#Jason met Danny while visiting a bar

[nelkcats]

Empath

Jason Todd is an empath, something that probably no one would believe if they were told the story of Red Hood. It's not an ability he likes to brag about either, honestly, Jason hates it, as much as he hates being back from the dead, it makes him feel different, it makes him feel like he doesn't fit in.

It starts small, with a boy who feels his mother's pain and his father's rage. With a child who sees Batman and instead of a big scary bat feels layers and layers of sadness. It starts with Robin, feeling too much and wanting to change everything for the better.

He never tells Bruce, what good would it do? It's not a useful skill, sensing the Joker's madness didn't help to prevent his death. Feeling Bruce's despair wasn't enough to keep his eyes open.

It ends too quickly, too soon. Maybe for that reason he was given a second chance. One that Jason didn't want. Pit madness feels a thousand times stronger than it should, it pollutes his mind, it seeps into his heart and Jason hates it a little more every day.

Then, he meets Danny in a bar, full of smiles and biting comments but so so scared. He hears his silent pleas, his regrets, his desire to belong, to not be hated. And for the first time in a long time, Jason's heart breaks a little.

For the first time in a long time, the pits fall silent and give way to the confused feelings of the boy beside him.

Danny becomes part of the routine, Jason doesn't quite know how but the boy refuses to leave. He never asks about Red Hood, though the small flicker of doubt every time Jason leaves the apartment confirms that he knows. He never stops him, he just smiles and waits for him with a first aid kit under his arm, bandages his wounds and sleeps beside him.

Jason knows he is dangerous but can't help but love him as much as he can't help but feel the pain that accompanies the boy.

Then, his little home life is invaded by Bruce (worried, always worried, overly cautious), he warns him that Danny is a dangerous creature, warns him that he will hurt him. Jason can't help but snort.

Jason knows Danny isn't human, it's not something his ability tells him, it's just easy to deduce. But when Danny confesses it to him (scared, so so scared), he downplays it, tells him it's okay and he can go back to sleep. Danny doesn't fit into what's normal, but that's okay, he doesn't either.

[youngbradford]

On octogenarians, houses as metaphors, and doing it out of love

At the Union Square Cafe, in 2006, I first met Alan Heller. I had just moved back to NYC and Alan was courting my then fiance Benjamin Dixon to come work for him. With Alan's wife Barbara, the four of us laughed and indulged at NYC’s top restaurant. It was indulgent, fun, and prophetic.

Ben had known Alan from Design Within Reach, as Ben had been the brand’s controller during their IPO era, a time when design seemed on the brink of mass appeal, when this idea of being a design brand could be mainstream. Huge, even.

Ben did not take the job with Alan, but I kind of did. Not officially. But I did befriend Alan as I enrolled at Parsons, a New School branch, at which Alan graduated in the 1960s. This time in my life, I became the top seller at DWR, while I went to school part time, under the influence and guidance of Sandra Hansel. Ben moved on to banking. I immersed myself in design.

A lot happened in those years around 2009. It was explosive! First, I met Georgi Balinov, which disrupted a lot and altered my course. And then came the professional combustion. Jason Goldberg called me and asked me if I wanted to found a tech company. At Eisenbergs, during this time with Alan, and on the phone, with Sandra (and Eric Lee, Eric Riley, Peg Kendall), I made peace with change in my personal and professional life. I embraced it.

During this time, I remember eating a reuben with Alan and I told him about my dream of Fab.com. It was going to be a place where people who loved design and color and other people would shop, where design was inclusive, and sometimes fun. Where it was actually within reach. And joyous.

He said do it.

Later, he told me that Milton Glaser would love the idea of Fab and that he was so happy I wanted to make design accessible, affordable, and fun (which he too had done). With tuna, hanging from my lips, in a diner, crowded with pearlized plastic tumblers of Coke, and plates of pickles, Alan scribbled Milton’s phone number on a napkin. I was stunned. This was how Alan rolled.

Hours later, at the Fab(ulis) offices, I summoned the courage to call Milton. A receptionist fielded the call, which was fine, I was calling as a friend of Alan Heller’s. Milton took the call, obviously.

The rest is history. It was a turning point in my life.

