#alvin alley

[chromet]

Denim Tears X Champion Alvin Alley American Dance Theater

Available HERE on grailed

[barbiesince59]

Alvin Alley: American Dance Theatre - 2008

[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.

[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

[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 :')

[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.”

[chromet]

Denim Tears X Champion USA

Available HERE for purchase on @grailed

[stainedglassthreads]

I acknowledge that Knight Alvin and Knight Papyrus are the two most popular candidates, and with good reason. But. May I also propose. Knight Alphys.

Association with Determination. (Carried out experiments with DT in UT,) Association with NEO as a concept. (Created Mettaton's NEO body. Asriel Dreemurr, whose God of Hyperdeath form shares similarities with Mettaton NEO's design, was revived by her. Undyne the Undying, who shares design traits with MTT Neo and God of Hyperdeath, who creates more of her own DT than any other monster, NEEDS to confess to Alphys in order for the True Lab to be opened, the secrets of DT and Flowey revealed, and the path to the True Ending revealed. Alphys has many crushes, but it NEEDS to be Undyne who reciprocates.) Shows strong tendencies of escapism, to the point of self-destruction, in normal Undertale. Holds strong connections with both Gaster(in UT) and Gerson(in DR).

Consider with me! We're led to believe Alvin is the Knight. But! It is a red herring. At one point when Kris and Susie go after Alvin, he explains to them about his Father's relationship with Dark Worlds, and how he's recently re-opened the Castle Town Dark Fountain because he felt it was necessary. But the Castle Town Dark Fountain and the other Dark Fountains are different--each Fountain reflects the will of its opener. Those other Fountains are impure, and are made by someone with a more anxious, self-deprecating, wavering heart.

They were made by Gerson Boom's other pupil, and his true successor. Ms. Alphys. Kris' own teacher. Because Kris' classmates have gotten a lot of emphasis...and the teacher is a member of Kris' class too.

Alphys. Who, in Undertale, had issues with escapism. Forcibly cast a human and her best friend into a role so she could feel better about herself. Because she hated herself to the point of wanting to vanish into an endless abyss. Alphys, who spends time putting milk out in an alley which has graffiti of a tree found in the Dark World, and of Everyman, who appears in the attacks of the Amalgamates, and of certain Dark World enemies. (Queen, most notably.)

Who would be able to pause class to go check up on Kris and Susie, and then shut the doors on them? Alphys. Who is known to frequent the Library often? Alphys, who left her opinion on Mew Mew Kissie Cutie in Library. Who's complaining about how the previous MMKC was too light, and likes how much darker and more complex the sequel is, in contrast to her more heroic and well-intentioned otherworld self? Alphys. Who in Undertale believes in the existence of alternate universes?

Fucking. Alphys.

Is this incoherent? Maybe! But I think of all the Dark World candidates, or of UT characters who may have significant roles later on, Alphys is comparatively overlooked.

[steamedtangerine]

Plug for Alvin's on Cass from old Detroit mag.

I've seen the Japanese noise band Ruins (which, along with three Melvins shows, helped take my hearing down some notches) there along with the Nihilist Spasm Band and many notable local acts including the Immigrant Suns, Fez, Larval, Only a Mother, and many Time-Stereo outfits.

I also supported the Family Funktion nights on many a Wednesday (my dearly departed child friend Quincy/Nolan used to get up on open mic to lay down some verses) and a number of DJs (was involved in helping put on the D'Jungle Sunday evening events which included jungle DJ Rotator).

My circle of friends were notorious for loitering outside and skateboarding during the Wednesday events (one sad, low-point during one summer had me going through the side alley to find discarded weed roaches leftover in the "secret smoking area").

it is now a Carhartt operation-which is not shabby.

[essentialthyme]

Saw this in the GBC subreddit, and boy, if this isn't right up my alley:

Wrong World Cover (Classical Arrangement)

by Matthew Tong (‪‪@mattmtong‬), Aaron Ma (‪‪@manameisaaron‬), and Alvin Ma (‪‪@alvinma2460‬). Piano, violin, and cello, respectively.

