#is there a bigger boss than tim? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

igotanidea · 1 year

Text

Date gone wrong : Jason Todd x plussize!fem!reader pt 1

@jasontoddsthickbabe - here you go :D

summary: being bigger girl is not always easy. Especially when it comes to the dating and relationships. However, they say that there are plenty fish in the sea, so maybe some people are just to stubborn to realise they are looking in all the wrong places,

This can be read as a story preceding to my other plussize!fem ff: Beneath and Snickers and Hoodies

Warning: mention of past trauma and eating disorder.

Clarification: I have nothing against make-up, dresses, woman's magazines and girls who are feminine. I'm just creating reader as more of a tomboy, because I seriously believe we need more representation of such.

***

„What are you doing?”

„Thinking.”

„You sure you are not worrying?”

“Yes, Dick, I am pretty sure I am not.”

“You got that face you know. “

“What face?”

“The face you do when you are worried” he grinned, making her roll her eyes

“You are unbelievable….”

“I know. Now come on, if there’s anything you want to share with your best friend….”

“On second thought there may be one thing.” She tapped her chin “and you may be right , I may want to share with my best friend.”

“Well then….”

“I’m gonna go find Tim. Have you seen him around?”

“That is so not fair!” Dick rushed right after her, not wanting to miss any of the gossip that she may tell Tim. After all, he was the oldest brother, and her oldest friend, it was his dutyto take care of Y/N.

***

Before Y/N started working in tech department of Gotham’s press and met Dick, she was a freelancer for a woman’s magazine. Now, thinking back it was the worst time of her life. She was never really interested in all those articles like “12 make up tricks to make your eyes look bigger” or “10 ways to make a man fall for you” Ugh! This was just too objectifying – was it really the purpose of a girl to play pretend just to catch attention? But she was newly graduated and needed money to keep herself afloat, so the best option to have any income was to adjust to the realities. And that meant accepting the open slot and cut down on her ambition. Just a bit and just for the time being.

“One year” she was telling herself “you have to stick here one year, get a name for yourself and then you will be able to choose any other newspaper to work for.”

Biting the bullet she was writing all those silly news and gossips, counting the days to the desired promotion and submitting to the wishes and whims of her boss. The editor was not the person to discuss with, she always knew better what would turn out to be popular, and when one day she called Y/N into her office, the girl knew there was a task for her. Arguably the one she would not like.

“I’m sorry, boss, you want me to do what?” she raised an eyebrow involuntarily, but quickly realized it was not professional. She was the newbie, with no power to bargain, treated rather like a coffee delivery and courier than a real journalist. If she was to act even a bit too cocky with the boss that would end with her on the street.

“I’m pretty sure you heard me the first time, but I’ll repeat it for you. I need you to go to ten different dates with ten different boys found on dating app and write a reporting on it. “

“But….”

“No buts.” The boss cut her off “you got two weeks and I want to see it on my desk.”

“Two weeks?” that would mean she would be forced to go out almost every night “But…..”

“You can go now, Y/n. Good luck.”

This was like a nightmare coming alive. Y/N did not have good experiences with men or with dates or with that whole relationship stuff. Maybe it was partially because of her childhood issues. She never felt wanted or accepted for who she was. Her father practically did not care about her, only willing to acknowledge her presence when he was in need of help or feeling lonely enough to settle for her in the absence of someone better. Not exactly a role model. Y/N did not have any male friends in school as well, to focused on being an A grade student to please her strict mother. Burdened with pressures and expectations from everyone, herself included, she got dragged into eating disorder that left her a bit bigger than her friends. At some point it felt like food was her way to suppress all the emotions, good and bad. Instead of letting her feelings out she was drowning them by sticking food in her mouth and stomach. It was shameful and embarrassing and the more she tried to hide this sick self-defense mechanism the worse it got. Finally, after a lot of hard work she dealt with it, but her weight and curves stayed in place. She was still bigger.

On good days, the outlook and weight never bothered her, she was just doing her own things, not caring who thought what about her, but on the bad days – she didn’t even want to leave the house and show herself. On those days she watched comedies and sitcoms that would lift her spirits and help her regain some confidence. But not with men. Her sarcastic and a bit harsh attitude alongside with emotional unavailability was not helping either. There were countless times when she heard from her mother, grandmother, aunts and cousins that she should be sweeter, lighter, feminine ….. All those words made her laugh inside. To hell with those comments. She was not going to be the men pleaser, and if that meant being alone then so be it.

But now, the task to come was bringing back all her insecurities. Again. So instead of treating it like a cruel joke from the boss (since at first she believed it was assigned to her only to mock her) she started thinking about it more like a job. Involuntarily she created a fake account on the app and started her work. Maybe this would turn out to be a good social experiment.

***

“Hey Tim, can I have a minute of your time….” Y/N asked noticing the middle Wayne seated on the couch with some newspaper in his hands “what are you reading…..? Oh, shit……” she hissed realizing the article Tim was so engaged in.

“Y/N?” the boy raised head and his eyes landed straight on her face “You did work for this magazine in the past, right?”

“I…. um…. Yes” there was no point in lying. Knowing Tim, he already got everything figured out.

“And you had one very particular nick you used for your articles, right?”

“Yeah, I…..”

“I am sorry.” Tim put the paper down and stood up to hug his friend. Y/N just stood frozen for a second not sure what to do, but after a few seconds reciprocated his embrace “you did not deserve any of it.”

“It’s in the past, Tim. I haven’t really thought about it in a long time.”

“Still. You did not ….”

“Mhm, you said it” she cut him off “and thank you for that. But what interests me the most here is how the hell did you find this outdated magazine?”

“I…..” Tim hesitated and scratched his head

“Oh, you were spying on me.” She smirked

“That’s not the word I would use, but…. Look, you have been sad lately and Steph suggested….”

“So she was involved in this as well, great. I guess I should have known it from the beginning.”

“Don’t be mad at me, Y/N.”

“I am not.” she assured “I just need you to keep it to yourself, all right? Can’t risk your brothers finding it and…..”

“Finding what?” Dick peeked through an open door with a shit eating grin on his face

“NOTHING!”

“Oh you two are hiding something.” He muttered coming closer to the sofa. Predicting his next moves, Y/N quickly reached for the magazine, grabbed it and started running the other way but before she was able to escape Jason stood in her way and she ended up crashing into his chest.

“Auch!” she yelled, the paper falling from her hands, while Jason’s arm grabbed her securing her before hitting the ground. Too close, too damn close.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked, eyes switching between Tim, who just shrugged, Dick who quickly throw himself to gather the magazine and Y/N who wriggled out of his embrace, being the first to grab the paper.

“Come on, Y/N. Don’t be like that. Show me what is it.” Dick hissed, while Y/N hid behind Jay using him as a shield. “Don’t be a kid.”

“I am not the only one who’s acting like one! This is mine!”

“And yet, you let Tim read it!”

“In her defense, she didn’t know about it.” Tim chimed in

“Irrelevant. If Tim knows, we all knows.”

“Is that how it works now?”

“Pretty sure it was always like that.”

“I wonder why the hell do I even came here in the first place” Jason sighed and without any effort grabbed Y/N from behind, snatching that damn paper off her hands. “And you claim I am the crazy one here.”

“Give it back!” she struggled against his arms, but he did not let go. Just one of them was enough to keep her in place.

“What even is it? 10 dates that went wrong? Wait, did you write it?”

“Please…..” she whispered “please, give it back to me…..” her eyes were so pleading that it almost, almost got Jason wavering. He wondered why. Y/N just seemed to have strange effect on him and he wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not.

“I…..”

“Hey, Y/N. Relax. It’s just some funny article of yours, right. Nothing to be ashamed of. Or worried. Or…..” Dick opened the article, clearly ready to read it out loud “Y/N? Are you all right?” she was sobbing now and that was an unexpected view.

“You know what. I’m done fighting with you. Read ahead, but it’s not a funny little article.”

“Y/n….” Jason looked at her carefully. He recognized that look in her eyes. It was the same as he had when after coming back from the dead and dealing with all the shit in Gotham he still felt not wanted. Like a piece of trash. Clearly, just the title from the past brought some bad memories in her.

“I’ll be fine.” she took a step back “like I said, read ahead. Just…. not with me here” turning on her heels she rushed out of the living room.

“Tim?” Dick glanced at his younger brother.

“I’ll check on her. And just a word of advice to you two – prepare for some additional trauma after this.”

***

Date number 1 – he showed up late using some lame excuses about having an important job and being a really big fish. For the whole night he was talking about himself, not asking a single thing about me. After an hour of his monologue I excused myself into the bathroom to catch a breath and when I came back found him flirting with the sexy looking girl on the other table. “What, can’t blame me for being attracted to a good looking girl, for a change.

Date number 3 – he seemed like a nice guy. Came right on time, focused on me (perhaps a bit too much, not caring about personal distance), saying that he enjoyed my company. He paid for the meal. But when I started thinking that maybe, maybe he was a good one, the situation turned around. Despite my clear “no”, his hands were all over me, definitely in the places they should not. “come on, honey, you know no one else would want you. You’re just not the kind of girl to be desirable.” I used my pepper spray on him and got away, chased by his yells that I was a bitch

Date number 5 – “You should have posted your profile picture on the side. I wouldn’t have to waste my time if I knew you looked like this”

Date number 8 – “I believe man are far superior to woman. We are just stronger, tougher, smarter. Oh, and you probably did not know this, but color red is believed to be attracting to you, girls. I had plenty of woman falling to my knees just because I was wearing it.”

“Jason?” despite the seriousness dripping from the article Dick could not help a laugh

“What? That’s not why I chose to be Red Hood and you know it!”

“Maybe that is why you are just staring at me with those dumb, pretty eyes without a single word.” I was staring, but definitely not because I was enamored by his behavior.

Date number 10 –Honestly, I was planning to skip it, but much to my surprise my date found me. “You must be Y/N” he smiled approaching the table “I knew it from the second I saw you sitting here all alone.”

“Did you?” I raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, sipping on my drink.

“Mhm. You are smart girl. And those are rarely wanted. If you were pretty however….”

Ok, that was the end of that joke of a date.

So, to sum it all up, I am pretty sure finding yourself a good partner is a challenge I was not able to tackle. But if you follow all the rules and guidance we prepare for you in our magazine your chances for meeting your price charming are rising significantly. Go check our tips for weight loss and new trends in make up for the spring……

Dick voice broke at the ending, not capable of finishing.

“Poor Y/n” he sighed “she’s been though a lot.”

“She shouldn’t have searched on the Internet. “ Jason scoffed but clenched his fists. “She should have known better.”

“It was for a job.” Dick pointed out “she would never come up with something like this on her own and you know it.”

“How much time ago was it written?”

“Three years ago, why….? Jason! Jason! what the hell are you planning on doing?!”

“Making it right.” The younger brother muttered walking out of the room, grabbing his helmet on the way.

“Don’t you dare! Jason!” now Dick really felt like it was his responsibility to make sure his brother won't do anything stupid.

to be continued

@pinksirensong

274 notes · View notes

sevensoulmates · 6 days

Note

Greetings, I really want to know your opinion about this topic I saw. Something about metrics, so my friend was saying there's is a shift big enough in the fandom favorite characters because the buck/tommy ship is the most popular pairing now than buddie is and abc was waiting to see the fans reaction to decide the future story of buddie and the possiblity of buck tommy is bigger now. Are tv studios really measuring this data? I knew they did this with ratings but not this, how exactly fans get this kinda info and statistics? And shows like this one usually listen to the audience this way? I just thought it was interesting but don't know if is true.

If networks only went by what fans trend then buddie would've gone canon back in season 2b/3. That's when they had their first big surge in numbers like right now. Buddie was so popular it was beating out seasoned pairings like Destiel!

And yet...the networks did what they wanted and buddie stayed just platonic friends. Regardless of how popular and profitable buddie was/is.

And I don't believe bucktommy is more popular than buddie. There's a surge in popularity, yes, because they're brand new and Buck is confirmed queer for the first time, so of course there's gonna be a lot of new and excited eyes on it. It's the shiny new thing everyone's curious about. They're almost ENTIRELY a blank slate that people can project all of their desires for a canon pairing to have. It's far easier to trust a pairing that has two confirmed queer characters than it is to hope that the show will do the same for Eddie. There's a lot of factors that go into it, that make it seem like bucktommy would suddenly be the new fan favorite, but you also gotta keep in mind....it's only been a month. It's still fresh in people's heads. Buddie has survived seven years. It all goes down to infatuation vs. love. A crush vs. commitment. You'll see.

And yes, some cynical buddie people or people who just want Buck to get with a guy period and don't care about a love story will jump ship easily. But they are NOT the majority. They're just being super loud right now (which makes sense again it's huge news!) so it FEELS like there's a lot of them.

Myth: eVeRyOnE'S jUmPiNg sHiP to bUCktOmmY

Reality: Most bucktommy shippers are also buddie shippers and are just enjoying a new cute ship while it lasts and multi-shippers are allowed to exist. Just because one ships something doesn't always mean they want it to happen in canon. Two things can exist at the same time.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I don't think they would've taken the leap to make Buck queer in the first place if they weren't AT LEAST strongly (and I mean strongly) leaning towards making buddie canon down the line. Majority of fans are going to EXPECT it now, and as Tim said, he tries not to let fans dictate what happens in the story, but he IS aware of what fans want. If he's making a decision like this, he is committing to being hounded literally non-stop about buddie until they actually become canon. I don't think he would do that unless that was the end goal, even if it's not for another x amount of seasons.

Yes, networks do keep track of fan metrics because it directly correlates to views which earns them money. BUT just because they know something is popular RIGHT NOW doesn't mean they're gonna just jump and immediately do it or scrap other plans. Especially when those other plans might be something that earns them MORE money down the line. I've talked extensively already about how buddie would be extremely profitable (more profitable than bucktommy sorry).

Fact of the matter is Tim and Co. know how loyal and dedicated most of the buddie fans are. They know they can weather any storm and still come out of it annoying as hell badgering them for the same thing.

Finally, despite Tim Minears many many flaws, I do have faith in him as a writer that he at least TRIES to do right by these characters. He's flawed, he has bosses that he has to adhere to. The same goes for the Kristen Riedel seasons as well. BUT, I think that Tim knows his characters well, and at least has SOME kind of vision of where they need to end up. I trust that Tim is going to be true to his word and is not going to let fandom trends dictate where he takes his story. I hope Tim knows what he wants, and with the approval of the networks, does it.

Edit: You can also think of the Bucktommy vs. Buddie popularity like Spotify monthly listeners. Just because a new popular artist with a trending song suddenly has more monthly listeners than someone established, like say Beyonce, doesn't necessarily mean this new artist is more popular than Beyonce or has more dedicated fans than Beyonce, it just means that person is the hot new thing and is trending so they have more listeners than Beyonce AT THE MOMENT, but not long term. Does that make sense?

#911 abc #buddie #bucktommy #discourse #I almost wasn't gonna answer this but I did #I don't really wanna answer more like this #I don't have any more insider knowledge than y'all do

20 notes · View notes

just-an-enby-lemon · 10 months

Text

AU were the S1 archive crew are all Gertrude's new assistants after she lost all her original ones.

