Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim's tired in that way only a day full of nothing can make a person: four in person meetings, two conference calls, a video conference that didn't work, a networking lunch and a mandatory video seminar on telework tools. He has achieved precisely nothing and somehow racked up three hours of overtime despite that.

So when he opens his apartment door he's not mentally prepared for any amount of something to confront him, let alone the very significant something that Damian, sitting in the dark, represents.

Luckily he's too tired to really react, even his heart barely mustering a couple of skipped beats. Damian is at the breakfast bar, dressed in his school uniform, eyes glittering in the darkness. He's too old now for the full horror movie haunted child affect, but it's pretty creepy nonetheless.

Tim flicks on the overhead lights. Damian doesn't even blink.

"Why are you here?" Tim asks, though what he really wants to know is how long he's been there. The uniform suggests he's come straight from school. Has he been sitting in the dark for hours? Why didn't Tim's alarms go off?

"I have a question."

"You could have messaged me."

"I need to ask in person."

Damian is sitting preternaturally still, tapping into his assassin training. He's nervous.

Tim swallows a yawn. He leaves his coat and bag by the door, and walks across the open-plan apartment to the kitchenette. He passes Damian and reaches for the coffee pot.

Damian swivels on his stool.

"Please, Drake."

"Please?"

Close up, Tim can see the wideness of Damian's eyes, the sheen of sweat on his brow.

"I need you to answer me seriously," Damian says. "I'm... I'm not joking."

"I didn't think you were. What do you need to ask?"

He really wants coffee. Or a nap. Both. He wants Damian to get this over with, whatever it is. Something awkward, maybe embarrassing, but not someone he'd go to Dick about. Needs to clear his internet browsing history before Bruce sees it? A sext that needs wiping from someone else's phone? It's hard to imagine Damian having that sort of relationship with someone, but he's nearly eighteen now. Just because he's never introduced a girl or boyfriend to the family doesn't mean he's ace.

Still, Bruce has drilled the importance of discretion into all of them often enough that Tim thinks it's unlikely there are unedited pics of Damian out there. Vale would have published them already if there were. Bad grades, then? Some kind of bullying that Dick wouldn't relate to?

If Damian would just let him have a coffee first, Tim could probably figure it out without Damian having to say anything, which surely is the least cringe worthy approach for both of them.

"Will you have sex with me?"

Tim's brain stops.

"Now? In the kitchen?"

Damian responds with an arched brow that perfectly conveys the idea Tim is the one asking weird questions in this conversation.

Tim blinks repeatedly as his brain reboots.

He can see why this has to be an in person question, and why Damian had stressed it wasn't a joke. It's too much - too serious, too blunt, too Damian - for Tim to suspect anything other than complete sincerity.

He's been waiting in his apartment for hours to proposition Tim. The least Tim can do is respond to his request with the same gravity Damian delivered it with.

"Are you under the influence of any substance or toxin? Ivy? Scarecrow?"

Damian shakes his head stiffly.

"Alcohol?"

"No."

"Are you or anyone else going to come to harm depending on my answer?"

"No."

Tim considers, trying to find another angle to come at this from.

Damian scowls at his hesitation. "Cease stalling, Drake. Is there any question you can ask that would change your answer?"

Tim catches his bottom lip between his teeth.

"No. That is, no it wouldn't, and no, I won't have sex with you."

Damian pushes himself off the stool and grabs his school bag.

"Thank you. Good night."

"Are you going to tell me what this is really about?" Tim reaches a hand out, but stops short of grabbing Damian's blazer.

Damian doesn't pause. Doesn't even react as he strides across Tim's apartment. Tim's left the front door open, and he pulls it closed behind him.

Well, fuck.

Tim needs something stronger than coffee.

Chapter Text

He skips patrol. He can't handle seeing Robin right now.

There was a time when being propositioned by Robin was his most secret fantasy, but that was a very different Robin, a very long time ago.

He just can't figure out Damian's motivation. He settles in front of the computer in the Nest with a rum and coke - mostly coke, he has work tomorrow - and tries to get on with some case work, but he keeps coming back to Damian's completely impassive face as he put his request to Tim.

It wasn't a joke. It wasn't extortion. Was it a bet? A dare?

Was it only Tim he asked? Or was Tim a long way down the list? The latter seems more likely, but Tim can't figure out how to ask Dick or Jason if Damian approached them without explaining why, and if he's wrong, if Damian didn't ask anyone else, then he doesn't want to embarrass the kid. Damian hasn't told him to keep it a secret, but it feels private.

He starts working back through the last two weeks of Damian's life: patrol footage, social media, trackers, school schedule, gossip column reports. He's done nothing out of the ordinary for him; the only non-routine blip was taking Titus to the vet, and the dog is fine, just elderly. Tim supposes this could be some weird reaction to being reminded of the imminent mortality of the first being Damian really loved, but it's a stretch.

He gives up around 4am, falling asleep in the Nest's medbay because he's too tired to drag himself upstairs to bed. He's wasted the whole night on Damian, and he's pissed off enough about it to vow that this is the last of his mental energy he's going to waste on him. Damian can be weird on his own time without impinging on Tim's.

So when he wakes in the morning, late for work, sweaty and sticky and aching, from a dream where he said yes and Damian fucked him over the breakfast bar, he's not best pleased.

#

Would Damian have gone through with it? Immediately? Or would they have arranged a date? Is Damian a virgin? Is he aware that Tim is?

By the end of the week Tim has conceived of a dozen different scenarios about how it might have gone, from rough kitchen sex to tender, scented candle love making. He’s verging on the point of obsession, and even when he make the effort not to think about sex, he still can’t stop thinking about Damian. Is he okay? Is he safe- is he being safe? Who else has he asked? Has anyone said yes? Did they fuck over a table, or in a bed, or against a wall, or-

It’s much harder than Tim expected to keep his mind out of the gutter. It doesn’t help that Damian’s, well… He’s definitely an adult now. Physically, at least.

But he’s still Damian. With all his irritating Damian-ness. Like. Um.

Normally it’s easy to distract himself from his baser instincts. You just focus on the person’s bad habits. Kon picks his nose. Dick drinks milk from the carton and puts it back in the fridge empty. Steph doesn’t always flush, not if it’s just pee (and they had some weird fights about that, about low flow toilets and water rates and how Bruce wastes more gallons maintaining the manor’s lawns than she could flush in a lifetime, but he never could bring himself to just tell her out loud that it grossed him out).

Damian, unfortunately, has impeccable manners, even when he’s being deliberately rude. Tim’s never even heard him belch. He just can’t picture Damian with a finger up his nose, or double dipping communal food, or being willing to approach a toilet that’s anything less than sparkling clean. There’s nothing gross for Tim to latch on to, just snide remarks and murder attempts, and maybe familiarity breeds contempt, or maybe it just breeds, because it really says something about Tim’s life these days that attempted murder isn’t the slightest bit offputting.

Tim tells himself if he can figure out Damian's intentions he'll be about to put this behind him again. Damian has given no indication he's spared a second thought for Tim since that night; they haven't even spoken.

He must have had a motivation for doing it, though. The timing feels significant. Tim just needs more context. He has to know if he was the only one. He has to know if Damian needs his help. Why he needed Tim’s help. How Tim can help.

Honestly, he just has to know.

#

He manages to catch Dick at the end of patrol, bringing a couple of chocolate milkshakes with him as a bribe.

Dick beams at him, flopping down on the edge of a rooftop and gazing up at Tim like he’s brought Dick a significantly more impressive gift than a sweaty plastic cup of badly mixed ice cream and cocoa powder.

Tim swallows, guilt swirling in his gut. How long has it been since he took the initiative to hang out with Dick? The old animosity has long since bled away, but Tim hasn’t changed the habits he fell into while he was mad at Dick. He’s put the responsibility of maintaining the relationship squarely on Dick’s plate.

“You wanna watch the new Star Trek on Sunday?” Tim asks, sitting down beside Dick and handing him the milkshake. Dick has taken off his domino, and Tim pushes his cowl back, so they’re talking as Tim and Dick, not Red Robin and Nightwing.

“Definitely!” Dick pauses. “Oh, but-”

“Damian?” Tim asks. Dick and Damian have what amounts to a standing date night on Sundays.

“Yeah.”

“How about Monday, after work, instead? Before patrol.”

Dick nods, but he doesn’t look thrilled by Tim’s rescheduling.

“It’s not because of Damian,” Tim lies easily. “I just want to spend time just with you. Like we used to.”

“Mm.” Dick gives Tim enough side eye to convey that he doesn’t entirely believe his justification, not coming out of the blue now, years and years since it was just the two of them under Bruce’s wing.

“Earlier, on the comms… Did he seem out of sorts to you?”

Tim watches Dick’s reaction closely. If Damian has propositioned Dick as well, there’s no way he won’t react to Tim’s careful question. He’s looking for the micro-tells, widening pupils, tightening skin, prickle of sweat on the top lip.

“How so?” Dick frowns, but it’s pure concern. This is news to Dick.

“I don’t know. He’s just been a lot quieter than usual this past week. Not as quiet as he was when his voice was breaking and he wouldn’t say anything out loud, but when he is speaking he’s sticking really tight to mission relevant stuff. He didn’t even comment when Jason was talking about that chilli dog place, and they don’t have any vegetarian options.” Tim takes a long slurp of his milkshake. He tries to stick to things Dick might have noticed himself, so if Dick asks Damian what’s going on Damian won’t think Tim has broken his unasked-for confidence. “I thought it might be something Bruce has said to him.”

“I don’t think so. Bruce has been away with the Justice League a lot recently. He’s pretty comfortable leaving Damian holding the fort these days. Honestly, it’s only a matter of time before he spreads his wings and leaves Robin behind.”

“Maybe it’s that.” Tim shrugs. “Or maybe it’s not cape related at all. He’s due to get his SATS results soon, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. God, somehow that hits harder than the idea of him graduating from Robin. High school, Tim. He’s going to graduate high school this year.”

“First of us since you.”

“Yeah. I can’t believe you haven’t gone back. You’re so smart, Tim. You should be in college.”

“When would I find the time? I can’t add college on top of Wayne Enterprises and patrolling.”

“So drop one.”

“One? Either?”

“You weren’t going to be part of this life forever, you told me once. Just as long as Bruce needed you.”

“Ouch.” He knows Dick didn’t mean it like that, but the implication Bruce doesn’t need him around any more still strikes more sharply than Tim likes. Tim holds up a hand to forestall Dick’s pained apology. “Maybe he doesn’t need Red Robin, but I do, and he does need me at Wayne Enterprises. Ever since Batman Inc the board have been getting twitchy about the impact on our profits, and now they’re questioning why there hasn’t been a visible impact on our profits. I’ve got to hide a decade of Bruce embezzling from his own company to fund Batman before someone calls in the auditors and notices the correlation between redacted R&D projects and Batmobile upgrades. Twenty year old Bruce was not quite as savvy as he is now.”

“Shit. Really?”

Tim knows that no one in the family really appreciates the work he does at Wayne Enterprises. They don’t understand it, and don’t understand why he stays there, which is why it’s not the first time Dick has suggested Tim quit and get his GED.

“I’m keeping busy,” Tim says dryly.

“Maybe, over the summer, Damian could help you?”

“I’m not mad at him,” Tim says.

Dick snorts. “I didn’t mean it as a punishment. You know he wants to get more involved at WE.”

“And Bruce wants him to go to college, and I’m not getting in the middle of that.”

“Damian graduating high school is bringing up some stuff for you, isn’t it?”

Tim grimaces. He’s let himself get caught up on the image of Damian in blazer and tie and he’s been assuming his proposition was prompted by something that had happened at school. Some kind of locker room talk, perhaps.

Maybe Dick is right, and he’s latched on to that because Damian is now officially better educated that Tim ever was.

“Maybe,” he admits. “You know one of the most successful Neon Knights initiatives is the Stay in School program? Tam does all of the promo for it, because I look like a raging hypocrite. I don’t know. Maybe I should do my GED. It’s just… I don't want Damian to drop out.”

“I don’t either.” Dick grins. “I have to admit, when he’s complained about how useless school is, I’ve not been above using you as motivation.”

“Gee, thanks.” At this point Dick’s needling may still trigger something competitive in Damian, but he’s less likely to use it to put Tim down. Well, not unless they’re already fighting about something. “Does he still confide in you, then?”

“I wouldn’t call it confiding. He’s eighteen. It’s not exactly an age where you want to share anything if you can help it.”

“No, and Damian’s more private than most. I’m glad he’s got you, and not just Bruce.”

“I know how it sounds, but honestly, me too.” Dick slurps the last of his milkshake. “You’ve got me too.”

“I know.” Tim smiles at his brother.

But he’s not going to tell Dick about Damian. He’s pretty certain he wouldn’t have Dick then.

Chapter Text

Damian’s school is going on a trip to Metropolis. For three nights.

Three nights of high school seniors cooped up in the same hotel.

If Damian wants to have sex, it’s a perfect opportunity. Scores of horny teenagers with no parental oversight and teachers hiding out in the hotel bar. Damian is attractive enough; Tim doubts he’ll have to put much effort in to getting laid, if sex is all he’s after.

If. Tim’s still not sure about that.

He’d really hate for Damian to do something he’d regret.

It’s like a cream cake placed in front of a toddler. Tim knows he shouldn't touch it, but he keeps finding his hand sneaking out. It’s like it’s got a mind of his own. He has to concentrate on resisting the temptation, and as soon as he’s distracted he finds himself with a mouth full of cream. Or, in this case, a hotel room booked under the name of Alvin Draper.

He just wants to make sure Damian is okay. He’s not going to overstep. Damian won’t even know he’s there. He’ll find a case to work in the city so even if their paths do cross he’s got a reasonable excuse for being there.

It’s a flimsy excuse in his own mind. If he’s worried about Damian he needs to be on hand at the moment of temptation, when Damian might find himself too proud to turn down an offer he doesn’t actually want to take. But it’s not like he can go undercover as a high school student.

Well.

He probably could - every time someone checks his ID they seem to think it’s a clever fake (which, okay, several of them are, but still) - but he couldn’t fool Damian. And there’s no scenario in which Damian knows he’s there that’s going to end well for him. So really, the sensible thing would be to not be there. He should cancel the hotel room and leave well enough alone.

So of course he’s checking into the hotel a week later as Damian’s class emerge from the elevators and start milling around the lobby. It’s terrible timing, but it does give him a chance to eavesdrop while the poor receptionist tries to run his third card to check if it’s good to charge incidentals to.

It won’t be. Tim’s got another two cards to do before they get to the good one. Alvin is not a man of means, but he likes to spend like he is.

Tim’s ears are pricked for Damian’s voice, but his mouth is enthusiastically telling the receptionist about his street art photography and how it would look great in the lobby coffee shop.

“Really give it an edge,” Alvin says, “You know? Challenge those one percenters to really think about their lives. You know, babe? Like, you know.”

He and Damian are the only one percenters in the entire hotel, Tim’s pretty certain. He winks at the receptionist, who is in her late forties and very over this whole conversation.

So over it she somehow makes one of Alvin’s maxed out cards work, taking Tim by surprise.

Tim drags his battered case over to the coffee shop, the broken wheel leaving a black skidmark right across the lobby floor. His plan is to duck into a booth so he can keep eavesdropping on Damian’s peers until the lobby clears.

It’s a good plan, marred only by the fact Damian is sat in the booth in question.

It’s too late to avoid meeting his eyes. Damian recognises him immediately, despite the fact Tim has largely avoided using Alvin around him. The mockery wouldn’t be worth it.

Damian’s sitting on the very edge of the booth. Most of it is taken up by a group of boys who are largely ignoring him. If Tim had to guess Damian had claimed the booth first, and his classmates had co-opted it for lack of other seating. He’s the only one still wearing his blazer and tie, and he’s got both hands wrapped around some kind of black tea.

For a moment Tim thinks they might get away with it, but a blond boy notices Damian staring before Tim can break eye contact.

“Put it back in your pants, Wayne.”

Damian scowls. “I’ll have you know, Blake, that this is my boyfriend.”

And now the rest of the table is staring at Tim, who’s trying very hard not to gape at Damian.

“Vinnie,” Tim says, lifting his free hand.

“Seriously, Wayne? You snuck your boyfriend along?” The blond, Blake, looks halfway impressed.

One of the other guys, east Asian with a pierced eyebrow, scoffs. “Like Wayne has a boyfriend. Like, what, does he go to another school? This is just some rando.”

Damian reaches out and Tim lets him pull Alvin into his lap.

“Gotham Community College,” Tim says, stung on Damian’s behalf. “Daddy Wayne doesn’t approve,” he mock whispers, holding his hand in front of his mouth.

The reaction to the idea of Damian Wayne having a college boyfriend ripples around the table.

Tim helps himself to a slurp of Damian’s tea in lieu of kissing him, which would be more convincing but also far more awkward to discuss as soon as they’re alone. “I’m on the fourth floor, babe. Economy double.” It’s a challenge to say ‘economy double’ sexily, but Tim thinks he pulls it off.

Damian stands up, arm around Tim’s waist. Tim finds himself suspended an inch off the floor for a moment, which is a disconcerting reminder of Damian’s maturing body.

“Cover for me at dinner,” Damian tells his peers, and drags Tim out of the coffee shop with him.

Damian releases him in the elevator. Tim double checks his room number, and punches the button for the fifth floor. At least if the others try and follow Damian they'll get off at the wrong floor.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Damian’s anger has an edge of fear in it. He’s come out swinging because he knows he handed Tim the moral high ground as soon as he claimed they were dating.

Tim hates defensive Damian. “Working a case.”

“Here?” Damian gestures at the confines of the elevator.

“Yes.”

“Why isn’t it my case?”

“Because it’s mine.” It’s too tenuous to even log on the bat-computer, a drug supply line via a dealer’s cousin and the license plate of one of Scarecrow’s lackey’s. If there genuinely is a connection Tim is going to look like a fucking savant for tying it together.

“You knew I was coming here.”

Tim considers lying, but he’s trapped in an elevator with someone who has repeatedly tried to kill him in the past and who is probably carrying more concealed weapons than Tim is.

“Yes. I considered contacting you.”

“Tt. Liar.” Damian takes a step into Tim’s personal space. Tim refuses to back up and give him the satisfaction.

“I considered it,” Tim says firmly. “I decided not to. You’re not going to get to go on many more trips like this-”

“I didn’t want to come on this one.”

That takes Tim by surprise, and he falls silent just as the elevator doors ping open.

The family that summoned it takes one look at the two men, standing inches apart, and the father says “we’ll get the next one, kids.” As the doors slide closed again Tim hears him mutter “perverts” under his breath.

Tim rolls his eyes. Damian steps back, shoulders slumping.

“Damian?”

The doors open again, and they’re on the fifth floor. Tim takes the lead to the room he’s booked.

It’s mostly bed, just enough room to squeeze around two sides of it. It’s pressed against the wall under a narrow horizontal window with smears around the lock. There’s a rail instead of a closet, with a safe placed on the floor underneath it that’s small enough to fit inside a suitcase. The ensuite is a wetroom, saving the space a shower cubicle would have taken up by letting it spray water over half the toilet.

“Hm,” Damian says. "It’s nicer than mine."

“Seriously?”

“Same room, but there’s two singles squeezed into it. I’m rooming with Blake.”

“Wow. The amount Bruce is paying that school of yours, you’d think you’d at least get queens.”

Damian shrugs. He stands awkwardly in the small amount of floorspace the room affords.

“Can I sleep here?” he asks abruptly.

It takes Tim a beat to convince himself he didn't just hear 'Can I sleep with you?', but it's obviously from Damian's expression that sex is a long way from his mind. 

“You mean, as part of my cover?” Tim asks, cocking his head to one side.

“Blake has made it clear he wishes me to vacate our room for extended periods of time so he can fondle his girlfriend. I believe he expects me to simply roam the hotel corridors at night.”

“Oh. Um, sure, then. If you won’t get in trouble.”

“The faculty don’t care.”

Tim looks Damian over. “You really don’t want to be here, do you?”

“I told you.”

Tim sits down on the bed and pats the cover next to him. Damian considers the invitation for a moment before sitting as far from Tim as the bed allows, half tangled in the curtains.

“You need to know about Alvin,” Tim says.

“Alvin?”

“Vinnie. Alvin Draper. I’ve been using the alias for nearly a decade now, so he’s pretty well established. High school drop out from Burnside, works occasional shifts at a Sundollar in the Diamond District. You can see the facial piercings, but there’s also the right nipple, a good quality shoulder tattoo of the Gotham Knights logo and two shitty ones on his left arm.” Tim rolls up his sleeve to show Damian. "Has an urban photography instagram with a few thousand followers. A couple of juvenile counts for vandalism and shoplifting, an outstanding ticket for speeding. Alvin is… an idiot. A useful idiot. Thinks he’s a gangster, but really he’s just the kind of naive kid organised criminals love to take advantage of.”

Damian snorts. “I see.”

“Bruce definitely wouldn’t approve.”

“I’m sure. You said you were at Gotham Community College.”

“I thought a college boyfriend would impress your peers more.”

“They’re not worth the effort." Damian rolls his eyes. "But yes, it did.”

“I’ll add some college classes tonight. GED, probably.” Tim shakes his head. “Alvin is completely the type to have a high school boyfriend. Someone who doesn’t know better and won’t call him on his bullshit. You’ve got yourself a pretty shitty boyfriend.”

"As long as they think I'm sexually active." Damian sighs and leans his head against the dirty window.

“Are you?”

Damian blinks. “No. Obviously.” His mouth works like his teeth are stuck in a particularly chewy toffee. "I know you're taking this information and using it to dissect my motivations for propositioning you." He's clearly trying for accusatory, but his tone comes out weary.

"We should talk about that," Tim says, like he hasn't stalked Damian all the way to Metropolis instead of initiating the conversation.

“Is there anything I can do to stop you asking about it?”

Damian’s plaintive tone surprised Tim into replying honestly, “No. But, I mean, you can just not answer.”

Damian considers this, and his shoulders relax a fraction of an inch.

"Look, I don't know what's going on with you, though I can make some inferences, especially now. High school sucks, puberty sucks, feeling like everyone around you is getting laid and you're not sucks. Half of them are probably lying about it anyway."

Damian frowns. "Why would you suspect that?"

"Experience. I'm not saying no one is having sex, but high school makes everything a competition, so people lie about how far they've gone, how often there doing it, how many people, how much like porn it is. Nobody knows enough to call anyone out, and you get this echo chamber of sexual bragging that warps people's norms. I mean, even you're lying about having sex."

"I didn't-"

"Literally ten minutes ago, Damian. You deliberately let them all think we're having sex right now."

Damian grimaces. "But that's different. You're under cover. I'm supporting your alias."

Tim doesn't dignify that with a reply.

"Do you want me to apologise for propositioning you?" Damian asks, just as the silence gets uncomfortable. Not that the question really alleviates that.

"Are you sorry?"

"No."

"Then no. For what it's worth, it was definitely one of the better propositionings- proposings- propositions…" Tim gives up before he loses the thread of what he wants to say. "What I mean is you made it easy for me to say no. I felt like you respected me."

It's not a feeling he's used to associating with Damian, and already his younger brother's lip is curling with contempt.

"But you want me to know how common an occurrence it is for you."

Tim splutters. "What? No. I mean, no more than any other teen hero, I'm sure. It must happen to you too."

"You're holding my actions up for comparison with supervillains'? Ivy's pollen? The Seven Sins? We have all been the unwilling recipients of inappropriate advances."

It's not… okay. It's not okay, the way adults of all genders have hit on Robins over the years. Not just them - Kon doesn't joke about Bombshell any more, not the way he used to, 50% bravado and 50% the only way he knew to process a situation he was too young to navigate - but Tim can count until he runs out of fingers how often he's been on the receiving end of inappropriate flirtations, unwanted kisses, sexual jokes, and scenarios that would have come very close to undisguised rape had someone else not stepped in. He shouldn't be surprised Damian has too, but it makes his heart ache. Everyone knows Robin is a kid. Why do they keep doing this?

It's no wonder he doesn't like being hit on, and equally unsurprising that Damian made his approach without flirtation. He hates that Damian understands, but he appreciates it too.

"Rose Wilson once chained herself naked to my bed," Tim says, and shrugs. "I was just so tired, I nearly gave in because it seemed like a quicker route to getting some sleep than kicking her out. Maybe your proposition wasn't the most conventional, but I didn't have to weigh my answer against anything else. I appreciated that."

"I… that was intentional. I assumed your 'no', and I didn't want to complicate matters with candies and flowers."

Why ask, Tim wonders, if he expected a 'no'. Why did Damian want to hear 'no'?

"Was… was it a bet?"

"No!" Damian jerks away from the window. His vehemence startles both of them. "No," he repeats more softly, "it was sincere, and entirely my own idea. You haven't told anyone?"

"No. You didn't ask anyone else?"

Damian's lips thin, and he doesn't reply. Tim takes from that that he hasn't, but maybe it's still on the table. Ugh. It's exhausting trying to interpret Damian sometimes.

"I'll stop prying," Tim promises, with some genuine intention of keeping it but enough self knowledge to know he’ll probably fail. "Let's focus on the here and now. I've already cloned the room key, so feel free to come and go as suits you. Let me know anything you've told your friends so I can-"

"They're not my friends."

"-your classmates, so I can corroborate. How did you and Alvin meet?"

"At the coffee shop you mentioned. When did he last work there?"

Tim runs back through his mental schedule. He last managed to squeeze in a shift as Alvin in February, covering for Alison when she had mono. He'd had to fake a business trip at WE, but he'd enjoyed helping out at the Sundollar. Alvin's colleagues thought he was an idiot, but they could rely on him in a pinch, and he'd fended off Kareena's stalker, which had bought him some good will.

Tim summarises for Damian. "Perhaps you helped with the asshole, and I offered you a free coffee, and we got talking?"

Damian gives Alvin's metal-heavy face a skeptical look. "What would we talk about?"

Tim shrugs. "Titus? Alvin's landlord won't let him have pets, but he'd love a large dog like Titus."

"Do you love Titus?"

"Me? Tim me? Of course. Why?"

Damian shrugs. "You mostly ignore him when you're home. You've never snuck him table scraps or taken him for a walk. I don't think I've even seen you pet him."

Tim considers the accusations. He has petted Titus, hasn't he? Big dog like that, head at perfect petting height. Leans his head on the sofa when you’re sat there, but doesn’t headbutt you for attention like Alfred or Batcow. Tim tries to find a sensory memory of what TItus’s fur feels like beneath his fingers, and comes up oddly short.

"I...well… he's your dog. He's usually at your side." It goes unsaid that Tim still doesn't tend to put himself within arm's reach of Damian voluntarily.

"He thinks you don't like him."

Oh, Tim isn't touching that can of projected worms with a barge pole.

"Well, I'll work on that. Alvin made a big fuss of him."

"Ye-es. Alvin was sweet to Titus, and I admired how he'd stood up for his colleague. So I… gave him my number? Asked for his?"

"I think he probably slipped you his, without asking. And you called him because?"

"I sent him pictures of new dogs at the shelter. The one in Robbinsville, where I volunteer. We started messaging."

"Bruce saw you looking at your messages and wanted to know who you were talking to. He tried to warn you away from Alvin. I mean, he probably asked you some leading questions to make you conclude for yourself that Alvin is only interested in a high schooler because guys his age have got him figured out, but from your perspective he was being unnecessarily harsh about a guy he'd never even met."

"You'd have me be an unreliable narrator?"

"Of course you are. Everyone is. You say Bruce cruelly forbade you from innocently messaging Alvin, they'll assume he expressed mild concern and pat themselves on the back for seeing through your lies."

"So I arrange to meet Alvin out of spite."

Tim nods. "A college party. Does he get you drunk?"

"No. No, he keeps me away from the spiked punch. I think he has integrity for meeting the bare minimum standards for being a decent human, because my perspective is skewed like that.” Damian rolls his eyes. “Does he drive me home?"

"No car. No, but maybe he walks you to yours, and you make out leaning against it."

Damian shifts, a blush rising in his cheeks.

"The messages get more… we need to fabricate messages."

"Give me your phone."

Tim downloads a virus he wrote a while back that allows him to change the internal clock on various apps that don't use the phone's date and time.

"This could take a while. I'm going to order room service. Have you got pictures from the shelter?"

Damian nods.

Tim gets into Alvin's head space, and starts texting.

Chapter Text

It takes them the better part of two hours to fabricate a conversation going on for months, snacking on a surprisingly good ‘Indian style vegetarian platter’. The curried cauliflower bites prompt a brief tussle over who gets to eat the last one.

• Hi. This is Damian, from the SunDollar. I saw this dog at the shelter I volunteer at, and thought you would like him.

• What an absolute unit. Big as Titus? What breed?

• Bigger. Bernese Mountain Dog cross. Not sure what with, something very energetic. The previous owner said his mother got pregnant by accident. They sold most of the puppies but kept Shep, but he’s too energetic to home with their other dogs now he’s an adult. I suspect they might be a puppy farm; we’re going to keep a close eye for other animals with links to the breeder.

• Puppy farms suck. Adopt don’t shop.

• Exactly.

• Wish I had space for a beast like that :*(

Tim manufactures a gap before the next exchange, this one started by Alvin.

• Yo. Saw this and thought of you.

• Corgi crosses. Thank you. 

• They’re like miniature versions of big dogs!

• They’re very cute.

• What do you think would happen if you crossed a corgi with Shep?

• I’m not sure it’s possible. Physically. The corgi would need a step ladder.

• Lol.

“How riské do we want to go here?” Tim asks. “Like, does Alvin make a joke where you’re Shep and he’s the corgi?”

“If it’s in character.”

“It's depressingly in character. I’m just not sure I can reconcile it with you responding positively.”

“Perhaps I let the conversation go cold for a few days.”

“Until Alvin grovels.”

• I didn’t mean to be gross. Sry.

“How am I meant to reply to that?”

• Are u mad at me?
• Don’t be mad at me
• Plz
• I have some more good dog memes.

• They will need to be very good memes.

Tim spams Damian’s phone with every dog meme he can find. A couple manage to raise a small smile on Damian’s face, and Tim feels like he’s achieved that, rather than Alvin.

“Alvin is going to be gross again,” Tim warns him, and sends a meme with a dog humping someone’s leg.

• Sry. Im drrrunk. U hv nice legss

• Where are you?

• Party. U wanna come over?

• Do you have a way to get home safely? With someone sober?

• If I say no will u come n get me?
• Damian
• Damian
• Dames
• Plz come get me.

• Where are you?

• Iceberg long

• I thought you were at a party?

• I got lost come get me.

• Call an uber

• Calling u.

Damian sighs. “I get him, don’t I?”

“I hate that Alvin is wearing you down,” Tim says.

“You - he - kisses me. When I drop him off.”

“Ugh. Messily. Drunk kisses aren’t good.” Tim wrinkles his nose.

• Do i need to say sry for last night?

• I don’t know. Do you?

“Does Alvin remember?”

“Yes. That kind of blackout drunk is rarer than fiction would have you think, unless you’re a regularly heavy drinker. He might take advantage of your naivete and pretend, though.”

• Do u want to come to a party? College party?

“You’re not going to address it?”

“Alvin wants to see if you bring it up first.”

• When?

“I’ve had the fight with father. The morning after dropping Alvin home. He thinks I’m being taken advantage of.”

“You didn’t tell Bruce about the kiss?”

“Of course not!”

They’ve gravitated towards each other, sitting crosslegged opposite each other on the small bed, phones in their laps. When Damian stretches his knees knock against Tim’s. Tim’s conscious that if they share the queen tonight they’ll be hard put to avoid touching. He isn’t going to sleep well, he knows that already.

They trade a few more messages, shifting from Alvin’s heavy-handed come ons to something more like mutual flirtation. Dog pictures reappear in the conversation, as do a few photographs Tim’s taken of Gotham. They’re quick snaps he took on his phone, not the careful photography of his youth. No shutter time adjustments, changing lenses, aperture settings. Just point and shoot. Tim has to swallow down the urge to explain this to Damian, to justify the amateur luck Alvin displays and prove that he, Tim, is an artist.

There’s another sort of photograph that is starting to hang over the conversation, one Alvin would definitely send.

Tim sighs.

“Alvin would send you a dick pic.”

Damian jerks, thumbs skidding across the surface of his phone.

• Titus is goddddfghj

“Tt. I’ll delete that.”

“Wait, no. I’ll send and delete one before it. That’ll be the dick pic.”

“Why would Alvin delete it?”

He wouldn’t, of course, but if he doesn’t then Tim has to actually send Damian a dick pic. And the worst part is his dick seems quite interested in the idea.

“Say you’re worried about Bruce checking your phone.”

So Damian does, and Tim adds a deleted message.

“He’d ask for one back, wouldn’t he? And the image would be saved on my phone.”

Damian stares down at his phone, eyes fixed on the screen even as it times out and goes to sleep. He’s still flushed from their conversation about Tim’s - Alvin’s - dick.

“You could say no.”

“I couldn’t. Alvin has been grooming me too long at this point. I would do it because it’s easier than withstanding the inevitable nagging and guilt trips, knowing I’d give in eventually anyway.”

Tim swallows a mouthful of bile. “I hate Alvin.”

Damian pushes himself off the bed, long legs unfolding to the floor. Tim watches him like he’s watching a movie, unable to influence the outcome in any way.

Damian pads silently across the thin carpet and opens the bathroom door.

“Wait!” Tim feels like he’s underwater, or in the tail end of a dream that’s just become lucid.

“What?”

“It has to be after you turned 18.”

“I am 18.”

“Last month. Two weeks after…” Tim holds up his phone. “You could land Alvin in jail.”

“Would Alvin take that into account?”

He wouldn’t.

“You would.”

Damian rocks on his heels in the bathroom doorway.

“I’m going to take the photo,” he says eventually. “Maybe I showed it to Alvin in person. Maybe I sent it to him through SnapChat. Maybe I’ve kept it back to keep him in line.”

“The trip was already booked. Maybe you used it to bargain with him.”

Damian disappears into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Tim tidies up the room service plates scattered around the bed. It’s starting to get late. Damian should at least make an appearance to reassure his school friends - peers - that he hasn’t been kidnapped. They need to agree how they’ve spent their time together.

He can't stop picturing Damian in the bathroom, pants undone, phone out. After everything that's been taking up Tim's mind recently, it ought to be sexy, but he finds himself jealous and resentful of Alvin instead. That Alvin can make Damian do this, do something he's clearly uncomfortable with, when he doesn't even exist, is…

Tim knocks on the bathroom door.

"Damian, stop. I can't let you do this, not for the mission. It's unethical."

"I'm not going to share the picture." Damian sounds grouchy, and also much closer than Tim expected, like maybe he's leaning on the other side of the door.

"I'm crossing a line. It's too intimate, and I don't like where it could lead to. You're not obliged to use your body in ways that make you uncomfortable to support an undercover mission. It's better to take the risk."

"Tt. That kind of cowardice and lack of commitment is why you'll always be the weakest Robin."

Ouch. Tim knows he's hit a vulnerable spot to prompt Damian to lash out like that, but the rationalisation doesn't help the little cascade of anxious shivers running down his spine. He's not good enough, not committed enough, doesn't deserve it, needs to try harder, needs to push further, needs Bruce to say he's proud so badly.

This isn't going to make Bruce proud, though. He'll pull that face, the one he gets when he realises his kids have learned from his actions rather than his words what he expects of them and now he feels like a bad parent.

And oh, bringing up Bruce while Damian is trying to take a photo of his erection is going to win him precisely no fans, but it'll get the job done.

"Do you think Bruce would do this?"

"...what?"

"Bruce. Do you think he'll be proud of you for this?"

"I think he would be disappointed if I refused to do what was best for the mission."

"This isn't a mission, Damian. It's lying to dumb teenagers. You don't think Bruce would be disappointed in you for doing this? Having intimate photos of yourself introduces a whole separate risk. What if your phone got stolen or hacked? Bruce wouldn't swap a small risk, like someone reading the whole chat thread and wondering why there are no dick pics, for a big one, like his cock becoming headline news across the country."

"So he'll be disappointed either way."

"Yes. So… do what you want."

Tim waits. Maybe Damian will go through with it. Maybe he'll send Tim a dick pic, and Tim will have to resist the urge to look at it and jerk off to it and reply to it. He'll have to live with the guilt of taking Damian's, what, phone virginity?

"Damian?"

"I… I will rejoin you shortly."

Tim steps away from the door. He doesn't know what to do with himself. The shower clicks on, and Tim needs something to distract him from the mental images suddenly assaulting him. He settles on a quiz show on TV, and when Damian emerges, wet and flushed, Tim manages to stay immersed.

Damian sits next to him on the bed and joins him in correctly guessing the answers. Another quiz follows. Tim changes for bed in the bathroom. Damian borrows a t-shirt and puts his boxers back on.

It's a very tense kind of relaxed, but Tim thinks maybe it would be that anyway. They've never really spent time together like this before.

It's late enough that normally they'd be on patrol, and Tim is trying to figure out how to broach going to sleep, when Damian gets a notification.

"Blake says I can return, if I like."

"You don't have to."

"I'm going to. What shall I say we did? Which, uh, acts?"

Tim wants to tell him to be coy, but he knows Damian's room mate will bother him until he shares something.

"Blow jobs?" Tim suggests. "Your hair is still damp. Maybe Alvin jerked you off in the shower."

Damian flushes to the roots of his hair. "There wouldn't be space," he says, just a little too quickly.

Well, Tim knows what Damian was thinking about in the shower now.

"I don't think Blake is going to worry about the spatial geometry."

"What if he asks… what if he asks what you taste like? Your, um."

"Salty," Tim says, with more confidence than he can justify. "I mean, not just mine. In general."

Damian nods, attention turned inwards. He leaves Tim standing in the middle of the room, changing back into his school uniform in the bathroom and leaving without another word while Tim is still processing the fact that Damian isn’t staying.

He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed.

Chapter Text

"I think he believed me," says Damian, "but he looked a little confused. You're sure about the taste?"

"Yeah." After Tim had jerked off that morning, he'd gingerly pressed a finger into the cum on the tissue and tapped it briefly against the tip of his tongue. It hadn't been as bad as he'd been expecting. "Though I've read that it can vary a bit, person to person, based on diet. If you eat a lot of red meat it's meant to taste worse."

They're sat in Alvin's room. Damian has a selection of items he's smuggled up from the breakfast buffet, since Alvin chose not to pay for it. Dry rolls, hard eggs, bruised fruit and a surprisingly decent coffee make up the spread.

"Unsurprising," Damian says, looking pleased. "Perhaps it was my description of the act. I may have been too vague."

"Generally, straight guys aren't known for being really into hearing about what is like sucking someone else off. I think they like to imagine it's all fun and rainbows for their girlfriends."

"Blow, not suck."

"No, suck."

"But… it's a blow job." Damian frowns, confusion turning to horror in the lines of his brow. "It's called a blow job."

"Yes, but…" Tim gestures helplessly. "You suck." At least, Stephanie had, the few times they'd tried it. She'd been much better at going down on him than he on her, and that aspect of their relationship had petered out pretty quickly. "If he looked confused, he probably doesn't know for sure either. If he challenges you, just act like he misunderstood."

"I… yes. I will." Damian swallows. "They don't- they didn't- I was not taught oral sex. The lessons focused on vaginal."

"Sex ed at school? Yeah, it's mostly about pregnancy."

"And STDs." Damian wrinkles his nose.

"It's that all the sex ed you've had? What they teach in school?"

"Mother explained the biology to me when I was young. Father felt it was sufficient."

"Yeah, but… do you know anything about any other kind of sex? Anal?"

Damian looks uncomfortable. "Some," he says.

"As much as you know about oral?" Tim raises an eyebrow.

Damian scowls. "Some information was provided during the HIV lesson."

"Oh jeez."

"And my peers have discussed it at length."

"Yeah, but, Damian, your peers are idiots."

"Tt."

"Look, just, when we get back, ask Dick. Not just about sex. Relationships, too. Don't Google, don't rely on porn, and don't assume anything you overhear in the locker room has the slightest grounding in reality."

"Grayson? I can't."

"Well, Bruce has clearly failed you, and frankly, I'm not sure it'd be appropriate from me, not with Alvin and everything else. You need teaching by a neutral party, one who's got your best interests in mind."

"Where did you learn?"

His parents had covered more bases than Talia apparently had, and Steph had filled in a lot of the rest. But it hadn't worked, learning as they went along, they'd made too many mistakes and didn't know how to tell which ones were worth getting mad over. Tim hates uncertainty, hates ignorance, hates knowing he's getting something wrong and not knowing what. So he'd stopped trying, and Steph had stopped trying, and suddenly there was a gap between them that the physical intimacy that had been so easy before couldn't bridge. Sex had hung over the relationship like Gotham smog, choking it.

"I tried to figure it out as I went along, and it didn't work. Look, I can send you some resources for the, uh, technical stuff, to get you through the lies, but you'll really be better off just talking to Dick. You know he'll be thrilled you've come to him."

"You're sure? You guarantee it?"

Tim blinks. "Um. Yes? He adores you, Damian." They're talking about something else again, Tim can tell, but he isn't sure what.

Damian nods, and apparently that's the end of the conversation, because the next thing he says is, "How can I assist your investigation today?"

"I don't think it's going to overlap with your itinerary very much, unfortunately. I've got a little legwork to do on the south side, but most of the work will be tonight. You should go to the museum as planned."

"Tt. I've visited Metropolis Museum of Superheroics multiple times. I appear in one of the exhibits."

Tim wants to tell Damian to go anyway, and enjoy the thrill of his secret identity, but he suspects no matter what he says Damian is going to follow him regardless.

"Do you know when you need to check in with faculty? When they'll be doing headcounts?"

"If they follow the usual pattern, only when getting on and off the bus."

"Okay, so take the bus to the museum. Alvin will hang around outside, visibly, so hopefully your, uh, acquaintances will cover for you again if anyone raises any questions. You'll need casual clothes."

"You plan to investigate in civvies?"

"It's why I came as Alvin. People try to sell him drugs as soon as look at him. Overpriced drugs." Alvin is a born sucker, and real crooks can smell it like blood in the water.

"Should I match Alvin's look, or-"

"I doubt you've got the wardrobe with you. No, be a rich kid. We'll attract attention together. I want to see who risks coming out of the woodwork for what they think is an easy score, and then we'll know where to check tonight."

Damian nods. "I'll see you outside the museum, then."

He leaves Tim to his crumbs and apple cores. Tim makes a note to buy them both a decent brunch while they're out, and leaves the detritus on the bed while he goes to put Alvin's face on.

#

They've already been approached twice before they reach the warehouses Tim has selected for investigation. He put a bit more legwork in overnight, unable to sleep, and even if he can't make a link to Gotham's rogues, there's definitely a drug trade going on between the two cities it won't hurt to shut down.

Damian is wearing slacks and a sweater, oozing money from every fibre despite an obvious attempt to dress down, or perhaps because of it. Alvin is wearing multiple layers, a band tee over a long sleeved tee, an oversized button down under a worn denim jacket, gloves that weren't meant to be fingerless but are now. The weather is crisp but mild, the sky alarmingly clear compared to Gotham. Alvin has to keep shedding and reapplying layers, but Damian is comfortable throughout - his sweater is the kind of expensive that does the job of multiple cheaper items and will outlive them all, the kind of thrifty only the wealthy can afford to be.

They are catnip to dealers, even midmorning on a weekday. Rich boy and his bit of rough. Wannabe gangster and his mark.

By the time they reach the right district time is getting tight. They're going to have to get an Uber back to the museum if Damian is going to make his bus. Alvin has several bags of weed (well, at least one bag of weed, and at least one of oregano, and a couple that are probably a mix of both, but deserve further analysis) and Damian has some coke Tim is taking off him as soon as they're out of here.

Alvin, precious idiot that he is, tries to sell the weed to the first dealer Tim clocks. Damian has no idea what's going on until Alvin pulls a bag of weed he bought only a few hundred yards away out of his jacket pocket and tells the six foot four, heavily muscled, prison-tatted guy that he can have it for the low low price of twice what Alvin just paid.

"You don't come here, little man, and try selling me that shit." The guy reaches into his jacket, and Tim and Damian both tense. "You go to Metropolis U and sell that shit, for me."

He pulls out a business card and hands it to Alvin. "And when you've done that, you text this number, and I'll give you something worth selling."

"What's in it for me?" Alvin asks. Damian grabs his arm with both hands, gripping right enough to bruise. Alvin tries, ineffectually, to shake him off. "Be cool, man," he hisses out of the side of his mouth.

"No one ever tell you? You make a little money, you make a lotta friends, and maybe you get some free samples for yourself, from time to time. You do well, maybe you get a little more."

"Just marijuana?" Damian asks, accent all Upper East Side Metropolis, vowels just left of Gotham's centre.

"You want something else?"

"No! No, he doesn't." Damian glares at Alvin.

"Hey, chill, man. I'm flexible," Alvin reassures the dealer, who still looks mostly amused with the both of them, and clearly has no intention of seriously recruiting Alvin. "I've got contacts. People who need their noses powdering, if you know what I mean. People who want to have a real good time. People who… don't."

The dealer frowns.

"You wanna sell to people who want bad trips?"

"No, no. But, like, I'm from Gotham, you know? You can get some weird shit in Gotham. Bit of Joker juice in the NO to make the smiles last longer, fear gas infused shrooms for some serious hallucinations, Poison Ivy's own bud. You know, Gotham shit. Been telling my boy, you can't get it here. I'm gonna import, soon as I get set up." Alvin winks at the dealer. "Maybe I'll cut you in."

If he's wrong, Tim's just launched a whole new drug problem onto Metropolis's streets. It's going to be fun trying to explain that one to Superman.

The dealer snorts. "Oh, we've got that shit. You try marketing it here, though. Everyone wants kryptonite meth, sure, but who knows, maybe you're the guy that'll crack it."

"You've got some, then? What?"

"Nah, boy. You sell the weed, then you sell my weed, then maybe I'll mention your name and see what happens. You just keep hold of that card."