I visited Milton that afternoon on the east side of Manhattan. We talked of “I Heart NY,” New York Magazine, and life in general in his studio basement. He, like Alan, and Sandra, saw something and believed in me. He said, for the first time, he wanted to sell these works online.

A month later Fab.com launched. We sold $1Million in our first 20 days and Milton was featured on the day of our launch. Many years later, I would meet Milton. We sold and created more items together, and he welcomed me back to his studio when I dreamt up Bezar. It was like being in the company of kings those days. He embraced me as a peer in his 80s.

Milton died in June of 2020 at 91 and I was punched in the gut, left with relics of our partnership, signed, in rainbow pencil, posters and prints to Georgi and I. Alan, around this time, took a turn for the worst too health-wise.

We’d meet, he’d be slower. He’d watch what he ate (I kept eating too much tuna salad). We communicated via email a lot. He was a big eBay fan, admired Casper, and we had fun poking at specific design retailers, certainly not within reach. He always asked about Georgi (he did attend our wedding, the oldest, yet one of the kindest, attendees), and Sandra, who we all knew via that design retailer. He always asked who he should hire and was obsessed with innovation. He sent silly jokes. With Jae Hah, sometimes, and alone with others, I’d venture to the UES, where we’d dine in Breuer Buildings or holes in the wall. He was far less mobile. Yet, moving fast in his head.

A few weeks back, I emailed Alan, as we always did, on or off, for the past 15 years. This time, I wanted gray Gehry cubes for my pool area. I have outfitted the Pool Bar with Vignelli Hellerware and I had inherited a few Gehry cubes from the previous owner of Rode Barns, but in blue and white they did not match my black-tonal palette. Alan responded quickly, he would take care of it.

Then silence. I emailed again. Again. Again. And I knew what was happening. At dinner I told Sandra I was worried something had happened to Alan. Then I got the note from Barbara, Alan’s companion, who had been there in 2006 at the Union Square Cafe: Alan was in his final days. I told her to tell him what he meant to me, believing in me, a person who gave me a big break. She replied “Just read your beautiful email to him. He smiled and said ‘tell him I did it out of love.’” Alan died a week later. He was 81.

A week after that, at the Gramercy Tavern, another Danny Meyer haunt, I met up with two women, both recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Both I worked with at the retailer Alan and I often lambasted at Eisenbergs. And both were doing this cancer thing, their way. One, I am especially close to, the other, I know less, but admire greatly. And it was she who dropped the wisdom of the evening. Over Sichuan Slushies, she told us of how she’s handling cancer. She painted a picture. Her life is like a house, as she drew a square in the air with her hands. “Some people are always inside.” “Some are in the yard, some, sometimes, have the key to the gate, some are on the outside.” It was her way of sectioning off the sympathy she’s receiving, who she wanted to engage with, verses who were engaging with her to actually make themselves feel heard. It was a wise observation I thought, one that provided space and protection to manage life and it’s curve balls, her way. It stayed with me even after she left.

Today, at a gay restaurant in Rehoboth, my mother Peggy and I discussed her mother, my friends, and life in general. I told her the story of my friends’ cancer, about the house metaphor, and other recent observations I’ve found profound. Last month, Jesse Cozart told me people have two choices, to be interested in people or be interesting to people. Some people have both! No one has the luxury to be neither. A week later, Mark Silver told me he wanted to be around people who made him feel full after encountering them, not those who deflated him, sucked his blood, his energy.

I have been lucky enough to feel this fullness from friendships. And as I grapple with the death of mentors and cancer of loved ones once again, I whisper the advice I gave my best friend with cancer a few weeks back, and my mother too tonight: it’s gonna be alright.

It always is when you do it out of love.

[illbefinealonereads]

Blog tour day! Allow me to tell you more about Husband Material by Emily Belden, as well as share an excerpt from the book.

Husband Material : A Novel Emily Belden On Sale Date: December 30, 2019 9781525805981, 1525805983 Trade Paperback $15.99 USD, $19.99 CAD Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy 304 pages

Told in Emily Belden's signature edgy voice, a novel about a young widow's discovery of her late husband's secret and her journey toward hope and second-chance love.