It started with Jon. Elias saw the babyfaced pre marked new researcher and decided "this is going to be my new archivist" and after a long consideration decided that placing him early on the archieves would make the promotion less suspicious and help prepare him early (Gertrude did love to mark her assistants by throwing them in dangerous situations and they sometimes had to record statements). Some fake concerned platitudes about how she was already getting old and it how the archieves were big and it would be just so hard to organize them on her own and it was done.

Sasha was a counter attack. Gertrude had no idea what Elias was planning: if Sims was part of a bigger goal or if it was just a power play, Elias showing he could and would involve inocents just cause, but if he was doing that she would ask the woman she choose as her sucessor to join as well. It was the best way to prepare Sasha and also she needed an assistant she could trust.

Tim just sorta joined in. He was Jon's only friend and Sasha's best friend. And the moment he realized that his friends were being putted against each other in a Gertrude × Elias competition he decided he needed to be there to keep things in check. He wasn't the best peacekeeper and he would totally pick Sasha's side if Jon moved against her but from what he was seing Jonathan wasn't showing any signals of moving against Sasha and his friends were really just dragged into their bosses dick measuring contest and he was not going to be quiet and just watch.

Martin was a joke and maybe a distraction. To be honest Elias was a bit drunk after a funding discussion with Peter and he saw the kid shelving books in the library and though "you know what would be hilarious?" before shoving the guy that lied in his CV into Gertrude and laughting at her paranoia over the fact she Knew Martin was totally lying and unqualified.

Suddently Gertrude had more assistants than ever most that were almost certainly hostages and no idea what to do with them.

#tma #s1 archives crew #elias bouchard #gertrude robinson #Jonathan sims #sasha james #tim stoker #martin blackwood

93 notes · View notes

dancingacrossthemilkyway · 10 months

Note

Make a drabble for my time travel au pls

It shouldn’t be so difficult to keep up an act, but Jon never was much of an actor to begin with.

In a perfect world, he could blame the slip-ups that almost reveal they’re dating on someone else. Martin, for instance, given he is the other half of this particular equation. However Martin does a significantly better job at keeping everything under wraps - something that shouldn’t be a surprise after everything they’ve gone through. No, his fault is being slightly too aloof at times these days or when he’s blunter than he ought to be, compared to how he was a matter of weeks ago. Still, Tim and Sasha simply worry over him, concerned that something has happened in his personal life to upset him. When he delivers Jon tea and occasionally shuts the door behind him, they assume he’s in trouble again, none the wiser about the kiss he places on Jon’s forehead or the casual way they chat with him leaning against Jon’s desk.

Jon, however. He’s not as subtle as he’d like. It’s been a point of contention with himself for over a decade that he more or less wears his heart on his sleeve, despite every attempt otherwise. It certainly doesn’t help that he can’t lie to save his life.

All of this means he generally goes out of his way to avoid Martin because he’s well aware of the fact that he cannot control how softly he looks at him.

So far, it’s been a successful strategy. Sasha assumes he’s kicked up his dislike of Martin a notch and hasn’t thought too much further into it; Tim’s spent much of his time preparing to comfort Martin after Jon inevitably does something to upset him. This does nothing, unfortunately, to save them when he’s forced to be in the room with all three of them to prepare for the inevitable arrival of Jane Prentiss.

There is nothing to worry about, he tells himself as he gathers the pertinent statements along with a list of reasons they should be preparing that hopefully won’t trigger suspicion. I simply won’t look at him, or speak to him, or even acknowledge that he exists. It is an absolutely reasonable plan, one that he’s confident he can stick to.

“...hey boss,” Tim starts about halfway through Jon’s explanation of why he believes Prentiss is inhabiting the tunnels underneath the Institute. “Is there a reason you’ve been avoiding looking at Martin the past 30 minutes?”

Jon startles visibly at the question, clutching his pen tighter. He clears his throat and glances at the table, setting down the pen in favor of picking up his papers and organizing them. “He has yet to ask any relevant questions. I don’t see why I should focus my attention on him.”

“It’s just that, you know, you’ve glanced at both Sasha and me several times by now. Doing the whole-” Tim wiggles his fingers at his eyes with an easy grin, “-eye contact thing to make sure we’re listening and understanding. But not Martin.”

“Yeah, actually, Tim’s right.” Sasha sits up in her chair and leans forward, placing her elbows on her desk and frowning at him. “You’ve been treating him like he doesn’t exist lately, Jon. That’s not okay.”

“Well, I-” Shit. Jon swallows, stumbling over his words in his attempt to come up with some sort of believable excuse. “Martin, he - that is, I simply-”

A long-suffering sigh comes from Martin’s desk. “Guys, it’s okay. Jon doesn’t have to like me.” As usual, Martin comes to his rescue right before he makes an even bigger mess of things. “What matters is that we do the job, right?”

“There’s plenty of studies out there that show it’s important that people who work closely together need to have the ability to get along if they’re going to be successful,” Sasha argues with a shake of her head. “The workplace environment can become toxic really fast otherwise.”

“Toxic?” Jon furrows his brows, offended at the implications. “Maybe I don’t talk to Martin much, but I would hardly call that toxic.”

“What about the way you berate him when he doesn’t do his ‘due diligence’?” Tim cuts in. “That’s toxic behavior if I’ve ever seen it.”

“Or the way that you not only give him the easiest tasks but tell him you’re doing so because that way he can’t mess things up?” Sasha tilts her head to the side, one brow raised in a challenge. “Or how you-”

Jon raises his hands in supplication and sighs. “Alright, alright, I get it. I need to be more pleasant to Martin. Now if that’s all, I’d very much like to get back to how we’re going to handle Ja-”

“No, no, you’re not getting off that easily.” Tim exchanges a look with Sasha, then, one that becomes far more mischievous than he likes. “You need to apologize.”

“What?” Both Jon and Martin respond in unison, eyes meeting for the briefest of moments before looking at Tim and Sasha in varying states of dismay.

“He really doesn’t need to do that.” Martin leans forward and fervently shakes his head when the others look at him. “It’s, it’s fine, guys, okay? Just drop it.”

Is this how they all viewed him, back then? Jon’s brows furrow and his lips tilt down into a frown as he leans his palms onto the spare desk in front of him. He knew he’d treated Martin poorly, of course he did; he’d have to be either very stupid or very oblivious to not. “No, no,” he says in a softer and far more exhausted tone than he usually uses (mostly for the purpose of keeping up the ruse). “They’re… they’re right. I never have properly apologized for the way I treated you, Martin.”

Martin, for his part, freezes much like a deer caught in headlights. “I - uh. Jon, this maybe isn’t the time?”

For the first time since walking into the assistant’s area, Jon looks straight at Martin. It’s probably a mistake, one he’s not entirely certain they’ll recover from because he can feel the way his expression softens even as Martin’s shifts to a visible panic. “There’s never going to be a ‘right time,’ I don’t think. I’m sorry, Martin. I truly am. I will do better from here on out.”

The silence that follows is loud, lasting what feels like an eternity before being cut through with a low whistle. “That was a lot more genuine than I expected,” Tim says, gaze flicking between the two with a growing curiosity. “Hey, have you two ever considered-”

“That’ll be quite enough of that, thank you,” Jon interrupts, breaking eye contact with Martin and shuffling his papers unnecessarily. “Back to the topic at hand-”

#tma #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #jmart #tma jmart #drabble #prompt #the-lantern-lights

79 notes · View notes

ladytauria · 3 months

Text

the sweetness of honey: chapter ii

Pairing: Tim Drake/Jason Todd Rating: Explicit (and please mind the tags!) Chapter Words: 7.9k Total Words: 12k

chapter two of my fic, the sweetness of honey!

preview and chapter content warnings below the cut <3

>>> chapter ii: a gift, pretty and bruised <<<

cws: threats, non-consensual touching, fantasy misogyny, first aid, author is not a doctor & also knows very little about first aid, anxiety, non-graphic panic attacks

With no windows to guide him, Jason tracks the days by the overhead light in his cell. It comes on in the morning, followed by breakfast and a humiliating ‘check’ to see if he’s started his heat yet before changing his clothes. Then lunch, and a few hours after that, supper. After supper, his teeth are brushed for him, and then finally, lights out.

Every day, Jason expects something different. For things to change.

He tracks six days before finally, something does.

The light comes on as he’s sleeping. His rest has been fitful, restless. It wakes him immediately. Jason uncurls from the tight ball he sleeps in, sitting up and blinking the sleep from his eyes. His sense of time is frayed, but not broken completely. He knows it’s not morning yet.

The door opens a moment later.

Baldie looms in the doorway.

Jason is on his feet immediately, baring his teeth.

“The boss has someone who wants to meet you,” Baldie says, stalking toward him.

Slimeboss’s words replay in Jason’s mind. “No… No, I have a different purpose in mind for this one.”

He swallows, a low growl filling his chest. “I’m not going anywhere with you, asshole,” he spits.

Baldie’s scent seems stronger than it was six days ago; the musk filling Jason’s nose. The part of him that wants to roll over, offer himself up, feels bigger. Jason ignores it. As soon as Baldie gets close enough, he lashes out—kicking, clawing, snapping his teeth.

He won’t go quietly.

Even with a few nights sleep and proper food in his system… Jason is no match for Baldie. The alpha is bigger, stronger, and meaner.

Jason at least gets one victory; digging his fingers into where he’d bitten the alpha before, tearing through the bandage and drawing blood.

Baldie snarls. Jason freezes, something instinctive and primal in him reacting to the deep alpha noise. Baldie doesn’t hesitate to take advantage, slamming Jason against the wall.

Jason hisses, bumping his head against the wall—then yelps when Baldie flips him. That yelp turns to a whimper when Baldie scruffs him harshly; submission making him go limp. The scent of alpha displeasure nearly has Jason sticking his hips out in offering.

“You better hope the boss gets rid of you tonight,” Baldie hisses in his ear. “If you come back here, I’ll beat your ass black and blue—damn the consequences.” He shakes him.

Jason whines pathetically, tears pricking his eyes. It’s just because he’s close to his heat, he tells himself. He wouldn’t be so affected otherwise. Wouldn’t be thinking about Baldie mounting him, using him. Wouldn’t half-want it.

Baldie turns him again, unlatching the chain from his collar before hauling him over his shoulder, driving the air from him. He carries Jason back to the bathing room, dropping him on the table.

Jason barely has time to catch his breath before Baldie forces a bit between his teeth. The edges of it bite at the corners of his mouth—Jason tries to force it out, but gets nowhere. Not before Baldie muzzles him, the leather straps digging into his skin.

Despite everything in him telling him to submit, Jason growls. His legs twitch as he fights the submission, but it’s as useless as it was six days ago, and Baldie ignores him. He strips Jason down instead, and then wipes him down with a rough cloth. Once Jason is clean again, Baldie dresses him in a similar outfit as before; a tiny pair of shorts that barely cover his ass and a slightly too-big t-shirt. He’s given no socks or shoes.

Finally, his hands are bound behind his back—first with the cuffs, and then rope over that. Baldie makes sure it’s tight, too, the coarse material digging into his skin.

Then he hefts Jason up again, carrying him to the garage. Jason gets a brief glimpse of the slick black car he’d seen before before he’s dropped in the trunk again. Baldie slams the lid shut.

A moment later, the engine rumbles to life beneath him.

Jason tries to keep track of the time, but without anything to anchor him, it’s hard. Still… he’s pretty sure less than thirty minutes pass before Baldie hauls him out again, setting him on his feet before clipping a leash to his collar.

The moon is high in the sky, enough light passing through ever present clouds and smog to illuminate their surroundings. He recognizes the old warehouse district, down by the docks—the smell assaulting his nose.

Jason sucks in a deep breath.

Pleasant? No. But this is the first breath of fresh air, or what passes for it in Gotham, in almost a week, so he takes in as much of it as he can.

Baldie wraps the leash around his hand and leads Jason inside one of the warehouses. The bottom of it is empty save for large, looming crates. Jason is sure there are guards, but… not being able to see them makes him nervous. Twitchy.

He thinks about fighting, but… He knows he won’t get far. Better to conserve his energy for now.

Baldie heads straight for a set of metal stairs, prodding Jason into going up first.

Jason hesitates. His stomach churns. He doesn’t want to go up there—doesn’t want to know what fate is in store for him at the top.

Baldie growls. “Move,” he snaps, a little Command in his tone.

It’s never been easy for Jason to resist a Command. He’s only ever managed it a few times in his life. Right now, in pain and terrified, with lingering submission in his veins? It’s impossible.

He still fights. Of course he does. He’s not going to just roll over and let this happen to him.

In the end, though, there’s nothing he can do except climb the stairs.

On the second floor, Baldie takes Jason over to a metal door. There’s a discolored spot where a sign used to sit. Jason imagines it was some kind of manager’s office. There are windows, but all of them have been blocked off with wooden slats.

Baldie opens the door.

The office has been converted into some kind of meeting room. There are two couches set up in the center of the room; a low table between them. There are four guards on one side of the room, behind the man Jason recognizes as Slimeboss.

The man across from him is a stranger.

He’s dressed in a suit too. It’s all clean, sharp lines; fitting him better than Slimeboss’s fits him. It makes him look even slimier in comparison.

There are no guards behind the stranger, and yet… he looks relaxed.

Confident.

The hairs on Jason’s neck raise.

Slimeboss grins at their entrance, exposing far too many teeth. The sleaze dripping off of him makes Jason feel gross. Like he needs a shower. A wicked hot one, to burn away the top layer of his skin.

Baldie shuts the door. Bile rises in Jason’s throat, growing thicker when Slimeboss beckons them over.

“To convince you of my sincerity, and as a token of my friendship, I wanted to offer you a gift.”

>>> continue on AO3 <<<

#jaytim #timjay #batcest #dcu #tauriawritesfanfic #tauriawritessmut #the sweetness of honey #aob dubcon fic

22 notes · View notes

nightwings-robin · 2 years

Text

having some feelings about Joe Chill in this Chili's tonight.

I often hate how Joe Chill and the Wayne murders are handled, specifically when it's part of some bigger grand scheme as opposed to just a regular everyday mugging and how that relates to Bruce as a character. I feel like something is lost when Thomas and Martha are killed because of some conspiracy or whatever. I think it takes away from one of the core reasons why Bruce became Batman in the first place.

like it's supposed to be a random act of senseless violence! not some huge conspiracy with a secret group controlling Gotham or because of some mob connection. I don't want Joe Chill to be in the Court of Owls or be a Talon or a hired hit-man or to be a mob boss or or or

I think Joe Chill works best as a character and plot device when he is simply a guy who needed some quick cash and robbed the first wealthy people he saw. (maybe killing them was an accident or maybe he did mean to kill all three but didn't realize that he didn't have enough bullets for Bruce. idk haven't figured that part out yet)

it doesn't have to be any more grand than that!

Bruce became Batman so that he could stop random acts of violence from tearing families apart. so that no one else has to watch their loved ones get murdered right in front of them.

that is the core of what he does and why he does it.

making his parents be the target of the Owls or the mob or whatever kind of takes that away imo.

AND ANOTHER THING

I don't like when stories have Bruce figure out who killed his parents. I like it to be a mystery! I like the irony of Bruce being the World's Greatest Detective but the one case he can't solve is his own.

the irony! the drama! the frustration! the feelings of inadequacy!

he keeps going back to the case. HIS case. trying to find new leads, new evidence, new anything. but there is none! because there was no rhyme or reason to the killings. it was just some guy who needed money. and that could be anyone.

