his mental Gotham and Blüdhaven comparisons. Whatever. 

Anyway, Peter and Roy were just outside the apartment building when Roy’s phone decided to start going off.    

“This bitch empty,  yeet !”  Roy’s phone announced. After a moment, it repeated itself. 

Roy scrabbled for the phone in his back pocket, doing his best not to dislodge Lian’s grip on Peter’s finger (because it was the cutest thing he’d seen all day and he wanted it to continue indefinitely). “Dick!” he answered. He didn’t quite miss Peter’s look, but it wasn’t exactly out of place, given that Roy had just enthusiastically answered his phone with what was usually considered an insult. “You’re not dead! Thank fuck!” 

“I sent you a selfie as proof of life!”  

Roy snorted. “That cereal has to be expired. Proof of possible poisoning at best.” 

Peter looked like he wanted to escape, but had a consternated little frown focused on Lian and the point of contact between himself and the little girl. Lian bounced in her papoose a bit, kicking out aimlessly. “Ba, ba,” Lian said conversationally. Peter visibly melted a little. 

“Hey, I’m taking Lian out to the playground. If you have time, you should swing by, say hi to her. It’s been half an age,” Roy said.    

“It’s been less than a week, come on,”  Dick laughed on the other end.  “But sure. I mean, I’ll think about it.”   

“That’s just code for ‘no, but I don’t want to disappoint you so I’m going to be noncommittal instead,’ and you know it.” Roy huffed. He put his free hand on top of Lian’s unruly hair. “Lian misses you, dude.”    

“I’ll think about it! I mean it!”   

“Sure. Was there a reason you called?”    

“Just to tell you that we’ve found another avenue to explore. I wanted to know if you were still down or what. Details to come later, in person. All that jazz,”  Dick said. 

“I know the drill. And yeah, I’m down.” 

“Take care,”  Dick said. 

“You too.” Roy clicked his tongue and sighed, hanging his phone up and shoving it back in his pocket. He turned to smile at Peter. “Sorry about that.” 

Peter shrugged awkwardly. He seemed more muted, withdrawn, than he’d been before. Though he hadn’t pulled away from Lian or shown any intention to make a break for it. “It’s none of my business,” he said. Which was a bit odd, given the prying he’d done on other occasions, but Roy could let it pass. "All good, uh, with your friend?” 

“Yeah. I mean, yeah, sure. He’s going through it, with family shit, but he’s hanging in there – which is totally not what you asked, sorry.” Roy laughed to himself. “I mean. We’re good, he’s good, it’s all good. Except that he never has time to just come and chill. It’s always a borderline breakdown or emergency that brings him to my door, I swear.” 

“Doesn’t sound like a great dynamic.” 

“Yeah, but he doesn’t shove it on me or anything. I just wish he spent more downtime somewhere. With someone, me or otherwise, rather than waiting for the last shreds of his sanity to begin slipping before he’s willing to knock on my door.” Roy adjusted one of the papoose straps, which Lian had been working her way out from under. “But he’s always been like that, I guess. Well, no. He was a kid once. And a happy one, in spite of all this shit that his family went through. But, Jesus, the moment he hit adulthood it was like the world suddenly had a bone to pick with him.” 

“Mm,” Peter looked back down at Lian. 

“I swear he doesn’t even smile real smiles, anymore. Except maybe at Lian,” Roy sighed through his nose. “But enough of that. I spy a playground. Look, Lian!” Roy took her unoccupied hand – because of course Peter and Lian were still holding hands – and used it to motion toward the playground, trying to direct Lian’s attention in that direction. 

Lian burbled confusedly for a bit, then gave a bright, neon squeal of joy as she caught sight of the swings. 

Chapter Text

Even though Peter set the diaper bag down (near the swing so that Roy wouldn’t have to go anywhere to grab it), he actually didn’t make his departure, immediately. Instead, Peter leaned against one of the swing’s metal supports and basically kept a lookout.  

Roy didn’t call him on it. Even though he could more than handle himself and  Lian , alone, in the park.  

Besides, it was sweet, the way Peter seemed to dive into protective instincts like that. He was clearly fond of  Lian , which Roy always appreciated in a person, but he was also... Roy couldn’t put his finger on it. He was also... something.  

Guilty?  

That might have been it. Peter seemed to have something like guilt weighing him down.  

“Hey, I don’t want to keep you if you need to be somewhere,” Roy said. He buckled  Lian  into the baby swing and turned the papoose around, so that it wasn’t in his way, before he pushed the swing, lightly. “You said you were headed to the coffee shop, right?”  

“Just for coffee. I’m not standing anyone up.” Peter shifted and looked over at Roy. He didn’t smile, but his expression softened, the hard edges of vigilance falling away as he crossed his arms and focused in on Roy. “I can go later. Unless you’d rather—”  

“No, you’re fine,” Roy said quickly. He felt his cheeks warm a bit. R eally, Harper, how desperate could you be?  he berated himself. “I just wanted to be sure we weren’t—yeah. You know.” Roy rubbed the back of his neck and dropped Peter’s gaze.  

And his gaze landed on a telltale bulge (get your head out of the gutter) in Peter’s jacket.  

Roy raised his eyebrows and glanced back up at Peter, sharply. “You have a gun?” he asked.  

“ Hm ?” Peter glanced down, as if he’d forgotten he was carrying it. “Yeah. Got something against guns?”  

Roy felt a snap of “in playgrounds, yeah!” rising up, but he pushed it back down and thought about it. This was Blüdhaven, after all. Having protection was neither unheard of nor unwarranted. And Peter was just... such a protective force, under his eternal scowl. “Not particularly,” Roy said, finally. He deflated a bit. “I just,” he motioned at the playground, then at  Lian , who was blowing more spit bubbles and gumming happily on her fingers.  

“ Hm ,” Peter glanced around. “Yeah, I get that. Sorry.”  

“No, I mean. I shouldn’t have—you’re fine,” Roy said.  

“No, no. I should have probably warned you I was carrying, before inviting myself along. Guns around kids. Yeah, no. I can see the issue, there,” Peter unfolded his arms and dug his hands into his jacket pockets. He dropped his eyes to the ground.  

“It’s fine,” Roy repeated.  

He knew better than to ask whether or not Peter had a license to carry, let alone conceal and carry. If you lived in Gotham or Blüdhaven, it was more important to have a means of self-defense than it was to have a  legal  means of self-defense. It wasn’t Metropolis, where Superman was just a scream away. And it wasn’t Central, where a call to the police was as likely to bring the Flash as it was the actual police. And it certainly wasn’t Star, where the police response times had been getting more and more decent in recent years. In Gotham and Blüdhaven, the Bats were there to help, but everyone knew that the Bats couldn’t do it all or be everywhere.  

And they had to focus on the bigger threats, besides. Like Joker.  

In Gotham and Blüdhaven, the people tended to take care of their own problems, as much as possible. A daytime mugger? That was basically a non-issue, given how the majority of both cities had the means and preparedness to take down most would-be muggers, themselves.  

So yeah. Roy didn’t ask whether or not Peter had a license to carry.  

They were both there, just standing awkwardly and facing each other ( Lian  burbling and kicking out her legs as her swing slowed to almost a stop), when chaos decided to invade. Like, lovable chaos. Roy startled and jumped, like, a foot in the air when an arm came down across his shoulders.  

“Roy!” Dick hugged him close, one-armed. “How’s  Lian ? Who’s this?”  

“You—Dick!” Roy put a hand over his heart.  

Then they both turned to  Lian , who squealed, head leaned back to look at Dick. It couldn’t have been comfortable, but she looked happy.  

“She’s fine, as you can see. Asshole,” Roy said. “And this is my n—” Roy turned to where Peter had been standing to find the spot empty. “Oh. Uh. That was, uh, my  neighbour . And it looks like you scared him off.” Roy felt the confusion pinching his brows together, but decided to shrug it off. “I thought you were caught up in work,” he turned back to Dick.  

“Whoa, whoa, hold on. This is ‘Haven, Roy. I think we should focus on the sketchy  neighbour , disappearing just as the off-duty cop arrives,” Dick said. Though he said it almost as a joke, full of  humour , there was a touch of actual concern there, too.  

Roy rolled his eyes. He took a moment to push Lian, who was bouncing restlessly in her swing seat, before responding. “Well, first of all, you look nothing like a cop, D,” Roy motioned up and down at Dick, who was wearing a white short-sleeved button-up with green, blue, and purple polka dots, at least two sizes too big, and  light-coloured  bootcut jeans with raw hems and unintentional holes in both knees. It actually matched (for once in Dick’s life, outside of all-black ensembles), but it didn’t exactly scream “professional” anything, let alone cop. And, of course, Dick’s hair was far too long to look “cop,” in any context, while loose (because he wore it in a tight, professional bun at the nape of his neck while on duty – not loose, obviously, he wasn’t a stripper-cop).  

(Missed opportunity, there, though – Dick would have been a great stripper-cop.)  

Dick laughed. “Fair.”  

“And secondly,  all  my  neighbours  are sketchy. All  your  neighbours  are sketchy. Over half the population of Blüdhaven is sketchy! Especially in this part of town.” Roy motioned vaguely around them, to encompass that part of Blüdhaven, then pushed  Lian  again.  

Lian  gave a victorious war cry, in a shrill tone so high-pitched that it was, practically, just shy of becoming a dog whistle.  

Dick took a moment to smile down at her, then pushed his hair behind his ear and returned his gaze to Roy. “Okay, okay. I give. Keep your secrets, for now. But if your sketchy  neighbour  gets any sketchier, you know who you can call.”  

“Seriously, he’s a nice guy,” Roy said. “Grumpy. But, like. Nice.”  

“Mm, nice, huh?” Dick grinned.  

Roy shoved him, laughing. “Come on, I’m a single dad. With a literal baby. Even if I was interested, a guy that looks like  that  definitely has better options than a washed-up former addict with daddy issues and a kid.”  

“Whoa, hey,” Dick shoved him, back, albeit much gentler. His voice went gentler, too. “That’s my friend you’re putting down. Besides, if some guy or girl, or whoever you’re interested in, ever, doesn’t think you’re a catch, or doesn’t think that  Lian  is a plus and not a  hinderance ? Then you deserve better, dude.”  

“Sure,” Roy said.  

“I mean it!”  

“I believe you. Here, take a turn pushing the Munchkin,” Roy stepped out of the way.  

Chapter Text

Dick stayed for twenty minutes, give or take a few, then bid his farewells – mostly to Lian – and headed back for work. Which was how Roy found out that Dick had just taken a long lunch to visit with him and Lian, actually. 

Roy felt a little guilty, taking up Dick’s lunch break, but Dick always looked so happy around Lian, so Roy didn’t feel  too  guilty. 

Roy continued to push Lian in the swing, since she was still enthralled by the whole experience, but started to wonder whether he should start back home or not, His musing was interrupted by a paper cup pushed inside his peripheral, until it was almost in front of him. 

Roy startled back, away from it. “Jesus!” he turned. 

Peter raised an eyebrow. “No, just me,” he said. The smartass. 

“You scared me!” Roy said. 

“Yeah, I noticed,” Peter’s lips quirked up on one side. “Want it? Caramel latte.” 

Roy hesitantly reached up, briefly wondering if he was trusting the other man a bit too much, for Blüdhaven and her whole reputation, but took the cup in hand. “Uh. Thanks. Where’d you go?” 

Peter motioned to his own paper cup. “Coffee.” 

“You kind of up and disappeared...” as soon as Dick had shown up. Roy frowned. Peter had also up and reappeared almost as soon as Dick had left. Talk about “sketchy.” Maybe Dick had a point. I mean, Dick often had a point, but maybe he had a point that Roy should actually  consider.  

“I didn’t say anything?” Peter asked. “Coulda sworn I did.” 

Both men obviously knew that, no, he hadn’t said anything about leaving. Roy let the question hang in the air for a long moment, as he wondered whether or not he should call Peter on it. He gave a slow, one-shouldered shrug. “I must not have heard you,” he said, finally. Peter hadn’t been anything but decent, after all. Roy could allow him the moment of... whatever that had been. 

Besides, Lian liked him. 

Roy took a sip of the offered latte. Almost exactly how he liked it, lack of whipped cream and all, not that Peter could have known. “Nice,” he said. 

“Figured I’d just get two I liked, in case you didn’t want it,” Peter shrugged. “Not like I knew what to get, exactly, anyway.” He put an awkward, empty hand in his pocket and glanced around, once more. He was as vigilant as he’d been before, but there was an edge of nervousness there, too, that hadn’t been there before Dick’s surprise appearance. “So... your friend.” 

“You could have stayed long enough to say hi,” Roy said. He pushed Lian briefly (her howls of violent victory echoing through the park) and turned to poke Peter, once. It was the first time he’d initiated contact with the other man. “Man, Dick thinks you’re my hot, sketchy neighbour, now.” 

“Hot, huh?” Peter smirked. 

Roy felt himself redden a bit. “Well,” he huffed out. “I said that was what he thinks.” 

“Face like this isn’t exactly one to write home to mom about,” Peter un-pocketed his hand to motion towards his face. His incredibly attractive face. That jaw could probably cut a man, and those eyes had this weird almost-glow of green to them? 

Roy spluttered in disbelief. “Do you hear this shit, Li?” he turned to stop Lian and lean over her to chat to her more directly. “Not a face to write—that's so dumb. Lian, Peter is over here saying dumb things. I can’t even believe this shit.” 

Lian squealed up at her dad, kicking out her legs and arms and bouncing up and down in her swing. 

“That’s right. He’s got a nice face, doesn’t he?” it was marginally less embarrassing to tell Lian, in front of Peter, that he thought Peter had a nice face. Well. Less embarrassing than telling Peter himself. Roy did chance a glance up at Peter, though, smiling. 

Peter rolled his eyes, but there was the vestige of a suppressed grin under his eternal grumpiness, just barely hidden with a flat, put-upon expression. 

-- 

Peter stayed with Roy and Lian for the next fifteen minutes, until Lian began to fuss in the swing and Roy decided that it was time to head back. 

Peter even walked back with Lian and Roy, talking about nothing in particular the whole while. Roy didn’t bother putting Lian back in her papoose, either. He propped her on his hip, between himself and Peter, and conferred with her to keep her in the conversational loop. She loved it, babbling nonsensically back to him every time he looked down at her. 

Peter smiled every time Roy included Lian in the conversation, though he tried to hide it behind his coffee cup, even when said cup had to be empty. Roy felt a little thrill go through him every time he caught one of those smiles out the corner of his eye. 

“You know, it’s okay to just... smile,” Roy smirked at Peter. 

Lian babbled and reached over toward Peter, as if in agreement with her father. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter said. 

Roy snorted and hefted Lian up. “Wanna hold her?” 

Peter blinked at Roy, pausing and looking very taken aback. Lian put one hand out towards him, making an approximate “gah” noise, and made a grabby motion. “You sure, man?” Peter glanced past Lian, at Roy. “I mean. You barely know me. I have a gun.” 

“Just don’t hand her the gun,” Roy snorted. He pushed Lian into Peter’s already partially-raised arms, then adjusted the big-ass diaper bag, against the papoose. “Besides, it’s not like I’m going anywhere. What are you gonna do? Run off with my kid? Yeah, doubt. Kids are a lot of work.” 

Peter immediately adjusted Lian’s weight, holding her high up on his ribs and looking down into her pudgy face with a sense of awed confusion, like no one had ever handed him a baby in his life. Being as that may have been, he knew how to hold a kid, and didn’t look like he was floundering with what to do. “Hey, kid,” Peter muttered. 

“Ba!” Lian squealed at him. 

Peter, having a kid in one arm and his coffee in his other hand, couldn’t quite hide his grin. 

“Ba? Chú không phải là ba của con,” Peter said, voice so many times lighter than his usual gruff voice. 

Roy startled a little. Last time he’d heard anything in Vietnamese was when Jade had been saying goodbye to Lian, before she’d dropped out of her life, and dropped back out of Roy’s life. Even then, all Jade had said was “Tạm biệt, Lian.” Just “goodbye,” and Roy would have been lying if he’d said he weren’t upset that Jade hadn’t, you know, tried. At all. Even for, simply, a more heartfelt goodbye. 

Roy was pulled out of his thoughts by Lian squealing and kicking her legs, even more, grabbing for Peter’s face, which was nowhere near being within her reach. Peter muttered more Vietnamese to her, but Roy didn’t bother to try to understand. It was all cutesy, simple things, anyway. 

(Roy used to be pretty good with Vietnamese. His messy break with Jade hadn’t been a great encouragement toward continuing with the language, though. He knew he wanted to brush the rust off his Vietnamese, sometime – for Lian and that part of Lian – but it was still... difficult.) 

“Did you know?” Roy asked. “I mean, that she’s... Vietnamese?” 

“I thought she might be, but no. I was just...  ba ,  you know?” 

“Ba?” She said that all the time, lately. “Ba” or “na.” At the rate she was going, Roy was almost expecting a “banana” for her first word. 

“It can mean dad,” Peter smiled back down at Lian. 

“Ba!  Ba!”  Lian squealed. 

“I just told her I wasn’t her dad. Being, you know, silly,” he gave a self-conscious shrug. “But she is Vietnamese, then?” he glanced sideways at Roy. 

“Half,” Roy shrugged one shoulder and gave a strained smile. “Err, quarter. Yeah.” 

“Well,” Peter looked back at Lian, smiling softly. “I think you get your looks from your dad, kid,” he said, clearly using the same method of talking to Lian to make something seem less embarrassing. 

Roy laughed and ducked his head, inordinately pleased. 

When they arrived back at the apartment building, Peter very carefully passed Lian back to Roy, bidding her a quiet farewell in Vietnamese that was better than Roy’s had ever been. It was just more and more coincidental, someone like Peter living in the same building as Lian and Roy (and knowing Vietnamese, of all things), and Roy was glad for the coincidence. Or whatever it was. 

“Say ‘bye,’ Lian,” Roy bid. 

Lian smacked the air aimlessly, in a vague approximate of a wave. “Ba!” she squealed. 

Peter waved and parted ways with them. Roy didn’t know what Peter had slated for the day, but he didn’t enter the building at all, heading down a side street with his hands shoved back into his deep jacket pockets. 

Chapter Text

Oh god. Oh god, oh god.  

How did he get himself into this?  

Tim looked down at the baby, then back up at Roy and Dick, who were about to leave the apartment. He very badly wanted to hit the rewind button and go back to when Dick had randomly (or not-so-randomly, as it would seem) asked him what he thought about babysitting and kids and  childcare  in general. He wanted to hit the undo on how he hadn’t been paying attention, particularly, because he’d definitely managed to agree to this somewhere in there, and he couldn’t even pinpoint where, exactly.  

I mean. Who trusted  Tim  with a kid? Tim had had to look up how a vacuum worked just the previous week, because the maid wasn’t due for like three days and he’d knocked over a box of cereal. He’d had to watch a stupid-ass YouTube how-to, and then he’d had to sit there feeling like an idiot because, duh, of course all he had to do was turn it on and push it across the mess.  

Somehow, that Tim was the same one that Roy Harper had handed a whole ass baby, burbling and giggling and making presumably normal baby noises.  

“If you need anything, you can call,” Roy said. And how he could look all cool and at ease when he was literally a dad, one which had handed their baby over to what had to be the most incompetent babysitter in all of Gotham, Tim had no idea.  

“I have full faith in him,” Dick said. Because he just liked living up to his name like that.  

Tim gave a stilted nod. At least the baby wasn’t, like, really little or anything. And at least he had YouTube and  WikiHow  to help him stumble through anything blisteringly unfamiliar. He was a Bat, how bad could it really be? ...right?  

Dick and Roy left, which left Tim standing in front of Roy’s door, holding a baby.  

Oh god, why did he have to be such a people-pleaser? Was it that hard to say no to things?  