Twenty-nine-year-old Charlotte Rosen has a secret: she’s a widow. Ever since the fateful day that leveled her world, Charlotte has worked hard to move forward. Great job at a hot social media analytics company? Check. Roommate with no knowledge of her past? Check. Adorable dog? Check. All the while, she’s faithfully data-crunched her way through life, calculating the probability of risk—so she can avoid it.

Yet Charlotte’s algorithms could never have predicted that her late husband’s ashes would land squarely on her doorstep five years later. Stunned but determined, Charlotte sets out to find meaning in this sudden twist of fate, even if that includes facing her perfectly coiffed, and perfectly difficult, ex-mother-in-law—and her husband’s best friend, who seems to become a fixture at her side whether she likes it or not.

But soon a shocking secret surfaces, forcing Charlotte to answer questions she never knew to ask and to consider the possibility of forgiveness. And when a chance at new love arises, she’ll have to decide once and for all whether to follow the numbers or trust her heart.

Advance Praise for Husband Material

“Tackling thorny questions of widowhood and dating after trauma, Belden's second novel is witty, full of heart, and blindingly au courant. Packed with pop-culture references, it will appeal to fans of Sophie Kinsella, Rosie Walsh, and Plum Sykes. Belden writes twists and turns to keep readers hooked.” —Booklist

“Charming.” —Publishers Weekly

“Sensitive, thoughtful, and touching.” —Library Journal

“In this touching, witty, and timely book, Emily Belden deftly explores the complexities of human relationships in our increasingly tech-obsessed world. By turns heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, Husband Material beautifully demonstrates that you can't reduce love to a bunch of 1s and 0s.”

—Kristin Rockaway, author of How To Hack a Heartbreak

Buy Links: Harlequin Amazon Barnes & Noble Indie Bound Kobo Google Books

Author Bio: EMILY BELDEN is a journalist, social media marketer, and storyteller. She is the author of the novel Hot Mess and Eightysixed: A Memoir about Unforgettable Men, Mistakes, and Meals. She lives in Chicago. Visit her website at www.emilybelden.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram, @emilybelden

Genre: Romance, Chick-Lit

Rating: 4/5 stars

Review: This was a very fun read for me. Belden writes in a style that I really enjoy, it feels fresh and light. Though the book tackled some heavy subjects, none of it was felt in the writing. The plot was paced well, and the way it progressed felt natural. The idea behind the book was beautifully executed. The characters were well developed and set up in a way that kept the book dynamic and entertaining. Though the characters aren’t relatable, straying from most books in the romance genre, Husband Material didn’t need to rely on that to make the book as enjoyable as it was. All it needed was the wit that Belden incorporated in it, and that was enough for me.

Excerpt:

Well, that’s a first.

And I’m not talking about the fact that I brought a date to a wedding I’m pretty sure didn’t warrant me a plus-one. I’m talking about grabbing a wedding card that just so happened to say “Congrats, Mr. & Mr.” on my way to cele­brate the nuptials of the most iconic heterosexual couple since George and Amal. This—and a king-sized KitKat bar from the checkout lane—is what I get for rushing through the greet­ing card aisle in Target while my Uber driver waited in the loading zone with his f lashers on.

It’s Monica and Danny’s big day. She’s my coworker, whose gorgeous face is constantly lining the glossy pages of Luxe LA magazine. Not only because she’s one of the leading ladies at Forbes’s new favorite company, The Influencer Firm, but because this socialite-turned-CEO is now married to Dan­iel Jones—head coach of the LA Galaxy, Los Angeles’s pro­fessional soccer team. If you’re thinking he must look like a derivative of an American David Beckham, you’re basicallythere. Let’s just hope their sense of humor is as good as their looks when they see the card I accidentally picked out.

Before I place it on the gift table, I stuff the envelope with a crisp hundred-dollar bill fresh from the ATM. Side note: I think wedding registries are bullshit. Everybody wants an ice cream maker until you have one and never use it, which is why I spring for cold, hard cash instead. I grab a black Sharpie marker from the guest book table, pop the cap off, and attempt to squeeze in a nondescript s after the second “Mr.,” hoping my makeshift, hand-drawn serif font letter doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb. I blow on the fresh ink, then hold the pseudo Pinterest-fail an arm’s length away. That’ll do, I think to myself.