He still doesn't think Alvin is going to cut it as a dealer. Tim knows he won't - he'd smoke the whole stash and forget he ever meant to be a big man by the end of the week. He's just trying to look big in front of Damian.

"Maybe you should keep hold of mine," Alvin says, still far too cocky for his own good.

"You don't have a card," Damian points out.

"I could have a card. Hey, is there a copy place around here?"

The dealer rolls his eyes. "I'm sure I'll see you around."

"You betcha." Alvin salutes the dealer, baggie still between his fingers. Damian grabs him by the wrist and pulls him away, nodding a tense farewell.

They walk a couple of blocks before calling an Uber. Damian doesn't let go of Alvin's hand.

"That was terrifying," Damian says, once they're safely ensconced in the taxi. "Alvin is terrifying."

"Terrifyingly stupid, yes," Tim says. "But also so stupid he never registers as a threat. The dealer thought he was adorable."

"Ah yes, truly the epigraph we all aspire to have on our tombs." Damian picks up Tim's wrist again. It's still pink from Damian's earlier grip. "Did I hurt you?"

Tim glances down. "No, it's fine." He turns his hand over in Damian's and links their fingers for a moment. It's not a gesture that makes sense, not as Tim and Damian, and he feels Damian stiffen under his loose grip. Tim releases Damian's hand, but before he can fully let go Damian curls his fingers up. His palm is warm against Tim's.

They stay silent for the rest of the ride back, neither willing to break the tension or draw attention to it.

For Tim, the journey is both too short and too long. For all Damian's actions, Tim's still unclear on if he even finds Tim attractive. The cold-blooded proposition that Damian wanted to be rejected for, the fake dating that's mostly happening in private; it's more about Damian's peers than Tim, and it's a mystery he'd still love to get to the bottom of.

Damian's hand is warm and dry in his. As a gesture of affection it could be romantic, platonic or filial. It's probably not even intended as affectionate, just more spycraft to maintain the illusion of dating. But it feels nice, and it's a level of intimacy Tim hasn't had with another person in too long, so he gives himself permission to enjoy it.

When they get to the museum Damian breaks contact. Tim wonders what he was thinking the whole way back, whether his mind was as busy as Tim's. Probably not, he concludes. Damian isn't the sort to sit and stew. And Tim envies him that.

Chapter Text

That afternoon Damian is forced to attend the theatre with his peers, and Tim makes him eat dinner with them as well. You'd think he'd assigned Damian to six months hard labour from the amount of bitching, and it says something about how far gone Tim is that he finds it endearing. Damian would rather spend time in his presence - who'd have thought he'd live to see the day?

That night, the Robins fly together.

Red Robin perches in the rafters of the warehouse they identified earlier, while Robin watches the exits. Their dealer is clearly small fry in this operation, despite his formidable appearance. He's running gopher for two much smaller guys, who also have some other Alvin-esque lackies doing chores for them.

"You'd like this guy," their dealer says. "Dumber than a bag of rocks, but with a rich boyfriend." He hoists a large box onto one broad shoulder. "Where do you want this?"

"The ag college car. Was the boyfriend also stupid?"

"Dunno. He didn't say much. Kinda a pussy."

"Smart, then. Or smarter, at least."

"I figure if we can make the dumb one think he's a dealer, he'll buy plenty, even if he smokes most of it himself."

"You figure, do you?"

The dealer droops. "No, boss. Sorry, boss."

"Good. Get on with packing."

Tim scans the warehouse's other occupants.

"Oh, no," he sighs.

"What?" Damian's voice is brisk over the comms. "Red, report. Do you need backup?"

"No, nothing like that. I just recognise two of the gang from the Neon Knights program. I thought they were clean. We'll have to re-evaluate the whole program; this isn't just a lapse, this is joining a whole new gang."

"Not a current priority."

Tim doesn't argue aloud, but he disagrees. Knowing what leverage the gang has over the two young Gothamites could be relevant. He's lost people from the program before, money and addiction forcing their hands when the social net is too slow, but Roger and Johnny are both still card carrying Knights, which means there's a risk they could recruit others from inside the program.

"It's another Gotham connection."

"You seem surprised each time we encounter one, which is odd considering its the whole premise of your case and your justification for being here."

Tim smiles at the heavy sarcasm.

"Can you tag the cars on their way out? I'm getting a whole ubereats for drugs vibe in this set up. I want to know if they take specific neighbourhoods or if they just stay on the road waiting for orders."

"Beats standing under a street lamp in the rain."

"Pah, Robin, this is Metropolis. Don't you know it doesn't rain here? Superman blows all the clouds away with his superbreath, to ensure a clean and sunny city all year round."

He doesn't hear Damian laughing, but there's a long enough gap before he speaks again that Tim assumes he's at least suppressed a chuckle.

"The batsignal would be useless here, with their clear skies."

"Every hero has his city. Central and Keystone have their straight, wide streets so the Flash doesn't go careening into buildings. Star City apparently has locks which can be opened with trick arrows."

"I never understood the point of that. Surely, once you've unlocked the door, your next action is to pass through it? What benefit is there unlocking it at long range in the first place?"

"I've always assumed Green Arrow's just shooting the barrel out," Tim admits. "We have movement. Be ready with the trackers."

They work well together, in spite, or perhaps because of, their years of antagonism. They're practiced at sniping at each other without ever losing focus. Without anyone else from the family in comms, though, there's no need for the usual put downs and one-up-manship, no one to persuade to take one side or the other.

It's a little alarming to realise they're still so entrenched in their adolescent pattern, despite years of detente. Damian isn't going to try and physically hurt him, Tim knows that, but the need to prove himself superior still dogs their interactions when the others are around. Damian brings out his worst insecurities, and needles them until Tim is raw and defenceless. No one else gets under his skin like Damian - no one else sees through him like Damian - and it's no wonder that Tim can't let go of Damian's proposition. What has Damian seen in him this time?

"I think we're done. Let's head back," Tim says over the comms. He plants a couple of bugs in case they pick up any useful chatter inside the warehouse, but he doesn't have strong hopes for them.

"You don't want to tail them? Take them out?"

"Not tonight." He can almost feel Damian bristling, and knows if he doesn't explain Damian will take matters into his own hands. Tim sighs, and tries not to sound too patronising. The Titans never make him explain his decisions. "With only two of us, we couldn't take them all out, and the rest will disappear. Better to get good info and give it to the police, so they can perform a simultaneous sting, than pick up one or two low level thugs ourselves and have the rest scatter."

"Are you planning to do any of the work yourself?" Damian snaps. "Anyone who dies tonight of an overdose is on your conscience."

Privately, Tim thinks deaths are unlikely. It's low grade shit being sold to college students, mostly weed and laughing gas; the bigger risk is allergic reactions to whatever the weed's been cut with.

"We need to work the Gotham link," Tim says firmly. "We don't have the resources to do otherwise, and besides, do you want to explain to Superman why we're operating without permission in his city?"

"I'd say it was your idea," Damian says promptly. "I'm on a school trip."

"Point," Tim acknowledges.

"He doesn't do this kind of work," Damian adds. "He fights robots and stops asteroids. Individual deaths don't register for him."

"They register for Clark, who uses his reports to influence the police." Tim had wondered, once, how Metropolis' drug problem could be so much smaller than Gotham's when Superman almost never tackled gangs and dealers the way the Bats did. His research suggested that the marginally less corrupt police force made a significant difference, and Clark influenced that by holding it to account in the Daily Planet.

If Vicki Vale stopped focusing so much on Bruce and his boys, maybe she could make the world a better place too. The difference in corruption really is marginal, but the impact is massive.

"We play by his rules while we're here," Tim says, "and we don't fool ourselves into thinking he doesn't know what we're doing. We need the info for Gotham, and when we're ready we'll make sure the whole gang gets taken down at once."

Damian huffs, but doesn't say anything else about following cars in person. When Tim gets outside he's waiting for him. Tim tries to hide the fact he’s pleasantly surprised.

"Can we at least pick up a couple of muggers?" Damian asks. "I've been looking forward to punching someone all day. Someone who looks like Alvin, for preference."

Tim laughs. "Fair. Let's see what we find on the way back."

#

Tim's sat on the bed, squeezing water from his hair with a towel that's about as absorbent as aluminium foil. His laptop is open in front of him, far enough away to not get dripped on. A map of Metropolis is populating itself with brightly coloured lines corresponding with requests for dealers. He only has the number of the guy Alvin spoke to, but he can cross reference the messages coming in with the guy's route, and Tim is pretty certain with a bit of digging he'll be able to identify the numbers for the other dealers. It's an efficient system.

Damian emerges from the bathroom, hair damp, in grey button down pyjamas. Tim tries not to notice where they're sticking to him between his broad shoulders, or how the fabric hangs from the curve of his butt, and fails miserably.

He's so distracted he doesn't realise at first that Damian is getting into the bed next to him, until he's lying on his back under the covers.

"Um."

"Turn out the light when you're done, Drake."

"I thought you were going back to your room? Blake's girlfriend should be long gone."

"Tt. I don't wish to. I will sleep better here."

Tim won't, though.

Damian closes his eyes and falls still, breath evening out, face slackening. Maybe he's sleeping, maybe he's faking it so Tim won't kick him out.

Tim isn't going to kick him out.

He skims through his emails to distract himself. An interview request from Clark, since he understands Tim Wayne is in Metropolis, has been intercepted by an apologetic Tam explaining that no, Tim is home sick, but she might be able to squeeze in a telephone interview next week once he's recovered. Tim sighs. Dealing with Superman feels like a tomorrow problem. If he can ditch Damian he can even be partway honest about it.

Damian doesn't make a sound as he sleeps. His hands are folded across his chest and his body remains perfectly aligned. He looks like he's been laid out by an undertaker. Of course, he sleeps like the dead to avoid death, silent and still so as not to attract attention from fellow assassins.

Tim does not sleep like that. He sprawls, he snores, he tosses and turns. He's had double beds to himself since he was five years old, and no need to worry about waking anyone. Not that he's going to get much sleep tonight.

He lowers the lid of the laptop and puts it on the bedside table. Sliding under the covers, he turns off the lamp with one hand, and rolls into his side to observe Damian in the ambient light seeping around the ill-fitting curtains.

He could kiss him. Easy as thinking it. He's barely inches away. Tim could slide closer, until Damian's body heat touches his skin like a phantom caress, and press his lips to the smooth curve of Damian's cheekbone. Maybe his eyelids would flutter, his mouth purse, and Tim would risk another kiss. Damian would wake, turn sleepy eyes towards Tim, and let Tim take a third kiss from his lips. They'd turn up in invitation, and Tim would slide under the sheets until they were pressed together from ankle to shoulder. They'd kiss, and kiss, and kiss, until Damian's whole body was aligned with his, their hips rocking together, heat building between them.

Oh good. Now he has an erection. How helpful.

Tim flops onto his back with a sigh. He adjusts his boxers, but keeps his hands out of them.

He's in lust with Damian. That's all. It’s not even a crush, just lust. Damian planted the seed, perhaps, but Tim has been feeding and watering it and he needs to stop. Whatever compelled Damian to ask him for sex is in the past; Damian has made it clear he's completely uninterested in repeating the offer. He wants Tim to drop the issue, and Tim knows he should.

He can't look at Damian. Can't torture himself with those long dark lashes, those high cheekbones, that sunkissed skin, his swimmer's physique. Sure, Damian is eighteen now - and much older in specific life experiences - but he's also in high school. There's a reason Alvin is a creep for dating him. Damian is startlingly naïve in some areas, and the part of Tim that finds that appealing is no less naïve. He can't lead Damian on a voyage of sexual discovery when he's never left the station himself. His desire is born of being a bossy know-it-all, not an actual teacher.

If he wants Damian to look up to him, he needs the high ground, moral and otherwise. He can point Damian in the direction of good resources, but he needs to be honest about his own lack of experience. Maybe, if he navigates this carefully enough, it'll resolve into the kind of big brother relationship he thought he'd have, where Damian respects him and seeks out his advice.

But right now there's nothing brotherly about his relationship with Damian, and honestly, the idea of forcing them down that path at the moment feels wrong. Better to have no relationship than one straddling that boundary.

He just has to wait for this to burn itself out. It'll be easier once they're back in Gotham, fake relationship behind them. Damian can dump Alvin and his peers will forget about it soon enough. They can go back to only seeing each other on patrol and at family dinners.

He just has to cope with one more day of fake dating, and then they're done.

Chapter Text

Tim decamps to a SunDollar for the morning to finish his research on the dealers. It doesn’t take long to untangle most of the Metropolis operation. He flags the numbers to watch for calls to Gotham area codes, pulling Roger and Johnny’s numbers from the Neon Knights records to do the same. He assumes they’ve probably got separate burner phones for dealing, but some people are just that dumb.

He’s laid claim to a corner of the shop at the end of the counter, where the multiple espresso machines are clanking and clattering non-stop. He’s got his back to the wall and the curve of the booth hides his laptop from view on all sides while still giving him line of sight from the door at the front to the fire exit by the bathrooms at the rear. He plays some low level white noise to give him a little respite from the staff and customers shouting orders at each other over the clamour of the machines.

There’s a small thump as someone drops with a very deliberate amount of weight into the seat opposite him. Tim acknowledges his companion with a nod.

A hand reaches over the table to push the lid of his laptop shut.

“Don’t do that,” Tim snaps. “I haven’t saved it yet. Seriously, you know better than that.”

He frowns across the table at Clark, who gives him an amused look over the rim of his glasses. He’s got a cinnamon roll and a mint tea in front of him. He’s so large he blocks Tim’s view of the rest of the coffee shop, though Tim supposes that at least that means no one can see him, either.

“Someone’s cranky.”

“I slept badly.” Tim sighs. “I mean, more than usual.”

“Must be that lack of Gotham smog.”

“Mmm.”

“Does Bruce know you’re here?”

“I… don’t know.” Tim considers. “I mean, probably, but I haven’t talked about it with him. I’m following up on a Neon Knights connection.”

“Are you opening a branch here?”

“I might. If I do I’ll be sure to give you the exclusive.” He flashes Clark a tired smile. “I’m not hiding from Bruce, if that’s what you’re asking. We haven’t crossed paths in a few weeks, but I’m sure he’s keeping tabs on me.”

Clark pushes his glasses up his nose with one finger. It slips on the plastic nose bridge and leaves a cinnamon frosting smudge on one lens. Tim offers him a napkin.

“You haven’t crossed paths with your own father?” Clark asks as he uses the tissue to make the smear worse. He keeps his gaze deliberately downturned while his eyes are bare. Tim isn’t sure if it’s for Tim’s benefit or Clark’s secret identity.

Tim shrugs. “He knows where to find me.”

“What about Damian?” Clark puts his glasses back on. Tim’s not sure how he can see now, unless he’s x-ray visioning past the greasy streaks.

“He knows where to find Damian too.” TIm bites back further sarcasm. He doesn’t like it when Clark passes judgement on Bruce’s parenting. Hypocritical, from Tim’s point of view.

“Jon was hoping to visit this week, but he’s not been able to.”

Tim wonders if Damian would have claimed Jon was his boyfriend. If his classmates would have bought into that farm-fresh affection. If they’d have laid chastely next to each other all night long.

Was it Jon he really wanted to sleep with? Tim was an awkward substitute, but maybe Damian was just that lonely.

“That’s a shame,” Tim says. “It’s been a while since they’ve been able to hang out.”

“Yes.” Clark drops his voice, though it’s not really necessary with the sheer volume of ambient noise around them. “Time travel is a pain like that.”

Tim nods.

He and Clark get on well enough. Tim has forgiven him for how he treated Kon, but he hasn’t forgotten. Tim has more than enough experience with bad fathers to see Clark’s flaws clearly, and though they don’t add up to anything worse than the average man, they don’t reach the moral heights the rest of Superman embodies. He likes the idea of parenthood more than the practice, and Kon is far from the only substitute child he’s palmed off on someone else to raise. Tim wonders whether Jon would have ended up at the Kent farm too, if he hadn’t got lost in space and decamped to the thirty first century.

“How long has Jon been away now, by his own reckoning?”

“A year, maybe.”

So he and Damian will be the same age.

“I have some leads you might be interested in,” Tim offers. “Give me a chance to tie up the loose ends with Gotham, and we can move simultaneously.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you.” Clark smiles at him. “It’s sweet, you know.”

“The cinnamon roll?”

“That you came here to keep an eye on Damian. Time was you two couldn’t be left alone in the same room.”

Tim’s not sure they should be now.

“He’s… not happy at school. He’s not really had a friend there since Jon. Being trapped like this, sharing a room with a classmate for three nights in a row, eating all his meals with them, no free time without them, it’s even worse than usual for him. At least normally he can come home. He’s got… outlets.”

“So you’ve come to provide him an ‘outlet’?”

“I came, and I have. Don’t ask me how he’s managed to smuggle his, uh, martial arts uniform with him, but it turned out he has, so we’ve been able to ‘work out’ together.”

“I’m sure if you hadn’t, I’d have crossed paths with him somewhere in the city.”

“He wouldn’t have liked that.” Tim smirks at the thought. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Clark smiles at him. “That was supposed to be my line.”

“I’m good. We’re good. Damian’s going home tomorrow, and I’m leaving at the weekend. Maybe sooner, we’ll see.”

“If you need a lift…” Clark spreads his hands.

And oh, flying is fun, but Tim has his own Super for that, and besides, the wifi’s terrible compared with taking the train.

“Thanks, but I’m good.”

Clark hangs around for another ten minutes, drinking his mint tea excruciatingly slowly. Tim goes back to his work. He can outwait Clark. He can outwait Bruce, on a good day.

“So you and Bruce haven’t crossed paths in weeks?”

“Nope.” Tim pops the P. He keeps typing.

“Is that usual?”

“Yep.”

“Has Damian said anything about him?”

“Nope.”

“Has he been working at Wayne Enterprises?”

“Nope. Hasn’t been there in months.” Tim raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Lois has been digging through the latest offshore document drop and cross-referencing it with the Panama Papers and FinCEN Files.”

“Ah.” Tim lowers the lid of his laptop. “You know, one of the board is agitating for an audit. David McCloud III. We bought up his father’s company five years ago and offered him a position to keep him quiet, and he’s been a pain in the butt ever since.” Tim wrinkles his nose. “Bruce usually manages to put him in his place, when he bothers show up, but when Bruce isn’t there he thinks he’s top dog. What has Bruce said about it all?” If Bruce is also fighting fires on this front, Tim would like to know so he can make sure they’re not duplicating work.

“I haven’t been able to pin Bruce down. The longer I stall Lois, the more she’s going to dig up.”

“She wouldn’t drop it if you asked?”

Clark sighs. “It’s a matter of professionalism. I’m not going to ask anything of her that I wouldn’t be comfortable acquiescing to if she asked it of me. This isn’t a small story, Tim.”

“Alvin.”

“Alvin. It’s not just about Bruce, either. There’s been a lot of questions about who bankrolls the various teams.”

“It was a shock to find out Luthor was sponsoring the Titans,” Tim says, remembering. He’d just assumed it was Bruce, or maybe Oliver Queen. He doesn’t take funding for granted any more.

“Yes, and there’s some interesting paper trails there, money wandering in and out of Lex Corp. But she can’t touch that without bringing Wayne Enterprises into it - if she leaves it out Cat Grant will pounce, and then half the story will be ‘why did Pulitzer Prize winning Lois Lane drop the ball?’”

“And Vicki Vale will probably fabricate an affair out of thin air, to get her bite of the pie. No, you’re right.” Tim steeples his fingers. “WE is mostly clean, you know. There’s some inconsistencies, but we’re talking about a decade ago. They've changed accounting software four times since then, their financial archives were hit by the quake, and they’ve fired three separate employees for embezzlement and related charges. Frankly, that the books line up as well as they do is impressive.”

“You’ve been looking into it?” Clark asks with a cadence that suggests ‘looking’ isn’t the verb he actually wants to use.

Tim nods. He’d known Bruce embezzled from Wayne Enterprises - much as he’d like to put a prettier gloss on it, that’s what it is, and they’ve used that money to put people in jail for precisely the same crime - since his earliest days as Robin and he’d been keeping an eye on each offshore leak as it came out. Nothing had really stood out to him, the pieces of the puzzle too disparate, he'd thought, for anyone to make the connections. He’d been more concerned with Batman Inc and the possibility of an audit finding financial discrepancies internally. Once you spot the money going out, it’s much easier to match it to the money going in to the offshore accounts.

He hadn’t considered that Lois Lane would be able to put it together in the opposite direction, but that kind of in depth investigation is her bread and butter.

She probably knew Bruce embezzled too, which will have helped. And now Tim is an accessory, and whatever else it is you are when you cover up someone’s crimes.

“I don’t know when the audit is going to be. I was hoping to head it off, but it might actually work in our favour. Maybe… Maybe Lois would like to talk to McCloud.”

“Are you sure? This could all go very wrong. Maybe I should check with Bruce first.”

“Probably,” Tim agrees, because he can’t see how Bruce could influence the outcome either way. Lois doesn’t find him the least intimidating, and Clark’s already admitted he isn’t going to stop her even if Bruce asks him to. Couldn’t stop her, more like. “That Bruce Wayne funds Batman is public knowledge. The worst case scenario, Bruce ends up doing a few months at a low security prison, and Batman keeps fighting the good fight.” Dick will be pissed at having to put the cowl back on, but it’ll be good for proving that Bruce and Batman are definitely different people. “I don’t think it’ll come to that, though. There’s a big difference between the court of public opinion and being able to provide hard enough evidence to hold up in front of a judge. Or jury. I don’t know which it would be for something like this.”

Clark raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure you and Bruce aren’t on the outs?”

That startles a laugh from Tim. He puffs his cheeks and pops his lips, feeling the messy liner around Alvin’s eyes crease as he smiles. Alvin has such cheap taste in make up.

“Not yet,” he says. “This is a problem of his own making, and maybe I’m not as sympathetic as I could be.”

Bruce hadn’t been thinking that far ahead when he started. Tim knows that feeling, the one where the future doesn’t matter because you don’t expect to be around long enough to care. Tim does feel more sympathetic than he is willing to let on to Clark. Or maybe that’s empathetic.

He was Batman and he was Brucie, and he was circumventing what he saw as unnecessary bureaucracy to help his city. Now it’s decades later and he’s got responsibilities and kids and a whole different reputation, and the future matters to him. Batman Inc is a way of making sure his crimes don’t taint his legacy.

Tim might still be a little ambivalent about whether he’ll see his next birthday, but he’s learnt from Bruce’s mistakes: he plans like he’s going to see seventy. Hell, he’s even got an 401K already.

Tim runs his hands through Alvin’s oiled hair. “Usually when his past catches up with him it spits out murderous exes and surprise children.”

“Children, plural?”

Tim shrugs. “Selina Kyle wouldn’t say who her daughter’s father is,” he admits, “but she’s got black hair and blue eyes and surprisingly sharp cheekbones for an eight year old. And Bruce is monitoring her every grade, dance recital and soccer game. Her adoptive parents have no idea.”

“And you’re monitoring him monitoring her.”

“He’d think less of me if I wasn’t.”

Clark rolls his eyes. “Of course he would. How do family dinners even work in your house? Hack each other’s phones to ask people to pass the potatoes? Disguise the turkey as the cranberry sauce?” He shakes his head, amused at himself. “Will you help me pin Bruce down?”

“I’ll do what I can. Don’t… Don’t mention what I said, about Helena Kyle. I was showing off, that wasn’t my information to share.”

Clark smiles at him. “Of course.” He puts a large hand over Tim’s. “He wouldn’t think less of you, you know. You’re the world to him. All of you are. I know you’re so scared of disappointing him, but there’s nothing you could do to shake his faith in you.”

Tim pulls his hand back. “That’s frankly untrue,” he says.

“He’ll always take you back. Whatever you do, if you return to him, he’ll have you.” Clark tilts his head to one side. “He’s told me as much. I know you think it’s different, that Jason and Damian are different, but he loves you all the same. You don’t have to show off how like him you are.”

Tim thinks of young Bruce, spending Wayne Enterprise’s money on his crusade, so sure he was the end of his line. Unable to let anyone close. Content with the idea of death.

Oh, he wants to go back and save that Bruce from himself. But he doesn’t need to. He was there, the night Bruce was saved. When Dick Grayson lost everything, and Bruce Wayne gained a future.

“Maybe I should be on the lookout for an orphan of my own,” Tim says, even though it’s the opposite of the point Clark was making.

“Look after yourself, T- Alvin.” Clark stands, and puts a heavy hand on Tim’s shoulder. “You’re not alone, like he was. You’ve got him, for one.”

“And so many others. Thank you for the reminder. I think… I think I might pass it on to Damian, too. He needs to hear it.”

#

“Oh, you’re back early.” Tim closes the hotel room door behind him, glancing over at where Damian is sat on the bed, looking even more miserable than when Tim had dismissed him that morning. “Clark found me today. I think-”

“I’ve been expelled.”

“-he’s worried about Br- Expelled?” Tim drops his laptop bag on the floor. “How?”

“I threatened a classmate with a museum artefact.” Damian stares down at his lap. “A sword.”

“I was picturing a greek vase.” Tim considers. “If anyone could do it, you could.”

“Do what?” A small line creases Damian’s brow, though his gaze stays firmly on his hands.

“Threaten someone with a greek vase. Do you still have the sword?”

“No, I left it in the gallery.”

“That’s a small mercy. If you’ve been expelled, how come you’re here? I’d have thought they’d have you under lock and key until Bruce could fetch you.”

“I may have spoken prematurely. I will have been expelled, as soon as they find me.” Damian looks up, finally. His eyes are dry, his cheeks chapped red, and his lips pale, like he’s been out in the wind for too long. “Don’t you want to know why?”

“In my brief acquaintance with your classmates, I can think of a dozen reasons for perfectly justifiable homicide. You’ve still got a temper, but it’s not like you’re completely feral any more.” Tim speaks lightly, but Damian flinches. “Look, if you haven’t been expelled yet, we can do some damage control. Call the museum and apologise, for one, and offer to cover any costs to restore the artefact. Make a sizeable donation, too.”

Tim kind of wishes he’d been there. Damian in high dudgeon is deeply entertaining to watch, as long as his ire isn’t aimed at you.

“That won’t change things with the school.”

“Well, no. But… I mean, you hate school.”

“I hate school.”

“So, expulsion isn’t ideal, but it is a way out. I’m sure with a large enough donation Bruce can agree whatever the school equivalent of a resignation rather than being fired is. You can finish off whatever credits you need to graduate at a local community college.” Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. “But we need to deal with the museum first. It’s not fair that they got caught in the crossfire.”

“Have you ever been expelled?”

“No.” Tim wants to say he left a few schools before he could be pushed, but it’d be a lie. He was a straight A student, one extra curricular, two friends, some tardies, few detentions (usually for falling asleep in class), always sat somewhere in the middle of the classroom. “But I’m a dab hand at starting a new school late in the day.”

Damian snorts. “But you didn’t bother with community college.”

“I… no.” Jeez, is everyone on his back about it now? First Dick, now Damian.

Damian slumps onto the bed and pulls out his phone. Tim flops down next to him and watches Damian google the general line for the museum.

He tunes out Damian’s conversation, first with the front desk staff, then their manager, then someone higher up and further behind the scenes. It takes him a while to persuade them he genuinely can afford to pay the damages. It doesn’t sound like they'd been planning to press charges, at least.

Tim balances his laptop on his belly and pulls up a list of community colleges in Gotham that offer high school GED classes. For Damian.

Damian has only just hung up when there’s a knock on the door, startling both of them.

Tim climbs to his feet. He throws the bedspread over his laptop, half covering Damian in the process. Damian tucks it around his legs, and returns to scrolling on his phone.

“What?” Tim opens the door, throwing Alvin into surly mode. He rubs at his eyes, like maybe he’s been taking a nap fully clothed. He’s certainly rumpled-looking enough.

The young woman in the doorway is staring past him. “Fuck,” she mutters under her breath.

Damian scrambles out of the bed.

“Miss Green.”

Relief crosses her face as she looks over Damian. Tim turns to look at Damian, and realises it’s because he’s fully dressed.

Miss Green is a black woman only a few years older than Tim, natural hair pulled back into a fluffy bun, conservatively dressed in a grey pencil skirt, green cardigan, and aggressively sensible shoes. Tim gets the very strong impression she’s drawn the short straw to be here.

“One of your teachers, babe?”

“Oh, fuckity fuck.” The colour that had been returning to Miss Green’s face drains again.

“Yes,” Damian says shortly. “Come in, Miss Green.”

She steps cautiously into the room, and flinches when Tim closes the door behind her.

“What are you doing here?” Damian asks.

She turns to look at Alvin. Rumpled Alvin, in t-shirt and baggy jeans, liner crusting around his eyes.

“How old are you?” she asks.

“Damian’s eighteen,” Tim answers as Alvin. “He’s legal.”

“You’re Alvin, aren’t you?”

“Who’s asking?”

“She’s my geography teacher,” Damian supplies. He must like her better than some of the other staff, Tim figures, because he’s almost being helpful.

“I’m twenty two,” Tim says, following Damian’s lead. “I’m Damian’s boyfriend.”

Miss Green swallows visibly.

“And has he- have you-”

“I slept here last night,” Damian says. “I’m not willing to comment on it further.”

She closes her eyes. Tim shoots a glance over at Damian, who shrugs. When she’s done composing herself, Miss Green balls her hands into fists, releases them, and opens her eyes.

“Damian, what happened today was unfortunate. Under normal circumstances, threatening a fellow pupil like that would be grounds for expulsion.”

“Under normal circumstances?” Damian asks.

“Ye-es. Obviously, we would discuss it with your father, first. However, under the circumstances-” and she looks pointedly at the crumpled bedsheets “- it might be better for all concerned if we just acknowledge that you were provoked, and find you a different room mate for the last night of the trip. No need to drag your father out here.”

No need to tell Bruce the school hadn’t noticed his son was sleeping with an older man, Tim concludes. No need to admit the school hadn’t noticed he was missing from his room overnight, missing from several activities, missing from meals.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” Damian asks.

Miss Green sighs. “Really, Damian? What do you think?”

Damian pouts.

“Babe,” Tim says, because Alvin is starting to feel left out of this conversation.

“You’ll be sharing with a member of staff for the rest of the trip.”

“Who?” Damian looks alarmed at the prospect.

“That is to be decided.”

“Not Mr Jones. Or Mr Fisher. Or Mrs London! Or-”

“It’ll probably be a male teacher,” Miss Green says. “I would assume Mr Fisher, unfortunately.”

“Why unfortunately?” Tim asks.

Miss Green shakes her head.

“He’s a racist old f- c- man,” Damian spits the word with all the venom his rejected curses would have conveyed.

“Damian doesn’t have the best grades in his class.” Miss Green sighs. “Though to outside eyes his work does appear to be the same quality as the other students’.”

“Fuck off.” Being Alvin has its perks, and having no qualms about his language regardless of the company is one of them. “Fuck that. Damian, babe, you’ve got to quit this place. Why hasn’t daddy sued the tits off them?”

Because, seriously, why hasn’t Bruce stepped in?

“I can handle it,” Damian says stiffly.

“What about parent teacher evenings?” Tim asks. “What about, like report cards or whatever? He can’t just ignore this shit. How are you handling that?”

“Father is very busy.” Each word is bitten off. Damian’s rigid shoulders inch up a little further.

“Not that fucking busy! … Babe.”

“I. Can. Handle. It. Babe.” Damian’s so stiff he’s vibrating.

“Look,” Miss Green says, raising her hands so there’s a palm facing each of them in a calm down gesture, “this is an emotive issue, and I agree that the school’s current approach has been insufficient, as evidenced by the fact it’s still ongoing. It’s not something we can easily tackle here, but once we’ve returned to school property a thorough investigation will take place. I will do what I can to find an alternative to Mr Fisher for tonight, but Damian is going to have to share with a member of staff to ensure his safety.”

“It sounds like he’s a damn sight safer with me.” Tim raises an eyebrow. “He’s eighteen. We’re not doing anything… unsafe.”

Miss Green snorts. “I’ll bet. Okay, I’ll say it, the safety of the school’s reputation.”

“But racist bullying doesn’t threaten it?”

“Does it?” Miss Green lowers her hands. “I won’t be lectured on institutional racism by a white boy. I understand you’re feeling protective, and you probably think you’ve got a solution that’s somehow passed me and your boyfriend by. You think that getting angry about something is the same as fixing it. I bet that even works sometimes, for little white boys.” The bitterness in her voice strips Tim of his righteous anger like steam on wallpaper. He’s floppy and useless in the face of it. “This isn’t for you, Alvin. You don’t get to talk over us, even if someone like Mr Fisher might listen to you.”

Tim shoves his hands in his pockets and stares down at his feet. “Jus’ tryna be g’d ally,” he mumbles.

“Damian, you need to come with me. Now.”

“Yes, Miss Green.” Damian sounds oddly subdued as well. Tim peaks at him through Alvin’s bangs. He doesn’t meet Tim’s eyes, but as he passes him the back of his hand brushes Tim’s hip.

Tim yanks his hand out of his pocket and grabs Damian’s hand, twining their fingers together.

Damian pauses, glancing back at him.

“It’ll be okay,” Tim says. “I’m still here for you.”

Damian swallows, and nods. Tim quizzes his hand a little tighter, and lets go.

Damian follows his teacher into the corridor, and the door clicks shut behind him.

#

Tim leaves for Gotham that night.

Chapter Text

"So, I'm trying to figure something out, baby bird." Dick flips down next to Tim on the rooftop, holding out a doughnut box. A bribe to stay put. "I talked to Damian a couple of weekends ago, after his trip. A good talk. And I was thinking, hey, maybe this is the thing Tim was picking up on. Well done Tim for seeing it."

"But now you doubt I deserve a well done?"

"Now I'm thinking you already knew. The thing is, I can't figure out how."

"You're going to have to be more specific."

Dick pulls out his phone and opens up the Gotham Gazette. Vicki's column gets a banner ad, hot pink and flashing.

Damian dares daddy's disapproval dating delinquent.

And there's a thumbnail of Damian and Alvin.

"Wow. That's a lot of alliteration."

"Mmhm."

"Do you know if Bruce has seen it yet?"

"No idea." Dick sighs. "I didn't realise you were still using Alvin."

"Occasionally. At least he's got enough history Vicki shouldn't get suspicious if she digs." Tim takes a large bite of doughnut to buy time while he arranges his thoughts. "We didn't mean to fake date. Damian recognised me in front of some of the other kids at school, and it kinda snowballed."

"Avalanched, if even half of Vicki's article is true." Dick scrolls through it idly. "Did you know already, when you were telling me you were worried about him?"

"Know what?" Tim frowns. That they were going to fake date? That Vicki would find out? Does Dick think this is all some really elaborate scheme of his, with some end game in the distant future that destroys Ra's or saves Gotham or adds another layer of obfuscation to their secret identities?

Dick looks confused by the question. "That he's gay."

"You didn't know?" Oh, that explains Damian's reaction to Tim's suggestion he talk to Dick.

"No. When did he tell you?"

"I mean, he didn't. Isn't it obvious?"

"No!"

It's not like Damian is camp, sure, but Tim's been quietly confident of his sexuality since he was fourteen, maybe fifteen. "Do… do I have gaydar?" he wonders aloud.

"I don't know, Tim, do you?" Exasperation is sneaking into Dick's voice.

"He's never been interested in girls. And he's so… buttoned up. Repressed. But clearly boiling under the surface; it's not like he's ace. Remember how he always made remarks about Steph's body? He wanted to diminish her femininity, because it bothered him. He wasn't attracted to her breasts, so he made it very clear that was her fault."

"He grew out of it."

"Supergirl shamed him out of it."

"That probably should have been one of us, shouldn't it?" Dick sighs. "It was like playing whack-a-mole with his behaviour back then. I definitely let problematic stuff slide because I was focused on the physically dangerous stuff. Maybe if I'd called him out on it he'd have owned his feelings sooner."

Tim doesn't point out that Dick let a lot of the dangerous stuff slide too. That Damian has matured into the person he is, instead of an entitled serial killer and misogynist (aka mini Ra's), owes some credit to Dick, and some to Bruce, but the vast majority of the hard work has been Damian's alone.

"Are you attracted to Steph?" Dick asks. "Women in general? When you say gaydar?"

Oh. Right.

"I'm not unattracted to women. But I'm definitely more attracted to men." Tim fidgets with the remains of his doughnut. "I kinda thought I'd already told you."

"Nope."

"Sorry."

"That- you don't owe me an apology for not coming out."

"I remember planning to tell you. I was nervous, and I kept trying to find the right moment, and then Bruce died and…" Tim shrugs.

"And you didn't trust me, any more."

"No! At least, not like that. For that. But Tam announced our 'engagement' and it seemed like a weird time to bring it up, and after a while I forgot that I'd expended all that mental energy on preparing to tell you and never actually done it. I felt like I'd done it. And I don't really date much these days." Tim finishes with a shrug. Maybe if he'd had a boyfriend he'd have said something, but where would he get one of those anyway?

There's a moment here, a moment that's slipping away, where he could tell Dick everything. Damian's proposition, the energy between them that Tim doesn't think he's just projecting, that they haven’t talked since Metropolis, Vale’s article. Dick could run interference to stop this fake relationship getting out of hand. Have Dick help fake Alvin's death so he can run away to San Francisco and not have to look Bruce in the eye and explain what the hell he's doing with Batman's precious baby boy.

"You're not actually dating, are you?"

"No."

And the moment's gone.

"I told Damian to talk to you," Tim says instead. "It was clear from some of what he was saying that his sex ed had been sorely lacking, and I figured you were the best person to fill in those gaps for him. He's miserable enough at school without having his naiveté laid bare for the predators to feast on."

“That’s what he told me.” Dick bites into an iced doughnut. “Mmf. So good. You tried one of the yellow ones?”

“The lemon and raspberry. Yep.”

“So good. Do you think it really is just that? Or do you think there’s someone he’s interested in putting a little theory into practice with?”

Tim swallows. “I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “His classmates are the absolute worst, though.”

“Worst how?”

“Just… arseholes. Teenaged arseholes. You must have gone through it at school, especially as Bruce’s ward. Rich, entitled kids, who think they’re being so subtle with their snide comments. And they’re worse when they’re trying to curry favour.”

“Because of Bruce’s money?”

“Because of Alvin’s ability to buy beer.”

“So they don’t have a problem with Damian being gay?”

TIm shrugs. “They have a problem with Damian. Sometimes they express it through race and sexuality and so on, but they’re not targeting all the gay kids, or all the POC. Racism and homophobia are ways to hurt Damian, not reasons to.”

“But it must come from somewhere. Some reason they’re targeting Damian.”

“Look, I don’t want to sound like I’m victim blaming, but Damian is the reason they’re targeting Damian. You can’t just hold your entire class in contempt and not expect them to react negatively to that.” Tim pinches the bridge of his nose through his mask. “You know what he was like at thirteen. He was a bully. He never censored himself when he had something negative to say about someone’s intellect or personality.”

“That’s not true.” Dick reaches up and takes his own mask off. “I’m sorry, Tim, but it’s not. I’ve seen him be sweet, and kind, and courteous. I’ve seen him save lives by being sweet and kind and courteous.”

Bile rises in the back of Tim’s throat. “Strangers,” he says. “Civilians.” He knows the sort of lives that needed saving, and he doesn’t know how to tell Dick how close he was to being one of them himself. Damian could have saved him, but he’d repeatedly tried to push Tim over that edge instead. “Pets,” he adds bitterly.

“Mostly civilians,” Dick acknowledges. “I know he didn’t show that side of himself to you, but it’s one of the reasons I knew I could trust him with Robin. He’s a very sensitive individual.”

“That’s one of the things that makes him so good at being cruel, too.” Tim fidgets with the edge of his cape, running the weighted hem between his fingers. He realises he’s smearing yellow frosting along it and starts picking it back off with his nails. “Look, I’m sure he thought he wasn’t dishing anything out people couldn’t take, or sharing hard truths that people needed to hear, or whatever, but he doesn’t actually know that. He’s always been outright rude to the whole family and his friends. Imagine being a normal kid and seeing him talk to Jon like that. Jon, his best friend. Wouldn’t you have been scared of him? Scared he’d turn that scorn on you?”

“Scared enough to strike first, you mean?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Are we talking about the kids at his school, or are we talking about you?”

“What?” Tim recoils. “He started it! He always started it! I tried to be nice and he tried to kill me, Dick! Actually kill me.”

Dick raises his hands. “I know. I know he did.”

“Not just that one time, either!”

Dick frowns, and Tim wonders how many times Dick knows about. He never even bothered tell him about the time Damian cut his grapple. But then, he’d been preparing to let Ra’s kill him at the time, so it hadn’t seemed like such a big deal.

“Were you scared of him?” Dick asks.

“Yes! Of course I was.”

"He was scared of you too."

"I know that! That's what made him so frightening." Tim stares down at the mess he's made of his cape. "There was a moment, in Metropolis, in the elevator. He hadn't meant to say Alvin was his boyfriend. He was scared of my reaction, and I was scared of what he'd do to make that fear go away. But he swallowed it down, or something, and we both survived. I realised how much he's matured, I guess." He tosses his cape back over his shoulder. "He must have been scared starting school. Always home schooled before that, never really knew anyone his own age, from a completely different culture, and he was dropped into this existing ecosystem that's innately hostile to newcomers. He must have been terrified."

"Bruce and I agreed to frame it as a mission, so it wouldn't feel completely unfamiliar."

"Missions end."

"High school ends."

"Yeah, after the longest years of your life. He's so miserable, Dick. I was beginning to worry it had ground him down, that his bite had lost its teeth, but he lost his temper when one of his classmates pushed him too far and honestly, it was almost a relief to see him strike like a stepped-on rattlesnake."

"He got into a fight?"

"Oh, if he hasn't told you, I'm not going to." Tim rolls his shoulders back. "I'm not scared of him any more, and I don't think he's scared of me - well, not in most circumstances - but he still gets my adrenaline pumping." At least, that's how Tim is going to frame it to himself from now on.

"I have no idea what to make of you two. You hate each other, you're scared of each other, you spent three days pretending to be lovers entirely unprompted, you are so concerned for each other's welfare. What happened in Metropolis?"

"You know what they say," Tim says, flashing an awkward half smile, "what happens in Metropolis stays in Metropolis."

"If I find out you secretly got married…" Dick shakes his head ruefully.

Tim laughs.

The light is changing and dawn is distressingly close considering Tim has a breakfast meeting. He wants to keep talking to Dick, to tell him about Damian’s teachers, to make him understand that he or Bruce should have stepped in before now. Of course Damian hasn’t told them he’s struggling. Of course Damian doesn’t want them to know.

And, Tim supposes, he has to respect that. Damian’s eighteen, not thirteen. He’s nearly done with high school. He was very clear that he didn’t want Tim to interfer. Whatever this fledgling camaraderie between them is, this tentative friendship feeling it’s way, he needs to respect Damian’s boundaries.

Dick says his goodbyes and Tim climbs to his feet, planning to set off back to the nest and get a couple of hours sleep. The purpling sky catches his attention, lilac streaks ribboned between the dark skyscrapers on the skyline. Even if he had to quit Red Robin, he'd still be up here in the early hours of the morning, wrecking his circadian rhythm, just to see his city like this. Like it deserves to be seen.

He’s going to send Damian all the information he needs if he wants to drop out. Other schools that would accept a transfer at this late stage. How to finish up with home schooling. Gateway programmes at junior colleges that take early admission. Community College GED programs that segue straight into associate degrees.

Tim could get an associate degree in business studies.

Tim can’t imagine anything duller, but it might carry some weight with the Wayne Enterprise board and make him feel a little less of a hypocrite in front of Neon Knights.

He knows it won’t be like high school. It won’t be so boring he has nothing to do but dwell on how far off the rails his life has gone. It won’t be full of students who saw pictures of his father’s murder in the newspaper and look at him with pity, or read about his adoption by Bruce Wayne and look at him with envy. Steph won’t be there. Ives won’t be there.

His parents won't be there, to attend his graduation, to be proud of him, to see him take a step on the path they had wanted so badly for him to walk.

Maybe he’d never have taken that journey, even if they had lived - though it’s hard to picture standing up to his mom and telling her so - but at least they would have been able to share their opinions on his options. All those work trips, all that time away, to save money so he could attend any college in the world for as long as he wanted, all those reasons they couldn’t be there for him as a child but would as an adult, and it all slipped away. No past together, and no future.

His future still feels as nebulous as it did when his mother kissed him on the forehead and told him one day he'd appreciate how hard she was working, and not to miss her too much in the meantime. College seems as remote at twenty two as it did at eight. He might as well pick a major based on his childhood hobbies: orphaned wizards, local superheroes, photography, point and click computer games...

Imagine if he'd told his mother he was going to study computer game design. She'd have had a stroke. His dad might have taken it better, but not seriously. He'd have been pressured into changing major before he even finished unpacking his dorm room.

Alvin might study computer games. He'd probably expect the whole degree to be playing existing games, with designing the new angry birds and raking in millions for his finals.

The sun breaches the horizon, turning the windows of the business district into a shining mosaic. He's left it too late to go to bed. He might as well head to the Penthouse and change into a suit there, and get started on work early. There's always something that needs doing.

It's like he told Dick last time they had a roof top hangout: he doesn't have time for college. He barely has time for sleep.

He certainly doesn’t have time for regrets.

Chapter Text

It’s nice, for once, not to be the focus of Vicki Vale’s attention. Well, as far as she knows, anyway.

Alvin’s had a message from Alison, at the SunDollar, letting him know that Vicki’s been sniffing around. The girls have nothing bad to say about him, despite Vicki’s digging. Neither of them remember Damian coming in, but Tim texts back to say Damian had been deliberately anonymous, just another guy in a hoodie; even Alvin hadn’t figured out who he really was until they’d been texting a while. He gives it two days before that filters back to Vicki too. Alison offers him a couple of shifts, and he takes them, knowing that the place will be full of Wayneaboos, as the more obsessive fans are sometimes known online.