Tim looked down at  Lian . She burbled and leaned her head back to look up at him, right back. She reached up and made a grabbing motion, though Tim couldn’t for the life of him figure out what the grabbing motion would have been intended for.  

“Hey... kid,” Tim said.  

Lian  giggled at him.  

Tim hadn’t thought that real, actual babies made the TV baby laugh, but apparently  Lian  could make that very particular laugh. Or Tim was just overtired from school, training, patrol, homework, and then starting it all over again with barely a nap in between.  

The latter was more likely, come to think of it.  

--  

Tim found out, pretty fast, that  Lian  was actually incredibly tolerant. Not patient, per se, but tolerant. She didn’t mind that she slipped down a bit too much in Tim’s grip, and she didn’t mind that Tim floundered about snack and dinner, and she certainly didn’t mind that Tim had no idea when he was supposed to put her to bed.  

Or, rather, she didn’t mind his cluelessness about her bedtime, at first. After a while, though, people got tired – even babies who seemed to have boundless reserves of energy at any other point in the day. The problem, there, was that Tim started to wind down – off of his last energy drink – about the same time  Lian  did, which made for two cranky people trying to share space with each other, in spite of neither of them being used to the other.  

Tim and  Lian  were both tired to the point of tears when the knock on the door came.  

Tim blearily stood, almost walked away from  Lian , then turned and picked her up – though she lolled around in his arms a little, tired and unsure of what to do with herself. He managed to get himself and  Lian  safely to the door.  Lian  leaned into Tim and made a growly, whiny babble noise.  

Tim sent up a prayer that it was Dick and Roy on the other side of the door, back from their night out, but when had the universe ever been kind to Tim, anyway?  

The guy on the other side of the door was neither Dick nor Roy. Tim gave a long, sad sigh and turned to exchange a look with  Lian . “I can’t believe this,” he whispered to her. He should have probably shut the door immediately – it being Blüdhaven and all – but instead he just kind of stood there, like a puppet with cut strings.  

“ Nga ,”  Lian  mumbled. She tried to reach up and rub at her face, but it came across a bit more like she was trying to whack herself, but missed miserably. She didn’t immediately seem to notice either the open door or the impromptu visitor on the other side of it, though he seemed pretty big to be something that was missed, even if by a baby.  

“Hey... kid,” the guy said, gruff and dangerous looking in all the ways Tim knew better than to trust. He had his eyes narrowed. What Tim had managed to do – in the past ten seconds – to offend this guy, Tim didn’t know. “Roy around?”  

“No, he’s out,” Tim said.  

Lian  whipped her head around, and looked at the man. “Ga!” she squealed, a bit angrier than she might have been if she were fully rested. She reached out for the guy in the universal “up” motion, opening and closing her hands a few times.  

Tim sighed and rebalanced her to keep her from toppling right out of his arms.  

“You babysitting, then, kid?”  

Tim narrowed his eyes at the guy. “I’m not a kid.”  

“Mm, sure,” the guy rolled his eyes and glanced down the hall. He was nervous, almost, the way thieves were. Or vigilantes, Tim supposed. Well. Maybe not vigilantes. But Tim-as-a-vigilante was nervous and attentive like that. “Isn’t it the Munchkin’s bedtime?”  

“I have no idea,” Tim admitted.  

The guy gave an amused huff, seemingly in spite of himself, then shouldered his way past Tim, into the apartment. “Mail carrier dropped a Harper package off in my box number instead of his,” he explained. “Never mind that I’m floor two, he’s floor five. Can’t fix stupid...” the guy was. He was, in fact, carrying a box. He set it on the back of the couch, surveying the apartment, then turned back to Tim. “You know how to put a kid to sleep?”  

“No.”  

“Mm,” the guy rubbed the back of his neck, then sighed. “I’m Peter.  Neighbour ,  kinda .”  

“Tim,” Tim mumbled. He was  gonna  be in so much trouble for letting some  rando  in the apartment.  

“ Lemme  put  Lian  to sleep—”  

“Oh no, I’m from Gotham. You can’t pull one over that easy,” Tim scoffed.  

“Fine, you sit on the couch with  Lian  and you put her to sleep,” Peter said. He rolled his eyes for good measure. “I get it, better safe than sorry and all, but – let's be real – kid actually knows me, I clearly know her and her dad, and you have no idea what you’re doing, even though all you’ve had to do, this whole time, was basically rock her until she drifts off. Or just sit there. Anything, really. How do you mess up putting a kid  that  tired asleep?”  

“I feel really insulted right now,” Tim glared at the guy, not nearly caffeinated enough to deal with one of Roy’s asshole friends. Not that Tim had expected that Roy would  have  asshole friends, just that this guy was definitely an asshole and seemed to be a friend of Roy’s. Of some sort.  

“That’s because I insulted you,” Peter said. He patted the couch. “Sit down. Munchkin’s  gonna  try and topple herself out of your arms if you stand around much longer. And you look just dead enough on your feet to let her.”  

Chapter Text

Jason decided that his new middle name was “Compartmentalization.”  

Jason Compartmentalization Todd.  

How else was he sitting here, on the arm of Roy fucking Harper’s couch, watching  Lian  sleep in the arms of the fucking Replacement, without actively trying to commit a much-deserved homicide?  

Well.  

A... maybe much-deserved—  

(Why was it much-deserved, anyway—?)  

Well!  

Whatever! Whatever. He’d have a clearer head about the Replacement, later, when he wasn’t distracted.  

Even if he could so easily dispatch the sleeping fucker. B’s training must have really gone downhill if the stupid kid—no. Not “kid.” Jason didn’t hurt—no. B’s training must have really gone downhill if the stupid Replacement was sleeping, there, in Roy’s house, with a stranger so close at hand.  

(Or he was that tired, unable to push forward for another moment. He didn’t look like he slept enough, let alone ate enough. What was B even—)  

Part of it was  Lian . Jason knew that much. He didn’t see quite as much  green  when he was around  Lian , making everything less stark and obvious to Jason. Even when the Replacement was right there, making for an easy mark. Jason wasn’t even considering an attack, though that part was probably because  Lian  was asleep against the Replacement, between Jason and any form of violent vengeance he might possibly think to inflict.  

Jason was in no way going to put  Lian  in danger. Not even for his crusade.  

Maybe even “especially” for his crusade – what was the point of doing what he was doing if he wasn’t protecting a kid that was actually in his life to some extant? He couldn’t protect everyone  but  Lian . That was unthinkable.  

(But wasn’t the Replacement...? No, shut up. Bats didn’t count. The lifestyle of a vigilante – a goddamn child soldier – wasn't one that made “kids,” unless those kids were  dead  kids.)  

Instead of attempting to attack Tim  (Replacement, a nameless, faceless replacement, because Jason wasn’t worth more than that—) , Jason pulled out a beat-up Dover Thrift Edition of The Phantom of the Opera and sat back – still perched on the arm of the couch – to read until Roy got back. He wasn’t about to leave  Lian  unsupervised, which she would certainly be if she were in the presence of only a sleeping Replacement.  

Jason’s emotions roiled and churned inside him, but he could put it aside. He could compartmentalize it. In Roy’s apartment, there was  Lian  and there was “Peter.” In Roy’s apartment, there were no Bats and there was no Red Hood.  

God, he was going soft.  

--  

Jason didn’t expect to be diving out the window, before the front door opened, but that’s where his instincts sent him as soon as he heard Dick’s laugh – loud and almost honest, a thorn of nostalgia pushing through memories of anger and resentment – on the other side of the door, accompanied by Roy and Roy’s warm laugh—  

(Dick and Roy, taking over one of the TV rooms, playing a Mario Party game after having snuck away from a gala that Jason had refused to attend in the first place—)  

(Roy laughing as he forced Dick’s character to his death in some stupid  minigame —)  

(Dick shouting and shoving Roy off the couch—)  

(All the while, Jason sitting in the corner, a book propped on his knees, pretending to read even though his ears burned and his eyes wandered, without permission, from the page he still hadn’t read, in an entire hour, to Roy’s profile, watching the way his laugh affected his entire body—)  

(Roy startling as he catches sight of Jason in his beat-up hoodie, grungy in a way that all Jason’s before-Bruce clothing was—)  

(Jason curled up in the corner—)  

(Jason had been there the whole time, but he was used to Dick and Dick’s friends not noticing him. He didn’t care. He didn’t! But—)  

(After startling – after noticing him! – Roy smiled and it felt like the fucking sun, if a  Gothamite  even knew what that could feel like—)  

(“Hey! Jason!” said like Roy was actually pleased to see him, even though Dick’s smiles were always turned a bit sour in resentment that Jason understood but was no less hurt by—)  

(“You should play with us! He should play with us,” Roy said, that smile still bright and honest and warm and everything that Jason’s fourteen-year-old heart wanted in life, which was fucking sad—)  

Dick and his loud, nearly honest laugh.  

Roy and Roy’s warm laugh.  

Thorns.  

The whole situation was full of thorns. Complications in a plan that should have gone off without a hitch, that should have already been almost done, ready to be triggered. Thorns that, instead of encouraging Jason along his path to vengeance, caught him up in feelings he hadn’t even been sure he still had, after the Pit.  

Jason didn’t expect to be making his escape via living room window, swinging himself onto and down a fire escape.  

Jason also didn’t expect to accidentally leave his much-loved copy of the Phantom of the Opera on the couch in Roy’s stupid apartment. But whatever. It was just one copy of one book and Jason could get another one. There was no point in retrieving that particular copy when doing so would mean seeing Dick face-to-face.  

Would mean possibly being recognized.  

(He wasn’t ready for this game with Roy and  Lian  to end, yet.)  

From his place, a level down on the fire escape, Jason could hear the door open and Dick and Roy enter, still laughing in that way that tied stupid knots around Jason’s equally stupid heart. Fucking inconvenient, that was what that was...  

Jason stopped in his fire escape descent and pulled out a beat-up pack of cigarettes, frustrated.  

He hadn’t even closed the goddamn window. How much did he have to slip before fucking  Talia  popped up just to call him on it? Or before Bruce caught on and caught up with him? He couldn’t be so careless, going forward.  

Chapter Text

Tim startled, visibly, when the door opened. His startle jostled  Lian , but managed not to wake her.  

“Hey, careful there, Lil Rob,” Roy said, grinning. “How’d it go?”  

Tim looked around, frowning in confused suspicion, but didn’t seem to find what he was looking for. His gaze lingered on the window – Roy almost never opened that window, why was it open? – before returning to Roy. “Uh,” Tim said, blinking. Bleary. So tired.  

Why couldn’t anyone in B’s little chiropteran family do the whole “sleep” thing, anyway? The kid clearly needed it, and Dick always seemed to be in need of a break or a nap or... something.  

“Uh, yeah. It went. Fine. We had a little, um, trouble. Toward the—” Tim glanced toward the clock on Roy’s Blu-ray player and paused. “When did—um.” He turned back toward Roy, clearly floundering. “I couldn’t get her to sleep.”  

“She looks asleep now,” Dick grinned and leaned on the back of Roy’s couch, looking down at  Lian .  

“No, yeah. Um. Your, uh...  neighbour ,” Tim frowned a little harder. “One of your packages was mailed to him, I guess. He knocked n’ stuff and invited himself in.”  

Dick glanced up sharply at Roy, worry written in his frown.  

Roy, however, felt weirdly calm at the news. “No kidding.” He picked up the box off the back of the couch. There was a post-it stuck to it.  Dumbasses can’t tell a five from a two, Peter.  Roy smiled.  

Tim, however, could only see Dick’s worry, so he started speaking faster. “I mean, he knew Roy and  Lian  and  Lian  knew him, so it didn’t seem that bad. I mean! I didn’t want to let him in, but he was so big. I—I mean!” Tim scrambled for an explanation that didn’t sound like he had no idea the kind of danger inviting someone in could have. “His name was Peter!”  

“Yeah, I see that,” Roy grinned at Dick, then at Tim. “Hey, don’t worry about it. He’s a bit intense, but he’s actually a secret mush.  Lian  loves when she gets to see him. He helped you put her to sleep?”  

“Yeah. He just...” Tim glanced at the other end of the couch. “Read his book?”  

Huh. Peter was a reader? That was new information. Roy glanced at the couch and reached over to pick up the book he found there. Roy raised his eyebrows. It was fiction, then, which was almost as surprising as knowing that Peter had actually been in his apartment in the first place. He didn’t seem to be the reading type.  

The Phantom of the Opera. Gaston  Leroux .  

Roy flipped the book over in his hand, glancing at both sides. It was worn, older, and looking mildly worse for the wear. “Well loved” some might say.  

On the cover of the book, there was a painted illustration of a skull-headed figure, swathed in red and wearing an opulent hat, descending a kind of grand staircase. Vague figures of other partygoers lined the grand staircase, filling the higher portion in the background, in neutral  colours  that made the foremost figure that much more obvious and prominent. The skull-headed figure (it wasn’t really a skull, at second glance, just disfigurement that seemed to emulate a skull-like visage) looked out, at the viewer, while the vague background figures all looked at one another, ignoring both the red-cloaked figure and the viewer.  

“Peter again, huh?” Dick frowned at Roy.  

“Don’t look at me like that. Just because Blüdhaven doesn’t usually offer decent people doesn’t mean she doesn’t  have  any. Peter’s a good dude!” Roy set the book down on the back of the couch.  

“He looks like he could take on a brick wall and win,” Tim muttered. “Like, with his glare, alone.”  

Roy snorted. “Maybe. Here, let me take the Nugget, huh? You look beat.” He reached down and slowly extracted his baby girl from Tim’s arms. She stirred and cracked an eye open, but when she saw the familiar face of her father, she settled in with a grunt and fell back asleep.  

“When do I get to meet this guy, anyway?” Dick asked.  

“I  dunno . He’s just a  neighbour —”  

Dick snorted at Roy, which was probably fair.  

“Okay, a friend maybe. But it’s not like I’m hiding him from you or something. We never  plan  to meet up. It just happens.” And it managed, somehow, to only happen when Dick wasn’t around. Or Peter happened to disappear right when Dick showed up. (Okay, maybe it was getting a bit weird.)  

“Yeah, but you obviously like him,” Dick said.  

“He’s attractive, sure,” Roy shrugged. “And he’s good with  Lian . And he’s probably the only person in all of Gotham who would help someone pry their mail out of their mailbox for no other reason other than that he was there and noticed that they need help. Of course I like him.”  

“Roy and Peter, sitting in a tree—”  

“Are you actually a child?” Roy gave a surprised laugh. He turned and headed around the couch, then into the hall toward  Lian’s  nursery. “God, you’re so immature. Why am I friends with you?”  

“You know you love me,” Dick leaned against the arm of Roy’s couch.  

“Yeah, I’ve accidentally befriended an absolute menace, and now I can’t get rid of you. It’s the bane of my existence.” Roy tossed a cheeky smile over his shoulder, then popped into  Lian’s  room to lay her down in her crib.  

It struck him, kind of suddenly, that Tim hadn’t said anything unless he was directly spoken to. That Tim hadn’t engaged past the bare minimum. He frowned as he returned to his front room. Tim hadn’t fallen back asleep or anything, he was quietly watching Roy and Dick, still seated on the couch. Roy made a small noise in the back of his throat, in an attempt to express the feeling in his chest. Something... sympathetic and annoyed.  

“You... good, Tim?” Roy asked.  

Tim frowned at him. “I mean. Why wouldn’t I be?”  

That kind of non-answer always concerned Roy, because he used to evade questions the same way, especially when things were really bad. “ Dunno , kid, you’re just. Quiet.”  

“Oh. Sorry.”  

That was concerning, too. Roy shook his head and threw a smile back on, though he exchanged a brief, worried look with Dick, first. “No, don’t apologize! Seriously, you’re fine,” Roy said. Which was a blatant lie because Roy was pretty sure that, no, this kid wasn’t actually “fine.” ”Anyway, thanks again for babysitting! You saved my ass.”  

Tim flushed and dropped Roy’s gaze. ”It's fine,” he mumbled and gave a halfhearted shrug.  

Maybe it was the whole “parenthood” thing asserting its presence, but Roy felt like smacking Batman. And the Drakes. And maybe even Dick. This kid was clearly in need of some fucking validation, acknowledgement, and affirmation. And any synonyms of those ideas. And parental love. And maybe a nap. And a caffeine limit (it hadn’t escaped Roy’s notice that the kid had a four-pack of Red Bull in his backpack and that three of the cans were now empty).  

Chapter Text

Lian  was in bed and Dick and Tim had headed back to Dick’s apartment.  

Roy dropped himself onto his couch with a long sigh, then remembered the open window. He sighed again, albeit more aggressively. Yeah, he loved Dick, and yeah, it had been fun to go out with him for the evening, to just loosen up and have some fun. But it was draining, too. Roy just wanted to sleep for a month, or something.  

He stood and wandered over to the window to close it. He paused with his hands on the sash, to either side of the lock. Roy’s eyes followed a meandering line of smoke down to its source. There, a familiar outline leaned against rail of the stairs, just below the fourth-story fire escape landing. Roy made a curious noise in the back of his throat, then ducked out the window, himself, fire escape creaking absurdly in protest – the building really wasn’t known for up-to-date fixtures or safety – and made his way down to the figure, hands shoved into his pockets.  

“Peter,” he smiled, knowing that it would be heard. He waited until the figure – Peter, of course – turned .   T hen, “you left your book in my apartment.”  

“Mm, sorry,” Peter flicked ash off the end of his cigarette.  

“Thanks,” Roy put in, stopping at the fourth-story landing.  

“ Hm ?”  

“For the mail.” Roy shrugged. “For helping Tim with  Lian .”  

“Oh, sure,” Peter glanced away, but not before Roy spied a face of... doubt? Confliction? Something not quite positive. But not necessarily negative. Peter shrugged awkwardly. “He had it handled. Mostly.  Lian  and... Tim, I mean. Yeah. He had it.”  

“I mean it,” Roy leaned back against the fire escape railing (not his brightest idea). “Thanks. You  wanna ... come up?” he jerked his head toward his window. “You can get your book. Maybe hang out a bit.”  

Peter glanced sideways at him.  

The silence that stretched between them was heavy, but not uncomfortable. Contemplative.  

“Coffee?” Roy broke in.  

Peter snorted and glanced away. “Bit late for coffee.”  

Roy made an offended noise, without really thinking about it. “It’s never too late for coffee—”  

“Got any tea?” Peter put out his cigarette on the stair railing, then flicked it away, down into the alleyway, four stories below them. He seemed to very carefully not look at Roy, as if this was a compromise of some kind, and one he didn’t think he should be making.  

“Tea drinker?” Roy tilted his head.  

“When it suits me.”  

“Yeah, I have some tea. Uh. Earl Grey?”  

Peter smirked a little. “Earl Grey. Hot.” He glanced knowingly up at Roy, and it was the first time Peter was glancing  up  at him. He wasn’t too much taller than Roy, but he  was  taller. “TNG fan?”  

“Maybe,” Roy smiled back. “Is that a yes?”  

“Sure.”  

Chapter Text

Windows aren’t doors, but Roy felt about as comfortable going in and out of a window as he did going in and out of a door. It was one of the effects of formative years spent in vigilantism, probably. It didn’t escape Roy’s attention, either, that Peter seemed just as comfortable with the uncommon (and some might say “unfortunate”) habit of entering a place through the window.  

Roy and Peter weren’t small guys, really. Peter definitely wasn’t “small.” But he was at ease going through the thirty-six by twenty-four inch window. Little less than twenty-four inches, in fact, given that the sash liked to dip down a bit on one side, leaving the window lopsided, when it was open.  

Roy went for the kitchen immediately (though not so quickly that he missed Peter picking up the Dover Thrift book and disappearing it somewhere into his jacket, impossibly reminding Roy of how  Nightwing  managed to have all his gadgets on him without having a utility belt). Once in the kitchen, Roy put the kettle on the stove and turned the stove on.  

