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vikingpoteto · 4 years

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Red Robin under the spotlight

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Relationships: GEN. Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake

Summary: Red Robin and Red hood are basically urban legends, no one is sure they're real. That is, until there is a picture of the two of them grinning at each other on Gotham Gazette's front page.

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Tim Drake is having… a day.

Stuck in his office for the afternoon, he is praying for nightime to come soon so he can put on his suit and vent his frustration by beating up some unsuspecting criminal. He’d known being a CEO wasn’t particularly fun, but he didn’t expect the board of directors to be babies for so long.

He skims his proposal for what feels like the hundredth time unsure of how to make it clearer that that is the best course of action for their investments. The fact that he is only 18 should not trump his very solid, data-based arguments.

So he’s already in a bad mood and praying for a distraction when his office door swings open and Tam Fox storms in.

“Timothy!” she shouts.

He feels like he's about to learn he should be careful with what he wishes.

“Hey, Tam, I missed you too?” He tries.

Behind her, his secretary makes a helpless gesture as if trying to communicate she tried to stop Tam. Tim gives the woman a tired smile and makes a dismissive gesture.

Ignoring that, Tam slams the door closed and repeats for emphasis: “Timothy.” She pushes an iPad into Tim’s chest. “What is the meaning of this?”

Raising an eyebrow, he takes the iPad and looks at the screen, noticing he’s staring at a Gotham Gazette article and… Tim’s heart stops.

The headline screaming at his face says RED DYNAMIC DUO? by Vicki Vale and beneath it…

“Oh god,” Tim whimpers.

Beneath the headline there’s a picture of him and the Red Hood.

Or, well, Red Robin and Red Hood. They’re sitting on the fire escape of one of the abandoned buildings in Jason’s territory and both are seemingly at ease. Too at ease. There are two BatBurger bags at their side and their fingers are intertwined. Red Robin is staring at their joined hands with a wide smile. Fucking hell. Tim always makes a point of never smiling in front of anyone when he’s in his suit, he has a reputation to protect. He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that Red Hood isn’t wearing his helmet, because it emans his open grin is visible as well - and thank god Jason has the habit of wearing a domino under his helmet.

Who the hell took that picture? How the hell did they go unnoticed by both Tim and Jason?

He then starts reading the article, every word feeling like a punch to the gut.

Gotham City has seen its share of vigilantes over the years and, unlike public figures such as Superman, they prefer to keep to themselves, making many people wonder whether they’re even human. As a shot captured by an amateur photographer that chose to remain anonymous, we find out at least a pair of the many Gotham “heroes” are closer to us than we thought.

The vigilante known as Red Robin Gotham's patheon of heroes a couple of months ago and little is known about him. He’s been seen working with the likes of Batman, Robin and even Batgirl, making us all think he’s one of the good guys. It seems like Red Robin’s circle of friendships doesn’t include only Justice League members, though.

The Red Hood, the man so tenderly smiling at Red Robin, is a notorious mob boss whose territory's size, GCPD especulates, rivals Black Mask’s. Red Hood wanders between both criminal activities and a violent brand of justice and, while he's been seen working side-by-side with heroes like Nightwing, a hero that since has only been seen in Bludhaven, no one can claim to have seen the Red Hood so comfortable around one of the bats of Gotham

The two young men were pictured in a tender moment. Could this mean that Red Robin is straying towards villany? Is the Red Hood is considering changing his ways? Or, perhaps, are we facing a pair of starcrossed lovers, separated by different set of morals, but still unable to stay away from one another?

Tim makes an inhumane sound. The words star crossed lovers jump from the screen, burning his eyes and making him wish he was going over a dumb business proposal still.

“Well?” Tam demands. “What is that, Tim?”

“I don’t know, Tam,” he answers, his voice weak. “What on earth- How the hell… Oh, god .”

“Why were you hanging out with the Red Hood?”

“Stakeout,” Tim says simply.

“Why were you on a stakeout with the freaking Red Hood?”

At that, Tim recovers enough to feel a bit miffed. That’s the same tone she had last year when Tim was working with assassins and he gets offended on his brother’s behalf. Even if, you know, said brother had also been somewhat related to the assassins in question. In the past.

“Hey, Hood is not as bad as the news make him look. Sure, he’s not exactly clean, but he’s a valuable undercover agent and…”

Tam makes sounds of a woman whose white Valentino bag had liquid lipstick spilled in. “Does that mean you are dating the Red Hood?”

“What? NO!”

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. God, what a mess.

“He’s my brother,” he says.

Tam looks like she goes through the 7 stages of grief in a very short time and, honestly, Tim feels for her. He likes Tam a lot. She is smart and strong and the poor girl has had to deal with so much since she and Tim became friends.

“Are you telling me… that Dick Grayson…”

“No, Dick’s not the Red Hood.”

She stares at the picture again and then at him. “This isn’t Duke or Damian, Tim.”

“You’re right. It’s a long story. I can’t tell you, though. I trust you but Hood’s identity isn’t my secret to share.”

Tam closes her eyes and breathes in and out slowly. After all the crap she had to deal as one of Red Robin’s friends, a stranged brother that happened to be a crime lord (an anti-hero, really) wasn’t that far fetched. She didn’t know much about the Drakes because Tim didn’t talked about them, so, for all she knows, Red Hood could be Jack’s or Janet’s bastard child. Although Tim can figure her theories, he doesn’t try to explain anything. Whatever she works out is better than letting her know Red Hood is Bruce Wayne’s son brought back from the dead.

