#alvin alley

[chromet]

Denim Tears X Champion USA

Available HERE for purchase on @grailed

[barbiesince59]

Alvin Alley: American Dance Theatre - 2008

[miss-ingno]

Established JayTim Outsider PoV idea:

Red Hood gang/Crime Alley residents thinking that Hood has to be a great lay since he's banging multiple people on the regular:

There's Alvin Draper, the sly and sneaky gopher associated with several crime families who always manages to weasel out of consequences when the cops crack down on crime. Somehow also weaseled himself into Red Hood's bed instead of gang, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Then there's Caroline Hill, the harried med student who tends to show up with two tall black coffees for herself and is rumoured to be the only doc allowed to patch Red Hood up (and feel him up while she's at it).

There's Thea, no last name, whom Hood brings to all of the social mob events when he's invited by the Falcones or Maronis to some party or other, for the usual politicking. It's unclear if they are an item or if it's just an insinuation because it suits their image. Thea is known to kick a mobster in the balls and might instead be a bodyguard under the guise of arm candy. Which Hood may or may not be fucking on the side.

Rumour has it Hood's got a Thing going on with Red Robin, too. Red Robin's definitely the most sighted vigilante around Crime Alley, seen sharing information and bantering openly. There's a blurry phone snapshot going around the internet where Hood has Red Robin pinned to an alley wall with a raging debate on whether they were fighting or kissing.

And then there's that one neighbour in the same apartment building that houses Hood's not-so-secret home base (the one everyone in Crime Alley knows about but would never admit exists), who swears up and down that he caught Timothy Drake-Wayne's walk of shame the morning after on two separate occasions.

[dcxdpdabbles]

#holiday request Hi, I love your writing! Could you please update either "Danny's grill", "Congratulations! It's Triplets!" or "Phantom's number 1 fan"? Please and thank you

Jason is once again reviewing the map of potential areas Alvin could have been operating in when his burner phone rings. He snatches it up before it can pass the fourth ring, pressing it gently against his ear.

He offers no greeting. It's a tactic he uses to ensure that whoever is calling him has permission to do so. If someone attempts to conform his informants' and allies connection with him, Jason is not about to give them away by speaking first.

"Hey Boss," Honeycomb's voice filters through, edged by that familiar overdramatic southern draw she did when working. Apparently, the clients like listening to her use her accent. "I got eyes on that doll you've been searching for."

Jason sits up straighter. "Where and when?"

Honeycomb is one of the working girls who's been with him since his return to Gotham. She was the first to sign up for his protection, long before he did the whole heads in a duffle bag thing, and was one of his best eyes and ears on the street in exchange.

He didn't know her real name or age- but he was sure she wasn't underage. He made it clear he wouldn't allow it. All Jason knew about Honeycomb was that she had run away from her home in the southern states with nothing but her pretty face, blond curls, hazel eyes, and the clothes on her back.

She was feisty and could charm her way out of most problems with her silver tongue. Her manipulation of her clients was almost an art form, and she could get any information out of anyone with a well-placed hand on the air and a sweet little "darling" on her grubby lips. He often thought she would have been a lawyer if life had been fair to her.

"Just now, on Ruby Street. He was with a man in his late teenage to early twenties. About six feet five inches, black hair, blue eyes, and Caucasian. Alvin was wearing black tights and a red hoodie. The man is in jeans and a white zip-up." Honeycomb rattles in one smooth report, the huskiness of her accent making her articulation more pleasant to the ear. "Seems they were doing a photo shoot."

Jason is already moving towards his bike, switching her call to his helmet. His stomach turns slightly as he grunts, "What kind of photoshoot?"

"Not that kind, Darling. Seemed more like a scavenger hunt, according to Alvin. They are finding specific landscapes and making posses that are answers to some riddles." Honeycomb responds. Distantly, her heels clicking against the concrete echo a little louder, letting Jason know she has wandered into an alley. "I approached Alvin when the man with him went up a fire escape to take a picture with a gargoyle. I offered him my service to him as a cover. Once he confirmed his name was Alvin and he was already with a client, I left before he could get the idea I was attempting to steal his work."

"Good job." Jason boots up his bike, flying out of his hideout without hesitation. He was still twenty minutes away from Ruby Street, but if the pair was going to be a moment, he could close the distance between them and find a trail to follow once on scene.

He questions as he flies through two lanes, ignoring the honking of angry divers. "How did Alvin look? He's supposed to be with one of my contacts, so if he's with someone, it might be a John roughing him up."

I'll deal with Victorian later. He mentally swears How dare he not tell me, Alvin went back to the field after hiding out for so long without a ounce of protection.

"The sweetheart doesn't seem hurt, but I can tell his client is one of those problematic kinds." Honeycombs sighs, the edges of unease slipping into her voice. "He looks at Alvin like he's in love."

Shit. It's never suitable for working folks to meet someone who "loves" them. Nine out of ten times, it was just a wacko who became violent the moment the prostitute so much as hinted that this was only a job to them. Jason had pulled out three women's bodies from the Brown River the last time one of those clients fell in love.

Jason pressed harder on the accelerator. "Are they still there?"

Honeycomb hums "The John is on the roof now, but Alvin is waiting for him under the street pole-Oh shit!"

Jason nearly slams into a nearby car at her sudden yell. "What happened?"

She doesn't answer, but he can pick up the sound of her running and her fast breathing. He knows she is getting out of danger because if there is one thing Honeycomb is as a person, she's a survivor. He wants answers but would rather she focus on getting herself safe first.

He meanwhile, concentrates on the phone calls and the vehicles he's flying between.

It's a few minutes before she gasps. "Sorry, Darling, I had to run. Batman was on the roof with the John."

What.

"Batman just appeared out of nowhere and threw a bucket of mud at the john. Alvin didn't seem to notice, but I did. Batman made eye contact with me, so I ran." She concludes, pushing through her uneven breathing. "I have to go, Darling. Hideout before the Bats lock me up."