Well,  tried  to turn the stove on.  

Roy rolled his eyes and moved the kettle to a different burner and turned that one on, instead. This one spluttered despondently, but did actually turn on.  

Roy turned to ask Peter, who he thought was still in the next room, what he wanted in his tea, but instead startled when he found Peter just inside his kitchen, looking around with an appraising eye. Or just an overly attentive one, like the one that had sought out the exits the week before, when they’d had one of their first conversations.  

“Jesus,” Roy put a hand over his heart, laughing. ”You're quiet!"  

“I can be,” Peter shrugged. He crossed his arms and leaned up against the wall beside the kitchen doorframe, blue-green-teal eyes flickering from his analysis of the kitchen to an analysis of Roy, himself. Not a very subtle one.  

Roy wet his lips and turned back to the stovetop. He reached up, into the little cabinets above his microwave (which was above the stove), and dug out the beat-up box of premium Earl Grey   loose-leaf   (Thank you, Dick,  he thought)   and a pair of mugs. He felt his shirt – a bit too tight and a bit too small, probably due to a laundry mishap – ride up a bit, baring  an  inch or two of his lower back (and the lower half of the lower back tattoo he’d said he was getting as a  joke  and then really got because of how hilariously disapproving Ollie had been) .  He was overly aware of it due to a self-consciousness he hadn’t felt in, like, forever. He could also feel Peter’s eyes, his intense gaze prickling across Roy’s skin like a thousand tiny needles.  

Roy was in too deep. And he was only just realizing it.  

Should he be nervous?  

Roy focused in on his self-appointed task, instead of possible nerves (or reasons he should possibly feel nervous). “Do you do the whole milk-and-sugar shit?” he asked.  

“Yeah, actually.”  

Roy could hear the shrug in Peter’s voice. He turned to catch Peter quickly turning his gaze upward. Roy felt his cheeks warm a little, and the urge to dismiss the tramp stamp as a joke, or something. But what if he hadn’t even been staring at that. Jesus, why did he get that tattoo? Why was he suddenly hyper-aware of it? “Uh, milk’s in the fridge. Don’t have creamer right now, though, sorry.”  

“’S fine.” Peter shoved away from the wall and walked over to the fridge to get it himself. He made a disbelieving noise as he opened the door, though, and turned to offer Roy raised eyebrows. “The hell do you eat? There’s like nothing in here.”  

“Uh, yeah,” Roy scratched the space just below his ear. “Um, I should probably go grocery shopping again. I haven’t been since,  ya  know, I hit you with my cart. I hate shopping.”  

“Get it delivered, then,” Peter suggested.  

Roy groaned. “I hate dealing with websites and apps.”  

“Don’t you, like, make shit from scratch?”  

“Not  websites,”  Roy scoffed. And paused. He tilted his head. “How—uh.” Well, actually, with all the shit just barely child-safe on shelves in the next room, he supposed it actually wasn’t that big of a leap. “ Nevermind , actually.” He turned and reached back into the cupboard for the sugar. He felt his shirt ride up again and it was just as irritatingly noticeable to him as last time. He even caught Peter looking over at him, again, too, as he turned back around with the sugar bowl in hand.  

Roy gave an almost nervous smile. I mean, he tried not to be nervous, but he could feel the nervous itch stretch across his skin unpleasantly.  

“It’s hot,” Peter shrugged, he placed the half-empty half-gallon of milk on the counter, standing that much closer to Roy.  

That startled a laugh out of Roy, but also relieved him immensely. “Stupid teen Roy did it,” he said.  

“Thank him for me,” Peter smirked.  

“That bitch doesn’t get any thanks,” Roy snorted. “Though his bad decisions  did  land me the best kid in the world, so I guess he wasn’t all bad.” He shrugged, only a bit awkward about it. To be more accurate, it was in his much more recent early twenties that had got him into real trouble.  

Teen Roy was more about fooling around, underage drinking, chasing adrenaline rushes, and maybe smoking some weed. Having a good time. Twenties Roy... that was the one that got him in trouble. He wasn’t even that far from that Roy, though he’d definitely done a lot of changing. He didn’t do any of the Teen Roy shit  or  the Early Twenties Roy shit, anymore. Not when he had  Lian  to think about and slowly-healing, once-broken relationships to work on.  

Roy felt himself sober a bit, leaning back against the stove and bringing his dominant hand up to rest over the crook of his opposite elbow. You couldn’t even see them, through the tattoo sleeve, not without knowing they were there and looking for them specifically, but his own mind had brought him back to the fact that they existed and...  

Yeah.  

The kettle started to whistle, breaking Roy out of his thoughts.  

He turned to the stove, turned it off, and pulled the kettle to the cool front burner, then busied himself with the Earl Grey and two of his silicone tea infusers – a little hot tub guy and a sinking Titanic – and getting the two cups filled with hot water. “My friend, Dick, buys me all the tea shit. I mentioned liking tea, like, once. I swear he just looks for excuses to buy novelty shit without feeling guilty.”  

“We all have pasts,” Peter said. It wasn’t apropos nothing, either, Roy supposed.  

“Some of us have worse pasts than others,” Roy shrugged and didn’t turn to look at Peter, just yet.  

“Past is past,” Peter’s shrug was once again obvious in his voice. “You seem caught up in yours. I  dunno . I just wanted you to know that I don’t care about whatever ‘Younger Roy’ did. I mean. I’ve seen you with your daughter, man. Younger Roy could have been a total douche, but you’re not a bad father, like, at all. Focus on that, instead.”  

Roy sighed through his nose. “You say it like it’s easy.”  

“If it were easy, I wouldn’t have to say it,” Peter countered.  

“Fair enough,” Roy turned around, a mug in either hand. “Let’s move to the living room. Unless you want the two-star experience of sitting at a secondhand table in mismatched chairs, looking at either the kitchen wall or the  discoloured  countertop.”  

Peter snorted. “Couch is fine.”  

Chapter Text

Peter was easy to be around. 

Roy already knew that, but it always struck him, when he was around Peter, just how easy he was to be around. He wasn’t judgmental or outright mean. He was borderline decent. As a wise book-seller once said (well, book-keeper more than a book-seller...), he was “at heart, just a little bit of a good person,” no matter how much he protested that Gotham didn’t make decent people. 

Roy had a feeling that Peter knew about – to put it delicately – the before-Lian Roy, even though neither man ever mentioned him. And Peter didn’t say anything about it, or allude to it, or make obvious judgments. And it didn’t escape Roy’s notice that he’d only ever seen Peter smoking the one time, like he outright avoided doing it around Roy. But maybe that was just... well. Not everything revolved around Roy. It wasn’t logical, thinking “oh, this thing is because of me” for everything. 

But still. It kind of felt like that. 

It kind of felt like this guy whose leather jacket kind of always smelled of smoke and gunpowder was consciously not smoking around Roy, who had been an addict and actually did avoid being around people while they were smoking. Usually. 

Would it be weird to ask? Ugh. Yeah, it probably would. 

“So, uh. Phantom of the Opera, huh?” Roy glanced sideways at Peter. 

“Mm,” Peter nodded serenely. 

“Good book?” 

Peter glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “You really think they’d make a musical out of it, let alone a movie, if it wasn’t a good fucking story?” He spoke in a flat voice, without heat. The corner of his mouth twitched up, briefly. 

Roy laughed. “Gee, sorry. Didn’t know I had a book snob on my couch.” 

Peter snorted. “Book snob.” 

“You denying it?” Roy leaned in a bit. Part of him wanted to move clear across the couch and close a bunch of that space between himself and Peter. A wiser part of him suggested that maybe he should stay on his side of the couch. Stop tempting fate. Or something. 

“No, I guess not. I like my Shakespeare and Austen as much as the next book snob,” Peter’s lips quirked into a smile. 

Roy’s heart did something stupid and dizzy, which left him with a disoriented, warm feeling. Roy curled his fingers a bit more firmly around his cup. “Facets upon facets,” Roy mused. 

“I’m a fucking diamond, Harper,” Peter scoffed. 

Roy startled into a laugh. 

They settled into a more comfortable silence. Not that the previous silence hadn’t been comfortable. Roy didn’t really know what he was doing, and Peter seemed more than willing to let him flounder about in the depths of that unknown. Roy didn’t even know what he wanted out of... whatever. That. This. The situation he’d created. 

Well, he did, but it was unrealistic and rushed along a relationship that was too good to rush along. He had  eyes.  

Roy glanced down into his tea. It didn’t hold any answers. 

The silence stretched until Roy felt jolted, however minutely, out of the silence by the sound of a mug against the coffee table. Roy glanced up, a bit too quickly, worried that the moment was about to end and that Peter was about to leave. But he glanced up to find Peter sitting on the coffee table, much closer. “So,” Peter said, casual. 

“So,” Roy echoed, a bit faintly. He smiled at Peter, though. He smiled at Peter a lot – as he’d begun to notice. 

Peter grinned sharply at him, but there was something under it. Hesitance or guilt or... something. And those were such different things, but Roy could still see the start of either, or both. Or something else entirely! Roy wished he knew how to read Peter better, because there was layers and depths and complexities in the way Peter shaped his emotions. What was he feeling? What was he thinking? 

Peter tilted his head. “I should—probably head out.” Now the emotion in his eyes seemed to be regret. Maybe Roy’d misread the hesitance-or-guilt-or-both. Or maybe this was just one more layer of emotion that Peter seemed to be doing his best not to put forward. 

“I figured,” Roy’s smile turned a little regretful. 

Peter scoffed. Or laughed. He looked down for a long moment, then looked back up at Roy. 

Roy held his breath, though couldn’t put his finger on why. He was holding his mug too tightly, really, just to give his hands something to do that didn’t look as anxious as the rest of him suddenly felt. 

Then Peter gently pried the mug from Roy’s fingers. 

Roy made a questioning noise in the back of his throat, but didn’t get much further than that before Peter had a hand to the side of his neck, gentle and... something. Hesitant, again, maybe. Roy’s heart was in his throat when Peter leaned in. But then the hand was gone and Peter was getting to his feet. 

Roy glanced up at Peter, as the other man stood, and frowned at him a bit. He even opened his mouth, to say something about that moment – the one Peter had broken and backed out of, looking like a scared kid or something. Or like someone who thought they’d screwed up. Roy’d seen that expression enough in the mirror to know what it looked like, anyway. 

“See you around, Roy,” Peter mumbled. He had a dusting of pink across his nose, cheekbones, and the tips of his ears. 

The blush brought out freckles Roy hadn’t even noticed, before. 

Peter beat a quick escape after that. Roy, frustrated, just wanted the kiss he’d almost gotten. 

Chapter Text

“Seven months!” Roy cheered quietly, lifting Lian up in the air. “A whole seven months, baby! Look how big you’re getting!”  

Lian squealed at him and stringed together all her little syllables, drooly and adorable in equal measure. She’d collected a few new syllables (Roy swore he’d heard a “da” in there, finally) and showed them off with the pride that she was absolutely entitled to, as the smart little babbler she was becoming.  

And she really was getting big! And long—or. No. Tall. She could stand, now, with some help. That officially put Lian in the “tall” category instead of the “long” category with measuring. And, damn, maybe he should have gotten one of those milestone books after all, because his heart jerked around his chest in thrill, recognizing the end of the one phase and the beginning of the next one.  

“My big girl,” Roy pulled her in, cuddling her close and peppering her cheek and the top of her head with kisses. “Seven whole months. That’s amazing.” Part of him couldn’t even believe he’d made it that far with her. That he’d made it to that point without irrevocably messing something up, messing her up.  

Roy brought Lian close to his face, lifting her until she was looking over his head, a blew a noisy raspberry against her fat little tummy. She squealed and made aborted grasps for Roy’s hair. Roy repeated the raspberry, sustaining the noise for longer.  

Lian squealed even louder, pleased.  

Seven months was momentous, for Roy, but not so momentous that he and Lian were going to break from habit. Much. Maybe she got a few more of those dry, banana-flavoured snack things (how did he never know the name for those, anyway?), but that was about it.  

Lian, of course, devoured those snacks with aplomb suitable to being graced with extra of her favourite snack, though, which was adorable and which Roy immortalized with his smartphone camera. She looked right at the camera, smiling with her mouth wide open and bits of the snack on her cheeks, in her mouth, in her fists, and scattered around her on her jumper/activity center (Exersaucer? Baby things were so weird...), around the little steering wheel.  

--  

Most people smiled in mild confusion when Roy told them that Lian was seven months old, not at the age itself, though. Their confusion was, probably, due to Roy’s blatant excitement about the milestone. They didn’t understand the significance.  

And, yeah, there was a significance.  

Well, every month carried significance. Hell, every  day  carried significance. But seven months... yeah. There was a special significance to it, one that Roy – for the most part – kept between himself and Lian. It was okay if other people didn’t understand his excitement at the seven-month milestone.  

(Granted, when he visited with the other single parents earlier in the month, they seemed to more-or-less understand. The single parents of infants, in particular. They might have had slightly different reasons for finding seven months celebratory, but the base understanding was definitely there – the understanding that every month, surviving the world of parenting without someone to fall back on, was a month to celebrate. Every milestone their child made was a milestone to write in the stars.)  

“Seven months, huh?”  

Roy had been talking with one of his friendlier neighbours – a young mother with a three- and five-year-old she had shared custody of – and telling her about Lian. The question, though, wasn’t from the smiling young woman getting her mail. In fact, the speaker clearly startled the young woman, leaving her worried behind her polite mask.  

Roy turned with a grin. ”Peter!”  

“Roy,” Peter quirked a grin at him and moved close enough to softly ruffle Lian’s hair. Lian bowed her head, making a pleased “ah!” noise. Before Peter withdrew his hand from her hair, he tapped Lian under the chin, still soft and careful. Lian squealed excitedly at the interaction.  

“I’ll talk to you later,” the young mother said, she looked a bit less wary after seeing Peter interact with Roy’s little girl. Roy hadn’t caught her name, but as he waved goodbye at her, he resolved to ask her the next time he saw her.  

“So. Seven months?” Peter reiterated.  

“She’s getting so big,” Roy smiled, wide and excited, as he turned back to Peter.  

Peter gave a short laugh, just shy of sarcastic, and stuck his key into his mailbox. “Why the seven-month cheer? Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of folks who probably celebrate every month right up until the first proper birthday. But you seem to be in good cheer. There a proper reason for it, or is it just a good day?”  

Roy smiled down at Lian, propped on his hip as she always was. She squealed and flapped her arms, making a brief attempt to expel her pacifier from her presence. Luckily, her pacifier was leashed to her little Superman onesie and could not be so easily expelled from her person. Roy turned his smile back up to Peter. “Well. Both, really.”  

“Mm?”   

“Well, uh,” Roy gave half a shrug and felt his grin turn sheepish. “Six months. This marks six months with her, for me. She wasn’t quite a month old when Jade, uh, her mom—uh. Yeah. We’ve survived six whole months together.”  

“Damn,” Peter flicked his mailbox shut and tugged his key out. “That’s worth celebrating. Hey, how bout you let me buy you lunch?”  

“You don’t have to—”  

“Let a guy buy another guy some lunch, man,” Peter broke in. “It’s just fucking lunch. Hell, let’s make an outing of it. Has the slug been to a family diner yet? Shit’s a must for kids, ain’t it?”  

“No, she hasn’t,” Roy smiled down at Lian. “How about it, sweetheart? Should we let Petey treat us to lunch?” (Petey. Yeugh. That didn’t work right on Peter, either. It definitely worked less than “Peter” did. He marked that as a ‘no,’ mentally, and resolved not to say it out loud, ever again.)  

Lian squealed in affirmative.  

“Okay, why not?”  

Chapter Text

“Okay, let me get this straight.” Dick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your new friend, there—”  

“Peter,”  Roy interrupted.  

Dick sighed and adjusted his phone. He took a steadying breath and nodded. “—okay... your new friend, Peter. He just  happens  to know Vietnamese and Romani.”  

“And Polish!”  

“And Polish,” Dick leaned, heavily, against his kitchen counter. “And probably other languages, too. And you don’t... find that odd.” He’d meant it to come out as a question, but ended up stating it with some measure of finality.  

“I mean. Well.”  

Dick sighed. “I wasn’t joking about being suspicious of him, you know. A week or whatever back, at the park. I  was  suspicious. He seemed sketchy. Now he seems dangerously sketchy. There’s just— there’s something about him, Roy—”  

“Look, I get it. You probably feel like he’s avoiding you,”  Roy said.  “Which, by the way, I highly doubt. But, because you feel like that, everything feels suspicious, right?”  

“He carries a gun.” Dick turned to his fridge and tugged it open. Dinner had to happen sometime, conversation with Roy notwithstanding. “He carried a gun  to a playground.  If that doesn’t scream sketchy, what does? Oh, I know. The growing list of languages he’s fluent in. That’s not normal!”  

“You carry a gun—”  

“I’m a cop!” Dick leaned closer to his fridge and knocked his head against the freezer door.  

“—and you and me both speak a good handful of languages. Between us, we have Romani, Vietnamese, and Polish, I’m sure—”  

“We’re vigilantes, Roy!” He leaned away from the freezer and jerked the milk off the top shelf in his fridge. “And trust fund brats! Of course we speak a bunch of random languages!”  

Quiet fell between them for a moment, except for the thud of Dick slamming the gallon of milk down on his counter.  

The moment broke and Dick snorted. He always found that a pretty ugly habit of his, but he had it on relatively good authority (Roy’s, anyway) that it was actually endearing.  

Roy snickered back.  “Trust fund brats. Seriously? We live in fucking Blüdhaven, man.”  

“We are,” Dick insisted. “We’re just stupid trust fund brats who don’t use their trust funds, I guess. But seriously. We have our reasons to know and do the things we do, and most of them aren’t law-abiding ones. Don’t you think that should clue you in to the fact that this Peter guy might,  might , have something to hide?”  

“Everyone has something to hide.”  

Dick could hear the way the smile fell out of Roy’s voice. He could tell that Roy was beginning to grow defensive. Dick sighed. “Yeah, okay. Listen, you know it’s because I’m concerned, right? You know it’s because I care about you and Lian. I just... I don’t want something bad to happen because you’re being the decent guy in a city of... of bastards, really. Not everyone, no. But, Roy—”  

“Look, I get it. You’re looking out for me. But Peter’s... he’s good, okay?”  

Dick wanted to scream. Instead, he very calmly opened up the cupboard next to his fridge and pulled a box of Lucky Charms off the second highest shelf. He swallowed his frustration, as best as he could. “Just. Please be careful?”  

Dick was already compiling everything he knew about this Peter guy. It wasn’t a lot, but he had a feeling that it might be enough to dig up something on him. Either something to alleviate his own suspicions, or something he could show Roy, that might make Roy take all this more seriously.  

Roy would hate him for a bit, probably. But it would be for his own good, right?  

(Dick hated how much he’d begun to sound like B, sometimes...)  

“Whatever,”  Roy huffed.  “I know you don’t get it. And that’s fine. But I wish you’d at least pretend—I don’t know. I wish you’d give Peter a chance.”  

Oh.  

Oh no.  

“Roy,” Dick said slowly.  

Roy was quiet for a long moment.  

“Oh, Roy,” Dick sighed.  

“Please don’t,”  Roy said.  

“Roy, you like him,” Dick said. Well, no. He didn’t say it so much as offer it as an observation. “You like him, like, a lot.”  

“Seriously—”  

“You. You barely know him, Roy,” Dick felt like he was pleading. All the alarm bells were going off in his head. “You can’t just give your heart away like this.” He managed to bite off an observation on how the last go-round went, with Jade. But only just.  

Roy was quiet.  

Dick held his breath. And the cereal he hadn’t set down.  