Alvin’s instagram stats suggest she’s found his account. She’s referenced his photography online, but hasn’t linked to it, which irritates Tim slightly. What’s the harm in giving Vinnie’s gram a bit of a publicity boost? It’s only fair when she’s already cost him his privacy.

Tim wishes he’d had more time to set up the college element. If she hasn't already started interviewing students it’ll be next on her list, and of course there’s no one there to give Alvin a heads up, on account of how he’s never actually been. The fact he hasn’t actually attended any classes is going to be a problem. Alvin is not… unmemorable.

He is, fortunately, flaky as hell, which makes his abysmal attendance record unsurprising. Can you flunk out of community college? Alvin is probably going to.

He wonders which of Damian’s classmates tipped Vicki off. It was obviously one of them, just from the information she’s already got on hand. Well, that and the fact that no one else knew Damian was dating Alvin, because he wasn’t.

Easy money is on the room mate, but from the way Damian talked about him, this seems a bit subtle for his style. There’s a few references to drug use that Tim doubts Damian deliberately shared. Most of the photos were taken from a distance, though there’s one of Alvin and Damian in an uber - their little outing to track down some dealers - that’s either a very lucky shot or someone was waiting to take it. That makes him wonder if someone was already gunning for Alvin and Damian, collecting material ready to launch an attack.

He never found out who tipped off the teachers to try Alvin’s room. He’d told Damian’s classmates he was on the fourth floor, so either Miss Green had been trying rooms for ages, or she’d persuaded the front desk to share Alvin’s real room number.

They hadn’t stopped him from checking out, hadn't even charged him for checking out early.

There were a lot of people trying to wash their hands of the whole situation. Even though Damian is eighteen. Even though the supposed relationship is consensual. There’s just something about the way it’s all been hushed up and rushed out that makes Tim’s skin itch. The school and the hotel are complicit in covering up Alvin’s existence because they’re scared of Bruce. No one’s scared for Damian.

It almost makes Tim respect the anonymous student for blowing the whole thing open.

He’s got a missed call, though, that suggests Bruce might not feel the same way.

#

Damian’s presence hits Tim like a static shock. His muscles twitch painfully and he has to grab the handrail to keep from falling over the edge of the stairs and into the cave.

Damian’s in uniform, ready to go out for the night. His cape brushes the ground behind him. His hood settles across his broad shoulders, framing the powerful tendons of his neck and the sharp lines of his jaw. He doesn’t have his domino yet, and Tim can see the creases of concern around his eyes, and shadows beneath them.

Tim tried reaching out once since they got back to Gotham. Just ‘hi’ to see if Damian was amenable to talking. He’s been left on read for ten days now.

Damian notices Tim, clinging to the handrail. When he looks up his eyes are hidden by his hair, and he raises his domino to his face before Tim can get a better view of his reaction.

Tim is still in his suit from a day at work. He feels out of place in the cave, conscious of the damp crawling up his hems, the smell of guano seeping into the cloth. He’ll need to get it professionally laundered before he dares wear this suit in public again.

Bruce is suited up, but his cowl is down. He nods at Tim and turns back to the Batcomputer. Tim can see the hot pink pages of the Gotham Gazette’s gossip column long before he’s close enough to read the headlines, not that he needs to.

“Can you explain why this ruse was necessary?” Bruce asks when Tim’s close enough to hear without anyone shouting.

“It wasn’t,” Tim says simply. “Not for the case I was working on. We failed to hide that we recognised each other.”

“The case that took you to Metropolis,” Bruce says, raising one eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t added any updates to the log since your return.”

“It’s… proving difficult to pursue. I need to find time for an undercover stint as Alvin.”

“Is the time the issue, or Vicki's investigation?” Bruce steeples his fingers. “It’s going to be hard to insert Alvin anonymously into a gang situation now.”

Tim has been thinking about this. “Not as a small time dealer. He can walk into any gala, any party, in Gotham on Damian’s arm, and no one’s going to pat him down. Places where he’ll be the only dealer.”

“On my arm?”

Tim swallows. “I mean, uh-”

Damian looms behind him. His voice is calm, and Tim can’t read his reaction to Tim’s proposal. He didn’t mean to pitch it to Bruce before Damian, but his mouth ran away with him and it’ll work, and he needs it to work because there’s a kernel of rot in Neon Knights that’s threatening to consume the whole program. Neon Knights is the one thing Tim can do for Gotham that makes a real difference. Not being CEO of Wayne Enterprises, not being Red Robin; Damian’s going to take WE off him in a few years and he’s honestly not sure how much longer his body will hold up as Red Robin. Neon Knights is measurable, it’s specific, and it’s the reason strangers come up to him in the street and tell him how he saved their lives. Neon Knights is why Tim matters.

“It makes sense,” Bruce says. “But I’m concerned about your time management.”

“What? Did Dick say something? Just because I haven’t got time to pick up some college courses…”

“College courses?”

Tim knows he’s made a mistake from the way Bruce’s face lights up.

“I’m not… not right now… but Alvin…” Tim sighs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. It’s a relatively new habit, an adult habit, since he stopped gelling it. Sometimes he uses a bit of hairspray, when he wants his hair to do something other than tightly follow the contours of his skull without being obvious about it, but he does like the feel of it when he hasn’t got any product in.

“We can make time, Tim, if it’s something you’re interested in.”

“It’s not,” Tim says. “Sorry, Bruce, but it’s really not. This is what I’m interested in, Neon Knights and Red Robin and Wayne Enterprises.”

“Damian, would you do the start up checks on the Batmobile, please?”

Damian folds his arms. “This discussion concerns me, father. If I am to be forced into a fake relationship for the sake of Drake’s vanity project-”

“And we will continue that discussion when you are done with the start up checks,” Bruce says.

“He wants to badger me about college,” Tim says. “Just… let him. For five minutes.”

“Five minutes. And then I return.” Damian turns with a sweep of his cape that’s so like his father that Tim feels thirteen all over again.

“I’m surprised that worked.”

“He doesn’t want you to badger him about college,” Tim says. “This is about Wayne Enterprises, isn’t it?”

“Lois approached me for comment about an article she’s planning to run. I understand you’re aware of the issue?”

Tim nods. “I never thought I’d say this, but the quake was a real stroke of luck. So many records were lost, I think they’ll struggle to find physical evidence of anything. The mechanic who used to work on the Batmobile’s engine for you died of the Clench, sadly, and the business that used to manufacture the armoured elements was based in Bludhaven, so that’s gone. There are more risks when it comes to parts you had manufactured and shipped in, like the child-sized kevlar for the Robin suits, but the paper trails are long gone, at least.”

Bruce nods along with Tim’s analysis. He’s almost certainly down his own checks since it came to his attention, on top of his usual monitoring.

Tim doesn’t know how the others felt when Batman Inc went live, but he’s sure Bruce and Alfred must have breathed a sigh of relief. Manufacturing and maintaining everything in separate parts, running every order through shell corporations, having to monitor so many different people and businesses to ensure they remained trustworthy… There are five separate staff members, plus two managers and three accountants, working full time on it at Wayne Enterprises and Tim’s approved a request to expand the team twice already.

Plus, Alfred no longer has to build the Batplane himself. Which he claims to miss, like a soldier taking pride in assembling his weapon after cleaning it, but he stands a little straighter and takes a few less pain meds now he’s not over-exerting himself.

“However,” Tim continues, “Lois’s angle, coming at it from the off shore leaks, that’s more of an issue. They can’t link it to Batman, but there’s a pretty clear case to be made for embezzling. Which, well-”

“Is because I was,” Bruce finishes. “That bothers you.”

“That I’ve put away multiple criminals for crimes we’ve committed ourselves, on a much grander scale? I don’t love it.”

“We put people away for assault, too, which is a charge that can also be levelled at us,” Bruce says evenly.

“Vigilantism is inherently hypocritical,” Tim says. “Have you ever added up how much you took out of Wayne Enterprises? The taxes we didn’t pay as a result? The research we could have done with that money?”

“Most of that money was spent on research.”

“Armoured tires aren’t going to help most of Gotham’s population, no matter how much Jason thought he might sell them for back in the day.” Tim pauses. “I wonder who he thought he was going to sell them to? They wouldn’t fit on any standard chassis, and I can’t think of anyone who’d think it was worth the effort custom building a vehicle just to use them. Say what you like about Gotham’s villains, but they’re surprisingly big on using public transport. Even if they try and blow it up when they get to their station.”

Bruce chuckles. “I doubt he was thinking that far ahead. I do take your point, Tim, and it was one of the motivating factors in launching Batman Inc, despite the risk of exposure. Do you have any thoughts on Lois, though?”

“Let her run the article. I mean, do we really have a choice? It’s Lois Lane.”

“And if an investigation is launched?”

“The audit starts next week. It’ll find enough to suggest we haven’t arranged a cover up, but not enough to successfully prosecute anyone.” Tim rolls his shoulders back, spine clicking. “A lot of people are going to think they’re very clever for figuring out that we were funding Batman before Batman Inc, but the most they can do with that information is congratulate each other on being smarter than Brucie.”

“And how did Brucie manage to pull it off?”

“His log in is BWayne and his password is written on a post it note next to his monitor,” Tim says. “I think Batman might just have been able to figure it out.” He grins. “The actual transfers might not have survived Gotham’s various catastrophes, but some security footage may possibly be in a vault where it might be dug up by a sufficiently investigative reporter.”

Bruce sighs and rubs his eyes. “How much am I going to have to donate to cyber security education programmes to apologise for being so foolish?”

“Oracle will have thoughts on that.”

Tim bounces on his toes. He’s good. He’s done this. He’s fixed it! He’s so pleased with himself it’s hard not to put his hand up like a kid at school and shout ‘I know, pick me, pick me, I’m ever so smart’ . He’s an adult now, and he doesn’t need to hear Bruce say he’s proud. His self esteem is sufficient.

“Well done, Tim. It seems you thought of everything.”

The compliment literally lifts him off the ground, the bounce turning into an actual jump.

Bruce smiles at Tim's pleasure.

"So, since you've got that in hand, I assume your next priority is making time for the case as Alvin?"

Tim glances back across the cave towards the Batmobile. The car is ready to go, Damian standing stock still next to the driver's side, staring at his wrist computer. He's timing the five minutes to the second.

"I should," Tim says, trying to speak quickly without losing his thread, "but I haven't discussed it with Damian yet. The fake relationship was spur of the moment, and it's one thing for me to be Alvin, but it's another when it's his real identity, especially now Vicki has latched on to it. I don't want him to put himself at risk."

"Is there risk?"

"Emotionally," Tim says. "I mean, I'm pretty certain he's never dated before. Is he going to resent me for taking some of his firsts away from him? And Alvin is such a shitty boyfriend, Bruce. I can't even exaggerate."

Time is up and Damian is coming towards them.

"Can you make it work without him?"

"Sure. Probably."

Bruce frowns.

"Father?"

"Tim and I were discussing the relative risks of continuing the fake relationship. Have you identified any?"

Tim recognises the shift in Damian's posture as a slighter version of his own bounce: he stands straighter, chin higher, shoulders further back, for the compliment of Bruce's regard. His opinion is being sought as a peer.

"Nothing of significance.”

“Give me an insignificant risk, then,” Bruce gently prods.

“Insignificant? Uh.” Damian frowns.

It’s an awkward moment. The risks are all personal, and Damian isn’t going to admit any kind of vulnerability in front of his father, not right now.

"Well, there are risks associated with publicly coming out..." Damian trails off. After a pause, he says, "I'm gay, father."

"I'd gathered."

"TT. Well, you are the world's greatest detective. As I was saying..."

Tim feels the world drop out from under his feet, and it takes immense concentration to keep from swaying.

He's forced Damian to out himself not only to Dick but also Bruce. He's not even out himself to Bruce, and he’s forced Damian out.

How can he accuse Alvin of being a shitty boyfriend when he’s done this all himself? And Damian’s just going along with it, like it’s fine that Tim’s done this without coming out himself.

Does Damian know he’s not out?

Does Damian know he’s bi?

Should he come out now?

No, he shouldn't piggyback on Damian's revelation.

But Damian acted like it wasn't a big deal. So maybe it wouldn't be a big deal if Tim just dropped in that he's bi?

But just because he didn't act like it was a big deal doesn't mean it wasn't. Tim should respect that.

It's a big deal for Tim.

Is it?

If he just does it now, like it's not a big deal, maybe it won't be?

But it feels like he's copying Damian.

Bruce probably already knows.

Had he known about Damian? Inferred it from everything that's going on? Or is he just hiding his surprise?

"It sounds like it's settled then. If you two set a time for your visible date, I'll leak it to Vicki."

Oh. He's missed the moment.

He always misses the moment.

Damian frowns, and shakes his head. "I informed my classmates that the relationship was over."

He says it like it’s a major hurdle. It doesn’t feel like one to Tim, but he supposes it depends on how Damian told them. He probably made a big deal of it, after all the chaos Alvin had left in his wake. Vicki might pick up on it, so they can't pretend that they never broke up.

Which means they have to get back together.

Alvin’s going to have to win Damian back.

"Oh no," Tim says. "A Grand Gesture." His nose wrinkles in distaste. It's not so bad when he’s Alvin, but he still doesn’t like to draw that much attention to himself. And it’s going to have to be a lot of attention. Enough that Damian wouldn’t feel able to turn him down on the spot.

"What?"

"Alvin. To win you back. It's got to be a grand gesture. Like skywriting. Or a jumbotron. Or serenading you outside of school-"

"No!" Damian physically recoils, a hand going to his mouth.

Tim knows how he feels. The thought makes him nauseous as well.

"No, no," Tim says, "I know. But it's Alvin." He shrugs. It is Alvin. It’s Alvin. "He's got to embarrass you into saying yes." The important thing is it’s not Tim, and he’s got to keep that in mind.

"Not the school," Damian says. "Public, sure, but not… I can't. I wouldn't say yes." The whites of his eyes are visible. Tim feels bad, but Damian’s the one who decided Alvin was his boyfriend in the first place. It’s not like ‘asshole’ isn’t written on every inch of his being.

"It sounds like neither if you want this," Bruce says evenly.

"Obviously," Tim says, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, "but it's Alvin. I can't… I'm not throwing him away, Bruce. I'm not risking an identity I've built over decades because stupid manipulative romantic gestures make me squirm. He's too useful." Alvin has been part of his life longer than Damian. Longer than Cass. In a couple of years he’ll have been part of Tim’s life longer than his mother, which is a depressing thought.

Alvin’s everything Janet was terrified of Tim growing up to be, which made him easy to create. He just had to remember the little comments, the criticisms, the people she pointed out as bad examples. If you don’t go to college you’ll end up working somewhere like this. If you date a girl like that she’ll get pregnant, and you’ll be trapped like him. If you hang out with people like him everyone will think you’re no better than he is. If you let your friends pressure you into this, they’ll pressure you into taking drugs, and we won’t help you out then. If you dress like him, if you talk like her, if you slouch like them, if you don’t study, if you don’t exercise, if you don’t network, if you don’t…

Alvin is the freedom to explore every don’t, and Tim has the sneaking suspicion he’s happier than Tim would ever have been. But he’s also not going to live to see twenty five, not in Gotham, so his mother wasn’t completely wrong, either.

"I won't be responsible either," Damian says, voice sharp against the presumed accusation that he would be. Tim understands that sting, but he’s tired of it. He didn’t accuse Damian of anything, and if they’re going to do this Damian can’t read things into Tim’s words. "But it has to be something I'd say yes to."

Of course it has to, and now Tim is the one bristling

"Public but not in front of anyone,” Tim says, wanting to show Damian that he does get it. “Shame, but not embarrassing. I… Alvin can do that. Yes.” Something that'll catch Vicki's attention. Social media, maybe? Alvin’s instagram. A grand gesture, one that Damian will consume in private, but so will all his classmates. Public, but with time for Damian to compose himself before he has to handle the reaction.

What can he photograph that will convey “take me back?” What will imply a personal connection, that will tug at Damian’s heartstrings and remind him of the imaginary good times he and Alvin supposedly had together? Ten puppies, each with a letter in their mouth?

No, it’s too twee, but the letters could work. Alvin has a lot of images of graffiti, street signs, billboards and flyers. They could be places they went on dates, food they shared, bands they saw. Or would have, if Damian hadn’t dumped him for embarrassing him in front of his ‘friends’.

Alvin can be romantic. He’s a selfish jerk, but he’s got a better memory of the times he did good than when he did bad. He’ll never remember why Damian is mad at him, but he’ll remember what words, what actions, got Damian to do what Alvin wanted.

Tim blinks, remembering where he is. Who he is.

“You’ll say yes,” he promises Damian.

“Tt.” Damian turns to Bruce. “We should be leaving for patrol. If we wish to catch Ivy in action we will have to head straight there.”

Bruce pulls his cowl up over his head. “Agreed. Tim, I want you to have a full plan on the batcomputer for the Alvin play by the end of tonight. I want to know your predicted timeframes, and your planned arrests. Understood? I’m going to be questioned about this as Brucie, and I need complete oversight.”

No, you don’t, Tim thinks, but bites his tongue. Bruce is right, he’s going to be drawn into this, and there’s no hiding that up until now he’s been making it up as he goes along, which is raising red flags. He can’t exactly tell Bruce how it all started, but at least he can set parameters to know whether he’s seen it through to a successful finish.

One of which, he knows, is getting over Damian.

Chapter Text

It’s a beautiful plan. He hacks an extra license of Wayne Enterprises' bespoke project planning software to put it together. There’s a colour coded gantt chart, a dependencies tree, a RACI matrix and full social media integration, which is great for Alvin’s Grand Gesture.

Tim pulls the message together from photos he already has, though he has to take one new one with a SunDollar receipt he finds in his trash. Okay, next to his trash. In the takeaway bag next to his trash, because the can is full and he hasn’t emptied it in a while.

There are several takeaway bags clustered around the can.

He should empty it.

But anyway, it’s supplied him with a SunDollar receipt, and of roughly the right date (which, okay, is months ago, and he’s definitely emptied his trash at least once in the last month, which raises questions about the provenance of some of the bags. When did he last take his recycling down to the curb? They’re all paper bags. He probably had a plan.)

He scrawls Alvin’s name and phone number on the receipt, and snaps a quick pic with his phone. It’s a little blurry, so he deletes it and tries again. But there’s a bill on the table with Tim’s name on, so that won’t do either. He clears the table and tries a third time. The lighting is dull.

It takes him fourteen tries to get a picture he likes, which he promptly filters to blandness and blocks out the number. Well, most of it. If you were, say, a photojournalist who wanted to contact him, or a nosy schoolmate who wanted to troll him, you’d only need to try four or five variations to hit on Alvin’s actual number.

It becomes a nightly ritual, sharing another photo on Alvin’s instagram. He adds a little backstory with each post, tagging Damian in. The restaurant that didn’t serve any vegetarian food. The frat party Damian rescued him from. The movie they were going to see when they got back from Metropolis. Alvin’s number.

Each time he ends it with #ImSorry.

His views and likes grow with every post, his follower count exploding. His older posts start getting some traction, and some interesting things pop up in his DMs. A lot of offers that boil down to ‘for the exposure’ that Alvin deletes without replying, a couple of token payments he accepts, a variety of unsolicited dick pics he sends viruses to which will wipe their phone’s ability to take photos, and a few people clearly angling for a connection to Damian.

Nothing from Vicki, but he wasn’t expecting her to approach him so directly. He’s not made Alvin hard to find, so she’s clearly still gathering info before she interrogates him.

Still, it’s nice to feel appreciated for his art. To feel like he’s adding something to the world, not just taking people out of it. People comment to tell him what the pictures mean to them, how much they love seeing their corners of Gotham, why romance isn’t dead. It’s trash and graffiti and anti social behaviour to most people, people who want to clear it all up and replace these places with shiny glass condos, but it’s love and home and family to the people that live there.

The closest Tim ever came to this was sharing some of his photos in a middle school art class collage. Even the teacher had been impressed with his skills, and though he’d had to exclude the more exciting images - not so much for Batman and Robin’s sake as to avoid questions about what he’d been doing out in that part of town at that time of night - he’d been rightfully proud of that A+, and so had his parents. It had hung on the fridge until the ink was faded almost to nothing. It wasn’t that he didn’t have other fridge-friendly grades (though he wasn’t quite the student Jason had been, he was no stranger to As), but that one had made him happiest.

Alvin doesn't have memories like that. He grew up in the system, didn't live anywhere long enough to have to answer the question "don't you think we should take that down now?"

But he has this. And Tim doesn't. He can't.

Each night when he gets home from Wayne Enterprises he takes off Tim Wayne, slips out of his suit and into the shower. Still in a towel he transforms into Alvin, sitting on the bed, browsing Instagram. By the time his hair has air-dried he's put Alvin away and put on Red Robin, ready for patrol. And finally, somewhere around two am, he peels off the cape and cowl, showers again, and crawls into bed, Tim Drake until his alarm goes off at six.

And then it starts all over again.

Throughout the day Alvin's phone pings with notifications. Tim answers the comments in the bathroom at work. He's uncomfortable trying to put Alvin on over his suit, but it's easier on the toilet (because of course Alvin doesn't think twice talking everything from finance to flirting bare assed). He nearly slips once, answering a question from Tam in the wrong accent. Her raised eyebrow cuts him off seconds before one of the IT guys walks in to reprogram the printer for the third time this week.

The one person who hasn't commented on his pictures, hasn't even liked them, is Damian.

It's all part of the plan, but Tim still has butterflies when he pulls up outside Damian's school in a stolen car and texts him to cut class and come join him. He didn't steal it, obviously. Alvin rented it off a guy in a lot who took a suspiciously low price for it and didn't ask about insurance. The engine is badly tuned, whistling when it goes over sixty, and it's got the rattle of a suspension that's on its last legs. Tim's pretty sure he saw this same car being chased by cops after a bank job a couple of weeks ago, which explains why it's in such bad shape.

Alvin's last picture was of a gargoyle with a camera slung around its neck, the post location a small art gallery. #GothamLoveStory #Exhibit #LastDay #LastChance #LastTimeIllSay #ImSorry

Damian has left him on read for forty minutes. The flowers that looked so bright when Alvin splurged on them are starting to smell the wrong kind of sweet, like whatever perfume had been sprayed on them has worn off to reveal the sickly scent of rotting vegetable matter. Tim climbs out of the car to escape the smell, lighting one of Alvin's cigarettes. He touches it to his lips a couple of times, but otherwise let's it burn down to the filter. He doesn't like the smell, but it's easier on his fluttering stomach than the flowers.

Tim hasn't asked many people out. Usually he's the askee. Or not even that; he couldn't tell you how most of his relationships started, just that he noticed he was in them at some point. Usually by the third date, at the latest. It's strange being so bold, taking the emotional risk, even though he already knows Damian will say yes because he signed off on the plan.

Certainty is no match for self doubt when Tim has put so much of himself on the line.

A bell rings, muted by the walls of the school. At first it seems like nothing changes from the outside, but then his eye fastens on the windows, which are blurs of activity. He's parked in the bus stop, a little way from the student parking lot, so he'll stand out, and he wonders how many of those blurs can see him. Are any doing, wondering who he is? Or do they know, and they're waiting to see if Damian takes the bait? Maybe none of them care, and this public display is a waste of time.

A fire escape slams at the corner of the building and Damian strides down an uneven wheelchair ramp. He hops the railing and makes a beeline across the grass towards Alvin.

Tim crushes what's left of the cigarette under foot and opens the passenger door, grabbing the bouquet from the seat, where it's left a yellow smear of pollen.

Damian stops next to the car. Tim hands him the bouquet, wordlessly, and is treated to a look of utter befuddlement. Damian shrugs his backpack from his shoulders one at a time, gingerly switching the flowers from hand to hand as he takes it off and throws it into the back of the car.

He opens his mouth, like he's going to say something, glances back at the school, and gets swiftly into the car.

Tim looks at the building; no one's coming to see who's picking Damian up in the middle of the day, to ask who this adult man hanging around a building of teenagers is, but Damian is as antsy as if they were.

"So," Tim says, as he takes his seat, "hey."

"Seatbelt," says Damian.

"What?" Tim turns the key in the ignition. It takes a couple of tries before the engine turns over.

"Seatbelt."

"Oh. Sure." Tim buckles up. "How was school?"

"You're not my dad," Damian says. "You're…"

"Alvin," Tim says, even though there's almost no chance of them being overheard. "Your boyfriend."

"TT. The guy auditioning to be my boyfriend. Applying to audition. Begging for the opportunity to apply to audition." Damian raises an eyebrow, but there's a twist to his lip that invites Tim into the game.

"The guy grovelling to beg to apply to audition," Tim says. "Interviewing for a position as groveller in chief to beg for the opportunity to apply to audition."

"Exactly." Damian looks down at the bouquet. "Well."

"Well?"

"Maybe you've passed the interview. Round one of the interview. The group stage."

"Oh, the group stage?"

"I'll have you know I get propositioned by a lot of people on Instagram."

"I'll bet," Tim chuckles. He doesn't really find it funny, not after Alvin's recent experiences, but Alvin would, especially after all the fuss about his imaginary dick pic. "You've earned me a bunch of new followers, and a lot of them are very happy to tell me how much better for you they'd be."

"Tt. I've been hearing daily reports at school. 'They ate there, how tacky?' 'graffiti? Like he thinks he's ghetto.' 'who even goes to SunDollar anyway?'" Damian puts on a different voice for each statement. "Always in earshot, that kind of whispering that carries like a shout."

"Fuck them all," Tim says with feeling. "What, should I have taken you to some Michelin star restaurant that serves foie fucking gras?"

For the first time since getting in the car Damian relaxes. Tim hadn't even registered how tense Damian was until his shoulders dropped, finally hitting the back of the seat, sliding his hips forward and his knees up.

Something unknots in Tim, too. This is going to be a good date.

#

Tim's been a fan of Queenie's work for a couple of years now, ever since he has to rescue her from halfway up Gotham Cathedral. They had a very geeky chat about her camera. She started following Alvin's Instagram a couple of months back, which was a little concerning, but they are both urban photographers in Gotham and it's not a massive community, so Tim's 90% certain she hasn't figured anything out.

She caught him as Red Robin a year back, flagging him down from a fire escape. He let her take a couple of shots as he grappled over.

"You know how you fight injustice, right?" she'd asked, fiddling with the beads in her braids.

"Yes?"

"If I told you about an injustice, you'd look into it?"

"I would."

"Even if it were… not a crime?"

"Not a crime?"

"But injust. Unjust. You know."

He'd caught up eventually. "Racism?"

"Yeah. I mean… yeah, but I can't prove it. It's subjective." She'd laced so much scorn into the word Tim had half expected the fire escape they were on to visibly corrode with the acid fumes.

"Yeah, I can look into that."

And he had, and she was right. She'd entered a competition and she'd been cut in the early round despite her photos being more original and technically better composed than photographers who were taken into the next round. Not making it onto the shortlist meant she didn't get the press write ups. Not getting press write ups meant she didn't get gallery slots. Not getting exhibitions meant she didn't qualify for other competitions.

He'd sicced Vicki on the racist competition judges, and she'd been in fine form. None of them would be able to express an opinion again in public. There was a rapid overhaul in other Gotham competitions and publications, a big move towards anonymous entries, unconscious bias training, positive discrimination. Galleries made a point of seeking out BIPOC artists.

And Queenie still hadn't scored an exhibition, because her subjects weren't white, and taking her name off her work hadn't disguised the fact she wasn't making art for rich white people.

So Tim had solved the problem with money. He'd commissioned her to work with Neon Knights, to lead some workshops on urban art and to document the programme. That had caught some attention, and her online store started seeing some traction, and she'd placed a few pieces at commercial galleries, then a few more at a charity auction, then a whole display as part of new artists events, and now she had this, her own exhibition, and Tim was blown away by it.

If he'd kept at photography, could he have been this good? Would he have deserved a show like this?

Or would he have got one instead of Queenie, because Tim Drake was more familiar to the establishment?

'Grotesques' marries Gotham's gargoyles to its citizens, creating a skyline for the city that challenges the viewer to question the very nature of its inhabitants. Tim's in love with the contrast on the gargoyles, the saturation of Gotham's pollution-filled sunset against the frowning granite brows. Queenie's really captured the texture of the stone and used it to bring the rippling clouds to life.

"To get this kind of light, at that time of the evening, she must be using an 85mm. ISO around 3200 - something nice and high, at any rate - and some post-processing to deal with the noise."

There's no way Damian knows what he's talking about, but it's nice to have an excuse just to talk photography out loud.

“Did you use your phone or a camera?” Damian asks. Tim looks over, disconcerted by the intrusion on his stream of consciousness. “For the grovelling," Damian clarifies.

They're still joined at the hands. Damian's carrying around the bruised bouquet in his other hand, which limits his movement. He's made no move to let go of Tim, though.

“Ooh, grovelling’s a strong word!” Tim says, slipping into Alvin. “Mostly my phone. I’ve got an old DSLR that weighs a metric ton, with a bunch of lenses, but it’s a pain to carry around the city, and it’s getting a bit delicate these days."

He's telling the truth. He's had the DSLR since he was fifteen, a gift from his dad who'd believed him when he said he was out late taking photographs. It's a good camera, a really good camera, but he can't bring himself to use it any more.

"I had a compact, but I could never get the image the way I wanted it, you know? And if I’m going to fight automation, I’d rather do it on my phone."

Dana gave him the compact. She didn't understand cameras, and the guy in the store had taken her for a ride, but it's a good little point and shoot for family events.

"You know what they say: the best camera is the one you have with you. My old film camera, that was always my favourite, but I don’t have access to a dark room any more, and it’s harder to find places that process film.”

“There’s one at the manor,” Damian says.

There's not, Tim nearly says, before remembering Alvin wouldn't know that.

Oh, there's a dark room in the cave, sure, but it's hardly ideal conditions. The damp gets into the paper, the guano contaminates everything, and Bruce is Right There All The Time.

“Do you think you could persuade daddy to let me have a go?” Tim asks, tossing his head back. “I mean, if it doesn’t see a lot of use, the fixer and stuff will probably need replacing, especially if it’s been opened. And I’ll need to take some pictures, obviously." He grins, all teeth. "I don’t suppose daddy would appreciate a boudoir shoot.”

It's an Alvin gag, sleazy and obvious. Tim barely has to think about it.

There was a pantry Alfred used to let him use as a dark room, but Tim hasn't been in there in years. Knowing his teenage self, he probably left everything open, so all the chemicals will have oxidised and the powders got moist and clumpy. He doubts Damian has ever entered the dank space, but he has to assume that's the room he had in mind. He'd hardly invite Alvin to the cave.

“I might."

“You… might?" Might what? Tim tracks back mentally. "Right. Yes. You might." Let Tim take photos of him naked. He might let Tim take photos of him naked. Damian might. "Of course.”

“Have you ever taken photos like… that? Before?”

This conversation has completely escaped Tim and he has no idea how to get it back. Damian is blushing, but his eyes are bright and his grip on Tim's hand is firm. He's talking to his boyfriend, Alvin. His sleazy, shitty boyfriend.

“No one’s taken me up on it. I’ve tried with a timer, just myself, but it’s not really come out right." It's terrifying admitting it, even if technically it's Alvin saying it. Can Damian see through him? Does he understand that it was Tim, naked and alone, fiddling with timers and lights and angles? Not even for anyone but himself, an abortive attempt to feel sexy without having sex. "Not worth showing anyone. Not good enough to show you.” Damian deserves so much better than Alvin and his shitty, blurry nudes.

“Any view of you is worth looking at,” Damian says huskily.

“Maybe I’ll try again,” Tim says. “For you.”

For a terrifying, thrilling moment he thinks Damian is going to call him on it, there and then. There's no one around. Damian could say anything.

“I’ve drawn you,” Damian blurts out.

“Drawn me?”

“I’ve sketched you. From memory.”

Alvin me or Tim me, Tim doesn't ask.

“Pencil?” he asks, to fill the increasingly fraught silence that keeps threatening to swallow the conversation whole.

“When I’m just doodling. I’ve done some charcoal sketches as well. I have an idea for a painting, but it’s not right for oil, and I don’t have as much experience with other paints.”

“Everything I know about painting I learned from those old Bob Ross videos," Tim says truthfully, "and I don't think I’ve ever stayed awake to the end of one.”

“I prefer portraits to landscapes. Not big on ‘happy little trees’,” Damian says.

“No, your vibe isn’t happy little anything,” Tim says, then throws his hands up in mock defence. “Not in a bad way! You’re just a bit too intense for that sort of ASMR thing. You’re more of a National Gallery full of mad royals sort of painter.”

“Velasquez,” Damian says. “Perhaps. You can really see the effects of inbreeding in his Hapsburg portraits. I do paint quite… literally. Realistically. I wonder sometimes if I lack the imagination to produce more challenging work.”

Tim would never, ever say it out loud, but he's had the same thought. Damian's painting is technically good, even Tim can see that, but he just doesn't get realistic paintings, not when there's a camera right there.

But when Damian brings up Velasquez something clicks. Because it's a choice, painting like that. Capturing every little detail and choosing to include them even when you don't have to. Generations of cousins marrying, chins receding, and one of the greatest portraitists to ever live capturing it even though royal portraits are supposed to be flattering.

Tim wonders what Damian's sketches show. What the portrait of Alvin would show. He wants to see it, and he's scared of it. There are going to be truths in there he's not ready to confront, things he can ignore in a selfie that he can't when someone has put them there on purpose.

“Challenging to the viewer? Or to you?” Tim swallows, trying to push the mental image aside.

“You’re not meant to ask insightful questions. You’re supposed to tell me I’m a great artist and flatter me.”

Because he's Alvin. Right. He probably doesn't even know who Velasquez is. He's never been to Madrid, with Bruce and Dick and Damian, visited the Prada to kill time waiting for night to fall so they can suit up. Alvin's barely left the state.

“You’ve never shown me any of your work, babe," Tim says. "You’ve seen mine.”

“You want to see if I’ve drawn you the way you want me to see you.”

“Ooh, Damian, draw me like one of your french girls.” Tim tried to laugh off the conversation. “Is there anything else you want to see here?”

Damian shakes his head. “That’s a movie reference? French girls?”

Tim leads them from the room.

“You haven't seen Titanic? I genuinely don’t know if that’s a tragedy or a triumph.”

Steph had made him watch it. She’d wept when Jack died. Tim had felt nothing, until he woke up that night from a dream where his mother was trapped on the sinking ship while Tim sat alone in a lifeboat. He’d sobbed so loud Dana had called through the door to check on him (even tears weren’t enough to make her risk walking into a teenage boy’s room unannounced), and he hadn’t known how to tell her how badly he missed Janet when she was the one stroking his hair.

He doesn’t care about Jack and Rose, but every time he watches Titanic now he sees those families being torn apart, children lost in the confusion, lives destroyed for being saved.

What would Alvin see?

Kate Winslet’s breasts, obviously.

But Alvin likes a melodrama, a sweeping romance, and all those storytelling tropes.

“The first time I saw it I was like, that’s three hours of my life I won’t get back,” Tim says, trying to find Alvin’s voice, “but then I watched it again and I was like, it’s a masterpiece, then I saw Avatar and I was like, no, this is Cameron’s masterpiece, but then someone pointed out Avatar is just Pocahontas and now, like, maybe Titanic is it again, you know?”

“I followed about fifty per cent of that.”

Tim snorts at Damian’s dry response and squeezes his hand.

They leave the building and as planned Vicki is lurking outside. Tim angles them so she can get a clear shot, and Damian puts a hand on Tim’s back. Vicki’s shutter snaps like hipsters at a poetry slam.

“If we were to see a movie, what would you want to see?” Tim asks, opening the car door for Damian.

“I don’t know. I don’t keep track of the listings.”

Damian’s mood has changed. Tim wonders if he wants to drop the act now they aren't in public. The way Damian is bristling is unfortunately reminiscent of thirteen year old Damian, when Tim would hit a nerve without realising it.

“Well, what genres do you like?”

Tim regrets the question as soon as he asks it.

The worst thing about bratty Damian is it brings out a… ‘less good’ side of Tim, too. It makes him want to push, to prove he's not in the wrong, to stay on topic until Damian shows the world that <i>he's</i> the problem.

“What do you like?” Damian still sounds put out, but it doesn't feel like things are escalating.

Damn mature Damian, taking the high road.

There's something between them, a piece of grit between Tim's sole and Damian's shoe, that has had Tim restless this whole date. They're on the edge of something and Tim thinks Damian feels it too.

“Sci fi, obviously," Tim says, trying to edge back from the precipice before him. "Fantasy. I don’t have a lot of patience with action moves these days. Horror, though. As I've got older it’s grown on me, especially the stuff that’s not all jump scares, you know?”

He puts his foot down and pulls out into traffic without checking over his shoulder. His distraction is rewarded with a blare of horns. Tim changes lanes for the hell of it, trying to channel some of his recklessness into skirting the good humour of Gotham's traffic cops.

"Horror?”

“Yeah. You don’t?”

“With everything our lives are, I hardly see the point.” Tim waits for the scoff, but it doesn't come.

“You won’t find it scary, you mean?” he asks.

“No. I have seen enough lives end. I spend most nights risking my own, and watching those I care about risk theirs. I am very familiar with fear, and I don’t understand the appeal in exposing myself to those physiological reactions recreationally.”

It's unexpectedly raw, for all Damian's careful phrasing. He's obviously given it thought in the past, and Tim wonders how many movie nights Damian's excused himself from, waiting for someone to ask why, that he has it all laid out on the tip of his thoughts like that.

“No, I get that," Tim says softly. That thumping heartbeat, that cold sweat, Damian has more than enough experience to not need to seek it out on his days off too.

“Why does it appeal to you?” Damian asks, just when Tim thinks the conversation has come to a natural end.

“Horror, good horror, isn’t about raising your heart rate and getting a jump out of you," Tim says, mind still half on Damian's comment about physiological reactions. "It’s about the emotions that feed fear, and spring from it. You’ve heard that anger is a secondary emotion? It’s a reaction to something else, a defense mechanism to ensure you don’t feel fear or shame or shock or whatever again.”

Does Damian have the self knowledge to recognise that yet? Tim half hopes he doesn't; suggesting Damian's temper is masking a vulnerability feels like he's mocking Damian for it. He doesn't mean it like that, but-

“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate.”

It startles a laugh from Tim, pulling him out of the anxiety spiral.

“Yes! You get anger in horror, especially big, social injustice kinds of anger, raging against the system, like Get Out or the original Stepford Wives, but the ones that appeal to me now, they’re really about grief. We’re all scared of grief." Even now, Tim fears it. Those overwhelming days, when you can't feel anything else. The lonely days when everyone else is just going about their business. The guilty days when you're conscious you haven't been mourning. He hates all of those days. "Films like The Babadook or The Others, they’re about dealing with grief. Having to keep walking a path you thought you’d be walking with someone else. Sometimes it’s too much, but sometimes it’s just right, you know? Cathartic.”

"So, even though you know grief, even though there is a surfeit of grief in your life, you seek it out?”

“Not sure how I feel about ‘a surfeit’," Tim wrinkles his nose, "but sort of? Movies don’t make me grieve, but they reflect the grief I’ve already experienced. And some of them, the really good ones, they reflect the path out of it too. Paths, plural.” He can sit and cry and mourn other people's creations, and when the movie is over he can go about his day. A vaccine, a little grief now, so he won't be sick with it later. He watches other people heal, and sure, sometimes he's jealous, but mostly it gives him hope.

“But they’re not date movies, that’s for sure," Tim sighs. He's not curling up on a sofa with Damian and a stream of The Orphanage any time soon.

He speeds through an amber light to pull up outside Wayne Enterprises. It's time to release Damian into Bruce's waiting glare, while Tim ditches the car a few blocks away and sneaks back into the building so he can chill out in the penthouse, as the malingering Tim Drake-Wayne, who's definitely not spent the day avoiding a meeting with Luthor or anything.

But Damian doesn't move.

"Are you an only child?" he asks.

Tim stares blankly at him.

"Alvin?"

Oh. Right.

"Maybe," he says, throwing on Alvin's bravado like a dry coat after an ill-advised midnight skinny dip. "I ended up in the system pretty young, and I haven't really kept in touch with the biologicals. Why?"

"I just wondered. You - everyone - know so much about my family, and I know nothing about yours."

Tim spreads his hands. "I am, as such, unburdened. I'm a free agent, babe." He grins and winks at Damian, to hide the shudder his own words inspire.

"Well, you've got me." Damian looks at him with utter sincerity, which knocks the wind right out of Tim.

"Yeah," he says, matching Damian's tone, "I do."

Damian has unbuckled his seat belt, so Tim leans over to open the door for him. It's scripted. Choreographed. It's part of the plan.

He feels Damian's breath against his lips, the only warning he gets before Damian's nose nudges his aside. Tim turns his head on autopilot and their lips meet.

Oh.

This is the precipice Tim's been skirting all day, all that nervous energy that's had him picking fights and over sharing and running red lights. The kiss is pure vertigo. He doesn't know up from down. It's freefall.

Damian is soft and pliant beneath him. When Tim opens his mouth Damian's lips follow.

He opens his eyes, not sure when he closed them. His vision is filled with Damian's long, dark lashes, fluttering against his cheeks. It's almost overwhelming, adding another sense to the overload of the kiss, but the blue-gold of Damian's lids quiver, and a line of concentration forms between his brows, and Tim just wants to stare at him forever.

A shadow falls over Damian's face. Tim breaks the kiss on the same instinct that started it.

Bruce.

Standing by the car, looking at them through the open door.

Tim freezes. His brain just stops and locks up his body with it.

Beneath him, against him, Damian starts to squirm. Tim desperately wants him to stop, like maybe Bruce's vision is based on movement and if they both stay still long enough he'll forget what he's seen, but his larynx is as paralysed as the rest of him.

Damian manages to extricate himself from the car. Tim still can’t move.

"Call me."

"What?” Oh. Right. The plan. “Oh, sure.”

They planned this. But not this. They planned the implication of this.

He was clear, right? He needs to check his notes. He needs to check them right now. He didn’t leave space for Damian to think Tim wanted this, did he? That Tim planned this? That Tim used the case to extract sexual favours from him?

The thought brings his gorge to his throat.

"Tonight, babe,” Tim chokes out, aware they’re still being watched. He finally manages to unlock his spine, and he turns back to the wheel, unable to even look at Damian. "I'll call you. Don't call me, I'll call you, babe."

As soon as he’s checked his notes.

Chapter Text

Pull up outside Wayne Enterprises.
Alvin will lean across Damian to open his door.
The physical proximity will imply a kiss, or similar romantic contact, from the perspective of anyone outside the car.
Alvin will pull back and Damian will exit the car. Damian will suggest Alvin call him, and close the car door.
Alvin will pull away from the building and merge into traffic. He will take the first left onto 10th, then a right onto 9th, then the Sprang tunnel, before disappearing from cameras.
Damian will watch Alvin pull away and then enter Wayne Enterprises. He will encounter Bruce in the lobby.

Imply.

It definitely says imply.

There’s no way of reading it to suggest Tim wanted to force Damian to actually kiss him.

Even if you’re skimming.

Well.

Maybe if you were really skimming.

But Damian doesn’t skim read. He’s thorough.

He won’t have missed ‘imply’.

Almost certainly.

99%

95%

Tim forces himself to put his tablet down and head into the bathroom to take off Alvin’s face before anyone comes up to the penthouse looking for him. He assumes Bruce will want A Word just as soon as he’s done with Damian, and even if he doesn’t Tam is due to come get him in an hour. Either way, the makeup that makes Alvin’s jaw just a little sharper than Tim’s, his nose a little broader, his cheeks a little sallower, it has to go.

There’s something meditative in wiping the cotton pad over his cheekbones, stripping away the highlights and lowlights and carefully sketched on scars. It’s no surprise he feels cleaner for it, but it’s funny how much grime it’s taking off his soul too.

If there’s a 5% chance that Tim is the reason Damian did this - 1 in 20, odds you’d enter the lottery for but not trust a bungee rope with - there’s a 95% chance that Damian made the choice himself.

He chose to kiss Tim.

Because…

And Tim goes back to that night, Damian in his kitchen, the proposition.

Even though he's in the Penthouse, not the Nest, the open plan aesthetic is similar enough that when Tim looks at the breakfast bar he sees Damian's silhouette, the sharp lines of his school blazer like a suit of armour.

He'd been so tightly wound. Every word had been so carefully chosen. But he hadn't been cold; precisely the opposite.

There's something burning in Damian. Something he thought he could quench with Tim. He'd wanted to lose his virginity.

Why Tim? That was the question that had been dogging him since that night. Damian had never even liked him; the best he'd ever seemed to muster was a cool indifference. Maybe that had been the appeal. No risk of an ongoing entanglement, no chance of ruining a relationship that didn't exist.

Clearly, that hadn’t worked out.

It doesn't make sense for Damian to reopen to discussion now, surely. Not now they're finally starting to bond. Maybe it's bond in the bail sense, more punitive than positive, but it's more than they had before. And they're stuck working together for some time yet. Damian had clearly wanted space after Metropolis, which Tim had respected, but the current timeline doesn't work for that. They haven't got time for a real hook-up in the middle of their fake relationship. Damian knows that.

Unless it was Alvin Damian kissed.

Tim paces around the penthouse. There's still no sign of Bruce. Probably planning to give Tim plenty of time to stew before turning up in full costume to menace him tonight. Plenty of time for Tim to get out of Gotham, if he doesn't mind looking incredibly guilty. And dropping the case.

If he can figure this out, he'll know what to say to Bruce. He's a detective. He can deduce Damian's motivations.

Is Damian in too deep? Has he lost sight of Tim in the rush of the fake relationship?

Alvin is all wrong for him, but it's the same logic as propositioning Tim: no lasting consequences. Alvin is easy. He's available. He's worked hard to make Damian feel wanted.

Knowing everything Tim does about Damian's social life, or lack thereof, it's no wonder Alvin's lovebombing appeals. Alvin asks about his day. Alvin always notices what he's wearing. Alvin asks after Titus and the other animals. If it's important to Damian, Alvin is currently feigning interest in it.

Can Tim go through with this? Can he stick to the plan when it's doing this to Damian?