"That's alright. Stay safe." Jason tells her, taking a turn sharply as she hangs up the call without another word. The second she does, he double-taps his helmet to connect to the Bat communications.

"Barbie. I need to know what B is up to now."

_________________________________________________________

Bruce watches the Fae shake the mud out of his face after he has scrambled down the fire escape. Tim was at his side in a second, using a handkerchief to gently clean up the Fae's face.

There were a lot of whispered words, but based on what Bruce could pick up from lip reading, Tim had no idea he was up here. He just assumed the Fae got caught up in a juvenile prank.

Oddly enough, that was primarily due to the Fae covering for Bruce.

It was rather disappointing the repealing spell hadn't worked, but the Justice League Dark the mixture of John's Wort, primroses, and marsh marigolds mushed together with water socked in iron during the full moon should have made it possible to force the contact with Tim to break down.

Of course, this had been a desperate attempt, seeing as all the JL Dark had been unsure which method was best when he asked how to get a Fae to leave a human alone.

A lot of debate went into finding a solution, but in the end, Bruce had chosen a mixture repellent. He had even decided to use some holy water and trough in blessed soil and blessed iron just to make it extra powerful.

The magic users had all assured him it would work as long as it touched the Fae skin while Bruce chanted Tim's full legal name. It had felt rather ridiculous dragging a bucket half the size of himself through the city, trying to spot where Tim and his companion were, and even more so when he had sprinted across the rooftop screaming.

"Timothy Jackson Drake! Timothy Jackson Drake! Timothy Jackson Drake!"

The Fae had been in the middle of taking a photo. He set up his camera on a little tripod and, after pressing the time, had run to face the city- back facing Bruce- raising his arms to form a triangle above his head. Based on fact the camera was slightly lower then the Fae's torso, Bruce could deduct her was attempting to capture himself making the triangle top of one of the most iconic buildings in Gotham.

Spear tower.

He waited only long enough for the flash to go off, so by the time the Fae turned around, he had a face full of mud.

It splat all over his front, covering every inch of what should have set Tim free. The silence followed was louder than anything Bruce had ever heard, even as the Fae calmly picked up his camera and scurried to the ground.

Bruce let him go, wondering why he had failed. Thankfully, it seemed Tim and the Fae were getting back in their car- not the food truck for some reason- and were driving away.

Tonight, Bruce would find its lair and get his son home because letting him take a relaxing vacation was alarming to the rest of his children.

He rushed to the Batmobile, climbing into the driver seat and taking off after the pair. As he was driving, he could have sworn Jason just passed by him, moving like the devil was after him.

Bruce wondered briefly if he should check in on his third oldest but thought better of it when he noticed Cass, Dick, and Duke driving right behind Jason on their own bikes. His children had each other backs.

A few hours later, Bruce stood before a large empty field. He had watched the Fae drive into it and vanish from sight. None of his machines could pick up any hint on where they might have gone, but he was reasonably sure there wasn't any teleportation involved.

Sometimes teleportation left some traces in the airwaves. It's how Bruce could track people using the boom tub or find the Flash whenever Barry went on a craze.

Bruce was thinking that this was the Fae's court and his magical home was being protected by supernatural means. He just had to figure out how to get in and Tim out.

As he was considering the field, a soft, distant roar made him reach for his weapons. He turns one hand poise for a throw, his trusted batarangs in between his fingers, only to become surprised when he recognizes the vehicles driving towards him.

It was his spare Batmobile and four bird-themed motorbikes. His children.

"B?" Dick questions after spinning to a stop and sliding right in front of Bruce. He lowers his window, looking at him with apparent confusion despite the Nightwing mask blocking his eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Following a lead on the Fae. What are you doing here?" Bruce asks, lowering his arm but keeping his weapon. He could never be too sure this isn't a trick.

"Following a lead on Tim." Dick responds, stepping out of his car. Two other doors open, and out steps Steph and Damian, both looking posed for a fight. Of all his children, those two tend to be the most territorial and have not taken to Tim being a semi-held hostage well. "Oracle was able to track him through the city cameras after he popped up taking photos."

"hmm"

Jason jogged over to them with Cass not far behind. "Wait,, you got a lead on your cases too? We would check in on Victorian and see if he knew anything about Alvin."

He gestures to those behind him, indicating Cass and Duke, but the daytime hero is not paying attention. Duke was staring at the field, mouth slightly open as if in awe. Bruce straightens once he realizes Duke can probably see or at least detect the magical castle.

"Victorian?" Damian asks, crossing his arms. "Who is that?"

"The owner of the giant mansion we're standing in front of. He's one of my contacts."

"Ugh, not to make you feel crazy, Hoodie," Steph speaks up, placing a hand on the crook of her hip and waving her hand to the field. "But there is literally nothing there

"What are you talking about. This place is bigger than Wayne Manor."

Bruce heard about this. Guests who have been here before or have permission to enter can see glimpses of the Otherworld that Fae deals in. However, it is surprising to know Jason has already been in contact with the Fae before and has not been kept.

Did that throw a wrench in his theory of Tim and Alvin being the same person? Why would the Fae ask Jason to find Tim if he was in the creature's home?

Before anyone could say anything else, a giant gate entrance suddenly manifested mere feet from where Bruce stood. A soft creek was heard as it was thrown open, and a glowing woman in an old mail outfit floated just a foot off the ground on the other side. She eyed them all in an eerie, emotionless face before bending her own into a low bow. "Welcome. My King wishes to invite you in."

Well, that's not ominous at all.

His children shared a look between them, silently letting each other know to be cautious as they followed the floating woman. She led them down an impressive driveway that slowly gave way to a massive mansion.

Bruce fought to keep the surprise off his face. Jason was right. This place was more prominent and grander than his manor. It didn't just scream wealth. It screamed nobility; it screamed royalty.

The group walked into the main hall, some muttering thanks to the bowing woman who opened the doors. "Of course. The King stated that his home would always be open to Master Alvin's kin."