“Fine. You’re not dating a criminal. You’re a criminal’s brother.”

“I mean… if you think about it, I’m a criminal too.” He smiles sheepishly under her glare. “Being a vigilante isn’t exactly something I can put on my resume.”

Shaking her head, Tam checks the picture again. “What were you even doing? Because it looks like you’re holding hands and finding it hilarious.”

“We… hm. We were thumb wrestling.”

She stares at him, her expression empty of any emotion. Tim cringes.

“Look, not everything is death traps and high risks, alright? Sometimes stakeouts get boring!”

“You were laughing your head off because you were having a thumb war with the Red Hood,” Tam deadpans.

“Hm. Actually the thumb war wasn't that funny, that was him cheating. I was winning so he kept talking shit about Dick’s past to make me laugh and lose focus.”

Tam finally sits down and she looks at ceiling as if she’s considering all the life decisions that lead her to this moment. At this point, Tim knows she’s just being dramatic, because knowing Red Hood cheats at thumb war for certain isn’t more shocking than the time she met Tim.

“The thumb was isn’t important now, though,” Tim says. “ This is a huge problem. Hood’s gonna be in hot water if people think he’s friends with a hero.”

He refuses to use the word lovers, because ew. Sure they’re not related by blood, but… ew. Tim sees him as a brother, damn it.

“Well, I’m afraid there’s not a lot we can do now,” Tam says apologetically. “The article’s been up since this morning. Even if we have them take it down, it’s already out there. #RedDynamicDuo is trending on Twitter.”

Oof. That’s… oof.

Tim intertwines his fingers and glares at the tablet in front of him as if waiting for the puzzle to solve itself. He knows it won’t, so it’s up to him to fix this. His burnt out brain suggests calling Bart and asking him to run back in time and stop that cursed thumb war. His practical brain has half a mind to call Oracle and see how much online evidence she can get rid of. He has to contact Gotham Gazette and threaten them into not putting vigilante’s identities at risk by posting such pictures, although he doesn’t hold high hopes for that course of action. What he needs now is a bigger scandal, although he fails to think of something more dramatic than Red Robin and Red Hood being buddies…

Right as he’s starting to feel a bit forlorn, his phone buzzes on the table. A picture of Dick smiling flashes on the screen and Tim allows himself to perk up for a moment. Dick for sure will be able to help him.

“Dick!” He picks up, full of hope.

Tim is greeted with cackling. Dick’s cackling.

He groans. “Richard.”

“AHAHAHAHA O-oh god, you… aha... b-baby bird, you… HAHAHAHA--”

Tim isn’t paid enough for this. He hangs up.

“Can you help me with this?” He asks.

“Don’t I always?” Tam quirks an eyebrow.

Smiling tiredly, he stands. “I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off. Can you take care of… you know… day job stuff?”

“I guess. Good luck with your… your family thing.”

THE BIRDNEST

spoiler alert: *insert game of thrones joke here*

In the hood: Go fuck yourself, Stephanie

spoiler alert: not judging u bro he hella cute

WonderWing: steph please

cassandra cain-wayne: ?

send me a Signal: they’re talking about that picture of Hood and Red holding hands cass

yumm: were NOT holding hands

cassandra cain-wayne: I print that picture.

In the hood: W H Y ! ?

cassandra cain-wayne: cute :)

spoiler alert: she right and she should say it

In the hood: Steph, turn on your location. I just want to talk.

yumm: stephanie I hv pics of u sleep drooling on me from that that 1 patrol dnt test me

spoiler alert: shut up red dynamic duo

Tim hates the internet.

Barbara is kindly trying her best to muffle the online reaction, but there is only so much she can do without outright deleting people’s tweets. Tim knows for a fact that that would only cause a bigger uproar, so he asks her to settle for burying mentions of them under a fake algorithm.

He has yet to think of gossip hot enough to top the rumors, but he doesn’t think even his fake engagement to Tam last year received so much attention. A glimpse into Gotham’s elusive heroes’ personal lives was too exciting to let go quickly.

When he walks into his apartment, he wants nothing but to take a hot shower and a nap. He knows he can’t, though.

As well as he knows he isn’t alone.

He plays it cool, walking in as though he doesn’t notice the person in the shadows. He drops his keys and phone on the nearest table as he would normally and turns around too abruptly to allow a reaction, his fist connecting to… someone’s palm.

“Nice reflexes, Baby Bird,” Jason says, quirking an eyebrow as though mildly impressed.

Tim groans. “Would it kill you to use the door?”

“It might, better not risk it.”

“It shaves five years of my life span every time I come home and you’re waiting in the shadows. Of all of Bruce’s habits to pick up…”

Jason simply shrugs. “So… what’s up, honey? ”

“Ew, don’t say that,” Tim groans.

Keeping his nonchalant facade, Jason lets himself fall into Tim’s couch as though he belongs there. Tim heads to his room to change into more humane clothes.

“I’m assuming Dickie shared the news already,” Jason says.

“He couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say anything,” Tim replies from his closet. “Tam was kind enough to show me, though.”