I feel like Bruce never being able to find the guy who killed his parents would actually be better for his character growth than if he ever was able to confront Joe Chill. it would push him harder to want to be a better detective. it would give him more drive! like yeah I do want him to have some closure and some solace but I also have a lot of feelings about his pursuit of finding his parents killer being ultimately fruitless and bleak.

it could also add a layer to his relationship with his kids, specifically the ones who also have murdered parents. but the thing is, all them who have dead parents know who the killers were. there's no mystery to who killed Dick's parents, or Jason's parents, or Tim's parents. Bruce can relate to them all for having murdered parents but he can't relate to actually having that closer of Who Did It.

it's what drives him to help Dick take down Tony Zucco. it's about the guilt he feels knowing his own friend Harvey Dent killed Jason's father. it's about how he couldn't save Sheila Haywood from the Joker along with Jason. it's about how Jack Drake was killed by a villain that Bruce easily would have taken down had he been there. it's about how he couldn't actually save any of his kids bio parents but has solace knowing that at least they won't lie awake at night wondering who it was that killed them like he's done every single damn day since he was eight years old.

does anyone else have as many thoughts and feelings about Joe Chill as I do???

this post was brought to you by my long tags on this post.

#bruce wayne #batman #thomas and martha wayne #joe chill #batman meta #dc comics #please feel free to add on #I'm curious what other people think

180 notes · View notes

jimmy-johns-was-taken · 3 days

Text

A Shadow? (Pt. 1??)

BEN VS Dark link for the reader

Plus platonic Nina and Brian

A.N: I don’t really ever see much CP Dark Link, so here he is. Right now this is just part 1? Hell, dark isn’t even in this, but if y’all want more I wanna write more. And I think BEN VS Dark is pretty funny

T.W: none that I can think of??

Summary: Moving into a mansion in the middle of no where is difficult. Making friends proves to be an even harder task. And, what the hell is the shadow?

Thank you for reading :)

“So, breakfast starts about 5:00 AM? There’s no real time, but I recommend being down there before 9:30,” the man stated, walking down a long hallway. He had introduced himself as Brian and had been tasked with showing you to your room.

“Gotcha, gotcha,” you followed after him, taking in the hallway. A long corridor, dark wood floors with a stained red carpet and dark wood walls. A few tables here and there, as well as a few paintings. Most were of the Slenderman, but many included other beings. They looked similar to Slender, but had differences.

The hallway had been lined with doors, each adorned with a name plate. You didn’t pay much attention to the names, loosely looking at some. Brian, Tim, Toby, Cody, and Kate were at the beginning of the hall, but you stopped paying attention after them. More invested in what Brian was telling you, rough schedules and duties.

“Dinner and lunch aren’t really a thing, unless there’s an event. Oh! And a rule, don’t touch anyone’s food. If it’s not yours, don’t touch it,” Brian glanced back at you and you nodded in response.

“Is there rules on keeping food in the rooms?”

“Nah, boss don’t care much ‘bout that. Really, just as long as you clean up after yourself and shit, your fine,” Brian explained, arriving at a dark wood door with no name plate. “And here we are! Home sweet home,” he grabbed a key and unlocked the door, walking in.

“This is nice, bigger than I thought it would be,” you looked around. The same dark floors were present, however the walls were painted a dark gray. A bed was in the back corner, a nightstand next to it. A dresser sat across the room and a wardrobe by a door. You peered inside the additional room, a small bathroom with no decorations.

“Yeah, but it’s plain. If you feel like decorating, go for it. Most people have their rooms designed to their liking,” Brian had began walking out of the room, “I’ll leave ya’ be. Let you get settled. To your right is Silver, he’s quiet and won’t bother ya’. But, he’s also like, a glitch like you, so y’all might get along? Nina is to your right, good luck with that,” he gave you a small smile.

“Good luck?” You cocked your head sideways.

“She’s sweet, really, but she can be a lot. A little loud, yapping, stuff like that. But she’s sweet, won’t really give ya’ any trouble or nothin’,” he explained, turning on his heel and walking out, shutting the door behind him. You glanced around the room again, trying to come up with design ideas.

After a few hours, you had put up some decorations and filled the wardrobe and drawers. Being a glitch made things easy, just reaching into the screen and grabbing as you pleased. Brian mentioned someone named Silver and how he was like you? Your mind wondered, curious if there were any others here like you. There had to be, with all the rooms and such.

You stared at one of the posters, your favorite band peering into your soul. Smiling, you turned on your heel and walked into the bathroom, now starting on organizing that. A few minutes passed, you had just barely gotten started, when a loud knock rang out.

“One sec!” You yelled, scrambling off the bathroom floor and toward the door. Unlocking it, you just barely opened it. A girl stood there, just a little taller than you. You opened the door all the way, trying to get a good look at her. Black hair with two sections of bright colors and tiger stripes. Pale white skin, a large, thin smile cut into her face. She wore almost a scene-emo get up, studded belts and knee high converse.

“Hi! I’m Nina!” She threw her hand out for you to shake.

“(Y/N),” you responded, grabbing her hand. She shook it violently and somehow her painted smile grew wider.

“You’re the new girl right?! Aren’t you like, a glitch gamer pasta???” She questioned, looking behind you to see your room.

“Oh, uhhh, yeah,” you stood there, a little intimidated by her.

“Cool cool! There are a few of y’all here, but we’ve never had a girl gaming pasta!! Do you haunt a game? Or like, what? Also, I love that band!” She motioned to the poster behind you, smiling brightly. You now knew what Brian meant by “good luck.” Well intentioned, just a lot.

“Uhh yeah, they’re cool. I’ve got some CDs from them, if you wanna’ look,” you stepped aside, granting her entry. She pushed her way into the room and began to look around, taking in every detail.

“I know these bands! They’re cool. And I love the colors you have here, and the way you’ve done everything. Most people don’t really style their room, but I LOVE yours!” She continued to talk, going over everything from the posters to your large CD collection.

“Yeah, it’s nice. And to answer your question, yeah, I haunt a game. Final Fantasy, seven to be more specific,” you watched as she poked around your room.

“Ohhhh, blonde sword guy right? Big spiky hair?”

“Cloud.”

“Yeah! That’s him! BEN will like you, he haunts some Zelda game? I think it’s Majors Mask, but what do I know?” She turned toward you, then spun around and dramatically flopped onto your bed.

“Whose BEN?” you tilted your head, sitting down next to Nina.

“He’s another glitch, Zelda. But don’t call him that, he hates being called Zelda,” she told you a few more things about this “BEN.” He was like you, around your death age too.

“Oh! We can walk down to get dinner soon! I’ll text BEN to meet us, you can meet him” she pulled out her phone and rapidly texted as you watched in awe. How the hell could someone text so fast? And with that many abbreviations?

“Uhhhh, sure I guess?”

“Did Brian go over rules and stuff?” She looked back to you, sending off the message.

“Some? Stuff like not taking anyone’s food,” you snickered, it was a simple rule, common sense more like.

“Yeahhhhh, I wouldn’t. We got cannibals here soooooo,” she glanced toward your desk, looking at the PC.

“Oh shit, yeah I don’t want none of that” you looked toward the PC as well, noticing an odd shadow on the wall. But, as soon as it was there, it was gone again. Like seeing something out of the corner of your eye, yet when you look, there is nothing.

“Don’t go into anyways rooms without permission, try not to touch anything that doesn’t belong to you, don’t wake anyone up,” Nina listed a few more rules before her phone dinged again. A message from BEN, telling her to come downstairs. Another message followed, however you didn’t get a chance to snoop.

She grabbed your hand, leading you toward the door. You shut it and locked it behind you, then Nina practically took off running. She dragged you down the hall and down a large flight of stairs. You hadn’t seen this area before, a large chandelier and a few large doorways leading to various rooms. It was plain however, no paintings or tables.

Nina pointed out the doorways, explaining where they went. The largest one, located on your right, was to the main common room. Past it was a living room, complete with a large TV, gaming systems, a pool table, and more.

To your back left was a cellar door, which led to the basement, wine cellar, deep freeze, and additional storage. Another door to the back right was a long hallway, leading to the library, main laundry and cleaning closet, and a few quiet office rooms. Right in front of you stood a large door, leading to the outside world.

To the left must have been the dining room and kitchen. That’s where you and Nina were headed. Opening the doors, there were only three people present. You recognized one of them as Brian, to which he smiled and waved at you. The other two looked at you, confused.

“Yo, what’s up? This is Tim,” Brian motioned to his left, “and that’s Toby,” he pointed to the right. Tim nodded, pulling the red flannel closer to him. He was a bigger dude, not someone you would want to fist fight. Toby was different, orange goggles resting on their head. They looked kind of weak, but something told you that they could probably kill you. You waved slightly at the two, but a shadow caught your attention. But just as before, it was gone as soon as it got there. The others noticed and looked between one another, a silent understanding. We’re you missing something?

“Come on, come on, come on! BEN is in the kitchen I think?” Nina grabbed your hand once more.

“BEN is in the kitchen???” Tim spoke.

“Yeah?”

“We’re all gonna’ die, I swear,” he focused again on his food while the other two laughed. Nina rolled her eyes and you snickered a little. So, another detail about this BEN, he probably couldn’t cook for shit. Dragging you into the kitchen, your eyes widened.

“Holy shit dude,” the kitchen was massive. Stoves, pots and pans, at least 5 microwaves. It was like something out of a movie, all finished with fancy marble countertops. The Slenderman must be loaded.

“Yea, it’s big,” Nina looked to you, giggling.

“Yo!!! Nina,” a small, elf-ish looking boy walked over, grinning. He looked at you, red eyes examining you. This had to be BEN, he was dressed like a high schooler, sweats and a hoodie, hair messy and huge bags under his eyes. His eyes did catch your attention, bright ruby gems swimming in a sea of darkness.

“BEN, this is (Y/N). (Y/N), this is BEN” Nina introduced the two of you, motioning for you two to chat.

“Hi,” you plainly said.

“What’s good?” He sounded like a middle schooler. Nina, really the only person you actually knew, walked off, joining someone else in the kitchen. Damn you Nina, leaving me alone with strangers.

“So uhh, your BEN?” You didn’t know what else to say.

He chuckled, “yup, the one and only,” the proud grin that made its way to his face make you giggle. What an ego.

“You’re the new girl right? Glitch?” BEN asked.

“Yup, final fantasy.”

“Oh that’s cool, which one?”

“Seven.”

BEN’s eyes widened a little, “oh, so a blonde swordsman huh?”

You giggled, sensing slight jealousy, “yeah, cloud. Pretty cool huh?” You smirked.

“Link is way cooler,” he matched your smile, almost challenging you. You rolled your eyes in response. You two chatted a bit more, learning little about each other. Nothing too fancy, but someone else here so you weren’t alone. 20 minutes passed before Nina came back over, bacon and biscuits with her. She set the plates down, and the three of you began eating. You didn’t pin Nina for a good cook, but life was always full of surprises.

“Oh, guys?” You said, grabbing the others attention, “what’s with the weird shadow dude?”

“What?” BEN spoke first, looking around the room quickly. He seemed alarmed, worried almost.

“I mean the shadow dude lurking around? I’ve seen him a little, but he kinda’ hides,” you explained. Nina and BEN both shared worried looks, slightly talking between each other.

“Listen,” BEN started, “we can’t really talk about it. But listen, if you see him again, tell us. Like, right away.” BEN sounded serious, alarmingly so. Just who was this shadow man? You had seen him twice now, once in your room and the other in the dining room.

“Oh well, he was in my room…” you trailed off, looking over to Nina, “and he was in the dinning room.”

“Well shit,” BEN murmured, thinking.

“Uh, care to fill me in?” You asked, now slightly concerned for your safety. You were strong, sure, but you had no idea what this thing was.

“You’re a glitch yeah?” BEN asked.

“Yes, she is BEN,” Nina commented, rolling her eyes.

“Ok ok ok,” BEN looked to you, “have you ever heard of Dark Link?”

“I’ve heard of him, but I don’t really know much?” You had heard of Dark, he had been around for a while now. Not only that, but he was a more powerful entity, not someone you wanted to fight.

“I don’t even know why he’s hanging around here,” BEN sighed, “listen, you see him again, tell someone yeah? Don’t mess around with that guy.”

“Ok?” You had a questioning tone, yet no one answered. What was so bad about Dark Link, and what did he want from you?

#creepypasta #creepypasta headcanon #ticci toby #ben drowned #eyeless jack #jane the killer #jeff the killer #nina the killer #creepypasta x reader #ben drowned x y/n #nina the killer x reader #creepypasta platonic #brian x reader #dark link x reader #creepypasta dark link

17 notes · View notes

weekend-conspiracy-theorist · 9 months

Text

in which damian has an agenda, cass has been keeping secrets, and gotham has just the worst infrastructure in existence. (an entry in the tim&steph role swap au)

Unlike Tim's non-flashy but solidly respectable apartment, which had been purchased with the intent of fooling his case worker into believing the lie of his beloved and financially stable Uncle Eddie Drake, the offices of Red Bird Investigations were kind of a shithole. The office space itself was clean, recently painted, and well-repaired, thanks to the elbow grease Tim (assisted by his begrudging blonde minions, plus an utterly unhelpful Cassandra, who had never held a paintbrush or screwdriver in her life) had put into it when he first signed the lease, but it was nonetheless housed in a crumbling brick building in one of Gotham's many questionable neighborhoods--

And 4032 Dixon Ave was exactly what you'd expect of a crumbling building in one of Gotham's many questionable neighborhoods. In theory, a person had to have a key or get buzzed in to access the building, but really you could force the lock if you jiggled it just right and pushed down on the knob, and the super kept the side door propped open so he could chainsmoke in the alley.

Half the offices were empty, and the rest were primarily a combination of loan sharks, con artists, and realtors. Roaches were a fact of life, the elevator had been out of order for upwards of a decade according to the manager of the phone line on the second floor, and the air conditioning was reliably unreliable during the hottest months of the summer. There was one gargoyle statue on the corner of the roof, which was neither attached nor an original aspect of the structure, but had been added (and gaudily painted) by someone with an impeccable sense of humor sometime in the semi-recent past.

Tim, who periodically spent an hour wistfully scrolling rental listings for the boathouses on the marina before reminding himself it'd be stupid even for a millionaire to move out of his apartment when it was fully paid off, couldn't have been happier with this particular life choice. He liked places with history, even when said history was as mundane as being an office building from the 70s which had survived the Quake by dint of thick walls and being far enough off the harbor to actually have been built on decent soil. He liked fixing things, sinking his time and his sweat into routine maintenance and non-lease-breaking improvements.

And more than anything, what Tim really liked were the people. Messy, vibrant, petty, compassionate people. There was character, there was life to the parts of the city which weren't directly under the heel of Gotham's glamorous rich, and Tim thrived there.

In rare form, Stephanie didn't even usually give him a hard time about his office space, because she got it. She liked them too.

Damian Wayne was less impressed.

"I was under the impression you ran a respectable business," the kid said, as he stood in the center of the main room. His shoes alone probably cost as much as every piece of furniture in the office combined, and his expression was deeply dubious.