She vanished from sight like mist fading away as soon as they crossed the doorway.

Bruce's eyes instantly landed on the figure standing atop the grand stairs. Tim was gawking at them, wearing nothing but a long, seductive black robe with fluffy collars and wrists. The front of the rob was open, displaying a large amount of chest and thigh, but keeping the significant bits out of sight.

Thankfully.

His skin was glowing, his hair tussled stylishly, and a dozen red roses were in his hands. Tim looked like he was planning a romantic evening in his get-up.

"Oh," He said dumbly. "You're not Danny."

"What the fuck is going on" Jason demanded after a long period of silence.

"Um...I was planning on seducing my friend. What are you all doing?"

"Regretting waking up this morning," Damian demands, pressing a hand over his eyes. "Please get decent. My nightmares are horrid enough."

Bruce nods. "You were Alvin Draper and are romantically involved with the Fae. He seems to be treating you well. That's good."

All of his children stared at him for a long moment before the hall erupted with displeased noises. Bruce was taken aback.

Did none of them know any of this? It seemed obvious to him.

[demonic0angel]

Danny ends up in Gotham with no memories of his past or ghost powers. In an attempt for more power a rouge observant weakened Clockwork with liquefied blood blossoms, sent multiple rouge ghosts through the portal to occupy the rest of team Phantom before stabbing Danny in the back with an electrified blade coated in liquefied blood blossoms as well. This forced Danny into human form as his core cracked, leading to him having amnesia.

Danny ends up working at a low rent hair salon after the owner finds him in an alley behind the shop and patches him up. He's also staying in the apartment above the salon. He doesn't get the danger when a robber tries to rob the store. Danny sits the robber down and gives him a hair cut and listens to his woes, and treats him like a normal person. He encourages him to do better.

This keeps happening and goes from petty criminals to some of the rouges. The bats are kinda freaking out when they find out that Harley and Ivy opened a therapy office and flower shop and that the Riddler opened a one hundred percent safe and legal escape room business. Tim gets sent to investigate the salon and becomes fast friends with Danny.

"So, what type of haircut are you looking for?" The boy asked, as he draped a sheet over Tim.

Tim hummed and then said in a very serious tone, "Low taper fade."

He got smacked at the back of the head for that.

"Don't you start!" The boy said, though he was laughing.

Tim pouted. "Ow!" It didn't really hurt, but he'd take whatever he could in order to make this nameless boy open up.

The boy gasped. "Oh no! I'm sorry— I was just joking! Does it hurt a lot?" He ran his hands through Tim's hair, rubbing at his scalp. The sudden touch made Tim jump before he relaxed at the massage.

Tim shook his head and said, "No, no, it's fine."

The boy leaned down to look at his face and then sighed. "Do you really want a low taper fade?"

Tim snickered. "Nah, just a trim, please."

The boy laughed. "Sure! I was worried I had to shave you bald."

Tim gasped in mock horror as the boy laughed again. They chatted some more, trading stories and making jokes until Tim finally asked, “Hey, I heard that this place gets a lot of visits from villains? Is that true?”

The boy blinked. “Villains?”

“Yeah. I heard that Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy was here. And the Riddler. And Mr. Freeze. Is it true?” He asked, trying to sound eager.

The boy chuckled. “I’m not too sure? Sometimes, people come in here and threaten to rob the store and I try to calm them down. I’m not really sure if they’re villains, I’m new.”

Tim blinked.

“… you’re new? To Gotham?” Huh. He hadn’t expected that from someone who had supposedly been able to talk down Gotham City villains.

There were a strange amount of newcomers coming to Gotham lately. Batman and the others had been hearing rumors of a red haired woman tearing up the underworld in search of something and had apparently even made contact with Red Hood.

The boy was oblivious to his thoughts and only nodded, trimming more hair. “Yeah. The owner of the salon found me after I was on the streets and then patched me up. So I’m working here to help him out.”

Tim nodded slowly.

“Say, what’s your name again?” Tim brought out his hand. “I’m Alvin. Alvin Draper.”

The boy blinked again and then smiled. He shook Tim’s hand and turned him back around to take off the protective sheet. “Daniel,” he said. “Daniel Nightingale.”

[brucewaynehater101]

Just a warning, this au strays a bit close to NSFW territory in that it does talk about Sex Workers, but it does not mention or describe anything specific, mostly just discussing how they operate and some dangers they may face working in Gothem.

So, we all know that Tim would do a lot for the mission right? More than most people would. I mean, just look at Brucequest or the fact he came back after his 16th birthday or his first few months as Robin when he was basically Bruce's nanny. He also has many false life's he can slip into at the drop of a hat such as Alvin Draper or Caroline Hill. So why not add one more to those personas? A woman named Jane Doe, a sex worker who works just outside Crime Alley who everyone knows and knows everyone, but no one truly knows her nor have they ever seen her face, if she even is a woman as she uses all pronouns to get just a little more mystery added to them. Their outfit is constantly changing but also very specific, a short and highly attractive dress that doesn't look cheap and a full face mask in the style of Venetian Carnival Masks, Volto design specifically so that it covers his full face but shows striking blue eyes. Those he has colored contacts that he switches around constantly.

The reason that Tim does this is simple. Information. While Jason may be able to ask the sex workers under his protection questions, they wouldn't be as open with him as they would another sex worker. Tim can get information from them, the clients, the shop owners of the area, the homeless, anyone and everyone who is often on the street or connected to it that none of the other Bats would ever be able to get. And through his... services he gets a lot of information about up coming things thanks to a special discount everyone knows about. If you tell Jane a secret they don't already know, you get 10% off his services. Tell him 2 and you get 20%. So on and so forth, but it has to be things that Tim didn't already know and he's more than happy to hear about which rouges are hiring at the moment and when they stop hiring, after all, what easier way to predict when they are gunna do stuff than by when they get new henchmen?