They need more failsafes. Shorter dates. More eyes on them. Alvin needs to be even more Alvin, selfish and manipulative and embarrassing and borish. He's won Damian back now, so why would Alvin keep laying it on so thick? Time to just take what he wants from Damian-

Except what Alvin wants is sex.

Sure, the money and status are nice, and he's going to fall into being a dealer more through luck than judgement, but Alvin looks at Damian and he sees those shoulders, that ass, those plush lips turned up in a knowing smirk, and he wants to rip Damian's pants off with his teeth.

It's not all Alvin, of course. Tim can admit that. It wasn't Alvin kissing Damian back in the car.

He hasn't been letting himself think about Damian like that. The more he wants to the harder he shuts it down. Even in his dreams he finds ways to stop himself, his subconscious obediently sabotaging horny dream Tim with unhappy observers, insurmountable obstacles, rogue attacks. When he wakes up he purposefully doesn't think about Damian, though he's usually so close he doesn't have much opportunity to fantasise before he comes over his fist.

He's spent so long not thinking about sex with Damian that something as chaste as a kiss has floored him.

Damian kissed so sweetly. Tim's never experienced such gentleness from Damian, and he feels honoured by it. Thinking of it, his lips tickle with the memory. Warmth spreads to heat his cheeks, brighten his eyes, and fill his chest with a giddy glow. It's barely sexual, just an expression of genuine affection that makes Tim feel like the most important person in the world.

The way Alvin tries to make Damian feel.

Alvin, who Damian kissed.

The rush of jealousy is bitter and black, forcing out the warmth like a spreading oil slick in a nature reserve. He could gag on it.

Damian kissed Alvin.

Poor, poor Damian. Tim has to find a way to save him without disrupting the mission. He has to show him he deserves better than Alvin.

This is what he'll tell Bruce: Damian is vulnerable. Alvin is predatory. Damian is confused. Tim is not. They'll redraw the boundaries, stick to the plan, and Damian will come out of it better off.

And Tim will… well, he won't have done anything to make himself a worse person, at least, even if his heart is going to take a little while to heal from the self-inflicted wounds.

#

The auditors are set up in the conference room at the end of the thirteenth floor, with their own private bathroom and kitchen facilities. Tim collapses onto a sofa in the break out area at the opposite end of the suite, under one of the floor to ceiling windows that looks out over the Diamond District. If he cranes his head over the back of the sofa he can see the Clocktower.

Tim had been terrified talking to them this morning. When he planned this farce he was meant to be well-rested, prepared, rehearsed.

Showered.

Bruce hadn't come last night. Tim had spent the whole night in the penthouse braced to confront Batman, and he hadn't even come.

Instead he’d had to corral half a dozen auditors through the panelled halls and up the executive elevator with bags under his eyes and sweat on his brow, looking for all the world like he’d been kept up all night with guilt.

Which, true. But not over the audit.

“Hey, chum.”

“Brucie?” Tim pulls his head back in line with the rest of his body and raises an eyebrow.

“Just Bruce will do,” Bruce says, sitting down next to him.

It takes every ounce of Tim's self control not to tell Bruce to fuck himself, there and then. How dare he look so bright eyed and bushy tailed? Coffee in hand, freshly pressed suit, polished shoes, clean shaven. Like some kind of asshole who's ready for work or something.

He offers Tim a coffee, but Tim waves it away. He’s had four already this morning. “I was expecting you last night.”

Bruce puts the coffee down on a side table. “Damian asked me to stay with him.”

“I… oh. What does that mean?” Tim asks. How upset was Damian that he’d needed Bruce at his side all night? Tim can’t even imagine Damian in that sort of mood; he, like Tim, pushes people away when he’s hurting.

“Well, it was at least in part for your sake. I think he was worried about what I might say to you in the heat of the moment.”

“Was it any different to what you’re going to say now?”

Bruce settles deeper into the sofa. “Yes,” he says, once he’s made himself comfortable, and it’s not lost on Tim that comfortable is both of them staring at the same wall instead of each other. “Damian had some good points to make, and I’m going to trust his - and your - judgement on this one. You’re both adults now, or near enough, and I have to respect that."

Tim can’t supress a snort. “That’s never stopped you with any other adult, let alone your kids.”

“Fair,” Bruce smiles. “I’ve been working on it, though. I’ve… You know I’m close to Clark. That I’ve gotten closer, over the years. Well.”

“You’re saying he’s been a good influence? I mean, he’s a lot more trusting than you, but he’s definitely got his blindspots.”

“You’ve always kept him at arm’s length, compared with Dick or Jason, or even Damian. Because of Kon?”

“I know their relationship is better these days, and I know there was a lot going on with him,” Tim says, looking down at his hands, “but I still feel like he’s choosing not to see the damage he did. Like Wally with Bart, too. It’s just a choice they made, that wasn’t a good one, but look how well things turned out regardless, so why keep digging it up?” He sighs. “I mean, I know that you know that I think you’ve screwed up, plenty of times, but you’ve never screwed up the same way twice. You acknowledge your mistakes and grow from them, even if you don’t always apologise for them to the right person.” Tim raises his hand to his mouth and theatrically coughs “Jason”. Bruce chuckles. “And you never made any of us feel unacknowledged. Unwanted, sure, occasionally, but you never failed to take responsibility for our relationship.”

“Unwanted?” Bruce puts a hand on Tim’s knee, but Tim shakes it off.

“Maybe… Not as a person, but our behaviours. Like Jason. When you reject his behaviour, his beliefs, he thinks you’re rejecting him.”

Every time he invokes Jason, Tim knows Bruce is hearing ‘me’. And maybe he’s not wrong to.

“He controls his behaviour. He makes choices, Tim, and I don’t always approve of them, but I still love him. His actions may disappoint me, but he is not a disappointment. You understand?”

“He’s still your son.”

“He’s always my son. I’ll always love him.” Bruce sighs. “I’ve lost my thread a bit here. We were talking about Clark. And Lois, too. She’s been an influence on me as well.”

“Lois? Really?” Tim frowns. “You mean about holding you accountable? I mean, Bruce, the audit, it’s not like I could have persuaded Clark to talk her out of investigating, and the wheels were already in motion. And I can’t say I entirely approve of your actions, back then, you know? You made some dumb choices, even if you hid them very smartly.”

Bruce smiles. “Accountability. Yes, she definitely brings that to our… relationship. She won’t let me hide from the consequences of my actions.”

“Are you still… Is this… I know you said you trusted me to handle this, Bruce, but I understand if you don’t any more. The audit. Everything. Damian. If you want to take the reins I can accept that.” It’s so hard to say out loud, but he has to do it. He’s breached Bruce’s trust, and he needs to accept that he’s forfeited the right to keep moving forward without at least checking in.

Besides, Bruce probably isn’t going to take Neon Knights off him. He can argue Bruce down from that, at least. He’s got bargaining chips.

Cough-prison-cough.

“I do trust you, Tim. With the audit, and with Damian. And I trust Damian, too. He made it clear he wants to keep working with you.”

“Did he say why?”

“Because he wants to earn your trust.”

“My trust?” This is getting confusing. “Why wouldn’t I trust Damian?”

“He went off book, didn’t he?” Bruce reaches out again to put a hand on Tim’s knee and catches himself, leaving his palm hovering awkwardly over the fabric of Tim’s trousers for a second before retreating back to his own lap. “He’s always looked up to you-”

“Bullshit,” Tim says bluntly.

“Okay, that was the wrong choice of words. Your opinion has always been important to him, more accurately. He’s always cared what you think.”

“He’s always th- he used to think he was better than me,” Tim catches himself before the bitterness can seep into his words. “He wanted me to acknowledge that.”

“He measured himself against you. He thought Dick and I would too. You were his yardstick, and in a lot of ways you still are. This project you’re working on together is important to him because it’s important to you. It’s like…” Bruce glances around the empty corporate space, seeking inspiration in the plush carpets and panelled walls. “You’re his final exam. He needs you to accept him as an adult, as competent, as a peer, before he can consider himself grown up. He’s invested a lot in this project, too much, and that’s why he made the mistake he did.”

“He’s falling for Alvin, isn’t he?” Tim sighs. “Alvin’s such a schmuck, Bruce. He’s just… He doesn’t deserve Damian. I keep trying to make Damian see it, but it seems like the harder I push Alvin’s negative traits the more Damian finds to empathise with.” He looks sideways at Bruce. “Should we break them up? Before it gets any worse?”

Bruce leans forwards, folding his hands in his lap, and addresses the coffee table solemnly. “I don’t know if I’m betraying his confidence in telling you this, but you’re right. Damian is wrapped up in the heady honeymoon phase right now, and even though he’s smart enough to recognise it won’t always feel this good he can’t shut down the emotions. I don’t think it would be entirely healthy for him to try. I think the conversation I had with Damian last night will help things come to an end naturally, if we don’t try and hasten things. Let Alvin keep showing his true colours.

“He’s worried he’s going to torpedo his relationship with you over Alvin, and he truly doesn’t want that. And I don’t want that for you two either. That's why I don’t want you to fight with him over Alvin, and I don’t want you to stop working together. Does that make sense?”

Not entirely, not knowing that he and Alvin are the same person and the project is Alvin, but Tim supposes he can see where Bruce is coming from. Let the plan go on, let Alvin keep being a dick, and give Damian space to process it all. Be Tim, and be Alvin. If Damian can't disassociate Tim has to.

Or has to stop doing so.

Letting Alvin off the leash might be a bad idea right now, especially if Damian is falling for him. Tim's already jealous enough of himself.

Okay. Stick to the plan, hang on to the reins as tightly as possible, be a dick, and keep Damian at arm's length for his own good.

That doesn't sound quite right, not exactly what Bruce is asking him for.

“Do you trust Damian, Tim?”

He almost says ‘with what’, but instead comes out with “Yes” while he’s still trying to untangle the many aspects of his life he needs to trust Damian with, and having taken himself by surprise falls silent without further elaboration.

Bruce smiles, and the warmth of it makes the space feel three times brighter. Tim can’t look away.

“That’s good. That’s so important to me,Tim, that you trust each other. I know I’ve broken your trust on more than one occasion; I know we all have. To see you building it with Damian gives me real hope.”

“I trust you, Bruce,” Tim says.

“Thank you. But I know it’s not the same. It’s… You said earlier, I learn from my mistakes, and I understand you trust me not to disappoint you in the ways I have in the past, but you’ll never trust me not to hurt you, because experience has taught you otherwise. And I accept that.”

“Damian’s hurt me plenty of times,” Tim says.

“But now, right now, do you trust him not to do it again? Are you guarding yourself against him?”

Well, that’s a very strange realisation to have, surrounded by sound-reducing curtains, UV filtered sunlight, and the pumped in smell of vanilla essence to cover up the new carpet smell. Tim feels like he ought to be somewhere else - a rooftop under the stars, a deserted island, staring at a ring in a restaurant - to undergo such a revelation.

He’s not scared of Damian any more.

Not physically. Not mentally. Not emotionally.

“Tim?”

“Processing,” he mumbles.

Bruce ruffles his hair. “You need more people in your life you trust like that. I need more people in my life I trust like that. I find… Simultaneously, I feel that way about all of you, my children, that I know in my heart I don’t have to guard myself against you, but at the same time I still do it.

“When Damian told me he was gay, it took me by surprise - not that he is gay, but the way he told me. The confidence with which he came out. I… didn’t feel I deserved that. I’ve never been that open with you, all of you, and if I’m honest I didn’t expect openness from you. To be trusted like that felt good. It felt like I’d done something right as a parent.”

“Jason died,” Tim says. “You can’t trust us not to hurt you, because that means trusting us not to die, and that’s not something you can fool yourself into doing.”

“I… yes. That’s definitely part of it. But I was talking more about relationships. I’ve never been very open with you about mine, and when Damian came out I realised I hadn’t made an environment that invited that, because I treated relationships and sexuality as fundamentally private.”

Bruce is a fundamentally private person. It's something they've got in common. But if he's saying this now, talking about Damian, maybe he's telling Tim he should open up too.

"I'm bi."

"I'm- Yes. I mean, thank you." Bruce blinks a couple of times. "Sorry."

"Sorry?"

"I wasn't dropping hints." Bruce sighs. "I didn't mean for you to feel like I was trying to make you come out too."

"But you already knew? Like with Damian?"

"Tim, your whole plan, Alvin, Metropolis… if you were straight, you'd have approached it differently."

"It was Damian's idea," Tim says. "Dating Alvin."

"It was Alvin who seduced him back," Bruce says gently. "And, honestly, if you'd been straight I doubt you'd have put so much effort into hiding your porn. I couldn't go into Dick or Jason's rooms without tripping over swimsuit magazines and lingerie catalogues."

"You'd think they didn't have the internet," Tim says dryly. "I was going to tell you when Damian did, but I didn't want to come across as making it all about me. He deserved that moment to himself."

"You've got me to yourself now."

"Yeah, but…" Tim laughs weakly. "Can we be done now? I'm not Damian. I don't want to be the centre of attention. I like being private about this stuff. So, I'm bi, I've been single for ages, please never talk about porn with me again, I promise I won't make things weird with Damian, can we go back to talking about the audit now?"

Bruce clasps Tim's shoulder.

"I know, I know, I won't, you won't, and I'd like to bury my head in the sand for as long as possible on the audit front?" Bruce smiles at him. "I would have been here earlier, but I got pulled into a scrum for a new HR app. It was pretty interesting, actually. You know it?"

"I’m the business whatjamacallit. Sponsor? Visionary? I’m the one with the budget. They wouldn't have got this far with it if they hadn't convinced me it was worthwhile," Tim says.

They talk about the various ongoing projects within Wayne Enterprises for a while, until catering boot them out of the space so they can set up lunch for the auditors.

"What have you got on this afternoon?" Bruce asks as they walk to the elevator.

"Neon Knights admin," Tim says. "We're looking at some new potential initiatives to fund, but nothing's really clicking yet. Everything so far is either too similar to our work already or outside of our remit. The scope creep is real, Bruce."

"It sure is. I… I just want to say one more thing about our earlier conversation."

Tim's stomach flips.

"Damian’s still learning to navigate his sexuality. I'm worried that Vicki's reporting is going to warp his feelings about it. Can you… can you make sure he sees something positive in it? You've both described Alvin as a way of learning to recognise red flags, but can you, Tim, teach him about the green ones too? Be his mentor?"

Tim barks a laugh. "Bruce, he's way ahead of me here. He's got a boyfriend. He's out. I literally came out because he did. There's nothing I can teach him."

That makes Bruce chuckle. "Yes, because you've always needed practical experience to share your opinion on a topic. I meant what I said earlier, about him looking to you as a guide for himself. I know you've done your research. Just… I’m not asking you to be a role model, here, because I know that’s not fair on you, but while you’re working this closely together, and while Damian is struggling with his feelings for Alvin, I need you to look out for him.”

“Can you not just point him at Kate?” Tim asks. “She’s got her shit together.”

“Yes, well, let’s not give him unobtainable goals, shall we? Kate’s Kate.” Bruce ruffles Tim’s hair. “I know I’m asking you to be two things at once, but if anyone can do it, you can.”

Tim really, really doubts that.

Chapter Text

Tim managed to stick to the plan for oh, fifteen minutes there?

What is wrong with him?

They’re dine-and-dashing from a mob run restaurant. Emphasis on the dashing, because frankly neither of them ate much.

Tim can picture the whole plan laid out in its neat colour-coded gantt chart. Blue for dates. Green for interactions with drug dealers. Red for Vicki Vale. Three overlapping rows for dinner at a Maroni run joint.

None of those rows ended with “refuse to pay the cheque because they gave Damian meat and didn’t care”.

Seriously, how was he meant to plan for that? What kind of restaurant is that shitty at food hygiene? He wants to sic Gordon Ramsey on them.

There’s a shout behind them and Tim glances back to see a handgun being pulled from an underarm holster. He shoves into Damian and they both round a corner onto the next block before the goon has the opportunity to take the safety off.

They keep running until Damian’s breath turns ragged. Tim realises he’s laughing and it’s enough to set Tim off. They stagger to a halt and Tim stumbles sideways, catching himself on Damian’s chest.

He’s still wheezing, eyes stinging with tears, as he turns his gaze up to see how Damian is doing.

Damian pushes Tim away, but keeps one hand on his shoulder to steady him, which tells Tim precisely how he’s doing.

He’s sweet, he’s really sweet, and he’s trying so hard for Tim’s sake.

"I don't think I can come back to yours," Damian says.

They’ve already ditched the plan, so Tim isn’t surprised.

He pulls Damian into a nearby alley. It’s weirdly clean for Gotham; they’re still in mob territory, but clearly the residents around here have paid their protection money and the garbage men are part of what they’re paying for.

Tim perches on top of one of the locked dumpsters and waits.

"I talked to father," Damian says. "I don't think it's a good idea."

Tim thinks back to his chat with Bruce and his heart aches for Damian. "Why not?"

"After the gallery… I just. We've only just got back together. It's too much, too soon."

"Where do you want to go instead? Home?" He should take Damian home. Let him decompress. They can start over with this date in a Falcone restaurant in a couple of days. Damian’s right, it was too soon.

"No. Take me… take me somewhere you, Alvin, would go.” Oh, that’s not what Tim was expecting. “Not somewhere to impress me, or father, or Vale. Where do you go when you don't have anything to prove?"

He really needs to push Damian away from Alvin. He doesn’t need to see the ‘real’ Alvin. There is no real Alvin.

Before Tim can say something to dissuade Damian, he continues, "take me to wherever Alvin's dealer hangs out."

Oh, right.

"Do you really want that, though? Seems like it would stress you out." Tim slips into Alvin’s accent, "You didn't like our little excursion in Metropolis."

"I was unprepared. And hot, and tired. Tell me what to expect." Damian turns earnest eyes up at Tim, like he thinks he needs to redeem himself. He wants your trust, Bruce had said. You’re the test he feels he has to pass. You need to show him how to accept himself, you need to teach him things you’ve never done for yourself, you are his initiation into adulthood.

What kind of adult is Damian going to be? What is he ready for?

"We can go to the campus,” Tim says, trying to picture Damian in a few years' time, “I get my weed from a guy from Oregon. He buys it legally and smuggles it to Gotham in some of his textbooks. You'd like Dave; he's vegan. He's a sweet guy."

"Is that what you'd be doing on a Sunday night? Hanging out with college students?" Damian raises an eyebrow and Tim realises he thinks Tim was talking as Alvin. Whoops.

He considers correcting Damian, but decides it’s better if Damian doesn’t start to cross the streams. If he thinks Tim is completely straightedge, and Alvin is the stoner, better not to disillusion him.

So he answers in character, "Hey. I'm a college student. Just because I'm not Gotham U doesn't mean I'm not studying.”

"Yes. Sorry. But you don't like Gotham U. You called them stuck up last time we talked about that place."

"I called them worse than that,” Tim recalls the backstory from the plan. “Dave's alright, though.” But if Damian doesn’t want to go to the college, where does he want to go? “Are you trying to tell me you want to go to a house party?" Tim asks sceptically.

"Yes."

Damian’s going to hate a house party. Tim’s not the biggest fan, but he’s been to a few as Alvin and he can tolerate it for a few hours, especially when he’s not himself. It’s easier to socialise when there’s no consequences, when it doesn’t reflect on him.

He’s tried going to parties with Steph as Tim, but he gets too shy to talk to anyone and hides in the corner, trying not to ruin the vibe. Alvin, though, he doesn't care what people think of him. He isn’t scared of looking ignorant. He’ll start a conversation with anyone.

Especially anyone who looks like they might be useful to Tim.

There’s a party house Alvin’s been to several times now, rented for a short lease and trashed most nights. He’s not sure anyone actually lives there or if the bedrooms are just for hookups. There’s usually a door fee for the big nights, when they get DJs in, but tonight it’s a birthday party. Some of the New York crowd might drop by; Alvin knows a couple of gangs well enough to be welcomed in, even though he doesn’t know the birthday girl.

"It'll be hot. You'll get tired." Tim gives Damian a considering look. "There's one in the narrows tonight, but it'll take us a while to get there. Not that it'll really get going until after midnight."

"So we can get dinner on the way. From somewhere with higher standards than Maroni's sidepiece, like that street vendor who refuses to name what meat is in his shawarma." Damian smirks.

Tim is pretty hungry, and he might be able to talk Damian out of this while they’re killing time. "Okay. Sure. Let's do this." He climbs down from the dumpster. Damian waits, and after a moment’s hesitation Tim puts his hand in the crook of Damian’s elbow, leading him out of the alley. "Let's go slumming."

#

The music is audible a block away. Tim’s stomach is well lined with shawarma and vegetarian samosas, and he’s actually kinda looking forward to it now. He’ll have a couple of beers, may even smoke a little if he can pass it off as Alvin doing so to Damian, talk to some artists and musicians, the sort of creative people he doesn’t get to hang out with as Tim Drake Wayne.

The windows are completely steamed up. The door is wide open, the shadows of the occupants cast in scintillating colours across the asphalt. Small groups are hanging around outside and Tim notices a couple of large black cars parked on the curb opposite that are attracting a lot of traffic.

He leads Damian through the crowd and into the yard, which he knows will be a little cooler. Damian’s already looking flushed and a bit harried, and he stands out amongst the party-goers both for his age and the fact he’s dressed like a middle aged bank manager. Tim had made him take off the sweater before they got here, but his shirt is too crisp, iron creases stark along the sleeves, and he’s only just popped his top button now they’re here.

He’s fucking adorable, but no one else is going to see it like Tim does.

Tim leaves him propped against a wall and dives back into the house to find them a couple of beers. The smell of weed is omnipresent and Tim clocks a couple of dealers - he spots Oregon Dave, in a corner of the kitchen with some other Gotham U students looking almost as out of place as Damian does here - but he’s more interested in the pros out front. There’s a cooler filled with now-warm water in the front room, bottles vibrating together as the bass rumbles through them. He grabs two, sticking one in the back pocket of Alvin’s baggy jeans, where it quickly soaks through the cheap denim, and starts peeling the label off the other as he scans the crowd.

It’s easy being Alvin here, throwing out opinions on any conversation he wanders past. Sure, the Knights are going to come good this season. Damn, he wishes he’d been there for Mucous Membrane’s gig at the Iceberg Lounge, he’d have been right there with them trashing the joint. No, see, the island is purgatory, right? They’ve been dead all along. It’s not even a real reboot, that’s the twist. Yeah, Vicki Vale is a b-

“Vale? I’ve got personal beef with Vale,” Alvin interrupts himself as Tim realises the subject of the conversation he’s just forced his way into. “Why, do you?”

“How can you have personal beef?” the stranger asks sceptically. “She doesn’t know the meaning of the word. She’s so shallow even a baby couldn’t fucking drown in her.”

“You don’t mean you actually care about, like, Bruce Wayne? Ickle baby manchild Brucie?” His blue-haired girlfriend gestures with her vape and blows a vanilla scented cloud into Tim’s face.

“First against the wall when the revolution comes,” Alvin says, wrinkling his nose at the sickly sweet smell. He goes to take a swig of his beer and finds he’s finished it, so he starts on the second one. He can get Damian another later. “No. I mean, he’s as bad as she is, and you know they used to fuck.”

“Get out! No.”

He’s gossiping about a gossip columnist. Go figure. “Yeah, man. But no, like. She’s been using my pictures. Without even fucking crediting me, let alone paying. Like because they’re on instagram they’re fair game.” Alvin raises a conspiratorial eyebrow. “I’m talking to an actual fucking lawyer. Got a case for copyright theft.”

“No fucking way.”

The guy who started the conversation snorts. “Lawyer. Yeah right. Like some law student, am I right? Not even that. Some girl who told you she’s stripping to put herself through law school.”

“Fuck you.” Alvin squares up to the stranger, who’s at least a foot taller than him. In the back of his head Tim is wondering where the hell he’s planning to go with this, because there’s no way Alvin could win a fight with this guy, though he’s easily stupid enough to pick one. “Where the fuck do you get off-”

“Alvin, right?”

“Vinnie,” Tim says, grateful for the distraction. He glances over his shoulder, not entirely comfortable taking his eyes off Vicki’s biggest hater, and takes in a slightly too-well dressed man mountain with bulging pockets and a cashbelt like a stay-at-home mom at the farmers market. Not a party-goer: the dealer Alvin and Damian met in Metropolis. “Fuck me. You’re a long way from home.”

The aggressive stranger takes in the dealer’s stature - even taller, and at least twice was wide - and he and his girlfriend melt into the crowd. One thing off Alvin’s plate, at least.

“You got a card yet, little man?”

Vinnie grins. “Nah, man, didn’t get organised. Seriously, what are you doing in Gotham? What have you got? I am having a sloooow night.”

“I’ve got a business proposition for you, is what I’ve got,” the dealer says. “If you’re still interested.”

“Fuck yeah.”

Tim follows in the big guy’s wake as he leads Vinnie back out onto the street.

This is interesting. Metropolis dealers in Gotham. He’s barely had time to follow up the Neon Knights links with the audit and everything going on, but he hadn’t seen any hints to suggest the trade was going both ways. Is he here to sell, or to recruit? There’s a couple of Neon Knights at the party Alvin is pretending not to recognise, but there isn’t a big gang presence otherwise. It’s a birthday party. Neutral territory, as far as anywhere in Gotham can be. Not a night anyone wants to get hurt.

The dealer opens the door of one of the big black cars, and Tim hesitates.

“What?”

“Isn’t this the point where you’re meant to offer me, like, candy or puppies, before I get into the van?”

He hasn’t got any weapons on him. He’s not even wearing a tracker. Damian doesn’t know where he is. If he has to fight his way out he’s going to have to shelve Alvin forever, which he’s been trying so hard to avoid.

“Oh, we’ve got candy,” a voice comes from inside the car. “And I think you know some people with a sweet tooth. Don’t you want a cut of Willy Wonka’s factory?”

Tim suspects Alvin’s role is going to be more candystriper than stockholder, but this is what he’s been angling for.

Fuck.

If the only thing that stands between him and death tonight is hoping really, really hard, Tim’s just going to have to cross his fingers and toes.

“I regret asking,” he says, as he climbs into the ridiculously large vehicle. “I made the whole thing creepy, didn’t I?”

The man sitting beside him huffs gently. “I’m glad you realise it.”

He’s familiar and Tim wishes he’d found time to peruse Metropolis’s police files. Middle aged, dressed not just in a suit but a black one, very funereal. Bells are ringing in the depth of Tim’s memory and he knows there’s a link with Oracle somewhere, but it’s not coming to him as quickly as he’d like.

“Vinnie,” he says, sticking out a hand.

“Mr Adams.”

Damn Metropolis’ villains not having nice, helpful monikers, like Isley or Nigma. How is he supposed to figure the guy’s identity out from ‘Adams’?

“I understand you’ve got a proposition for me.”

Tim’s very conscious that the big dealer has moved around the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. He really doesn’t want to be taken on a ride.

“Mitch here told me you had one for us.”

“And who’s us, exactly?”

Mr Adams smiles, lips pressed tightly together.

“You told Mitch you could get some interesting recreational chemicals. Is this true?”

Mitch ‘mmhmms’ from the front seat, where he’s messing about with the radio. The keys are in the ignition, but the engine is still silent.

“Well, I mean… Yeah. Basically.”

“Basically.”

“I can hook you up. What do you need?”

“I need reliable young men who are currently unaffiliated.”

“You mean to deal, or, like, are you asking me to pimp?” Tim scoots back across the seat and presses his back against the car door. He keeps both hands visible, but he can feel the handle against his hip and he knows just how quickly he could reach it if he needed to.

“That’s not my racket,” Mr Adams says. “No, to be… plain… I need dealers. I need dealers who don’t already work for someone in Gotham.”

“Oh, so, like, it’s better if I can’t hook you up, you’re saying?”

“There’s no harm in having a network, but I’m looking for people who are available to work for me exclusively.”

“You, or ‘us’.”

There’s a clunk, and Tim feels the door shudder behind him.

Locked.

Fuck.

“You would be working for me. I work for a larger organisation, but Gotham is my… franchise, shall we say.”

“Look, if I’m working for someone, I want to know who. Like, sure, I care who my manager is more than which logo is on the outside of the building, but if someone asks I need to know if I’m under the Colonel or Ronald McDonald, you know?” Tim tilts his chin up.

“Perhaps the better analogy would be Avon or Mary Kay. I am, after all, offering you the chance to be your own boss. Work for yourself. You’ll buy the product from me, and be responsible for selling it on yourself.”

“You won’t take a cut?”

“It’s an offer I only make to a select few.”

Yeah, Tim thinks, a select few idiots. The kind of wannabe dealers who’ll plunder their own stash, who are too unreliable to trust to sell it on. Better to get the money up front from someone like Alvin than assume he’ll manage to break even, taking his own pills, handing out free shit to friends, getting too high to do basic maths.

“Do I get a pink Cadillac if I recruit enough suckers below me?”

“You’ll be able to afford whatever Cadillac you want.”

“Why me?”

“Because you showed initiative, and because we believe you’ve got access to a market that has the potential to turn a tidy profit.”

“Damian’s friends, right? Mitch heard me talking to that guy about Vicki Vale. Everyone knows, even if she won’t fucking credit me for my own fucking photography.”

“You’ll be able to afford a real lawyer,” Mitch says from the front seat.

“Fuck you, I have a lawyer. They do free consultations, you know.”

Mitch and Mr Adams exchange an amused look in the rear view mirror. Tim feels about two inches tall, but he reminds himself Alvin wouldn’t even notice.

“So can I get something to start me off, then? Like, a starter kit, or whatever Mary Kay bullshit you want to call it?”

“Mitch will work out the details with you.”

There’s another clunk as the door behind him unlocks. Mitch lets himself out of the front seat, the car shifting as his bulk slips out of the door.

“Yeah, but-”

He’s cut off when the door opens behind him, spilling him out onto the sidewalk because he’d still had most of his weight against it. Mitch picks him up under his arms and sets him back on his feet. Mr Adams pulls the car door closed.

So they’re done then.

Tim roots around in his pockets for as much cash as he can find, which turns out to be just shy of $100, since he had wanted to give the impression Alvin was planning to pay for dinner. Well, he’d been planning to dine and dash, but they were supposed to get caught and he’d have to cover as much as he could, and Damian would have covered the rest, so Alvin is unusually flush. It gets him a couple of baggies of pills, including some crystalline chips Mitch claims are a form of kryptonite that affects humans, and a small baggie of weed Tim is probably going to smuggle home for personal use.

Alvin tries to haggle on the price, but Mitch points out he can sell the crystals for as much as he likes, since they’re new to the Gotham market.

“And you’ve still got a couple of hours to work the party,” he says.

“Man, these things go on way longer than that. Last time I- wait, what time is it?” Tim frowns.

“Two fifteen.”

“Shit. Really? Shit.”

“You got somewhere to be, Cinderella?”

“I left Dames in the yard. I was going to get drinks.” Tim isn’t feigning his guilt. “He doesn’t know anyone here. Fuck. What if someone else has got him something? What if it’s spiked? Fuck fuck fuck.”

Mitch shakes his head slowly. “So go find him.”

“Right. Yeah. Right. Thanks for the… you know.” Tim waves with the bag of crystals still in his palm.

Mitch rolls his eyes. “Just don’t fucking drop those, okay. Or mix ‘em with alcohol.”

“Right, sure. No alcohol. Got it.”

Tim dives back into the house. The damp heat hits him like a wave. Someone’s been sick on the stairs since he left and the smell pervades the cramped space, a sharp note under the fragrant weed and sickly sweet alcohol. The cooler full of beers is long since empty, and bottles of spirits lie abandoned against the wall. A very cosy game of beer pong is taking up most of the front room, barely three foot of space for the ball to bounce before it hits one of the watching crowd. The college students have left and the kitchen has been colonised by a group of girls all offering a miserable young woman advice on washing vomit out of her dreads; it’s someone else’s judging by the position, a white guy’s, judging by the immediate suspicion that falls on Tim as he tries to sneak past them. Tim holds up his hands in surrender and backs out of the kitchen door and into the yard.

He turns on his heel, but Damian’s not against the wall Tim left him by. Before he can panic, though, he realises Damian’s only moved a couple of feet - he’s stood in front of the back wall instead, back to Tim, in front of… Tim’s not sure. A lot of silver spray paint, applied by someone holding the can way too close to the wall. It might be a tiger? Or Damian’s name?

"There you are!"

He puts his hand on the back of Damian’s neck, where the tendons are standing out like suspension bridge cables. He rubs a small circle with his thumb against the top vertebrae, but Damian doesn’t relax.

"Damian?"

Damian’s shoulder slump. He gestures at the wall. "I'm… bad."

Oh thank god. It’s not just that Tim doesn’t get it.

"I mean…" Tim shrugs helplessly. "It's your first try, right?"

"Vinnie? You're Dee's boy? I didn't know you were a queer."

Tim looks up to see Anton, a graffiti artist from New York. At least that explains why Damian’s redecorating the wall, though Tim finds himself desperately curious as to how they even struck up enough of a conversation in the first place to lead to this. Anton’s standoffish at the best of times with the Gotham crowd, unsubtle about his attitude to the ‘little provincial town’ and its wannabes.

"You can't say that," another guy snaps. "Can he?" he addresses Alvin.

Tim takes a second to recognise Matt. He’s met him a few times as Alvin, at parties like this. He doesn’t know what sort of impression he’s left on the statuesque black guy, if he’s left one at all, but he hadn’t taken Matt for the sort of guy to care about homophobia. Tim has half an idea he might have seen Matt at a Neon Knights event, but it’s hard to be sure.

"Queer? I'm bi, not that it matters. Dames is my boyfriend.” Tim frowns. It feels weird, after talking with Bruce earlier, to come out again like this. It doesn’t feel like Alvin coming out. But then, Alvin’s already out, at least in his own mind.

Damian’s looking at him, something strange in his eyes, and Tim wonders if he’s slipped out of character, so he throws in, “Queer’s, like, a slur and woke, I guess?”

Damian immediately flinches, and the rest of the crowd react as the wave of secondhand embarrassment flows outwards.

Damian shrugs off Tim’s hand, which stings a bit considering Alvin just claimed him as his boyfriend in front of everyone. It’s not like it goes unnoticed, either - both Anton and Matt narrow their eyes, though Tim suspects it’s for different reasons.

"You joining Shaz's crew, babe?" Tim says, the endearment sickly on his tongue.

"I'm fucking up a perfectly good wall. I'm not good at this, Draper."

The surname is like a slap, almost as painful as being called Drake. Damian might as well physically push him away.

The urge to snap back rises in Tim. It’s on the tip of his tongue to agree with Damian, that he is terrible at this, and he should just give up, and accept he’s as flawed as the rest of the mere mortals who actually have to practice their art to achieve their goals, but agreeing doesn’t feel right. It’s not where the fight is meant to go. Damian doesn’t give him openings like this.

Damian doesn’t admit failure.

Damian… doesn’t know failure.

The stakes have always been too high.

Oh, Tim’s not delusional enough to think Damian’s always been good at whatever he put his hand to, but Talia’s idea of child-rearing involved putting him in the hands of tutors who would treat him like an adult at three years old. He learned perspective when most kids still painted the sky as a blue strip along the top of the page. He knew the golden ratio when his peers were still drawing their parents as smiley faces with the arms coming out of their ears.

He doesn’t remember learning. He just remembers doing.

Has Damian… has not tried anything new since coming to Gotham?

No, that’s obviously not true. But this isn’t watching a Disney movie with Dick or eating veggie chilli dogs with Jason.

He wants to reach out and put his hand back on Damian’s neck, but he doesn’t want to be shaken off again. Instead he shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels, offering Damian a sympathetic smile. "No one's perfect first time."

"I am,” Damian shoots back immediately. “I don't know how to be bad.” It’s a simple statement of fact, and if Tim didn’t know how hard it is for Damian to admit he doesn’t know something, even something as contradictory as failure, he’d assume it was arrogance.

In a much smaller voice, Damian adds, “I can't do this."

Tim wants to take him in his arms so badly. He knows the feeling, the fear, so intimately. On the other side of the yard Anton is saying something mocking and Tim’s back goes up. He positions himself between Damian and the experienced graffiti artist.

"It's school. It's broken me,” Damian says. “I've forgotten how to learn. I'm making the same mistakes I was an hour ago."

He looks at the wall, then down at Tim.

"An hour's not long," Tim says. “It does that, school. It’s why I dropped out. It’ll come back to you, though.”

Damian’s not paying attention to him any more, though. The energy around them has changed, and Shaz is demanding to know how old Damian is.

“He’s eighteen,” Tim says, a little lost. Matt looks like he wants to punch Alvin, and he’s not the only person present who’s glaring at them. Tim puts a steadying hand on Damian’s back, not sure what’s about to go down but not trusting a vulnerable Damian to de-escalate without prompting.

Matt lunges towards them and Tim tenses, but he just snatches the beer from Damian’s hand.

Oh, they’re not seriously mad about Damian drinking? What, do they think it’s some kind of sting operation?

Damian is equally unimpressed by the sudden desire to police his activities, and mutters sarcastically, “Not underage drinking."

Only now Damian says it Tim thinks he does look a little… well, not drunk, precisely. His eyes are red rimmed and wet, there’s a sheen of sweat on his skin and he’s pale under his tan. Damian presses the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, and when he pulls them away his eyes are even redder.

"Are you okay? Maybe we should head out," Tim says.

"I'm not drunk!" Damian snaps.

"I know. I know,” Tim soothes. “What's up?"

Damian rubs his eyes again and groans. "Headache."

"You wanna go out the front, get some fresher air, babe?"

"I'm not high, either." Damian lifts his head from his hands, blinks blearily at Tim, then goes back to rubbing his eyes.

Tim doesn’t reply, but he can’t resist the urge to rub his thumb over the steel cables in the back of Damian’s neck any longer.

Damian leans into his touch. "Five minutes. Just to clear my head. Headache."

The air has changed again - well, not the literal air, which is heavy with paint fumes - and the hostility has eased. Anton’s lost interest in them completely and returned to his art, but Shaz offers Damian some Tylenol and Matt is still hovering protectively, drinking the beer Damian had barely touched. They’re hanging over Damian like older siblings, because apparently Damian doesn’t have enough of them already.

Tim thanks Shaz for the pain pills and tugs Damian out of the yard before he gets the shovel talk from a gangbanger.

“Hey, dude, dude! It’s not purgatory. It’s a coma.”

“That’s Life on Mars, douche,” Tim tells the drunk guy in the 4 8 15 16 23 42 t-shirt. “Which is a fucking awesome show, but I’m busy.” He gestures to Damian, who’s stumbling through the house with his eyes mostly shut.

“I’ll DM you, man. You’re so fucking wrong.” Tim is ninety per cent certain he hasn’t given the guy his socials, but Alvin had been pretty chatty earlier.

He gets Damian to the kitchen and finds a relatively clean glass. The tap water is cloudy, but Damian downs it along with the pills and goes straight back for a second glass, and then another. It’s like watching a baby giraffe figure out how to lower its neck to drink from a stream for the first time. There’s been several moments in Damian’s puberty where his limbs have outgrown his ability to control them, but it’s been a while since Tim’s seen him so gawky.

After he downs the third glass of water Tim puts a hand out to stop him going for a fourth. Too much water on… whatever’s in his system right now, it’ll make him sick. And he’ll probably feel better after, purged, but it won’t last.

"Let's get some air.” Tim puts his hand on the small of Damian’s back and urges him back out of the kitchen.

The street is busier than it was earlier. Mr Adams’ car has gone, but it’s been replaced by a very similar one. A girl in a pleather miniskirt and handkerchief top is leaning against the door, head and shoulders through the window, talking to whoever is inside.

Tim lowers himself to the damp sidewalk. When Damian stays standing Tim reaches up and tugs on the waistband of his trousers. He drops like a marionette with cut strings, flopping bonelessly against Tim.

Tim rearranges him against his shoulder, but Damian slithers down his chest until his head lands in Tim’s lap. His eyes are shut before Tim can even react.

Tim rests one hand on Damian’s head and props himself up with the other on the sidewalk. It’s a mild night, but cool after the sweaty heat of the house party, and it’s nice to be outside. The sky above him is burnt umber, the light pollution obliterating any glimpse of stars. The windows glitter with the reflections of streetlights.

It’s a good party. Tim feels a sneaking guilt over how much he’s enjoyed himself, not including the encounter with Mr Adams. He wishes he hadn’t abandoned Damian for so long, but the kid seems to have made some friends. What would Damian’s school friends think of him now, hanging out with college students and adults?

"Hey."

A beer can appears in Tim’s field of vision. He follows the line from the large hand wrapped around it, up the well-muscled arm, to Matt’s face.

He accepts the beer and gestures of Matt to sit beside him, but the older guy shakes his head.

Tim pops the tab on the beer and takes a long sip. "Hey."

"He okay?" Matt asks, nodding at Damian.

"Yeah. I think the paint fumes just got to him."

"They're pretty brutal."

"No kidding." Tim’s own head aches a little, but it’s clearing up with the fresh air. The beer is crisp and sour on his tongue, and actually cold. He has no idea where Matt has managed to find a cold beer at this point in the party. He half wonders if he’s a Mr Freeze minion.

"You really his boyfriend?” Matt asks, shifting from foot to foot. “Like, you're fucking?"

"Worse than that: we're dating,” Tim dodges the question verbally and mentally, not letting his thoughts go there. “Went to a restaurant for dinner and everything."

"Anton says he's Damian Wayne."

Fuck Anton. Tim bets he reads Vale’s column. He’s so up himself, but of course he’s as obsessed with celebrity culture as the rest of them.

"Yeah," Tim says, swallowing the acknowledgement down with another gulp of beer.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah,” he says again, emphatically enough to quell Matt’s doubts.

There’s another lull in the conversation. Matt drains the last of his beer.

He crushes the can in his hand. "Kellie says she saw you talking to Adams."

"Yeah, and?" Does Alvin know Kellie? Tim can’t remember. She’s another Gotham Knight. Are she and Matt caught up in whatever’s going on too?

"You don't wanna get mixed up in that shit, Vinnie,” Matt says earnestly. “That's Metropolis shit. No one wants to get mixed up in that shit."

Tim’s taken aback by how serious he sounds. "I got my own reasons,” he mutters, hoping Matt won’t ask him what they are.

"You wanna drag him into that shit? No, don't answer that. You'll only piss me off." Matt glances to the side, then down at Damian.

"You just met the kid,” Tim objects. “What do you care what he gets into? Daddy can always bail him out."

"Boyfriend, he says, like it's normal,” Matt says, gesturing at Damian. “Like he's got nothing to fear. You wanna know why I care?” he asks, voice starting to tremble. “Last time someone said that to me, I gave them something to fear. And they…” He catches his breath.

Tim waits. Matt fights the paralysis in his throat for a moment, then manages to take a steadying inhale. “I never got the chance to make it right with them,” he says, “but I can make sure I don't get it wrong again."

It takes a moment to sink in. "Oh."

"Yeah.”

Did he hit them, Tim wonders. Did he threaten them? Did he destroy their life in other ways?

Did he kill them? Or did they kill themself, because of him?

Tim’s pretty insulated from the dangers face by most queer youths in Gotham. He’s too rich to be worth the risk of attacking, too well known in Gotham.

And he’s not out.

“You good, Vin?"

Vinnie’s out. Vinnie’s not famous. He’s not rich. He’s small and stupid and doesn’t have any real friends, not even at a party like this.

Tim lets himself feel it, feel Alvin’s grief for the stranger Matt blames himself for the death of. "I'm not bad,” he says quietly. “I haven't got nothing to fear, though. I got a lot of fear.” A lump rises in his throat.

Matt nods. Tim looks up, meeting his eyes, and a little of the fear eases. Matt’s looking out for him. Matt’s keeping him safe. He thinks Alvin is an idiot, a white boy appropriating his slang to make himself feel important, getting in over his head with real criminals to soothe his own ego, convinced of his own immortality.

Matt doesn’t like him, not on any level, but he’s not going to let anyone beat on Alvin for one of the few aspects of his life beyond his control.

“Damian doesn't,” Tim says. “Feel fear. I don't deserve him."

"No, you don't, especially if you get involved with Adams." Matt rolls his eyes. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a card, shoving it at Tim. "Take it."

"I-"

"Take it, Vin. You can call, or they do drop in sessions at the church on 49th. Whatever's making you act so fucking dumb, even by your standards, they can help."

It’s a card for Neon Knights.

Tim’s heart swells in his chest. He looks at the card, smudged and grubby, and he’s so proud of it. He wants to frame it and hang it on the mantelpiece.

He did this. He did this, and he made it available to Matt, and Matt is making it available to other people. Even people like Alvin.

Gotham can change. Tim can change Gotham.

It’s working.

"Thanks, Matt," he says, still staring at the card. When he looks up Matt has gone.

Damian stirs in his lap, breaking the spell the card has on Tim.

"Hey, Dames,” Tim says softly, squeezing his shoulder. “Time to go home."

Damian sits up, stretching. His spine audibly cracks. "I'm not asleep. What time is it?"

"Three, I think." Maybe even closer to four, now.

“The light pollution in this city is ridiculous.” Damian rolls his eyes at the offending sky. “What did Matt give you?"

Tim holds it up. "Card for Neon Knights. He left East Side Dragons last year. It's good to know he's stayed clear."

The street has cleared out since they sat down, but the party inside is still going strong. There’s a nip in the air that suggests tomorrow is going to have clear skies, which would be nice if Tim ever had the opportunity to enjoy a sunny day.

He stands and helps Damian to his feet. He’s still a little coltish and knock-kneed, but it seems like that’s just the impromptu nap, rather than the remains of any illicit substances in his system.

"Should we go back in?"

"On a school night?” Tim teases. “They'll eat me alive. You made a lot of friends tonight." He’s genuinely pleased for Damian.

"I made a fool of myself,” Damian says under his breath. Tim rolls his eyes and bumps him with his shoulder. Damian’s posture improves a little, but he still doesn’t seem to believe Tim.

Tim sets off towards the railway arches at the end of the block. He knows what will help Damian’s mood.