[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."

[cynicalone94]

You Will Regret Touching Him

Jay steps into the back lot, running a hand through his hair. He knows better than anyone the destruction that a well-trained sniper can leave in their wake but he’ll never get used to seeing it at home in Chicago. On top of that, its always unnerving to have someone openly attacking law enforcement.

He should have caught it earlier at the ambush. Something had felt wrong but he’d reacted too slow. And now a promising young cop was dead.

He shook his head, letting out a long breath. The clink of metal bouncing across the ground pulled him from his thoughts and he turned, eyes widening as he spotted the smoke bomb rolling toward him. It went off with a muted bang as the dark cloud billowed up around him.

He staggered away from it, holding his breath and closing his eyes as he fell back on his other senses. But he didn’t hear the blow that caught him over the head coming either.

The air was forced out of his lungs as he hit the ground and the gasping breath he took in response was his undoing. As he lost consciousness he cursed himself for being so stupid.

Erin stepped out the back door, looking for her partner. He’d stepped out for air but she knew better than to leave him alone with his own head for long.

She’d expected to find him staring into space, lost in thought. Instead she’d found a chalk outline that vaguely matched his lanky frame with a familiar golden shield resting in the the middle.

Within fifteen minutes the parking lot was crawling with activity as crime scene units swept for evidence. The initial sweep has turned up an exhausted smoke bomb and a lead pipe with blood that she had no doubt would be matched to Jay on it.

Voight put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

“He’s not dead.” he tells her, “The bastard wouldn’t have taken him if he was. And we’re going to find him.”

“He took him from the station.” she hisses, “On our goddamn back porch. The one place that we should have been able to feel safe even in the middle of all of this and he had enough time to trace a fucking chalk outline first.”

“I know.” he tells her, “I know.”

Adam and Alvin join them.

“Cameras are of limited use.” Alvin reports. “We can see the smoke bomb roll out and then we have silhouettes of the guy clubbing Jay over the head but he’s wearing a gas mask.”

“We have an estimate on height and build?” Voight questions.

“Average build. About 5’ 10”.” Al replies.

“Drags him away from the building and then stops to draw the chalk outline and then keeps dragging him around that corner.” Adam adds, pointing toward the alley. “Antonio and Kevin are looking for a camera angle out there that might be able to give us a vehicle or face.”

“Alright.” Voight growls, nodding. “Until we get that , let’s focus on why the bastard changed MO.”

“Hank.” Erin says, eyes going wide.

“What?” he asks, turning to her, hand falling back on her shoulder.

“Jay was at the scene of both shootings.” she breathes, “Pinpointed the angle the bastard was shooting from in a heartbeat both times. We weren’t even there for the actual shot the first time and the partner had moved the guy, pulled him out of the line of fire. Jay still knew exactly where the shot had come from.”

“You think he sees Jay as a threat?” Voight says.

“Maybe.” she says, “Maybe as a challenge? To prove to himself that he’s as good as he thinks.”

“Fair enough.” he agrees, “If he just wanted him out of the way, he wouldn’t have been so ‘theatrical’ about it.”

He points toward the chalk outline for emphasis as he speaks and she nods, swallowing hard.

“We will find him.” he promises her, “C’mon. Let’s get back to work.”

She nods again and they make their way back up the stairs.

Jay wakes up slowly with a pulsing, stabbing pain in the back of his head. He tries to reach for his head, intending to search for the source of the pain but his hands hit resistance.

His eyes fly open in panic, traveling down to find both wrists secured at his sides using heavy leather restraints. There’s another strap across his torso and an attempt to move his legs finds them tied down as well.

“Welcome back, Detective.” A voice calls from behind him and he snaps his head around, looking for the source.

“Who are you?” he growls when he can’t see them.

He’s in a dark room, no, not a room, there’s too much air flow. And he can hear flowing water nearby.