“Tam… is that your ex-fiancée? Hmm… The news sure keep shipping you with everyone, speaking of which.”

Grumbling the whole time, Tim puts on a purple hoodie he might or might not have stolen from Stephanie and that he wears whenever he’s stressed. He wears that hoodie a lot. Heading back to the living room barefoot and feeling slightly more prepared to deal with the situation, he says:

“I’m assuming you aren’t here just to hang out.”

Jason gives him an unimpressed look. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

Tim blinks once. Twice. No, it can’t be that… “ Everyone thinks you’re a rat.”

“Bingo.”

And this situation keeps getting better and better. Red Hood is feared enough that he can get away with hanging out with the goody two shoes every now and again and keep his rep. Being caught eating burgers and giggling with a hero was a whole new animal.

They have to assume Hood’s safe houses were compromised as well. The point of having many hideouts is that you’re never left with nowhere to go, but even Jason wasn’t prepared to have everyone in his territory turn on him. That and they all had been raised and trained to be paranoid. It was too big of a risk to assume he’d be safe in a known place.

“Crap,” Tim mutters.

“I considered ditching Gotham and spending some time with Roy instead…”

“But that would be as good as a confession. You’d never gain their respect again,” Tim completes for him.

Jason nods.

The only silver-lining about this situation is that this is Jason. Granted he isn’t too angry to think, Jason is practical and willing to do what’s needed, even if it’s annoying or if it makes him uncomfortable. Tim likes working with him because of that.

“You know where the extra blankets are,” Tim says.

Because, of course, if Jason can’t be at his own place and he can’t be with Roy and Kory, he’d crash Tim’s place. The manor isn’t really an option for him and Tim doesn’t blame him for that.

“The plan of action?”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out.”

Jason sighs. “I’m going to punch something in your Red Robin cave.”

“Be my guest.”

Damage control is necessary, of course, especially for Red Hood’s safety, but there is something bothering Tim more. He opens the news and studies the picture. It’s a damn good shot, almost looks like it was staged. He closes his eyes and tries to remember that night. In order to take that picture, the photographer would have to be in of of the buildings across the street and they’d have to be good enough to go unnoticed not by one, but by two highly trained vigilantes, one of which had his senses enhanced by the Lazarus pit.

He messages Babs quickly for more info on whoever sent those pictures to the news, but not even Oracle had managed to track them yet. It sounds like the photographer walked into Vicki Vale on the street and handed her the picture, because there was no digital footprint of such interaction.

Without any more ideas, he puts on his suit and heads out, glad that is patrol night. Perhaps punching criminals will give him some clarity.

Tim is nowhere near closing any of his cases and Gotham is unusually quiet because of course the criminals would choose tonight of all nights to be chill. The night Tim needs a crime. That’s why he’s more than a little thankful when a crackling sound in his comm lets him know someone’s trying to send him a message.

“Hey, hot stuff,” a familiar voice calls, “I have an underground gambling den to dismantle tonight, you want in?”

Red Robin smiles. “Is that a date?”

“I don’t know, is it? I don’t want Red Hood coming after me.”

“Batgirl.”

She laughs shamelessly. He hopes Barbara isn’t listening. Although the alternative would be Wendy listening, and he doesn’t know which one would be worse. Steph’s sense of humor isn’t for everyone and while, Tim doesn’t mind their inside jokes and got used to her eternal flirting, he feels as though those should remain between the two of them only.

“I’m serious, though,” Steph continues. “I don’t think backup is needed per se, but I miss fighting criminals with you. Plus I figured you could use a punching bag or two.”

He grins. He just really loves Steph.

“Send me the details. I’ll meet you there.”

Turns out it’s a pretty standard burst for them. Gambling den covering a massive drug operation, because this is Gotham. Why wouldn’t they use an illegal thing to cover another more illegal thing? That sounded like a great idea.

He finds Batgirl waiting for him on top of a building. She simply smiles and points at the shady alley down the street.

“Gentlemen first?” she offers.

“It’s your case.”

With a nod, she dives towards the ground and Red Robin follows her closely, frowning in confusion when she doesn’t dropkicks any windows. Instead, she casually strolls towards the back of the alley where a suspicious metal door that could easily go unnoticed if it didn’t scream CRIMINAL ACTIVITY HERE. Batgirl knocks at the door and gestures at Red Robin to stay away.

A slit on the door slides open and a confused crook tries unsuccessfully to see who’s there. With both vigilantes’ out of his line of sight, the poor bastard has no option other than opening the door to check. Batgirl swiftly pulls him into a headlock as soon as he walks into view and Red Robin’s grinning face is the last thing the man sees before the pressured applied makes him pass out.

Red Robin doesn’t figure what Steph’s plan is until she cuffs the unconscious bouncer and stands straight, offering her arm.

“You’re so dramatic.” He rolls his eyes, even as he takes it.

“Shush, you think I’m awesome.”

That he does. Especially when the two of them climb down into the basement turned illegal cassino with their arms locked as if they’re a couple. It’s cartoonishly comic how long it takes everyone to realize Red Robin and Batgirl are standing on the entrance, looking around at the 50 different illegal activities happening at once.

Not as comic as when Batgirl shouts over the music: “Please, don’t stop on our account!”