He looked painfully young, in the washed out gray light seeping in through the big windows on the back wall, sandwiched in between the doors of Tim's office--a shoebox full of filing cabinets and the best computer equipment he could cram into it--and that of "Alvin Draper," which was bigger, nicer, and only occupied once a week, when the actor he'd hired to play his boss made a perfunctory appearance. The main room had a few of his better Gotham-by-night photographs framed on the wall, a kitchenette with a sink and a minifridge and a miniscule sum of counterspace mostly taken up by the drying rack for the two plates and two forks which Tim kept on hand for his lunches, as well as a nice couch and a coffee table at which Tim usually interviewed his clients.

He had spread the details of his latest case out on said couch and coffee table, not having anticipated any visitors after 4 PM on a Friday afternoon. "Uh," he said, intelligently. His hair was a mess, between the sweat and the running his fingers through it while he thought, and he'd stripped to his undershirt an hour ago. He debated, briefly, grabbing his dress shirt off of the arm of the couch and putting it back on, but 1) it was too damn hot, and 2) it was a sign of weakness. "'Respectable' is as good a word as any, I guess."

"Tt." Damian clicked his tongue, that sharp green gaze of his sweeping across the room and across Tim. "This building is incredibly insecure."

"It is," Tim agreed. His computer network was quite sound--and only got increasingly so, as he continued hanging out with Stephanie at the Clocktower and picking up advice from Oracle--but the information he kept in his filing cabinets was a careful mix of useless and non-confidential. Most of the physical files he built throughout the course of a case ended up digitized and shredded before he sent the final invoice. "But for the kinds of clients I prefer to work with, it's familiar. For the ones I tolerate for the sake of my bills, they're just excited that I'm cheap."

"The air conditioning is... insufficient."

Tim, who had been glistening with a light sheen of sweat since he walked in the door at 7 AM, really hadn't needed Damian's help to figure that out. "Oh, is that why my paperwork keeps sticking to my arm," he drawled, snide, and leaned back against the couch as he tossed down his pen.

This was already the longest one-on-one conversation they'd ever had, with the exception of the union mediation Tim had arbitrated, which didn't really count. Well, and the time Robin had cornered him during a stakeout to give him a shovel talk regarding Steph, which had been hilariously out-of-date. Point was: he and Damian didn't just talk. They talked so little, in fact, that Tim hadn't even found an opportunity to launch the "actually we're cousins, didn't you know?" prank for which Cassandra had dutifully planted evidence in the Wayne Manor library.

They sat in silence for a moment; Tim studying Damian and Damian studying the weird water stain in the middle of the ceiling. (There were two floors between this one and the roof, making rain damage unlikely, but there were also no utility pipes running through the ceiling above that spot; Tim had checked the as-builts. He'd left the mystery alone from there, because he was certain he didn't want to know where it had come from.)

Tim was good at reading people, and good at reading Robins in particular. The wrinkle between Damian's eyebrows and the poutiness of his frown said there was something on his mind; the fact that he'd showed up at Tim's office said... honestly, Tim didn't know what it said. He had a hard time believing that he'd done something to offend the kid and an even harder time believing that Damian would seek him out regarding something someone else did to offend him, considering they never talked.

Speculating about it wasn't going to get him anywhere. Leadingly, Tim asked, "Are you here for, like... a reason?"

Damian thinned his lips and narrowed his eyes, briefly transforming into the spitting image of his mother on the one time Tim had seen her, a brief glimpse caught from opposite ends of a League compound, as Z whisked Tim away by the scruff like a recalcitrant cat and Cass and Pru gleefully tore the place apart. With careful deliberance, Damian said, "Stephanie tells me she sought your counsel often during her tenure as Robin."

Tim was still Stephanie's favorite sounding board, and vice versa. Damian definitely knew that; the two of them weren't shy about it. Which meant it was purposeful--and significant--that the kid had specified her Robin days.

Tim looked at the papers spread across his coffee table. This particular case wasn't going to fall apart any time in the next two hours.

Standing and stretching, he draped his dress shirt over his arm and jerked his chin towards the door, ushering Damian out ahead of himself. He flipped the sign on the door--THE INVESTIGATOR IS OUT. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, PLEASE CALL: (862)-555-9321--and locked up, for habit's sake more than any belief that it would actually keep someone out of his office who wanted to break in. "This sounds like a taco tax situation. Steph ever explained to you how that works?"

"The purchase of tacos can be traded for assistance or advice," Damian recited dutifully. "I need neither," he added, even as he quickened his steps slightly to catch up to Tim's longer stride.

"Sure you don't," Tim said dryly. "You just showed up at my office all hangdog for no reason."

"What is 'hangdog?'"

Tim really wanted to say, "Nothing much; what's hanging with you?" but he knew that--despite Stephanie, Cassandra, and Dick's best efforts--there was no chance Damian would get the joke. "It means you look like a kicked puppy," he said instead, hands in his pockets as he turned the corner for the stairs.

"I am in no distress," Damian said, with stubborn insistence.

"Sure you aren't."

Damian bristled, coming to a stop abruptly, and Tim turned to look up at him from several stairs lower down. "This was a mistake," he said flatly. The line of his shoulders was tight and hostile. "I do not know why--I will be taking my leave. Apologies for the interrup--"

"Screw off," Tim said, exasperated. "You came to me, you don't get to get pissy when I try to actually talk to you, even if I'm being a dick about it. Look, whatever, fine; you don't need my help." He threw up his hands, turning back to the stairs. "I guess we're just hanging out, like normal people do with a friend of a mutual friend." That was a reductive description of what Stephanie was to either of them, but--whatever. He took two more steps and then hit upon an idea. "Cass has been teaching you to skateboard, right?"

"She has," Damian said, suspicion coloring his voice.

"Cool. We'll swing by my place, grab a couple boards, hit the park."

"You skateboard." Damian's voice remained flat.

"Kid," Tim said, exasperated, "I'm the one who taught Cass. Which took, like, four hours and now she's better at it than I am, because she's Cassandra fucking Wayne, but still."

***

They didn't go to a skate park.

On the way to Tim's apartment, he'd grilled Damian thoroughly regarding what Cassandra had taught him so far, and decided that there was a better (stupider) use of their time. Damian, for his part, was intrigued.

"It sounds like an engaging test of skill," he'd said, eyes glinting, and Tim had grinned.

"It's also illegal," he'd said cheerfully. "Of course, trespassing and illegal entry are probably less of a thrill for you than for the average skate punk." They shouldn't have been a thrill for Tim at this point, either, but sue him. There was a reason he'd ended up in the Girl Wonder's rolodex, and it wasn't for not being an antiauthoritarian adrenaline junkie.

What they were about to do was a classic rite of passage within Gotham skate culture. The first time Tim had heard about it, he'd been thirteen, and therefore not nearly cool enough for the fifteen-to-seventeen-year-olds that hung out at his favorite skate park to acknowledge his existence. The older kids, the eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds, were much more chill about being willing to teach new faces; but those kids in their mid-teens had something to prove. To themselves, their teachers, their parents, the older kids. They didn't let kids like Tim in on their secrets willingly.

But Tim had been, as Tim continued to be, both unconscionably nosy and very good at flying under the radar.

A kid Tim had only ever known as "Scoop" had showed up one day with his arm in a cast and half his face scraped up, looking nonetheless pleased with himself as he claimed the center of attention amongst that mid-teen crowd. There'd been a lot of whispering, a lot of back slapping, and just enough details dropped for Tim to figure out what had happened, and why it mattered.

Gotham City's infrastructure was, to a brick, old and confusing and unnecessarily complicated, and its storm sewer system was no exception. There were culverts under the city large enough to float a mobile home down the river with room to spare, entire streams which had been turned into trapezoidal concrete flumes, and detention ponds that never drained the way they were supposed to. And then there was this:

The Gotham Aqueduct.

It was one of the few above-ground portions of the storm sewer system, and despite being a triumph of masonry techniques, it made no sense. A lot of old school civil engineering had been pretty myopic, focused on one particular result with no understanding of the subsequent consequences (see: turning urban streambeds into concrete flumes in order to prevent stream migration, thereby also preventing soil infiltration while simultaneously increasing the velocity of the water, resulting in rampant downstream flooding), but even for the time period, the Gotham Aqueduct was bizarre.

The main section--the one Tim and Damian had scaled a chainlink fence to access--was approximately a half mile of semi-circular brick switchbacks that ended abruptly in a twenty foot drop into the reservoir. The slope along the centerline of the tunnel was so steep that the aqueduct almost never actually had any water in it, because of the speed at which the water flowed through it in the aftermath of a storm.

(Presumably, the switchbacks had been intended to slow said velocity. Functionally, the first couple switches tended to overtop and flood nearby streets because water didn't really love to navigate 90° angles. Tim was begging the people who'd designed the damn thing to think about K-values.)

Naturally, Gotham skaters had been treating the thing as a half-pipe since the day skateboards had been invented. The bricks made it unpredictable; the slope made it fast; and the fence along the top edges meant there was exactly one safe opportunity to bail once you got moving, about three yards before the drop off into the reservoir, where there was about five linear feet of fence set back from the edge in order to accomodate a gate.

Eight years ago, Scoop had missed his chance to get off and been forced to ditch his board, breaking his wrist and scraping himself up in the process. Of course, it had been impressive that he'd even made it that far; most everyone wiped out long before the reservoir, and ended up crawling up the sides to make a painful and embarassing trip back over the fence.

A Gotham skate culture rite of passage.

Tim laced his fingers and pushed his hands upwards in a stretch, blowing out a breath. "Let's get our story straight before we do this," he said sternly. "If you get seriously injured, we're telling people that Jason pushed you off a roof."

Damian rolled his eyes. "I will not get injured," he said confidently. He was still in the same very nice clothes as he'd showed up to Tim's office wearing, but Tim had put his foot down about trying to skate in dress shoes, so he'd borrowed a pair of Tim's Vans. That he was three inches shorter than Tim and still wore the same shoe size was depressing evidence that he wasn't going to stay short for long.

Tim, though, had taken the opportunity to change; switched his work boots and khakis for sweats and Converse, and he'd opted for a long sleeve tshirt despite the heat, in the vague hope it might cut down on the inevitable road rash in his future. Last time he'd skated the aqueduct, he'd been fifteen and a much better skater (more consistent practice) than he was now. He'd still missed the chance to bail and opted to take a dive into the reservoir rather than try to stop. Stephanie had had to use a grapple line to fish him out.

Choosing a swim over a crash wouldn't be an option today: the water level was too low after the fire department was forced to overtax the system while fighting the efforts of an arsonist collective.

Tim shook his head. He didn't really think Damian was going to get hurt; the kid had a lot of advantages compared to the average fourteen-year-old moron on a skateboard--better balance, better reflexes, better understanding of how to fall safely, not to mention he was best friends with Superman--but it was a terrible idea to get cocky about it. "I'm serious, Dames. This thing is going to be a wild ride. Stay low, stay alert, and get ready to bail if you have to."

"Yes, yes. Your concern is touching. I agree to sell out my brother to protect a near stranger should we get into trouble." Damian gestured toward the aqueduct. "Are we going to do this?"

Tim tipped his head back, laughing, and held up three fingers. "On my count. Three, two--

"One." In unison, they shifted their weight and dropped into the aqueduct.

Tim let out a whoop of excitement, and even Damian let out a small gasp, but both were rapidly snatched away by the vibration of the bricks and the roar of the wind. The first switchback came up fast, and Tim dropped his center of gravity as low as he could, fingers nearly brushing the ground as he leaned hard into the turn. The trucks on their boards were practically screaming already. Damian's smile didn't drop, not exactly, but it did turn downright feral, his green eyes sharpening as he realized Tim hadn't been fucking kidding.

Tim's teeth nearly rattled out of his head as the bricks whizzed past, and his eyes were watering from the wind as they continued to accelerate, faster and faster. There was no time to think; only to react. Every slightest shift of weight held the potential for catastrophic failure--and it was exhilarating.

On turn four, Damian came in at the wrong angle and nearly threw himself off balance when he overcorrected; Tim yelled at him to stay fucking low, and Damian snarled in response. On turn seven, Tim nearly wiped out. Damian managed to grab his sleeve and yank him upright while still somehow making the turn himself.

Turn eleven--the last turn--was where it all went to shit.

Tim came out of it a little ahead of Damian, and he purposefully swung high up the wall to give himself a better angle on the gate access before stepping on the back of his board and braking as hard as he dared. It wouldn't do to wipe out right here, and he still needed enough speed to make it back up the other wall--it was heartstopping, heartwrenching, but he let out a triumphant yell as he hit the gap just right.

He made the top of the aqueduct, grinding the edge with a mildly terrifying crunching noise before the fence pole caught his hip and slammed him to a stop. He spun on his board, bracing himself to catch a high school freshman to the midsection--

Just in time to see the moment that Damian's wheel caught a loose brick and yanked his board off course.

There was no time to think: only to react. Tim was throwing himself and his board forward again before he understood what his own plan was. Luckily the brick had stolen enough of Damian's speed for Tim to catch him on a cross-angle. One arm snagged Damian around the middle; his other hand shot outwards, catching at the final fence pole and only barely managing to get the first two joints of his fingers around it.

It wasn't enough to stop them. Tim had the insane grip strength of an urban climber who spent a lot of time scaling brick walls and pulling himself up onto rooftops by his fingertips, but between their combined body weight and their momentum, there were hundreds of pounds of force he was fighting against. He could only slow their flight by a fraction of a second--

Which was enough for Damian's Robin reflexes to kick in.

The two of them spun around the fence pole, grounded by Damian's own iron grip, and then tumbled across the concrete on the other side when he let go. Through the ringing in his ears and his own panting breaths, Tim heard the splash of two skateboards dropping into the reservoir.

He slowly pushed himself over onto his back, wincing as his shoulder protested loudly, and stared upwards at Gotham's moody gray sky. "Well," he rasped. "What'd you think?"

Damian moved in Tim's periphery, and Tim looked over to find him inspecting his palm, shiny and raw from where it scraped against the fence pole. His clothes were ruined, and there was the start of a beautiful bruise on his cheekbone. "A qualified success," he said, with satisfaction.

Tim stared at him for a second. Then he burst out laughing, draping his arm over his eyes, and after a moment, Damian started laughing too.

"We're never telling Batman about this," Tim ordered, when he'd managed to calm himself down slightly. He rubbed at his shoulder--it had taken the brunt of their impact against the ground, he was pretty sure--and sat upright, brushing his hair out of his face. He could see the skateboards from here, half-submerged where they'd caught onto a floating raft of trash fifty feet out into the reservoir. "Damn," he sighed.

Damian followed his gaze, and a frown ticked at the corners of his lips. "I find it unlikely we would be able to retrieve them."

"Yeah, no. Not even with a grapple." Tim huffed another laugh, shaking his head. "Good thing I'm a millionaire and can afford to replace them," he added dryly. "C'mon, up. We've managed to crashland by the corner of the treatment plant. We gotta get out of here before the cops make an appearance."

Green eyes narrowed, though Damian did find his way to his feet and fall into step next to Tim. "But you aren't," he said.

"Aren't what?" Tim asked distractedly. His vision nearly whited out when he tried to stretch out his shoulder, and he caught Damian's arm in a death grip to keep himself upright and moving.

"A millionaire." Damian brushed his hand off (not unkindly) and circled around to Tim's other side, inspecting his shoulder with brusque, professional movements.