“A decorated detective such as yourself hasn’t figured that out by now?” the words are cold and mocking and he snarls.

“You killed two good cops, you know?” he challenges. “Innocent, good people who were just trying to make the city a little safer.”

“Shoulda been a little more concerned about themselves then, huh?” the voice huffs back and Jay glares as the young man rounds whatever he’s strapped down to, coming into his view. “Maybe the city should take better care of its protectors.”

“It’s a dangerous job.” Jay retorts, “Especially with assholes like yourself taking potshots at us.”

“I know that.” the man hisses, leaning forward to clamp a hand around Jay’s throat, pinning him in place as he leans close. “I lost my father to the ‘job’.”

“Then why are you doing this?” Jay chokes out, air only slightly limited by the tightness of the grip.

“Because the illusion of safety needs to stop.” the man tells him. “Every day the people of this city, the cops of this city, are trapped in a chokehold and they don’t even realize they’re in danger until something happens. Until someone applies just. a. little. pressure.”

His fingers tighten just a little with each word and Jay gasps for air.

Desperation doesn’t change the fact that the restraints have no give as he fights to get free, fights for the chance to fight back.

“And this city doesn’t do enough to prepare for the inevitable day when that pressure is added.” the man continues, ignoring Jay’s struggles, ignoring the desperate, wheezing breaths that he’s fighting to pull in. “There are no protocols, no training in place for the event that someone declares war on the city. And the Chicago Police Department does not hire individuals who are best suited to defend themselves.”

Individuals like you Jay’s mind supplies as he shivers from more than just the chill in the air.

This bastard has training. He knows his way around a sniper rifle, understands how to set up an ambush. If he weren’t batshit crazy, he’d probably make a good cop.

But there’s more to being a police officer than being a soldier.

The people of Chicago don’t need warriors. They need guardians, a distinction that this man seems to have missed entirely.

The pressure finally releases and the man paces away, still talking as Jay struggles to catch his breath.

“I have to show the city that they need to be prepared. That this city is a battlefield and they have to treat it accordingly. They need snipers, tacticians.”

“Have.. SWAT teams.” Jay interrupts. “Need patrol officers for… s’much more than that.”

The asshole is right about one thing. Situations like he’s created can happen at any time. But they are only a tiny fragment of what patrol officers need to be ready to deal with.

“Maybe they… just didn’t want you.” he suggests.

“Shut up.” the man snarls. “I have seen hundreds of cops today and the only one who even began to live up to my potential was you. Hell, if your instincts weren’t dulled by the department’s bullshit, you might have actually stopped today’s ambush from happening.”

Another stab of guilt.

The idiot is nuts but he’s right. If Jay had been just a little bit faster…

“So now you’re bait. I’ll reveal your location and if they can make it through a series of … drills if you will… before the time is up they might even get you back.”

“That’s not-”

Jay’s cut off as a damp cloth is shoved over his mouth and nose, fumes invading his senses.

He tries to jerk his head away but the man holds tight and soon enough, the drugs pull him under.

Voight can’t help but glare into the bullpen.

They have a lot of theories and not a lot of leads which is not a place that he considers acceptable to be when his detective has now been missing for six hours.

“What do we have?” he growls, stepping back out of his office.

“We’ve narrowed a list of people who were either rejected by the police department or cut by the academy.” Adam says. “Running through psych evals and instructor evaluations looking for anything that might point out our guy.”

“We heard back from Erin?” he asks.

He’d sent her down to Special Operations to consult with the SWAT team on what the tactical setup of the hits from the previous day tell them about their perp.

“She’s on her way back now.” Adam says. “We’ll compare notes and see if we can’t get you a name.”

“We’re working on –”

Antonio is cut off as the gate buzzes and Trudy walks into the bullpen.

“You’ve got mail.” she says drily, holding up a foam mailer.

Voight takes it from her, shaking out a flash drive onto Jay’s desk. Kevin picks it up, plugging it into his computer.