As they approach the dirty yellow cart Damian overtakes him and before Tim can say anything he’s pulling out his wallet. In short order Tim is clutching two large bags of skin-on fries, so greasy the paper is translucent, the smells of suspiciously old fat and a heart-attack’s worth of salt winding their way around his body like a double helix of delicious DNA. It’s heavenly, and it’s all he can do to stop himself plunging headfirst into one of the bags like a starved raccoon.

Damian grabs two sodas: Zestis, and Tim wants to ask if he really likes them, or if it was the best of a bad bunch, or if he knows that Tim likes them, but bites his tongue. He holds the fries a little away from his body, conscious the grease is already seeping through and staining his shirt, and asks instead, "How's your head?"

"Still hurts. I can tolerate it now, though." Damian pops open one of the sodas. "Have you got any more Tylenol?"

It takes a bit of juggling, but Tim manages to get the packet out of his pocket without dropping any fries.

They make their way to a subway station. Two of the benches have people sleeping rough on them and Tim makes a note to see if he can send someone from Neon Knights over tomorrow to see if they can offer the individuals anything; not everyone wants to stay in a shelter (and in Gotham, Tim completely understands why) but they have the facilities to clean and repair sleeping bags and coats and lockers to store them in during the day, and cheap coffee and clean bathrooms and information about all of the free clinics in the city. The council hate the program, because it doesn’t get people off the street and out of sight, but an anonymous donor keeps throwing money at it every time there’s a whisper it might come under fire and Tim just shrugs and spreads his hands when he’s questioned about what sort of person is paying for this.

Jason. It’s Jason.

But Tim pretends he doesn’t know.

The third, empty bench is damp and cold. Tim wipes the condensation off it with a napkin from the foodcart. The fries are still finger-burningly hot and the oil clings to his fingers like perfume. He can’t eat them fast enough, stuffing handfuls into his face and feeling the roof of his mouth blister and not even caring.

Damian is more methodical, one fry at a time, but it’s an efficient conveyor belt system and he finishes his bag before Tim. He downs his soda, and takes their trash over to the nearest can just as the train pulls in.

Tim catches Damian yawning as they embark. The carriage is empty but for them, the rows of threadbare seats in clashing shades of 70s-esque orange upholstery face off against each other warily. Damian leads them to the rear end of the carriage and drops down next to an ad for a local STD clinic.

"Where are we going?" Damian asks,twisting to look at the graffiti scratched into the window.

"Alvin's place. It's closest, and I got the sofabed out earlier." And the bruises to prove it.

"Shouldn't let that work go to waste."

"You mock, but I've had easier battles with Killer Croc."

Damian’s still frowning at the tags on the window. Tim wipes his hands on his pants self-consciously, then reaches up to push a stray strand of hair back behind Damian’s ear. He keeps it so short it’s rare to see any part of it out of place.

Damian tilts his head, pressing into Tim’s palm. It feels like a question. A request.

"Six stops," Tim says. "Twenty minutes." Long enough for another nap.

Damian’s lips don’t move, but Tim thinks he can see a small smile in the corner of his eyes. A tiny crease that says ‘thank you’, unspoken like the rest of the conversation. Damian lowers his head into Tim's lap, pulling his feet up onto the seat beside him to lie on his side.

Tim rests one hand on Damian’s head, rubbing his fingers against the soft fuzz of his undercut. It’s like stroking a cat.

Or Titus. Because Tim has definitely stroked Titus, no matter what Damian thinks.

"I had a good time," Damian says quietly.

Tim hadn’t been sure. "Good. That's good."

"I'm sorry I outed you- Vinnie." Damian pauses. "Are you bi?"

Tim forces his fingers to keep working in Damian’s hair, though his heart has stopped in his chest.

This shouldn’t be hard to say. Not now. It should be obvious. It shouldn’t need saying.

He shouldn’t have to say it.

He has to say it.

"Yes."

Damian reaches out and takes Tim's free hand in his. Tim hopes he doesn’t notice how sweaty Tim’s palm is. "Thank you for telling me."

Tim swallows.

Why does he feel like more of a coward for saying it to Damian now than he did for not saying it?

He sees Damian in Tim’s apartment, asking Tim to say no to sex.

He sees Damian in the hotel room, talking about dick pics.

He sees Damian coming out to Bruce.

He sees Damian breaking the kiss in the car.

He sees himself, keeping silent every time. Every time it was relevant, every time that coming out could have changed the path they were on, he let Damian assume he was straight. That whatever was happening, there was this big, immutable roadblock that neither of them could do anything about, so it was all just pretend anyway.

He’s forced Damian to ask him outright. Put the burden of his own coming out on Damian’s shoulders as well. And he said thank you, like it wasn’t long past time for Tim to volunteer the information on his own, like he hasn’t been lying by omission the whole time.

And Tim doesn’t even know what Damian is going to do with the information.

The rest of the journey passes in silence.

Chapter Text

It’s very awkward how audibly his ass is buzzing. Mr Adams is frowning at him.

“My insta is, like, blowing up,” Tim says, shrugging. “Everyone wants a piece of Vinnie these days.”

“Turn it off,” Mr Adams says.

“Nah, man.”

“Yes.”

“But-”

“Turn it off, or we’re done here.”

Tim makes a big show of pulling Alvin’s battered phone out of his pocket, screen and protector both shattered in different patterns, a dozen retro charms dangling from it. He holds it up so the screen is facing Mr Adams and holds down the power button until it shuts down.

He didn’t risk bringing his own phone, but he’s got one of Bruce’s trackers sewn into his underpants. They’re in a warehouse filled with brightly printed leggings and flannel dresses stacked high on unvarnished pine shelves, the smell of moth repellent strong in the air. The early afternoon sunlight coming through the high windows that separate the walls from the roof has bleached the edges of the packaged leggings. Two large skylights make the room even lighter, one of which would give a lovely view of the Batsignal at night.

Someone has really thought about how to design a warehouse to discourage Gotham’s gangs from moving in. There’s even a patterned carpet covering the floor that would make any blood stains stand out a mile.

Shame it hasn’t deterred Metropolis’s organised crime. Maybe they’re used to working in bright and airy conditions.

Mr Adams narrows his eyes. “You need to take this seriously. If you screw it up not only will you not get another chance, but you’ll significantly limit opportunities for others.”

“I mean, is that really my problem?”

“They’ll make it your problem.”

“Oh.”

“Tell me about this gala.”

“It’s at the Royal Hotel. For, um. I want to say diabetes? Or epilepsy? Something medical. The Electric Unicorn are playing. And there’s going to be one of those silent auctions. Dames says if I bid on something he’ll pay for it, so I’m hoping the Unicorns are selling, like, a meet and greet or something.” None of Alvin’s rambling seems to be what Mr Adams is looking for. “The Unicorns are cool, man,” he clarifies. “People want to see them. Cool people.”

“What sort of music?” Mitch asks from behind Mr Adams. “What’s going to sell here? MDMA, speed, coke?”

Tim has absolutely no idea what the illegal narcotic pairing for memepunk is. What makes people think they’d look good on tiktok, apart from weird food supplements and cabbage water?

“Coke?” he guesses. God knows he’s seen enough powdered noses as Tim Wayne at these events.

Mr Adams nods to Mitch.

“I’ve got a leather wallet for you,” Mitch says. “Specially designed. Lead lined.”

Tim scoffs as he accepts it. “That’s so fucking Metropolis. The Bat can’t see through shit. …Probably.”

Oh, he’s keeping this. It’s too large to sit comfortably in his pocket - it looks more like an iPad mini case than a billfold - but it’s not as rigid as he expected, and there’s space for plenty of cards. There’s a hidden pocket that’s bigger than it ought to be, with a couple of baggies of pills already inside it. He wants to take it home and see how many gadgets he can fit inside and run it through an x-ray machine to see how good the lining is. He’ll be able to sneak all sorts of things past Superman.

“Do you have a tuxedo?”

“Dames is sorting it for me.”

“Make sure it has a large inside pocket.” Mr Adams looks him over again. “No make up, clean hair - if you have time for a cut, make it a short one, but not shaved - manicure, polished shoes with tipped laces. Do you understand?”

“Undertaker gear, like you?”

“You need to look like you belong. Do not get searched. Remove your jewellery.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Have you seen half of Gotham’s elite?”

“You are not elite. They know that. If you attempt to pass yourself off as one of them you will be punished for your lack of deference. They want your product, not you. They do not see the contradiction in turning you in for supplying what they demand.”

“That… yeah.” Tim sighs. “Yeah.”

A flicker of something that might be called sympathy in another person crosses Mr Adams’ face.

“Have you got the money?” Mr Adams asks.

Alvin had to borrow it from Damian, under the guise of getting his car repaired. Tim took it out of one of Bruce’s accounts, so there’s a paper trail. It’s… a lot. More than Damian should ever lend to a boyfriend, especially one he’s only been dating a few weeks.

Tim hands over the wedge of cash.

“You’re getting this at cost, near enough,” Mr Adams says. “It’s not a deal I offer just anyone. You’ve got an opportunity here to become your own boss. To make the kind of money that allows you to stand at Damian Wayne’s side with pride.”

“If you spend the money you make at the gala on more product,” Mitch says, “you’ll be able to double your profit at the next event. You’ve got my number.”

“And you’ve got mine,” Tim says, frowning. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like how this ought to work.

There’s a commotion outside. There’s only two doors in the whole warehouse - the loading bay and a fire exit at the rear - and no sewer access. Mr Adams’ mouth thins.

“What’s going on?” Tim asks.

“Nothing to concern you.”

“I left my car out there.”

“Believe me, no one is going to steal that.”

“It looks like someone set it on fire already,” Mitch adds. He’s pulled a gun from his shoulder holster and is moving towards the loading bay doors from an angle.

“Someone did,” Tim says.

He’s still driving the stolen goods he picked Damian up in for their first date, but leaving it parked outside of Alvin’s apartment unattended hadn’t done it any favours. The scorched shell is covering a brand new V8 and a beautifully tuned suspension, but it still pops and bangs and backfires every few yards for reasons even Tim can’t figure out. It’s almost like it’s mad at him for letting such an indignity happen to a sporty little model like her. Doesn’t he know how many people want her? Like the police, for one, and her original owners?

He has never loved a car more. Her name is Pansy and their relationship is a jealous and stormy one.

The bay doors slam upwards and bullets start flying. Tim throws himself behind a crate of tunics. He has no idea what’s going on and he hates it. This warehouse isn’t sat in the territory of any of the existing Gotham crime families. Almost none of the Rogues operate during daylight hours. No one has noticed the 100 starting to move in on Gotham apart from Tim.

He starts edging towards the fire exit at the back. There’s a Red Robin costume stashed in Pansy’s trunk.

The two men Mr Adams left outside are down. Mitch is laying down a hail of suppressing fire from amongst a cluster of shop dummies. Tim glances back at the fire exit to see Mr Adams disappearing through it.

Huh. He’s fast for an old guy.

Mitch drops to one knee with a grunt.

“Surrender now,” a mechanical voice intones, “and your medical bills will be covered.”

Fuck.

Jason.

“Which ones?” Mitch calls back, still reloading.

“That shattered shin.” Red Hood pauses. “Why, you want me to throw in a concussion and some broken fingers?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of my insulin.” Mitch fires four more shots, one of which ricochets off Jason’s helmet and embeds itself in a pile of pug-and-doughnut leggings to Tim’s left.

“Done,” Hood says. “What about you? You going to turn yourself in, or just let your big friend take the heat?”

It takes Tim a minute to realise Jason’s talking to him. To Vinnie.

“Leave the kid out of it,” Mitch says. He fires at Jason again.

“For that, you’re getting the generic.” Jason aims at Mitch’s feet.

“I’m already on the generic, you dick.”

Mitch is trying to buy him time to get out.

Fuck.

Why do people like Vinnie so much? No one who’s known Tim for five minutes puts their life on the line for him like this (not that he doesn’t have people who will put their lives on the line. It just took them longer to warm up to him).

Tim stands up, hands out in front of him, visibly empty.

“Red Hood, right? I’ve heard of you.”

Recognise me, he screams mentally. See through me.

“You heard of what I do to dealers?”

“...Yes. Yes I have.”

Don’t recognise me, a smaller voice pleads.

His relationship with Jason has improved over the years, but he still has nightmares about him. It’s different to Damian. He doesn’t understand Jason. Damian, Tim always understood, always followed his logic. Insecure and jealous, lashing out, easy to read. Easy to push the buttons of. Whenever it had been too long since the last fight and the anxiety about the next attack threatened to overwhelm him Tim could provoke it, could get it over with.

He couldn’t provoke Jason, though, because it was never about him. All of Jason’s rage was about Bruce, and Tim was just another way to hurt Bruce. He was entirely dependent on whether Bruce provoked Jason. Or Talia, or the Joker, or anyone, really. Anyone that made him see green.

Jason like this, talking about heads in bags, that’s a Jason who’s feeling provoked.

“So why aren’t your hands around your fucking ears?” Jason says, and fires.

Tim’s shin flares and burns and radiates pain like a nuclear blast, heat flooding up his leg until his joints boil and his vision turns white, and he drops to his knees.

Mitch opens fire on Jason again.

“Stop! Stop!” Tim yells, but he’s inaudible over the gunfire.

Oh god, Mitch is going to die. Jason is going to kill him and it’s Tim’s fault. He’s just some Metropolian goon who’s in over his head and thought Vinnie was an easy mark. Tim could save him, he knows he could.

But not if he blows his cover right now.

Shit. Shit. How does he make this stop without blowing his cover?

His jeans are soaked with blood, but now the first flush of pain is past he’s pretty certain it’s just a flesh wound. Jason isn’t shooting to kill, not even to maim. Well, not deliberately. Vinnie doesn’t have insurance; he’d hobble home with this wound and try and dress it with bandaids and mouthwash, and end up drowning in medical debt once his landlord dragged him to hospital to get his suppurating, gangrenous leg amputated in a few weeks’ time, if he was lucky.

“Police!”

Tim’s not sure how long they’ve been hailing from outside the warehouse, but the call comes through in a brief break in gunfire, like an embarrassing statement sounding twice as loud in a lull during a busy lunch period.

Jason snorts, buzzing through the helmet’s mouthpiece. “That’s my cue,” he says.

Tim glances over at Mitch. He’s reloading, focused on his own survival now. It’s clear to Tim Jason’s been shooting to miss, but Mitch doesn’t know that.

He turns to look at Jason, and catches the tail end of a blur of motion as Jason launches himself towards Mitch.

Mitch is down before he can see what hits him, which would be one of Jason’s massive fists. He hasn’t even fully hit the floor when Jason pivots, springing across the warehouse to kick Tim in the head.

At least, he tries. Tim’s already rolling, arms up to protect his head.

He’s got maybe three seconds before the police bust in.

Jason hasn’t tried to kill him in years, but right now, when it feels like he’s trying, it takes every scrap of courage Tim can summon and then some to say, “Jay, it’s me, it’s the replacement.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then the doors crash open.

“Hands up! This is the Gotham Police Department! You are-”

A big hand grabs Tim by the back of his hoodie and lifts him bodily off the ground. Tim nearly passes out the first time his injured leg is slammed into a clothing rack on the way past, but unfortunately stays conscious for the next three times it happens as well.

The police are at the back door too. Jason fires a couple of warning shots to clear a path, then switches to his grapple gun.

“Leave him. Red Hood is above our paygrade,” Tim hears below them, as the ground disappears from beneath him.

He’s still dangling like a wayward kitten, and he’s very aware that Vinnie’s hoodie was already coming apart at the seams before this. If Jason doesn’t put him down very soon gravity is going to take care of it for him.

They hit a rooftop just as Vinnie’s hood parts company from the sweatshirt and he lands face down on the mossy concrete.

He starts pushing himself up, but a boot in the middle of his back stops him.

“How’d you know that name?”

“For fuck’s sake, Jason, it’s me. Tim. I’m undercover.”

Jason rolls him over with the tip of his boot. Tim finds himself blinking at the barrel of a gun.

There’s a pause, a two breath pause, before Jason lowers it.

Tim’s pretty certain the second breath is just Jason messing with him.

Probably.

“The fuck were you doing in there?” Jason pulls off his helmet.

“Working a case.”

“What, as Seattle’s last Cobain wannabe?”

“Grunge never died, it just gentrified,” Tim says. “Vinnie’s got an aesthetic, okay? Do you know how hard it is to find 90s plaid in thrift shops these days?” The jeans are a complete wreck, blood soaked from the tattered hem to mid thigh on one leg, the other splattered and sticky.

“Vinnie, huh? Would that be the same Vinnie stalking the baby bat?” Jason smirks, but the expression falters as he follows Tim’s gaze to his leg. “Aw, fuck.”

“Yeah. That… got complicated,” Tim says, pulling the frayed denim away from the wound. The bullet only grazed him, but there’s a lot of cotton fibres in the gash it left. “The plan is I use Damian as a connection on behalf of the 100, an in to a market most of Gotham’s dealers can’t touch.”

“I can take you to Thompkins’ clinic, if you want to stay in character.”

“Fuck that. Mr Adams is long gone and Mitch is under police custody. No one’s going to look for Vinnie right now. Take me to the cave.”

Jason grimaces. “Gotham General? I-”

“You shot me, Jason.” Tim looks up, meeting his eyes with a challenge.

Guilt wins out. “Fine.”

“And you can tell me how you knew about the 100 on the way. I thought I was the only one aware they’re trying to move on Gotham.”

“They’re bringing girls from Metropolis to try and squeeze out local trade. Got a lot of pissed off sex workers demanding I do something about it.”

Jason puts his helmet back on and swings Tim up and over his shoulder, so its rim digs into Tim’s bruised hip.

“They’re coming in at street level,” Tim says.

“No, not street sex work. Escorts, mostly working the white collar crowd. Business cards in hotel rooms, discrete websites.”

“Are they college girls?”

Jason snorts. “Yeah, they’re all MBAs and arts students, apparently, just paying off their student loans.” The sarcasm is heavy even through the voice modulator.

“They all wearing glasses in their glamour shots?”

“Oh yeah.”

“The 100 are targeting Gotham’s upper middle class. Fewer targets but bigger money, and too concerned with their reputations to ever go to the police.” Tim chews his bottom lip. “Alvin’s a weird ‘in’, though. Sure, he’s dating Damian, but he’s basically trash.”

“Gee, you’ve sure got a high opinion of yourself.” Jason sounds a little disconcerted.

“That’s the whole point of Alvin,” Tim dismisses Jason’s concern.

“Let me rephrase that,” Jason says, tone sharpening. “You’ve sure got a low opinion of guys like Alvin.”

“He’s a wannabe dealer, Hood. You can’t defend him,” Tim protests. “He’s piggybacking on Damian’s status, but he’s a coward with no morals and even less integrity.”

Even as he says it, though, he finds himself bristling at his own words. Alvin isn’t completely without integrity; his art, at least, he holds dear. And he genuinely likes Damian, in a way that very few people do. He’s just desperate for something he can’t define, something out of reach, and every half hearted scammer that crosses his path can sense it. He wants to be someone and he’ll take any shortcut offered to him.

“He that different to all your Knights? You feel that way about them?”

Tim sighs. “One of my Knights tried to save him from himself the other day,” he says. “They’re better than he is. They’ve got the self-awareness to get out. Alvin’s digging himself deeper.”

“You can’t just slap a fake moustache on and call it a day, can you, Pretender? Got to go all Matches Malone.”

Tim shakes his head. There’s something about Matches that’s tugging on a thread. “He’s a born lackey. Matches, not Alvin. Alvin’s too flakey. Why wouldn’t they approach something like Matches?”

“He’s unaffiliated?” Jason asks. “Does it matter?”

“They’re recruiting out of Neon Knights. Everyone’s unaffiliated. Why Knights, though? Why people who are trying to get out? And why Alvin, when he isn’t?”

“And how did you end up in the middle of my bust?” Jason asks.

“Who tipped you off? It’s not exactly standard operating procedure, not for Gotham. Or were you looking for some cute new sweatpants?”

“Yeah, because these thighs need an off brand nyan cat stretched out across them to get people’s attention. How’s the blood loss?”

“Pretty loose,” Tim admits. His head is throbbing and his vision is starting to sparkle. “We nearly there?”

“I thought I just grazed you?” Jason swings Tim around in his arms to get a better look at the wound, supporting his torso on one arm with his head dangling like a baby that’s proving especially hard to burp. It’s a small balm to Tim’s ego that he grunts, at least. “Fuck’s sake. We must have left a trail King Shark could follow across town.”

“‘Snot that bad,” Tim protests. He belches, and feels a little better, but then the headache snaps tight around the back of his neck again. “Can we get a ride?”

“Agent A? Can you send something inconspicuous to Newtown? For Tim. No, in civvies. Well, in disguise. Yeah, him. No, I- No, but- Alfred, I- … Okay. Sure.”

Jason drops them down into an alley. He leans Tim against the wall and yanks his helmet off. “Looks like I’m coming with you,” he says.

Tim focuses on not slithering down the wall, as much as his body wants to. Jason ignores him and starts stripping off his holsters.

“We getting an uber?” Tim asks.

“Alfred’s busy. He’s sending that guy from the driving service, the one Bruce uses when he wants to get all of us to a gala and doesn’t fancy the minivan.”

“I’ve been shot in the leg,” Tim says. “Dave is going to have questions.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’d have questions about why Tim Drake was shot, but he wasn’t, was he? Damian’s lowlife boyfriend got shot. Or something else. You don’t have to show him the wound. Just make a big deal about how you don’t have insurance.”

Oh, right.

“And you know Vinnie?”

“Apparently I do now. Fuck.” Jason runs his hand through his hair. “We’ll figure it out.”

#

Jason skulks around the cave while Alfred cleans Tim’s wound. He doesn’t say sorry out loud, but Tim gets the message.

It hurts to stand, but Tim rebels against using his old crutches again. Tim isn’t wounded, after all; Vinnie got shot during a handoff, not Tim. For some reason the logic doesn’t work on the torn muscle fibres, so Alfred has Jason carry him upstairs.

“You’re staying here tonight,” Alfred says firmly. “If you’re determined to walk into Wayne Enterprises, you need to stay off that leg as much as possible. I’ll have one of the accessible guest rooms made up for you. Jason, would you fetch one of the spare wheelchairs? Manual.”

“If you’re loaning him a chair,” Jason says, “why did I have to lug his skinny ass up here? There’s spares in the cave. He could have taken the elevator.”

Alfred gives Jason a stern look.

“Fine, fine, whatever.” Jason deposits Tim on a stool at the breakfast counter and slopes off to the storage room by the garage.

As soon as he’s gone Alfred pulls a tray full of unbaked cookies from the fridge and promptly sticks them in the stove. The smell is wafting through the room within minutes.

Tim hides a smile behind a glass of orange juice as Jason returns and gets hit with the full force of Alfred’s stratagem. He can no more leave the manor now than if Alfred had chained him to the table.

“Where’s Bruce?” Jason asks gruffly.

“Working with Mr Kent, I believe.”

“You believe?”

“Well, Mr Kent lured him out of Gotham with the promise of a case,” Alfred says. “But Martha Kent recently visited Metropolis, so I suspect the real motivation may have been soliciting assistance in eating the Justice League’s weight in fruit pies.”

That startles a laugh out of Jason. “You know Clark’s said something to her, and she’s decided Bruce needs a bit of mothering, and now Clark can’t get out of it.”

“Yes, Clark said something,” Alfred says dryly.

#

Tim’s starving. It’s morning, some kind of sensible time of the morning where the sun is up, but not too high. There’s an alarm going off in another room. He’s slept past the time he’d normally leave for the office, but woken before he really wanted to. His calf is throbbing where his duvet has tangled itself around the wound.

He takes a couple of painkillers and swings himself out of bed and into the wheelchair he left at its side last night. He’s going to have to make some kind of excuse for not going into the office today. He had planned to make up for skipping out early yesterday - he’d left at lunch to give himself time to change into Alvin before the drop off - and now he’s going to have to call out again. He can’t go back until he can walk, though, that much is clear to him.

The painkillers kick in while he’s halfway to the kitchen, the hallway suddenly taking on the glow of nostalgia. The chair starts to glide more easily over the carpet, and isn’t it a lovely carpet, all autumnal tones, and doesn’t it complement the wooden panelling? Tim wonders who chose it. Thomas Wayne? A previous ancestor? Bruce has done very little decorating himself. But it’s in good condition, despite being in one of the main thoroughfares of the house, so perhaps it’s newer than the style suggests. Does Alfred find pieces that match the existing decor? Does he commission exact copies? Or perhaps there’s a whole attic full of hallway runners, all rolled up and ready to replace the old ones as soon as they start to wear thin.

“Master Tim?”

Tim’s head jerks up, and he realises he’s almost overbalanced the wheelchair trying to get a closer look at the carpet.

“Alfred?”

“Master Damian has been working with young Master Kent and didn’t return until late. Would you take Titus out for his morning constitutional?” Alfred is holding an old leather leash, but there’s no sign of the elderly dog.

“Jon’s back?” Tim asks. “Damian must be thrilled. Or furious.”

“I believe they spent the night liberating animals from a cosmetics testing laboratory.”

“Thrilled, then.”

There’s a sting of jealousy that Tim shoves aside. Damian doesn’t have many friends, and he’s lucky that he can count himself among them now, or at least amongst his friendly acquaintances.

“I thought I wasn’t to walk on my leg?” Tim asks, eyeing the leash in Alfred’s hand warily.

“A short tour of the accessible portions of the upper garden will suffice. The lead is Titus’s preference; he can’t chase his humans like he used to and likes to keep them close.” Alfred looks down at the length of leather with fondness.

“Are you sure he wouldn’t rather have Damian?”

“He likes you well enough,” says Alfred. “You should make haste, in order to be done before breakfast.”

“Yes, but-”

“He’s waiting at the morning room door.” Alfred places the leash in Tim’s lap. “We will see you shortly.”

Titus sits by the window. He raises a paw when Tim clips the leash to his collar, gesturing towards the garden. He’s too old to do anything as juvenile as tug on the leash, but it’s clear he isn’t enjoying the delay to his morning routine.

Tim follows Titus through the french windows at the end of the room, his arm muscles complaining about the unfamiliar movements required to keep the chair’s wheels rolling. Alfred nods to them through the kitchen window, where he’s wreathed in steam from a boiling kettle like a benign djinn, ready to grant all one’s breakfast wishes.

The conversation he had with Damian back in Metropolis nags at him and he feels like he’s got something to prove. The old dog keeps glancing back at him, like he doesn’t understand why Tim has replaced Damian in what’s clearly much-cherished master-pet time. He keeps three feet ahead of Tim, who’s wound the leash around the handle of the chair rather than hold it, and leads them past Alfred’s rose garden without stopping for so much as a sniff.

There’s a small copse at the edge of the garden, little more than three or four trees deep with a manicured path winding between them, but it cuts them off from the house briefly, and they’re surrounded by bird song. It’s a warm morning for the time of year, the big drops of dew on the leaves and spiderwebs already shrinking to fill the air with heavy moisture. Down in the city the stink of garbage will be inescapable, but here the world smells of soil and fruit.

Titus paces around the chair, choosing a spot behind it for a little privacy while he does his business. Tim isn’t sure if he’s supposed to clean up after him - Alfred hasn’t given him a baggie or anything, and it’s not like he’s going on concrete, where it’ll sit and fester in the sun. Here it’s just more compost.

Right?

He really doesn’t want to touch dog shit. Not today. Not any day.

Titus reappears around the front of the chair. Tim reaches a nervous hand out. Titus sniffs it, then rubs his jaw against Tim’s palm.

The hair around Titus’s mouth is a wiry grey now. He’s old for his breed, but Tim can’t imagine the manor without him any more. Ace passed away last year, and Titus clearly misses his old friend, but no one has suggested bringing a new dog in. Maybe it’s because they all assume Damian is going to leave for college next year - Bruce doesn’t keep pet-friendly hours, often gone for days at a time, and Alfred can’t be expected to train and exercise a lively puppy on top of his other duties - but it doesn’t feel right to leave the manor un-hounded.

A little of Titus’s drool drips onto Tim’s hand and he jerks it back automatically, wiping it hurriedly on his pant leg.

“We should go back,” Tim says to the dog. “I need to wash my hands.”

“I mean. Um.” It’s just drool. Sure, he should wash his hands before breakfast, but he should do that anyway.

But it’s on his hands. What if he touches something?

And he got it on his pants, too. He’s got to change his pants.

Titus’s still staring at him, so Tim reaches out to touch the one thing that’s definitely safe to touch: Titus.

He’d always wanted a pet as a kid. It wasn’t practical, of course. He was at boarding school during the week and his parents were travelling. It wouldn’t have been fair on an animal.

He’d thought about asking Bruce, when he was adopted, but he’d known what the answer would be. A distraction. A vulnerability. Unnecessary to the mission.

Besides, he hadn’t really wanted one by then anyway.

His mom had always said they couldn’t have pets because animals carried diseases. She’d seen some documentary about the Black Death as a child and had carried the horror of it with her for the rest of her life. If he’d gone to a friend’s house where they had pets, he had to take his clothes off in the boot room before she’d let him into the rest of the house.

Looking back, he wonders if she was allergic to dander. But she didn’t know it, so she just thought she was getting sick every time she got near animals and it just confirmed all her anxieties. There’s no way of knowing now.

He hasn’t inherited any allergies, but the anxieties passed themselves right on down to him. Disease vectors brought right into people’s homes, eating at their tables, sleeping on their beds, playing with their children. Absolutely baffling behaviour.

He knows Titus is clean. Intellectually, he knows it. Even instinctually, he guesses, because he’s not bothered by the idea of Titus being dirty. But the idea he might make Tim dirty is pretty ingrained. He feels like a contaminant. Like patient zero.

His mother was an anxious person. She never really talked about her own parents; he thinks they might still have been alive when Jack’s death left him orphaned, but he hadn’t seen them in over a decade, and his mother’s will had been very clear they weren’t ever to have guardianship of him. It was clear they had left his mother with a lot of hang ups, so Tim doesn’t really fault her for passing some of the extra weight on to him. He’s got pretty good at tracing his more irrational behaviour back to its roots over the years, and excising anything that doesn’t serve him, but he hasn’t had to think about pets for a while now. It’s weird to have it laid bare when he’s been happily visiting the manor and its increasingly large menagerie for years without making the connection, just because he didn’t come into physical contact with the animals.

He doesn’t even want to touch the wheels of the chair to propel himself back to the house. He’d rather walk and risk damaging his leg.

But he can’t. Vinnie got shot, not Tim. Tim has to be able to walk come Monday.

Vinnie.

Vinnie loves animals. Vinnie loves Titus.

Just thinking about it has Tim’s hand halfway back to Titus’s head.

Vinnie is the person he can be that his mother would have hated and it does make it easier to bring himself to touch the chair again with that in mind.

Vinnie can bring whatever he likes down on his own head. His mother was a big believer in people’s agency. It cut both ways, the idea that you could take your destiny in both hands and be whatever you wanted to be if you put your mind to it, because if your life didn’t turn out the way you wanted you only had yourself to blame.

Yourself and all the rules you hadn’t followed, whether you knew they existed or not.

Of course that was anxiety talking: it’s clear as day to him now. His mother’s need to do everything right, all of the time, because otherwise something terrible would happen. Each time a single example of something going right or wrong would become a universal rule that must be followed without deviation. And if a later incident contradicted it, well, that was a sign the rule was more nuanced, and needed following in even more convoluted ways.

On the one hand, Tim does know better. There’s no one path to a safe life, a sound life, a life without pain. There’s no life that is safe, after all. But on the other, he’s more than familiar with all the missteps a person can make without thinking that guarantee pain.

Take Bruce, for example. Of course his parents’ death wasn’t his fault. Of course there was nothing he could have done to save himself from that pain. But at the same time, there were a hundred little micro-decisions that put his family on their path that fateful night - did he stop to tie his shoes before they left the cinema? Did he go to the bathroom? Was he tired, and walking more slowly? Or was he excited, and leading his parents down that alley faster than they might have gone otherwise? Was their enthusiastic chatter what drew the mugger to them? What if Martha hadn’t worn pearls? What if Thomas had chosen a different film?

He sees his mother in Bruce, in the way he pours over details to determine cause and effect. He doesn’t take it to the same place of judgement that she did, but there’s no way he hasn’t wondered which meaningless choices might have changed his whole world that night.

Janet Drake never wore pearls. The Wayne’s must have done something that got them killed, she’d reasoned; there must be something she could do differently that would keep her safe.

Vinnie wears conspicuous jewellery, because of course he does. It’s all cheap, but it’s there to catch the eye, the hoops and studs and chains.

Vinnie pets strange animals. Vinnie doesn’t wash his hands nearly as often as he should to start with. Vinnie smokes. Vinnie drinks. Vinnie gets himself shot during drug deals.

Alfred is laying breakfast out on the veranda, taking advantage of what may be the last nice morning of the year. There’s a pot of coffee wreathing the air with white ribbons of steam, a toast rack crammed with thick slabs of bread bookended with jars of homemade jam, and great dishes of scrambled eggs and golden grits.

The french windows that open onto the veranda from the breakfast room swing open, and Clark Kent steps out, carrying a plate of crispy bacon and plump sausages.

"I've been trying to bring it up casually, but it's hard to work into convers- morning, Tim” Bruce follows Clark with a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice.

“You’re here early,” Tim says. “When did you arrive?”

“Um. Last night,” Clark says. Titus stations himself at Clark’s feet, limpid eyes turned upwards. Bruce tuts at him, but does nothing to discourage the begging. Clark caves almost immediately and the Great Dane plucks a sausage from his fingers. “What happened to you?”

“Got shot during a drug deal,” Tim says. “I need to wash my hands before we eat. Excuse me.”

When he returns Damian has emerged, damp haired and gritty-eyed.

Clark hands Bruce a cup of coffee. Tim notes it’s just the way Bruce likes it - more cream than coffee and so much sugar the spoon basically stands up. He doesn’t drink it that way with the Justice League, where he always has it intimidatingly black. But it’s not like this is the first time Clark’s appeared at the breakfast table; Tim wonders if he knows how privileged he is to know Bruce’s distinctly basic coffee preferences.

“You working on the audit story?” Tim asks, slathering a slice of toast with raspberry jam and taking a bite. With his mouth full, he adds, “They’ve found less than I thought they would, to be honest.”

“The audit- No, that’s Lois’s beat,” Clark says. “I’m not stepping on her toes. But I can’t promise anything you say will be kept off the record, so…”

“Didn’t mean to put you in an awkward spot,” Tim says, licking a glob of raspberry seeds from the corner of his mouth. Sometimes he forgets that Clark takes his journalistic integrity as seriously as he does, considering the lies he has to tell the world. But he is a reporter, and he changes the world with what he writes just as surely as he does with his superstrength.

Tim’s faced moral quandaries when his Neon Knights work has overlapped with Red Robin, trying to ease someone out of organised crime during the day and beating them up for not having made it out at night. He can’t hold back as Red Robin without giving away how much he knows about Neon Knights and risking his secret identity, but the guilt tears at him and he’s not ashamed to admit he’s pulled his punches when he can get away with it.

How does Clark handle it, when the two sides overlap? If he overhears something with his superhearing he doesn’t have a source for as Clark? If he encounters one of Clark’s sources as Superman?

“If you had to pick,” Tim asks, “would you rather be Superman or a reporter?”

“It would depend on the circumstances,” Clark says. “Is this a scenario where someone is threatening to out me as both? Am I the only hero being forced to make this choice?”

“Hmm. Yes, you’re the only hero. The rest of the Justice League is still around, and so on. And no, you’re not being outed. It’s, let's say, a magic scenario. Klarion or someone. Your private life doesn’t change, insofar as you still have Lois and Jon and they’re not affected by your choice. But either you lose your superpowers, or you lose your ability to, well, report.”

“You become illiterate,” Damian says, finally awake enough to join the conversation. “And you can’t just dictate to someone else, either.”

Clark snorts. “You don’t have to cover every loophole,” he says. “I choose to be a reporter. Your go: Tim, Red Robin or Wayne Enterprises.”

“Tt. Wayne Enterprises is mine by right,” Damian says.

“I mean, it’s not,” Tim says, “but I’d still take Red Robin. WE has spent more time without family input than with.”

“What do I have to give up,” Bruce asks, “if WE is apparently Tim’s now? Or Damian’s.”

“Hmm.” Clark gives him an appraising look. “You’d give up being Brucie in a heartbeat if you could get away with it. And you’ve always tried to dodge Wayne Enterprises, so that wouldn’t be a fair choice.”

“Your wealth,” Alfred says. “Being Batman, or having to get a minimum wage job to support yourself.”

“Oh, wow, coming in hard there, Alfred!” Tim says. “Yes, the money. No manor. No suits. No butler.” He glances at Alfred. “I mean, you’re still fine,” he adds. “You get the manor.”

“You really think I’m that privileged that I couldn’t manage for myself? I spent years of my youth travelling the world,” Bruce says. “I lived hand to mouth.”

This statement is not taken seriously by anyone at the breakfast table.

Tim pulls out his phone. "A one bedroom apartment in the Bowery, the cheapest part of the city, requires an average of 60 hours work per week at minimum wage to cover rent and bills. Of course, you have no work history or qualifications, so whether you'll manage to even get a job is risky. You'd probably need a room mate, or several. If you get to stay Batman, in this scenario, then we can assume you retain access to the cave, but the only money that can go towards upkeep and innovations is what comes from Batman Inc, which currently only covers 45% of the annual amount you actually spend on Batman-related work."

"You're saying none of my kids would let me stay while I found my feet? Gee, thanks." Bruce rolls his eyes. "You hear that, Clark? Everything I've done for them and they'll leave me to starve on the streets."

"You currently fund 60% of Dick's lifestyle, 100% of Cass's, 30% of mine, and more of Jason's than he'd ever let on. Plus Damian, too. If we're picking up the slack in the Bat-budget it's going to be tight belts all round. Going to have to sell off a lot of safehouses just to keep ourselves in kevlar." Tim wrinkles his nose. "I guess you could have the spare room at the Nest."

"No impact on the family, those were Kent's terms," Damian says. "I'm not living in your spare room. Pennyworth and I will be quite comfortable here, and I'm sure we'll find a way to keep paying your allowance."

"Bruce Wayne is 'dead'," Tim says, with airquotes. "That's how it plays out. Your can't access your money, out the manor, or help from us, because you've got to stay in character as a stranger."

"Okay, so you get to stay Batman," Clark says, "but you have two jobs, three room mates and no health insurance."

"No health... Do you know how much money I spend on medical care? I couldn't do it.” Bruce stares at him.

“And if you took time off work sick you’d probably be fired,” Tim says.

“Do you really spend that much? I mean, I assume you’re not actually claiming on your insurance,” Clark asks. “I always got the impression you handled most of your injuries yourself.”

“Oh, I can sew a gash back up or pop my shoulder back into place, but you can only do that so many times before the scar tissue starts to build up. I have regular cortisone injections, physio appointments, anti-inflammatories, ice baths, and the rest. You’ve seen how many pills I take in the morning these days.” Bruce gives Clark a sideways look. “What did you think I was taking?”

“I just… what would happen if you had to stop?” Clark asks.

“I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. Literally.” Bruce sighs. “Honestly, Clark, it’s barely been a decade since I broke my spine. My back aches before it rains with more accuracy than the weather channel. I’m not twenty any more, and I’m not invulnerable, unlike some people.”

“This isn’t so much of a game, is it?” Tim says quietly. “You really are going to have to quit soon.”

“I’ve been talking about it with Leslie, and yes, I’ll need to delegate some of the more physical challenges - Killer Croc, Clayface and so on.” Bruce grimaces. “My self care routine has enabled me to stay active this long, but there is a limit, and since I turned forty I’m conscious that I don’t heal like I used to.”

“You need some more cerebral cases,” Damian says. “Proper detective work.”

“Do we- Should I- When we?” Clark stumbles over his words, a blush rising as he repeatedly fails to get out whatever it is he thinks Bruce needs to stop doing.

“No,” Bruce says firmly. “I am quite aware of my own limits, and I’m more than capable of communicating them.”

Silence reigns for a single beat before Tim, Damian and Alfred all start laughing.

“And on that note,” Alfred says, “Damian needs to leave for school.”

“I am quite aware of my own timetable,” Damian says, “and I’m more than capable of communicating it.”

He manages to get the whole sentence out with a straight face, which only makes Tim laugh harder. Maybe it’s the painkillers, but it’s the funniest thing he’s heard in a long time, and he’s gasping for air as every inhale gets caught on a chuckle on its way out. He folds double, forehead connecting with the table, and wheezes while the tears trickle out the corners of his eyes.

By the time he summons the core strength to lift his head again Damian and Alfred have both gone. Clark and Bruce are communicating solely through significant eye contact. It takes them a moment to realise Tim is back with them and Bruce breaks first to turn to him.

“What are your plans for today?” he asks, as Clark busies himself clearing the table.

“You don’t have to do that,” Tim says. “You’re a guest.”

Clark glances at Bruce over Tim’s head, before adding another serving platter to the pile already in his arms and heading into the house. Titus follows him, with hope still in his eyes.

“I didn’t mean we’d leave it for Alfred,” Tim says. “He knows that, right?”

“I’m sure he does,” Bruce says. “He’s here a lot, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Tim frowns. “No? But then I’m not here that much. It’s so inconvenient for the office, and for patrol. I don’t know how I used to do it as Robin when I lived next door, especially when Redboard was my main mode of transport.”

“There was always the Batmobile.”

“Not when Jean Paul was Batman,” Tim says. “Anyway, what are your plans? Are you and Clark working on something?”

“...Yes,” he says.

Tim snorts. “Fine, keep your secrets. I’ll get out of your hair.”

“No, Tim, that’s not what-”

“I need to be back in Gotham for four, anyway. Vinnie has to see a guy about a gallery.”

“Vinnie does? What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why don’t you do your own show? You could display the photos under your own name.”

“Sure, and never know if it was the name that was selling or the pictures,” Tim says wryly. “There’s something satisfying about getting recognition as Vinnie. Plus, less risk of people asking how and why and when I have the freedom to get some of the shots I do. No one is ever going to suspect Vinnie of being a vigilante.”

“Well, that’s true,” Bruce says. “I’m happy to give you a ride into town after lunch.”

“Ah, so you’re not kicking me out,” Tim says. “Cool. Well, I might try and get a bit of work done. Can I use your office?”

“Of course,” Bruce says. “Don’t overtax yourself, though. Wayne Enterprises will stay standing without you.”

“I’ve got a mirror set up for the auditors’ laptops,” Tim says. “I can’t do anything if they find something physical, which god knows they might, but at least I can monitor what they’re digging out of the old accounting database.”

“I thought you had everything covered?”

“So did I, but apparently Sarah in HR is reeeeally attached to printing out memos and then hiding them in archive boxes in rooms that are meant to be paper-free for fire safety reasons like old emails about cake in the breakroom are some kind of contraband, so who knows what they’re going to find.” Tim rolls his eyes. “She knows she’s not meant to do it, too, but when I was in on Friday I checked the printer logs and she printed off eight more emails.”

“Maybe she has difficulty reading them on screen?”

“Well, maybe she should request an accommodation, then,” Tim says grumpily. “God knows she’s got no problem printing out other people’s requests and then keeping them lying around for literal years.”

“Well, I’m sure the auditors will have something to say about that.”

The thought does perk Tim up a little. He hadn’t been sure how to handle the issue; it wasn’t like he could report her to HR, after all.

“Anyway, I’ll see you at lunch,” Tim says. “You might have to come fetch me. Watching people click through hundreds of near-identical invoices is weirdly hypnotic.”

Clark reappears in the doorway, but steps back to let Tim pass. He opens his mouth to say something, but seems to change his mind, and after a moment’s hesitation says, “I hope you have a productive day.”

“You too,” Tim says absently. He doesn’t think Bruce realises Tim can see his reflection in the breakfast room window, that Tim saw him shake his head to forestall whatever Clark had been going to ask.

He’s got a mirror of the Batcomputer on his personal laptop. Whatever they’re working on, Tim will find out.

Chapter Text

It sucks having to stay off his feet. He barely made it through a day in the office, and he was sat down most of the time - he hates having to pretend to be high-handed with Tam, like she’s just there to fetch and carry for him, and by the end of the day it was very clear she was done with it as well - and his calf is throbbing. He had a plan to tail a couple of Knights he’s identified as 100 targets, but there’s no way he’s going to be able to leap across rooftops tonight.

“I’m on rotation tomorrow,” Steph groans. “I have to be up at five. Five am, Tim.”

“I’d be more sympathetic if my alarm wasn’t permanently set for six,” Tim says.

“Oh, there’s a world of difference between five and six.”

“I know. I get home at five often enough to know which side of the night it belongs on. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.”

“I know, I know.” Steph sighs. “That’s why I’m already suited up. But I am extracting allllllll the favours from you for this.”

“And you can have them,” Tim says.

He directs her to the old church that’s hosting tonight’s Knights meeting. It’s mostly just hot food and drink and a couple of counsellors with information about drug programs, emergency housing, food bank referrals and bank account applications.

It took Tim by surprise when he learned how many people in Gotham were unbanked. He’s had an account since he was four years old. If you’d pressed him, he’d probably have figured out recent immigrants might not have accounts, at least with US banks, but it’s over a fifth of Knights.

Of course, you need a fixed address to get a bank account, and you need a bank account to rent somewhere to be that address; a vicious cycle that drives people back and forth between slum lords and loan sharks. It’s easy, once you’ve got someone owing money to you, to talk them into working for you to pay it off. Drugs, sex work, extortion. The gangs have their own financial ecosystem, one that functions so much more efficiently than straight capitalism.

Neon Knights has partnered with Gotham General Bank to provide bank accounts to people with no fixed abode, so they can start applying for everything else they need to start clawing their way out of the cycle. Since word got out a lot of people come just for the accounts - and the hot meal - but even if only ten percent of them come back a second time, it’s the first step to autonomy.

“Can I get one of those spring rolls?” Steph asks, having arrived at the church. “I can smell them from up here.”

“You can’t just drop in. You’ll spook the targets.”