Tim chose not to be offended that Damian had been investigating his finances. He was kidding himself if he thought any of the Bats hadn't. "First aid can wait," he said gently, ushering Damian onwards. "And, yes, I am. Officially, on paper, I have a net worth of a hundred and something blah blah blah. I just can't actually touch most of it, by design; almost everything liquid immediately gets funneled into various charities. Help me over?"

With enviable grace, Damian found his way to the top of the chainlink fence, straddling it as he leaned down to clasp Tim's good arm and pull him upwards.

"It's a lot like what Bruce does," Tim added. He hooked the toe of one shoe into the other side of the fence, holding tightly onto the top bar (Damian's hands hovered nearby in case he lost his grip), and carefully swung his other leg around. "Except it's chump change comparatively, and it's not my own foundation I'm putting money into. I'm also not trying to fund the Justice League and probably a hundred other vigilantes while maintaining a frivolous playboy persona, so percentage-wise I hold onto a lot less of it." Tim stretched down from the top of the fence and then dropped lightly to the ground.

Well--he meant to drop lightly to the ground. He actually tripped over his own feet slightly and stumbled. Damian snorted, and Tim flipped him off. "Fuck off. Anyway. I'd keep back even less--my bills are practically nonexistent; I bought my apartment as a cash sale, I don't have student loans, I don't even own a car--but I try to keep a discretionary fund around in case Red Bird doesn't make enough money to pay rent one month or I have to bail Steph out of jail again or something."

"Again," Damian repeated.

"Again," Tim confirmed, smirking, as he gazed up at Damian where he still sat atop the fence. "Seriously, Bruce has no idea what we got up to while he wasn't looking." He gestured between the two of them, raising his eyebrows, and then at the general predicament they currently found themselves in. "We've been hanging out for like two hours, Dames. Steph and I have been hanging out for seven years."

With a tilt of his head to acknowledge the point, Damian leapt down from the from the top of the fence, landing with a panther's grace and a fourteen-year-old's smug pride.

"Yeah, yeah," Tim huffed, reaching out to ruffle the kid's hair. "You're so much cooler than me. Whatever. What d'you want for--ah, shit." The hour hand on his watch was way closer to eight than Tim had realized. "No time to eat unless we do it on the move. I've gotta get you back to Bristol for patrol."

"You should come to the cave as well to get your shoulder checked out," Damian told him sternly. He paused, tilting his chin slightly, and Tim was coming to recognize that glint in his eye as a herald of Damian's patently mean and deeply hilarious sense of humor. "We'll tell everyone that Jason pushed you off a roof."

Tim was still laughing as they pulled Damian's bike up to Wayne Manor.

***

Whyever Damian had showed up to Tim's office that afternoon, he never let it slip. But it did... turn into a thing, after that. Damian showed up; Tim found something for them to do for a couple hours; Damian asked a probing question about Tim's life and/or his methods; Tim set aside the sarcasm and did his best to answer it.

(Robin was just bored, Tim had decided, as he was falling asleep on Friday night. The Black Bat was off spreading the fear of the bat across international waters, Batgirl was in space getting up to shenanigans with Young Justice, Nightwing was too busy with a gang war in Blüdhaven to be spending time in Gotham, and Tim was a mildly interesting puzzle hanging out at the edges of Damian's family. A puzzle that had even accidentally conditioned itself years ago to asking, "How high?" whenever Robin said, "Jump.")

Saturday, Tim woke up to find Damian climbing in through his bedroom window. He had already thrown a pillow by the time he realized who it was (force of habit of hearing the bell ding at an hour that Stephanie knew he would be asleep if she came by), and it bounced off Damian's scowling face. "I'd apologize, but I'm not actually sorry. Come back at noon," Tim mumbled, rolling over and pulling the blankets over his head. Next to him, Bernard snored loudly, blissfully unaware of the teenager skulking his way back out onto the fire escape.

Tim had samosas and paneer tikka masala waiting on the coffee table when Damian returned, at 12:00 exactly, and this time it was a Switch controller that Tim threw at his head. Damian caught it and proceeded to kick Tim's ass at Mario Kart for an hour.

"How are you so good at this," Tim groaned, slouched low into his couch with his feet kicked up onto the coffee table amongst the empty tupperware containers and dirty plates.

"I play against a speedster on a weekly basis," Damian said dryly.

Tim snorted. "Right. I mean, Steph plays against Bart all the time, and she still fucking sucks at this game, but I'll accept the premise. Tell me, though--is 'Thunderheart' regretting the superhero name she chose for herself when she was nine yet, or...?"

"I was actually talking about Kid Flash, but you tell me, Drake: does it matter how ridiculous the moniker she uses is when she's one of the single most powerful metahumans on Earth?" Damian countered.

"Point." Tim backed out of the race selection and scrolled through the wheels available for his bike, ignoring the snort that very clearly said that Damian didn't think any changes to the stats on his set up were going to help him win.

"You know her true identity as well, don't you?" Damian asked abruptly, just before the starting whistle on their next set of races.

"The second Iris West," Tim confirmed. "One of Wally and Linda Park-West's adorable little muppet children."

"How many civilian identities do you know? How did you deduce them?"

"Well, for the Flash family specifically, I didn't actually deduce anything; Bart just told me. Or he told me enough, at least." Tim groaned as his bike took a dive off of the course after being hit by a red shell. "There's a lot of that for what I know with regards to the greater superhero community--I was never a member of Young Justice, obviously, given that I'm not a superhero, but Steph dragged me around to a lot of their bonding exercises, so I was sort of honorary. Knowing the sidekicks tends to make it easy to figure out the Justice League."

"But you figured out the identities of the Gotham-based heroes on your own."

"Mostly. The others in Gotham--Huntress, Black Canary, etc--aren't as paranoid about covering their tracks as your whole brood is, and most of you are pretty easy when you walk in knowing Bruce Wayne is Batman. Steph generally kept mum on secret IDs unless I'd already figured it out myself, but I probably wouldn't have known Cass's Batgirl or Oracle even existed if I hadn't been friends with her." Tim gave up on trying to beat Damian the normal way and just shoved a hand into his face to keep him from being able to dodge the banana he was throwing.

(The conversation devolved at that point.)

Sunday night, Tim was shooting pool at a dive bar in one of his more lowkey aliases when Damian appeared out of nowhere to loudly judge his shots. The kid refused to answer how he'd gotten in (though at least he was dressed like a normal person and not like Bruce Wayne's son), but Tim decided after a brief argument that it was in no way his problem. If Batman didn't want his fourteen-year-old to have a good enough fake ID to somehow convince people he was seven years older than he was, then he shouldn't have given him the tools to make one. They played a few rounds, and despite the shit talking, Tim won most of them.

They were walking down the street afterwards, Tim with a chili dog in each hand and Damian eating the fries, when Damian said, out of the blue, "There is a firearm registered to your name."

Tim chewed his next bite a little longer than he usually would have, trying to discern if that was judgement or curiosity hiding behind the casual tone. "There is," he confirmed. It was a simple six-shot .38 revolver; Tim had no intentions of ever being in a fire fight that would require him to get off more than one or two shots, much less six, and revolvers were way less likely to jam than semiautomatics. "I also have a concealed carry permit."

"But you don't actually carry it."

"I do sometimes." Tim licked chili off of his wrist, pretending he didn't feel Damian's surprised gaze boring into the side of his head. "Look, I may not have the obscene level of trauma surrounding them that your dad does, but I don't like guns. I don't believe in capital punishment--I don't even believe in the prison industry and its focus on retribution over rehabilitation. People can change; in fact, people do change, all the time. But."

He took a deep breath. "I am not a superhero. What you and the rest of your family do, Dames, is not something that anyone can do just because they want to do it. You are brilliant detectives and above Olympic level athletes, trained not only in a wide variety of martial arts but also in deescalation and hostage negotiation techniques. There's a genetic component to that. There's also a truly insane physical and mental training regimen.

"The simple fact of the matter is that even if I wanted to become what you already are, which I don't, I literally can't. I've come at it too late to ever be as good as one of you. And that's fine, because for the most part, the stuff that I do doesn't involve bashing heads together or making daring rescues. But every once in a while, I find myself in a situation where my life or somebody else's life is being threatened, and you and I are both aware of how much more difficult it is to stop someone from hurting someone else without hurting them in turn. In the moment, when it comes down to an innocent person's life versus the life of the person who is actively attempting to maim or injure them, I'm not willing to discard any of the potential tools at my disposal just because I find them distasteful."

Damian was quiet for a couple of blocks after that. Tim was wandering them loosely towards the bus stop that would get the kid back to Bristol--ah, nostalgia; he and Steph used to ride this line two or three times a week--but hadn't yet made it obvious that he was pointing them in any particular direction.

"It is an interesting perspective," Damian said, finally. "I hadn't expected such nuance, given your vocal distaste for the Red Hood."

"The Red Hood is a hypocrite," Tim said flatly. "I've got more respect for Deadshot's moral code than I do Hood's. At least 'I'll kill anyone you pay me to' is fucking consistent. Don't--don't fucking get me started on the number of bullet holes he's put in random enforcers and runners. Some of them undoubtedly were absolute scum whose lists of crimes would turn even Hood's stomach, but just as many of them are people trying to get through the fucking day. People who could get out if you just gave them a fucking stepstool, which is purportedly something Hood cares about."

Tim slammed the remains of his second chili dog into the nearest trashcan, his appetite suddenly gone. "'I'm just doing what Batman can't,' what a load of schlock. Dames, listen to me: I know I don't really know you and it's none of my business to say this, but I'm so fucking proud of you for the steps you've made to break away from the League conditioning and follow your dad's code instead. Whenever you grow up and start to figure out what's actually true to you, though, just promise me you're going to be smarter about it than Hood has been."

Damian was staring at him again. Tim supposed he probably wasn't used to hearing it stated, blatantly, that people were proud of him, or that they would keep being proud of him even if he decided one day that he did actually think killing people was okay under certain circumstances.

Tim fidgeted. "Just my two cents," he offered. The silence continued to stretch on. Akwardly.

"Shouldn't you have been in Bristol getting ready for patrol like two hours ago?" he finally asked, bluntly, because he was feeling a little like a bug under a microscope, and Robin was still staring at him, and he still didn't really understand why the kid was even here.

Damian shook off whatever had been going through his head. "It is my night off," he said, ducking his head back towards his fries and leading the way towards the bus stop. (Figured he'd already known where they were going.)

Tim wanted to ask why he wasn't in Kansas or Metropolis, hanging out with the younger Superman, or why he wasn't in San Francisco with the Titans, but he didn't. The kid was bored, and Tim was there, and Damian wanted to know why Stephanie liked him so much. Probably.

(Tim was beginning to doubt that theory, but he had no idea what to replace it with.)

Monday afternoon, Damian found Tim at the Department of Finance, pursuing a records request for one of his cases.

"You could obtain this information much more easily and quickly through other means," Damian murmured, hands in his pockets as they waited in the lobby. He'd sidled up sideways to Tim's conversation with the office manager, and Tim had done his level best to ignore him until Maureen had become too clearly distracted by his presence, at which point he'd been forced to tell her that Damian was his assistant. This had earned him an eyeroll, but Damian must have finally taken Stephanie's lessons on how to "yes, and" to heart and hadn't argued. "I have not had cause to assess your hacking capabilities myself, but Gordon considers you moderately competent."

Tim raised an eyebrow. He kept his voice similarly low, and turned his head partially away from the camera in the corner of the room to make it difficult to read his lips, same as Damian had. "High praise. But there's a difference between what I do, and what you do. Namely, legality, and therefore paper trails. Besides--you'd be shocked how useful it can be to build rapport with the office staff who do all the paperwork and greet all the visitors. I know CPAs who explicitly start their tax audits not by investigating the spreadsheets, but by talking to the secretaries. Support staff, janitors, waitresses, bartenders--these are all people who hear and see a lot of things because people who think they're better than them pay no attention to them. Relatedly: there's a reason your dad pays his PA as well as he does. It's a good habit. Make sure you continue it when you take on a role at WE."

"Noted," Damian said, looking like he actually was making a mental note of that, and Tim didn't bother to resist the urge to reach out and ruffle his hair. He'd gotten away with it after the aqueduct adventure, when his shoulder (which was still sore, but workable) was fucked up, but it got his hand slapped this time.

Offended or not, Damian still shadowed him all the way back to 4032 Dixon Ave, at which point Tim paused on the sidewalk next to the propped open side door, resigned to the idea that this was happening whether he liked it or not. "Okay, look. It's Monday," he said.

"Yes?" Damian was looking at him like he was reevaluating his opinion of Tim's intelligence.

Tim sighed, shifting his files higher up into the crook of his elbow and bracing his other hand on the doorframe. "Monday means my boss is here."

Damian's opinion of him plummeted even lower. "Your boss doesn't exi--"

Tim slapped a hand over Damian's mouth. "My boss, Mr. Draper, is here today," he said firmly. "He doesn't know anything about anything, including who it ultimately is who's paying his salary. As far as he knows, I know nothing about anything either. Do you understand me?" He lifted his hand and placed it back on the doorframe, barring Damian's way in.

"First of all, had I been anyone else in our immediate acquaintance, I would have bitten your hand for that; consider yourself lucky I am above such base instincts. Second of all, I absolutely do not understand you," Damian said flatly. "You mean to tell me, Drake, that you have hired a real person to be your fake boss--"

"There has to be someone until I'm old enough to get my own license," Tim said tiredly. He and Stephanie had already had this argument a dozen times. "And if I had to spend a couple years answering phone calls and making coffee runs before I was allowed to actually do any investigating, I'd have gone full supervillain."

"Remind me what you were just saying earlier about legality and paper trails--"

"Screw off. Are you gonna behave or not? I'm sending you home if you won't pretend to be having a client meeting with me or something."

They glared at each other for a long moment. Tim had the upper hand, literally and metaphorically, but Damian was the biological synthesis of two of the bitchiest people on the planet Earth, so it was still a pretty even match. Finally, with a roll of his eyes, he ducked beneath Tim's arm and pushed through the door into the building.

"What reason could I possibly have to hire a private investigator?"

"You've got four flights of stairs to figure it out," Tim told him, and waved a hand at the super as they passed him, headed out to smoke with an unlit cigarette already dangling out of the side of his mouth. "Maybe you want me to look into whether or not Bruce has another biological kid floating around out there."

The elbow to the diaphragm that earned him had him wheezing all the way up to the office.

Damian didn't come up with a fake mystery for Tim to be solving, but he did stick his nose in the air and tell Mike Haskins (the actor Tim had hired to play Alvin Draper), haughtily, that his case was confidential and he was only interested in working with Tim, and that was good enough. They passed a quiet couple of hours in Tim's office--Damian ended up on top of his filing cabinets after picking the locks and rifling through them, because there was nowhere else for him to sit--as Tim sifted through the copies of the records he'd gotten from the Department of Finance and Damian took what had to have been the world's most uncomfortable nap.

Tim was starting to wonder if the kid was grounded or something. It would explain the lack of patrol, the fact that he wasn't seeking out Dick or Jason instead--Dick was too busy with the gang war to indulge him and would have pressured him to return to Gotham, and it was fifty-fifty on whether Jason would have held him hostage, to infuriate Bruce, or ratted him out to Alfred, to infuriate Damian.