“I know,”  Roy said. He sounded muffled, like his hand was over his mouth or something.  “I know! It’s just! He’s! He’s so good, Dick, you don’t understand. He’s good. Kind. Lian likes him, he’s good with her. And he—he...”  he trailed off.  “Fuck.”    

“Roy.”  

“No, shut up,”  Roy said.  “This is—no. We’ll talk about this some other time, okay? I get it, you’re worried. But I can’t do this right now, okay?”    

Dick managed, barely, not to sigh into the receiver. He finally set the box of cereal down. “Okay, Roy.”    

“Thank you. I’ll, uh. I’ll talk to you later.”    

“Sure, Roy.”  

Dick set his phone down after he heard Roy hang up on the other end, then ran a hand down his face. Romani. How random was that? Dick could admit that the random Romani-speaker more than threw him off, more than put him on edge. It wasn’t anywhere near as common as other languages, in terms of what English-speakers learned. It wasn’t common. Period.  

It wasn’t a good reason to be suspicious of someone. He knew that!  

But.  

But something was definitely off about Roy’s mystery neighbour.  

Chapter Text

Finally!  

After weeks and  weeks  of the elevator being broken – so much for it only being broken every other week, right? – the building owner had finally deigned to have the elevator fixed. No more five flights’ worth of forced stair-climbing cardio, up or down.  

At least. Until the next time the piece of shit elevator broke down. Which was, unfortunately, an inevitability in an apartment complex as rundown as the one Roy’d settled in. What else could he afford without asking for help, though? And, no, he didn’t want to ask Ollie for anything. Not yet, at least. He had to prove to himself that he had it in him to—yeah. To support himself, and his little girl. That he could do it without touching his trust or asking Ollie for help.  

Besides, piece of shit though the whole building was, Roy’s rent had actually gone down in the last month. By, like, two hundred dollars.  

Blüdhaven was cheaper than Gotham, but that wasn’t saying much. Blüdhaven still cost an arm and a leg, half the time. Which was part of why the rent decrease was such a surprise, but Roy knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when that amount of savings could go right into care for Lian, who was already growing like a little weed.  

But yeah. Elevator fixed, wonder of wonders! Roy took the stairs down, anyway, because he knew how much Lian liked the moving, but he resolved to make his way back up via the elevator.  

Roy had a bounce in his step when he set off to get his mail. A bounce in his step that Lian absolutely loved. She squealed and bounced in his arms. Maybe she knew that downstairs meant mailbox, and that the mailbox was where they usually ran into Peter. He wouldn’t have put it past her, she was a smart cookie.  

And the universe seemed to be smiling upon them, that midweek morning, because there Peter was, leaned up against the block of mailboxes and going through his mail.  

“Peter! Lian, look who it is.”  

In her papoose, Lian did her best squirming, limbs waving and butt wiggling. “Ga! Ga!” she greeted.  

“Sup, Peanut,” Peter grinned. “And Peanut’s dad.” He winked at Roy, and it was unfair, really, just how attractive and distracting he was. He always managed to make Roy feel jittery and unsure of himself (especially lately) (especially after that conversation with Dick), and that good kind of anxious.  

“I was thinking,” Roy unlocked his mailbox. “First off, why don’t I have your number? At this point, I feel like I probably should have it, right?”  

Peter hummed noncommittally and, just, fine. He could be that way. But Roy could be annoying when he wanted something, and he’d just decided that he wanted a direct means to contact Peter. As well as that goddamn kiss he’d almost received, almost a week ago.  

“And secondly, could I take you out for coffee? Well, no, I mean. Could I get you a coffee? We could go to the park or something, maybe. Although maybe that’s lame? I dunno.” Roy tugged his mail out of the box, heaving a sigh. “It feels like a coffee day. You in?”  

“Sure,” Peter turned and dumped all his mail into the recycling bin. Just. All of it.  

“Was that all junk mail?” Roy blinked at the recycling bin.  

“Yeah, just about.”  

“Huh.” Roy couldn’t imagine why anyone would stand there, reading through junk mail, unless they were actively looking for a reason to linger in the mail area. He liked the idea that, maybe, Peter had been wasting time, waiting for Roy and Lian to make their appearance.  

From twice a month to several times a week. Roy’s mail-retrieving habits really had changed, hadn’t they? And it was definitely because of Peter.  

“And the park’s not lame. Nice to see it being used, actually,” Peter said. He shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded toward the door. “Lead the way, Harper.”  

Roy smiled at him. “I doubt Blüdhaven has an excess of good coffee places, so I’m pretty sure you can guess where we’re headed anyway, but,” he shrugged. “Sure.”  

Peter got the door for him, then fell in step when they were both outside.  

Lian kicked and burbled a bunch, eyes flickering over everything, like she was seeing it for the first time. She seemed especially intent on Peter’s profile, and Roy didn’t blame her. After what she deemed to be an appropriate amount of time – about twelve seconds – Lian squealed out an “Eh!” noise at Peter and made a grabby motion at him.  

Peter turned to look down at her, laughed, and reached for her. She latched onto his hand and squealed again, this time sounding pleased.  

Roy, on the other hand, watched the exchange and noticed – with a startle – that Peter had a bruise on his right cheekbone, just under his eye, and the remains of a split lip that had already done some healing. Roy couldn’t figure how he’d missed that. “Wow, you okay?” Roy asked.  

Peter’s eyes flicked from Lian to Roy, then dropped back down to Lian. “Yeah, definitely. Why wouldn’t I be?”  

Roy pressed his lips together, catalogued the two visible injuries, then dropped his own gaze. Which only lead him to the revelation that Peter’s knuckles were bruised and scraped, too. He’d either been roughed up or done some roughing up, recently, and Roy felt a sickening little twist in his stomach, thinking about that. Well, no. He didn’t mind, too much, the idea of Peter starting a fight – would have been a bit hypocritical for a formerly active vigilante to mind that – but he definitely minded the idea of Peter hurt. Getting hurt.  

“You sure?” Roy pressed.  

“Of course,” Peter frowned over at him.  

Roy took that as his cue to let it go. He had the weirdest feeling that this whole exchange was significant, but he brushed it off. “Hey,” he shifted the papoose a bit, “You wanna hold her? I kind of want to shove the papoose into the bag or something. I don’t know why I thought it was a good day for it.” Thankfully, it was a soft papoose and Roy could do exactly that. Regretfully, though, it would be an awkward fit in the front pocket of the diaper bag.  

Peter looked at him a bit incredulously, and Roy supposed he deserved it. I mean, Roy’d just observed the evidence of some kind of altercation and, after ascertaining that Peter was okay, his first thought was to hand his daughter over? Yeah, that deserved a raised eyebrow, probably. But Peter was safe. Lian was safe with Peter.  

“Sure,” Peter said slowly.  

Roy immediately unhooked Lian to pull her out – her babbles and giggles gaining excited volume – and plop her into Peter’s arms.  

Peter and Lian regarded each other. Then Peter visibly melted, smiling at her.  

Chapter Text

It was almost like date.  

Well. Dates probably didn’t include children, as a rule of thumb. But still. Or maybe especially because of that, because of Lian’s presence. Not just her presence: Peter’s reactions to her presence, which were all positive and positively smitten.  

Roy bought their coffees. Caramel lattes like last time, at the park.  

Peter seemed discontent about watching someone else pay for his things, but didn’t say anything. Roy understood that much, at least. The wanting to pay your own way part. He was like that, with Ollie, and it tended to spread to other things and other situations until Roy didn’t want anyone paying for things for him, even gifts. It was a difficult feeling to push down, but with friends like Dick and the Titans, Roy’d had to give on that, a bit. Because, honestly, it wasn’t always about him and his wallet.  

Heaven forbid Dick Grayson be unable to buy things for people. The man’s love languages were physical affection and gift giving.  

And, man, did Dick love giving gifts. From silly to extravagant. A “World’s Okayest Dad” cup for Bruce one year, a rented lab space (private and set apart from everything else “Bat”) for Tim another year. An “I Saved the World and All I Got Was This Stupid Shirt” shirt for Clark one year, a vigilante-custom wheelchair for Babs another year. Dick always went for “thoughtful,” no matter the budget required – and gift-giving was one of the few things he’d touch his trust for. He was hellbent on doing things his own way, without financial help, unless it came to giving gifts.  

So, yeah. Dick loved showing love through gift-giving. And Roy had consciously decided to accept that about his friend, rather than to take it as some kind of ridiculous affront to the capacity of his own finances.  

Besides, with Lian making a home in his life, Roy’d decided that he could give up some of his pride. Some more of his pride, rather. He wasn’t about to deprive Lian of anything, let alone gifts from friends and family. (Thus: things like the pink noise machine Lian had in her room. And a bunch of her baby furniture, besides.)  

Speaking of Lian. She squealed and bounced in Peter’s arms and Peter grinned at her, encouraging her, helping her bounce higher. Roy leaned up against the café counter and watched Peter and Lian while he waited for the lattes. If not for the distraction of Peter’s smile and Lian’s laughter, Roy probably would have been a bit miffed about how long their order was taking.  

Roy’s smile felt soft and real. He couldn’t have hidden it or wiped it from his face if he tried.  

“Roy,” the sharp-eyed barista offered him two cups. A few of their fingers, on their dominant hand, were bandaged. Not so on the other hand. They seemed to have a compression sleeve on their non-dominant arm, though. It reminded Roy of archery practice, particularly if he wasn’t wearing an arm guard. “Um. Roy?”  

He startled, turning toward the counter. “Right, that’s me,” he grinned and accepted both cups from her. “Sorry.”  

They nodded and glanced past him, where he’d been looking. They leaned against the counter.  

“It’s nice to see him smiling,” the barista grinned. Their nametag introduced them as Kate, and while Roy tried not to assume – heroes weren’t supposed to make people uncomfortable, and one way to make people more comfortable was to simply not to assume things about them – the name and appearance choices made Roy think they probably subscribed to feminine pronouns, so he allowed himself to mentally subscribe to those pronouns. “His resting bitch face is something else. I used to think he was, like, mad at me. All the time.”  

Roy snorted. “I take it he’s a regular?”  

“Yup. Never thought I’d see the day he’d bring around his family, though. I mean—” she motioned to Peter and Lian, but grinned at Roy. “I didn’t peg Jay as a family guy, honestly.”  

“Oh, we’re not—well,” Roy shrugged awkwardly. Family. That was a nice thought, warm and prickling pleasantly just under Roy’s skin.  

But that was also jumping way too far ahead of himself, in terms of relationship progression. Roy and Peter hadn’t even had a relationship talk. Or properly asked one or the other out. Or kissed. It was a bit soon, probably, to be dropping the “family” tag onto anything.  

“Oh,” Kate straightened and pushed dark hair behind her ear. “Oh, sorry. I guess I just assumed...”  

“No, it’s okay,” Roy smiled. “It’s just—” he trailed off, finally processing that Kate hadn’t called him Peter. “Yeah,” he said slowly. Jay, huh? He reset his expression, smiling again. “Maybe someday, though. Who knows? I mean, my baby girl loves him to bits and all.”  

“Man, woulda thought he was her dad, way he looks at her,” Kate dusted her hands off on her apron. “All soft like that. I didn’t even think his face could do that. Like. I thought maybe it was stuck in a scowl or something. He’s much cuter when he smiles.”  

Roy laughed, but couldn’t exactly disagree.  

“Stop gossiping about me, Kate,” Peter called over.  

“Bite me,” Kate called back. She gave Roy an apologetic look. “I do have to get back to work, though. Sorry for keeping you.”  

“No, it’s fine,” Roy smiled.  

“Bishop!” someone in the back of the café shouted.  

“Shit,” Kate ducked her head and scurried back into place, behind the espresso machine.  

Roy shook his head a little, then followed Peter out of the café. He mentally filed the name Kate used for Peter with everything else about Peter that didn’t quite add up. It was a growing collection, but Roy was getting pretty good at ignoring it all, even though he knew he probably shouldn’t.  

Part of it, the ignoring everything, was definitely because of Dick’s attempts at meddling – Roy didn’t want to be mother-henned, you know? And, yeah, he knew that was very much not a good reason to be ignoring red flags about Peter, but that was what he had. Besides just... not wanting to deal with the red flags. Not wanting to question Peter’s presence or motives.  

Babies were good judges of character, anyway. Lian liked Peter, so Roy wasn’t going to look too deeply into the inconsistencies. Willfully so.  

--  

When Lian was back in the baby swing at the park – her favourite thing ever, along with everything else – Peter took it upon himself to be the one pushing her, gently. Roy got to just stand back and watch, sipping his latte. It felt nice. Domestic. But he kept that thought tucked deep inside the recesses of his mind, along with any similar observations.  

He didn’t want to scare Peter off.  

Peter chattered away at Lian. It might have been about anything, from Peter’s day to the weather to the alarming rate at which bees were disappearing. Roy didn’t know, because Peter spoke in Vietnamese. I mean, Roy could follow along okay, but it took some effort because Peter seemed to have a regional dialect of some kind, or else an accent? And, anyway, Roy was still just kind of... rusty.  

Lian kicked out her legs and tried to babble back, to the best of her ability. Peter engaged her as if they were having a proper back-and-forth conversation. Like a pet owner having a conversation with their noisy cat – except it was a grown man and a baby.  

Roy never knew that he could derive so much joy from something as simple as just. Watching. Just watching someone talk to his baby girl, smile at her. But there he was, experiencing joy from exactly that.  

Chapter Text

After the park, Peter gathered Lian up in his arms. She was tiny next to him, but so content and happy and, just. Peter was safe. She felt safe with him. Roy felt that she was safe with him.  

“Keep smiling at me like that and Kate’s not going to be the only one assuming things,” Peter quipped. He was smiling down at Lian, but his gaze briefly jumped over to Roy and he was smiling in that soft, content way that turned Roy’s heart into a chaotic little acrobat in his chest. Like a young Dick (Grayson, that is).  

“Sorry,” Roy said. He wasn’t sorry, though.  

Peter shrugged. “It’s a pleasant change from the usual.” He affixed his gaze to Lian more firmly, smile fading a little. Roy didn’t like the implications of that at all – what was the usual if it were so different from a smile, anyway? Did it have to do with the estranged family Peter had left behind? Did it have to do with the bruise and cut lip and battered knuckles?  

In Peter’s arms, Lian had long since made herself comfortable. She had her little face leaned up against Jason’s chest as she blinked loudly, dozing. She yawned, blinking hard, and pushed her closed fist at her cheek once, almost as if trying to rub sleep from her eye (and missing badly).  

As Roy watched, Lian turned to smoosh her face into Peter's chest (Roy’s heart did a series of little flips as he watched Jason adjust to keep her comfortable).  

“You’re amazing with her,” Roy murmured. He reached over to smooth down Lian’s mess of hair, a riot of dark, wispy curls. It turned out that the way to a man’s heart wasn’t actually through his stomach (ribs was a more direct path, anyway), but through careful, loving interactions with a man’s child, because Peter claimed a little more of Roy’s heart every time he did something like put a steadying hand on Lian’s back to keep her sleepy form safe and upright against his chest.  

“Thanks,” Peter said, a little gruff. “Used to help with... neighbours’ kids n shit. Way back. Haven’t been around a baby in forever, though. It’s. Nice.” He smiled over at Roy. Shy, almost. A bit hesitant. Like he didn’t think the moment were real, or something.  

Roy’s heart did another of those stupid little flips. How was he ever going to get anything done when his heart got like that, anyway? If he was around Peter, Roy’s heart was doing Olympiad-level gymnastics in the hollow of his chest. If he wasn’t around Peter, Roy’s heart was making him stupid with wondering the next time he might see Peter, wondering how he was, wondering what he was doing, wondering if he was thinking about Roy.  

There was always room in Roy's heart for Lian, where he held her first and foremost as the most important thing, but it seemed like the rest of his operational capacities were slowly being absorbed by what was becoming a particularly troublesome, all-consuming crush.  

Lian snuffled against Peter and turned her head, but only just enough to bring her pudgy little fist up and pop her thumb into her mouth.  

--  

The conversation between Roy and Peter stalled comfortably, for the rest of the walk back to the apartment building, and Peter offered to carry Lian up to Roy’s apartment. To minimize the chance of waking her. He was just thoughtful like that, much as he still claimed that Gotham produced nothing but the dredges of society, himself included.  

Roy caught the elevator and grinned at Peter. “That would be amazing,” he said. He stepped inside and hit the fifth-floor button, but had to catch the door when Peter didn’t stay in step with him.  

Peter didn’t immediately follow Roy over to said elevator, even, but Roy didn’t question the hesitation more than he questioned anything else, regarding Peter. And Peter  did  end up getting into the elevator. It just took a moment longer than what was strictly normal. Then he stood close enough that his elbow brushed Roy’s and Roy’s brain – and any coherent thought therein – did a nosedive out the nearest window.  

“I’m so glad they finally fixed this old beast,” Roy crossed his arms and leaned back against the handrail and wall of the elevator.  

Peter, a bit stiffer than usual, stood next to him and nodded.  

Roy glanced at him and frowned. The doors closed a bit louder than a newer elevator’s doors would. After a long moment of the elevator deciding whether or not it would be cooperating, the machine began its grumbling ascent. Peter dropped his gaze to his feet and stiffened a bit further, but held Lian as gently as he had been. Maybe more so. Or more conscious of how he was holding her, maintaining a gentle but protective hold.  

He was almost curled around Lian, holding her as close as possible.  

“Peter...?” Roy made an aborted motion toward Peter.  

Peter shrugged him off. Or flinched. Roy wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret the brief jerk of movement.  

Roy frowned from Peter to the floor indicator. It wouldn’t be long, no. But. He looked back at Peter. He hesitated. “You don’t—”  

“S’fine,” Peter cut in. Gruff. Stilted.  

But that kind of gave it away, didn’t it? Peter wasn’t comfortable in the elevator. Like, at all.  

The universe, of course, decided to intervene between the third and fourth floor, like it knew that one of the elevator occupants was uncomfortable and wanted to maximize that selfsame discomfort. There was a jerk, then a grinding halt that made even Roy uncomfortable. The elevator stopped. Roy sighed slowly and chanced a look at Peter.  

Peter seemed fine. But his jaw was clenched and his breathing had gotten loud. Obvious. Roy couldn’t recall ever hearing Peter’s breathing, let alone so prominent.  

Roy reached out to him, but Peter jerked away a bit.  

“Probably should—” Peter swallowed hard and his breathing came a bit quicker. He was wrapped around Lian protectively, though, and Roy wasn’t worried for her safety. He was, however, worried about Peter. “You should take her,” Peter managed. His movements were jerky as he disentangled himself from Lian’s tiny, sleeping form. She garbled sleepily.  

Roy accepted her back, eyes still fixed on Peter. “Are you okay?”  

“Yeah,” Peter said, gruffly. But he tucked himself into the corner, which didn’t look very fine to Roy.  

And then, of course, the lights in the elevator decided to go out.  

Chapter Text

Peter slid to the floor, slowly.  

Roy stood there, holding Lian, and scrambled mentally for something to do or say. Anything. He came up short, though, when he noticed the almost feline glint off Peter’s eyes, the  fear  that glimmered in the semidark. Except, no. It was full dark. Not even the emergency lights were on.  

If it weren’t for the situation, and the absolute dead-eyed fear that had trickled into Peter’s expression, Roy might have questioned that more – questioned the weird light in Peter’s eyes more – or tried to at least explain it away. But, in the moment, it just wasn’t important – didn't even rank anywhere near the top of Roy’s priorities.  

Roy swallowed thickly.  

The fear on Peter’s face was so foreign. Alien. It didn’t belong there.  

“Peter...?”  

Peter didn’t respond, he looked straight ahead, the glint in his eyes looking more like a soft, sickly glow. His eyes were too wide. Afraid. His expression was slack and lost and far away.  