“I’m not suggesting I drop in. I’m suggesting that someone asks them nicely to put a plateful outside the back door, where it will be mysteriously spirited away.”

“If you can beat the rats to it,” Tim says, “you’re faster than Bart.”

“Spoilsport.”

“I’ll bring some by the hospital tomorrow,” Tim promises. “A trayfull, to share.”

“You are going to get literally mobbed by nurses. Trampled.” Steph audibly smacks her lips. “What if I snuck into the rafters and used my grapple to grab just one?”

“Did you not eat or something?”

“Mm.”

Tim smiles to himself. “There’s a snack stash on the roof of the grocery store, under the busted air con outlet. Protein bars, trail mix and a couple of bags of chips.”

“Ooh, chips.”

There’s the whoosh of air on the other end of the comm, then the rustle of a bag of chips.

“You still got sight of the road?” Tim asks.

“Of course,” Steph says, “but no one’s going to pull up in a shiny new SUV around here. They’d have the wheels off before you put the parking brake on.”

“Mr Adams isn’t the sort of person who takes a cab,” Tim says, “and he likes the personal touch.”

“And he wants every gang in Gotham to know he’s recruiting?”

Tim purses his lips. “How is he moving in under their radar?”

“If I wanted to drive around like a drug dealer,” Steph says, audibly crunching on a chip as she muses, “in a massive car that directs everyone’s attention to it, then I’d be making sure that direction was misdirection. Have you run the plates?”

“Registered to a car hire company just outside of Gotham. Legitimately, as far as I could tell.”

“You’re saying he just rented it?”

“No, there’s nothing on the books that links the car to Mr Adams.” But even as he speaks Tim’s pulling up the rental company’s accounts, combing through for any other connections. “Oh. Oooh. There’s a Maroni connection. Curly and Toots have both used them.”

“Sorry, Curly and Toots?” Steph asks. “Are they mobsters or lost boys?”

“Joe Bandano and Luca Mareli. Lower level mobsters. The timing is weird - doesn’t correlate with anything we know they were up to. Except, oh, Pino’s daughter’s sweet sixteen.”

“I thought she was being raised by her mother? Well out of mob influence. There’s no way she’d have let them turn up and start dealing at her daughter’s party.”

“So maybe they weren’t dealing. Maybe they were just attending. Or chauffeuring - thirty five teenage girls all with VIP tickets to Electric Unicorn. They’d have wanted to make sure the cars were completely clean.” Tim frowns at the records. “Oh, the Maronis are going to be pissed, if this is their source for clean cars and Adams is trying to link it to them.”

“Is he, though? I mean, who else is going to dig in that deep?”

“The Maronis, for one,” Tim says. “Possibly the Falcones. Like you said, he’s trying to draw attention. If no one knows the 100 are here, people’s suspicions are going to turn inwards pretty quickly.”

“Mob war,” Steph says, and sighs heavily.

“Not if we can help it,” Tim says.

“And if we can’t?”

Tim doesn’t answer that.

It’s a subtle strategy. The 100 is coming in squarely in the middle, aiming for marks who think of themselves and their crimes as outside of Gotham’s organised crime purview. Men who think their escorts work for themselves instead of a pimp. Teenagers who believe their dealer personally grows their weed. Women who just need a small loan from an independent financier - not a loan shark, not like poor people use, it’s basically a credit union bar the background checks - to pay off the credit card bill before their husbands see how much that start pack of make up cost.

Ex gang members who think they’re working for themselves.

Everyone thinks they’re working for themselves.

Oh god.

It’s an actual MLM.

“It’s multi-level mobstering,” Tim says under his breath. “Everyone’s buying their own product to shift.”

“What?”

“What makes Alvin different?” Tim asks.

“His charming personality? What are you muttering about, Red?”

The traffic sound behind Steph’s voice ebb and flow, light chatter rising up from the street, dogs barking, the occasional clang of metal on metal. This is Gotham at its most peaceful, and the 100 are here like a wasp in an airplane cabin to stir everyone up.

“It’s not a traditional crime set up,” Tim says. “It’s like a pyramid scheme. I’m in Adams’ downline, or maybe Mitch’s. But Alvin isn’t a Knight.”

“Didn’t you just walk up to him and introduce yourself?” Steph asks. There’s a whoosh of wind that suggests she’s grappling to another rooftop. Tim wonders if there’s any of his snack stash left. “Like, that time I accidentally commented on this girl from school’s instagram post and she linked me to this protein powder and I bought some just to see what it was like and now I’ve got this subscription I can’t figure out how to cancel without making things weird with her.”

“My powder’s a lot whiter than yours,” Tim says. “You’re on the move?”

“A couple of kids just left with purpose.”

“Any sign of the car?”

“Would you know this great big black SUV just circled the block five minutes ago?”

“Was that a tracker I heard you land on it earlier?” Tim asks.

“I hope not, or they would have heard it as well. I’m like forty feet up. The car’s stopped behind the Batburger on the next block.”

“Can you ID the Knights?”

“Both white, one guy, one girl. I’d say they’re just friends, at least on her part. He’s maybe five ten, dark hair, Street Demonz tattoo on his neck. She’s a Sprang Bridge Soldier, if I’m reading her ink right, but she’s got this top with lace sleeves on so it’s hard to tell. It’s really cute. I want to say I’ve seen it in H&M? Short hair, blue tips. Her, not him. His is under this really ratty beanie.”

“She’s Kellie. There’s a couple of guys he could be.” Tim pulls up the H&M website on his second screen. He owes Steph for working the case for him; he wants to show he’s listening to her. “How do they know about the car?”

“Kellie’s got her phone out. Hang on; Barbara gave me a new toy. Let me get closer.”

There’s the thud of steps on the rooftops as Steph catches them up.

“Oh, hey, it looks like your friend Mitch has got burgers for everyone,” Steph says. “Nice. I could murder a Killer Croque Monsieur.” There’s a chirp in the background. “Okay, cool, my phone is synced with hers. As soon as she puts it away I can start checking her messages.”

“Once she puts it away?”

“Yeah, it’s not just a mirror. Or it’s a two way mirror? If I start scrolling through her messages on my phone it’ll show on her screen too. O says it’s not so we can plant evidence, you understand, but, well, if there is evidence, and it happens to be nice and visible, and, you know, the lock fails so the phone’s just showing its panties to the whole world, including any cops who happen to be looking, well.”

“You ever wonder what we’d do if she turned bad?” Tim asks. “Like, red kryptonite, mind control, evil clone, whatever?”

“We’d be so screwed,” Steph says cheerfully. “That’s why I buy her the good wine for her birthday. Kellie’s put her phone in her pocket so she can hold the Deluxe with both hands. She has tiny hands.”

“I can’t say I’ve noticed,” Tim says.

“Okay, so, her messages. Your man Mitch texted her about ten minutes ago. Said he’s going to be here, getting a burger, and he’s got some ‘product’ if she wants some. Someone let him down, and he doesn’t want to keep carrying it around, so he’s willing to give her a discount since he knows she’s reliable, not like the other guy, but she’s got to meet him in the next ten minutes because he needs to get back to Metropolis. He knows she’s committed to being her own boss. Wow. Does he have an inspirational instagram too? Quote of the day? I bet he does.”

Steph sends him a couple of screen shots. Kellie’s asked if she can bring a friend. Someone who wants to take back control of his life too.

“How much is he asking her for?”

Steph names a figure, and Tim frowns. “That’s double what Alvin paid.”

“Well, of course it is,” Steph says. “There was no other guy. Mitch just wants her to feel special and the sale to feel urgent.”

“Alvin wasn’t getting it at cost either, was he?”

“Awww, did Mitch make Alvin feel important?”

“He took Jason’s bullets for me,” Tim says. “I think he’s as enmeshed in this as Kellie and her new downline.”

“Hey, if you get in early enough, there can be money in it,” Steph says. “If, you know, you don’t mind making hundreds of other people bankrupt. I’m guessing Mitch’s morals are pretty flexible.”

“I don’t know if I’m his downline,” Tim says, “or Mr Adams. He’s the tippy-top of the pyramid, as far as I can tell.”

“Any thoughts on his end game? Filthy rich, or is there a power grab going on?”

“Not sure,” Tim says. “Oracle’s come up against the 100 before. Does she have any insight?”

“I’ll ask. She’s paying attention to the case, I can tell you that. I don’t think she wants to get personally involved, though. I don’t know what went down before, but she’s more than happy to let you handle it.” There’s a rustle as Steph shifts. “Deal is done. Do you want me to tail Mitch or Kellie?”

“What’s the range on the tracker you put on Mitch’s car?”

“Short range,” Steph says. “Radio tracker. It won’t track him all the way back to Metropolis. My bike is a couple of blocks away; I can probably get to it before I lose him if you want me to follow him.”

Tim considers this. She’s making the offer genuinely, which says a lot about how far they’ve come. There would definitely be benefits to knowing what Mitch does next - whether he drives around playing the same card with all of his downline, or if he really does go back to Metropolis, and if so, where? The warehouse, his own home, or somewhere else?

Or he could ask her to follow Kellie. See if she recruits anyone else. Find out how she answers her new downline’s questions before the buyer’s remorse kicks in.

Or…

“How do you feel about getting a Killer Croque Monsieur and a Deluxe and coming back here? I have beer.”

“I really need to run missions for you more often,” Steph says. “Be there in ten.”

#

Steph dips one of her jokerized fries in her chocolate milkshake, ignoring the disgusted look on Tim’s face.

“So how often are you staying up until five and getting up at six?” she asks. “Because, you know, that’s probably not ideal.”

“Not that often,” Tim says.

“With you that could be anything from once every six months to five times a week.”

“It’s… closer to the bad end of that scale, thanks to Alvin,” Tim admits. “Maybe twice a week? There’s just not enough time to be Tim Wayne fifty hours a week, Alvin most evenings and weekends, and Red Robin four to six hours a night. Things… blur.”

“Blur how?” Steph asks sharply.

“Who knows what, for example. What Red Robin knows about the Knights vs Tim Wayne. What Damian’s boyfriend knows as opposed to his brother. What Tim Wayne knows about the audit versus, well, me, I guess.” Tim frowns. “That’s not really a Red Robin operation, you know? If it was, I think I’d feel compelled to turn Bruce in for embezzling. But as his son, I’m just… exasperated. For a man so smart he made some really dumb decisions about funding Batman.”

“I was reading the Lois Lane piece the other day,” Steph says. “She doesn’t think a case can be made.”

“I think… I think I could make a case, or break one. Lois knows perfectly well he’s guilty, and that’s hamstringing her. She doesn’t dare conclude anything she can’t cite evidence for in the offshore leaks. It would depend on what sort of court Bruce managed to swing, but it might not be a case of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt, just probability. Martha Stewart went away for obstruction, remember - any evidence Bruce is interfering with the investigation would carry a heavier penalty than the dirt I’d let them dig up.”

“Worth knowing.” Steph nods to herself, munching on another fry. “Didn’t she only get a couple of months?”

“Five,” Tim says. “Why?”

“My dad’s potentially about to be moved from Blackgate to a lower security prison. For ‘good behaviour’,” Steph airquotes with an eyeroll. “Might be interesting to see what happens if Bruce has to share a cell with him.”

“Pitch it to him,” Tim says. “He’s been looking for more investigative stuff to work on. I wouldn’t normally describe prison as a place he’s less likely to get injured, but a low security place as Brucie versus every night on the streets as Batman, and it’ll basically be like a spa weekend.”

“I mean, prison is still prison,” Steph says. “White collar criminals still get nasty. What’s up with him?”

“Getting old,” Tim says.

“Oh. Weird.”

“I know, right?”

They both fall silent, contemplating an elderly Batman.

“Do you think Dick would put the cowl back on?” Steph asks.

Tim opens a second beer and takes a swig. “No. I think it might be time for Damian to step up, to be honest. Not right now this second, but it’s increasingly clear that the next time Bruce is taken off the streets, he’s the one who’ll be filling Bruce’s boots. I mean, he’s almost as big as Bruce now.”

“Leaner, though.” Steph abandons her now salty milkshake for a beer of her own. “You’re spending a lot of time with him, aren’t you?”

“As Alvin.”

“But you said it was confusing.” Steph frowns. “What’s the actual deal with you two, Tim? You’ve been weird about Damian for a while now. Not just as Alvin. Why did you even go to Metropolis?”

Tim leans back on the sofa, tipping his head towards the ceiling.

He hasn’t breathed a word about Damian’s proposition to anyone. It’s starting to recede from its position of importance in his mind as they spend more time together. Since Damian kissed him. Since he came out to Damian. It’s just another data point, now. But he has been carrying it for a while, and it might be good to talk through it all with someone else.

“I… Something happened, with Damian. Or didn’t happen, rather. I don’t want to betray his trust,” Tim says, “because it’s obvious he wouldn't want me to tell anyone, so I don’t want to go into detail, but I guess it got me questioning our relationship. The fact he’s grown up.”

“Grown up how?”

“Grown up hot.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you kiss, or something? Get locked in a room together naked? Catch him watching porn with a twink version of you in it?”

Tim laughs. “Nothing like that. Just… He’s interested in sex, now. And I don’t know if it’s specifically with me - I kinda assumed it wasn’t - but I got a bit obsessed. I was worried about him, really. What he might do and who he might do it with. He seemed desperate. And then he claimed Alvin was his boyfriend, and I realised it was at least partly just peer pressure. I mean, he’s eighteen, he wants to get laid, but more than that he wants people to think he’s getting laid.”

“But that’s about him,” Steph says, reaching up to knock him gently on the chin with her beer bottle, forcing him to lower his head and look at her again. “What do you want?”

Tim considers. “It keeps evolving. At first, I think I wanted sex as well. I certainly started to get hung up on my own virginity, amongst all the other teenage experiences I missed out on. It’s started hitting hard recently that I’ll probably never go to college. I never went to prom. And it’s feeling increasingly like maybe I’ll never have sex? Like I missed the boat?”

As he says it outloud his heart starts to pulse in his chest, a very real fear settling over him. It’s ridiculous, of course it is, but voicing the fear suddenly makes it seem like something that might be true.

“Are you even twenty two yet?” Steph asks. “Of course you’re going to have sex. There is no boat to miss; you’re just waiting for the right one. No sailing straight out into a storm like I did,” she adds ruefully.

“Damian’s gunning for a storm,” Tim says. “Or he was. The Alvin stuff… Alvin is a terrible boyfriend. Like, the worst of me, with a large dose of your ex for good measure.” Steph wrinkles her nose at that. “But Damian’s still falling for him.”

“Yeah, well, you only have to be charming once. After that it’s all…” Steph waves vaguely, “Negging. Love bombing. Gaslighting. MLM bullshit.”

“It’s a really hard line to walk,” Tim says. “Bruce asked me to look out for him at the same time, make sure he doesn’t conflate his sexuality with Alvin’s shittiness. I feel protective of him.”

“Are you sure it’s protective? Not jealous?”

Tim remembers the dark curling feeling in his stomach after Damian kissed Alvin. There’s still a shadow of it, but he’s more mad at himself than Alvin these days.

“It’s changed,” he admits. “I was jealous, but the more time we spend together, the more I see what Dick saw in him. And you.”

“So?”

“So it’s more of a sibling thing. I think I’m finally seeing him like a little brother. I want to defend him from Alvin.”

“He’s not my little brother,” Steph says. “I’ve always seen him as a kid, and I love him, but not as family.”

“Not romantically?”

“Oh god no. Is that the only two kinds of love you can think of?” she asks. “No, he’s… I don’t know. I feel like his teacher, or something. Like, sure I think he shouldn’t be dating Alvin, but I don’t want to defend him. I want to help him with the lesson.”

“I mean, there’s platonic love,” Tim says. It feels weird talking about love. He has this complicated affection-exasperation-lust-anxiety-fondness for Damian, and maybe calling it love is simpler, but he still finds himself shying away from the word. Maybe it just hasn’t been long enough since he was obsessing to have a platonic love for Damian yet. He’ll get there. He has faith in himself.

“Oh good,” Steph says, “three kinds.”

“You’re not about to start on about the seven kinds of love in Greek, are you?” Tim asks. “Because I don’t remember enough Greek to argue about that.”

“You don’t remember, I’ve never known.” Steph repositions herself on the sofa. “If you’re not obsessing, what are you?”

“That sounds like an existential question.”

“I mean, for you, it is. But I meant about Damian. You were obsessing, and now you're protective, and I’m not really seeing how you, existential obsessor, view the path from one to the other.”

“Before,” Tim says, choosing his words carefully, “when I thought about him, it was in one aspect only. And it was a complex aspect, but ultimately, all my trains of thought were taking me to the same place.”

“One where you guys had sex.”

“Yes. But just sex. And slightly scary sex? No, not scary. Just… I don’t know. Intense, and dubiously consensual.”

Steph raises an eyebrow.

Tim chews his lip. “Like, in the fantasies, we never talked about what we wanted, we just took it from each other, and it turned out okay, but in real life I’d rather have a conversation first. And when it wasn’t fantasies, I was obsessing about him having dubiously consensual sex with other people, where it didn’t turn out okay, because someone was taking advantage of him, and I felt like I had to make sure that wasn’t happening.”

“Has anyone actually had a conversation with Damian about consent? And sex in general? I mean, I can’t really see Bruce sitting him down to explain the ins and outs of, well, ins and outs.”

“I made sure he talked with Dick,” Tim says. “He really was pretty ignorant. Especially about gay sex.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“And see, that was one of the turning points. Because we were spending time together, and I was getting to know him as an adult, or a near-adult, and I could actually do something for him. It helped assuage my anxiety over what might happen, because it so clearly wouldn’t, and I was able to start putting some of the obsession to bed.”

“Okay, okay, I can see that,” Steph says.

Tim gets the sense she’s happy to leave it there, but he can’t. He needs to lay it all out now he’s started. “We didn’t see each other for a while after Metropolis, and I could feel myself getting caught up again, obsessing over what he was doing. He’s being- he wouldn’t say he’s being bullied, but he is, even if he insists it isn’t affecting him, so it can’t be bullying. But they’re awful, shitty kids at his school, and they outed him to the press, and they’re obsessed with whether he’s having sex, and he won’t tell Bruce or even Dick about it. He nearly got expelled while we were in Metropolis and he was so relieved, and then the staff freaked out because they hadn’t noticed he was sleeping in an older man’s room instead of his assigned room, and they covered the whole thing up.”

“Older man?”

“Alvin.”

“You were sharing a room?”

“His room mate was one of the bullies. He doesn’t want me to tell anyone, and I don’t want to betray his trust, but you only have to look at him to see he’s near his breaking point even if he doesn’t realise it. I keep using Alvin to get him to skip class, just to give him a break.”

“Well, that’s one approach, I guess,” Steph says. “I’m surprised you haven’t gone after them yourself.”

“They’re not committing any crimes.” Tim sighs heavily. “I’ve considered planting stuff on their phones - not criminal stuff, but maybe a virus or two, just to inconvenience them - or even turning up in the suit and scaring them, but there’s no way to connect it to Damian that would make them stop bothering him without putting him at risk.”

“Fuck it, do it anyway, if it would make you feel better,” Steph says. “I’ll do it.”

“No one’s scared of Batgirl,” Tim says. “You drop down amongst them and they’ll just ask for selfies.”

“Eh.” Steph shrugs, acknowledging the truth of TIm’s statement with a tip of her beer bottle. “Fine, I’ll get him to skip school with me. He can’t resist a ‘Batgirl needs help from her Robin” ploy.”

“I thought I was your Robin.” Tim pouts.

“You’re Spoiler’s Robin. Cass is your Batgirl,” Steph reminds him.

Which, okay, true. Tim can’t deny that despite Steph’s years with the bat on her chest, when someone says Batgirl to him he still sees Cass’s sewn-shut mask.

“So I ended up fake dating Damian,” he says, the topic still itching under his skin, “which wasn’t originally about keeping an eye on him, but gave me the opportunity to. And I just wanted to make him feel good; give him someone in his life who knows what’s going on and is on his side. And I guess it worked too well, because Damian’s definitely fallen for Alvin. But it’s really hard to pull back, because he still needs that someone, and when I make him smile, it feels like it’s me doing it, not Alvin.”

“Make him smile?”

“Yeah. I can do that now. I know, shock.” Tim raises an eyebrow.

“No, not like that.” Steph frowns. “Like, you’re getting something out of making him smile. It makes you happy to make him happy.”

“Well, yeah. That’s how positive relationships are meant to work. Even platonic ones.”

“True, I guess. I just…” Steph wrinkles her nose, and turns to face him full on, staring at him intently. “Say it again.”

“Say what?”

“About making him smile, and how it feels.”

“It feels like it’s me doing it. And, yes, it makes me feel good.”

She keeps studying him. “Are you thinking about him smiling now?”

He wasn’t, but as soon as she says it the image rises in his mind’s eye unbidden. He messaged Damian earlier with some dumb dog meme, and got a laughing emoji back, and he gets the same picture now as he did then: not Damian laughing, not out loud, but with that smirk on his face where one corner of his mouth is tugging up harder than the other, like the laugh has targeted that as the weak spot where it might escape. And it never does, but his eyes crinkle up more than they do when he’s feeling superior, and the bridge of his nose turns pink, and he’s keeping that happiness in as hard as he can where it’s safe and secure.

“Oh, honey,” Steph says.

“What?”

“That is not a platonic dopey grin.”

“What grin?”

“The one on your face.”

Tim reaches up to touch his lips, but his mouth is open now, slack with surprise at her statement.

“You’re wrong,” he says. “It’s different. I’ve stopped thinking about Damian like that. It’s not sexual at all.”

Steph sighs, and flops back into the sofa. “Yeah, no,” she says. “This is where I get off. You and Damian, that’s for you and Damian to figure out.”

“And we will,” says Tim. “I really think we’re getting there. We just have to get through a few more fake dates, and then I can put Alvin away again and we can just be Tim and Damian.”

“Platonically.”

“Platonically.”

Chapter Text

There’s an advantage of being Alvin. Even though Tim can walk without limping now if he puts his mind to it, when he uses the crutches he doesn’t need pain meds by the end of the day to get to sleep.

He needs to take better care of himself. At this rate he’ll have to retire before he’s even half Bruce’s age.

He waves a crutch at their driver for the gala, David, glad to see the guy again as both Tim and Alvin. With everything else going on, it’s good to have a familiar face who’s proved he’s capable of a little discretion on their side tonight.

“How’s the leg?” David opens the car door for him,

“Better, thanks, dude.” Tim leans his crutches against the side of the car and sits down on the edge of the seat. He swings his legs into the car, using his arms to shuffle sideways without jarring his calf.

“How does he know about your leg?” Damian asks. “What does he know about your leg?”

“So, like, you know I hurt it? When I was taking pics, right. Fell off a fire escape.” Tim offers Damian a trademark Alvin grin.

“Onto a speeding bullet,” Damian mutters, climbing in the other side.

David carries the crutches round and passes them to Damian. He slots them into the footwell.

“Well, your bro Jay hooked me up with a ride, and lo and behold, it was our man Dave here.”

“It was lucky Jason was there,” Dave says. “You were bleeding pretty badly.”

“Dave wanted to take me to Gotham General, but, like, who’s even got insurance these days?”

Not Alvin, that’s for sure.

“Wait,” Damian says, “did father-”

“Wasn’t at home. Thank fuck.” He’d been too giddy with blood loss by the time he got back to be in a fit state to justify his injury to Bruce, especially not since it involved Jason. Thank god for Clark keeping him safely out of the way until the next morning, when everyone was calm enough to make it sound less like the absolutely fuck up it had been. “Jay said he’d take the heat for the blood stains.”

“And you know Todd how?” Damian asks, raising an eyebrow.

Not really something Tim wants to have attention drawn to in front of a civilian, but he supposes it’s a reasonable question for Damian to ask. Luckily, he and Jason had had a chance to pull together a quick backstory that brought them to together, and Tim had inserted Alvin’s name into some old records to give it more weight.

“Crime Alley fam, you know? I told you I worked my way through all the group homes. Ma Gunn included.” Jason hadn’t wanted to talk about Ma Gunn much, but Tim had read the case notes when he was training as Robin. “I always heard Jay had died. Glad he’s okay.”

“We all are,” Damian says.

Damian reaches forwards and taps the button for the privacy screen. Before it can close, Tim wrestles a baggie out of an internal pocket and shoves it through the shrinking gap, irritated that Damian didn’t warn him. It’s in the plan: establish with Dave that Alvin is carrying drugs.

“For your discretion, man.”

Dave pockets the baggies and gives Alvin a thumbs up.

“What did you give him?” Damian asks as the car pulls away from the curb.

“Weed,” Tim says. “You want some?”

“Not right now, no.”

Which is not entirely the answer Tim was expecting. He can picture Damian stoned, red-eyed and heavy-limbed. It would be a careful balancing act to make sure he enjoyed himself. Learning when to let go and stop overthinking is crucial; weed can break an anxious cycle for Tim, but it can create one, too.

See, this is a protective feeling. A fine and normally and probably-brotherly protective feeling. He wants to be there for some of Damian’s firsts - his normal firsts, not his first murder or his first time being murdered, all those firsts that got in the way of what should have been his childhood - and to make sure he has a good time.

He’s perilously close to thinking about Damian smiling again. Even though Steph’s implications were definitely, totally wrong, and even if Alvin’s the person best placed to dopily grin over Damian, he’s got to stay in control of himself.

This time, they’re going to stick to the plan. Cross his heart and hope to die.

To distract himself, he asks, “What are you looking forward to?”

Damian thinks about it for a moment. “Probably the concert tickets. I’m not a fan, but I can gift them to Colin, who’ll probably drag me along.”

Colin? Since when was he playing second fiddle to Colin?

“Not your boyfriend?”

“I’d rather share activities I enjoy with you,” Damian says, looking down at his hands.

It’s such an obvious statement, it only confuses Tim further. “But not with your friends?”

Damian shrugs. “It’s different. Colin isn’t bothered if I sulk through the concert. He knows I’ll extract a fair exchange from him. I… I don’t think romantic relationships should work that way, though.”

“I’m not bothered if you sulk,” Tim says. “Honestly, if a romantic relationship can’t survive the occasional sulk, it won’t survive.”

His have had to survive sulks, sleeping through dates, constant distraction, lies of all shapes and sizes, and the occasional tendency to forget he’s already in a relationship when someone tries to start another one with him.

Well, not ‘survive’. The opposite, in fact.

“Not the moods,” Damian says, “though thank you for the reassurance. No, in terms of exchanges. I think a relationship should be fair, but if you focus too much on the mechanics of it, it can become… competitive.”

Tim can’t suppress a smile at that. Of course Damian’s relationships are competitive. Everything Damian does is competitive.

But he knows what Damian means. That tit-for-tat, where you remember every favour earned and spent, weighing them against each other. I did the dishes so you have to make the bed. You came to my work party so I have to hang out with your friends. I sat through this concert so you have to sit through that film. It’s not about sharing passions or helping each other out; it’s about being aggressively, painstakingly fair, because you know it’s not okay to try and ‘win’ at the relationship, to take more than you give, so the only win you permit yourself is the win of being most fair instead.

“Is that how it is with your friends? You try to win at ‘fairness’.”

“No, that’s why we’re still friends,” Damian says, looking up at him. “They are capable of calling me out when I start to get too demanding.”

Tim wants to say that’s good. He wants to tell Damian he’s proud that he’s recognised the pattern for what it is and found a way to break it.

But those are big brother things to say. Alvin is Damian’s boyfriend.

So instead he winks, and says, “I like it when you’re demanding.”

Damian turns bright red.

Whoops.

“Dames?”

He expects Damian to look away, to look down, but he holds Tim’s gaze with an intensity bordering on desperation. As long as he’s staring, Tim doesn’t feel able to look away.

Damian’s eyes are still green in the right light, but it’s dim in the car, and they’re dark as flooded sinkholes. Something behind them burns.

“What are you going to bid on?”

Damian’s voice is strained, like he’s trying to make conversation while someone is standing on his foot. Tim isn’t sure what he’s holding back, but it’s obviously taking some effort.

“Definitely the meet and greet,” Tim says, keeping his tone light.

“The? Oh. Yes.” Damian considers Tim’s reply with significantly more gravity than it deserves. “Obviously, I’ll add you to my account, so you can bid freely.”

Damian just bleeds money for Alvin. Honestly, it’s starting to make Tim bristle a bit. Sure, Alvin was taking advantage when he asked to borrow some ‘seed money’, but he genuinely does anticipate being able to pay Damian back. He’s not a charity case, and the unthinking way Damian keeps throwing money at him only drives home the difference between their situations.

Tim keeps his gaze locked on Damian’s, tilting his chin up. He’s got his pride, and he wants Damian to see it.

“Do you enjoy concerts? Who have you seen live?”

This is starting to feel reminiscent of the movie genre conversation, except Tim can’t risk an honest answer. He hasn’t seen live music outside of a case for years now. Bands he’d have queued for hours to get tickets for have come and gone in Gotham, and he hasn’t even bothered see if Bruce could pull strings. What’s the point, when he’s only going to have to skip out halfway through the warm-up act to fight crime?

He lies and says he’s mostly been listening to local bands, because that’s who Alvin would have seen - scrappy garage outfits paid in beer, no door charge, sticky floors - but his mind is back on his conversation with Steph. It’s not just recently he’s been letting Red Robin and Tim Wayne take up his whole life, so he doesn’t have to confront his empty apartment and even emptier diary.

He’s been training himself not to want things so he can’t be disappointed when he has to sacrifice them before he can enjoy them.

No, more than that. He’s been training himself not to like things. There’s this gap where his likes and dislikes used to be, and that’s why he worries he’ll never have sex. How can he do something so passionate when he’s empty inside?

It’s why it’s so tempting to slip into Alvin, whose hedonism means he’s nothing but likes and wants. Alvin goes to gigs constantly, work nights, rough bars, wherever. He throws himself into the music. He’s always first and last on the dance floor.

“There’s this point,” Tim says, reaching into the fantasy that Alvin offers him, “when the whole crowd starts moving in unison. It’s like how I imagine a religious revival. The feeling, like suddenly you’re telepathic, you’re part of a larger whole. It’s euphoric.”

“I think I know the feeling,” Damian says, “but it’s… it’s the beat between the last note and the start of the applause, when the whole audience takes a breath in the same moment.”

Damian’s still looking him in the eyes and Tim can’t look away. He can see it, glowing in the depths of Damian’s gaze. He understands it, knows the feeling Tim is trying to articulate, when Tim hasn’t experienced it for himself in years.

“Synchronicity,” Tim breathes.

Damian gives him a little half nod, inclining his head in such a way that his pupils stay perfectly still while his body moves around them.

“I don’t get to experience it as often as I’d like,” Tim fumbles for words. “We should go to some concerts together. My kind and your kind. But not, you know, tit for tat. Like you and your friends. Sharing the experiences.”

“I’d like that.”

And Tim’s already calculating, figuring out where they can fit it into the plan, who he might take Damian to see. What he wants to share with Damian.

Damian finally looks down, and it’s like being released from a bear trap. The rest of the world snaps back into existence, and Tim finds it hard to find his focal point without those black embers to look at. The car blurs slightly as he blinks it back into focus.

When he does, he realises Damian’s adjusting his jacket.

Adjusting it over his… oh.

Oh, it is like the movie discussion again.

Damian catches him looking, and Tim sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, trying to think of a way to de-escalate the intensity that’s built between them. But then Damian smirks at him, one eyebrow raised, and it’s that smirk.

Heat floods Tim’s face.

For a moment it’s almost like he’s passed out. Passed out and woken up in an alternate universe, where he and Damian really are dating. There’s a bolt of electricity between them that has Tim’s heart fluttering. Oh god, what if he’s smiling?

No, grinning.

What if he’s grinning, dopily, like Steph accused him of?

He lowers his head immediately, staring down at his knees, before realising what that might look like to Damian and abruptly shifting his gaze to the window.

It’s ridiculous. It’s not like he’s hard. He’s not even sure Damian is - he might be reading too much into his actions; it’s just a twitch of his jacket, after all - but he’s as shy as if he’d caught an eyeful of Damian naked. If he’d seen Damian naked, and Damian had smirked at him.

The car turns left just as someone else runs a red light, and there’s a screech of horns outside the vehicle. Tim’s abruptly reminded about the existence of the world outside, and even more so, the fact ‘inside’ isn’t just the two of them, either.

But he can’t persuade himself that smirk was for Dave’s sake.

Damian’s still smirking, Tim realises, finding his reflection in the glass. It’s still flirtatious in a way Tim hasn’t associated with Damian before, but as he considers Damian’s reflection the smirk softens into a real smile.

Tim’s going to take him to a real gig. Something big, someone Damian would never see, with a crowd so large it’s almost private in the middle of it. And they’ll walk home afterwards, both half deaf, in their own shared world. And then Damian will take him to some chamber orchestra where they’ll sit at little tables lit by tea lights, like stars brought together in the milky way, and the world will seem so loud and large when they leave.

And it’ll be as brothers. Or friends. Or whatever other kind of love Steph had in mind. But not as Damian’s boyfriend Alvin; he’ll be Tim, wholly Tim, and Damian will want him there.

#

The outside of the hotel looks like a five year old girl’s birthday party turned up to eleven. The doormen are busy chasing off people taking selfies amongst the streamers and fairy lights, so there’s only one porter to open the car door, which means Tim has to crawl across the back seat to get out, jarring his injured leg on the drink cooler in the middle. They never even touched the champagne-style carbonated grape juice; Tim prefers grape soda, anyway.

Tim reaches blindly out of the car, unable to see past Damian’s broad back. Damian grabs his hand. Tim clutches at it, using the extra leverage to peel himself out of the vehicle without hurting his leg any further.

Damian steps away from the car to give Tim space to exit, body angled back towards him to take Tim’s weight as he finds his balance on his weak leg. Tim’s hand is still clasped tightly in Damian’s, giving him leverage to pull Tim close. His other arm loops around Tim’s back, and Tim leans into it, letting his head fall back.

Damian presses his lips to Tim’s.

It’s almost choreographed, the way it leads from every other movement, like they’re mid-dance. The cameras going off around them snap and crack like applause.

And it makes sense, Tim realises as Damian pulls back, because of course this is scripted. He took it out of the plan after their previous kiss - their real kiss - with Bruce’s advice in mind, but it feels right that Damian’s put it back.

It’s all a performance, after all. There’s space for improvisation.

Tim slips into character, putting on Alvin’s rehearsed leer.

This is the night where it counts the most. This is the most audacious part of the plan, the element Tim absolutely has to pull off if he wants to get any further with Mr Adams and the 100. Alvin has to step into Damian’s society and make them want what he has, without ever presenting a threat to them. Not Tim. Alvin.

He keeps his hand in Damian’s and leads them into the hotel, past the ridiculous rope barriers with their stuffed unicorn toppers. Hotel security is busy dealing with fangirls, barely sparing them a glance as Alvin flashes Damian’s invitation at them and deliberately walks around the outside of the metal detector like of course it isn’t meant for people like them. It earns him a frown, but there are plenty of other people heading down the red - sparkly pink - carpet, many of whom don’t have invites, to keep them from chasing down legitimate guests.

The ballroom is at the back of the hotel, large and drafty and barely up to code. It’s a historic venue, having hosted it’s fair share of mobsters and molls back in the day, mixing with Gotham’s hoi polloi much as Alvin is tonight. Tim can name three different massacres that took place here, which definitely keeps him on his toes. One set of double doors doesn’t match the others because the Free Men Gang drove a Model T through them back in the early 30s as part of a turf war with the Irish Wound Ravens, and there’s a chandelier missing in the ballroom, which was used Phantom of the Opera style to assassinate a whole cadre of Cobblepots thirty years ago, not to mention the plastered over bullet holes in the ladies powder room from the Cosa Nostra matriarch massacre of 1947.

There’s a bizarre Justin Beiber cover of an older Electric Unicorn hit playing, the repetitive chorus padded out with some warbling and a poorly thought out rap. Tim’s not really a fan of Electric Unicorn, though he’s been doing his research and he has to admit they’ve produced multiple earworms, so as long as what you really want going round in your head at three am is a 14 second loop of a remixed theremin.

At least one waiter moving past them is wearing ear plugs. They’re shuttling trays full of empty glasses and napkins and other party paraphernalia to the ballroom. Tim would almost think they’re early, but there are other couples and small groups filtering down the corridor, most carrying glasses of complementary fairyfloss cocktails.

They look disgusting, to Tim’s eye, tooth-rottingly sweet, but he’s willing to bet they pack a punch. These secret auctions rely on the paranoia of drunkenness; the conviction that you’re in competition with the rest of the room despite the fact you might be the only one bidding. Sealed bids are a fools game, and it’s one Alvin is going to throw himself into whole-heartedly.

"Do you want to get a drink?" he asks Damian, and is slightly surprised when Damian shakes his head. "...Okay."

It’s not like he thought Damian wanted to actually drink it, but they need to kill some time before they reach the ballroom. No one respects an overly keen drug dealer, after all.

Tim presses the side of his body against Damian’s, arm tightly looped in Damian’s. His calf is starting to ache already, which isn’t ideal. He skipped the painkillers this evening, which he is starting to regret, and he left the crutches in the car. He leans a little more heavily on Damian, trying to avoid limping.

He glances around, looking for something to talk about that will justify them slowing down even more. He dismisses the waitstaff and the other guests - the latter because, frankly, he wants something to talk about in the car home, and he’s already got half a dozen notes he wants to gossip about uninterrupted - and the decor speaks for itself. He wonders if Damian knows the hotel, the history of it. He’s not born and bred in Gotham like Tim, didn’t come here on school trips, didn’t hide in the backroom with the other kids during galas, didn’t bury himself in the library’s microfiche collection of old unsolved crimes.

Okay, maybe that’s not most kids born and bred in Gotham, maybe that’s just Tim.

His eyes light on the doors. There are accessible rooms on the ground floor, and Tim knows there’s a couple of suites near the ballroom - and which famous assassinations took place in them - but he’s pretty certain they’re in the other wing.

Alvin might be as much a Gothamite as Tim, but there’s no way he’s ever been here before. The infamous roomservice murders of ‘78 could have happened in Star City for all Alvin knows.

"Are there bedrooms on this level? Or, like, are those other function rooms?" Tim nods at the rooms, hoping he’s not coming across as too interested in the completely plain doors.

Damian doesn't reply; he leads Tim over to one of the doors and presses down on the handle. The door swings open, revealing a small, grey meeting room with an out-of-place stock photo of over-saturated daffodils opposite the interactive whiteboard.

"Nice," Tim says, trying to make it sound like he means it. There has to be something positive about the space that the lurid yellow photo doesn’t overshadow. "Space to hook up?”

Damian stays silent, hovering on the threshold of the room.

“You ever fucked on a boardroom table before, Dames?" Tim chuckles as he says it. He can picture someone like Damian, sure, with his powerful build and haughty air, plowing someone like Alvin, scrappy and lean, in the conference room, but real Damian? Awkward young adult, desperation desperately contained under a rapidly fracturing cool exterior, and real Tim, so wrapped up in his own head he’s talked himself out of sex a dozen times over. Neither of them would manage to even get their pants off without tripping over them.

So it’s easy to slip into Alvin and keep leering. "Maybe later we can-"

"Stop."

"No one will even-"

"No. Stop."

The second time Tim registers Damian’s objections and promptly shuts up.

"This is over."

The world lurches sideways like their in the ballroom of the Titanic. Something like seasickness washes over Tim and his brain stalls.

"What's over?"

They’re in the middle of a mission. What is Damian talking about?

He’ll explain. Damian will explain and it’ll make sense and this horrible rolling vertigo will go away.

"This. Us. I can't do it."

He’s ditching the mission.

He’s ditching Tim.

No.

He’s dumping Tim.

Tim’s breath catches in his chest and he nearly chokes.

Damian pulls away from him while he’s still struggling for air, and turns back down the corridor. Tim grabs blindly for him.

"What do you mean you can't do it?” He can’t be doing this. He can’t be leaving Tim. Not Damian. “What the hell, Damian?"

Damian’s voice is cold and steady. "Let go of me."

Tim can’t handle this. Everything inside him is burning chaos. He feels like he’s dying, like he’s drowning, like Damian is walking away with the last life preserver.

"No, you can't just walk out like this. Not now."

They’ve been having such a good evening.

"I can't stay,” Damian says, like it explains anything. “I can't do this with you."

So it’s Tim, then, that’s the problem.

Tim who’s been misreading this whole night, the flirting, the rapport they built in the car, the whole relationship they’ve built. He’s been wrong about everything. It hasn’t been a good evening. He’s been doing something wrong all along, something that’s made it so painful Damian’s got no choice but to dump him right now.

It’s Tim, like it’s been Tim in every relationship he’s been in.

But this isn't a relationship, it's a mission.

"What, bid on concert tickets?” he flails. “What the hell is so wrong with me you can't wait another two hours to do this?"

Damian doesn’t even look back as he shakes off Tim’s hand.

"Damian!”

He starts walking away.

“Damian!"

Tim becomes aware of everyone else in the corridor; the waiters, the guests, the guitarist from Electric Unicorn with his two bottles of vodka.

It’s too much.

Everyone’s staring. The whole corridor is silent.

They think this is Tim’s fault. Like everything else Damian does, he’s found a way to pin his bad behaviour on Tim. He half expects to hear Dick ticking him off for provoking Damian.

"Fuck you too, Damian!”

He took it, all those years when Damian was a teenaged hellion. He took it quietly. Arguing never gained him the high ground.

But fuck the high ground.

Fuck taking it.

Fuck Damian.

“Fuck you. And fuck all of you eavesdropping assholes too.”

He can’t stop. Damian isn’t even looking back, but everyone else is watching him, like he’s the pre-show entertainment.

And he’s got to go into that ballroom. He’s got to sell them pills he’s carefully broken down and reconstituted into the safest, weakest versions possible without handing out aspirin. He’s got to convince them Alvin is the right guy to show them a good time.

And definitely not this guy, howling expletives in the corridor.

"Damian!"

"Please."

"Please?"

Damian’s gone.

He’s left and Tim doesn’t even know why.

Chapter Text

It's when Roy appears at Alvin's apartment, and says to Tim, "I've got two questions: are you using, and can you prove to me you're not?" that Tim realises he's gone too deep into Alvin. He spends an apologetic hour with Roy showing him the inventory Alvin has purchased but not sold, takes a drug test, and offers him a new version of a long range batarang launcher as compensation for his time. He doesn't ask who called Roy.

Sure, he's lost some weight, and he's blown off some responsibilities, and he's missed a few calls. It's just... Damian dumped Alvin, and Tim feels like maybe he owes Alvin some time to... Process it?

Not that Alvin’s really had time. He’s attending two or three parties a week - galas, openings and events, but also a lot of private parties at the homes of people who never bothered invite Tim Drake Wayne, despite moving in the same circles. Not that Tim would enjoy them. He feels so out of touch with his peers.

And then there’s the interest in Alvin’s photography. He spends half his time shutting down online stores selling copies of his work and resisting the urge to argue with them when they say he should be grateful for the exposure. He’s written a script to send out DMCA notices for him.

Alvin has a lot of things: a driving licence, a bank account, and as of last week he’s even got a social security number that belonged to a baby who would have been Tim’s aunt if she’d lived. What he doesn’t have is enough history to pass muster if the IRS starts paying actual attention, which they may well do if his art sells half as well as people keep trying to persuade him it will. None of the birth dates line up on any of Alvin’s documents. He’s never filed a tax return. He has no criminal record, no school record, no foster record.

It was never supposed to matter. Alvin is the sort of person who shouldn’t ever come on to the IRS’s radar. The vast majority of his transactions are in cash. Even now there’s a lot of dollar bills passing through his hands. He’s sold a few pictures, but now there’s a couple of galleries inviting Alvin to do shows, and it’s starting to get complicated.

Tim’s working on it, of course, in amongst everything else. He’s hacked several of Gotham’s institutions to make Alvin a bit more solid. He just doesn’t have the time to put aside to do a thorough job, not when he’s still spending the rest of his waking hours handling auditors for Bruce and the remaining handful he ought to be sleeping tracking the 100 without crossing paths with any of his family.

He doesn’t know how they feel about what’s going on. He doesn’t know what they think is going on. To be honest, he’s still not sure he knows.

He thought he’d known what was going on in Damian’s head. He thought he’d understood what was going on between them. He’d been in control.

And then everything was over. Curtain drop. Lights out. Get the fuck out of the theatre.

He can’t imagine what Damian’s said to the others. He literally can’t. When he pictures Damian with Bruce or Dick he gets as far as his lips moving, but no sound comes out.

Damian’s deleted all of his social media. He’s changed his phone number. Disconnected all of the trackers Tim had access to. Changed his frequency on the comms.

It’s ridiculous. Damian’s still living at the manor. Still going to school, probably. Still going out as Robin. Tim could just go… talk to him.

Ask him.

Every time the thought slips in, though, there’s another party Alvin needs to go to. Another meeting with Mitch to get more product. Some reason to cake himself in makeup and put on someone else’s clothes and go be Alvin.

It doesn’t make sense, because Alvin was the one who got dumped, not Tim, but when he’s Alvin he doesn’t care as much. Damian was cute, sure. Alvin owed him for the leg up in society Damian had given him. He’s even still planning to pay him back some day for the money Damian loaned him. But it’s not like Alvin was that hung up on him. It wasn’t that serious. It had just been a bit of fun. Alvin’s moved on.

Tim grabs the eyeliner. He can find a party. Plenty of doors are open to him now. That kid at Damian’s school, the one he was supposed to be rooming with in Metropolis, it’s his step-brother’s twenty fifth tonight. Tim hadn’t been planning to go, but he needs to get out of the apartment. Roy’s visit has just made everything raw again. The gritty remains of all those pills scattered around reminding him of the plan that Damian quit on.

He shoves a baggie of aspirin in his back pocket in case anyone is looking to buy tonight. They’re dusted with kryptonite powder to make them look like the stuff Mitch sold him, but it’s not enough to even give Kon worse than indigestion.

Maybe he should skip the party. Leave the glowing aspirin at home and call Kon.