I lift a glass of red wine from a caterer’s tray as if we cho­reographed the move and check the time on my Apple Watch, which arguably isn’t the most fashionable accessory when dressing for a chic summer wedding. But aside from the fact that it doesn’t quite match my strapless pale yellow cocktail dress, it serves a much greater purpose for me. It keeps my data front and center, right where I want it, not on my phone buried somewhere deep in my purse. Bonus: the band, smack-dab on the middle of my wrist, also covers a tattoo I’ve been meaning to have lasered off.

Other than telling me the time, 7:30 p.m., it also serves up my most recent Tinder notifications. I’ve gotten four new matches since this morning, which isn’t bad for a) a Saturday, since most people do their Tindering while zoning out at work or bored in bed at night; and b) a pushing-thirty New York native whose most recent relationship was the love-hate one with a stubborn last ten pounds. That’s me, by the way. Charlotte Rosen.

Though present and accounted for now, the battle of Tide pen vs. toothpaste stain went on for longer than I intended back at my apartment, causing me to arrive about half an hour late to the cocktail hour. Which means I for sure missed Monica and Dan’s ceremony in its entirety. I, of all people, know that’srude. I’m someone who is hypersensitive to people’s arrival ten­dencies (well, to all measurable tendencies, to be honest; more on that later). But I’m sort of glad I missed the I Dos, as there is still something about witnessing the exchange of vows that makes me a little squeamish. I got married five years ago and, well, I’m not married anymore—let’s put it that way.

The good news is that with time, I can feel it’s definitely getting easier to come to things like this. To believe that the couple really will stay together through it all. To believe that there is such a thing as “the one”—even if it may actually be “the other” that I’m looking for this next go-round.

Late as I may be to the wedding party, there are some perks to my delayed arrival. Namely, the line at the bar has died down enough for me to trade up this mediocre red wine for a decent gin and tonic. Another perk? Several fresh platters of bacon-wrapped dates have just descended like UFOs onto the main floor of the venue, which happens to be a barn from the 1800s. Except this is Los Angeles, and there are no barns from the 1800s. So instead, every creaky floorboard, every corroded piece of siding, and every decrepit roof shingle has been sourced from deep in the countryside of southwest Iowa to create the sense that guests are surrounded by rolling fields, fragrant orchard blossoms, and fruiting trees. The reality being that just outside the wooden walls of the coveted, three-year-long-wait-list Oak Mill Barn stands honking, gridlocked traf­fic on the 405 and an accompanying smog alert.

As I continue to wait for my impromptu wedding date, Chad, to come back from the bathroom, I robotically swipe left on the first three guys who pop up on Bumble, another dating app I’m on, then finally decide to message a guy who looks like a bright-eyed Jason Bateman (you know, pre-Ozark) and is a stockbroker, according to his profile. We end up matching and he asks me for drinks. I vaguely accept. Wel­come to dating in LA.

I’ve conducted some research that has shown that after the age of thirty, it becomes exponentially harder to find your fu­ture husband. What number constitutes exponentially? I’m not sure yet, but I’m working on narrowing in on that because generalities don’t really cut it for me. Thinking through things logically like this centers me, calms me, and resets me—no matter what life throws my way. All that’s to say, I’m officially in my last good year of dating (and my last year of not having to include a night serum in my skin care regimen), and I’m determined not to wind up with my dog, my roommate, and a few low-maintenance houseplants as my sole life partners.

“Sorry that took so long,” says Chad, returning from the men’s room twenty minutes after leaving. “Did you know the bathroom at this place is an actual outhouse? Thank god it was leg day at the gym—I had to squat over the pot. My quads are burning nice now.”

Confession. I didn’t just bring a date to the wedding, I brought a blind date.

No worries, though. Monica knows how serious I am about the path to Mr. Right and supports the fact that I go on my fair share of dates to get me there quicker. Plus, he isn’t a total stranger; she knows him—or, she met him, rather. He attended her work event last week at the LA County Museum of Art and is supposedly this cute, single real estate something or other. Of course he tried to hit on her and, unlike most beau­tiful people in Los Angeles, Monica actually copped to being in a committed relationship with Danny. (Who doesn’t like to brag they’re marrying Mr. Galaxy himself?) So she did the next best thing and gave him her single coworker’s Instagram handle and told him to slide into my DMs. It’s a bold move on her part, but I appreciate her quick thinking and commit­ment to my cause, Operation: Reclassify My Marital Status.