The video that auto starts only increases the frustration of the room.

Jay is pressed against an upright table, wrists, ankles, waist and shoulders tightly fastened to the surface with thick leather straps. Another leather strap is fastened in place over his mouth but worse than that is the heavy looking metal collar around his neck.

His eyes are closed but flicker open as they watch revealing an oppressive exhaustion.

They only get a glimpse of it before the camera angle zooms out, leaving them staring through the slats of an enormous water wheel.

Voight’s stomach twists. He recognizes it and he doesn’t like that. There’s no good reason for their perp to reveal the location where he’s holding Jay.

A shot rings out and the room freezes.

The camera zooms back in and the team takes a collective breath at the lack of blood.

Jay hasn’t moved but his eyes are slightly wide with panic as the wood next to his head continues to smoke where the bullet had impacted.

“If you fail to follow instructions, the next shot lands between his eyes.” a cold voice says. “I know you recognize the Mill. Be there by 1800. Your team only, no SWAT teams, no special tactical units, just Intelligence. You’ll enter through the main entryway on the east side. From there you will receive further instructions.”

The video goes dead and Voight shakes his head, looking at his watch.

1723.

“Everyone gear up.” he orders. “Trudy I need you to coordinate with SWAT and CFD. We’ll play this like he says but I’d still like to have them on standby to back us up.”

“I’ll take care of it.” she promises. “Bring him home, Hank.”

They get just clear of the doorway before stopping, waiting for these further instructions.

The main floor of the mill is crowded with equipment and inert machinery.

Voight glances down at his watch again.

1758.

Nothing happens until the clock ticks over to 1800. Then a speaker crackles to life on the wall above their heads.

“Only one member of the CPD has made me feel anything other than disappointment today.” the voice announces. “If your team can prove to me that he isn’t the only officer capable of an appropriate response to a tactical situation he might even get to go home today.”

Voight growls.

“The first drill starts in a moment.” the voice continues. “Good luck, Sergeant Voight.”

He reaches for his weapon.

“Eyes up.” he orders, hearing the rest of the team respond accordingly.

A loud crack sounds and the room starts to fill with smoke.

“Smoke rises. Watch your feet.” he whispers. “Move slowly to maximize the cover of your movements.”

Rounds ping off metal around them and they move forward, knees bent to improve their balance and stability.

They know the shots are not being fired by a living person but are likely the work of some kind of rigged system.

The smoke makes it difficult to identify the trajectory of the bullets. Voight wishes immediately that Jay was with them as his uncanny sense of trajectory and impeccable aim would be invaluable under these circumstances.

They take cover behind equipment, exchanging information about the angles.

Antonio takes out the first device. Erin gets the second.

By then, the smoke is starting to clear up and Voight himself knocks a third device out of play.

Silence fills the air.

“Not bad, Sergeant.” the voice says.

A light comes on, displaying camera footage on the far wall.

Jay still hasn’t moved, head tilted painfully back against the table behind him.

“He’s running out of time.” the voice continues. “Part of me is surprised that he’s still alive. His head moves more than a few millimeters in any direction and the spikes on that collar puncture his throat.”

It explains the stiffness of Jay’s posture. Explains the fact that he almost looks like he’s holding his breath.

Explains the tremor of the muscles in his neck and shoulders.

“You’ve seen the footage. If you can get to him before he dies then you might be able to save him.”

Voight scans the floor.

This old mill is often used for tours, showing mostly school groups how lumber mills operated before the advent of electrical power.

Which means that it’s floor plans had been public record. Antonio had spent the drive here studying those floor plans.

“Where are we headed?” he asks.

“The hatch leading below the mill is in that back left corner.” Antonio fills in. “We’ll have to move past the band saws and debarking machines to get there.”

“Alright.” Voight says. “Lead the way and stay on alert. We’ll be right behind you.”

Antonio nods, jaw tense and then moves forward.