Someone called Roy. Dick or Jason, probably. Maybe one of the Titans. People are worried about him. Roy’s probably reporting back to them right now.

Maybe they know what Damian’s thinking.

There he goes, thinking like Tim again. Like someone who cares what Damian thinks.

Alvin’s got better things to do.

#

Tim's eyes are still burning when he stumbles into the kitchenette after a long but fitful sleep. He didn’t take his eyeliner off before falling into bed and he’s paying for it with a nasty bout of pink eye that a hot flannel and eye drops have done nothing to alleviate. It hurts to keep his eyes open and it hurts to close them, his own tears scalding the surface of his eyes.

He manages to stop himself from rubbing them again as he drops into one of the breakfast bar stools and gropes for his phone, which he left charging on the counter.

He finds the TV remote instead, so he turns it on. The Gotham News channel pops up, ticker scrolling across the bottom. Tim blinks blearily at it, but the words are moving too fast for his burning eyes to read. It takes a few tries, but eventually he manages to focus on the clock in the corner.

11:21

Shit.

He turns back to the counter, but his phone isn’t there. It takes ten minutes of searching, but eventually he finds it under the microwave, a smear of something greasy suggesting it skidded there after he dropped it while eating… a burrito? A burger? A stick of butter? The battery is completely flat, which explains why his alarm never went off.

He sticks it on the charging pad and fumbles around in the cupboards until he unearths a loaf of sliced bread that’s only a little stale. He toasts a couple of slices and eats them dry, unable to find the butter and still half wondering if he ate it last night.

He’s not as hungover as last night’s actions suggest he ought to be, though maybe the pain in his eyes is distracting him from any other symptoms. He was fairly drunk when he left the party, though he’d kept at least half of his wits about him out of habit. He remembers taking an uber back to Alvin’s shitty apartment with a couple of other guys who lived on that side of town. They’d invited themselves up for another couple of drinks, and then a couple more, and then something a bit harder from Alvin’s stash. He’d ended up climbing out of the bathroom window just as they’d started to realise the pills weren’t doing much to their mental states beyond easing their aches and pains.

He’d wobbled a couple of blocks before hiring a Lyft to get back to the Nest. Oh god, he’d given the actual address, hadn’t he? He’ll have to check his phone once it’s charged. He’s not looking forward to trying to hack Lyft’s accounts when he can’t look directly at a lit screen for more than a couple of seconds. It’s going to be bad enough messaging Tam to let her know he’s off sick.

The idea he’s missed work because he’s overslept makes him feel bad enough, but it’s going to take him several days to shift this self-inflicted bout of pinkeye. With the audit still rolling on, and everything else he’s meant to be staying on top of. He won’t even be able to spend the time as Alvin, or patrolling as Red Robin.

He’s going to be stuck here. Alone. With his own thoughts.

He can work without being able to see, right? They have accessibility software for their visually impaired staff. Tam will be able to get him set up. It’ll be fine. He can keep busy.

A familiar voice on the TV breaks into his reverie:

“These revelations are pretty damning, Bruce.”

Lois Lane. Her investigation is obviously bearing fruit, then.

Tim turns to squint at the TV, and immediately has to look away.

“At the time, the involvement of the organisation lead by Talia Head - I think it’s Head Military Support now? Or Supplier?” Brucie’s smooth voice invites Lois to fill in for him, a hapless man at the mercy of sensible women who are capable of basic adult functions like remembering business names.

“The Head Armament Nexus, as of last month.”

“Thank you. Anyway, at that point, it hadn’t been involved in some of the more controversial conflicts they’re now known for. When Batman approached me to help him find a supplier for defensive apparatus for Robin, Talia Head was one of the few dealers I knew who hadn’t, well, committed a war crime.”

“As opposed to the other weapons dealers you socialise with?”

“Honestly? I… I’m going to get sued, aren’t I? But honestly, a lot of the money in Gotham has blood on it. I should have looked into Ms Head’s company more deeply, but I’d just become a parent - well, a ward, but really, a parent - of a twelve year old and I went with Talia because I thought I had enough information that I didn’t need to research any further..”

“And taking on a ward of your own, that didn’t give you pause when Batman asked you to supply chest armour for a child?”

“Hey. I had no idea how old Robin was. I assumed he was an adult. Everyone assumed he was an adult until the Teen Titans launched. I was furious to find out what he’d involved me in, of course I was. I look at Dick, only a few years younger than Robin, and I imagine him in that kind of danger, and it makes me feel sick. He didn’t have the decision making capabilities at that age, the ability to judge risk, to take it seriously.”

“But now you fund Batman Inc, so obviously you’ve made your peace with it, even though it’s clear the pattern of employing child soldiers has continued.”

“I… I lost Jason. I’ve called Batman out for what he does, but I can’t change the culture of superheroing from the outside, not when it’s not just Robin: it’s Wonder Girl, it’s Kid Flash, it’s Speedy, it’s Superbo- girl. And when I speak to my kids, I can see why those teen heroes are important. How they inspire and represent a vulnerable group who need advocates on the world stage. All I can do is my part to keep those kids safe. We don’t provide Batman with weapons; we provide armour, we provide communication hardware, we provide state of the art seatbelts for those mini-tanks they all tear around the city in.”

It’s weird hearing Bruce talk about teen heroes like this. Tim wonders if he really disassociates so well that he can make peace with Robin while parenting his kids, or if the whole time he’s had this conflict burning away inside him.

Both, probably. They all had their reasons they wanted to get out in the field, and maybe Bruce could have restrained Dick, earning his eternal resentment, and talked Tim out of it, but Jason and Damian couldn’t have been stopped short of physical restraints, and Steph and Cass had both been fighting long before they came into Bruce’s orbit. Batman can put his concerns away when he’s in the suit, train them, support them, protect them, but all Bruce can do is throw money at the problem and worry for them.

No wonder he always struggles when he’s injured and his birds are out without him.

“It’s clear from the direction that the Head owned corporations - under their many names - have taken that Talia Head does not share your concerns about outfitting children with heavy armaments. You benefited financially from the relationship you established with Talia Head, didn’t you? After her stint as LexCorp CEO she gutted the company in Wayne Enterprises’ favour.”

“That was completely unexpected, and I think it had a lot more to do with her relationship with Luthor than our brief business relationship.”

“These documents suggest your business relationship was far from brief. Money has continued to move between companies owned by yourself and the Heads.”

“Has it?” Bruce sounds genuinely surprised.

“Sorry, are you suggesting you’re unaware?”

Oh god, this means there are League operatives inside Wayne Enterprises. Again. Probably one of the Batman Inc employees. Damnit.

He needs to get some eyedrops and get in touch with Tam.

“I oversee very little of the day to day operations. I don’t even have sign off on large financial amounts any more, because I was causing a bottleneck when significant purchases needed to be made. Like our Star City office getting held up by, what was it, two years? I just never saw the paperwork on my desk, if you can believe it.”

Tim doesn’t need to be able to see to picture Lois’s face right now.

“Even when purchases are delivered directly to your house?”

“Sorry, Talia’s sent me what now?”

“Dog food, primarily, as far as our researchers can tell. The most expensive dog food in the world.”

Bruce swears under his breath, and Tim picks out the word ‘Damian’ in amongst the muttered oaths.

It’s clear from Lois’s tone of voice that she doesn’t think it’s really dog food, but she’s wrong. Talia’s just trying to take an interest in her son’s hobbies, and now it looks like Bruce is complicit in war crimes committed on the other side of the world.

Tim missed this. He missed Talia’s gifts, and this is his fault.

He curls in on himself. His mouth is still full of toast but he’s too nauseated to swallow it, so it sits there, sucking the moisture out of his cheeks until it turns into a leaden ball.

Tim is missing work. Tim has screwed up the audit. Tim is going to get Bruce jailed.

Red Robin is going to be out of action because Tim hasn’t been following basic hygiene around eye make up.

Alvin is…

Oh god, he wants to be Alvin so badly. To stop caring about Tim’s fuck ups. To stop caring, period.

What would Alvin do now? With burning eyes and a hangover and a dead phone battery?

He would go back to bed.

Great idea, Alvin. Amazing idea. Best idea Tim has ever heard.

Chapter Text

Tim’s got a patch over his worst eye, and so many drops in the other it’s like the world is underwater. But he’s here, he’s in the office, and he’s got the text-to-speech software set up on his laptop and he’s managed to get through three whole emails this morning.

“I think I got more done when you weren’t here,” Tam says. “It was a lot less distracting when Mechanical Sally wasn’t mispronouncing every other word of each email at full volume.”

“I tried to change the voice,” Tim says, “but I couldn’t stand listening to her read the menu to find the options.”

“Why are you here?” Tam asks. “No, scratch that, how are you here? You didn’t drive, did you?”

“Uber,” Tim says. “Seriously?”

“Honey, your shirt is inside out. You’ve got a sock stuck to your pants. You can’t see. You absolutely can’t see. You shouldn’t be here.”

Tim gropes down his left leg. There’s a sigh much closer than he expects, then fabric pulls tight over his right knee and Tam presses the sock into his hand.

“I’m not fixing your shirt,” she says.

“It’s not inside out,” Tim says. “It can’t be. How would I have buttoned it? You’re testing me.”

Tam snorts, but doesn’t confirm or deny Tim’s statement.

“Lois Lane picked up on Talia Head’s links to the family,” Tim says. “I haven’t been paying enough attention to the papertrails. I can’t risk anything coming up in the audit. No more surprises.”

“Or what?”

“Or Bruce will step in.”

“Bruce, hmm?” Tam paces around the room behind him, heels clicking on the carpet tiles. “The one who left all these surprises for us?”

“He won’t step back out,” Tim says. “I mean, he’ll say he will, but he won’t. And he’s been working really hard to let go of things that… that are life limiting, you know? I don’t want him to backslide.”

“Life limiting? You make it sound like he’s giving up smoking.”

Tim smiles. “He’s finally noticed he’s getting old. Well, not old, even. But older. And he’s missing out on stuff. I don’t want him feeling he has to turn all that focus on Wayne Enterprises, to put down one burden only to pick up another.”

“He’s older now than my grandparents ever were.”

Tim doesn’t know how long Damian has been standing there.

For some reason he feels like he should. God knows Damian moves silently enough that he can even sneak up on Bruce. He never wears scent, and he’s too far away from Tim to have picked up on his body heat. And yet the feeling persists, that he should have felt Damian’s approach, intuited it somehow. That he should have had some warning.

He gives himself a couple of beats to centre himself before he lifts his head. There’s a lean black blur in the doorway.

Oh.

It’s easier not being able to see him.

Not easy. But easier. He hadn’t realised how hard he’d expected it to be, seeing Damian again. He’d been ignoring that dread. But now it’s here, it’s happening, and he’s still breathing. This too will pass.

He just wishes Damian couldn’t see him, either.

At least he’s behind his desk. He knows what the view from the door is like, and if he hunches slightly he’s not much more than a forehead and his hair.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Tam asks, stepping around the desk to position herself between Tim and Damian.

“Suspended,” Damian says. “Father asked me to put my time to good use.”

“I’m sure we can find you something to do,” Tam says firmly. Her tread on the carpet is firm, like a ward matron approaching an unruly patient. Tim knows that walk. It’s got him down to the cafeteria, it’s got him into meetings he didn’t want to attend, and it’s got him out of the door and on his way home on more than one occasion. A little of the tension eases out of Tim’s shoulders at the thought of Damian being safely hustled out of the room with minimal input from himself.

“Father suggested I help with the audit.”

“We can’t disturb the auditors without looking like we’re tampering with their investigation. The finance intern is off sick. Your help will be appreciated there.”

“They can fetch their own coffees. I-”

“He needs to sign the NDAs and the rest of the paperwork before he can intern with finance,” Tim says, Tam’s comment about the investigation triggering some other realisations. “Damian’s not an employee. He can’t have access to confidential information without going through a full induction.”

“A what now?” The blur in the doorway gains three inches in pure outrage. “Of course I’m not an employee. I am an heir.”

It’s funny how Tim can actually hear Tam’s eye roll. Hey, maybe his other senses are starting to heighten. That’d be cool.

Oh god, that’s an Alvin thought. Only Alvin is that stupid. No one becomes a metahuman because they got pink eye. It’s because Damian’s here. Tim’s subconscious is trying to protect him by making him too stupid to care.

If he didn’t have a meeting in half an hour, he’d probably embrace it, too. His inner Brucie. But he needs to be sharp, which means he needs to be Tim, which means he needs to get Damian out of the room before his intellectual faculties degrade entirely.

“It’ll give you insight into how the company works from the ground up,” Tim says. “We’ve got two administrators and a delivery manager starting today on the Batman Inc project. You should join their induction.”

“On Batman Inc?” Damian sounds interested, despite himself.

“Think of it as doing your own audit of the induction process.” Tim leans back in his chair. “Write a report on anything you think needs improving.”

“Tt. Don’t patronise me, Drake. I do know busy-work when I see it. Are you going to mark it in red pen and give me a gold star if I find all the risks you’ve already identified?”

Tim can’t suppress a smile. He knows he shouldn’t, but Damian is so bitterly acerbic that he finds it funny. Damian. His Damian, not Alvin’s, all sarcasm and snideness. It’s funny because it hurts to know how far backwards things have fallen, and because it’s so familiar it’s soothing at the same time.

There’s a rustle in the doorway, a sound suspiciously like a dress shoe hitting a doorframe with force, and then footsteps stomping down the hallway outside.

Tam sighs. “You had to laugh at him, didn’t you? And now I’m going to have to fetch all your coffee personally to make sure he hasn’t poisoned it. I have better things to do, you know.”

“I can stomach a little poison,” Tim says. “Do we have any star stickers?”

“No, and we’re not buying any. What is this, Tim? Why are you antagonising him?” Tam’s voice moves around the room, pausing by filing cabinets, then moving over to the window. When she starts speaking again she sounds different. Tired, a little. Sad. Resigned. “This thing you’re doing, sticking your fingers in open wounds, it’s not like you. I’m not saying the thing where you wall yourself off is any healthier, but at least you’re not making teenagers cry.”

“Cry? It’s not- You know that we- He dumped Alvin. It’s complicated.” Damian wasn’t crying. He’d have heard that. Right? Damian’s breathing had stayed steady throughout. “I can’t deal with him distracting me today. I’m already having a tough enough time as it is.”

“Is that it? Your eyes hurt, so that makes it okay? Go home, Tim. You don’t need to be here when you’re sick.”

“We already discussed this. I’m staying.”

Tam sighs. “You’re not dealing, Tim. I don’t think it’s that complicated. I think you’re telling yourself that so you have an excuse for not dealing. Having him here is just rubbing that in your face.”

“Well, out of sight, out of mind. Do you have the agenda for the Kord Industries meeting?”

“If you’re doing so well, I’m sure you can find it in your emails yourself.”

Tam sits down at her own desk. There’s a click of a jack into a socket, the whisper of wires over a mousemat, and then a distant bass beat through headphones that throbs like an angry pulse.

He probably deserves this. His breakup with Tam hadn’t been exactly amicable, when they’d tried to move from the fake relationship to a real one, but they’d been civil enough to each other. It’s probably the closest experience he has to the break up with Damian, and he’s hard put to explain to himself why he’s feeling so much more raw now.

The thing is, he hasn’t audited the induction process. He doesn’t know what Batman Inc employees are told. And now it’s come up he’s aware it’s yet another glaring black hole in his audit preparations. Damian’s insight will be genuinely helpful.

He wants to explain to Tam that he wasn’t laughing at Damian, not really. Damian had said something funny, and Tim’s seventy percent certain it was on purpose. If he’d been talking to Alvin, it would have been on purpose; Alvin loved Damian’s sarcastic sense of humour. And Damian would have found it funny if Alvin had marked the report like an elementary school teacher.

And maybe they’d have bent over the report together, and as their heads neared Tim might have turned his face, and Damian his, and their lips might have met. And he’d have felt Damian smile against him, again. He’d have thrilled in that moment of silent feedback, kissed him back, and filed the memory away to turn into a private joke, to earn himself more smiles and more kisses and to know he could make Damian happy.

To know Alvin could make Damian happy.

Tim can’t make those jokes. Tim can’t earn those smiles. He has no right to Damian’s happiness. They’re Tim and Damian, they’re brothers forever at war, and nothing Tim can say or do will be anything other than antagonistic.

And it’s worse, because he knows Damian’s hurting over Alvin, and here’s Tim with Alvin’s face and Alvin’s voice and Alvin’s knowledge of him. And Tim can’t help that in any way apart from staying away from Damian, and now Damian’s here, and how’s Tim supposed to be the good guy when Damian’s hurting himself? Why would Bruce tell him to come here?

“Why would Bruce tell him to come here?”

But Tam isn’t listening and she doesn’t respond.

An alert chimes on Tim’s computer, and the text-to-speech software intones “Kord Meeting, Ten to Eleven Fifty, eleven invited, nine responses, eight attending, one maybe, meeting room nine, sixth floor, Wayne Enterprises, Wayne Tower, 82 Commercial Street, Old Gotham Gotham City, agenda attached.”

He’d zoned out during the roboticised address, but snaps back when he hears the word ‘agenda’. He clicks blindly at the screen, until he finds the right link and the software begins again.

“Kord Industries Wayne Enterprise Meeting. Date Time Meeting Room. Agenda Template. Time item time item time item. Refreshments provided not provided delete as appropriate.”

Tim sighs.

He should have just called out sick again.

#

“Knock knock!”

TIm’s head jerks up at Dick’s voice.

“Gee, you’re looking, uh-”

Tim snorts. “It’s pink eye,” he says, though now it’s also a pounding headache, a bout of tinnitus, and a throbbing foot where he’d slammed it into a wall that definitely hadn’t been there earlier. “What are you doing here? If you’re looking for-”

“I wanted to check in with you,” Dick says. “I feel like I’ve barely seen you in weeks.”

Tim’s been blowing him off. “I’ve been really busy. You know, day job, night job.” He shrugs.

“He’s been off sick for two days,” Tam says, and Tim jumps because he’d genuinely forgotten she was still here. “And he’s going to be off sick for at least another two, because I can’t handle listening to that text to speech software any longer.”

“Oh, is it still that voice with the vocal fry that can’t pronounce double vowels?” Dick asks.

“No, it’s better than that, but the accent is this weird British deal that’s super nasal and it pauses stupidly long for every period so you think it’s finally stopped, but it’s hasn’t, and every time you encounter a two letter acronym that matches a state or country code it uses that instead and do you know how many acronyms we use? Because it turns out it’s way too many.” Tam takes a deep breath. “I’m putting an urgent request into procurement for an upgrade, so keep Tim at home until either his eyesight returns or the request gets approved, I’m begging you.”

Dick chuckles. “Sounds like you’ve had your marching orders, chum.”

Tim sighs. “Yeah, it does.” He rolls his shoulders, back audibly clicking. “I think I’ve created more work than I’ve done today. Should have just stayed home. It’s just… Did you know Talia is sending Damian dog food?”

“No?” Dick’s a dark blur in Tim’s good eye, unrecognisable, but the smell of him as he approaches is the best kind of familiar - there’s something of the circus in his scent, burnt sugar and hot dough, dry grass and dust, diesel fumes and canvas wax - and when he leans over to shut down Tim’s computer for him Tim gives in to the urge and leans into him.

Dick tenses briefly, then wraps both arms around him and buries his nose in Tim’s hair.

He hadn’t known how badly he needed a hug until he got one.

“How about we go up to the Penthouse?” Dick says. “It’s closer than your place, and it’s all one level. You can have food brought up from the canteen here.”

Tim frowns. “They shut down at six. Don’t you want to get take out?”

“Not tonight,” Dick says. “I mean, why don’t you stay there? It’s easier for the office, so you won’t be out of the loop, and-”

“And Bruce can monitor me there.”

Dick shifts and Tim can tell he’s expecting Tim to pull away, but he doesn’t.

A day in the office, a day being Tim without any escape, has forced him to confront certain realities. It’s forced him to think like Tim, which hasn’t been pleasant, but has been productive.

Of course he’s being monitored. It doesn’t matter who called Roy - though right now he’s pretty confident it was Dick, based on his reaction to Tim’s appearance - because he’s been dodging everyone. There’s no point pretending to himself he can escape the family’s scrutiny, so he might as well take advantage of the benefits it provides.

But he’s going to make a fuss about it, so they don’t think he’s giving in too easily.

“Tim-”

“No, fine,” Tim sighs. “Until the medicated eyedrops actually do their job, at least. The Penthouse is signed up to more streaming services than my place, anyway, and there’s a TV in the bedroom. I might not be able to watch anything, but I do love the sound effects on Disney Plus’s Star Wars offerings. Pew Pew!”

“That sounds suspiciously like the plans of a person who’s sick,” Dick says. “Forgive me if I don’t expect you to stick to them.” He releases Tim, but keeps a hand on his upper arm.

Tim stands. “Bacteria is trying to eat my eyeballs. I hate it. I hate being sick as an adult, having to make my own soup and call my own doctor and put in my own eyedrops.”

“But you don’t have to do any of those things. You could come back to the manor any time and-” Dick catches himself.

“Yeah. Come on, let’s find you a neon yellow vest and you can guide me to more comfortable climes.” Tim gestures towards the door. “If anyone tries to pet you I’ll tell them you’re working.”

Dick snorts. “I’m going to look after you so hard, you won’t know what hit you. A pile of blankets so high the bed can’t take the weight. Enough soup to drown in. A hundred hours of 1950s science fiction radio plays to listen to.”

“Oh hell yes.”

#

They’re halfway through Charles Chilton’s Journey to Space - who knew all the astronauts on a Mars mission would have English accents so crisp they made Alfred sound positively regional? - when Tim’s phone chirps with an email alert. He grabs it on instinct and swipes it open, before realising the screen is nothing but a blur to him. He squints, moving the phone closer and further from his face, until he manages to make out what he thinks is two words beginning with V.

“Is this from Vale?” he asks, holding it out to Dick.

“Yes. Are you okay with me reading it?”

“Please.”

“Dear Alvin, Vicki Vale has asked me to reach out and arrange an interview with you to promote the opening of your exhibition at the Wolfman Gallery. She has the following availability: Tuesday 2pm, Tuesday 6pm, Wednesday 10am, Thursday 6pm. Please let us know your availability as soon as possible. Sent on behalf of Vicki Vale.” Dick’s thumbnail clicks on the glass of the phone screen. “Do you think Vicki would give an intern access to her email address? She sure as hell doesn’t have the clout at the Gazette to get a personal assistant.”

“You think she wrote it herself?” Tim snorts. It sounds plausible. “I’ve been waiting to hear from her for weeks. Surely she must want to plumb Alvin for gossip about Damian.”

“She was sniffing around Damian’s friends at school, but Steph has been running interference.”

“In costume? She’s the nice Batgirl.”

Dick laughs. “She’s also a crackshot hitting a telephoto lens with a gooperang from 60 metres away. Not only is the camera very, very broken, but it hit Vicki in the face. You guys can coordinate eye-patches for your interview.”

“It’s not stopped her from writing a bunch of speculative articles. I just don’t know why she didn’t approach Alvin when everything was really fresh to see what he would spill.”

“Classism? I mean, she doesn’t like Damian, but she really didn’t like Alvin for Damian. Made it very clear she thought he could do better.”

Tim wrinkles his nose. The class disparity just made the story all the juicier. “Can you reply and say Alvin is free on Friday morning? I’d like to be able to see her face when I ask her about it, and hopefully the antibiotics will have done their job by then.”

“Not Thursday?”

“No, if she wants an interview, she can work to my schedule.”

“Cool, cool. Do you want me to reply as Alvin?”

Tim smirks. “No. Be Alvin’s intern. Or Alvin’s agent’s intern. What name would Alvin make up?”

“Amanda Mount?”

“Anita Naylor?”

“Ivana Cox.”

“Stella Virgin.”

“Ophelia Balls!”

“Dill Doe!”

“Dixie Normous!”

Tim’s got at least another three in him, but he’s laughing too hard to get them out. He hasn’t had this much fun in ages. Simple, uncomplicated fun. Dick is so easy to make laugh, and it’s such a good sound. It’s like birdsong or perfectly pitched bells or a heartbeat. It’s a joy to hear.

By the time he can speak again, his eyes have watered so badly the last round of eyedrops have been washed out. He feels his way along the wall to get to the bathroom and back. They still sting going in, but not as badly, which he hopes is a good sign.

He has to let go of the wall to stumble the last few steps towards the sofa. He’s starting to suspect he’s missed when he’s still walking several paces after he expected to bump into the back of it, but a hand bumps his arm, then closes around his wrist. He lets Dick steer him back to the seat and collapses on to it. He manages to land half on Dick, who chuckles and gives his hair a firm ruffle before shoving Tim into his own space.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Tim says, still filled with the glow of Dick’s laughter. “I figured you’d come to pick up Damian, but-”

“Pick up Damian?”

“Yeah.”

“From Wayne Enterprises?”

“You didn’t know he was there?”

“No! It’s a school day!”

“He said Bruce sent him.”

Dick snorts. “Bruce did not, trust me on that.”

Tim frowns. “You sure?”

“Aside from the fact I was at the manor earlier? Yeah. Bruce is doing his best to give both of you space from each other. There’s no way he’d deliberately put Damian in your orbit right now.”

Tim swallows. “How… How is Damian?” He isn’t sure he wants to know, but he doesn’t know if he’ll get another chance to ask.

“You didn’t see him? I thought-”

“Well, I ‘saw’ him-” Tim air quotes “-briefly, but it’s not like I could actually look at him. Honestly, I was mostly hiding behind my desk so he wouldn’t see me. Not, like, wouldn’t notice me - we had a conversation - but I… I don’t know. I look a mess right now, with the eye, and everything, but I’ve still got my pride. I didn’t want him to think it was him.”

Dick exhales loudly, but doesn’t comment on that.

“Tam signed him up for an induction, since he’s not actually a staff member. I meant to check if he went through with it.”

“Didn’t you ask why he was skipping school?”

“He said he was suspended. He’s already in detention every day. Not that I’d blame him for skipping.” Tim chews his lip. “You’ve got to get him out of there, Dick. I keep telling myself to stay out of it, especially at the moment, but I can’t keep sitting on my hands. That school is killing him.”

“I know.”

“You know? Why are you letting-”

“Letting him? Have you met Damian?” Dick laughs humourlessly. “I’m not blind. I hate that he’s putting himself through this. But can you imagine telling Damian to quit something because it’s too hard? How he’d take that? He can’t quit, and he can’t fail. It’s just not in his personality. I’ve been trying to find a way to make him think it’s his own idea, but he’s not 10 any more. You can’t just reverse psychology him into eating his dessert.”

That brings a smile to Tim’s face. “That’s Damian, alright. Eats his greens but has to be tricked into consuming chocolate.” He tugs on his sleeve, the sudden swell of fondness uncomfortable in his tightening chest. He wants so badly for Damian to be happy. Even if it means Tim isn’t. Because if Damian quits school, he’s going to start working at Wayne Enterprises, and that means Tim’s going to be on his way out. “He’s getting better at failing, you know. He said… he said school broke him, because it’s been so easy. He’d forgotten how to learn, and that starts with failing, doesn’t it? So maybe he can learn how to quit school.”

“Look, I love the irony that in a family full of genuine geniuses that I might be the only one who graduated high school as much as the next guy, but I don’t think Damian’s going to drop out. Check out, sure, and I fully support him in that, but he’s too competitive to let those assholes beat him. He’s going to finish school, and he’s going to get the best damn grades in his class, and he’s going to tell himself that makes it worth it. And it doesn’t, but we’re going to help him lie to himself until it’s far enough in the past he can admit he made the wrong choice without blaming himself for it.”

Tim shakes his head. “Like you let me lie to myself that I made the right choice to drop out? Because it’s been years, Dick, and on the one hand I know that I couldn’t have kept going, kept sitting there, kept seeing those people, but on the other I’m mourning my life, as well as my dad’s and Dana’s and everyone else’s. Even everyone who came back, like Kon and Bruce, I’m still mourning them.”

“Oh, Tim.” Dick’s arms are firm around his shoulders and Tim lets himself melt into Dick’s chest. “Me too.”

He remembers Dick in the batsuit. He remembers Dick with the wrong Robin at his side. He remembers Dick trying to be a father. He remembers Dick trying to be Bruce. And he remembers Dick failing.

He feels Dick’s chest hitch against his ear and clings tightly to him. Dick buries his face in Tim’s hair.

They can’t let Damian lie to himself. Not like this, like they had to, to get through so much.

It’s not about choices, not really. Dick and Tim had both had to step into Bruce’s shoes. Their plans for themselves would probably never have come to fruition. Tim doesn’t even know what Dick had wanted, not really, or why being Batman had interrupted it. Maybe it wasn’t even that moment that threw him off course, but something earlier. Maybe he’s mourning the life he might have had in the circus.

He’s mourning how it changed their relationship, though. Tim can tell from the way Dick’s arms tighten around him, from the way the hug feels like coming home. Dick’s plans had always had them side by side, and they've been out of step for so long now.

They sit like that for a while, until Dick finally lifts his head from Tim’s.

“Jon returning has changed things for Damian,” Dick says softly. “I think… I don’t know what he’ll do now. He’s got to confront that the last few years haven’t been as he envisioned them. Maybe Jon will go back to school. Maybe that will make things easier.”

“Maybe,” Tim says.

“I know… I know there’s a lot of things you can’t have. Can’t redo. But that version of you you’re mourning, is there anything there you can reclaim? Get your GED? Go to college? Resurrect your parents’ company? When I read the bit in Vicki’s email about Alvin’s exhibition - which, by the way, I’m sure you were just about to tell the family about any day now, right? - your eyes lit up. Was that part of it?” Dick strokes Tim’s hair.

“I’m wearing patches over both eyes,” Tim says.

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“Liar.”

“Fine. I think your photography is amazing. I light up when I see it. I want to go to your exhibition. I want you to have space in your life where you get to do that when you aren’t undercover.”

Tim smiles. “It was never really my dream. I mean, it was always my hobby, and I loved it, but sometimes when I think about that version of myself, where dad lived and I graduated high school and went to college, I know that’s not the happiest version of myself. One where I quit Robin, and get an office job that bores me, and I pretend to be straight, and I lie and lie and lie to my dad about everything to keep him happy instead. I’m mourning a life I would have been pretty miserable in. But…” he shrugs. “Grief sucks like that, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“I don’t think there’s a version of school where Damian is happy, not really. Like you say, he couldn’t have quit, even early on. He couldn’t have failed. But it’s always been too easy for him, and his peers have always been assholes. I worry… I worry he doesn’t think there’s anything better for him to do with his time, though. He talks about Wayne Enterprises like I talked about college with my dad, like it’s just a given, but I don’t think he wants to be there more than he wants to be in school, and considering how miserable school makes him that worries me.”

“He’d be Robin all the time if he could,” Dick says. “But it’s clear that’s not healthy for him either.”

“No. It’s like trying to be Alvin all the time. It’s a break from being me.”

“I wish… I wish both of you liked yourselves better.”

Tim shakes his head. “No. That’s not the way to look at it. I mean, you were the first Robin. You’re Nightwing. Does that mean you don’t like yourself?”

“When I first became Robin? Yes, at least partly. I didn’t like grieving. I didn’t like the pain and anger and betrayal, and changes in my life. I didn’t like feeling guilty about not loving Bruce as much as my parents, and I didn’t like feeling guilty that I didn’t need my parents as much as I needed Bruce.”

“...Oh.”

“Tim… You stepped into Robin for a whole different reason to me. It was something very different to you. You were always the most whole of us. It was hard, seeing you wear Robin like it was just a costume to you. Just clothes. It was really hard realising that Robin is just clothes, and everything I’d been pinning on the identity was just me. That was why I struggled so hard when Bruce gave it to Jason.” Dick sighs. “You’re right about Nightwing, though. Nightwing is me. It’s not an escape from being me.”

Something ticks over in Tim’s mind. “Bruce… Batman was an escape, for Bruce.”

“Well, obviously.”

“And now he’s thinking about quitting.”

“He told you that?”

“It came up in a discussion about health care,” Tim says. “Physically, he can’t maintain Batman much longer. And I didn’t realise it at the time, but when he said that, he was fine with it. Like, fine with letting Batman go. He doesn’t need the escape any more.”

“No, he’s a lot happier these days.” Dick ruffles Tim’s hair. “He’s come to terms with a lot of aspects of himself. It’s not just Batman, either. Notice the end of Brucie’s serial monogamy?”

“Now that you mention it. I think…” Tim bites his lip. “Oh, he’s been trying to tell me something. Trying to- No, don’t tell me. He wants to tell me. God, that must have been so frustrating for him, when every time he tried to bring the subject up I started going on about Damian, or myself.” He can’t hold back a snicker. “And I’m meant to be the observant one!”

Dick laughs. “Yeah, you should make some time to just listen to him. Just… A lot of time. He tends to dance around the subject for hours before he actually works up the courage to say anything. It goes against his every instinct to be open about this stuff.”

“I know.” Tim shakes his head. “You don’t have to say it, either.”

“Say what?”

“That I’m just like him.”

“Wasn’t going to. Swear it.”

“Liar.” Tim grins. “I get that feeling, that need to keep things private, and I get how hard it is to share the important stuff in your life when you’re used to framing everything around the mission.”

“Do you want me to have him swing by here?”

Tim considers. It’d be nice to have his dad’s company for a while, but- “Doesn’t Damian need him?”

“He can spare him for a night. Gotham can spare him. Damian needs to get that suit back on and get into the city.” Dick leans back in the sofa. “Tonight’s my night off. Wanna continue with that radio show?”

Tim nods. He curls into Dick’s side, lets his brother slide an arm around his shoulders, and surrenders to the soothing rhythms of three long dead men in a tiny studio pretending they’re a world away.

Chapter Text

When Tim wakes up on Friday his eye only feels a couple of degrees warmer than normal, not the searing desert heat that’s been blistering his eyeball for the past few days. He can see pretty well as long as the light level doesn’t change suddenly. He suspects by the afternoon it’ll be hurting again, though. It’s probably not worth going into work. Right?

Besides, he’s got that call with Vicki today, which he can’t take in the office as Alvin, and he wants to be well enough to drop in on a Neon Knights centre after dark without having to wear an eyepatch. Alvin’s poor hygiene choices may have introduced the bacteria to Tim’s waterline, but Tim is the one who has been publicly ill. Alvin’s been… hungover, probably? Withdrawing, even.

Yes, withdrawing. That tracks with Knights. Alvin hasn’t made a decision to get clean, but maybe he’s scared himself a little. Maybe it’s been a really rough week and he just wants to see what the alternative might be. Whether it’s worth the work.

And if it’s not, well, then everyone else in the Knight’s NA programme is an idiot for wasting their time and energy when they could be having fun, and it’s on Alvin to make sure they know that and offer them an alternative.

Can Tim live with himself if Alvin and his gritty green aspirin take someone’s sobriety from them?

The thought doesn’t sit well with him. It ought to feel even worse - there are so many people around him for whom it’s a line they couldn’t conceive of crossing, and whose opinion of Tim would be forever destroyed if they knew he’d done it - but it’s just one digit in a complex calculation. On the one side is the lives that would be lost if he let Neon Knights fall to the 100. On the other is the lives he’ll destroy trying to save it.

Those kinds of calculations, though, they’re supervillain territory. The end justifies the means. The way people like Ra’s and Luthor think. Tim’s better than that.

Tim’s going to solve this case so efficiently the risk never comes to pass.

Easy.

His thoughts are interrupted by the ringing of a phone. It takes Tim a moment to place the ring tone, and another moment to remember where he left the phone in question.

Alvin’s phone is a chunky iPhone that used to belong to someone else and wasn’t very well wiped by the fence selling it. Sometimes the previous owner’s quirks manifest in unexpected ways, like assigning Vicki Vale ‘Jenny from the Block’ as a ring tone.

Once the mission is over, Tim’s going to return the phone, with as much of its original storage restored as possible. A lot of it’s gone, but there’s some pictures of a kids birthday party and some more of an old lady in a hospital bed, a playlist called ‘writing music’ and a lot of notes files Tim has chosen not to pry into. And some downloaded ring tones, most of which were attached to long deleted numbers, but are occasionally resurrected if Tim happens to add one of the same numbers to the phone book.

Like Vicki.

So there’s that to investigate too, even though it’s just idle curiosity. Tim can’t stand unanswered questions.

“Alvin Draper?”

“Yo.”

Tim waits. Vicki is quiet on the other end of the line a beat too long, waiting for Alvin’s inevitable questions. Tim lets her stew. She left Alvin waiting too long for this interview and he’s lost interest.

Vicki folds just quickly enough that someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t recognise it for what it was. “Have you got time to talk?”

“Depends.” Tim picks up a lighter and clicks it on and off, knowing the noise would be audible over the call.

“I understand you have an exhibition coming up. I’m sure you’re very busy preparing for it.”

“Yeah, it’s gonna be cool.”

He can almost hear Vicki grinding her teeth. “Would you like to share any information about the exhibition?”

“Nah, you can google it.” Tim inhales like he’s sucking on a cigarette. “Have your ‘assistant’ do it.”

“And are you inviting Damian Wayne?”

Ah, that’s a little more interesting.

“It’s not an invite only deal. Anyone can rock up. It’s just pictures, you know? Not a Lick the Mona Lisa party.”

“Not a…” Vicki huffs, and Tim suspects he knows what the article’s pull quote is going to be. “Have you seen much of him since the Electric Unicorn auction?”

“Nah.”

“That was quite a fight you had.”

Something tugs in Tim’s chest, the first loosening of his tongue, but he bites down on it.

“Especially after what looked like a very romantic kiss on arrival.”

Tim swallows, hard.

“Such a short time for such a change in mood. There’s been a lot of speculation about what happened, of course. Would you like to take advantage of this opportunity to give your side of the story?”

“Like what?”

“Like your side?”

“No, like, what speculation?” Tim clicks the lighter again. “I don’t read newspapers. What are people saying about me?”

“Well, considering the nature of what Damian Wayne was reported to say, some people have suggested a sexual act did or didn’t take place that he may or may not have been completely comfortable with. Where consent, perhaps, was not as fully informed as it might have been prior to the act.”

The lighter flame is bright in Tim’s vision, burning yellow-blue, the metal around it getting hotter and hotter until the pads of Tim’s fingers throb.

Some people.

Did or didn’t take place.

May or may not have been comfortable.

Consent.

“Some people,” Tim says, as the pain in his fingers finally forces him to close the lighter. The flame lingers in his vision, green and purple against the white walls of his apartment. It’s blurrier in his bad eye than his good.

“Online comments. You know. Anonymous. Would you like to explain what actually happened?”

“I don’t believe you. I think if people were saying I tried to rape Damian, I’d have heard. I think everyone would have heard. I think I wouldn’t be getting offers and exhibitions and invites like I am if people thought I’d tried to rape one of the richest, most important people in Gotham, male privilege- white privilege be damned.” Tim’s chest hurts. “I never laid a non-consensual finger on him. I never took a pic without his permission. I never told him who to be or what to want. Now, what ‘people’ think that fight sounded like, I don’t care, but Damian was not accusing me of rape, and you can ask him that directly for all I care.”

There’s only so much he can even say, because he doesn’t want to give those “me too is a threat to men” types something to latch on to. But it’s not Damian making the accusation, and he can shout “believe victims” until he’s blue in the face but no one believes victims who say something didn’t happen, like all those kids in the Satanic Panic.

If Damian was a girl, Tim would not be so confident that the complete lack of consequences Alvin is facing were due to a lack of rumours. The class disparity leans to Damian’s side, but Alvin’s white, he’s straight passing, he’s completely enmeshed in toxic masculinity. He’s got a narrative the press loves, all boot-strappy and rags to riches but ripe to be torn back down again. He just needs a little more success to make that downfall sweeter, first; he’ll be forgotten too quickly right now. Let him have his exhibition, let him sell some art to some big names, then take his feet out from under him and see who else he pulls down with him.

It’ll come back, Tim knows, this accusation he sexually assaulted Damian. It’ll re-emerge as soon as the press decides he’s getting too big for his boots. Right now it’s a threat - “give me something to print, or I’ll print this” - and Vicki is doing a great job at feigning concern, but there’s something she wants and she’s getting frustrated that he’s not giving it to her.

“Are you worried about the influence his family have in this town?”

“They didn’t like me when we were dating,” Tim points out.

“Yes, but with these rumours-”

“-that you made up-”

“-there’s not just his father to worry about, is there?”

“You mean like his brothers and sisters?”

There’s a pause, and he wonders if they’re about to dig into how Alvin knows Jason, but instead she asks, “did you even meet all of them? Damian is closest to his oldest siblings. Did you meet Cassandra Cain? Or Tim Drake?”

“Uh, sure. Probably. It was hard to keep track. There’s a frickin’ lot of them, and they’ve all got that black hair and blue eyes thing going on.”

“Indeed. Drake and Cain are closest to you in age, though. And Drake has an interest in photography. Were you aware of that?”

… How the fuck is Vicki aware of that? He entered, like, two competitions as a kid. Who’s trash has she been going through?

Before he can respond, she goes on, “and what about Damian’s mother?”

“Talia?” he asks, still mired in confusion about what Vicki is implying about Tim. Does she know? Has she seen through Alvin?

“Talia Head, yes. Did Damian introduce you to her?”

Wait, wait.

Fuck.

He’s fucked up.

It’s not public knowledge that Damian’s mother is the former head of LexCorp.

Fuckity fuck.

“I don’t know her full name,” Tim hedges desperately. “He doesn’t talk about her much.”

His go to line would be something about keeping Damian’s mouth too busy to talk, but after the way this conversation started he doesn’t dare go there, either.

“I was dating Damian, you know, not his fam. Avoided them as much as possible. Daddy Wayne was pretty clear that he didn’t want me around.”

“She’s a powerful person. Arguably even more so than Bruce Wayne. Certainly someone I’d be more worried about upsetting.”

“You mean, like by outing her kid without warning? Yeah, I’d be worried too if I were you,” Tim says. “Whatever, I’m well out of it now. I’ve moved on, Dames has moved on, who cares what we were doing, like, a month ago. I’ve got an exhibition to prepare for. I think it’s gonna really appeal to, like, real Gothamites. Not the Bristol crowd, you know. I got a series of pictures I took during the Quake that really tell Gotham’s story, the layers that were exposed. You know, architecturally and socially. That shit. I was here for the Clench, I was here for No Man’s Land, I’ve looked Joker in the eye. You don’t get to lay claim to Gotham’s trauma if you live on the fucking mainland. If you’re one of the fuckers that closes the fucking bridges as soon as someone in Gotham so much as twitches.”

It comes out with more vitriol than Tim expects, and he realises he means it. Too many people want to cut Gotham out like a cancer, and it’s not fair. He grew up in Central Gotham, water on all sides, and sure, he’s been moved in and out of the city his whole life - even as far as Keystone City - but every time the rest of America started eyeing up the road blocks Tim had made sure he was on the right side of them.

“And that’s the theme of the exhibition, is it? Gotham’s trauma?”

“Gotham lives with its trauma. Anyone who takes a picture of Gotham and edits it out is the same sort of person who’d photoshop legs onto a landmine victim. The theme is Layers.”

Vicki’s hm-hmms that, and Tim thinks maybe she gets it. She’s always been on the right side of the road blocks too.

“Was that a challenge, with the Waynes being mainlanders?”

“Oh, we’re back to that now. Like Daddy Wayne isn’t the poster boy for Gotham’s trauma. Wish mine came with a million dollar mansion and armfuls of Armani, but maybe I’ll strike it lucky with this exhibition and then I can say I least I earned mine.” Tim sighs. “Go on, ask another. Wayne this, Wayne that, the whole damn brood of them. What underwear does Dick wear? Who’s perfume does Cassandra buy? What camera does Tim use, because apparently that’s his thing, like it can’t even be mine because, oh no, a Wayne got there first.”

“So it’s still a prickly subject?”

“I don’t care. Me an’ Damian broke up. I don’t have anything to do with them. If you wanted to plow me for info, you shoulda tried it while we were still dating. Not that I woulda said anything, because snitches get stitches, you know, but at least I might have had something to not tell you.”

Vicki sighs. “You know, of the two of you, I hadn’t expected Damian to be the more forthcoming.”

Tim snorts. “I know that’s bullshit. Fine, you want something on Damian an’ me? I was blindsided. But that was his prerogative. It takes two people to start a relationship but only one to end it. So what if I didn’t see it coming? It’s not like we were fucking married. I got over it. I’m sure he has too.”

“But it was a shock?”

“Blindsided. That’s your quote, and I want four hundred dollars for it.”

“What would five hundred dollars get me?” Vicki asks, amusement lacing her tone.

“You can put an exclamation mark on the end.”

“Oh, well, if I get to put an exclamation mark, then that’s a bargain.”

“Six hundred will get you an interrobang,” Tim says, before catching himself. “And you can say I learned that word from helping Damian with his English homework for another hundred on top.”

“Ah, we’re getting a little rich for my tastes now. I’ll give you four fifty for a semi-colon.”

“Done.”

“Pleasure doing business with you. It’s funny, you know, a high school drop out like yourself being able to offer Damian Wayne help with his homework.”

“‘Help’ might be a bit strong,” Tim says. “So, yeah. Four fifty, Damian Wayne blindsided me but I haven’t seen or heard from him since and that’s just fine, and the exhibition is about Gotham’s layers and it’s going to blow some minds. You got all that?”

“I think I can manage to fluff that up into some kind of article, I’m sure. I’ll have my assistant wire you your fee.”

She doesn’t ask for his bank details before hanging up, which doesn’t entirely surprise him. She’s not going to send him money.

But Alvin’s got his own source of income.

#

He’s in a workshop on renters rights. Well, workshop might be a strong word. None of the Agile facilitators at work would recognise this ragged semi-circle of mismatched chairs, not a single post-it note on the wall. Tim just wanted somewhere to sit down to eat his spring rolls, and only realised two and a half rolls in that the guy leaning on the wall was actually talking sense, and the people around him were actually listening. You can’t blame him; on the opposite side of the hall there’s another guy talking and gesticulating with equal passion, but his audience are entirely in his head.