A lot is known about Jane Doe, yet also nothing is known. Jane doesn't keep any of the money he makes, giving it to the other girls and often extra as well. No one knows where she keeps getting 100s of dollars to just *give* them but she does. Jane has three brothers, a sister, and a father but no mother. They don't know their names, simply knowing them as N, H, C, R, and B. Whoever they are, they're a well off family but they aren't good to Jane, bad enough that Jane feels safer on the corners of Gothem than the comfort of her home. They know from "funny" stories he tells about his family or via them asking about scars he forgets misses when he covers himself in makeup (there are so many, what have they done to you child?) And him always telling something close to the truth.

They know that N is his oldest brother and the only one who cared about him for a long time, who helped him and was the first person who ever made him feel truly happy. They also know that N took something very precious from Jane Doe without Jane's permission and shattered their trust in N. Tim never told them what was taken or that it was Robin, but in a profession like the one he shares with them, they all come to the same conclusion about what was taken and why Jane might seek comfort in this line of work.

They know that H is also his older brother and has hurt Jane often. They know that the slight scar on his neck he covers with a choker or makeup was made by H, as was the bullet scar in his leg. He laughed about that one, telling his friends how H had set down one of his guns after cleaning it, R picked it up and accidentally fired it, and it bounced twice before going clean through Tim's leg. He laughs about how mad H was at both of them and how he yelled at them to not tell B or else, using a mocking tone and laughter that only causes the others to glance at eachother in worry over their friend. Tim makes sure to reassure them that he got to the blood before it dried so it wasn't to hard to clean up. Tim may have read it as anger in Jason's voice when he said to not tell, but actually it was panic and worry about Tim's wound and how Bruce would react.

They don't know much about C, only that she managed to escape the hell hole known as Gothem and lives in another country. Sometimes she comes back for visits and Jane is always very excited when she does.

The other Sex Workers don't like R. They know that R has either threatened Jane with sharp objects or actually harmed her with them many times but has never gotten in trouble for it. Any time Tim has some left over injuries from patrol, he plays it off as either R or H getting agressive with him again and tries to calm them by saying, "oh come on. Both of them have only tried to *actually* kill me twice! It's fine guys, they won't seriously injure me." While having 5 stitches in his arm.

Jane doesn't talk about their Dad much, always getting quiet and looking away when he's brought up. They ask if B has ever hit him and Jane says, "he doesn't hit me anymore." And all of them want to kill him. They want to kill all of them (except maybe C) and bury their bodies where they'll never be found.

Of course, none of the Bats know about Tim's other nightly activities and where he gets his info from, simply shrugging and moving along. Tim is terrified of any of them accidentally finding out. But unfortunately that day could be coming soon as one of the workers goes to The Red Hood and grabs him by the jacket saying, "you're supposed to protect us right? That's what you promised us, isn't it? Saftey? Well one of the others, Jane, is in deep trouble. Their family is gunna *kill* them. Do whatever you need to do to keep Jane safe from those monsters, we'll tell you what we know, but stop them before she's just another dead body in Gothem Harbor. Do we need to pay you? We'll pay you however much it takes for you to make them pay."

This does remind me of a few fics that go over Tim's "Caroline" identity combined with the idea that Bruce was worse to Tim during his Robin years. Some fics do go into Tim having to go so far as actually having sex with people while some don't.

There are also a few fics of Tim going undercover in Crime Alley as a stripper, cocktail server, sex worker, or other when Red Hood finds out and loses his shit.

The idea of Tim using a fake identity to vent about his family issues is a really cool concept! It would allow him to see how the actions done against him were shit and not okay. He may have the mindset that his trauma is fine because it happened to him, but the separation of identities may help start that realization process. I'm also all here for the identity shenanigans of someone trying to save Jane from her family and accidentally going to one of the people who's hurt them. Lovely amounts of mixed emotions there.

This fic/AU would need to be careful to address both the trauma of Tim selling himself at such a young age as well as still treat sex workers with respect, individuality, and care. It would also be cool to see how the inner workings of the sex industry may be affected by Gotham (such as rogues, toxins, corruption, wealth disparity/poverty, etc).

But yeah! Lots to explore in this AU. I wonder if Tim, in this one, cares about pronouns or gender identity. Does he enjoy crossdressing, does he experiment with his gender identity, and does he make distinctions? I think it would be cool to indicate he's closer agender but is fine with whatever. I like to imagine, in this AU, that he simply doesn't care what gender identity he's perceived as unless that identity needs a specific gender.

Anyways, I am curious about how Red Hood reacts to his characterization by Jane. I wonder if she seems to be wary or distant from him before he finds out that's Tim. Hopefully, Jason tries not to take Jane's hesitance personally. Just because Red Hood is established as a protector doesn't mean that Jane would trust him. They may have their own reasons/experiences not to that has nothing to do with the anti-hero.

[cirilee]

Same anon as before- I just wanted to add that I absolutely ADORE Artificial Idiocy, and both of your artwork!!!

I began reading it recently, and it's become my new favourite thing. I've been hyperfixating on it for the past few weeks and can't stop rambling about it to my friends. I love everything about it, the characters are right up my alley, I love how you tackle the darker themes & conflicts! But still keep it so funny and charming

I especially adore Alvin as a character & his story, I relate to him a lot and seeing him gradually grow and open up is so nice, even when he relapses. Especially as someone who's also touch adverse, having Isidor genuinely respect his wishes and not touch him unless necessary is really really sweet

This story has helped me get through a rough patch of my life, and my week always brightens when it updates! Thank you for the mlm robot x human content, we robosexuals desperately needed it!!!