The gamblers sober enough to freeze in horror.

“Before we start, anyone wants to just give themselves in?” Red Robin offers.

That’s when guns start firing and all hell breaks loose.

The night ends, as it would, with Batgirl and Red Robin walking home a trio of strippers. The women weren’t to blame that their work environment was less than ideal and they certainly didn’t need to be left tied up waiting for the GCPD like the mobsters Steph and Tim beat up tonight.

Red Robin wanted to just watch them from the top ot the buildings and make sure they got home safe, but Batgirl insisted they walked alongside the women. Their costumes don’t look completely out of place near them and Red Robin doesn’t know what to think of that.

For a second, he thinks he hears someone behind them. Everytime he turns around, he finds nothing but an empty alley, so he shrugs if off as him getting hit tooo many times.

While Batgirl excitedly chats with two of the women about their future employment - one of them is in this line of work just to get by, the other genuinely enjoys sensual dancing as a form of art but wishes she could work somewhere better - when the third of them discreetly detaches herself from the group to walk closer to Red Robin.

She still looks tense and guarded, her arms tightly wrapped around herself and Tim wishes he had a jacket to offer her. The way she sideeyes him says she wants to say something, but is too nervous to start. Not wanting to betray his persona, he simply waits, trying to appear as non threatening as possible.

“Thanks a lot for savin’ us, Red Robin,” the woman says finally. “I can’t believe I’m meetin’ ya.”

He gives her a small smile. “I’m just glad you’re safe, ma’am, there’s no need to thank me.”

“I just wanted ta say… I get ya.”

Red Robin tilts his head to the side. “Ma’am?”

“The thing with your man. Must ta’ be hard dating the Red Hood. I know how it is.”

He was… He was getting sympathy from a stripper with bad taste in men.

“There’s nothing gross between Hood and I!” He lets out before he can help himself, his voice a little louder than intended.

The other women startle at his outburst and turn to him, wary. One of them reaches for what is clearly a pocket knife that she thinks is cleverly hidden in her bra.

He sighs. “I’m sorry, ma’am, just… Batgirl, I believe you’ve got things from here. I’m taking off.”

She gives him a concerned look, but ultimately nods. Under Batgirl’s and the three strippers perplexed glares, Red Robin grapples his way out of there.

Tim wakes up around noon feeling as though he was hit by a truck, as he does when he sleeps longer than three hours a night. He slowly sits up and looks around his messy room, wondering how come he’s feeling so miserable. The smell of food stirs him into some sort of alertness.

Right. He’s not home alone today.

Yawning and scratching his belly, he forces himself to get out of bed. He know that the longer he stays the more likely he is to slip into a coma, his body demanding compensation for years of sleep deprivation. Tim drags his feet towards his kitchen where he finds one of Gotham’s most dangerous vigilantes humming to himself as he makes breakfast. Or Lunch. Brunch. Whatever.

“And here I thought I was the family’s zombie,” Jason says in lieu of good morning.

Tim grumbles something about his brother being too comfortable in Tim’s kitchen, but he doesn’t dare complain. Jason is probably the only person that uses Tim’s stove and one of the perks of having him over is that he does cook. A lot.

The one disadvantage about having Jason over is…

A knife lodges itself on the counter in front of Tim when he tries to reach for the coffee pot. Tim didn’t even see him throwing it. He glares at his brother.

“Food first. Coffee after,” Jason says.

“I’m too nauseous to eat, I just woke up.”

Again without breaking eye contact with the pot he’s stirring, Jason blindly reaches for a package of crackers casually left on the counter and hands it to Tim.

Tim makes sure to give him his best rebellious teenager glare before grabbing the stupid crackers and sitting down to eat them. Stupid Jason with his stupid boredom. Tim had forgotten Jason goes into full mom mode when he has nothing else to do and that he’s particularly obnoxious about Tim’s eating habits.

“I consume the necessary calories,” Tim mumbles over his cracker.

“Okay, Damian.”

Tim throws a cracker at him. Jason easily dodges without looking, which is kind of annoying.

After that, the two brothers fall into comfortable silence. Tim knows Jason wants to talk about their plan of action, but he knows Tim is nowhere near awake enough to hold a conversation. Besides, Jason doesn’t like being bothered while he’s cooking anyway.

By the time the food is ready, the crackers worked their magic and Tim no longer feels as though his stomach is ready to puke out its emptiness. He grabs dishes he hadn’t used in quite a while and sets the table for the two of them. The brothers start eating in silence, Tim slowly recovering his sense of self - no wonder he goes for so long without sleeping, he takes too long to reboot when he does - and Jason mindlessly scrolling through his phone.

Then something on the small screen makes Jason choke on his food.

Tim quirks an eyebrow. “You okay?”

“Hm… Timmy, you may wanna take a look at this.”

“What?” Tim takes Jason’s phone. “Oh, for fuck’s sake !”

It’s another news article. The picture is fortunately less detailed, just a red and black silhouette against Gotham’s sky that may or may not be Red Robin standing over one of the many gargoyles. The text, however.

RED ROBIN MAKES HOMOPHOBIC REMARK AND SHOCKS ADMIRER

Gotham’s newest vigilante busted an underground gambling den last night. Despite his heroic deed, his words after the fact were less than commendable. When questioned about his relationship with the Red Hood by one of the women he rescued, the hero allegedly said that there’s “Nothing gross between him and Hood.”