“No, I mean, literally no water,” the girl next to him is saying. “You’ve got to go to the landlord with buckets to fill up the toilet cistern, and he says that meets the letter of the law.”

“Yeah, well, the black mould on my wall has actually eaten through the plasterboard. I can see the kitchen from bed.” A guy leans back in his chair, folding his arms.

“My bed is in the kitchen,” a younger girl says mournfully. “Since my brother’s girlfriend got evicted they took my bed, and then her baby daddy was arrested so now her four kids, and two that are his with other women, are all in the apartment too, so I don’t even get the sofa.”

Alvin’s got black mould and a window that doesn’t shut, but suddenly Tim feels like he’s living like a king. Three whole rooms in his apartment, a door that locks, and no room mate.

The younger girl, long braids with bleached ends that she keeps chewing, is a good target for Alvin to recruit. She’s high school age, but Tim’s estimation, though he suspects that if she hasn’t dropped out already she will soon. Who could do homework in that environment? All the stay in school incentives in the world won’t help if she’s falling asleep in class and embarrassed because she’s wearing the same clothes four days in a row because the little kids’ clothes take precedence at the laundrette when there’s only enough quarters for one load.

She needs cash. She needs lots of it, and she needs to have it under her own control so no one else can spend it for her. Enough and she might be able to keep studying despite it all. At least, that’s the angle Alvin would take. She’s a good girl. A conscientious girl. Enough money to buy a camp bed, to buy a few more changes of clothes, to sit at a coffee shop to study in the evenings. That’s all. She’s just doing what she has to to get by, just until she graduates. She wants to be a high school graduate, doesn’t she? She might even get a scholarship somewhere, get out altogether and live in a cute dorm room with just one other person. She’s gonna make it. She’s gonna be someone. She just has to start somewhere.

The shredded carrot and cabbage in his mouth turn to slime, and it’s a fight to swallow.

He pushes himself out of the chair, leaving the workshop while the presenter is in the middle of handing out form letters. He abandons his last spring roll on the chair, where it’s promptly snatched up by one of the other attendees.

There’s another knot of kids in the corner of the centre, standing around a ping pong table. Two of them are holding bats, an east asian guy and a black girl, but there’s no sign of any balls. Alvin slinks over, hands in his pockets, and slouches against the wall at the edge of the group.

Court is being held by the guy with one of the bats, who’s gesticulating with it and talking about the Williams sisters. He’s older than most of the others, his clothes a little cleaner, his hair recently cut. Tim is willing to bet that if he rolled up the sleeves of his plaid shirt he’d have some pretty serious gang tattoos. Hopefully he’s here because he got out. Tim wishes he’d say something to that effect, but he’s really freakin’ passionate about Serena’s return to tennis after giving birth.

He turns his attention to the group. There’s a hispanic girl at the back in an oversized hoodie, slouching with her hands in her pockets. Her hair is cut short, and it’s glossy and thick, but her mouth is twisted like she’s got toothache.

“Oh, they always talk about the morning sickness,” he remembers Steph telling him once, “but no one ever warns you about the bleeding gums.”

He wonders if the girl plays tennis. There’s something hard in her eyes as she listens to the guy talk about Serena, and Tim’s not sure if it’s ambition or resentment.

Alvin could pitch to her, too.

Earn enough money to make a real choice. Raise your baby if you want to. Give it up for adoption if you want, but a private adoption. You’ll get a better standard of parent for your baby if they think you’re some middle class kid who made an honest mistake. Enough money to rent an airbnb, to pass yourself off as a college kid when you interview them. You’re studying medicine. Everyone wants to imagine that the only reason you’d give your kid up is because you’re going to change the world for everyone else. You’re the good kind of immigrant.

If they think you’re a high schooler from the slums, they’ll take advantage. They’ll make promises they won’t intend to keep. They’ll take your child to raise like Cinderella. You owe it to that baby to make sure it’s raised by a family that really want it. A family that thinks you’re like them. There but for the grace of god, the mother will say, and share some story about how she had a pregnancy scare in college too, and she’ll want you to think she’s a good person to raise your baby because she’s just like you, just a little older, a little wealthier, a little luckier.

Tim pictures Steph at the same stage of pregnancy, still able to hide it from people who weren’t paying much attention. Remembers her search for reputable adoption agencies; how hard it was in Gotham, and the attention she got from the less reputable ones when they realised her child was white. Huge demand out there for white babies.

The girl needs help, and she needs it to come from the opposite of Alvin. For all Tim knows she’s planning to keep the baby, anyway.

He turns away from her, and sees a boy who’s ripe for recruitment. Knock off Air Force Ones on his feet, knock off Rolex on his wrist, knockoff Raybans perched on top of his head, real - but several seasons old - LaCoste polo shirt. It’s an eclectic look, to be sure. Someone who’s wearing all of his wannabe rich kid stuff at once. He desperately wants to impress but doesn’t know how.

There’s ink under his fingernails and one of his pockets is bulging with a large book. Tim can’t make out what it is from the sliver showing, but he can see a bus ticket being used as a bookmark. The stamp at the top suggests he’s come further than most of the others here.

Oh, Tim thinks. He knows this kid. Not this specific kid, but he’s known plenty of kids like him. The kind whose parents send them to a private school they can’t afford. He’s smart, too smart for the public school system, so they scrimp and save and send him somewhere better, and he’s fucking miserable. He doesn’t dress like the other kids, doesn’t share their expensive hobbies, doesn’t vacation anywhere, let alone to Europe. He’s a cuckoo in the nest, stealing their grades and honours and scholarships they think their wealth entitles them to, so they peck him to shreds.

Such an easy pitch for Alvin. This will reduce your anxiety. This will stop you caring about what they say behind your back. This will make those exams easier to pass. Just remember which ones to take when. Oh, you’ll be fine, it’s just to get you through. And hey, do you want some to sell? Make a bit of money so you can have real AF1s?

The kid is smart enough to know any popularity at school he gains would be fleeting, that the rich kids who buy from him haven’t suddenly been won over by his personality, but that’s okay. Think of it as getting one over on them. It’s on them if they get addicted, if they ruin their own lives. He’s smart. He can manage himself; it’s just like getting meds from the doctor, but cheaper. Way cheaper.

The kid makes eye contact with Alvin, and Tim jerks guiltily, half convinced the guy knows what he’s been thinking. He’s spent too much time around telepaths.

Alvin looks away and shuffles towards the exit.

He can’t do it.

He’s good at this, undercover work. He’s one of the best at it. He has identities indistinguishable from real people, identities he can step into more easily than he can be Tim Wayne. He’s a detective that commands respect from heroes and villains alike.

But he can’t do this. He can’t pull one of these kids into the 100’s scheme and wrap up the case fast enough that they don’t get hurt. He’d have destroyed their lives before the night was over.

This is where Damian was supposed to come in. Someone safe to deal to, someone safe to recruit. Now how is Tim supposed to bring this case to fruition?

Tim shoves his hands in his pockets and dodges around another kid trying to fight the tide of late stage capitalism and claw their way out of poverty the hard way.

“Yo! Yo.”

A hand lands on Tim’s shoulder and he jumps, spinning around with one arm raised in defence before he can stop himself.

“Sorry, dude.” It’s the tennis fan, who steps back with his hands raised. “Sorry, I should know better. I just wanted to check you’re okay. You had something to eat? The spring rolls are fire.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. I’m just,” Alvin gestures are the exit. “Yunno. I’m done for the night.”

“We’re open late, you know. There’s no rush. You wanna play a little pingpong? I’m sorry for hogging the table earlier.”

“You really like Serena, dontcha?” Alvin can’t suppress a smirk.

“Yeah.”

“Who did you run with? Before you came here?” Alvin asks, not caring if it’s not how shit works in the Knights. He wants to know.

Tennis Fan rolls up his sleeve to show a dragon tattoo.

“You know Matt?” Alvin asks.

“Yeah. You’re Vinnie, right? He told me to look out for you.”

“He’s a good guy.” Alvin scrubs a hand through his hair, dislodging his baseball cap briefly. He shoves it back down over his brow. “I don’t run with anyone. I mean, I’ve picked up jobs, but, like, I’m not in deep. I’m cool. I don’t need all this.”

Tennis Fan frowns. “That’s not what I hear. I think you’re in over your head, Vinnie, and I think you do need this. Why do you think you came here?”

“Spring rolls?” It’s meant to be a joke, but it doesn’t come out right.

“It’s been tough, lately. You’ve got a lot of attention on you, right? Not all of it positive.”

Alvin scowls. “Who gives a shit about the haters? I’ve got an exhibition. I’ve fucking made it. I don’t need this place. I don’t need to pick up jobs any more.”

“But you’re still doing it, aren’t you? I wasn’t talking about press releases, kid. You’ve got big names, scary names, talking about you and your access. The parties you’re going to. The people you’re hanging out with.” Tennis Fan gestures around the room. “Just hang out here for the evening, Vinnie. See if you don’t like the people here better.”

“Of course I like the people here better,” Alvin says.

“Oh.” Tennis Fan is nonplussed by this revelation.

“That’s… That’s why I shouldn’t stay,” Alvin says. “Like you say, there’s some scary people out there. I don’t want to get anyone else into trouble.”

“We can help.”

“Really? Because there’s at least three kids actively recruiting out of Neon Knights right now for new dealers. Help them.”

Tennis Fan looks shocked at the revelation, but Alvin doesn’t waste time expanding - it’s Red Robin’s info, not his, so it’s not like he could explain how he even knows - and leaves the hall post haste, summoning an uber as he walks.

There’s a large black car on the corner, no licence plate and heavily tinted windows, one of which starts to whirr as it lowers. Alvin strides past, spying his uber on the other side of the crossing and not waiting for the lights to change as he sprints over to it, leaping into the backseat before it can even pull over for him.

The driver eyes him in the mirror. “You gonna say it?”

“Say it?”

“You know. Drive, drive, drive! Or ‘put your foot on it!’ But don’t say ‘follow that car’ - you want a cab for that. I have to stick to the app.”

Alvin laughs. “Burn rubber, man.”

Chapter Text

Tam drops a copy of the Gotham Gazette on Tim’s desk. Vicki’s profile sits above the headline, next to the tagline “Layers or Players - Alvin Draper on Gotham, Page 11”, which, he has to admit, is a nice hook.

He skims the article, which reads pretty much as expected. She’s used “Anyone who takes a picture of Gotham and edits it out is the same sort of person who’d photoshop legs onto a landmine victim” as the pullquote, and carefully avoided “Blindsided”, no matter the punctuation, which makes Tim smile.

It’s only as he reaches the end of the article that something tugs on the back of Tim’s mind, something that came up talking to Vicki about helping Damian with his homework.

Alvin isn’t a high school drop out. Tim is.

Alvin is a photographer, whereas Tim isn’t, not since he was a kid.

Same age. Similar looks.

Knows who Damian’s mother is.

Does… Has Vicki recognised him? Has she seen through Alvin?

Oh, he does not have the energy to deal with that on top of everything else right now.

He’s meant to be working on [something], but as usual when he’s meant to have his mind on Wayne Enterprises, Tim’s thinking about Neon Knights.

As Alvin, last night’s mission was a bust. But if he frames it as Tim Drake undercover in his own organisation, it was user research. There are so many new areas they could expand into. Like renters rights: that wasn’t an official programme, but one of the volunteers took it on themself to run the workshop. Tim’s already reached out, and the guy is happy to repeat the session across the sites, as long as travel expenses are covered.

It’s the pregnant girl who’s lingering in Tim’s mind. She reminds him of Steph, which reminds him of Steph’s daughter, which makes him want to check up on her, but that would be “over-stepping” and “boundary stomping” and “literally the opposite of what anyone is asking you to do, Tim”.

And he’s not, okay? He’s respecting Steph’s wishes.

He just wants to know what that girl’s wishes are. But not just her. Because she’s just one person, like Steph is just one person, and building a system around the needs of a single person is how you introduce systemic issues. You need to build a system that offers choices, that allows people to build the service they need for themselves.

And the easiest way - the most cost-effective way - to give people choices, is to give people money.

But there’s a board, and donors, and public scrutiny, and you can’t just say “here’s free money for pregnant people” without getting certain backs up.

So it’s a fund. There’s some kind of application form. Some payments go directly to vendors.

Tim starts scribbling ideas on a notepad.

The medical bills, that’s a fund, so people who are pregnant don’t avoid seeing the doctor. Maybe there’s two funds - one to cover copays for people with insurance, and one that covers clinic costs for people without.

A store of emergency baby supplies - diapers, formula, clothes, cribs, car seats, toys - that those who want to keep their children can use to prepare. Available round the clock, so if the baby comes in the middle of the night, early, no one has to drive around looking for a 24 hour Walmart.

And freely available contraception, of course. Not just condoms. Funding for IUDs, contraceptive jab clinics. Plan B. Support if you need to terminate the pregnancy; someone to give you a ride, someone to fend off the protestors, someone to tell you it’s going to be okay.

Referrals to reputable adoption agencies. Costs are usually covered by the adopters, TIm knows, but maybe there’s something he can do there too. You shouldn’t have to be able to afford someone else’s medical expenses to adopt.

A smile tugs at his mouth. Bruce might want to get in on that. Facilitating adoptions? Most on brand Brucie Wayne moment ever. Plus, if the audit keeps going in the direction it is, some good press is going to be needed.

He needs to do some research and build a business case he can present to Neon Knights Trustees (including Bruce). He’ll talk to Steph, see if there’s anything he missed- dental appointments, she complained so much about her teeth, make sure dentists are covered -and reach out to Leslie to find out about which clinics do maternity care, and which would if they had the money. He needs to know what sort of numbers might want to make use of the programme, so he should reach out to some of the centre leads, then he can start costing some of this up.

If he builds it, they will come.

Last night wasn’t a bust. He didn’t get any traction on the 100, but he’s going to make a difference to some lives.

“You’re late to the finance AI scrum,” Tam says.

He’s going to make a difference to some lives in his lunch break. Duty calls.

#

Tim always mutes his phone before meetings. It’s just good etiquette. He’s got his work phone on the table in front of him and his personal phone inside his jacket pocket, and when he hears “Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is about as effective as chewing bubblegum”, muffled by someone’s pants pocket, and stares around the room, wondering who else is into Baz Luhrman’s 90s music.

Everyone else is staring too. At him.

It’s his pants pocket.

It’s Alvin’s phone.

He pulls it out and hits cancel on the call, face flaming. Before he can apologise, it starts ringing again.

He hits cancel again, and while he’s trying to silence it it starts ringing a third time.

“Oh for- just answer it,” snaps one of the board members. “I’m sure we all can wait while you handle your busy social life, Mr Wayne.”

Tim hates board meetings. Tim hates the board. The only person who hates the board more than Tim is Bruce, which is why he’s always palming meetings off on Tim.

So fuck them. Alvin has fucking awesome taste in nineties tunes, and if they don’t appreciate a bit of life advice from Mr Moulin Rouge himself then they probably deserve the inevitable skin cancer they’re gonna get for ignoring him.

He ducks into a bathroom, checking the stalls are empty, and picks up Mitch’s fifth attempt to get through to Alvin.

“What?” he snaps.

“Where the fuck have you been, kid?”

“Busy.”

“Yeah, busy alright. What were you doing at a fucking Knights venue?”

Tim swallows, and decides to go with the truth. “Looking for buyers. But I didn’t find anyone.”

“You haven’t got anything to shift,” Mitch accuses.

“Yeah. I was gonna call you about that.”

“So why am I calling you, kid?”

“I, uh. I don’t know. Why are you calling me?” Tim lets some of his genuine confusion bleed into his voice.

Mitch sighs. “Because you’re starting to get flakey on me, Vinnie. You’re starting to turn into the kinda guy I don’t like associating with. I got plenty of people who want to be in your position, you know. People who want the kind of perks you’re getting. People willing to work harder than you.”

“Hey,” Tim says, “I work plenty hard. I sold it all, didn’t I? Even the freaky stuff.”

“And now you’re out. What were you planning to do if someone called you? You always gotta have stock in, Vinnie. You’re an independent salesman. You always gotta have stock, you always gotta be upselling. How you gonna upsell a guy looking for weed if you don’t even have fucking weed, Vinnie? You’re sabotaging yourself. You’re setting yourself up to fail. I don’t want to see you fail, Vinnie.”

“Yeah, well.” Tim shakes his head. He’s stung by the accusation he’s a failure, even as part of a sales pitch coming from Mitch.

Tim really hates letting people down.

“I woulda called you,” he says in Alvin’s sulky voice.

“I’m not fucking Door Dash, kid. You can’t wait until you need the shit to order it, you get me?”

“Well, no, but…”

“So you’re gonna come meet me now, right? Replenish your stocks. Get your shit together and be the salesman I head hunted. I got a deal you can’t afford to miss, the chance to buy enough shit to start building your own down line. Put the graft in now and by the end of the month you won’t have to work more than an hour a day. You just gotta meet me and take this shit off my hands before someone else does, because like I say, Vinnie, there’s a lot of people out there jostling to take your place.”

“The same warehouse as before?” Tim asks, feeling a little cowed by Mitch’s monologue. He’s got this cadence, this rhythm, that’s hypnotic, like someone reading Shakespeare with too much emphasis on the iambic pentameter. The words rock back and forth against Tim’s chest like a blunt saw, the teeth chewing their way towards his heart despite his resistance.

“No, that’s compromised, or have you forgotten? I’ll text you the address.”

“‘I’ll come at-”

“You’ll come now. And bring something to eat. I’m fucking starving.”

“Yeah, me too,” Tim says, and hangs up.

The thing is. The thing is. Mitch.

Mitch, who took on the Red Hood for him, and didn’t even leverage the fact (...yet). Maybe he was being genuine. Maybe he really does like Alvin, and wants to see him succeed. He sure as hell cares more about Gotham’s working class than the group of inbred idiots in the board room, mocking Cathy from catering’s comfortable sneakers as soon as she’s done dropping off the coffee, throwing the half-full takeout cups they brought with them into the trash because they don’t care that janitorial are going to have to deal with a liner full of liquid, joking about how they should steal the sleeping bags tucked in a discrete corner by the entrance because homeless people ‘are on too many drugs to feel the cold anyway’.

Tim remembers the way he’d have pitched to the kids at Neon Knights, and thinks maybe he’s fallen for something similar himself. Mitch isn’t Jason, he’s not some kind of Robin Hood figure for Gotham’s ghettos. Somehow he’s convinced Tim that he’s a slightly more put together kind of Alvin, someone with a bit more self control and a bit less procrastination, but exactly the same chip on his shoulder. Someone who deserves more chances than the universe is going to give him.

The address comes through to Alvin’s phone while Tim’s ruminating on Mitch’s charm, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing aloud at the very timely example Mitch has sent him: it’s the gallery Alvin’s exhibition is taking place at.

Mitch wants to see Alvin succeed.

#

Alvin doesn’t wear shirts this expensive, but Tim didn’t have much of a choice. He had to pull together a disguise out of pieces he had at the office and in the penthouse. All of it is too good for Alvin - nothing from Walmart, no knock offs, nothing splitting at the seams or worn to translucency. Instead of oversized plaid Tim’s wearing one of his spare dress shirts, the sleeves rolled up to hide the immaculate cuffs and the collar popped. Dick’s jeans aren’t the right kind of baggy on Tim; sure, they hang low on his hips but it’s clear it’s because they don’t fit, Alvin’s bulky phone dragging them down in a way that has him fighting his instincts to pull them back up. He had to fish a t-shirt out of Titus’s dog basket to find something that hadn’t been pressed and ironed by Alfred, a Damian cast off left there to comfort the dog when Damian had been in space with the Titans.

At least he has a full make up kit at the Penthouse, so his face is fully transformed. He manages to sketch on the pockmarks and scars that differentiate Alvin’s face from his own in record time, blending putty into his nose to create an old break - not that Tim hasn’t broken his plenty of times, but he’s always managed to reset it quickly and cleanly enough it isn’t obvious - while he laces up a spare pair of Matches Malone boots.

He decides to take the bus, in the hope that the general fug that accompanies Gotham’s public transport will rub off on him. When the doors open there’s an accompanying haze, like a swimming pool in winter. Tim’s clothes immediately collapse into creases and start giving off a smell of elderly dog, which is… not pleasant.

Whatever, he can cope. He’s spent hours in Gotham’s sewers before. A lunchbreak’s worth of eau de dog fart is… he can do it. He can absolutely do it. He’s Red Robin. He’s had his head trapped under Killer Croc’s armpit. He’s been soaked in Clayface’s bodily fluids. He’s fought Penguin in a very poorly cleaned aviary.

People are moving away from him on the bus. They don’t even want to walk past him to get off.

He gets off three stops early out of shame, even though walking the rest of the way to the gallery is only going to prolong the torture for him.

Undercover work sucks, especially when he hasn’t had time to prepare for it. He doesn’t even have the lead-lined wallet with him, so the cash he hurriedly scrounged from the petty cash dish in the penthouse - almost two hundred dollars, with no notes bigger than a twenty, and yes, sometimes Bruce Wayne really is that billionaire who doesn’t realise two hundred bucks isn’t petty - is stuffed into one of Dick’s stupidly small pockets. From the fact he can barely fit his fingers down to the knuckles into the front pockets of the jeans, he has to assume these are actually women’s pants. They probably make Dick’s butt look amazing. Whereas on Tim they’re making a break for his knees and trying to take his underwear with them. Stupid flat butt.

Mitch is waiting outside the gallery, which is a small mercy. Later, Alvin needs to come by and help curate his artwork ahead of the opening, but Tim had already factored in swinging by Alvin’s apartment for some of his own clothes. He’s going to have to stay later at the office to make up for the long lunch break, but there’s no way he’s coming back out dressed like this again.

“Vinnie. You look…”

“Don’t,” Alvin says. “I wasn’t at my place when you called. I don’t even know what happened to my threads. I don’t remember anything after the third bottle of vodka.”

Mitch shakes his head. “You’re self-destructing, kid. Alcohol’s a killer. You’d be better off sticking with pills.”

Tim bites his tongue to keep from objecting.

“You look pretty perky for a guy who was drinking hard enough to black out,” Mitch adds. “Those hangovers are going to catch up with you eventually.”

There’s something in his voice that raises red flags in the back of Tim’s mind. It’s too neutral, like he’s fighting to hold back his scepticism. Tim needs to get this interaction over with as quickly as possible.

“I’ve got cash,” he says.

Mitch tuts. “Yes, please, let’s make an illegal exchange here, in the middle of the street, in front of multiple security cameras, in front of a window with your name and picture in it. With the cops right over there.” He gestures to a police cruiser inching its way along the street.

“They’re Gotham beat cops,” Alvin says. “They’d probably let us use their car if we cut them in. What, are Metropolis cops not on the take?”

Mitch grunts.

“Fine,” Alvin says. “Lets go hang out by the trash. It’s not like I could smell any worse.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything, man, but…”

“Oh, I know. No enclosed spaces, trust me. That girl’s dog, it was not well.” Alvin rolls his eyes. “You got any pets, man?”

“Yeah,” Mitch says. “Couple of rottweilers. Absolute softies, both of them.”

“I’ll bet. You know what I miss about Damian? His dog.”

“You should get one,” Mitch says. “Could be good for you, being responsible for something else.”

Jeez, Mitch, Tim thinks, you’re laying it on a bit thick, but Alvin is lapping up this surrogate-dad-ing, and Tim can only half lie to himself about why. He misses Bruce right now. He misses that slightly smothering overprotection, those jokes that are really suggestions, the awkward balance between intruding into every aspect of his life and giving him his privacy. It sucks that Damian got Bruce in the divorce, so to speak, but there’s probably a lesson there about not keeping things in the family.

“Well, if yours have any puppies, let me know.”

“Had them both fixed, kid. But their mom had another litter recently. Show me you can be responsible for a puppy by being responsible with my product, alright? Dogs gotta keep regular hours, gotta have fresh air and good food. None of this partying all night shit unless you want to come back to an apartment covered in dogshit and shredded furniture. And the vet’s bills: phew!”

“Sure, mom, I swear I’ll clean my room twice a week, and mow the lawn! Gosh, I’ll save up just all of my allowance,” Alvin snarls sarcastically.

Mitch smiles, but shakes his head as he does so. Tim knows that blend of affectionate disappointment well, especially from his mother, but it isn’t reaching Mitch’s eyes. That distrust is still there, that scepticism, that makes Tim nervous.

Alvin checks around them for security cameras, and pulls out a wad of cash, fumbling the notes a little. Mitch counts them, raises an eyebrow, and Alvin pulls his phone out of his pocket to root out another fifteen bucks. Mitch hands him various baggies, which he then has to squeeze back into the ridiculously small pockets.

On their way back out of the alley, Mitch puts his hand on the small of Alvin’s back. Tim tenses immediately, jerking away. Mitch steps away, as far as the narrow space between the buildings will allow him to, raising both hands.

“Sorry, kid. I just… I just wanted to give you some more advice.”

“It’s not… I don’t need advice. I don’t need a puppy,” Alvin says. “I don’t need you doing this.” He gestures between them. “I can look out for myself. I always have done. And maybe you don’t like how I do things, but I’m still your best downline, aren’t I? I’m still shifting product in quantities no one else can, still got access to all those kids who never stop bitching about Damian behind his back. So step off with the mentoring thing.”

“Work smarter, not harder, kid,” Mitch says. “Just think on that.”

Alvin snorts. “Sure thing, mom. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and fucking burn these clothes before Scarecrow steals them off my back for his next fear toxin.”

And he walks away without looking back.

Chapter Text

The gallery opening is a success. It’s really weird being there as Alvin, having to switch off all of his decades-honed instincts to smile and nod and make polite chit chat. He has to keep reminding himself that every time that little voice in the back of his head that sounds like his mother - its pitch getting higher and higher the more anxious his behaviour makes it - drops a suggestion he should do the precise opposite.

It’d be liberating if it weren’t so incredibly stressful.

He rolls his eyes when people make obvious remarks about the Gotham cityscape. He snorts when he’s asked about his process. He flips the bird at someone who asks him about his models.

Which, okay, that might have been going too far. He’s really struggling to calibrate himself as Alvin tonight, and the idea that he might have posed these photos, paid people to masquerade as Gotham citizens, just rubs him right up the wrong way. What’s worse is the person he flips off then offers more than double the asking price for the piece in question, and tells their entourage that they’re going to hang it in their hall, next to their Basquiat. Which. Well. Alvin would be flattered if he didn’t think Basquiat would have hated the guy as much as Alvin does.

“I could never buy anything worth only three figures,” the guy says to the gallery owner. “What would I tell people? They’d think I couldn’t afford real art. You need to price pieces for real collectors, like me, not just people who want something to hang in their home office.”

“I… will definitely think on that,” she says.

“This piece, for example. It says I’m serious about art. It says I buy from authentic artists. It’s just so urban,” the guy says.

“It’s literally a city,” Shaz says from behind him.

“I meant in the African American sense,” he says as he turns. He flinches when he sees the hijab wearing graffiti artist, flanked by Anton and Omar. The look she’s giving him is so scathing Tim’s impressed the gucci-wearing banker still has skin.

“Vinnie,” Anton says. “You owe us a cut, man.”

Alvin shakes his head. “Nah, man. I didn’t shoot no fulls. You want me to shoot your pictures straight on, gallery style, I’ll do it on commission. They’ll sell.”

“Look. This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. I don’t care if it’s just fractions, I-”

“Shut up, Anton.” Shaz flicks her fingers at him. “Vinnie. Your boy hook you up with a gallery? All his oil paintings and shit?”

Alvin shakes his head. “You didn’t hear? That’s very over.”

“Well, you’re a fucking idiot,” Anton says. “I bet he could have got you into fucking MoMA.”

The banker glances at one of his cronies, and gestures to another picture, voice lowered.

He’s not sure if it’s Anton’s intention, but Gotham’s wannabe elites are lapping up the idea of Alvin as a street artist on the up.

“Yeah, well, I’d rather have one room on the edge of Chinatown that I earned than fill up the whole Met,” Alvin snaps, though Tim is internally cringing.

“Does he really think Vale was interviewing him as an artiste?”

“Doesn’t know the difference between the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. How far can he really go?”

“He’s a naif. He’s authentic.”

“Do you think Damian Wayne helped him?”

“Get the gallery?”

“Take the photos.”

“Oh, you think this might be worth investing in as Wayne juvenalia? He paints, you know. Selina Kyle has a couple of his pieces, and you know she’s got an eye for value.”

Shaz gives Alvin a sympathetic look while Tim grinds his teeth and tries to figure out whether Alvin would stay silent for the money or throw the whole lot of the suit wearing, champagne swilling, snobs out of his exhibition.

Omar puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t do it,” he says, like he read Tim’s mind. “Go spend ten minutes in the bathroom playing on your cell. Check your DMs. Check your bank balance.”

Anton nods. “And I’ll spit in the champagne,” he adds.

“Joke’s on them,” Alvin mutters. “It’s craft hard cider.” Because champagne wasn’t Alvin, but the cider was brewed in Gotham and there was a non-alcoholic version available too, because he wanted Shaz, Anton and Omar to be included too.

Omar gives him a gentle push, propelling Alvin towards the back of the room. He passes the gallery owner on the way, who’s clutching a clipboard and a half empty sheet of coloured dot stickers. She gives him a thumbs up and a slightly manic grin, no doubt thinking of the commission he’s earning her.

He hopes she doesn’t raise her prices. Gallery openings are their own weird beasts, full of investors and competitors, but the reason Alvin went with her gallery was because it gets decent foot traffic, locals who’ve been shopping at the asian supermarket or studying at the cantonese school above it, emerging from the subway back from the financial district or waiting for the bus to the university. They priced the pieces between $75 and $500, depending on size and canvas type, so Gothamites could take home a bit of their city.

He slouches into the single stall bathroom, pushing the door closed behind him. There’s a half-empty cider flute on the cistern of the toilet and foundation fingerprints on the sink. Tim drops the toilet seat and sits down, reaching into his back pocket for his cell.

It takes him a moment to process what’s wrong when he pulls it out.

It’s not Alvin’s cell.

It’s Tim’s. Specifically, Tim’s work cell. Tim’s real cell is tucked in a hidden pocket sewn into the lining of his pants.

He’d picked up two cells. He’s had the reassuring weight of two cells tugging down his already baggy pants. He’s had chimes and vibrations coming from both of them all evening.

But neither of them is Alvin’s cell. So where the fuck is Alvin’s cell?

Tim desperately casts his memory back over the events of the day. He already knows, deep down, when he lost it, but he’s grasping for any hint he had Alvin’s cell after lunch. Did he leave it in the Penthouse? Is it in his Wayne Enterprises desk drawer, charging instead of his work cell? Could it be in the laundry?

Or was the last time he saw it outside this very gallery, in the company of Mitch?

His heart sinks to his knees, but he tries to reassure himself - the cell is purely Alvin’s. He’s never used it for anything else, not even another undercover case. Oh, sure, Mitch is probably going to use it to empty Alvin’s bank account and steal his data from social media, but it’s not like it’s going to lead him back to Tim. He’ll figure out pretty quick that Alvin has been making zero to no attempts to push the merchandise or sign up any downline, but he already suspects that anyway.

Still, he can’t believe he’s been this careless.

He’d wanted out of Wayne Enterprises too badly. He’d wanted out of Tim Wayne. It’s making him reckless.

He’s felt uncomfortable in his own skin since he and Damian broke up. He’s been submerging himself in Alvin in a way he didn’t when they were fake dating, and it’s bleeding through into the rest of his life.

More than half of the photos here he took as Tim. Knowing this gallery even existed, that was Tim. Wanting to know whether anyone would care about his skills without his name attached, solely a Tim problem.

Alvin solves a lot of Tim problems.

And creates a bunch, too.

He needs to get out of here. He needs some space to figure out his internal boundaries again, and how Damian brought them tumbling down by not being around.

It hits him, then, how badly he wants Damian to be here tonight. As Alvin’s boyfriend, as Tim’s brother, whatever. He wants Damian to see his work, to judge it as a fellow artist, to sneer at the collectors who don’t get it. He needs Damian here as his peer.

It’s like the moment he saw Damian in the office all over again, but it’s worse without him here because Tim can’t just send him away and have the feelings go with him.

He misses Damian. He misses Damian so badly, and that’s what he’s been using Alvin as a shield against. He built a whole investigation around an excuse to spend time with Damian and he’s tried to fill the hole Damian left with more Alvin.

He needs to see Damian. He needs to see Damian tonight.

He doesn’t know what he wants to say. He doesn’t know how to explain it to Damian. He just needs to see him and find the edges of this black hole inside himself so he can figure out how to start repairing it.

There’s a knock on the bathroom door, breaking Tim out of his reverie. He shoves his work phone back into his pocket and stands up. He actually wouldn’t mind taking a leak now, but it feels weird to keep whoever’s out there waiting longer when he’s been in here for ages already.

He unlocks the door and steps out, straight into Mitch’s waiting arms.

#

Any thoughts Mitch might have been there to support Alvin as an artist went out the window as soon as Mitch shoved a gun into his ribs. Alvin had little option but to let himself be steered out of the back of the gallery and into a waiting car. Before they set off Mitch had cuffed his hands to the door and wrapped a thick, black blindfold over his eyes. A new gun rubbed an uncomfortable bruise in his side thanks to a minion Tim hadn’t seen before.

By the time they reach their destination (37 minutes travel, mainland, north along the coast, a few attempts to double back and u-turn, but it’s hard to know if that was to confuse him or just the most efficient way of dealing with Gotham’s terrible traffic) Tim’s recently recovered eye is feeling suspiciously itchy again, Alvin’s eyeliner being ground into it by the rough blindfold. Mitch hasn’t spoken the whole time. Tim tried to provoke him a couple of times, but got a large rag shoved into his mouth for his effort.

As the engine switches off, Tim feels strangely calm. He’s messed up this operation about as far as humanly possible. There’s really only one path through from here, no choices left to make. The endgame is upon them.

His captors have to unlock at least one of his hands to open the door and get him out. It’s a large car, plenty of leg room, but mobsters rarely run to the twinky end of the scale, and whoever it is unlocking him - not Mitch, Tim can tell - is awkwardly wedged half around him and half against the front seat. As soon as he feels the cuff fall from his left hand Tim yanks his right back, whipping the free cuff through the door handle. The mobster grunts and reaches for his right wrist to stop him, but Tim has already shoved his fingers through the loose cuff and uses it like a knuckle duster, slamming his fist into where he thinks the mobster’s nose is.

There’s nowhere for the guy to fall, but it also means there’s no room for him to swing at Tim, either. Tim wishes he had time to take the blindfold off, but it’s tied too tightly to pull it free quickly. The mobster’s gun is somewhere on the back seat with them, but Tim doesn’t know where.

He dives left, towards the opposite door, bringing his feet up to kick against the one he was cuffed to like an olympic swimmer turning in the pool. The mobster claws at his legs, but Tim has found the door handle and yanks on it. Nothing happens.

“Child locks,” Mitch says from the front seat, the first he’s spoken all evening. “Can’t actually figure out how to turn them off.”

There’s a click of a safety being released. Then another, next to him on the back seat.

“You’re a scrapper, Alvin, I’ll give you that, but you’re not faster than a bullet. This ain’t Metropolis.”

He could call Superboy. Yell for Kon. That would give them a fright and a half.

Though Kon might be in space right now, come to think of it, and if Jon comes that’s going to be hella awkward.

Call it plan B. Or Z.

Tim’s still confident he can get out of here on his own. He’s pretty certain it’s a small crew, and they’re mobsters, not Arkham inhabitants and their minions. They’re not Gothamites. Knock them all out, call the police, see if someone can get a Robin costume to him in time to create some kind of narrative about Robin saving Alvin and them definitely being two different people. Find out where Mr Adams is, take down the top of the pyramid tonight and let the downline fall apart with a bit of careful encouragement. Done. Over.

The door next to him opens and he’s grabbed under the armpits, hauled bodily out of the car and dragged across rough asphalt. The sea is just about audible, but muffled by at least one row of buildings, possibly more. He can tell from the squeal of the door he’s being taken into a warehouse, which is no surprise, and the smell of oceanic ozone only increases as they enter. Sound is deadened, echos bouncing vertically but not horizontally, and Tim concludes it’s probably fish or seafood storage, packed high and wide. That’s not good - there’ll be big industrial refrigerators and freezers here, and there’s really only one thing that mobsters like to use those for.

He’s dumped in a chair, the cuff still dangling from his wrist wrapped around the top bar and attached again to his other hand, dragging both arms awkwardly back and up behind him. His shoulders start to ache immediately, and it’s clear he’s not going to get any decent leverage. He rocks on the chair, but the legs don’t move. Bolted down? Not exactly standard practice for food storage, which suggests this place has been used by the mob for a while. Which fishery is in with the Metropolis mob? Someone must have seen something before, this place is clearly in use. If he’s still here come the morning is it going to fill up with dockers and truckers and forklift trucks trundling around? Are they all going to just ignore him?

Not that he’ll be here by then, but it’s worth knowing who’s good at not seeing things. If you can turn a blind eye to the mob, what else are you ignoring? Can you be bought? Can you inform?

The rag is yanked out of his mouth, which is a small relief, but when fingers brush the edge of his blindfold he hears a grunt, and they retreat again.

“So, here’s the thing,” Mitch says. “You dropped your phone. And I, a good samaritan, am here to return it to you.”

“Thanks!” Alvin says brightly. “I’ll take it and be on my way.”

A meaty palm connects with his cheekbone, whipping his head to the side.

His cheek throbs as he forces himself to turn his head back, blind eyes focusing on where he knows Mitch to be. There’s at least one guy with him, landing the blows - Bruno? - and from the shuffle of shoe leather on wet concrete Tim can pick out at least two more standing nearby. Assume they’re all armed. Assume they’re all big.

“We both know you haven’t been recruiting downline. I figured, maybe, you might have tried. I looked. Man, you’ve got almost no social life. Hundreds of unanswered DMs, ignored friend requests, unread emails. A lotta people want to talk to you, but you, it’s like you only use this thing occasionally. The only person you ever seemed to really talk to was baby Wayne.”

It’s not true. There’s Vicki Vale, for one, and Shazza’s crew, and he’s definitely responded to party invites where he’s supposed to have been dealing.

“I’m more of an IRL guy,” Alvin says. “If I got something to say to someone, I say it to their face.”

“Little Wayne, he’s got this brother. Your age. Runs this little set up, don’t know if you’ve heard of it, Neon Knights.”

Alvin frowns. “Of course I know Neon Knights. You told me to recruit there.”

“And you didn’t, did you? Oh, you went in, you asked around, and instead of downline, now there’s - what was it? - the Neon Knights Birth and Beyond Initiative.”

“They announce, like, one a week. Birth now, death tomorrow, probably some kind of food drive at the weekend. What of it?”

“And Damian. You were supposedly so hot and heavy, but there’s something screwy going on with your cell, man. All this talk, and then ‘message deleted’. Where’s the goods, Alvin? Not a single dick pic on this thing. Not even an unbuttoned fly. You’re telling me you and your boy were hooking up for so long and there’s nothing?”

“I deleted everything when we broke up,” Alvin scowls.

“You deleted that message as soon as you sent it,” Mitch says. “I don’t think you ever sent anything even PG13.”

Of all the things in this investigation to bite him on the ass, Tim was unprepared for Checkov’s dick pic. He wishes he knew where Mitch was going with this.

“Here’s my theory,” Mitch says, alleviating the suspense, at least, “you and Damian were never dating. You wanted to get close to Tim, or Tim put you up to it, or something. You hatched this little plot to see what was going on at Neon Knights, who was recruiting, and he sent you undercover. He sent you to play me.”

“But where does Damian even come into that?” Alvin asks.

“Access. Because if Tim was your access, that would be too obvious. Plus there’s always been something screwy about those Waynes. So many kids, no shared blood.” There’s a change in Mitch’s tone. “Are they fucking? Were you just the beard? And the kid got sick of pretending and dumped you.”

Well that’s not the direction Tim thought this was going to take. And fuck if it isn’t close enough to the truth to hurt, just a little, but also it scares him that if this blindfold snags on Alvin’s fake acne scars or the putty bump on his nose when it comes off Mitch is going to arrive at the actual truth pretty damn fast.

“That’d explain some shit,” he mutters as Alvin, pushing down the inconvenient emotions.

“Hah.”

There’s a pause, leaving Tim to wonder what the next steps are. Is Mitch hoping he’ll protest his innocence? He’s probably missed the window to do it convincingly.

“Look,” Alvin says, “say Tim had approached me. Not at first, not when I signed up. Later. He never liked me, you know. Never thought I was good enough for Damian. And when he found out I was dealing…” Alvin sucks his teeth. “None of them liked me, except Damian. And, okay, we weren’t fucking. He just wanted the kids at school to think we were, and I went along with that, because high school fucking sucks. The whole relationship was pretty PG13, and you know, maybe it was good for me. Don’t got a whole lot of wholesome in my life, but if you’re right about him and Tim, well, maybe I didn’t have it then, either.” He spits on the floor. “Fucking Tim. He blackmailed me. Said he’d tell old man Wayne about the dealing if I didn’t help him out. And let him help himself - where do you think all the inventory was going? You can’t recruit downline if there’s nothing to sell them because it’s all in some rich fucker’s pockets.”

“And you lied to me? Never told me this?”

“He scared me. Even after Damian dumped me, he still had this hold over me. Got me the gallery. Played it nice and sweet, then fucking ruthless. If there’s money flowing through Neon Knights, he said, it’s his by rights. Same as a dealer in the Iceberg Lounge - you work for Penguin or you don’t work there. Waynes are just as much mobsters as any other Gotham family.”

Mitch snorts. “See, Alvin, I’d love to believe you, but you don’t have a track record for truth telling, do you? You’ve got… gaps. Whole days and weeks where it’s like you don’t even exist. And I figure, if you’ve got bolt holes like that, then you could have get gone whenever you wanted. You’re not the dumb kid you pretend to be.”

“I’d have been dead years ago,” Alvin admits. “Somewhere at the bottom of the harbour by now.”

“Yeah you would. And you tell me you’re working for the Waynes like it’s a recent thing, but I think you’ve had protection way longer than that. I think someone else has you in their pocket.”

Fuck, which way to take this? Yes, he’s also a Two Face / Penguin / Morello lackey? Or he’s been Tim’s shill for years? Which buys him more time?

“I don’t have no allegiances,” Alvin says. “I told you, right at the start. I look out for number one. I keep my head down, I do favours, but I don’t sign up, I don’t drink the kool aid. You get too good at your job in this city, sure, you might end up on Two Face’s payroll, or you might end up on Joker’s. And that’s not a job that offers health insurance, if you know what I mean.”

He shifts on the chair.

“Look, I appreciate you’re working here and all, and you’re on a roll, but I gotta pee. Can we take a bathroom break?”

There’s a beat of silence.

“I thought we were done with you playing fucking dumb, Alvin?”

“Bladder wants what it wants.” And it’s true, too, which is less than ideal. He really should have peed before leaving the restroom at the gallery. “I had a lot of that hard cider.”

“So wet yourself,” Mitch says.

Tim sighs. “Jeez, and who’s going to clean it up? And it’s fucking cold in here.”

“Oh, where you’re going next is much colder,” one of the other goons says, confirming Tim’s suspicions about why the mob are using this specific warehouse.

“Shut it,” Mitch says. “Alvin, kid, I like you. You know I do. I was going to give you one of my fucking puppies. So it hurts to find out you’re a snitch like this. Now, I don’t think you’re taking shit seriously enough yet. You’re talking about bathroom breaks and we’re talking about kneecap breaks, you hear me?”

There’s a whisper of movement, and another blow lands on Tim’s face, something harder than a fist this time. Gun butt? Probably gun butt. It lands on the blindfold so it’s hard to tell, but it’s painful enough that he’s pretty certain his cheekbone is fractured.

“How am I going to know when you’re telling me the truth? How am I going to get past that smart aleck exterior?”

“Are you going to put me in the freezer?” Alvin asks. “Sounded like you were going to put me in the freezer.”

“Not a lot of space. Gotta keep the corpses somewhere,” Mitch says. Tim thinks he’s teasing, in his own kind of way; there’s no sign the 100 has been actively killing people. Overdoses, sure, and a bit of an uptick in gang violence, but they’ve been avoiding drawing attention to themselves. Dead bodies do that fast.

Something slams into his knee, causing his leg to fly out. Gun butt again, he thinks, biting down on his tongue to keep from whining at the pain. Not a bat, not enough swing. His kneecap remains intact for now.

“Let's see who notices if you go missing,” Mitch says. “Let’s see how long it takes for the amazing disappearing Alvin to be missed. What do you think?”

“Couple of weeks at least,” Tim answers honestly. “I mean, you pulled me out of my own gallery opening, so there’s going to be questions about why I didn’t come back from the bathroom, but like you say, I do this sometimes. There’s money involved, and sure, people are going to ask why I don’t collect it, but I bet they don’t ask too loudly, not when it’s resting in their accounts,” he adds bitterly.

There are people who’ll notice. They’ll ask questions. But they don’t know who to ask. It’s not like Shazza and her crew are going to go to the police. The family won’t notice he’s gone for a while, not when they know he’s working a case anyway. Tam is too used to having to cover for him without being asked to let flags be raised at Wayne Enterprises.

“Well there we go. Two weeks. What are we going to do with you for two weeks?”

Another blow lands on the back of his head, jerking his whole body forwards. His shoulders scream at the unnatural angle they’re being forced into, and another blow like that will probably dislocate at least one. It’s easier, if they’ve been dislocated a few times, all the tendons and sinew stretched out.

As he’s hit in the face again, he reminds himself that they can’t keep this up for two weeks straight. They’ve got to sleep, and besides, this is a working warehouse. Sooner or later they’ll have to stash him somewhere, and then he can escape.

The hits keep coming, and he keeps taking them.

A heavy fist lands in his midsection, right over his bladder. Warmth floods his pants, and he hears a snort of disgust. Under his blindfold Tim rolls his eyes. He did warn them.