!!!!! OHHH i am so so glad you're enjoying what we've drawn so far!! thank you so so much for this message omg <3 <3 <3

(and sorry for taking a while to respond - i'm in general slower on tumblr - AH)

And yeees, @mareeoth both wanted this romance to really take its time, really let them become friends first before they dive headfirst into things ;V; we're so glad that the connection between alvin and isidor comes across like that omg, we both love those two goobers so much

have a VERY early sketch of them

[ms-inreallife]

Alvin’s notebook pages

“Edges of Alley” exhibit at the Whitney

[tablestoastandtime]

How to Scratch a Record - Multiverse

Just half a one-shot set in my How to Scratch a Record 'verse (which is why I'm tagging Tim). This isn't canon to that verse and a bunch of the little details have changed so don't assume that any specific thing will definitely happen over there, but this concept hasn't left me alone so-

Down the line Jason and other Bats encountering a Batfamily from a universe closer to canon

Multiverse shit was always sketchy. Even at the best of times, with the best possible combinations, it was always weird and a little bit unsafe to have multiple versions of the same person running around. Sure it could lead to really fast problem solving, but it could also lead to some of the worst knock-down drag out fights any particular thunderdome had ever seen.

Jason wasn’t thrilled about having a complete second set of his family on site, was what he was saying. The costumes varied a bit, but it wasn’t that hard to pick out who was who underneath.

What he really didn’t like, was that it was pretty obviously his double dressed to the nines in a leather jacket and shiny red helmet. Jason didn’t want to be Red Hood, and he didn’t like what it said about their world that he was so comfortable in the role.

It didn’t matter, shouldn’t matter. Legacy titles were legacy titles and sometimes people picked them up to pay respect to someone they had valued. Despite their ups and downs, Jason had never wanted anyone to think he didn’t value how much Alvin had done and continued to do for the Alley. If Alvin really ever needed someone to cover for him while he was unavailable for an extended period of time, Jason would at least consider it.

Except. Alvin was a lot of things and stubborn was chief among them. He would never walk away from Gotham, from doing what he thought was right his own way, even when he fucked up. If Alvin Draper wasn’t the Red Hood where these alternates were from then he must not be able to do the work.

Jason didn’t like the thought, like grit caught in his teeth.

To be fair, the feeling seemed to be at least somewhat mutual. The Jason-in-the-Hood had been shooting him stony and clearly assessing glances periodically since they’d arrived, but hadn’t made any attempt to approach. Jason figured it’d be some time in the next twelve minutes or so unless something more pressing came up.

The two Batmen were certainly having fun, if the staredown they hadn’t let up on was any way to judge. Jason was also a little suspicious of how easy it was to tell them apart; his own Bat with navy highlights and yellow accents, armoured to take a bullet and allow for the kind of acrobatics that made him seem half liquid half wraith. The other Bat was all monochromatic blacks and grays, a shadow brought to life and layered with semi-flex plating that looked like it was intended to stop a shell from a tank rather than a shotgun. How he moved Jason sure didn’t know, but he was absolutely certain that whatever this Batman hit went down.

Over at the Batcomputer, in what Jason was pretty sure was a blatant breach of multiversal protocol, the two Tims were huddled over casefiles both on screen and from some kind of tablet the visiting Tim had pulled out. Interesting to see him in a Red Robin suit even with the cowl down, since local Tim was pretty adverse to anything and everything to do with the Red Hood, but maybe he’d stepped into the role to support his Jason after-

Probably not worth speculating on though, not unless he wanted to really get into the nitty gritty of gossip that very likely wouldn’t ever be relevant to him again.

More interesting was the almost identical Batgirl costumes the Casses were wearing. They matched down to some of the semi-decorative stitching and it was frankly more than a little uncanny. Was the design just that good that they’d inadvertently recreated them in some sort of convergent evolution thing, or was the second Batgirl just some kind of multiversal constant? Did Jason even want to know?

Maybe he’d be better off hanging out with the Nightwings. Sure Dickhead could be annoying, but at least they were similar enough to clearly be on the same page about things but not literally indistinguishable. That probably meant they were safe.

“Hang on,” the words from the computer interrupted Jason’s train of thought. Alternate Tim, Red Robin. “If your Jason went straight from Robin to Jayhawk and hasn’t changed since, then who’s the ‘Red Hood’ that keeps turning up in all these cases? And why’s he been operating so long? Don’t tell me the Joker swapped sides and you’ve just been letting him run Crime Alley.”

The temperature dropped.

No one talked about the Joker, not really. Not in years.

To this day, his death was something of a sore point for the original Dynamic Duo. Jason knew where he stood on the matter, but there was no point starting a fight over it, not unless Dick really wanted to push on why he didn’t trust Hood with any of his siblings.

So why did it sound like this other Tim thought the Joker was alive?

Their Tim clicked open the file, and Alvin’s masked face filled the monitor. “The Red Hood, a.k.a. Alvin Draper has been operating for almost a decade now. He started making waves in Crime Alley before debuting officially by murdering the Joker on live television, and ever since he’s been a big player in the Gotham underground. He’ll lend a hand sometimes, but he’ll just as often blow something up to act as a distraction if he doesn’t like an investigation. By day, Draper runs a medical research company with multiple production labs in the city and a prominent IT division that donates labour to small businesses across Gotham. He’s got a good dozen other investments and corporations, most linked to aliases, though that he owns them is an open secret. By most recent estimates, he’s got at least two precincts on his payroll and he and Gordon have been in a kind of cold war about controlling police patrols in his territory for years. Draper is-“

“Not real,” Red Robin interrupted.

“Excuse me?” Their Tim sounded offended, and honestly Jason agreed. Who did this guy think he was deciding who was and wasn’t real?

Apparently even Bruce agreed, finally breaking the stalemate and stepping towards the workstation. “Alvin Draper is very much a real person. He’s been both a help and a hinderance on countless cases, and I’ve personally spoken with him both in and out of costume-“

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure that’s all true,” Red Robin waved off the sentiments. “I’m not denying that there’s a guy running around doing all of that, but I’m telling you that that’s not a name that belongs to a real person. It’s an alias I’ve been using since I was fourteen. If you’ve got someone claiming to be Alvin Draper on your hands, what you’ve actually got is a Tim Drake that is lying to you.