--  

Hard to breathe—  

So dark—  

The darkness too close—  

Copper, like a bitten tongue or cheek—  

Earth—  

Dirt—  

Back there again, back there and trapped and—  

A mouth full of dirt—  

--  

Roy knelt beside Jason, a well of panic rising in him. Peter looked so far away, with wide and unseeing eyes. Something was there, playing in the back of Peter’s eyes, but Roy wasn’t privy to whatever torment was dragging Peter out of the present.  

“Peter,” Roy tried again. He absently bounced Lian in his arms, though he wasn’t sure if it was for Lian’s sake or his own. Lian was still asleep, though she’d begun to fuss when Roy’s heartrate picked up, rising dramatically in reaction to both Roy’s sympathy and fear. “Peter, buddy. Hey. I’m right here.”  

Peter turned jerkily to look toward Roy, but his gaze remained unseeing, lost.  

Clearly, there was some form of trauma that the dark, enclosed space had triggered, and Roy couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it might be, or how he could help.  

God.  

It reminded Roy of way back, like five years ago, when Dick would see something that unexpectedly reminded him of Jason. Of how Dick would crumble with uncatchable suddenness. Of how lost Dick’s gaze would become, especially when he’d cried about all he could cry about everything. After he’d raged himself to exhaustion.  

It wasn’t the same, but Roy felt just as helpless, seeing Peter tossed back into whatever traumatic experience had its hold on him, as he had when he watched the same thing happen to Dick. Especially if Dick were unguarded and almost  happy  beforehand. Like, once Dick had been joking around about how shitty Roy’s apartment was – before there was ever a Lian or an apartment in Blüdhaven – and he’d stopped suddenly, in front of a library book Roy’d forgotten to return. His gaze had gone faraway and, before Roy could comprehend the sudden change in his attitude, Dick was lost to memories and mourning Jason all over again. Over a library book.  

Roy didn’t understand. Not really. But he’d done his best to be there for Dick. As much as he could.  

Roy tried to remember what he’d actually done to help Dick. But that wouldn’t help, would it? Dick was tactile and would curl up into Roy, babbling about Jason and how he’d died and  “I wasn’t there, Roy, I failed him—he died and I wasn’t even there!”  and doing a speed-run through the stages of grief until he could find his way back to the present.  

Peter, though. Peter was deathly still, with wide and unseeing eyes. He breathed hard and fast and  terrified.  Roy was sure that, if he checked the man’s pulse, Peter’s heart would be racing.  

--  

God, the mud—  

It was raining, and he knew it before he ever broke through the surface. It soaked into him and clung to him. The dirt, wet and unpleasant, was in his mouth and nose and eyes—  

He’d gotten out of the damn box, but what was the point when all he had was his fucking belt to try and force his way through the slog of earth and rainwater? What was the point—  

And it was tighter, closer, squeezing him and keeping his breath locked away until he was struggling against the pain in his lungs—  

Tighter than the confines of the box—  

Tighter—  

Closer—  

Worse—  

There wasn’t help for him, there. No Bruce, no Dick. No one and nothing. Just him and the earth and the rain and a suit of death-scented clothes—  

Him, his death—  

And the roil of nausea in his stomach, eating away at him and trying to rise as bile from his throat. Burning, chemical bile. Another reminder that he wasn’t a boy, he was a corpse—  

He’d died and been buried—  

Worse: he’d died, been buried, and then woken in the box—  

Can’t breathe—  

Can’t move—  

Too close—  

Too much—  

This was why the dead should stay dead. Life was too painful for a corpse. Too painful, squeezing from the inside and the outside. Dirt and chemicals and spaces far too small—  

He tore at the dirt with hands and belt buckle and he didn’t know if it would be enough—  

--  

“Peter, please,” Roy whispered. He hesitated, then put a hand on Peter’s shoulder.  

Peter jerked away as if he’d been burned.  

He looked at Roy, still without seeing him. “B,” he croaked out, voice shaking. He sounded like a wounded animal, a husk of a person lost in their own mind. “Dad—” his voice cracked.  

“Peter,” Roy put his hand on Peter’s shoulder again, he adjusted Lian in his other arm. “Look at me, man. Come on. I’m right here. You’re okay. I promise.” He didn’t even know if Peter could hear him, and that scared him, too.  

It was just—why?  

It was such a good day. Peter had been smiling and happy. Lian had been smiling and happy. Roy had been able to look at that happiness and let it swell within him, a deep and abiding warmth creeping all through him. (It almost felt like the L-word, but Roy wouldn’t allow himself to think that. At least, not yet.)  

And then the switch had flipped and.  

This .  

Roy gripped Peter’s shoulder and hoped that it was grounding. Hoped that it helped instead of making things worse.  

Then he noticed the tears, streaking their way down Peter’s face, which looked younger in its slack, lost grief. So much younger. A wounded child hidden away behind the sharp expressions and cocky body language. It made a rush of protectiveness lash out inside Roy, surging through him.  

--  

Closing in—  

Too much, too close, too dark—  

He could smell the rain—  

There was dirt stuck under his fingernails—  

Dirt in his nose and mouth and eyes—  

His chest being crushed—  

Couldn’t breathe—  

Couldn’t—  

No, not again—  

--  

The elevator came back online, jerked into movement, then chimed its arrival to the fifth floor. Roy felt a rush of relief suffuse his entire being. Except. Except, maybe, the relief was preemptive.  

--  

And, as if it weren’t enough to be back there, back in the ground—  

Tick—  

It—no—  

No—  

Not again—  

Tick—  

No. No! Not—not again—  

Not the explosion, not the searing pain followed by cold nothingness—  

Chapter Text

Peter was curled in on himself even tighter, face hidden. He’d made himself much smaller than Roy thought a man of his size should be physically able to. Was he crying still? Was he  sobbing into his knees?  Silently?? God, Roy didn’t know how to deal with this sort of thing. It was so far outside his wheelhouse that his first thought was to call  Dick  and ask him to come help Peter, instead.  

But logic got the better of him. Well, a form of it.  

Dick and his suspicions. Roy didn’t think—  

Yeah, no.  

The elevator door opened and Roy squeezed Peter’s shoulder. “Hey. Hey, man, come on. I don’t know where you are, right now, but it’s not real. It’s—” Roy huffed out a slow, shaky breath and looked down at Lian, still asleep in his arms. “Come back to us, Peter,” he murmured. “Tell me what I can do, how I can help.”  

Peter didn’t respond. Didn’t move except to stiffen when Roy squeezed his shoulder. And, no, that wasn’t a good sign, but Roy had no idea what else he could do, especially in an elevator.  

Roy got up long enough to hit the “hold elevator” button, thought better of it, and hit the emergency stop button, instead. Then he went back to Peter’s side and knelt there, once more.  

“Hey, Peter. Breathe with me?” he moved his hand from Peter’s shaking shoulder, down his arm, and took Peter’s hand. “Come on.” He put Peter’s hand on his own chest, his heartbeat, and took a long breath, slow and calm and a number of other things Roy absolutely didn’t feel, in the moment. He did it again. And again. And another time.  

Peter slowly seemed to come back. Or at least become conscious of himself. He stiffened.  

“Peter?” Roy kept his voice soft, but squeezed Peter’s hand perhaps a bit too hard.  

“Yeah,” Peter croaked out. “That’s me. Definitely.”  

“Look at me? Please?”  

Peter did, albeit with a long hesitation.  

“There you are,” Roy sighed. “Can you stand?”  

“’Course,” Peter muttered.  

Roy still helped him to his feet. “Come on,” he soothed. “Let’s, uh. Get out of here, I guess.” He offered a lopsided smile that wasn’t returned, then led Peter by the hand. He didn’t need to, probably, but a small, scared part of him was worried that Peter would slip back into whatever  that  had been if Roy let him go.  

Peter let him.  

--  

“Stay there,” Roy said.  

He left Peter on the couch and put Lian down to sleep in her crib, then returned to his living room. Peter wasn’t very good at listening, because he was on his feet and hovering between the couch and the door, but he hadn’t left, which Roy counted as a small win.  

Peter looked at him with steely, suspicious eyes.  

“Hey, no, sit down, dude,” Roy said. He brushed past Peter and into his kitchen. “Tea?”  

There was a long beat, then Peter shuffled back over to the couch. Roy glanced at him and, yeah, he looked hesitant and suspicious. Young, too. Vulnerable. But he hadn’t made a break for it. He sat back in the spot Roy had pushed him into, gentle but firm, when they’d first gotten back to Roy’s apartment.  

“Sure,” Peter muttered.  

“Chamomile? Earl Grey?”  

“I don’t give a shit.”  

Roy picked the Earl Grey. Peter seemed to enjoy it, last time, after all. He set the kettle on and wandered back out to the living room, behind Peter. “How you feelin’?”  

Peter glanced at him, sharp and suspicious once more.  

Roy snorted and let his heart glow with fondness. “Better, I hope. How do you feel about a Star Trek marathon? I’m looking forward to vegging out on the couch with Captain Picard, but I’m flexible. We could watch Voyager or TOS or... whatever.”  

Peter’s suspicious eyes narrowed further.  

“Picard it is. Janeway’s cool, too, but Picard’s always been my favourite.” Roy unfolded the blanket tossed over the back of his couch and tossed it over Peter’s shoulders. “Get cozy, you’re about to be my pillow for the next couple hours, at least.”  

Peter scoffed at him, but shucked his jacket and kicked off his boots, as if resigned to Roy’s whims. It felt like a win, but Roy still hoped he was doing the right thing. Not, like, making things worse. And, like, part of him really wanted to ask what happened, where Peter had “gone” when the panic hit. But the suspicion, the flint in those teal (not steel, teal) eyes, told Roy that asking would just drive Peter away. So, Roy held his tongue.  

The kettle squealed. Roy beelined for the hot water and poured two mugs of tea, satisfied that Peter wasn’t about to up and disappear on him in the forty seconds it took to get the mugs of tea filled. Or the fifteen seconds it took to throw milk and sugar into Peter’s mug.  

“What is this?” Peter accepted the mug, but narrowed his gaze at Roy.  

“Earl Grey.”  

“Not the tea. This.” He motioned vaguely.  

“I dunno. Star Trek marathon? Couch date? Take your pick.”  

“You’re not gonna, like, give me the third degree?”  

“Nope,” Roy sat down next to Peter and blew on his tea. “Why? You want me to?”  

“Uh. No.”  

“It’s not really my business. I want to make sure you’re okay, but I’m not your therapist or anything. I’m. I won’t risk it, I guess.” Roy took a sip of his tea. And,  shocker , it was still way too hot (that was sarcasm, in case you missed it). He made a face and stuck his tongue out.  

That seemed to be the right thing to say, though. Peter looked at Roy for a long moment, then eased back against the couch and relaxed. “Okay.”  

Roy shot him a bright grin, then hopped up. Some tea sloshed out of his cup, but he was too thrilled at having done the right thing to care. “Cool! I have a bunch of Star Trek box sets, so. What do you think? Season one of TNG? We could make fun of Jonathan Frakes’s baby face and lack of a beard. Or season five and those great character studies, instead, maybe?”  

“Season two?” Peter suggested. “I’ve always liked the one where Data was Sherlock Holmes.”  

“You got it,” Roy grinned.  

Chapter Text

Roy fell asleep in the middle of the marathon, sometime between Data’s attempt to prove his personhood in The Measure of a Man and Wesley’s crush on a diplomat in The Dauphin. Probably.  

Roy couldn’t remember anything past the first half of The Measure of a Man and the moment where Picard challenges the ruling that Data was Starfleet property. But he knew the episodes – Star Trek: The Next Generation was the kind of series he’d put on for comfort or distraction – and he knew that The Dauphin was next, even if he didn’t like The Dauphin nearly half as much as he liked The Measure of a Man. He didn’t hate Wesley, but The Dauphin was hardly up to the same standard as its preceding episode.  

Anyway. Roy fell asleep on the couch, though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when. He woke up with a crick in his neck and a vague sense of contentment, which weren’t usually two things he felt in conjunction with each other. The couch was about as lumpy and unpleasant as it always was, but Peter was a solid, warm weight against Roy’s shoulder—  

Peter, right.  

Roy sat up and blinked away the bleariness. Or tried to sit up. He hissed and pressed a hand to the crick in his neck and tried to roll his head from one side to the other, almost as if to dislodge the sharp pain leftover from a subpar night’s sleep.  

Peter stirred, which drew Roy’s gaze to him. And—  

Peter looked very much  at peace , which was such a stark contrast when compared to whatever it was that had happened to him in the elevator. Roy smiled, which was the expression Peter would have caught when he cracked an eye open.  

“Mornin’.” Peter’s voice was sleep-roughened and gruff. It made Roy’s heart jump into his throat for a moment. “Didn’t mean to—yeah.” Peter rolled his head back and forth, much more successful in popping the vertebrae in his neck than Roy had been.  

“It’s fine,” Roy said. “More than fine. Uh. Do you—”  

A knock interrupted Roy. He turned to frown at the front door.  

“Roy?” Even from the other side, Dick sounded vaguely worried. Roy wondered if, maybe, he’d forgotten to check his phone. Like. A lot. Dick knocked again. “Hey, Roy? You haven’t answered any texts since yesterday and I know I’m jumping the gun, here, but could we talk? Please?”  

Roy sighed and turned to apologize to Peter, but— shocker— Peter had vanished.  

Roy frowned and glanced around. Peter’s shoes and jacket were gone, too, and he’d somehow managed to silently fold the goddamn blanket he’d had wrapped around his shoulders. Well, that just about confirmed that Peter was avoiding Dick, anyway.  

But you know who wasn’t going to hear about that? Dick. Roy wasn’t going to subject himself to an “I told you so,” willingly.  

The next set of knocks, which were a bit louder and more urgent, pulled Roy from the couch. “Hold your horses! I’m coming, man!” Roy took a moment to stretch and rotate his torso back and forth to crack his back, then went to open his front door.  

On the other side of the door, Dick had his arms crossed and his gaze fixed on the floor. He glanced up to meet Roy’s eye. “Lose your phone?”  

Roy felt a little like he did when a much younger version of himself was scolded by Dinah, which was silly. He hadn’t done anything wrong. “Uh. No,” Roy stepped aside to let Dick in.  

Dick ran a hand through the front of his hair, pushing it back from his face. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”  

“Sorry,” Roy shrugged. “You coming in or what?”  

Dick rolled his eyes, let some of the tension out of his posture, and stepped into Roy’s apartment. He glanced around in that way that looked casual, but which Roy knew was cataloguing everything in the room and looking for inconsistencies. “Guess I got a bit worried,” Dick turned back to Roy and smiled.  

“Mm, yeah. Sorry. I just, ya know, went to the coffee shop and took Lian to the park. Then parked my ass on the couch to watch some Star Trek.”  

Dick’s frown almost returned, tugging at the corners of his mouth. Because, of course, Dick knew that Star Trek was one of the things Roy used for self-care, comfort, or distraction. “Did something happen?” he asked.  

Roy couldn’t help the way his expression tightened and turned sad for a moment. Which Dick wouldn’t have missed. “Uh, sort of,” he shrugged. “Nothing... awful, I guess.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the back of his couch. “One of my—my neighbour had a panic attack in the elevator, I guess. I mean, I think that was what it was?”  

“Oh,” Dick frowned. “That sucks.”  

Roy nodded. “He’s fine. But it was hard to watch. Whole... nine yards, or whatever. Called for his dad,” he ran a hand down his face and let his shoulders slump. “Jesus. I felt useless.” When he returned his gaze to Dick, he found a slightly narrowed gaze, almost suspicious. “What?”  

“This wouldn’t be—?”  

“Oh, god. Does it matter?” Roy leaned his head back and groaned. “It sucked to watch. That’s all.”  

Dick nodded slowly. “So, it  was  Peter.”  

Roy leveled his best unimpressed look at Dick, who was really living up to his name lately. “So. What were you trying to get ahold of me for?”  

“Subtle,” Dick smirked. “I’ll let it pass, though.” His smile faded. “Night before last, uh. I—I ran into—” he glanced away and rubbed the back of his neck. “I fought Hood, again,” he murmured. Roy knew that the Red Hood had had confrontations with the Bats, but he hated that 'again.' “I didn’t—I didn’t want to fight him. He forced my hand. I can’t believe I...” Dick sighed.  

Roy looked his friend over again. Yeah, he could see the signs of a fight. Mostly, he could see how Dick was favouring his left leg and hear how his breathing wasn’t entirely even. Anything cosmetic, though, was probably covered up, meticulously, before Dick even considered leaving his apartment.  

“That bad?” Roy asked.  

“He. The things he said, Roy,” Dick choked out. “He took off his helmet and it—it was horrible. To hear those things in his own voice. I tried to pull my punches, but he kept—I had to stop pulling my punches and I just. Roy, I hurt him. I know I did.” Dick hugged himself. “I hurt my little brother. And he thinks I hate him. And...and he thinks we replaced him. I don’t understand why it—I don’t understand. He thinks we replaced him, all of us.”  

And, yeah, Roy could see how Jason might feel replaced (given the new Robin and all), but there was no reasoning with him. No correcting his skewed beliefs. No explaining what was actually going on. It was like Jason was hellbent on being angry, above everything else.  

At least, it was like that between Jason and his family.  

“I wish he’d let you just talk to him,” Roy sighed. “The fighting isn’t helping. Obviously. I mean, it’s gotta be feeding into the warped perception he has of you and B, right? And Tim, of course. But he won’t just stand still. He won’t  let  you guys explain things.” Roy turned his gaze to the ceiling and sighed. He still hadn’t told anyone about his own fight with the Red Hood, how the Hood hadn’t done anything overtly harmful to him. How Jason had only threatened him, warned him off. It was probably a bad time to bring that up. Even if that interaction was in direct contradiction to how Hood acted with his family.  

Dick sighed. He was doing a lot of that. “I… before he—before everything? I was. I was trying, you know? I was coming around. Not fast enough, I guess. But I was. Trying. I was spending more time with him. I was trying to-to get to know him.”  

“I know,” Roy offered a sympathetic smile. “I remember.”  

“I think he… I dunno. I think he liked you. Not that I blame him. You were always decent to him, and nice. Always trying to include him. He had this little puppy crush and it… it was really sweet. He tried really hard to hide it, but he was hilariously bad at it, sometimes,” Dick wiped at his eye and sniffed once.  

Roy shifted, but didn’t interrupt.  

But he'd known, on some level, that Dick's kid brother had a crush on him. He thought it was pretty cute, too. At the time. Afterwards, it was kind of painful. It was hard to think about the times Jason didn’t think anyone saw him looking. Or when Jason got all flustered in that awkward teen way, cracking voice and all. It hurt, thinking about how that kid never got to move past his stupid crush and date around, fall in love, all that mushy shit…  

“He was really sweet, under all those walls he kept building,” Roy said.  

Dick gave a pathetic laugh. “Yeah. He was. I just hope he’s still in there, under all this new anger.” He covered his face with both hands and took a long moment to just breath. “I miss him so much, Roy. It’s almost worse, knowing he’s back and doesn’t even want— I don’t know. I don’t know! But it’s fucking worse, somehow. Just the-the horrible sense that there’s possibility there, hope, but that it’s being held just out of reach!” Dick took a deep breath and uncovered his face. “Sorry, I guess I’m not as good at repressing my emotions as B is,” he muttered unkindly.  

“B has his issues,” Roy shrugged.  

“Yeah,” Dick scoffed. “No kidding.” He pulled his phone from his back pocket and turned the screen on, then made a face. ”Right. Work.” He put his phone back in his pocket and deflated. “Sorry to dump all my shit on you and run, but—”  

“You’re in the middle of a family crisis,” Roy waved him off. “If I can be a sympathetic ear, I will. Us capes have to stick together, otherwise we’d probably go off the deep end.” He winced. He didn’t mean it to sound like a “like Hood” comment, but it almost did. “Sorry I didn’t pick up your calls or text you back.”  

“I overreacted,” Dick rubbed the back of his neck.  