“Personally, I was shocked,” said the woman in question, Krystal Math, 25 years old. “Red Robin became my favorite hero when I heard he also has a dead-beat boyfriend. I was starting to finally see myself in one of those bats, you know? I couldn’t believe when he said being gay is gross. Never meet your heroes, I guess.”

THE BIRDNEST

WonderWing sent a screenshot.

WonderWing: red robin is cancelled for homophobia, pass it on

Robin: Good. It’s about time we rid ourselves of him.

Cassandra Cain: Little brother does not approve gay rights? :(

yumm: im literally bisexual

spoiler alert: he avoiding the question

in the hood: #redrobinisoverparty

yumm: I hate this fucking family

Tim hasn’t stopped pacing around the room since he read the most recent article. Those were his exact words by the letter, meaning someone had been listening. He doubts Krystal, bless her heart, was the one going to the news with his “homophobic remark”.

Having basically given up on getting Tim to calm down, Jason is the one to get the porch door open for Steph. Because apparently she’s been learning from Jason and acquired his hatred for front doors. Steph knows how Tim gets, so she promptly ignores him and gets comfortable on the reading chair to check the article fully.

“This is nuts,” Steph says. “We were being careful. I made sure of it.”

Tim believes her. Batman and Robin are basically public figures at this point, even if they don’t interact with civilians if they can help it. Red Robin and the Signal were heard of and spotted around the city, but not a lot of people really know of them. Red Hood was basically a urban legend until recently and Black Bat sill is. Batgirl, however, is known for being a people hero.

She was, back in Barbara’s time, stopped for a bit with Cass, but Steph embraced the old tradition whole heartedly. She would walk people home late at night to make sure they were safe, wave at little girls in the bus, talk to kidnapping victims until they were under heavy blankets handed by the police. Steph was extroverted and charming and she used that fully as Batgirl like she never could as Spoiler. That being said, she and Barbara always made a point to avoid pictures, security cameras and whatnot. If there was a hero good at hanging with civilians while unnoticed by the media, that hero was Stephanie Brown.

Tim’s phone is buzzing. He ignores it in favor of stomping around some more.

“Well, something must have slipped your watchful eye,” Jason says, shrugging.

Steph glares at him. “Mine, perhaps, but are you implying someone went unnoticed by Oracle?”

“Well, someone obviously did,” Tim snaps, tossing his phone at the couch in frustration. “What happened after I left, Steph?”

“Nothing,” she says honestly. “I walked the ladies home. Krystal was a bit miffed but she didn’t say anything, so I thought she was just a shipper upset that her OTP wasn’t canon.”

“You think she went to the news after?” Jason suggests.

Steph frowns. “Why would she? She didn’t look like she had media connections exactly.”

Tim’s phone, that bounced off the couch and fell with a soft thud on the carpet, continues to explode with texts. He sighs and stops to pick it up and finally answer them.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Jason argues. Then turns to Tim: “You should look into her. I’m gonna check other possible sources.”

“Hm-hum, just a second,” Tim mumbles, typing furiously. “Damian is being a nightmare and asking for help on a case.”

“Wack. Are you telling him to solve his own cases instead of using your intell to impress Bruce?”

Tim glares at Jason.

“Really? C’mon, Timmy, we’ve been over this.”

Stephanie gives them a puzzled look. “You’ve been over… Dami being a nightmare?”

“Jason says that whenever someone is mean to me I should reply by attacking them where hurts the most,” Tim explains.

“He knows all of our weaknesses and he has the quickest thinking,” Jason says, frustrated. “The least he should do is stand up for himself with that knowledge!”

"Kinda rich coming from the guy that tried to kill him," Steph says, quirking an eyebrow.

"Steph," Tim scowls. "He didn't know me then and the pit rage--"

"Timmy," Jason cuts him off.

Tim sighs. "Besides now I could off him in 20 different ways if he tried any of that shit again. There. Happy, Jason?"

"That's my baby brother."

Steph smiles at him. “You know what? You’re onto something, Jaybird.”

Tim interrupts his walk of worry again to smile a bit. Something about Stephanie and Jason agreeing on something is immensely satisfying.

Still, on the matter at hand, Tim says, “If I go off on Damian, Dick’s gonna get mad…”

“Then go off on Dick as well,” Steph promptly suggests.

Jason high-fives her. “Atta girl. Besides if Dick doesn’t want us to tell Damian to fuck off he has to work harder on teaching him not to be a little shit. Everyone here has a tragic backstory here and we all know Damian goes too far sometimes.”

Tim shakes his head again. “Regardless, Damian’s case will have to wait. We’re gonna go with your plan, Jay. And Steph…”

“Wow, no way, José. I’m just here as an eyewitness. I don’t want to get involved with homophobes and end up shipped with Jason or some shit.”

Tim glares at her. “I was going to offer you some of our leftovers, but since you’re not interested, that’s fine.”

While Jason laughs and Steph protests, he proceeds to look for his laptop, hoping this isn’t going to be a dead end.

“This is a dead end,” Tim declares.

From what he can find, Krystal wasn’t even paid for her impromptu interview. Apparently Vicki Vale showed up at her place to confirm the veracity of a story that she heard God knows where.