“And has been for ten years apparently, wow.” Red Robin blinked. “Good for him, I guess, though not so much on the very prolific murder.”

“Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jason’s double said, dismissive and cold and so fucking sure of himself. “You’re telling me that even across universes you’re stealing my shit? What this guy crossed dimensions and decided to try being a crime lord for the fun of it?”

His words were tacks under Jason’s skin. What the fuck did any of these people know about Alvin?

“You don’t get to talk about him like that,” he snapped. That red helmet caught the glare of the overhead halogens like a warning light.

“Just look at him,” Red Robin waved at the monitor and then back to himself. “That’s literally me in six years and a domino mask. Sure, the beard hides the jawline a bit and I think he’s got some light contour on his cheekbones or something, but it’s not like we don’t know how to recognize someone in a disguise. That’s literally my face.”

Tim grimaced, shifting uncomfortably. “I did notice he kinda looks like me back when I was younger. But I looked into it, and it just turned out he was my dad’s illegitimate brother-”

Bruce stepped closer, getting a hand on Tim’s shoulder and Jason’s gut twisted. “I found those records as well, some of them paper copies down at the city archives with all the hallmarks of original documents-“

“But if we’re looking at an alternate version of Tim Drake,” the Bat in black caught the thought mid-train.  “Then he may very well have planted those records years ago to handle the inevitable questions that would emerge from sharing a face with an actual resident of this universe.”

“Or maybe he just exists here! Maybe that’s the big differentiating factor between our universe and yours; that to you Alvin a lie but here he’s real,” Jason exploded. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t. He’d known Alvin for years, grown up with him always there in the background even after they lost touch, Alvin hadn’t been lying to him all that time. Not about something as fundamental as his identity.

Right?

Nightwing, not theirs but the one with the heavier gauntlets and the extra inch of lift in his boots, rolled his shoulders casually. “Well there’s an easy way to find out. Bring him here, grab a few samples, and test not just for the genetic match to the Timbos here, but also for any lingering magic or transdimensional radiation that might suggest he’s not supposed to be here. Anyone got his number?”

All eyes turned to Jason, which he kind of resented. It wasn’t like Cass and Alvin hadn’t gotten close during her run as Red Robin. He was pretty sure they still texted, whereas he and Alvin has been rocky for a long time. He knew he could rely on Hood if he really needed help, but Alvin was always unwilling to push for any kind of closeness and Jason had never quite managed to purge the slimy guilt that came from spending too much time with him. It wasn’t fair that he got to do that when others couldn’t, wasn’t fair that Alvin prioritized his wants and needs when there were people that needed him out there.

He did still have his number, though.

Maybe calling would help, would get Alvin in here and he could prove that he wasn’t secretly Tim Drake and this was all a big misunderstanding. He could be a Martian in deep cover or something, or he was a rapidly aged clone, or maybe he was just a guy who looked kind of similar to Tim.

Maybe he hadn’t lied to Jason.

There really was only one good way to find out. So he pulled out his phone and dialed.

Maybe it was going to be okay.

[creepypastabookclub]

Donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net/

An all-you-can-eat micropasta buffet with Jonah, Wednesday and their guest Michael!

If you have a small horror or web fiction project you want in the spotlight, email us! Send your name, pronouns and project to

creepypastabookclub@gmail.com.

Music Credits: https://patriciataxxon.bandcamp.com/

Our Website: https://jawscast.neocities.org/

Our Tumblr: https://creepypastabookclub.tumblr.com/

Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepypastaBC

Featuring Hosts:

Jonah (he/they) (https://withswords.tumblr.com/)

Wednesday (they/them) (https://www.instagram.com/xx_wormsday_xx/)

Michael (https://www.tumblr.com/barbielore)

Recommended Reading:

White with Red: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/White_with_Red

The Statue: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-statue/

Wake Up: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Wake_Up

Sarah O’Bannon: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Sarah_O%27Bannon

Home Alone: https://creepypasta.org/s/333/home-alone

The Portraits: https://www.reddit.com/r/creepypasta/comments/wbovd/the_portraits/

Humans Can Lick Too: https://www.reddit.com/r/shortscarystories/comments/22rboj/humans_can_lick_too/

WHO WAS PHONE: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/WHO_WAS_PHONE%3F

Ghastlymacaroni Collection: https://bogleech.com/ghastlymacaroni

Man Door Hand Hook Car Door: https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/r8jvq6/man_door_hand_hook_car_door/

Works Cited:

Lavender Town Syndrome: https://www.creepypasta.com/lavender-town-syndrome/

Russian Sleep Experiment: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Russian_Sleep_Experiment

Under the Bed Chain Letter: https://www.scaryforkids.com/hospital-bed/

Relaxing Car Drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMgsFZ4rkEI

Just-World Hypothesis: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1979-26009-001

Power of Prayer: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alley-oops/

The Spire in the Woods: https://web.archive.org/web/20190426135153/https://www.creepypasta.com/the-spire-in-the-woods/

The Licked Hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Licked_Hand

A Gathering of 100 Weird Tales: https://hyakumonogatari.com/what-is-hyakumonogatari/

Further Reading:

Delmage A., John; Schnier, Steve; et al., “Freaky Stories”, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166432/

Dodd, Steven; Gaines, William; “Tales from the Crypt”; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096708/

Edgar, Patricia; Jennings, Paul; Storm, Esben; “Round the Twist”, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103529/

Gammell, Stephen; Schwartz, Alvin; “Scary Story to Tell in the Dark”, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1325218

Narnia, Soren; “Knifepoint Horror”; https://knifepointhorror.libsyn.com/

Newall, Alexander J.; Sims, Jonathan; “The Magnus Archives, Episode 152: A Gravedigger’s Envy”

Stine, R.L; “Goosebumps”; https://kids.scholastic.com/kid/books/goosebumps/series/

[spaceghostswim]

i was only in 1st grade when my entire school concert was a big mj tribute, my class had this song & i used to play it over and over on the jukebox at the bowling alley with my best friend practicing the dance.

i miss that friend and our love of dance and music videos, i miss going to her apartment where she could pause & rewind live tv. we would spend hours watching MTV specials (mostly MJ, Beyonce & Destiny's child) and we even memorised every sequence from the Alvin & The Chipmunk movie.