Running off to the Titans would be guaranteed to result in Batman hunting him down and dragging him back by the cape, and any time spent with Jon Kent would probably also mean time spent with Clark Kent, which would mean Batman wouldn't even have to hunt Robin down; he'd just get a politely concerned phone call from his best friend.

Tim texted Stephanie that Damian was being weird, although he didn't expect a response until she was done being crowned the Queen of Mars or whatever she had going on with Young Justice, and then he texted Cassandra to tell her that he missed her. If Cass were home, Damian definitely wouldn't be having whatever crisis he was having all over Tim's office.

Tuesday night, Tim finally found out what was going on. And he was right: if the Black Bat had been home, Damian wouldn't have been spending so much time hovering over Tim's shoulder.

She was, after all, the one who'd asked him to keep an eye on Tim while she dealt another blow to the League of Assassins.

***

Tim woke up in the Batcave.

He only recognized it so immediately because he'd just been in its Medbay a few days earlier, letting Alfred determine whether or not he'd managed to tear his rotator cuff during the "unexplained incident" he and Damian had been involved in. It was easy to figure out why he was here now, given the pounding pain ripping through his midsection.

Tim woke up in the Batcave with a stab wound.

Which was, to be fair, better circumstances than the last time Tim had woken up from a stab wound related to the League of Assassins. Yeah--it was coming back to him. He closed his eyes against the brightness of the lights, breathing out through his nose.

Tim had been on the roof of some random apartment building in the Diamond District, which was never his favorite place in Gotham in which to be on a random rooftop. The buildings were too high and too far apart on the whole for him to easily maneuver without a grappling hook, which he staunchly continued to refuse whenever Stephanie offered him one. It seemed like a really good way to get himself in all sorts of trouble with both the police and Gotham's underworld if anyone ever discovered him carrying it.

But alas: Laney Franklin's wife was cheating on her with a beautiful lesbian couple with high class taste, so he wasn't exactly going to catch evidence of the affair at one of Gotham's many seedy motels. Skyscrapers and champagne and long walks up ugly stairwells it was.

He hadn't really been surprised to hear the purposeful thud of boots hitting the roof behind him; after all, it had been over twenty-four hours since he'd last seen Damian, which broke the trend of the past five days. "Rob," he'd greeted, without looking up from his camera.

"Timothy," Damian had returned (thankfully; it would have been embarassing if Tim had missed that called shot) as he took a seat next to Tim, and Tim's hands had briefly frozen while adjusting the focus on his shot.

Sure, he'd been purposefully needling the kid by using nicknames without having had permission offered to him like Stephanie (eventually) had, but he'd expected to be "Drake" always and forever for the rest of his life. Were they actually friends now? He didn't have a problem with that, but it was certainly a surprise.

He finished taking his shot and took a guess as to what had brought Batman and Robin to this corner of the city in the first place. "Catwoman busy tonight?"

"Unfortunately," Damian had said, so sourly that Tim had choked on a laugh.

"I take it Batman has things... covered."

Damian had made a disgusted noise, and Tim had laughed again. Then he'd heard the faintest whisper of a blade being unsheathed, and things had gotten--

Hectic, after that.

Tim reopened his eyes, biting back a groan as he levered himself up to sitting, and carefully removed the IV line from his arm and the electrodes from his chest. There was a murmur of voices out in the main chamber of the cave, and he was, as he always had been, unconscionably nosy.

He was still wearing his jeans but he raided the lockers for a shirt on his way out, relieved to find his own "Everything's Bat-ter in Gotham" tanktop stashed away inside Cassandra's, and then he hovered, not quite out of sight to the canny observer (Alfred, Bruce, and Damian alike were usually canny observers, but they were distracted by their conversation) and comfortably within earshot.

"--is not why my grandfather would be interested in Timothy," Damian was saying, his voice high and fast with impatience in a way that said he was annoyed with the conversation. "He is a reasonably gifted detective with a temptingly flexible moral code and unusual familiarity with both our inner workings and those of the superhero community at large. The question, Father, is how and why Ra's is even aware of his existence."

Wait. Tim set his hand over the stab wound in his side, frowning heavily. The ninjas had been after him? Not Damian?

"Black Bat gave no indication of what was going on when she asked you to keep an eye on him?"

"Ah," Tim said, reflexively, and then remembered he wasn't actually part of this conversation. Three heads snapped towards him, and he ruefully moved forward fully into the light.

"Master Drake, please--"

"Tim, please." He waved away the concern as Alfred and Damian both took steps forward to help him walk. "I'm fine; not the first time I've been stabbed in the spleen, and knowing my luck it won't be the last. Were you able to get hold of Cass?"

"Went to voicemail," Bruce said, gruffly. His blue eyes were sharp as he watched Tim lower himself carefully into one of the chairs at the table near the Batcomputer, on which grainy night footage of the rooftop fight was playing out silently.

"I appreciate the compliment, by the way," Tim told Damian, "but your grandfather isn't interested in me. At least, not as anything but leverage against Cass. Pretty sure the only time he's ever referred to me in conversation has been as her lapdog." He pulled his phone out of his pocket, grimacing at the traces of blood still present, and scrolled through his contacts. "Here we go," he said, with satisfaction, and set it on the table as he turned it onto speakerphone.

It rang twice, and then--

"Go for Prudence," she drawled, so very English and so very sarcastic. There was gunfire in the background, and it was staticky like there was wind blowing across the microphone.

"High, darling," Tim drawled back. "Hand the phone to the Bat on your right, would you?"

"Ah, tictac! No can do, she's very busy." Another gunshot. This one much closer. "Pru had probably been the one holding the gun" kind of close.

"I know she's busy, Pru. Her being busy is why I'm calling. Her being busy is why I have a brand new stab wound to add to my collection."

A pause. The phone audibly flipped to speaker, and Pru called, "Batsy, I thought you said they were just trying to kidnap Tim."

"They are," Cassandra her, more distant and barely audible over the spotty connection. A thud; a groan, and she added, "Stay down this time," in her scariest voice.

Prudence asked, "Then how come he's saying he got stabbed?"

There was a jumble of audio feedback as the phone changed hands. "How did you get stabbed? What happened to Robin?"

Tim rolled his eyes. "Well, C, when you don't tell me that there's a kidnapping threat against me and you just send Ra's al Ghul's grandson to hang out with me all day, there ends up being some miscommunication about which of us the ninjas are focused on, and I end up shoving the kid out of the way of a knife."

"Ridiculous," Damian added icily, his arms crossed over his chest. "I was wearing body armor. You were not."

"I could have been," Tim countered, "if someone had told either of us what was going on."

Cass huffed, managing to sound annoyed with the both of them even while in the middle of raiding a League base or whatever the hell it was she was up to. "I thought it'd be obvious."

"Can I ask," Bruce said slowly, "why Tim is even involved in this in the first place?"

"He drove me here," Cassandra said lightly. "The first time."

Tim bolted upright, then immediately regretted it and set a hand over his stab wound with a hiss. "C, you're in Nanda Parbat?"

"You've been to Nanda Parbat?" Damian asked Tim incredulously. He looked at the phone. "You're currently in Nanda Parbat?"

"What do you mean he drove you there," Bruce repeated flatly.

"When you were supposed to be dead and I realized you actually weren't," Cassandra began.

"When Cass was having her mental breakdown road trip of grief and self-discovery," Tim began.

"Rude," she huffed.

"Tell me I'm wrong." He waved a hand. "Never mind, point is: she recruited me as team mascot and secondary moral compass for the semi-feral, only-recently-ex assassins she was teaming up with."

"Rude!" Prudence yelled in the background.

"And then he drove me here," Cassandra repeated.

"Don't sell yourself short, TJ," Prudence added. "You were a little more than just a mascot; blowing up the bases was your idea."

"Yes," Tim said, feeling his face heat up. "Well. It just seemed... prudent."

Cassandra booed. Prudence booed. Damian looked like he wanted to boo. Bruce just looked constipated, which probably meant he also wanted to boo.

"Sorry. Look, I'm locked down in the Batcave now; Ra's tried and failed to gain leverage to counter whatever it is you're doing right now." Tim grimaced. "Do we want to know what you're doing right now?"

"Ra's started it," was all Cassandra offered in response to that.

Tim rested his forehead in the palm of his hand, closing his eyes. "Right," he said. "Ra's started it. Look, whatever. If you see Damian's mom, could you give her my business card again? I'm serious that Drake Industries could use her. Anyone ballsy enough to take Luthor on from inside his own company has exactly the kind of forward thinking we need."

"I've given it to her like three times now," Cassandra told him gently. "I don't think she's interested."

"I can and would fire our current CEO."

"I know, Tim."

"I've been dragging the company kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century; really pushing for an eco-friendly and worker-forward approach, but it's like pulling teeth when it comes to the board, and god knows I want to kill myself every time I have to spend more than three or four hours at a time pretending to be a respectable businessman. I could really use someone with a vision who's willing to push forward their own agenda without needing me to hold their hand."

"Tim, I promise you. I gave her your elevator pitch word for word last time."

He sighed. "I can still dream."

"Yes, you can," Cassandra told him, sounding amused. "And Pru wants to know if you'll also be dreaming about paying her phone bill for the month since you're wasting all her international minutes right now."

"She's a globetrotting antihero and she doesn't spring for an unlimited international plan?" Tim asked scathingly. "Tell her I'm disappointed in her. Then flip her off when she flips you off."

A pause.

"Done," Cassandra reported. "Do you need anything else?"

"Keep yourself safe, please? One stab wound between us is already too many. My poor spleen can't take much more of this."

"Why is it always the spleen when you get attacked by ninjas?"

"This is all I wanna know." Tim sighed again. "Since Steph's off world, you have a brief reprieve before Bruce and Damian explain to her that you've put me on Ra's al Ghul's radar and gotten me stabbed twice. Might wanna figure out how to defend yourself, because she's going to tear you a new one."

"Easy," Cass said confidently. "Batman and Robin needed Batgirl; Bruce needed the Black Bat; Cass needed Tim."

Tim blinked. He blinked again, harder. "Love you, too, Cassie," he rasped.

"I need to go. Tell Bruce I'll be back in a few days."

"You got it." He hung up, groaning, and leaned back in the chair. "Your daughter is simultaneously one of my favorite people in the entire world, and also someone I would frequently like to strangle," he informed Bruce. "'I thought it'd be obvious.' I know she operates on a literal different wavelength than the rest of us, but c'mon."

Bruce had his eyes closed; one hand on his hip and the other pinching the bridge of his nose. "When I asked her what happened while I was gone," he said, slowly, "she told me, and I quote, 'Oh, you know. The usual.'"

"To be fair," Tim said magnanimously, "for Cass, fighting assassins, struggling with her mental health, and taking down worldwide conspiracies with the force of her convictions is the usual."

***

Alfred did manage to bully Tim back into a hospital bed after that. Not that it took much, because the painkillers were wearing off and Tim was starting to deeply regret the decision to be upright.

He wasn't surprised when Damian flopped into a chair next to his bed. He wasn't even surprised when he pulled over the bedside tray on its swinging arm and started shuffling a deck of cards.

"So Cass asked you to keep an eye on me, huh?" Tim asked dryly, as he watched Damian deal. "And you decided that you might as well take the opportunity to figure out what makes me tick."

Damian tapped the remaining cards sharply on the tray, straightening them up, and set them in the middle. "I had assumed she believed you to be in over your head regarding one of your cases. Not that she expected my grandfather to send a team of ninja to kidnap you."

"Without the context of either how I'm involved in her vendetta against the League or that her current trip is in pursuit of that vendetta, it's not an 'obvious' assumption," Tim agreed. "What are we playing?"

"Go Fish."

Tim snorted.

"Fuck off. We are both capable and inclined to count cards; I don't see a point in pursuing a more sophisticated game. And I could always leave you here alone to be bored out of your mind, if you'd prefer."

"Nope, it's fine." Tim reorganized his cards, humming. "Got any 2's?"

Damian eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and then handed him a card.

"What I want to know," Tim said, a couple turns later, "is how come you were only coming around for a few hours a day if you were supposed to be on protection detail."

With a snort, Damian said, "You don't honestly think I was only there for a couple of hours a day."

Tim paused in the middle of drawing a card. "No."

"Yes."

"No."

"You should work on your situational awareness."

"Oh my god."

"You didn't do anything especially embarassing during my surveillance. I am, however, concerned about the amount of take out you consume."

"You're a menace," Tim said despairingly. He set down his cards and flopped back into the pillows of his hospital bed, running his hands down his face. "Fucking shit, Dames."

"I enjoyed our acquaintance far more than I anticipated," Damian added, with the same blunt abruptness with which he'd been interrogating Tim for the last week. He was looking firmly at his cards, and there was a pink tinge to the tips of his ears. "I suspect Cassandra had the ulterior motive of attempting to get us to bond."

Maybe. The Black Bat was sneaky, but she wasn't usually that kind of schemer.

"I just think it was inevitable," Tim told the bright, obnoxious lights on the ceiling. "We should count ourselves lucky we struck up a friendship before Steph decided to duct tape us together or something."

#tim drake #damian wayne #cassandra cain #the tim&steph role swap au #I wrote this #many thoughts about this one none of which that are well disposed to going in the tags #it's about time tim and damian bonded!!!

11 notes · View notes

jaybarou · 3 months

Text

I'm turning some of my most AU fanfics into Original short stories in the hopes of selling them to a publisher. (And thus get some cred to send my CV to Publishers and leave my job)

While I unfic them all, I'll post them here and you can read them with the tag #limited edition. I'll delete them after a few days

<7k words

Freddie is running out of time before the presentation for Stenson Industries and he needs a competent technician yesterday. How fortunate, then, that someone who was waiting and overheard his problem is willing to help.

Freddie burst into the hall and everyone held their breath while the second son of the boss made his way to the head of department. The rest of the employees mourned the poor woman and settled to watch the dismemberment. There were three rules in the company. Number one: Don’t piss off the boss. Rupert was a clever bastard who should have been a lawyer. Number two: Don’t mess with Tim, he was under Rupert’s protection and Rupert would utterly destroy you if you dared contradict the guy. Number three: Keep Freddie as a friend, but only behind Rupert’s back.

Freddie had turned into a tyrant lately. He used to be the most understanding of the three and the one to go to if the others were being unreasonable. The Winter fiasco had taken its toll on him, but even with the new bitterness, he was far more flexible than his relatives and he was your man if you wanted something that was technically off-limits. Going against Freddie was a suicide too, especially after the winter thing. Today Freddie had his ‘I have had a horrid day and I’ll be polite about it until I’m not’ face going on. The head of the department was so doomed.

She didn’t know it yet, though, since Freddie was coming from behind.

“Rosita,” Freddie’s icy tone clued the woman in, so she was properly scared when she turned to face her boss. “May I inquire as to the whereabouts of our IT crew?”

Ow, he was using the big words, he must be royally crossed.

Oh, but the head of department was breathing relieved, she probably had an ace up her sleeve. Anyone who worked at the Intenur Company for longer than a year had to lean to be prepared for their bosses’ moods.

“I alerted them when you asked me; I have sent no less than three messages this week and three more during the morning in anticipation. They assured me that the material would be ready yesterday and that they wouldn’t work on it today.”