Roy snorted. “A little, but I’m still sorry. I know how rough it is to navigate the shit life throws your way, ya know? Especially navigating that without a parental figure lending a helping hand.” He stood. “I can walk you out? Lian’s asleep, so—” No, not the best parenting, but Roy shrugged. A minute or two in a locked apartment, unsupervised but asleep, wasn’t going to hurt his baby girl.  

“Sure,” Dick gave a lopsided smile, still unbearably sad underneath it all.  

Roy checked the baby monitor, then hooked it to one of his belt loops and followed Dick out, after ascertaining that Lian was still asleep. It wouldn’t connect well, down in the lobby, but it was better than nothing.  

Chapter Text

The elevator was out again, already, that morning, so Roy and Dick took the stairs. Roy bid him goodbye in the lobby, gave him a bone-crushing hug (the best he could do for Dick, in the moment), then jogged back up the stairs.  

No more than ten minutes at the very, very most.  

Lian was quiet over the baby monitor, but Roy still resolved to properly check her as soon as he was back in his apartment. He already felt like a shitty dad, and the tradeoff still left him feeling like a subpar friend. It wasn’t a very worthwhile emotional tradeoff, honestly.  

Roy unlocked his apartment as he headed in, and locked it behind him, then beelined for his daughter’s nursery.  

The door was, as usual, cracked open. Roy nudged it open—  

And stopped in the doorway, surprised.  

Lian’s crib was empty. That would have been more concerning, though, if the first thing Roy saw upon entering the nursery hadn’t been Lian curled up – safely – in Peter’s arms as Peter took over the glider in the corner of the room. And Peter just... sat there with her, dozing a little and rocking the glider back and forth gently.  

“I thought you’d left,” Roy said.  

Peter cracked an eye open. “Nah, just... thought you could use some space to deal with whatever, with your friend,” he said. His voice was gruff and a bit hesitant, almost as if he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. “I thought I might’ve heard Lian, anyway, so I thought—” he gave a weak shrug.  

“Thanks for checking in on her,” Roy said.  

The voice in Roy’s head, that sounded just a little bit like Dick, was suspicious about the stranger being alone and unsupervised, with Lian, in Lian’s nursery. And, while Roy found it a bit odd, he found Peter’s presence – he wasn’t a stranger, really – comforting, since it meant that Lian hadn’t actually been left alone.  

Roy nudged the door again and walked over, looking down at Lian with a smile. He almost wanted to ask how Peter had managed to up and disappear, and fold a blanket!, in such a short amount of time. He decided not to.  

Lian stirred and Peter slowly stopped rocking. He looked up at Roy in time to catch Roy’s eye, as Roy looked back at him. It was weirdly intimate, being in Lian’s nursery, standing so close together, one of them seated, both of them relaxed, Lian in Peter’s arms...  

Roy offered Peter a soft smile.  

“Ba,” Lian murmured sleepily.  

“Mornin’, Pumpkin,” Roy dropped his gaze to smile down at her.  

“Ba,” she blinked her wide eyes open and looked from Peter to her Dad, then blew a strangely sleepy raspberry at them both.  

--  

Peter said he should probably go, but then ended up making pancakes for himself and Roy. Like that was a normal thing to do. Like he felt at home with Roy, in Roy’s apartment.  

Roy was, frankly, a little surprised that Peter was able to find all the ingredients he needed, but he wasn’t complaining. He was, however, shooed out the door when Peter realized that Roy had something like a teaspoon of cheap, off-brand syrup in his fridge, and nothing else to put on pancakes, not even butter.  

Roy put Lian in the playpen and did as he was bidden.  

Then Roy ran into a familiar face in the lobby, paired with a package meant for him, so he passed off his keys and said, “Peter’s watching Lian, but it should be fine,” as he continued out the door of the building. “Drop it off and head out, or stick around and play with Lian a bit, if you want!” he called over his shoulder.  

Roy was easygoing like that.  

Besides, Tim was a good kid.  

Roy continued out the door and down the street to the little corner store.  

The girl stocking the shelves, a blond chick with her hair up in a ponytail and bangs almost in her eyes, was sitting in front of a half-stocked shelf with an open box of cereal in her lap. A tall, dark-skinned guy turned the corner and sort of... did a full-body slump. “Parker,” he hissed. “You can’t just stop stocking and eat—Jesus, woman, is that ours? You can’t just open things, in the store. Especially without paying for it!”  

“Why?” Parker narrowed her eyes up at him.  

“It’s stealing!”  

Both of them stared at each other, then the guy sighed and sat next to her. Parker smirked and handed him a partially drank orange soda (that was also probably supposed to be on the shelf, not drank by an employee).  

Roy decided against questioning the whole of the interaction, and beelined for where he knew the syrups were kept. Roy knew Parker, in passing, and he knew that she didn’t have a problem with stealing, generally speaking. He also knew that Alec, the guy, was trying really,  really  hard to get it across to Parker that it was bad for business (and came out of her paycheck).  

Mostly, though, Parker had the upper hand over Alec. He was tied around her finger.  

Anyway, Roy continued on his way.  

Yeah, it was a small store. But Harland’s was packed with as much variety as the two thousand or so square feet of the store could possibly offer. The candy aisle was unparalleled, and Roy would have continued to give his business to the store if only for that and the soda selection, because where else was he going to find all those random, weird candy and soda flavours?  

The cash register was being manned by a charming, dark-haired woman off to one side (Sophie, Roy recalled). A mess near the alcohol was being cleaned up by an intense, scruffy guy with longer hair (Eliot – Roy'd once seen Eliot punch out a would-be robber, after said robber’d pointed a gun right at Eliot’s head, close enough for Eliot to grab). It was the usual suspects, except the manager (Nate, a dark-haired guy with floppy hair).  

Roy liked this weird little store with its weird employees. (He was actually pretty sure that they were all convicted criminals of some kind, excluding the manager, but he wasn’t rude enough to actually ask that and he was too lazy to go through the trouble of looking them up.)  

Whatever, though.  

It took Roy maybe three seconds to decide on what syrup to get. Which actually meant that it took him three seconds to decide that he didn’t want to decide and, instead of deciding, grab one of everything. Except sugar free things, because the aftertaste was gross.  

Roy headed for the cash register.  

A newer employee that Roy didn’t know as well (not that he really knew any of them) almost ran into Roy. “Sorry,” she said, smiling. She had blond hair and a deeper, smokier voice than Roy expected.  

He shook his head, “You’re fine.”  

“Thanks.” Her nametag said “Tara,” and “she/her” under that.  

(Parker’s nametag said “she/they,” though the rest of the team at Harland’s generally subscribed to default, cis pronouns – which was something Roy actually knew, even though he glanced at the pronouns every time he was there – if they were going to be open enough to provide them, he was going to be respectful enough to double-check that he was using the right ones.)  

Tara continued over to where Parker and Alec were passing the soda back and forth and muttering about some shitty corporate douche who was going to be checking in on the store, later that week. Tara stopped beside them and hissed. “Parker, you’re supposed to be stocking. Hardison, aren’t you on register two?”  

Roy snorted to himself and plopped his syrups and jellies on the open register’s counter. “Morning, Soph.”  

“Roy!” Sophie lit up. She had that adorable English accent, no matter how long she’d been in the city. Roy hoped it never left. “Haven’t seen you around in a while. Where’ve you been?” She started to methodically scan each item. Slowly, on purpose, so that she could chat with Roy a bit longer.  

“Sorry,” Roy shrugged. “You know how life gets.”  

“Oh, sure,” Sophie motioned with the blueberry syrup, “You’ve seen that we have our full house, eh? Sterling’s dropping by, in a few days. We’re trying to scrub the floors  and  the records, so he doesn’t try to fire anyone, again.”  

“Fire?”  

“Well, Parker’s always munching on something,” Sophie smiled fondly over at Parker, Alec, and Tara. “And it starts to impact inventory after a while. Nate’s going to go in, find the inconsistencies, and pay the difference. I know it’s supposed to come out of pay, but Nate never enforces that.”  

“Well, sounds like you’ve got it under control, anyway,” Roy said.  

“Helps that the new fella, Red Hood, keeps us from having to do as much clean up.” Sophie started to bag the items, in paper as was Harland’s policy. “Heaven knows it looks better when we don’t have six window replacements to explain away!”  

“Hood, huh?” Roy tilted his head.  

“Oh, he’s not all bad. I hear the working girls like him,” Sophie said. She must have seen something in Roy’s face, because she hurried to add: “Not that he sleeps with any of them, far as I’ve heard. He protects them. Gets the younger ones who shouldn’t need to make that choice out of there, even. And he keeps dealers from going after kids.”  

“He kills people,” Roy leaned on the counter, frowning.  

“Oh, tell me they don’t deserve it,” Sophie scoffed. “Don’t tell Nate I said that, mind. But some people... look, I’m not going to cry if a pedophile turns up dead. No one is. I won’t cry for rapists or abusers, either, and I don’t think the Red Hood’s gone after anyone who’s not guilty of at least one of those.”  

“I guess.” Roy accepted his bag from Sophie.  

“Mm, of course. Have a good day, Roy.”  

Chapter Text

Tim wandered warily up the stairs, to the fifth floor and Roy’s apartment.  

He  was there.  

Tim didn’t know how he felt about the idea of being in the same space as “Peter,” again. He’d had some off feelings about the guy, the last time. But, if nothing else, that just made Tim feel the obligation to make sure Lian wasn’t alone with him, in that case.  

But was that even his place?  

Tim was pretty sure Roy would never put his little girl in danger. At least, not on purpose.  

Tim was too busy overthinking to realize he’d gone on autopilot and made it to Roy’s door. He blinked back to proper awareness with Roy’s key already in the lock, turned. Tim huffed out a sigh. It looked like he was doing this, after all. To believe that all he’d wanted to do was drop off a package.  

Tim pushed the door open slowly and edged inside.  

Lian was in her playpen in the living room. She roared at Tim when she noticed him, arms thrown in the air. Tim couldn’t help but smile in response.  

“Forget something?”  

Tim froze up. “Um, no,” he turned, even though he couldn’t see into the kitchen from where he stood just inside the front door. He pulled the key out of the lock and leaned against the door to close it. “Roy—sent me? Up? I have a package.”  

The answering silence prickled with something.  

Tim took a deep breath and walked further into the apartment. He clutched the package to his chest and the keys in his fist. He put the package down on the back of the couch, where the mis-delivered package had been placed, when Tim was playing sitter.  

“I’m, uh, Tim,” Tim said.  

A noncommittal grunt carried from the kitchen.  

Of course he knew who Tim was. They only met, like, a week ago or something. More than a week? Tim had no idea how long, actually, but it wasn’t. Like. A lot. It wasn’t  that  long.  

Tim chanced a glance over his shoulder, into the kitchen. The person-shaped brick wall stood at the stove, every muscle stiff and coiled, the air around him tight and angry. He looked like a man ready to attack. He also happened to be a man holding a spatula and paying meticulous attention to the pancakes he was making on Roy’s stove.  

Tim exhaled slowly and turned back to Lian.  

She looked at him with big, curious eyes and a slightly knit brow and mouth slightly open.  

Tim pasted a smile on his face. “Hey, kid,” he said.  

“Ppahh,” Lian puffed out.  

Tim rounded the couch and stepped over the playpen wall. (Well, it took a little hop, thanks to Tim’s height, but he got over it.) Once inside the pen, he sat next to Lian, then pulled her into his lap. Smiling. “That’s a new one.”  

“Ba-ba-ba,” Lian whacked her medieval princess rubber duck on Tim’s thigh a few times. In her other hand, she held a dragonic rubber duck aloft. “Nga!” It was a ferocious war cry, squealed out as she tossed the princess duck at the play pen wall. It fell short of her target, but her victory was obvious.  

“So,” the guy called, tight and unwilling. “How long you staying.  Kid.”  

Tim shifted and frowned, but didn’t look up, for fear he’d actually make eye contact with the taller man. Eye contact was  so hard  on the best of days. Even more so when it came to intense people like “Peter.” “I don’t know—”  

“Staying for breakfast?”  

Tim thought for a moment, tracking the movement of Lian’s flailed ducks. “Are. You?” he asked. “I mean, I guess you are... did you—” Wait. He couldn’t ask if the guy stayed the night. That was so not appropriate for a guest to ask of another guest. “Um. What is it? Breakfast, I mean.”  

“Pancakes.” It was said in the same tone that one would say “dumbass.” Considering that the smell was very obviously pancakes, and Tim had literally  seen  the pancakes when he’d looked into the kitchen, that was probably fair.  

Tim wished Roy would get back, though. Soon. “Um. Is there... coffee?”  

There was the sound of a switch being flicked, overly aggressive and pointed. The coffee maker spluttered to life. “Yes.”  

“Um.” Tim winced. How many “ums” was he going to subject the air with, anyway? “I guess so. If-if that’s... I wasn’t planning on breakfast, but—”  

“Fine.” It was an aggressive way to be cut off, exasperated and annoyed.  

Tim sighed, almost relieved. (Though he could have sworn he heard a muttered  “I hate this kid”  under the obnoxious hum of the coffee maker.) Tim then received a dragon duck to the face. “O-oh. Hey. Uh—thanks,” he reached up and took the duck so that Lian would stop smooshing her drool-covered rubber duck into the side of his face. “Thanks,” he repeated.  

Lian squealed and attacked the toes on her right foot. Which was how Tim realized that she’d forced her way out of one of her little socks. Tim picked the little striped sock up and shifted Lian so that he could get at her bare foot. “Hang on, Lian,” Tim muttered. “You lost a sock—let me just... there we go.”  

Lian squealed and kicked her feet in delighted rage, then rolled out of Tim’s lap and went after her other, themed rubber ducks. She had at least one of each possible themed duck from the local supermarket or toy store, from little firemen and police ducks to little knight and jester ducks to superhero themed ducks. Then, of course, classic ducks and ducks of every colour. So many ducks.  

Tim could appreciate the pure excess of the duck selection, actually. Rubber ducks were, you know, pretty neat.  

Lian picked up a Batman duck and stuck its head in her mouth. Naturally, there was also a Robin duck  (That’s me,  Tim thought, still incredulous about it), and most of the other sidekicks seemed to be present, as well. Roy – or whoever had picked up the ducks for Lian – must have gone to several stores to find some of those ducks. Nightwing themed rubbed ducks only ever showed up in Blüdhaven. Speedy ducks only showed up in Star, Kid Flash in Central and Keystone, and so on. But Lian had them all.  

(Tim couldn’t possibly know it, but Wally was the provider of all things “obscure super-duck" in Lian’s collection.)  

Wow. Tim sure was focused on those ducks. (But, like, rubber ducks are great, why wouldn’t he be?)  

But also, where was Roy? How long was Tim going to be. Just. With this Peter guy, no Roy buffer and no cans of Red Bull to keep Tim alert? Maybe overtired Tim hadn’t been too concerned about him, but a Tim that wasn’t overtired just felt like there was a vague murderous intent hanging over his head, the longer he was in the same space as Roy’s... neighbour.  

“Got any allergies?”  

Tim blinked. Slowly. “I’m, uh, lactose intolerant?”  

He got a derisive snort for that.  

“Yeah, that was dumb,” Tim glanced over at the kitchen. And, of course, accidentally made eye contact. And, holy shit, Tim had thought this guy was blue-eyed, last time he was sharing space with him. But this time, even from the living room, Tim could tell that his eyes were a bright, almost glowing green. It was danger and alarm bells, as much as an eye colour could be. Tim dropped his gaze back down to Lian, who had moved on from trying to gum Batduck to death to smooshing Batduck into the carpet, squealing. “No, uh. No allergies. That I know of.”  

“Good, Harper doesn’t exactly stock his kitchen for divergent dietary needs. The milk’s dairy, the flour’s gluten, and the eggs don’t have a substitute.”  

And Tim nodded, even though he didn’t know if semi-murderous guy in the kitchen – who was practically a stranger – was still looking his way.  

Chapter Text

Roy hadn’t expected the next time he saw Kate from the Café to be when she was kneeling in front of one of Roy’s neighbour’s doors, clearly trying to pick the lock with a bobby pin and a paperclip. He wasn’t overly surprised, though. That seemed almost... par for the course, at that point.  

At first, Roy just walked past, groceries (syrups and toppings, rather) in his arms. But then he stopped, walked back over to Kate, and stood there until she noticed him.  

Kate startled and looked up. “Oh. Oh, hey! This isn’t what it looks like,” she said.  

She looked ready to jump into a long, explanatory spiel (truthful or not being up for debate), so Roy held his paper bag of syrups and jams out. “Hold this?” His smile didn’t even feel forced, in the slightest. Just, warm and friendly.  

“Sure?” Kate stood, leaving her improvised lockpicking implements in the lock.  

Roy handed it over, then knelt in front of the door, himself. He made quick work of the lock – and recognized that the bobby pin Kate had been using as her anchor was actually a pretty tough little bobby pin, practically meant for the job of B&E, which Roy was oddly okay with helping Kate do, apparently.  

“Um,” Kate said.  

Roy straightened and accepted his bag back. “There,” he gestured to the door.  

“I’m not robbing Clint or anything!” Kate blurted out.  

Roy snorted. Right.  Barton.  He knew the apartment number had been familiar. “Trust me, I would be thrilled if you were trying to rob Clint,” he said. And he was only mostly joking, really.  

“I forgot my keys,” Kate insisted. “And we lost Clint’s last hearing aid, of his last set, to the disposal unit in the sink, so he wouldn’t hear if I knocked and—”  

“Seriously, kid,” Roy reached over and ruffled her hair, then remembered he had the bobby pin and paper clip (both mutilated) in hand, still. He offered them back. “We’re in Blüdhaven. In a shitty apartment building. No one around here has anything worth stealing, probably. I don’t think you’re here to rob anyone, let alone Barton.” Roy scoffed as he said the guy’s name. He’d never meant to start that stupid game of one-upmanship with his neighbour, but Barton really brought out the worst in him, sometimes.  

“Oh. Oh my god! You’re Harper!” Kate pointed at him, grinning.  

“Yep,” Roy made a face.  

“Oh my god, Clint’s nemesis,” Kate cooed.  

Roy snorted, in spite of himself. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose. Anyway, best of luck with the keys and stuff,” he gave her a little wave, then continued on his way to his apartment.  

--  

Roy arrived back to an apartment that smelled like home. I mean, maybe it was a bit weird for Roy, who’d never really come home to homemade food smells, to relate exactly that to “home,” but that’s what it reminded him of.  

The first thing he saw was Tim laying on the floor in Lian’s playpen, Lian squealing and beating her fat little fists on his ribs. “You got me!” Tim put a hand to his forehead. Lian giggle-screamed.  

Roy smiled.  

“I’m back!” Roy chirped out. He didn’t have his keys, obviously, but he knew – and neither Tim not Peter could have known – that jiggling his doorknob to the left, aggressively, a few times turned the knob lock just enough to let the door open as if not locked at all. If he wanted the door locked, he usually made sure the bolt was turned. But, again, none of his apartment guests could know that the knob lock was really bad at its job.  

“Back? What, wasn’t the door locked?” Peter stepped out of the kitchen, frowning. He wiped his hands on a kitchen towel that Roy couldn’t for the life of him remember owning. His eyes didn’t look quite right, and they flicked over to Tim with a barely concealed sneer.  

Interesting. Roy pushed it out of mind, immediately.  

“No, it was locked,” Roy turned the knob lock so that it was fully locked, again. “It’s just a shit lock.”  

Peter narrowed his eyes at Tim for a moment, then returned to the kitchen. “S’ ready.”  

“Great! I got enough jelly and syrup to make Condiment King jealous!”  

Tim groaned, as expected. Less expected, but equally amusing, Peter poked his head out of the kitchen specifically to glare at Roy.  

“Tough crowd,” Roy snorted.  