I remember the day the music video for "Love On Top" came out, it was out first time hearing the song and my friend would pause and rewind each line and dance move to make sure she wrote it down and had it perfect.

I really wanna get into dance again, it's something that really used to light up my life. Hell, my first ever Tumblr blog was dedicated to a dance crew :')

[dcxdpdabbles]

Do you have any DC ideas that aren't crossovers

I fear you may have missed the point of my blog, but if this is a genuine question, I did have a fic idea I was considering writing. It's more of a floating idea that I could work on someday.

It would be Tim Drake-centric, with him killed while on a mission after bringing Bruce back from the timeline. The top members of the Justice Leauge feel awkward around him and don't know how to apologize, leading Tim to just drift away from everyone.

He went from a beloved friend and trusted leader to someone they rarely turn to, and Tim thinks it was because they thought he was crazy. This creates a gap between his command of a team and his determination to do everything on his own.

It would be an avoidable ancient, so Tim is killed when they fail to ask him for a plan and unknowingly blow his cover. He thinks they did it on purpose, dying without knowing the broken pieces he left behind.

He wakes in his own grave months later and realizes he came back on his own like Jason. He claws his way out of his own grave, sits in front of it for a while, and decides he no longer wants to be a part of the hero scene.

They let him die.

So, instead, Tim creates a new identity and chooses to live among the regular citizens of Gotham. Since he no longer has access to the Wayne or Drake funds- as even hacking the accounts would create a lead to him- he has to slum it until he can make enough money to start somewhere new. He keeps his training out of habit, keeps his head down, and avoids crime or crime-fighting like the plague. \

He's Alvin Draper, a law-abiding GED student working two part-time jobs. That's all there is to it.

Tim doesn't know that he may have woken up in Gotham, but not his Gotham. He's in a different dimension, having taken over the body of Tim Drake of this world and accidentally breathing life back into the corpse.

Oh, and another big difference is that this is a Reverse Robin world where Damian is the eldest and Dick is the youngest. That means Tim should have been this world's Jason, which means he stopped Red Hood from existing. Also, his family is slightly different as Bruce's first son was a bloodthirsty accident that both had to learn to soften. It also means Damian was secure enough in his spot in the family that he adored Tim when he came to the manor.

He was devastated to learn his brother had died and laches on to Jason and Dick in a more protective manner as a result. Then baby Dick, at the ripe age of twelve, spots Alvin working at a pizzeria in Crime Alley when Jason takes him to see his old stomping grounds.

He's older than when Tim died, but Dick is convinced Alvin is somehow related to his adoptive dad's deceased second son, and when no one believes him- it's been years since Tim died, not months- he decides to get proof on his own.

Tim is unaware that the cute blond kid that comes around for hours on end is his once older brother Dick Grayson, who is determined to bring him to a home that was never his.

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

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."

[alansdingusdnd]

session 7

this is gonna be short bc 1) nothing much happened and 2) i don't remember much (or at least much important things that did happen)

Abel was picked up like a baby by Estexev, carried and put next to a trash bin in an alley way next to the bath district. Keres noticed him there and they had some light conversation

Argenti, Asifra, Alexander and Jason were accused for signing at contract with a devil by Lilith and Olga (and my players figured out that Olga works for Estexev) and using a "signed" contract as evidence. Argenti asked Jason where the copy of the contract that she gave him and it turned out that Jason gave a copy of the contract to an imp. Ever since then the heresy half of the party has lost trust in Jason. (heresy half is Argenti, Asifra and Alexander. hero half is Humdrum, Keres and Abel). Argenti said that her contact Casey might help with the assembly of the quartz crystal to Lilith and Lilith let the heresy half off with a slap on the wrist

Maurice the yellow flower crab spider likes rough play

Alexander may perhaps has a gambling addiction and Lilith knows, or at least strongly assumes, to be the case (which is why Alex keeps asking for money all the time)

The party went to Larikan to visit Casey and Casey learned that a way to fuse a quartz via fabricate, and hypothetically and even larger quartz, is by first covering the pieces in oil of vitriol (aka sulfuric acid). There is ways to produce oil of vitriol but the easiest way of getting a lot of it is with the help of a black dragon (because they breathe (or more like vomit) sulfuric acid). the issue is that all black dragons went extinct and the last time Keres saw a black dragon was 600 years ago in Teshlish. with a glimmer of hope, there are rumors that there's a black dragon flying around in Bogton

While in Bogton, Abel, Argenti and Alexander met up with Humdrum and met K'vlazaron. Argenti and Alexander play up that Argenti was abused in the Bodian Church and wished to go to the Paskian Church in town for assistance. There, they were assisted by a nearly 700 year old elf bishop who is so old that he has wrinkles. He casted greater restoration and told a story that these "eyes of ourgon" were spread around my a cult known as the Church of the Flesh in preperation for a ritual to end the world 600 years ago. But then nothing happened and the black dragons disappeared. (one of my players later on off game figured out that Alvin Steqoz aka Estexev and Company were the ones who stopped that ritual and behind the extinction of the black dragons. Company refers to either a party (or more) that Estexev recruited for similar tasks)

Then, a mysterious muscular lady appeared. It turned out that whoever this woman is, who goes by Morgan Tesh, that Bogton was part of her territory that she gave to K'vlazaron a hundred years ago for an undisclosed reason and that the murders at night issue is her "marking her territory" and a way to bully K'vlazaron of doing something about the red dragon burning Dusk Woods and "if [K'vlazaron] cannot keep [his] domain then I want it back." Humdrum called her cruel and a bully and Morgan was just "yeah whatever" and went on doing her business.