Wow! Perfectly deflected blame! And the IT crew wouldn’t have it too bad; they were Tim’s friends. This was not a surprising development all the same; they always messed up Freddie’s tasks, and everyone knew that it wasn’t a coincidence. Tim’s protection was the only explanation as to why they still had a job.

“And the material is there for Tim’s and Rupert’s worthless power points, but I told them there was a compatibility problem with my presentation a week ago.”

“With all due respect, sir, that is not my responsibility.” Rosita had brass balls, or ovaries.

Freddie pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed slowly. “I’m aware; Rosita, but now I need a solution.”

“The other presentations are not causing problems,” she had the cheek to mention.

“Of course not! They are using the company’s system!”

“And why is that a problem? Maybe if you didn’t insist on using your personal computer...”

“It is a problem because it is Pi-21’s stupid technology, Rosita. What kind of impression do you think we will give to Miss Lloid and Mr Stenson if we present our data with their rival’s technology?”

“I’m sure they know by now.” Rosita sent a furtive look at the clients whispering into each other’s ears; a businesswoman and some oil-stained technician. Freddie didn’t spare a look. They were probably gossiping about Freddie’s tantrum; that seemed to be the default these days. Maybe Freddie’s interruption was making them impatient, but Freddie couldn’t care less. He had bigger problems.

“I can’t just transfer my presentation; Pi-21’s software keeps wrecking everything, I could write the transfer code, but not in the next...” Freddie looked at the clock on his mobile. “Not in twenty minutes!”

“I could call the IT crew for you.”

“Today it is Sophie’s shift; she will say that it is my fault, for working with Stenson technology. She only works with simple ‘intuitive’ code like Pi-21’s. I want someone competent!”

One of the two waiting clients approached them.

“I-” he started.

Freddie didn’t give him the chance to complain.

“I’m terribly sorry for the delay, but there is an emergency in the company.” Freddie usually kept his cool like a boss, well, better than the other bosses. He was usually PR’s wet dream, but he could be downright irrational if the situation really got to him. The Winter Project had been proof enough. “Unless you can fix the computers in time, kindly stay put for a few minutes.” The ‘or else’ was implied.

“I certainly could,” the client said cheerfully. Freddie looked at him skeptically.

“But…” Rosita tried to intervene.

“Do you have a solution, Rosita?” Freddie asked.

“Of course she doesn’t, she is a clever girl, Pi-21’s software is not for clever girls. Show me to the problem, Mr Legs.” The man had the gall to walk to the door where Freddie had come from and open it for him.

Freddie regarded the man warily. Twenty minutes. He still had time to look desperately for someone else if the man couldn’t help and fail. “Why not? I’m doomed anyway.” Freddie walked to the door with a sigh.

“But, sir! He is Ryan Stenson!” Too late; the door was closed. “I’m so screwed,” Rosita muttered thinking of the moment when Rupert heard how she had failed to stop Freddie.

Miss Lloid put an understanding hand on her arm; she probably knew a thing or two about trouble with bosses.

Freddie took the man to the conference room where he would have to meet the head of Stenson Industries. He had his custom Stenson laptop there with his presentation and an enormous mess showing on the Pi-21 screen of the company. There wasn’t even an error message, just all the text overlapped with the images and the data, and then it had frozen. If Rupert wasn’t such a resentful man, they’d have Stenson’s holo-displays everywhere instead of that waste of space that Pi-21 called technology. Unfortunately, Rupert would own the company for as long as he lived and Tim would follow his steps like a trained monkey.

The unexpected client-turned-help didn’t ask for permission, he just sat in front of Freddie’s computer as if it was his. He sent a disdainful look at the problematic frozen screen and he turned to Freddie with an amused smile to say: “Let’s start with archaic solutions for archaic technology.” Then the technician crouched to unplug the projector.

“I’ve done exactly the same more than once today.” It was the only way to unfreeze the projector, but Freddie resented the know-it-all attitude of the technician.

The man seemed to take that as a challenge, so he cracked his knuckles and promptly opened the familiar black window of MS-DOS. He started to write while Freddie looked over his shoulder. He was pulling pieces of code that Freddie had not considered, and he didn’t even need to do much after he was done. He just opened the Stenson software for presentations and saved the file that Freddie pointed out in a format that wasn’t there before the man had touched the computer.

The smug bastard had a cheeky smile when he presented Freddie with the pen drive.

Freddie saved all his praise until he plugged the USB drive on the projector and it miraculously worked. The clock on the screen said it had taken the technician… less than five minutes. Freddie was pleasantly surprised; he was going to thank the stranger, but then the presentation played the music that Freddie had saved without hope of it working.

“This thing never plays music, at least never at the same time as the presentation!” He let himself slouch on the chair closest to the projector. The presentation was saved.

“It was just too easy,” the smug technician commented.

“I would have managed with a bit more than twenty minutes,” Freddie said, pride a bit hurt.

“If your coding is as good as your people skills, twenty minutes would have easily become a week of work.”

“What gives you the right to say that?” Freddie protested.

“You have not even asked my name.”

Freddie pursed his lips. Despite having collapsed on the seat, he was tense all over. He had been stressed since he found trouble with the presentation a week ago and predicted more trouble with IT on top of the other preparations. The man was right, he had been snappy and the presentation hadn’t even started yet, so he took the chance to breathe deeply. And to collect his politeness from the depths of despair.

“Excuse my manners, I-”

“Yes, you don’t need my name, just my services,” the man cut him without retracting that annoying smirk of his.

“Fortunately your coding is better than your own people skills, then,” Freddie said, annoyed.

“No, just as good, people love me, I have people skills to spare somewhere, just not today, and I have a lot of class.”

“And what are you implying there exactly?”

“That music in your presentation? Tacky.” Let it be known that Freddie knew when he was being mocked and when he was being teased, he just had more experience with the former.

“I didn’t expect it to work and I can put whatever music I want, because the content is solid.”

“Show me.”

Freddie leaned forward. “What?”

“I said show me!” The technician leaned forward too. “You have time, right? I want to see the monster I helped to create.”

Freddie didn’t have time to reply, because the man stood up, took the remote control from the table, walked in front of the screen and played the presentation. Freddie did have the time now; Stenson should be with Tim and his unproductive dreams of harnessing storms to generate electricity. The technician’s opinion wouldn’t be very enlightening, but this way Freddie would have the chance to check his own presentation one last time.

“This section, why is it so short?” The technician said about the grid connection as he sat on the table. Freddie sat next to him.

It was Freddie’s favorite section, but Rupert didn’t like it, so Freddie had only sneaked a basic idea. He was quite proud of having passed it under the old man’s nose.

“Rupert is old school.” Freddie smirked privately. “He likes the old power plants and he hates Stenson. Hates that his green approach to energy is harming our productivity, and he doesn’t see that an update could benefit both of us. After all, as you see here, we already have a power grid that Stenson wants; we would only have to update the power plants. It would be a great investment, but he doesn’t like it.”

The technician crossed his arms. “He doesn’t like Stenson?”

Freddie laughed. “It is more than dislike. Stenson is the bane of his existence, as Rupert says: who does he think he is, that short-sighted idiot? or whatever short joke he thinks at that moment; apparently the man is quite short.”

“Yes, people say that. Go on.”

“Well, Father always says that Stenson will destroy America, because Forbes might call him a hero but his technology is destroying jobs everywhere, his words, not mine.” Freddie rolled his eyes.

The technician kept playing the presentation and smirked at one of the references.

“That is the project I… saw in a magazine about Stenson. It is not well known, is it? Have you been stalking him or something?”

“I’ve done my research. That high-entropy alloy project is spectacular, but it is not showy enough for the press, or the shareholders, Miss Lloid and he will probably value that Intenur-”

“Your boss is not here, Legs.”

Freddie hesitated for a moment, but the man was smart, he was learning how the Intenur Company worked incredibly fast.

“They will value that I recognize the real potential out of the flashy prototypes for the general public.”

“Are you saying that they lie with their flashy prototypes?”

Freddie looked the technician dead in the eye.

“Of course they do. That’s what marketing is about.”

“Would you tell them that to their face?”

“Of course not. Rupert would behead me if I did something to hamper his deal.”

“Why would he want a deal with a man he hates?”

“I convinced him that he could push his hate aside for the good of the company and to leave a better legacy to Tim.”

“The company, of course, because clean energy and the bigger picture are nothing compared to stock numbers.”

“Obviously you have never discussed it with Rupert. I told him what he needed to hear; I won’t jeopardize the ‘bigger picture’ as you say, by telling him something as feeble as the whole truth.” Freddie leaned his hip against the table. “Then the shareholders gossiped about Stenson and how easy it would be to negotiate some changes with him and Rupert was sold.”

“Huh? And what did they say about Stenson?”

“Why do you ask?”

The technician shrugged and grinned. “Because I want to keep listening to your voice, but I don’t think you’d appreciate me distracting you from the topic.”

Freddie raised an eyebrow at the blatant flirting, but let it slide. “They said that it takes a lot to keep Stenson interested in a single topic unless it is really engaging, but they also told us to use eye-candy to keep him involved.” Freddie allowed himself a private smile, the one that people compared with a snake’s. “Tim called his girlfriend to play the part of eye-candy. She is an expert in the field of his presentation, so he was terribly angry that she was called only for her looks.”

The technician shared his smile with the same subtle touch of cruelty that Freddie found… endearing.

“Maybe you should have read more magazines, and you would know that you put eye-candy in your presentation anyway?”

The technician was looking up and down at Freddie quite obviously. Freddie’s lip twitched and he retreated any endearing thought that had passed through his mind.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he swings both ways, you know?” Freddie didn’t dignify that with an answer, which was a bad decision, because the technician came back. “Don’t tell me you are one of those bigoted idiots who think bisexuality is just...”

“You are lucky I needed you. That comment would have you in the street by yesterday if you worked here.” Freddie didn’t appreciate being called bigoted; he had enough putting up with Rupert daily trying to keep his second son’s “scandalous ways” in the closet, thank you very much. “I was merely surprised; I don’t think I’ve ever been called eye-candy before.”

“Why the hell not? Do you usually hang out with blind people? Wait, Rupert is the guy with the eye-patch, right? Does that count as half-blind?”

“That is very insensitive of you.” Freddie chastised, but his twitching lip was persistent. He would love to say it was annoyance, but deep down he knew it was amusement.

“Let me guess; that comment would put me in the street by yesterday if I worked here. How lucky that I don’t actually work here, don’t you think?” The man had no sense of self-reservation. “And let me tell you, if your definition of eye-candy is allowed to have brains, you totally qualify, take it from an expert in eye-candyness.”

“An expert.” Freddie deadpanned with only a badly concealed hint of interest showing.

“An expert indeed! I look into the mirror every day, after all.”

Freddie pretended to think seriously, looking the technician up and down on his spot sitting on the table. He was indeed quite handsome, but Freddie was not going to make the same mistake twice and appreciate a man within Rupert’s earshot. “No, I don’t really see it.” Despite the words, Freddie sent a challenging look at the technician that contradicted is words, just in case the presentation went well and Freddie decided to celebrate when he went home.

“I’ll have you know I look amazing in a suit, in any suit, or with nothing at all, I’m only wearing the workshop uniform to piss… my friend off. Hell, I could wear a corset and stockings and I’d still look hot as-”

Freddie’s phone pinged. He put a hand up to make the technician stop for a moment while he read Tim’s message and his face fell a little.

“Apparently the eye-candy won’t be necessary after all. Tim says that Stenson didn’t come; it was only Miss Lloyd in his presentation, and apparently she is headed here.” Freddie looked at the clock. “Early. You should probably leave, ask Rosita anything you want at the front desk and tell her I approved it. She’ll make an invoice if necessary.”

“Unless she’s giving me your phone number I’m staying.”

Freddie glared at the man.

“What? Pi-21’s technology is famously unreliable as fuck. What if you suddenly need a dashing hero to help you?”

Freddie glared harder.

“I told you that I wanted to keep hearing you; what makes you think you’ll get rid of me anytime soon?”

Unfortunately for Freddie, Rosita showed Miss Lloyd into the conference room at that exact moment and Freddie had to put on his public mask and shake hands with the woman. Lloyd excused Stenson for not coming. She said something about a last moment change of plans; she also said that her chief engineer was prone to last-minute impulses and ideas while sending a look at the technician by Freddie’s side. There was no polite way to get rid of the man in front of Lloyd, though, and the man knew it. So he rolled on with his presence and ignored Ms Lloyd’s look. She’d have to suffer his presence too.

Freddie would have said something scathing about Stenson’s absence, but his lips were sewn as long as there was a possibility of a deal on the horizon.

The presentation ended up being a disaster and it was the technician’s fault. He kept interrupting Freddie and addressing Ms Lloyd directly, to Freddie’s chagrin. Freddie couldn’t explain the man’s presence now and he couldn’t just throw him away in front of Ms Lloyd. His comments were on point, but Miss Lloyd wouldn’t appreciate that someone that Freddie had not even introduced interrupted like that. Also, Freddie had prepared the presentation with Stenson in mind, he didn’t know as much about the discrete CEO.

A complete disaster.

Ms Lloyd left the room an hour later to speak with Rupert and as soon as the door closed behind her, Freddie collapsed on one of the rolling chairs. The technician was giggling like Freddie’s career wasn’t crumbling before his eyes.

“That was brilliant!”

“No it wasn’t. You were interrupting!”

“I assure you she won’t mind, she is used to much worse.” And as an afterthought he added, “probably.”

“Even if that is true, I don’t think Rupert will see it your way.”

Freddie wallowed a bit more in his misery before the technician derailed his train of thought.

“If Stenson had known what kind of presentation you had in your hands, he wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

“I guess we will never know.”

“Hey! I’m telling you! I’m sure!”

Freddie huffed sarcastically, but the technician was having none of it. “How come you know about a small project of Stenson but you ignore the most basic things that everybody knows about him?” He had an elbow planted on the table and his teasing tone was both baffled and soft at the same time.

“When I started to investigate I didn’t know he was a celebrity. When I realized he was, I did everything in my power to avoid yellow-press literature. It’s just too unreliable, and it would poison my own vision.” Freddie was defensive over his choices. “I think that reading his papers is enough. Don’t you think?”

“You have read his papers?” His eyebrows lifted briefly.

“And patents. Of course.”

“But most of his patents have nothing to do with clean energy, why would you read those too?”

“He is quite inventive; the material innovations were clean solutions. Masterpieces in a field that still managed to convey how his mind works. You can follow his thought process by-”

“Reverse engineering?” The technician ended his phrase. Freddie didn’t like how surprised he looked.

“I might come across as Rupert’s left hand, and the convenient scapegoat but I assure you that I’m more than the company’s tool.”

“I don’t know you,” the technician showed his hands conciliatory. “Maybe you should show me how much more you are.”

“Don’t play with me. It is not a good moment.” Freddie regarded the technician; he wouldn’t be trouble. “I planned today’s meeting with a high risk to my career, things are already terrible as they are.

“Why risk so much? You would have convinced The CEO of Pi-21 instead easily.”

“First, no matter what Intenur does, I only deal with the best and second… Well, I was looking forward to meeting him in person.”

“Why?”

“That is not your concern.” Freddie knew he had said the wrong thing, because now this man’s interest was piqued.

“Awww, how cute, you have a crush on him!”

“What? No! I don’t know him!”