Since Chad first messaged me a week ago, I’ve done my homework on him. And I’m not talking about just your basic cyber stalking. I’m talking about procuring and sifting through real, bona fide data. It’s essentially a version of what I’m paid to do for a living—track down all the “influencers,” people with a lot of fans and followers on the internet, and match them to events we plan for our clients so they can post on so­cial media and boost our clients’ profiles.

Some may think my side-project software, the one that com­putes how much of a match I am with someone, is a bit…much, but I don’t see it that way at all. I’m on the hunt for a man who is a true match for me—one who won’t just up and leave in the blink of an eye. I left things up to fate once and look how that turned out. I’ll be damned if I do it that way again.

While I studied up on Chad, I conducted a hefty “image search,” yielding about a hundred photos of him that have been uploaded across a variety of social platforms over the years. In real life, I’m pleased to say he checks out. Chad is over six feet tall, tanned, and toned, with coiffed Zac Efron hair that’s on the verge of being described as “a bit extra.” From the shoul­ders up, he’s an emoji. A walking, talking emoji. But as I step back and admire him in his expertly tailored suit, he looks like a contestant on The Bachelor. In retrospect, Chad is just the right amount of good-looking to complement my physical appearance, which can be described as a made-for-TV version of an otherwise good-looking actress.

“Something to drink, sir?” one of the caterers asks Chad.

“Yes. A spicy margarita. Unless… Wait. Do you make the margarita mix yourselves? Or is it, like, that sugary store-bought crap?”

Eek. I had forgotten my discovery that Chad is a bit of a…wellness guru. I guess so is everyone in LA, but I can’t help but be taken aback when I hear that there are people who actually care about the scientific makeup of margarita mix.

“Fuck it. Too many calories either way,” Chad announces before giving the waitress a chance to answer his question. “I’ll just take a whiskey.”

“Splash of Coke?”

“God, no. So many empty calories.”

With his drink order in, Chad rolls his neck around and pops bones I never knew existed. Then, one by one, the joints in his fingers. The sound makes me a bit queasy but I’m try­ing to focus on the positive, like his beautiful hazel eyes and the fact that cherry tomatoes and mini mozzarella balls with an injection of balsamic vinegar are the latest and greatest munchie to hit the floor.

Chad turns to me with a smile, his palm connecting with the small of my back. “Should we find our seats? What table are we at?”

Good question, I think to myself. I’m at table six. Chad is…on a fold-up chair we will have to ask a caterer to squeeze between me and Monica’s great-aunt Sally? I kind of forgot to mention to him that I didn’t really get an official okay to bring him tonight.

“Table six,” I say pleasantly with a smile.

“Six is my lucky number. Well, that, and nine, if you know what I mean,” Chad says with a wink accompanied by an ac­tual thumbs-up.

The waitress comes back with his whiskey neat, and he proposes we clink our glasses in a toast to meeting up as we make our way to the table. Still not over the lingering effects of his immature, pervysixty-nine joke, I reluctantly concede to do the cheers with the perpetual high-schooler.

“So, what did you think of Monica’s event?” I say to break the ice as we take our seats at the luckily empty round table.

“Well, I don’t really know what she does for a living, but she is fine as hell. I mean, that’s why I hit on her last week atthe LACMA. Sure, I saw the ring on her finger, but couldn’t resist saying hi to a goddess like her. My god, that woman is something else.”

I nod in agreement. Partly because, yes, Monica Hoang needs her own beauty column in Marie Claire, stat. And partly because I’m too shocked by his crass demeanor to really do or say anything else. Did I say Chad reminded me of a contes­tant on The Bachelor? I think I meant he reminds me of a guy who gets sent home on night one of The Bachelor.

“She said you’re a real estate…attorney, was it?” I awk­wardly segue. “What’s your favorite neighborhood in Los Angeles?”

It sounds like I’m interviewing him for a job, which in a way, I am. But had I known the conversation was going to be like forcefully wringing out a damp rag, just hoping to squeeze out something semidecent, I would have never invited him to join me at the wedding. In fact, I likely wouldn’t have gone through with a date, of any kind, at all. Conversation skills rank high on my list of preferred qualities in a mate. Looks like he’s the exception to the rule that attorneys are good lin­guists, because my app sure as shit didn’t predict this fail.