Humdrum told the present party that it would be wise to work with Estexev to figure out how to prevent the hatching, bc he's the only guy that knows how, and then do the rest themselves

the party is now officially known as "The Dingbats" and Keres is the leader with Abel being vice leader

[sivavakkiyar]

In these Inner Cities there is no "drive-by" anything; there’s merely back alleys, empty lots full of stubborn weeds and clear sky, trails of memory which may or may not lead anywhere or even have relevance to the music at hand. The bottom line: these pieces are a set of contradictory etudes - studies in liberation and attachment, cryptic itineraries to the old fountain on the town square whence flows all artistic divination and groping for meaning in the dark.

Inner Cities began in 1991 as an single innocent piano piece and has now evolved into a musical cycle of 12 pieces sometimes performed (following Daan Vanderwalle’s brilliant intuition) in its 6-hour entirety My goal, as always, was to reduce the musical elements to their ultimate essences, to repudiate and embrace dualism, and to emulate, even in permanent notation, the feel of spontaneous music-making. The music therefore is open, unhurried, brutally lyrical, quiet, private and tonal as it is raucous, aggressively impolite and obsessively meticulous in making the simple relations between tones and durations an unending adventure of personal wonder. Each piece starts with a single idea, chord, or cellular pattern, which serves as its own source of narrative and history. These could incorporate anything from the simplest melodicizing on a single tone, in IC I, to a vast postmodernist sonata, as in IC 10 (in itself lasting over one hour), where the music no longer understands where it is coming from or where it’s going.

IC 1, written as a birthday gift for Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, is composed on a single A major chord in first inversion supporting a one note melody on "A." When this gets boring the music "modulates" to a 3 note melody over a 4th chord.

—from Alvin Curran’s liner notes

[tablestoastandtime]

SAHTW: Trinity

So per that funny little poll, here's a snippet that's probably getting cut from the main fic of the sequel to Take It Back Now Y'all, but is kinda fun anyways. The current title for the whole project is Such A Heart That Will and all ficlets will have that in the title and the tags + a descriptor.

Bruce is having FeelingsTM and also an interrogation.

On his own, it would have taken months of planning. Even with the help of his family it would have been weeks. Within thirty-seven minutes of telling Clark and Diana that he needed to talk to Alvin Draper, a not insignificant member of the Gotham criminal element, openly and honestly after years of push, pull, and mysteries, the entire matter was handled.

There was always something humbling about the reminder just what the remarkable people he surrounded himself with were capable of.

In this case, that meant the Red Hood of Gotham seated and bound in the Lasso of Truth on the Watchtower.

His helmet was gone, but they’d left his domino as a professional courtesy, for whatever that was worth. It wasn’t much but it was a shred of privacy in what was bound to be a vivisection of a conversation. Bruce hoped it was better than nothing.

There wasn’t the space for that kind of mercy when it came to the questions even Bruce wanted to. The Lasso gave no quarter.

“Had you already been planning your takeover Park Row when we first met?” He needed to know, even if he doubted it. Back then the boy had barely been upright with illness, but time had proven Alvin a skilled liar. It wasn’t entirely out of the question that maybe the whole thing had been a play to bring his guard down. Bruce already knew that Alvin had somehow discovered his identity years ago. He might have already known back then. He might have use that, then.

Alvin barely blinked before the words were spilling out, honest in a way Bruce knew he would never be anywhere else. “It hadn’t’ crossed my mind in any meaningful way. The idea of controlling Crime Alley was a pipe-dream. I’ve seen people try and I’ve seen them fail.. Why would I be any different?”

“Any why were you?” Clark asked, gaze steady and incisive, all light and journalistic focus. “Different, that is. What do you have that they didn’t?”

Alvin twitched, the barest of flickers in his cheek and a tightening around the eyes for half a breath. In front of any other tribunal, the reaction might have gone unnoticed. Tonight, it didn’t.

“Training, knowledge, foresight, and a tired and true persona managed by a combination of deception, dramatics, and dumbass RNG.”

There were more questions than answers in that response, and Bruce paused to consider which angle to start unravelling them from. Who had Alvin watched fail to take over Crime Alley? Where had he tested his methods? Alvin’s resemblance to other criminals was a funhouse mirror, all warped edges and alien familiarity. He looked as much like an unusually brutal vigilante as he did a gang leader. Bruce could go try to pull apart the knot of his behaviour from any one of a dozen of threads, but which would get the most mileage?

Diana had no such compunctions. “What is Batman to you?”

A fair question, and one that cut to the root of so many of the questions and fears in the dark of Bruce’s lungs in a way that Bruce may not have thought to go for this early in the process. Certainly not something he would have thought of asking for the real reason he wanted to know.

He didn’t want Alvin to have lied about caring.

Bruce only had a moment to enjoy the warmth that flickered at Diana’s thoughtfulness before Alvin’s response crushed his ribs inwards.

“Well he’s my dad.”

His vision tunnelled ever so slightly, even as some part of his brain started doing the math. It didn’t make sense, couldn’t be true, the numbers just didn’t line up. And yet, somehow, it had to be the truth because otherwise Alvin wouldn’t have been able to say it.

Which meant-

Alvin was a good liar, but Bruce knew from experience that the Lasso didn’t work like that.

Which meant-

In every encounter they’d ever had, no matter Bruce’s disguise or name, Alvin had always looked at him with something Bruce had never been able to pin down. Something wary and judging and longing. Years passed and sometimes it was so secondary Bruce forgot to wonder what it meant, but from that first meeting with a child blinking through fever and cheap lighting to their last fight at the docks that ended with the Red Hood diving into the harbour, Alvin Draper had always looked at him like he wanted Bruce to know him but never expected him to be able to.

Which meant-

Beneath the domino mask they’d left him, Alvin’s face twisted. That seemed right, because Bruce had no idea how to untwist the knife he felt buried in his lungs.

“I wish you hadn’t asked that.”