“Yes you do, why would you bother otherwise?”

Freddie was done with that conversation, but he was starting to remember that this technician was supposed to be a client who was owed an apology for getting dragged into this whole mess, so he ended up answering in defeat.

“His research into AIs. There is speculation about him having made great leaps, but he covers it with zeal. It’s been years since he last published on the subject and I think it is because he made something spectacular.”

“His AIs... You are a nerd, aren’t you?” The technician-maybe-still-client laughed. “Why would you want to know about that and not his super-amazing robotics sowcase?”

“Because… Well, I have a couple of AIs myself, and as I developed them beyond what we currently know about AIs... I understood that I would never expose them to the public, no matter the sum offered. You wouldn’t understand, it is a strange connection with something that you’ve created that sounds… ridiculous. A program…” Freddie shrugged. “Tim says it is unhealthy, being attached to a few lines of code. But I found that I want the best for them and to make sure they cause no harm either.” He turned to watch the man warily. “And you won’t make me feel ashamed of it.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Any joke about cyberphilia and I’ll make sure nobody finds your body.”

Freddie could see the alternative joke forming in the technician’s mind, but before he could brace himself, the communication system came to life and Rupert’s voice filled the room.

“Freddie, Ms Lloyd has left the building without a closed agreement. Your plan has failed! and the company will suffer for it!”

“Maybe if Tim’s presentation hadn’t been so bland, Ms Lloyd would have been more interested in that agreement.”

“Your brother’s proposal was bland because you let him down, to do your own thing, like you always do. I hope you are proud of yourself! I should have known that you would make this deal a failure. Do you know how much time I put into this? Time I don’t have, Freddie! Time I can’t waste if you can’t even make Stenson come to listen to us.”

“You can’t blame me for that too. He is the one who decided not to come.”

“I warned you, my son. That little man isn’t worth a single minute of our time. Now, you will make sure this has been your last failure, you will forget about this venture or, as much as it pains me to say this, you will leave the company.”

Freddie’s blood went cold. His whole world darkened around the corners, all of him was focused on that speaker. Leave the company?

“Sir, negotiations have only started; it was almost six months until we convinced Vanestia co. to sell the company. We could still strike a deal with Stenson Industries in that time.” Freddie tried to hide how much it hurt him to think of giving up on this opportunity.

“No, son.”

The communication system died and Freddie held his breath. Rupert had never been so direct, he always insinuated and implied that Freddie was a waste of time and space that should only help to make Tim climb higher, but he was never this blunt. Rupert knew how to make Freddie stay by the company’s side and Freddie tried to earn the same respect as his brother, well, his not-blood-brother, as Freddie had discovered during the last project. His efforts had been less and less effective since the winter affair.

Of course, Freddie had suspected that Rupert favored Tim; it was plain to see, but Freddie had expected to overcome that favoritism with hard work or trickery. Apparently nothing was enough, nothing would ever be enough. What was the sense in trying anymore? Freddie should give up, leave Intenur definitely before being pushed out. But what would he do? He had worked there his whole life; there was nothing he could do now. Other companies hated Freddie because he had inconvenienced them in favor of Intenur. There was nothing to do. No solution. Nothing.

“Hey, ravenlocks? Someone home?” Freddie looked up to the Technician. Freddie had been still looking at the loudspeaker for a few seconds after it disconnected. Without the man’s interruption, he would have kept falling for a long time, he was sure of it. “After that, you look like you need a drink.”

“I won’t have a career by tomorrow morning. I think I need more than a drink.”

“You need to stop thinking before you give yourself an aneurysm, pretty thing, and I know just the place.”

Freddie wouldn’t be needed anymore that day. Maybe ever, if Rupert was to be believed. Freddie could just… Let go. There was a chance that Rupert would want him to be there, but if Freddie only did what Rupert told him, he’d stay put quietly in a closet until the old man had use for him. Therefore, and to spite Rupert if he actually called, he sneaked out of the building with the technician, who still avoided saying his name claiming that Freddie had had his moment to ask and that the moment was gone.

Freddie wanted… Freddie didn’t know what he wanted now, but he was on the verge of wanting to find a cliff, which was probably bad for his continued existence. Being alone now would be his worst decision to date, so he let himself be dragged away. The technician made inappropriate jokes and kept the self-destructive feelings at bay, so Freddie decided to cling to the man until he felt better or until he found something better to cling to.

They drove through New York like a pair of clueless tourists and they hit all the bars in what Freddie had named ‘A list of the most outrageous places’. It seemed like the technician knew his way around a good number of holes in the wall.

Once there was enough alcohol intaken, Freddie answered the Technician’s questions very easily. He had always been quite private about the family part of the business, and he had never spoken badly of it, but nothing had been the same after the winter collapse. The company had lost his respect; the family had lost his respect. And today Freddie’s career had crumbled down; sometime after the sixth drink he had realized that he didn’t really have any career to speak of. All his skill set was built around making Intenur work. He didn’t have a job description; he embodied all the spare parts of the well-tuned machine of Intenur. He was… a puppet, even though he was the spine of the company… the spine of the machine… maybe he should stop mixing metaphors, or drinks, maybe he should stop mixing drinks.

In between realizations, Freddie had decided that there was nothing to lose if he talked with the technician. He wouldn’t get into more trouble and he would finally get it off his chest, even if the man didn’t believe him, so he told the cheerful and rather handsome mysterious man about the project Rupert had in the works to create energy out of cold.

The man had laughed loudly enough to startle the other tables and the sound had pleased a petty and vindictive part of Freddie.

It was a senseless monstrosity called Productive Winters; a stupidity, of course, anyone with basic knowledge of thermodynamics would know it: it was a ruse to keep some clueless, idiot, brain-dead shareholders interested, but Freddie’s brother had wanted to put it into practice. Tim had been in charge of the company while Rupert was recovering from an eye operation in some spiritual retreat center. One of the mildly intelligent shareholders, Mr Ludwig, had suspected that the whole thing was a huge lie and Tim didn’t take kindly to being called a liar.

Freddie had been in charge of damage control. Mr Ludwig had been dealt with, but the problem was far from over. Both Rupertsons fought over the path to take and Freddie destroyed the project behind Tim’s back so it would never see the light of day and uncover Intenur as scammers or worse: idiots. In doing that, Freddie broke the shareholder’s trust and when Rupert found out, he ordered the PR department to make Freddie into the jealous villain who wanted more power in the company, to save face.

In that click-bait story that Rupert’s PR department fed to the newspapers, Tim was the magnanimous, kind brother who took Freddie in back again despite his ‘treason’. The story was heartwarming enough to save Intenur in the stock market and there was everybody’s happy ending. Freddie had been willing to sacrifice his public image to save the company, but he had never realized how much of himself he was giving away. Now he saw it as it was: a cage of his own making.

Intenur was the place where Freddie could live until he retired if only he submitted to Rupert’s rule. Only now, after decades of loyalty and sacrifice, did Freddie realize that he was considered chaotic and a liar in the larger world of business. Freddie had been pleased to take the burn of any problem in the company; it was not as if he would ever need to have references outside of Intenur. But now he had nowhere to go. He had built his own golden cage one bar at a time and Rupert had provided the tools all too happily.

His only chance of staying away from this was his mother. He could still try to find her wherever she had escaped from Rupert and beg forgiveness. She would receive him with open arms, but after years of defending his father and brother, Freddie couldn’t bring himself to concede defeat, the shame was too great.

The lack of flavor in his latest drink made Freddie realize that he had a bottle of water in his hand and that he had been complaining out loud. The technician was still next to him; he had two untouched colorful glasses in front of him and a boozed smirk. It took Freddie’s alcohol-filled brain a few seconds to realize that the man must have been the one to change the glass for the bottle of water, but the reason eluded Freddie.

The feeling must have shown on his face.

“Believe me, you will hate yourself tomorrow enough as it is. You don’t want to worsen your prospective hangover.”

Freddie took another sip of the bottle. They were in a nook away from prying looks. It was comfortable. He wasn’t sure of what he had said and what he had only thought, but the technician had a strange, mellow look, so the silent part had probably been very small. Freddie prided himself in knowing facial expressions, but he didn’t know enough about the man, and he couldn’t concentrate on his face beyond the basic features.

“Why don’t you try to work abroad, my emo friend?”

The technician had slipped an arm around his shoulders. Freddie didn’t even care when; he was very very focused on the face in front of him. He was going to read that face, he knew he could if he tried enough.

“It is not the job, it is me. If they don’t fire me, I’m leaving tomorrow.” He sighed. It had always been him, hadn’t it?

“From where I stand, it is them.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do! I do I do! Who do you think sinks the market points in my company?” The technician seemed to be quite drunk too, he wouldn’t have shared anything personal otherwise. Freddie was watching the corner of his lips; there was a tell when people lied… or was that the corner of the eyes? It didn’t matter, because Freddie kept getting distracted with the rest of the lips. “A company I didn’t ask for, too! A goddamned company that has almost killed me more times than I care to count.”

“Yes, Intenur is killing me slowly too.”

“And all because I had to carry on some kind of legacy, stepping on the heads of giants or something like that. It is what my father used to say to the ladies when my mother wasn’t around.”

“Wait, you have a company,” Freddie said unwisely. “And it was your father’s.”

“Ok, story time. My father built the company…” The man slumped against his seat. “No, I don’t think I’m up for story time.”

“What?” Freddie realized that he had scooted closer, to listen. Not because the warmth was nice and distracting. “You must tell me something, I told you a lot of things, now you owe me.”

“Since when are stories currency?”

“Since I want them, and you want me to stay, so I will have my stories.” Freddie hung his head back, supported by the nook’s headrest and closed his eyes. He opened one of them in what he hoped was a discrete move. He was not sure he was being successful. The man had that drunken smirk and his eyes half-lidded, as if Freddie’s gesture had made him sleepy in turn.

“Spoiled brat. Have it your way.”

The man said something about a company, a step-father? a story that seemed made to fit an action script, and Freddie was not sure why he kept mentioning the son of Sten. Freddie didn’t know, and only half of it could be blamed on the soft buzz in his head; the bastard was being cagey on purpose. He had the feeling that something in his brain was demanding he pay attention. He knew that story b- What if he is a corporate spy? The thought had already crossed his mind a hundred times during the day when he decided to let the man help with the presentation. He had ruled it out because… because of logic at the time. Logic that was not currently accessible.

Even though he didn’t know exactly what the man was talking about, he got the feeling that he was sad and Freddie had something to do with it. Oh! He was telling Freddie something sad about his company, or his family, or both, because Freddie had made him sad too.

“Hmm. I had planned to celebrate with you, not this.” Freddie most definitely didn’t whine.

“Don’t look at me! I’m the party king! I’m never a sad drunk! It is all your faul-hmpfmm.”

Freddie only knew that he had finally seen the sadness behind the smiling lips, and he had decided that he didn’t like it. The man was sad, he was also sad and they could make each other less sad, so the only answer to that was a kiss, obviously. Obviously? Huh. There was something about two negatives floating in his head, but logic was still not available.

For a delightful moment he wasn’t thinking about anything but the sensation of the other man’s lips against his, the sweetness of his latest drink, the tickling of his beard… He plunged deeper into not thinking when the technician responded by pressing and holding his neck first with one hand, but then he moved to sit on his lap and cradled his nape. Nothing mattered now, especially not when he sneaked an arm around his waist and pulled them closer together.

The water bottle and the time listening to the man had helped to clear his head moderately, so his brain had enough presence to kick in when he felt the man’s hand pushing him away. He let it happen, not without regret. The technician looked regretful too; he was breathing deeply as if he could get rid of the desire in his chest that way.

“Look, let’s stop here. Because tomorrow this will be very… interesting, but if we end up in my room…”

“Mmno,” Freddie protested and hid his face in the other’s neck. He felt the jawbone and cheek against him pressing back. “If I don’t work there, you can go back to being the client tomorrow and this would mean nothing.”

The hand that had been on his neck was still over there playing with his hair. “I’m not going back either. I shouldn’t make decisions right now, but I’m thinking of poaching one of their workers and be done with them.”

Freddie’s smile couldn’t be seen from his position, but it was audible. “You are lucky I don’t work there anymore, or I would have destroyed you for saying that.”

“You still work there.”

“Not mentally, no.”

“You made up your mind, then?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, but whatever I do, it’s going to be easier to decide if I don’t go back to Intenur. Beyond that… No idea.”

“I know exactly what you are going to do.”

Freddie emerged from his hiding spot, regretting not being able to kiss that neck. “You think so?”

The man climbed off of Freddie’s lap, but he didn’t back away from his personal space.

“Go to sleep.” He leaned on the backrest, trapping Freddie’s arm. But Freddie didn’t mind keeping it around the tech’s waist. “And once you have slept the hangover away, you are going to call me.”

“You are very sure of yourself.”

“You would be too if you were in my place.”

“If I were in your place I wouldn’t have stopped this.”

“Yes, you would.” The tech called the waiter over and asked for a pen, then leaned against Freddie’s chest for balance and took to writing on his white shirt, left side, close to the collar.

“Are you going to pay for this when I take it to the cleaners?

“I’ll be happy to, because you’d have to call me for that. And you’d have to use this number.”

After a few numbers Freddie was not ready to guess by feeling alone, the man paused for a moment, squinted while looking at Freddie’s face and went back to his task, but higher, closer to his neck.

The silence while he wrote was meditative. Freddie could still draw circles with his thumb on the man’s hip and he still squirmed very sweetly.

“Maybe I could leave the country, as you said,” Freddie wondered aloud.

“Call me first,” the man mumbled while capping the pen. He waved over the same waiter, gave back the pen and paid before Freddie could protest.

“Maybe I could start my own company,” Freddie kept daydreaming.

“Call me first,” the man insisted. He got close to Freddie’s ear. “We have much to talk about.”

Freddie woke up only a few hours later with his mobile in his hand. First, an alarm. He dismissed it. Then there was a 5% battery warning in red. He dismissed it. When the warning closed, he squinted at a perfectly composed e-mail, addressed at Rupert, cc’d at Tim, where he told them that he was leaving Intenur in not the politest terms. It was unsent.

He thanked his luck and the version of himself that had been too tired or too out of it to send the mail (but not too tired to spell asinine). He would have hated waking up only to see that email marked as sent.

He pressed send.

It was much more satisfying to do it when he was going to keep the memory of doing it intact.

He found the charger cord that he had failed to use the previous night. The phone died just before he could plug it in, but it was better that way anyway. He had no desire to dodge family calls for hours.

He turned to leave the mobile on the nightstand and he hugged his pillow, ready for some lazy extra rest now that he didn’t have a job to go back to.

Before tiredness could do him in, his eyes fell on the shirt that he had taken off the previous night and had discarded on the floor by the bed. It was no longer prim and proper, and from where he was, he could see a few numbers, written just an inch below the collar. The memory of the last night and the technician brought a smile to his face that was almost enough to wake him up all the way.

He stretched one foot to drag the shirt from the floor, grab it and memorize the number, or maybe write it down somewhere, but once he had the fabric in his hands, he noticed that over the phone number, under the shirt’s collar, there was more. He could see a “R”. Finally, a name! He flipped the collar up.

“Ryan Stenson xxx”

He threw the shirt across the room and rolled the other way, groaning into his pillow.

#limited edition

2 notes · View notes