Dick is in Bludhaven, but he insisted on facetiming them when he realized his brothers were struggling, even if he mostly just made worried faces from Tim’s phone as Tim, Jason and Steph exchanged notes. As a rule of thumb, Tim doesn’t involve his siblings in his cases since he became Red Robin, but this is definitely an all hands on deck situation. Tim isn’t desperate enough to get Bruce involved, but he’s getting there. Especially when Dick says:

“Babs couldn’t find anything in Vicki’s email or phone. She’s double checking all of Vicki's sources, but so far it’s been no good.”

“We could always get Vale and hang her by the ankles on top of some building until she talks,” Jason suggests. "Let's go old school on her."

Everyone ignores Jason. Tim stands for another mug of coffee. Dick lets out a frustrated sigh. Steph keeps watching all of them from the couch, where she’s been lying down and tossing gummy bears into her mouth for the past half-hour.

When no one acknowledges him, Jason sighs and stands. “Alright, this’ been fun. I’m going to patrol.”

Dick frowns. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“He can’t vanish,” Steph says. “One thing is crashing Tim’s place to make sure he won’t get ambushed in his down time. If Red Hood goes AWOL he might as well admit he’s working with the Batclan.”

Jason nods. “If I don’t do my job, next thing I know Black Mask takes over my stuff.”

“Can’t have Black Mask taking over his stuff,” Steph agrees.

Dick glances at Tim as though expecting him to disagree with the plan. Tim lets out a defeated sigh. “He’s right. Just… make sure to find a safe place to change into your gear so no one sees you. If there are any safe places, that is…”

Jason rolls his eyes. Tim knows he’s going full Robbie Downer mode, as Jason likes to call it, but he can’t help it. It’s not often that he finds himself without any ideas. He should have been able to solve this already. Since nothing comes to mind, he starts imagining unrealistic scenarios in hopes that they’ll give him some insight outside of the box. AU in which I was never shipped with my brother by some nosey reporter. AU in which I went out Damian instead of Jason that night.

Tim groans in frustration. “Why did it have to be Jason? We could get away with me having a thumb war with literally anyone. If it was Batman out there, this wouldn’t be that much of a problem.”

“Maybe if you hung out with all your brothers and not just Jason there wouldn’t be as many rumors about you and Red Hood,” Dick mumbles.

Tim glares at the phone.

“Really? You wanna go there? You wanna talk favoritism, Richard? Because you’ve been favoring Damian for-freaking-ever.”

“Drag him!” Jason cheers.

“Tim,” Dick says, looking genuinely upset, “I love all-”

“Save it,” Steph cuts in. “We all have favorites Dick, there is no use denying it.”

Because Dick’s eyebrows are knitted in confusion, Tim clarifies: “Bruce’s favorite is Cass, yours is Damian, Jason’s is… I don’t know, his guns. Steph is my favorite, unfortunately. Steph’s favorite is Cass, Cass’ favorite is Duke, Duke doesn’t have favorites, he’s the only good person in this family, and Damian’s is also you.”

Steph nods. “You did it! You broke the Bat Family dynamics to its bare essentials!”

“And that is why Tim is my favorite. After my guns,” Jason adds.

“Jason, we do not rate our siblings.”

“That’s why you’re in last place, Dick.”

Ignoring Dick’s enraged noises, Tim sets his mug aside. “I’m going patrolling, even if today isn't my turn. Solo this time. Hopefully Red Hood and Red Robin being separate out there will help the rumors die down a bit.”

No one has a better idea - Tim’s least favorite sentence - so that’s what they do.

It’s another infuriatingly quiet night.

Red Robin stops a couple of muggings, scares the crap out of some drug dealers. At some point, he considers contacting Poison Ivy and asking if she has any corrupt CEO she wants help with. He could, you know. It’d stop Ivy from killing someone and on his last run with Harley Quinn she did let slip that Tim was Ivy’s favorite Robin.

He almost falls mid swing at the memory, thinking he might be onto something, but then he remembers Harley hadn’t particularly recognized Red Robin as the third Robin. She was just ranting about how the new tiny Robin had no sense of humor and Ivy missed the last one. Besides of course Harley Quinn wasn’t feeding Vicki Vale some BatFanfic. Tim’s brain must be really burnt out if that’s the best hot take it can come up with.

It’s almost 3am and he’s taking a pair of muggers that can’t be much older than Tim to the police. He’s about ready to call if a night when someone shouts:

“Red Robin!”

He looks on instinct and his stomach drops when he sees Vicki Vale running towards him. Crap.

“Red Robin, can I get a statement?”

He keeps walking. He’s just one dirty alley away from GCPD, otherwise he’d just tie the stupid muggers to his back and would use his grappling hook to get out of the situation, grapple safety be damned. The muggers gingerly attempt to hide their faces as the reporter runs to them swinging a digital recorder. Vicki acts as though she can’t see them.

“Red Robin, what do you have to say about the rumors of your relationship with the Red Hood?”

The rumors you created? Red Robin quickens his pace and the muggers trip over themselves. He stares straight ahead, pretending he doesn’t notice the woman basically running in heels to keep up with him.

“Are you ashamed of it? Is it because he’s a criminal or because he’s a man?”

Red Robin wonders if the muggers would walk the rest of the way and turn themselves in if he asked nicely.

