so my younger cousin is flying in to visit from brazil on sunday, and will be staying here for like, the entirety of july. which, don't get me wrong, is super cool! i love the kid! but it felt like a super weird move, considering his parents are the SUPER strict and borderline helicopter parents. even the smallest prank/roughousing with him/his little sister would lead to a strict talking to from his parents, he couldn't ever do anything without their clear permission, that sort of stuff. so letting him fly at alone at 16 to a whole different country and stay there for a whole month seemed WILDLY out of character. additionally, it just felt like a super last-minute trip. it's not like we have any plans to do when he gets here, and the flight itself and stuff only got booked like, midway through june.
and i was talking to my mom about it, kind of trying to nudge some answers out of her, and after a while she went, "yeah, i think they're sending him over here to get away for his boyfriend. see if the distance breaks them off." which, first of all, surprised me because last i checked, they didn't KNOW he had a boyfriend. literally everyone in the family did EXCEPT for them because while that entire side of the family being semi-conservative, his parents (mostly his dad) are EXTREMELY old-fashioned. so clearly something already went wrong. and considering the only reason the rest of the family knew is because one person found out and it spread like wildfire, i have a sneaking suspicion he wasn't the one to tell them, either.
and second of all. they're sending him HERE. to try to make him forget his homosexuality. i couldn't do anything but just wordlessly gesture to the multiple pride flags scattered around my room, then to myself, because really? he has like two other cousins in the us and they're sending him to me? honey i am about to introduce this kid to queer scenes you have never even heard of. he'll be returning home with labels only shrimp can perceive
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Tim Drake had a lot of free time.
In between the time little Timmy was deemed old enough to not need a nanny and his ninth birthday when he got his first film camera, Tim Drake had so much time after school to explore his big, empty house. And so he did, hours upon hours were spent exploring his house.
Mansion, Tim corrects himself. His house isn’t a house. It’s an abandoned mausoleum disguised as a mansion. He intimately knows every creak of the floorboards in the out of the way galleries, every heavy weight curtain shut closed so what little sun that makes it way through Gotham’s gloom is reflected in order to protect the artifacts stored within the walls. Tim probably knows the exact amount of fleur-de-lys on the fourth sitting room’s wall paper- by extrapolation from preexisting data and personal data collection. Basically, he laid on the floor and counted.
Tim had a lot of time. He also had a lot of artifacts to pore over, making stories as he goes and double checking the actual history of the object.
Tim thinks he’s an artifact, almost. To his parents, at least. A child, a thing, they collected at one point in their lives and put on display at the galas they deem worthy to return to Gotham for. Perhaps he’s worth even less, had his parents bothered to look at him more than the lesser art pieces in their storage-mansion. The story everyone knows about him is prerecorded by people who weren’t really there.
Regardless, Tim Drake knows every single corner of his prison mansion. He’s catalogued everything, after all, on a nice spreadsheet. 
And that’s why, as he entered the fifth- and least used- guest bedroom, Tim’s attention immediately cut to the wrong bit of detail. Eyes flickering between the indent on the bed, the mussed- but not terribly dirty- state of the sheets, Tim slowly backed towards the door. His eyes fixed on the spot on the bed, he called out a soft “hello?”
He immediately cringed. He’s not an amateur, and that little “hello” was a mistake that might get him killed.
Tim trembled as the panic set in, tears pooling at his eyes. He wished Batman and Robin were here, they’d know how to-
There’s something appearing on the bed. Tim Drake stares as a glowing figure with white, wispy hair and a black hazmat suit appeared sitting cross crossed on the guest bed. His gloved hands were held out in the universal I-mean-no-harm gesture.
“Don’t- don’t panic!” The thing said, looking rather panicked itself. “I’m, uh, Phantom.”
Tim Drake’s curiosity and mystery-solving mindset slammed down on the toddler’s mind, quickly banishing the fear and panick in favor of interrogating this new, exciting thing.
“I’m Tim. Are you…” Tim frowns, wishing he had Batman’s intimidating growl. “A ghost?”
“Got it in one, kiddo. I’m, uh, not here to harm you. Or steal anything! I just wanted to rest.”
Tim blinked. He decided right then and there that he likes this person. This… Phantom. If his trust was based on the fact that the loneliness was worse than a dead person, no, it wasn’t.
“I thought you sleep when you’re dead..?”
——
Danny stared at the child in front of him, watching the kid- Tim- pout at something. Danny is distracted from the staples holding his ghostly guts from falling out of his non-consensual vivisection when the kid asks him if he’s a ghost.
“Got it in one, kiddo!” Oo, he should tone down the energy. Danny’s too tired right now to maintain that level when speaking to Tim. Now, gotta reassure the kid he means no harm before he reports Danny’s presence to whatever authorities around.
His parents, at best. The cops, at worst.
“I’m, uh, not here to harm you. Or steal anything!” He could tell he landed in some richie rich mansion by the opulent decorations in a seemingly impersonal room alone. “I just wanted to rest.”
Ancients, that had been more honest than he’d wanted. He really was out of it.
“I thought you sleep when you’re dead?”
Danny snorted.
“Yeah, but you can almost never have enough sleep, you know?”
The toddler looks unsure but nods anyways.
“Listen, would you… not tell anyone that I’m here? I’ll be out of your hair soon, promise.
Tim looks like a smart kid. There’s no way he’d fall for-
“Okay.” He fell for it. Danny blinked, stupefied. “My parents won’t be home for a while.”
“What.”
Tim shrugged. “You can stay. The housekeeper is only around a couple of days.”
“You… are you supposed to tell me that?”
Tim sent him a derisive look, clearly bolder now that Danny made no moves to hurt him.
On his cherubic but skinny face, the effect is both adorable and absolutely devastating.
“You’re hurt.” Tim fidgeted with his hands. “I can… I can get you water…?”
His core purred.
“Please. Thanks… Tim?”
The kid beamed at him and left.
Crap. New fraid member it is.
——
Danny, naive: “Surely him trusting strangers is just a one time thing, he’s so well behaved”
Tim, staring Danny in the eyes as he jumps out of the window to go stalk his vigilantes: “I’m gonna go take a walk in Crime Alley”
——
Tim gets Danny water, but it’s tap water from Gotham and is infected with both an ungodly amount of toxins (that doesn’t affect either of them bc one’s dead and the other had been chugging it since they were a baby- Gothamites get bottled water or from Wayne Foundation’s Clean Water Stations) and also like trace amounts of ectoplasm.
Danny: woah this is so healthy water!
Tim, pleased because Danny ruffled his hair: yes, I’m perfect
The rest of Gotham, if they knew: making warding sigils against these two eldritch gods
——
Basically, Danny gets attached and stays mostly because of said attachment but also Danny could see Tim’s budding world dictator tendencies and went yeah gotta curb that
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