So how does my software work, then? Well, it’s all about compatibility. My algorithm is programmed to know what I like and what I’m looking for in the long term. So to see if a guy is a match, I comb through his online profiles, enter the facts I find out about him, and generate a report that indi­cates how likely he is to be my future husband or how likely we would be to get a divorce, for example. One of the most helpful stats is how likely we are to go on a second date. I’ve determined that anyone scoring above 70 percent means that chances are good we’d go out again. And, well, a second date is the first step to marriage. You get the point. Anyone below a 70, I ignore and move on. Chad pulled a 74, which is a solidC if you’re using a high school grading system. Not stellar, but certainly passable with room for improvement.

As it’s turning out, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

“Huh? I’m not in real estate,” he says with a confused look on his face.

“Oh, Monica said you were an attorney at Laird & Hutchin­son?”

“Well, yes, that’s the name of our firm. The Laird side is real estate. But they acquired Hutchinson a couple years ago, and that’s the side of the practice I work on.”

“What kind of law is Hutchinson?”

“We’re the ‘Life’s too short, get a divorce!’ guys. You’ve probably seen a few of our company’s billboards.”

Chad slides his business card my way, and as soon as I see the logo, I picture those billboards slathered all over the bus stop benches down Laurel Canyon Drive and feel physically ill. Not only because he’s in the business of making divorce seem cheeky, but also because I’m wondering what other things I might have missed or gotten wrong about Chad.

“Wait. So have you ever been divorced?” The question pops off my tongue involuntarily. As soon as the words come out, I remember he reserves the right to ask me the same question in return and immediately regret posing it. I’m not ready to explain the demise of my first marriage.

“Me? Nah. Never married.”

Luckily, a server reappears to take our dinner order. But let it be known that if Chad had asked, I would have explained that I didn’t give up on my life partner because I was frus­trated he failed to load a dishwasher in any sort of methodical way. I didn’t just get bored and say “screw it,” chalking the whole thing up as just a starter marriage (google it, this is a thing now). In fact, if anyone abruptly left anyone, he aban­doned me out of nowhere.

“Would you like the chicken and veggies or the short rib and scalloped potatoes?” the caterer asks me.

“Short rib and potatoes,” I say, a game-time decision made entirely by my growling stomach.

At that, Chad looks at me like I rolled into the Vatican wear­ing a tube top. “You sure about that, Char? There are so many hidden carbs in potatoes,” he whispers with a hint of disgust.

First off, Char is reserved for people with a little more ten­ure in my life, thankyouverymuch. And secondly—

“Yes, I’m sure. An extra scoop of potatoes if possible,” I say, loud enough for our waitress, who jots down the special instruction.

“Chicken for me. Extra veggies,” my 74 percent match re­quests.

There it is. His wellness obsession flaring up again. I’m racking my brain for what to say next to a guy who screams “dead end” to me.

 Excerpted from Husband Materialby Emily Belden, Copyright ©2019 by Emily Belden. Published by Graydon House Books.

[mutable-manifestation]

Extremely funny if this stress causes Tim to also start crying.

Can you imagine the looks on Dick & Jason's faces as Tim just absolutely bursts into tears.

I mean he's going down on both knees and straight up begging. Like "it's not true I swear I'll prove it I'll do anything please please PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME" levels of desperation

Tim does not have room for dignity right now this guy is his last link to his favorite coffee brand.

Of course, Danny just figures he's playing along. They've met a few times now, he knows enough to know that Tim's sibling are on the same wavelength as his dad about the coffee. So he just plays it up the distraught boyfriend angle like "I- I don't know I can trust you/how can I believe you/I don't know if I can do this anymore/etc" figuring Tim would just come back to the shop at a later time and they could work out a better meeting point/time.

Tim goes full unhinged stalker-mode... but on himself. Like. Stands up to grab Danny by the shoulders with a manic look in his eye and just. "I'll prove it. I'll give you a link to all of the trackers I have planted on my person, I'll give you access to my apartment cams, I'll wear a bodycam everywhere I go, I'll hire someone to build an AI to go through the footage and separate out any instances o unfaithfulness for you to peruse at your leisure - or, no, I'll give you the money to hire someone to do that so that you know I didn't order them to make it not work, I'll-"

That's about as far as he gets before Dick frantically slaps a hand over his mouth, absolutely horrified, and confesses that they thought Danny was trying to sell Tim drugs.