“Don’t bother, lady,” one of the muggers says. “He’s a nasty bigot.”

The other mugger nods and the two of them are wearing matching pouty expressions. Now Tim just feels bad. He didn’t become a hero for the recognition and he’s not in the business of doing PSAs like Superman, but he doesn’t want the strange socially woke criminal youth of Gotham to think they’re being arrested by a homophobe.

“I have no problem with two men in a relationship, I’m bisexual,” he tells the muggers. “Still, I’m not dating Red Hood. Just because I’m bi it doesn’t mean I’m dating every male vigilante I run into.”

At that, the two crooks look mildly surprised and suddenly they seem to feel a bit better about being arrested. Would you look at that.

Red Robin delivers them to the police, painfully aware that Vicki Vale is nowhere to be found anymore. He feels like he’s going to pay dearly for being too prideful to let himself be mistaken for a heterosexual person.

Lo and behold, Twitter, on that very same morning.

@Gotham_Gazette:

Red Robin hints that he might be bisexual. “No, I’m not dating the Red Hood, just because I’m bi it doesn’t mean I’m dating every male vigilante,” said the hero on the rumors about his relationship.

@dgraysonman hints??? he literally said he’s bi smh

@stephssss wow only the male vigilantes? biphobic. let red robin date batgirl too

@babsgeez be gay do crime, be bi serve justice

@thomascommaduke no cops at pride, only Red Robin using a bi flag as cape.

“Timmy…” Jason starts.

“Don’t. Just leave me alone to die.”

“That’s fair, have a nice day.”

At this point, Tim is surprised Bruce hasn’t intervened. As unaware of social media as Bruce can be, he’s always on the look for anything that might compromise their secret identities. Tim pulls two all-nighters in a row doing detective work and still makes no progress on his search for the person that sent Vicki that picture and overheard his conversation with Krystal. He fully expects Batman to jump him on his next patrol and give him a lecture.

When he comments that to Jason, he gets a confused look in response.

“You didn’t get a lecture? Bruce was the one that told me first. I had to hear about being careless for 20 minutes before I got home and could take off my comm.”

Tim frowns in confusion. Bruce had talked to him once or twice after the news got out and he didn’t comment anything on it.

“That’s Batman’s psychological profiling,” someone suggests.

Tim almost jumps out of his skin when Steph casually walks into the living room with a bowl of chips.

“What are you doing here? And are those my clothes?”

Steph shrugs in the sweater that clearly doesn’t belong to her. “Jason and I are doing movie night.”

“Movie night,” Jason mocks. “She’s been here for the past two days. Did you seriously not notice, Tim?”

Tim’s jaw drops.

Steph sighs and her expression turns guilty. “Fine. My mom is out of town for the week and Jason is a better cook than I am. Is it a crime to bum off your ex-boyfriend and his bizarrely talented in the kitchen brother?”

Before Tim can say anything, Jason interrupts: “What were you saying about Batman, Steph?”

She heads to the couch and starts looking for the remote, her feet propped on the coffee table. “B knows Jay will just shrug it off and deal with the consequences, hence the need of a lecture. If he annoys Jason, he’ll stop and reflect on it, even if out of rage. He knows Tim’s already overthinking and working his butt off to fix it, so he doesn’t want to add any pressure.”

Both Jason and Tim stand in dumbfounded silence. Since when does Steph know Bruce so well?

She raises her gaze when the quietness stretches and quirks an eyebrow at them. “What? Am I wrong?”

“Hm. No. That’s pretty much what we’ve been doing,” Jason admits, if a big begrudgingly. “That’s annoying though.”

Steph simply makes a dismissive gesture and pats the sit beside her. “Tim, you need a break. Wanna join us?”

Tim hesitates. On one hand, the fact that Bruce trusts him that much is a tad touching… and knowing it makes him feel he has to solve this as soon as possible. On another… it’s kind of annoying that Bruce knows him so well and yet doesn’t think about offering any assistance. Tim is not stubborn enough to refuse a helping hand when he’s on a pinch.

“You’re not going to solve anything if you’re hallucinating from sleep deprivation, Timbers,” Jason points. “Besides we’re watching Avatar.”

“Fine,” Tim says.

If for nothing else, just to prove to Bruce that he’s not an overworker and he can slack off in the absence of a parental figure.

Tim falls asleep in the middle of the second episode. Steph and Jason vow to take him to bed once they’re sure he’s completely out, but they only last until the end of the first season. The three sleep soundly on the couch for good eight hours and regret dearly when they wake up with necks too sore to fight crime for at least a day.

Consequences. They always come.

Almost a week goes by in which the rumors are but an annoyance to Jason and a source of stress to Tim - but almost anything can stress Tim if he tries hard enough, so that’s not saying anything. Jason is still staying at Tim’s, but he’s considering going back to his own place when they go for three days with no new article and nothing unusual has happened.

Until it does.

It’ a rainy night Tim is going over reports for the next WE meeting when he hears a noise coming from the balcony. His stomach gives a familiar twist when he recognizes Batgirl hunched over the weight of one Red Hood.

He rushes to her aid, already feeling nauseous. There’s no blood in sight but whatever happened must be serious if Jason is willing to let Batgirl give him a piggyback ride. Tim lets them drip water all over the floor and, in his panic, has half a mind to appreciate that Batgirl’s boots have enough traction that she doesn’t slip.