“Roy, Condiment King is – he's not harmless, but dear god. He’s  practically  harmless and mostly just. Annoying,” Tim wrinkled his nose, then got bopped on the nose by a flying EMT duck. He gave the duck back to Lian absently. “It’s like. He needs to realize that his schtick is a Central schtick and leave Gotham alone. He’s a waste of time and effort.”  

“And mustard stains fucking everything,” Peter clattered his way around the kitchen.  

“And mustard stains everything!” Tim agreed.  

“Okay, you guys win,” Roy ambled into the kitchen and put the paper bag on the counter.   

Peter had the table set for three adults and Lian’s high chair wiped down and ready for food. Like, Roy saw that the tray of the high chair was streaked with moisture, because Peter had taken the time to actually wipe it down, to make sure it was clean.  

And there was coffee!  

“Oh my god, marry me,” Roy said. He was facing the stack of pancakes, so he could have been addressing those or the man responsible for their existence. It was up in the air, really.  

Peter either snorted or choked. “Damn, Harper, ask a guy to dinner first.”  

Roy grinned over at him. “That’s not a no.”  

Peter rolled his eyes and kicked at one of the chairs. “Siddown, Harper.”  

“Still... not a no.” Roy plopped down into the chair across from the high chair, which rather handily separated the other two chairs. You know, just in case Roy’s houseguests needed to be separated or something.  

“Kid! Bring the Grub in, pancakes’re getting cold,” Peter turned back to the counter and set about cutting a pancake into tiny, bite-sized cubes. His ears looked a little red. Possibly. Roy leaned his cheek on his hand and watched Peter absently.  

Tim did as he’d been unceremoniously bidden. Lian squealed in his arms, kicking and batting her hands on his chin and collar bone. She looked thrilled at the prospect of pancakes. Or sitting in the kitchen. Sometimes she had weird little moods like that, where a simple change of scenery was everything she thought she wanted in life.  

Peter reached over and took Lian out of Tim's arms, then settled her in her highchair with a soft smile and a kiss to the top of her head, absent and adoring. Unthinking, even. Lian squealed, looked up at Peter with hearts in her eyes (practically), then attacked her pancake bites.  

The whole exchange melted Roy’s heart.  

Roy glanced at Tim, who's jaw was clenched and whose gaze was sharp and intent, fixed on Peter. Something in Tim's expression softened when Peter set that kiss in Lian’s messy hair. Roy’s expression softened, too, of course. How could it not? Granted, Roy was pretty far gone for Peter.  

Tim shifted slightly away and pulled his phone out, glanced at the notifications, then slid it back in his pocket and sat at the table, albeit looking incredibly uncomfortable. And more than a touch suspicious.  

“Oh, hey, thanks for bringing that package up, Tim,” Roy said.  

Tim have him an awkward nod.  

“And for playing with Lian,” Roy grinned at him. “She likes you, I can tell.”  

“Oh.” Tim frowned a little, like that was a surprise. “Thanks?”  

Roy grinned, then glanced at Peter. Who… looked about as mutinous and hostile as Roy had expected, honestly. “Tim's a good kid,” Roy prodded.  

Peter glanced at him and sat down, a bit more loudly than necessary. “Whatever.  Solo comamos,”  he muttered.  

Roy blinked. Right. First language. He already knew that. He just hasn't heard Peter speak Spanish, before.  

Peter motioned at the stacks of pancakes in the middle of the table.  “Comamos.”  

“Gracias por la comida que usted,”  Tim murmured. He glanced up at Peter, then quickly dropped his eyes. He hadn't even reached for the pancakes yet.  

Peter flipped him off in the middle of filling his own plate.  

“Peter,” Roy snorted.  

Tim, though, looked a little more at ease. The smallest of smiles played at the corner of his mouth. He even reached for the pancakes. Rather, a single, solitary pancake. Probably the smallest of the whole batch.  

Roy reached over and put two more on Tim's plate. “Syrup preference, Timbo?”  

“It's just Tim,” Tim made a face.  

“Sorry. Syrup?”  

(Beside Roy, Peter seemed to take note. Roy couldn't be sure if that was a good thing or not.)  

“Um.” Tim shrugged. “Normal?”  

Peter smothered his own pancake stack with blueberry syrup. Muttering to himself the whole time. He was adorably disgruntled. Roy could guess why, but he let it be.  

Roy passed over the plain syrup, the Aunt Jemima type syrup. Then took it back when Tim wrinkled his nose.  

“No, that’s—that’s fine. I. That's fine,” Tim said quickly.  

“No, dude it's fine.” Roy passed over the much smaller container of maple syrup, instead. “You don't have to settle, kid.”  

Tim accepted the proffered syrup, flushing in embarrassment. “It's fine, though,” he insisted.  

Roy just waved him off.  

“Thanks,” Tim murmured.  

“No problem,” Roy waved him off again. “Really, kid.”  

--  

Breakfast was a weirdly domestic affair. Roy… really liked it. Really liked the sense of family he got from having a table full of people  

Peter was eternally attentive of Lian, of course, and Roy was beyond pleased to get an entire breakfast inside of Tim. And actual words, about himself and his week, out of Tim. Admittedly, the latter was a bit like pulling teeth, up until Roy got it out of Tim that he liked photography.  

(Tim lit up when photography came up and it was like having a completely different kid sitting at the table.)  

Roy felt like he had pretty much all he could possibly want, at his breakfast table. Almost, anyway.  

It would have been nice if Dick and his family weren't dealing with hard shit. And it would have been nice if Roy's issues with Ollie were completely dealt with. But this was close to perfect, regardless.  

Chapter Text

It was something like a week after Dick had visited Roy and had his little mini-breakdown. Life, as per usual, went on. And so did Dick’s attempts at looking into Roy’s Peter.  

Dick leaned his cheek into his palm. He knew enough about Peter that this shouldn't be difficult, but here he was, trying to figure out if any of the building records were even up to date. Or excessively falsified.  

God. It was fucking Blüdhaven, though, so it could be either. Or both. Or something else entirely.  

Apartment building records were only as good as their landlord, and if a landlord didn't care to keep good records, then that was it. No one ever penalized the landlords for sloppy records in this city, so there was as much a chance of that as there was of anything else.  

But, and this was a point in favour of Dick’s research on Peter, Roy lived in a slightly better part of town. Slightly better buildings included. And slightly better landlords, meaning paperwork that was slightly more likely to be kept up and correct. Slightly.  

It looked like Roy's building had gone through a few landlords, though, with the latest landlord having taken over only a few weeks before. The different landlords meant that there were going to be different levels of quality to the record keeping, different methods of record keeping, different quirks to record keeping. Mostly, it would be annoying to parse the different record keeping types.  

Except…  

Except that the latest landlord seemed to be meticulous, organized, and literate in business and record keeping, in general. That was convenient. That was good, even! Could make things easier for the investigation.  

Except.  

(And of course there was another “except.”)  

Except that Dick couldn't find the landlord, himself. Couldn't find proof that the guy even existed.  

Dick scrubbed both his hands over his face. He hasn't expected to run into this kind of roadblock on the landlord. Not in an investigation of  Peter.  “Of course there's a sketchy landlord at Roy’s sketchy building,” Dick muttered. And then set back to work, using the rest of his lunch break to try and track the landlord down.  

He even managed it.  

And it looked like the landlord lived in the top floor of the apartment building.  

By the time Dick found where the landlord lived, though, he realized he was off track. He was about to redirect his searching when he realized that the landlord also had one of the second-floor apartments. Which was where Peter lived, in Roy's building. It was a bit of a long shot, but…  

Dick had a hunch.  

He didn't much like the implication of that hunch.  

--  

The plan had been to break into the penthouse apartment.   

Before the new landlord has taken over, the top floor of the apartment building had just been filled with more of the same. Another floor full of normal apartments. When the new landlord has taken over, however, all the previous tenants left and the top floor had been renovated, quietly, to be a single penthouse apartment spanning the whole floor. How those renovations were managed was beyond Dick. He was more concerned that they  were  managed, in the first place.  

Anyway. The plan had been to break into the penthouse apartment. That plan didn't last very long, once Dick realized how secure the penthouse was. Secure to the point where Dick just wasn’t confident that he'd be able to get into the apartment, let alone without alerting the owner of his break-in.  

Plan B was to break into the other apartment, on the second floor.  

Luckily, for Dick, the apartment on the second floor, while more secure than Dick would have expected of a Blüdhaven apartment, was far less secure than the penthouse apartment. Getting in was a matter of waiting to make sure it was empty, then entering through the fire escape window.  

Any other window in the apartment building probably would have been easier to get into, and probably wouldn't have had to be disarmed, first. (Except Roy’s.) But it wasn't overly difficult, and Dick was fairly certain that he hadn't tripped any alarms.  

He had a pair of leather gloves on for the climb and disarming of the window, but before climbing into the apartment, he switched over to thick cotton gloves instead. The likelihood of a leather glove leaving a unique imprint that could be identified was high enough that the swap over was worthwhile, in terms of breaking and entering and keeping himself out of legal trouble, but the ultimate goal wasn’t necessarily to keep from leaving an identifiable mark, but to keep from leaving any marks, whatsoever, which meant that cotton was the best bet – it wouldn’t leave an imprint, unique or otherwise, unlike other materials. Dick didn’t want anyone, Roy’s mysterious Peter or otherwise, to know that anyone had been inside the apartment.  

So, gloves. Cotton gloves.  

And then he was in, standing in the middle of the apartment belonging to the landlord of the building. And, allegedly, Peter’s apartment. The name “Peter” wasn't actually on the lease for the apartment, though, which was a huge red flag for Dick. Not the biggest red flag, considering how it wasn’t unheard of that someone might lease an apartment for someone else to live in (especially in a place where records weren't exactly known for their accuracy), but still a pretty big red flag.  

The apartment was sparsely decorated. Spartan, really. Everything was clean, if a bit dusty and unused.  

The couch was some mid-range, neutrally coloured, pleather thing that looked like it had barely made it out of the plastic. The coffee and side tables were much the same, being mid-range or budget items from Home Depot or Lowes or something, and they were just as new (or barely used) as the couch. One side table had a lamp on it and a floor lamp sat in a corner. There was a console and television at the front of the front room, there was a table and chairs in the kitchen, and there were a few sets of shelves.  

It all felt… austere. Borderline not lived-in.  

The only things that looked used, really, were the sparse amount books spread across the shelves. Those, at least, looked like they'd been read, some of them seemed to be read quite a bit. There weren't a lot of books, though. Just a small handful. Few enough that it would only take one trip, and barely that, to transport them all, should their owner want to remove them.  

Dick looked in the meticulously cleaned refrigerator and found beer and bottled water. Nothing else. Most of the cabinets were completely empty, too. There seemed to be a single plate, a single bowl, a single cup, and a single set of silverware on a single shelf in a single cabinet next to the sink. Above those items were a relatively small amount of canned and nonperishable foods, a large container of drink mix, a few boxes of tea, an electric kettle, and a loaded handgun.  

(And, just in general, the loaded handgun shouldn't really bother Dick – it was that kind of town, really – but it did give him brief pause, paired with everything else.)  

The whole apartment felt like little more than a safehouse or a bolt-hole, crossed with a magazine cutout of what an apartment  should  look like.  

It didn’t feel lived-in.  

In short, the whole of the apartment was either filled with red flags or was a red flag. Dick documented each part of the apartment in photos on his phone. Though – frustratingly – the pictures couldn’t accurately express how odd and unpersonable the apartment was, nor did the pictures capture the dust or stuffiness inherent to an apartment not often touched or lived in.  

Then Dick went through the bathroom, the smaller bedroom, and the master bedroom.  

The bathroom had the barest of necessities visible. All-in-one type body wash in the shower and a huge container of mechanic’s hand soap, one of those multipacks of toothpaste (unopened), and a multipack of “3 out of 4 dentists” type toothbrushes (also unopened) lined up on the sink. A single towel, a single hand towel, and a single wash cloth were all folded and neatly and stacked on the edge of the tub. A four-pack of toilet paper, three still in the package (one on the roll), were sitting on the back of the toilet.  

Under the sink was another story. There were a number of cleaners, there, and a first aid kit of the sort only ever needed by a vigilante. Dick opened it and found meticulous labels on everything – purchase and expiration dates, mostly, but also quick notes on which things were for what. The handwriting labelling everything in the kit was small and neat and almost reminded Dick of ages-old English homework. Not his own, of course.  

Dick’s handwriting wasn’t awful, but it also wasn’t meticulous. Dick’s handwriting could be best described as a messy, cursive scrawl, maybe. It was charming, but not always legible.  

There was also a loaded gun under the sink, affixed on the underside of the counter and not visible from above. Barely visible from where Dick crouched by the sink.  

The smaller bedroom had an unmade bed, the mattress still in plastic, a pair of cheap side tables with side table lamps on them, a small garbage can, and a dresser. On the dresser was an unopened set of sheets and an unopened comforter, both of which sat next to a pair of pillows. Also not yet out of their plastic. There was nothing in the dresser, besides an unopened pack of shirts, an unopened pack of boxers, an unopened pack of socks, a pair of brand-new sweats with the sticker indicating the sizing (large, apparently) still on the one leg,  another  loaded gun, and a set of Bowie knives with a dedicated sharpening stone.  

The master bedroom had a bed that was actually made. The room didn’t feel very lived in, but there were signs that someone had used the bed at least once. Or just flopped on the one pillow for a bit. Either, or. Maybe both.  

On the foot of the bed was a halfheartedly folded maroon hoodie, the pullover kind with a kangaroo pocket in the front, unremarkable except that it was the only part of the bed that seemed to be personable and in frequent use.  

The dresser had the same items in it as the other bedroom’s dresser (including  another  loaded gun – Christ), but also an unzipped duffel bag filled with two sets of clothing that had seen previous use, including a Gotham U sweatshirt. The next drawer down had, shocker, another loaded gun. As well as ammunition for the guns littered throughout the apartment, a silencer, a modified pistol sight, a holster for said handguns littered throughout the apartment, and supplies for cleaning the weapons. The third drawer down, and the bottom drawer, had  a sniper rifle  in it. What. Dick blinked very slowly down at it.  

It was broken down, but all of it showed clear signs of use. Dick gnawed on the inside of his cheek and knelt beside the open drawer. It looked like, with only a brief glance at the different parts of the (definitely illegal) weapon, that the serial numbers had been successfully filed off. Of course. Not that serial numbers made much of a difference in terms of legality.  

Dick sat back on his heels.  

His entire bodily emotion was just. What the fuck. What the everloving fuck.  

Dick closed the dresser and stood.  

The side tables were just as new as the other side tables in the apartment, but instead of just cookie cutter lamps on them, it looked like there might be some personal items on or in them. The very first item Dick’s attention landed on was an orange prescription bottle with the label removed and, inside the bottle, around a month’s worth of round, scored tablets. White. Under that was a copy of Murder on the Orient Express, old and worn with a charity shop sticker still affixed to the upper right-hand corner.  

Beside the book was a stainless-steel water bottle, partially filled. Dick very briefly considered trying to get a DNA sample off the water bottle, then decided that that was a bit too... “Bruce” for him.  

Inside the side table were a number of items. USB-C charger, a burner phone that hadn’t been activated (or even taken out of its packaging), a box of tissues, a small stack of charity shop books, two boxes of cigarettes (one opened and the other not), a bit of cash, another loaded handgun, a set of earbuds, CBD gummies, and a bottle of water. None of it screamed “red flag,” really. Outside that being the fifth handgun and sixth gun in general that Dick had found without actually looking for any guns.  

Dick was about to leave, feeling uneasy about the man who lived in the apartment but not really like he’d found out anything earthshattering about him, when he saw the edge of something under the bed. Dick knelt and picked it up.  

And found himself looking at a thumb drive.  

That wasn’t weird, really, except that “TD” was written on it in silver Sharpie. Dick hesitated, then pocketed it. If he was right about the thumb drive (or rather, its owner), then it wasn’t like Peter was going to be able to report it stolen, anyway.  

Chapter Text

It seemed like, not too long after the elevator stalled with Roy and Peter inside, the building’s management had decided that the elevator needed to be replaced, which was the real reason that it had been put “out of order” again.  

It was weird, really. Roy didn’t know Blüdhaven apartments to be the kinds of places to shell out money for elevator replacements. Not unless the elevator the building already had was absolutely and completely beyond salvaging. It was just… an unnecessary expense.  

Not that Roy didn’t appreciate it. He still felt crazy bad for being part and parcel to putting Peter through that experience.  

It was just. Weird.  

Even weirder, though, was the company dealing with the elevator replacement, and the company responsible for that particular elevator model. Look, Roy knew that Wayne Enterprises didn’t exactly overcharge on their products, not where they could help it. But WE stuff was still pretty expensive. So were WE services. But there the specialized WE workers were, putting in a new elevator and making sure everything was in order in terms of safety and quality. The building owner had decided, apparently, that it was worth the extra cash to make sure that the elevator being put in was top-of-the-line, and that the people putting it in knew what they were doing.  

So yeah. Crazy abnormal for Blüdhaven, just in general. Moreso for the part of town that Roy lived in. He didn’t live in the worst part of town, or anything, but it was definitely not the best, either.  

Roy absently watched the workers while getting his mail, one-handed so that he could accommodate Lian in his other arm.  

Roy jumped when someone touched his elbow, then whipped around.  

“Jesus! Tim!” Roy huffed out a laugh. Lian laughed at the jerky movement and the swinging around. “Give a guy a warning, kid.”  

“Sorry,” Tim offered a wan smile and pushed his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose. He was dressed business-casual (as opposed to school uniform or full casual) and had a tablet cradled in one arm, a stylus resting between his fingers. He motioned to the workers. “I recognized the building address on the order.”  

“On the. Order?”  

“I’m interning,” Tim spun the stylus around and tapped the tablet screen. “Don’t tell Bruce, though. I made myself an intern. I don’t know if he would approve.”  

“Oh.” Roy raised his eyebrows. “Why would you want to intern? Aren’t you, like, thirteen?”  

“Fifteen, actually. Almost sixteen,” Tim smiled.  

“Oh,” Roy raised his eyebrows. He thought thirteen was accurate. Maybe even generous. Tim was a small kid. Sixteen. Wow. Clearly, Bruce needed to feed this kid more. “Sorry, kid.”  

“It’s a common mistake,” Tim shrugged, then produced a coffee he almost certainly hadn’t been holding, before. “I’m a senior, too. The amount of times new teachers and substitutes have tried to have me removed to the middle school campus, instead, is a little sad.” He motioned to the workers. “A bit wild, though, huh? I don’t think I’ve seen elevator orders from our subsidiaries in this part of town, before. I’ve gone through enough of the order history, I think, to gauge the likelihood of an order of this price-point in this town. And it’s next to none.”  

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Roy bounced Lian and smiled at her. “But convenient. The elevators in this building have always sucked."  

“Mm,” Tim took another drink of his coffee. “The new building owner’s been putting in a lot of time and money, into this building, renovating. I went over a few files and, like, the whole top floor was renovated.”  

“What? Seriously?”  

“Yeah.  That wasn’t WE, but I got curious, so I looked into it. It’s a penthouse, now. And the owner paid off the previous tenants. Or, I’m pretty sure he did. I have no idea where all the money to do all that came from? But I probably will, in a week or two. I mean. Gotta make sure, you know, my sorta-brother's friend isn’t living in some villain’s money laundering scheme, or something. Just in case.”  

“Are you just, like, a genius or something?”  

Tim shrugged slowly. “Um. I don’t think I’d put it like that? Personally?”  

“So, you are.”  

Tim shrugged again. “I’m a few grades ahead, I guess. Sure.”  

“And you hack into things to make yourself an intern.”  

“And I occasionally hack into things to make myself an intern,” Tim nodded. “Or to see if new building owners are sketchy or legit. You know. Um. Normal stuff?”  