Jay watches his team begin the slow creep across the warehouse floor, wishing there was anything at all that he could do to help.

The team is only here because of him. Because he had let his guard down and allowed himself to be captured by this jackass.

He’d messed up and now his team is in danger because of it.

They’re moving through close quarters, passing between heavy machinery with limited clearance.

They know they’re being watched, watched by a man who has already picked off two cops from a distance.

The roar of a saw kicking on fills his ears. Adam yelps and Jay releases a sound of protest, muffled by the gag strapped in his mouth.

In his horror he forgets he’s not supposed to move, chasing forward slightly to try to see what’s going on.

The sharp spikes bite into his skin and he freezes.

If he leans back he’s likely to increase the bleeding. If he leans back too far, he’ll stab himself on the other set of spikes on the collar.

Adam has skittered back several steps, bending over to clutch his leg. The team has turned to face him, all of their attention focused on him as they try to determine what’s happened.

Only Antonio has held his attention back, keeping his focus on scanning the room., watching for another threat.

Just leave. Jay begs silently. It’s not worth it.

He’s not worth it.

“I’m okay.” Adam says. “I’m okay. The stupid de… barking thing came on. Lost some skin I think but my jeans took most of it.”

“You sure?” Voight asks.

“I’m good.” Adam snaps. “We need to get to Jay. They must be showing him footage of us because he moved. Right about the time the damn thing clipped me.”

Their eyes jump back to the view of Jay, showing that Adam is right. Jay has leaned forward ever so slightly and thin trails of blood are running down the front of his neck. Damn it.

“Get down.” Antonio snaps, grabbing Kevin’s arm and dragging him to the floor.

Shots ring out, bouncing off metal above their heads.

“Keep moving.” Voight growls. “And stay down.”

The team inches forward, staying crouched as low as they can. Other equipment kicks on as they pass but the team is ready for them, managing to avoid the blades.

As they reach the hatch, another shot rings out. This one from a considerable distance and not directed at them.

“Shooter in custody.” Al announces over the radio. “And the bastard missed. Get Halstead out of there.”

For the second time that day, the team takes a breath as one before making their way through the hatch and down the ladder.

Jay is exactly where they’d expected to find him, eyes closed and breathing shallow.

The spikes seem to be deeper than after the machine had grazed Adam, more blood running down the front of his neck than had been.

“Get CFD in here.” Voight orders. “We need those paramedics. Now.”

He steps up next to the table, gently setting his hands on either side of Jay’s head to help keep it from moving.

“We got him, kid.” he assures him. “The asshole is in custody. He’s not shooting any other cops. Just try to hold still a little longer.”

Erin joins him, reaching around to unbuckle the gag that’s strapped around Jay’s lower face.

“We’re here now, babe.” she tells him. “Just hang on.”

It takes thirty seven minutes for CFD to reach them and then nearly an hour for them to get Jay down from the board that he’s secured to.

He’s wheeled out to the ambulance; IV’s in both arms and an oxygen mask over his face. Bloody gauze is pressed tightly against his throat, winding around foam blocks trying to keep the spikes stabilized to minimize the bleeding.

The paramedics have suggested that the shallow breathing might be about damage to his trachea as much as a conscious attempt to limit movement.

Erin climbs into the ambulance next to Jay and Voight stalks back to his vehicle.

Al is standing in observation when he arrives, watching Carl Doughterty stew in interrogation.

“What the hell happened out there?” he asks.

“Bastard decided to you were getting too close.” Al says. “Apparently he wasn’t really interested in letting Jay live if you guys did what he wanted.”

“And he missed?” Voight clarifies.

“He tried to send a round between the blades on the water wheel.” Al fills in. “Timed it wrong and slammed into the wheel instead.”

“Same shot he made on the first video though, right?”

“Under pressure it’s a completely different shot.” Al offers.

A smirk twists Voight’s face and he steps around, opening the door and walking into interrogation.

“You will regret touching him.” he says calmly as he crosses the threshold.