Is it embarrassing? Yes.

Will Danny and Tim both probably be insulted and pissed about the assumption? Yes.

But he does not want to know what else Tim was going to offer. He's half-sure he was about to out them all by offering to bug the batcave - assuming he hadn't outed them to this guy already.

Because, yikes, was that an obsessive attachment or what.

Leaving out the previous access to cams, Dick explains the whole brother + alley + unknown hooded figure = drug deal.

Jason throws him under the bus via "Actually, I figured you guys were friends or something. I was just joking about the drug deal thing. Apparently Dick thinks you have drug dealer vibes."

Eventually all of the tears peter out and Tim & Danny "make up."

Dick tries to invite them to Batburger to "make up for the unfortunate meeting and get to know you better!" but Danny is like "nah, I got *plans here*" and dips after saying he'll see Tim tomorrow.

Tim is very grateful it's only for a day, but his coffee has once more slipped away from his grasp. He's Big Mad at Dick and Jason about it, so he stomps off.

Dick and Jason? Very glad Tim isn't doing drugs.

But Very Concerned about just how far he was willing to go to get his boyfriend to not leave him.

Like.

Calling Alfred while following him home from a not-good-enough-for-him-not-to-notice distance and asking him to get the others there for an intervention about setting healthy boundaries in relationships.

And also to talk about the fact the Tim has a boyfriend and never told them???

Except Tim goes to his apartment instead of the manor. And doesn't let them in.

And bars the windows with Traps (TM).

He's big mad.

Dick tries to call & apologize but Tim is just. "I almost lost him because of you. You wanna talk to me again it'll be after I see him again and not before."

Which is really helping with the boyfriend assumption but is purely incidental from Tim's perspective as he's too lacking in caffeine to remember at the moment. this is just him being a coffee fiend.

Next time he visits the shop he's sure to give Danny a camera-free and well out-of-sight from almost all angles place to meet. He gets more coffee.

He goes back to the manor, mercifully full of coffee and practically cheery.

Dick, watching him arrive practically glowing with happiness: ...so how's Danny?

Tim, brightly: Great! He's the best!

It's only when the whole family emerges to drag him into the sitting room for questioning that he remembers the whole "boyfriend" thing.

He hasn't blown his cover yet, but oh boy. Time to Make Things Up.

(He's very insulted with the healthy boundaries talk. Like "I literally have trackers and cams on most of you. And you all do the same thing back." "He's a civilian! It's different!" "So are we! We just do non-civilian things! Illegally! Hypocrites!")

Danny, working as a cashier: Can I help you?

Tim half-deranged: Please I just want a cup of coffee

Danny squinted, then pulled out a binder: I'm sorry, sir, but you are on the Don't Serve Coffee list. I can offer you some tea instead-

Tim: NO. THIS IS THE FIFTH PLACE. BRUCE CAN'T OWN YOU ALL!

Danny leaning in to whisper: Look, man, I can't give you coffee under the cameras. Meet me in the back alley in twenty minutes and I'll get you a coffee. Bring Cash.

Tim: how much? Five hundred, six hundred or hell even a thousand? I'll bring whatever you want.

Danny: Chill dude, it's a cup of coffee. Three dollars is fine.

Tim: It's not just any coffee! It's my favorite brand and Bruce bought them out just to make sure they wouldn't sell to me anymore!

Danny: okay okay, this coffee means a lot to you. I get it. Twenty minutes alright?

Jason three weeks later in Bat cave: Tim's on drugs! I've caught him trading cash for small containers in a shady alley six times. We need an intervention.

Dick: What?! I thought that was his boyfriend!

Bruce: I also thought that was Tim boyfriend but if it's a drug dealer we have to help him.

Tim hiding in the shadows: shit.

Tim texting Danny: If anyone asks your my secret boyfriend who been making me teas in allies

Danny: who the hell would believe that? But I've had a boring week, so yeah, I'm down to be a pretend boyfriend.