“You have no idea what normal is, do you?”  

“No, not really. I’m not really socialized, just in general. But I’m great at gala small talk. I guess.”  

Roy winced, that was a little sad, actually. “So you just. Hack into people’s financials if you’re curious about them, huh?”  

“Yeah, and actually—this is. The-the building? The new owner only took over, like, a few months ago. Or something. Quiet-like. I think, usually, when a building changes hands, letters get sent to the tenants? Or people are told. I mean, it’s a courtesy, I think. But this guy kind of went out of his way to make it seem like nothing was different, while also putting in crazy security on the top floor, after renovating it to make it basically a penthouse on-par with stuff in, like, Financial District of Gotham?”  

“Someone’s nosy.”  

Roy and Tim both jumped. But it was just Peter. Roy settled back in, smiling and comfortable. Tim, on the other hand, looked significantly paler, actually. He looked up at Peter, then down at his coffee, eyebrows suddenly trying to knit something complicated.  

Peter shifted his bags of groceries. “Smart kid,” he observed.  

“Yeah, Tim’s brilliant. I mean. Dick’s whole family kind of is,” Roy’s smile got a little sad as he remembered how Jason had been, way back. “Most of them seem to get into tech, but Dick’s other brother—”  

Tim flinched. Weird.  

“Uh. Dick's other brother...” Roy frowned at Tim, then turned back to Peter, who looked guarded. What the heck. “He was more into literature. Always had a new book in hand, or was rereading some classic. I can’t say I understood half the stuff the kid read, especially when he took up the same books, but in different languages.”  

“Bookworm,” Peter said drily. “Those kinds are a dime a dozen.”  

“Not Jason,” Roy smiled softly, glancing down at Lian. “He was something else.”  

Tim cleared his throat. “I should—intern stuff.” He hid behind his coffee cup and scurried.  

“Then they got the new model,” Peter jerked his head toward Tim. “That’s the Waynes, isn’t it? Always ready with some kind of fucking replacement. Always ready to bury the dead and move on.”  

Tim scurried a little faster.  

“No,” Roy’s smile faded a little. “They’re really not like that. I get it, the tabloids make it seem that way. But, actually, Tim’s not even adopted. He’s their neighbour. But, like, his parents are literally never home. I don’t think they’ve ever given a shit about their trophy kid, beyond making sure he’s smart and presentable... and I guess Bruce just—”  

“Looks like a replacement, doesn’t it? Showed up after the  other one  blew the fuck up.”  

Roy leaned away a little, taken aback by Peter’s tone. “Don’t talk about Jason like that, man. Or Tim. It’s disrespectful.”  

A glint of sickly green crept around the edge of the teal that made up Peter’s irises. He scoffed at Roy and looked away.  

Roy shifted Lian around, into his other arm, and continued to bounce her. The new position meant that she could reach out and grab at Peter more easily. Even with Peter in a mood, Roy didn’t mind in the least when he lifted a hand to accommodate her. Lian gripped at his forefinger, babbling.  

“But. No, he’s always been around. Tim, I mean. On the periphery, at least.” Roy glanced over at Tim, who was over by the workmen, asking questions.  

Peter glanced over, too, then scoffed and dropped his gaze to Lian, instead.  

Roy cleared his throat. “When he was, like, really little, he went to Flying Grayson performances—Dick's family had been acrobats, you know? I think everyone kind of does. But. He—Tim was at their last one, the show where they, uh, fell. After that, quite a bit after it, I guess?, it sounds like Tim might have followed Jason around a bit, at school. Wanted to try and talk to him or make friends or something, but always chickened out. And it was—he. I don’t know what really drove him to,” he did, but he couldn’t exactly mention the big bad Bat and how reckless he’d been getting, in his grief, or how Tim had known (since before Jason was even Robin) who the Bats were, or that ‘Batman needed a Robin’ and Tim couldn’t get Dick to return to the role— Roy cleared his throat (again). “But the reason he made contact with the family, at all, was because he noticed how lost Bruce was. Especially with Bruce and Dick not talking – I'm sure the tabloids mentioned that, too, though. Right? Playboy and Golden Child Charity Case No Longer Talking or some bullshit.”  

“And the miraculous, genius replacement shows up in their lives, fixing everything.”  

“You really have a bug up your butt about that,” Roy snorted. “But no. Still no, rather. Tim doesn’t. He. I don’t know what to say, really. He doesn’t believe Dick when Dick calls him ‘little brother,’ even. He doesn’t think he has a right to any of the family. Dick’s told me that he feels like a placeholder, not a replacement.”  

The sickly green fluttered a bit brighter, then dulled until it almost wasn’t in Peter’s eyes at all. “The kid’s parents just leave him alone, then. And he, what? Hangs out with the neighbour? Seriously?” He narrowed his eyes at Roy.  

Roy scoffed, lip curling a bit. “From what I’ve heard, Tim’s parents were never around. Not since he was, like, in kindergarten.”  

“What?”  

Roy nodded.  

“Kindergarten? They left a five-year-old alone?”  

“Maybe younger, who even knows? The Drakes are just. I don’t know. I always thought my dad, Ollie I mean, was irresponsible, but I’ve quite literally grown to appreciate the little amount of responsibility he seems to have thanks to stories about Jack and Janet Drake. He, Tim, was left alone for  weeks,  with only the maid to check in on him since they couldn’t be bothered to even get, like, a nanny or something.”  

“Fuck,” Peter leaned his head back and groaned.  

“What?”  

“Nothing. I just—nothing.” Peter shifted his groceries. “I’ve got freezer shit. So, uh. Guess I’ll see you around.”  

Roy smiled. “Sorry it got all heavy, there. I know you didn’t sign up for someone else’s drama.”  

“Yeah, yeah.” Peter drew his hand away from Lian, painstakingly gentle. “See ya, Harper.”  

“See ya, Pete,” Roy tossed him a wink.  

--  

Compartmentalization. He just needed to compartmentalize.  

It was just.  

It was so much harder to compartmentalize when he—  

God, he wanted to hunt the Drakes down. Not even the Replacement (for once). The useless excuses for parents that apparently left a small child to fend for itself. And how fucking weird was it that he suddenly wanted to protect the Replacement, anyway? How fucking weird was it that he felt angry on the Replacement’s behalf?  

It was awful.  

How was he supposed to clip the latest model’s wings and leave him, broken and bleeding, for the Bat to find if he also wanted to protect him?  

God damn it.  

And god damn Roy Harper for making it that much harder to carry out his plans.  

Jeez.  

Maybe stringing up a few predators would make him feel better—  

Chapter Text

The thumb drive that Dick had found under the bed in Peter’s apartment turned out to be full of photos, primarily.  

Dick, curled up in his favourite worn-out sweater, was scrolling through the contents of said thumb drive on a trash laptop he kept around specifically for sketchy thumb drives or external drives or SD cards and all that other storage nonsense, the kinds of things that could potentially hold things that would harm or infect a computer system if not handled with care.  

There was a journal, a diary, rather, on the thumb drive, too, but it was painstakingly encrypted. And probably in code, too.  

Dick clicked on one of the photos at random and recognized, almost immediately, a picture of Gotham Academy. He clicked the next arrow. Another Gotham Academy shot. And another. And another. All of them looked nice, sure, but Dick didn’t  get it.  After a while, the photos turned into shots of floor corners, shoes, the corner of a chalk board, a... Gotham Academy student accidentally lighting their chemistry project on fire.  

Dick settled into a rhythm, going through the photos. And, eventually, found himself looking at a picture of a familiar face. Conner Kent, in fact. That, if nothing else, finally settled that the thumb drive was Tim’s, as Dick had suspected when he’d seen the “TD” written on it. Conner was playing a video game, intent and clearly losing.  

The next few shots showed Conner losing and dropping his head on the back of the couch, then throwing his hands in the air and shouting at the television, then flipping off the camera. Then there was a selfie of Tim, giving the camera a peace sign, with Conner in the background looking incredibly pissed off. Then there was a selfie of Tim and Conner, both doing “Blue Steel” and throwing peace signs. A few more ridiculous selfies followed.  

Dick lingered on one of them. Tim was grinning at the camera and Conner had turned his head to kiss Tim on the cheek. Tim’s eyes were wide in surprise.  

The next few shots, Tim’s face was significantly redder than it had been.  

Dick wondered if Tim and Conner were...? But that wasn’t the point of looking through the photos. That wasn’t the point of. Anything.  

(But still. Were they?)  

Dick copied the photo over onto the crap laptop, in a newly created folder labeled “future brother-in-law,” then went through a few more handfuls of photos.  

Bart was in some, Cassie in others. Most of the pictures that involved Tim’s friends, though, suspiciously lingered on Conner. A few, though, were taken of Conner and Tim, but by someone else. These photos weren’t framed nearly as well (and occasionally had a thumb in-frame), but were very obviously focused on what had to be a budding relationship that  Dick had known nothing about.  

Amazing. Dick made a mental note to ask Tim about it, later. Preferably not in a third-degree kind of way.  

And, jeez, why was the thumb drive in Peter’s apartment? Why did Peter have Tim’s photos? That was only going to bother Dick more, the further into the extensive collection of photos that he got.  

(One photo, taken by one of Tim’s other friends, showed Tim grinning at Conner when Conner wasn’t looking, Tim looking lost and found in equal measure. Happy. In love. Damn. Dick hoped that they were together, otherwise these photos were actually a little sad. Not pathetic-sad. Just... sad-sad.)  

(Dick put that photo in the “future brother-in-law" folder, too.)  

The best photo on the thumb drive, though, had to be one where Tim had fallen asleep, reading glasses sitting askew on his nose, and Tim himself tucked against Conner’s side. Conner had an arm around him and was smiling down at him and. Ugh. Dick’s heart got super happy and fuzzy-warm for a second. Until he re-remembered that Peter, for some reason, had had Tim’s thumb drive. And all these photos.  

Dick resolved to return the thumb drive to Tim. And try and figure out where, when, and how Peter had gotten ahold of it, in the first place.  

After he ran scans on the thumb drive to make sure it didn’t have anything suspicious or harmful on it. Besides Tim’s triple-encrypted diary. That was suspicious, but perfectly understandable, given Tim’s Bruce-levels of paranoia.  

--  

Of course, the day Dick had dedicated to investigating Peter had to get knocked off-course by a sudden uptick in Red Hood activity.  

A streak of violence flooded the edges of Blüdhaven and Gotham, both, and saw the extremely messy dispatching of many assumed or unconfirmed predators. No one that Dick would cry for, frankly, but enough deaths that it was an alarming turn of events, one that had all hands on deck.  

Dick really didn’t want to face off against Jason again, but this—  

No.  

It couldn’t be ignored.  

The best Dick could do, for his sanity, was try and bring himself some emotional support. Or a buffer. So, he called Roy.  

Chapter Text

Roy had never been to Peter’s apartment, before, but knew that he and Peter both had the same apartment number, barring the “5” in Roy’s apartment number and the “2” in Peter’s, so he trotted down the three flights of steps to the second floor, found the appropriate door, and knocked, breath held.

Tim obviously wouldn’t be available for babysitting when the Bats were all scrambled and after Jason (and what had set Jason off so spectacularly, anyway?), and all Roy’s usual babysitters were – shocker – simply not available on short-notice.

But he’d already told Dick that he would do it. That he’d go with Dick.

That last interaction Dick had had with Jason had shook Dick to the core, and Roy hated seeing Dick try and solo everything when he was so clearly in distress.

Besides, Roy trusted Peter.

And, wonder of wonders, Peter was actually there when Roy knocked. “Hey,” he gave a breathless grin when Peter opened the apartment door. “You really should give me your number. It would make everything a lot easier.”

“Sure, Harper,” Peter drawled.

“So, uh. Family emergency. Sort of.”

“What?” Peter stiffened from head to toe and looked suddenly alert and ready to strike.

Roy didn’t feel in the least bit threatened, or like Peter might try and attack him, though. Peter was safe. “My friend, Dick? You know? His family is. It’s a crisis. I guess. I said I’d go with Dick, help him out, you know? But I don’t have a sitter. I was wondering if you might. You know.” Roy offered Lian, who squealed and threw her arms in the air. “If you might be willing to do some last-minute babysitting for me?”

There was a long, almost awkward moment where Peter looked between Lian and Roy, almost confused. Or offended? Roy hoped he wasn’t offended.

“I’d pay, of course,” Roy babbled. “Normally I wouldn’t even ask. Not because I don’t trust you! I do! Trust you, I mean. I just normally wouldn’t try and throw something like that at you. Or anyone! It’s just that this really is a family emergency kind of deal and I’m low on options and I really don’t want to try a new sitter all of a sudden. I hate the whole vetting process and I always feel like I need to run, like, FBI background checks on people before I can leave them alone with my baby girl, unless I already know them—”

“Hey,” Peter gave him a mildly alarmed look. “You’re rambling. Geez,” he reached up and accepted Lian. “Don’t pay me,” he said, firmly. “I don’t need the money. Use it on the gremlin or something, instead.”

“But you’ll watch her?” Roy hardly dared to hope.

Peter sighed. “I had a thing—”

Roy cursed.

“No, it’s not important. I’ll just cancel. Or reschedule,” Peter glanced away. He pulled Lian in, though, and let her play with the zipper of his leather jacket.

“You’re a lifesaver!”

Peter snorted.

“No, really, I owe you so big. I don’t even—here,” he haphazardly offered Peter Lian’s diaper bag. “You don’t have to use my apartment, but you can! Or you can... not. I don’t know. You’re just. Amazing. Thank you so much.” Roy shoved the keys into Peter’s hand, grinning with all his appreciation and thanks.

“It’s fine,” Peter shook his head. He turned to smile at Lian. “Always a pleasure to see the Munchkin.”

Chapter Text

Jason looked down at Lian as the door closed behind him. “Well,” he sighed.

Lian screeched at him.

“Sure. We’ll head up to yours, Princess. Better’n my place, right? Give me a sec to change, though.” Jason set her down on the couch, where she squealed and wiggled, thrilled with the change of scenery. He stepped back, half an eye on her still, and unzipped his jacket.

For a moment, Lian paused, looking up at Jason. Then she squealed again, tipping herself sideways on the couch. Albeit slowly, almost like a controlled fall.

Jason snorted and shucked his jacket. “You like the body armor?” he asked. Because he’d been about to head out, as the Red Hood, when Roy knocked on the door. The only reason he’d been down on his second-floor apartment, rather than up on the top floor, was because he’d wanted a part off the rifle he kept, there.

“Bah! Bah!” Lian screeched at him. She tried to push herself back up into a seated position.

Jason stepped forward and gently helped her, then went about undoing the clasps on his body armor. “Wonder what Daddy would have thought,” he said conversationally, “if he knew who he’d just handed you to.”

Lian’s response squeal made him smile.

He divested himself of the body armor, then picked Lian up once more, now in a clean undershirt. “Now I just need a shirt and to lock my stuff away,” he told her. Even though he really didn’t need to tell her, of course. She didn’t care. He also wasn’t usually one to narrate what he was doing. Rules just changed when there was a small child in his care, apparently.

Like how he’d given a night of being the Red Hood in order to babysit for Roy. While Roy went out with Dick to look for the Red Hood.

Hell, maybe Jason needed to thank Roy.

He picked up his armor, jacket, and the helmet and gloves he’d tossed behind the door when Roy had first knocked, all shoved under one arm, then carried Lian to his room and set her gently on top of the comforter, in the middle of the bed. He dropped his Hood stuff at the foot of the bed for the moment. “I’m just gonna change into a shirt,” he said.

She toppled backward and immediately attacked her own foot.

Jason smiled and shook his head, then went to the dresser. His duffel, in the top drawer, offered him a gray shirt that said “attempted murder” and had a few crow silhouettes on it. He dragged his undershirt over his head and pulled the tee shirt on, instead, only feeling slightly awkward about the baby in the room.

He turned back to Lian.

She caught his eye and burbled, flapping her limbs at him. His heart melted.

And then he remembered his holsters, still strapped to either thigh. (How had Roy missed those?) “Gimme another sec, Kid,” he sat on the foot of the bed and undid the buckles to get those off, too, then stood and scooped up all his gear. He didn’t necessarily like using the long fire safe under his bed, but he’d bought if for emergencies like this (where he had to leave his gear behind somewhere other than his primary safehouses), so, he shoved his gear into the safe, helmet and all, and locked it up before kicking it back under the bed.

“All set, kiddo.” Last of all, and while he spoke, Jason tugged on his maroon pullover hoodie, the one that always sat at the foot of this bed. A depression sweatshirt of sorts. He scooped Lian up in one arm and ruffled his hair back into place. “Home?” he asked her.

She grabbed at a hoodie string, babbling amiably.

“I agree,” Jason said.

--

Not a sign of him.

Roy could see the way the frustration rolled off of Dick in waves.

They found a few more of Hood’s, of Jason’s, kills from the previous night. But nothing newer. It was almost like Jason had known they were looking for him and chose not to be out on that night. Except that Roy knew that that was entirely unlikely.

Or almost entirely unlikely. I mean, Jason did know how B worked. And he knew a lot about how Nightwing worked. It seemed likely enough that he could figure out, maybe, that a sudden increase in his crimes would send the Bats into an immediate frenzy. Maybe he really had decided to stay in that night, to avoid Bat-shaped fallout.

“I don’t know how he manages it,” Dick sat down on the edge of the roof. “If we want to find him, we can’t. If he wants to find us, though?” He shook his head.

“Yeah, well, you guys have patrol routes. All he really has to do is wait somewhere until you cross his path. He doesn’t seem to do the whole patrol route thing, unless he has a different way of doing it. You guys can’t just do the same thing back to him, unless you actually set up something that he’d feel the need to interrupt, like drug deals near a school or something.”

“And that’s a non-starter,” Dick muttered. Then he glanced sharply at Roy for a long moment.

“Don’t do that,” Roy sighed. “Just talking about drugs, in the abstract!, isn’t going to make me relapse.”

“Sorry,” Dick glanced away.

“No, I appreciate your concern.” Roy sat himself next to Dick and looked over the edge of the building. He let a few beats pass, then sighed. “I know heroes aren’t supposed to say this, but is there really that much of a problem with this? I mean—” he glanced at Dick out the corner of his eye. Dick was already looking back at him. “I mean. So he kills a few guys that go after kids. Abusers, rapists. Who cares? Gotham’s getting a favour, especially if the system isn’t holding onto these guys like it should.”

Dick sighed heavily.

Roy shrugged. “That’s my opinion. I know B doesn’t think like that, but... I have a kid, Dick. Things look a little different like that. I feel like, on some level, B must feel the same way, right? Or understand, at least. He has kids, too, after all.”

“I’m not disagreeing,” Dick said, albeit begrudgingly. “I just wish the system weren’t so broken that it let go of these guys in the first place. And I still don’t think their crimes justify their murder, either. But I get it. I understand why the people around here,” Dick motioned vaguely to the bad part of town they were in, “I understand why they revere the Red Hood, instead of fearing him. I mean, there’s both. Reverence and fear. But they’ve basically adopted Jay as their patron saint.”

Roy whistled.

Dick chuckled. “Patron saint of crime-riddled back alleys and the street kids that live there,” he said. “If he knows that, I bet it makes him smile.”

Roy laughed. “Oh, probably. I mean, he basically was that already, as Robin, though.”

Dick glanced at him, again.

“Patron saint of the street kids, anyway. He told me, once, though not in as many words or in such a self-aggrandizing manner. Like. Kids left snacks out for him, I guess?”

Dick smiled softly. “I think they do that for all the Robins,” he said.

“Santa in pixie boots and tiny shorts,” Roy teased.

Dick gave a surprised laugh and punched Roy. “I told you to stop bringing that up!”

“It was so bad!” Roy snickered.

“Shut up!” Dick continued to laugh.

It was nice to hear him laughing, again.