“Yeah.” Carl scoffs. “All these problems because I grabbed one stupid detective.”

“No.” Voight scoffs, dropping into the chair across from him. “You started this road when you shot Booker Ford. You made this worse when you set up that ambush in the alleyway and killed another cop. Everything that is happening now is because you decided to declare a killing spree on the cops of this city.”

Carl scoffs again.

“But I promise you, there will be additional consequences for what you did to Jay Halstead.” Voight continues. “You don’t touch a member of my team and walk away from it. You especially don’t touch my kid.”

With a scowl, he stands up and walks toward the door.

“You know.” he adds, pausing in the doorway. “Interesting that you missed that shot when you’re such a great sniper. Jay would have made it.”

“I guess that’s what an actual good sniper looks like.” he tosses over his shoulder before slamming the door.

[miles2g0]

This is coming in late but for the ask game? I'm curious about the "homeless Tim" one 👀

The basic premise of that one is that Tim never became Robin because his dad is abusive and he spends most of his time between 13 - 17 as a runaway. He goes back home intermittently when he's desperate and runs away again whenever his dad gets too bad.

It starts with Tim jumping in to help Jason in an alleyway scuffle during one of his runaway stints. (I haven't decided yet if Jason died in this AU or not, so he's either Red Hood or Red Robin here.) Jason can tell that Tim is in a bad situation and tries to convince him to let him help but Tim gets defensive. Jason asks around the streets later to get more of Tim's story from the locals, and he and Tim "run into" each other here and there (read: Jason being a stalker).

During all this there's a gang war brewing between two of the Rogue's gangs (haven't decided exactly which ones yet), and Tim and Jason end up getting tangled up in things.

It's basically a "Tim enters the Batfamily early late" story.

It's still really rough, but here's a snippet:

There was something off about the kid. His accent, for one. It was Gotham for sure, but it wasn't Crime Alley. It was almost like he was purposefully smudging it to cover up a more posh one. He was certainly skinny enough to be your run-of-the-mill street kid, and his clothes were a little worn, a little dirty, but they were good quality, better than a lot of the families in this part of Gotham could usually afford. He could have stolen them, but Jason's gut said otherwise.

He would bet the pie Alfred promised to make him tonight that the kid was from Bristol. A runaway.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Alvin," he answered smoothly. He was a good liar. If Jason hadn't already expected the kid to bullshit his way through this interrogation-in-disguise he wouldn't have suspected the lie.

"Where you stayin', Alvin?"

He shrugged. "Around."

"You get that cut looked at?"

He reached self-consciously to touch the large gash on his head. "It's fine."

From the looks of it, it should have had stitches. It must have bled like crazy and it was going to take much longer to heal this way.

"How'd you get it?"

The kid hummed. "You're welcome for the save, but I have places to be, if you'll excuse me?" Alvin didn't wait for an answer before he turned curtly on his heel.

"Wait!" Jason darted forward and put a hand on the kid's shoulder. Alvin flinched and whipped back around with a glare and Jason pulled his hand back and held it up. "Sorry, I shouldn't have touched you. Will you just listen to me for a sec'?"

Alvin crossed his arms. "Whatever you're going to say, I've heard it before."

"Look, I get it, okay? I used to be out here, too, y'know? I'm just sayin', if you're trying to get away from someone—"

"You don't know anything," Alvin said with a surprising ferocity that had Jason taking a step back.

"You're right," he conceded. "I don't know anything about you. I'm sorry. But I do know what it's like to be hungry, so at least let me buy you a burger or somethin'? As a thank you for saving my ass?"

Alvin was still glaring, but Jason could see him swallow. He'd never forget how much it had sucked to starve. He would have jumped at the offer.

He had jumped at the offer. And somehow it had ended with him in a goddamn leotard jumping off of roofs.

"Fine. But no more soft interrogations, I'm not an idiot."

Jason grinned. Smart kid. "Bat Burger?"