“What on Earth…”

“The most ridiculous thing,” Steph bables as she and Tim drag a very dizzy Jason to the couch. She then starts ranting so fast Bart Allen would be proud. “He was doing his thing as usual, but some of his people turned on him and there was an ambush and so many flipping people against one poor Hood and good god that guy shot his helmet at point-blank which, damn , that was so stupid, of course the freaking helmet is bullet proof, it just ricocheted and…”

“Steph, calm down,” Tim interrupts. “Jason, can you report?”

When he gingerly attempts to take off his helmet, Steph takes over and undoes the safety measures before carefully removing it. There is a dent on the back part where he had been presumably shot.

“Hm,” Jason grunts, squinting even behind his domino mask. “Ambush. Shot. Concussion. Very concussion. Ankle hurts? Prolly not broken, tho. Also stabbed?”

Tim nods. “Steph, get the medical supplies. Where’s the stab wound, Jay?”

Jason points to his thigh and there is an improvised bandage keeping him from losing too much blood. Considering how well done it is, Tim figures it’s Steph’s work. He nods and starts checking his brother’s vitals and making sure there aren’t other serious wounds.

When she comes back with the supplies Tim needs, Steph has her cowl down and a somber expression. She turns off the lights for Jason’s sake, the only source of light left on being the lamp near where Tim is already ripping off a piece of Jason’s pants to have better access to his wound. Steph sits by Jason’s side and grabs his hand, much to Tim’s surprise. He’s too busy taking care of the stab wound to ask, but he doesn’t have to. Steph breaks the silence:

“I’m so sorry, Jason.”

Jason gives her a confused look. “You saved my ass?”

“Yes, but…” Steph sighs and turns to Tim. “Babs is with the Birds of Prey tonight, so I was on my own. I was messing around with my comm frequency when I accidentally got into Jason’s. I heard the mess and it sounded like he was in trouble so I panicked. I went to get him and… Well, if there was any doubt that he’s working with the Bats, there isn’t now. It was too obvious that I was protecting him.”

Jason squeezes her hand. “Hm. Pigs.”

“Right. Then the police arrived and instead of leaving right away I stopped to make sure Jason wasn’t bleeding to death. More than a few cops saw me patching him up.”

Tim sighs. Well, shit.

“It’s not your fault, Steph,” Tim says. “I mean… he literally wears a bat on his chest. People were bound to find out it isn’t just to stick it to Batman.”

“Is too,” Jason mumbles.

Tim ignores him. “The situation isn’t ideal, but we all prefer people knowing Red Hood is associated with the Bats than him being dead.”

“I died before.”

“We know, Jay.”

“Do not recommend.”

“We know, Jay.”

Steph fidgets a bit, still looking guilty, but ultimately nods. Tim is about to start stitching Jason’s wound closed when she says: “There’s more. You, hm, you know Renee Montoya?”

“The one valid pig,” Jason says. “I like her.”

“She was there. She helped a ton keep the other cops away from us before we could escape,” Steph says. “I think she wanted to check on Jason and…”

Tim stops moving. He knows Montoya, worked with her before and she’s a nice woman. That being said, she doesn’t have any connections to Hood. Why would she… Oh. The gay rumors. Damn wlw/mlm solidarity.

“What happened?” Tim asks, already fearing the worst.

“Hmmm, we’ll tell you, but I’m concussed, so you have to promise you won’t be mad.”

“Jason.”

Jason sighs. “Well. She asked about our relationship and… Hm. I might have told her we’re brothers.”

Tim stares at them. Steph is cringing and Jason is too out of it to care. At this point… Tim starts laughing, making the other two - even the concussed one - frown in worry.

“Aw, man,” Tim says between chuckles. “What the fuck, am I right? I’m too old for this. Who cares? Not me! Fuck it. Fuckety fuck fucky-fuck.”

“I think we broke him,” Steph whispers even as Tim resumes stitching his brother.

They went from not-sure-if-real to a freaking cop knowing about their family in the span of a week. Tomorrow #TimDrakeIsRedRobin could be trending on Twitter and Tim wouldn’t care. Not anymore. Let them come.Literally everyone in his friend circle is a vigilante, a hero or a criminal at this point, he doesn’t even care about endangering anyone.

It takes actually two days for it to hit the news. He’s alone in his office when Tam texts him a link to Gotham Gazette online. Judging by the lack of other words, Tim figures she’s cutting ties with him again.

The newest article has no actual pictures, but a sketch of Red Hood standing with his guns pointed at the viewer and Red Robin standing behind him, his face only partially turned. The thing looks more like superhero fanart than an official sketch, but that never stopped Vicki Vale before.

VIGILANTE FAMILY? by Vicki Vale

Red Robin, one of Gotham’s many masked vigilantes, was cause of intrigue recently. Many people noticed the hero doing his work around Red Hood’s territory, something not even Batman dares on the regular. Speculation turned into a craze of theories when both red-themed vigilantes were caught sitting on a roof sharing a meal from Batburger and many thought perhaps there was more than your regular vigilante team up.

Turns out the hero and the mob boss aren’t lovers, against popular belief. When questioned about the nature of their relationship, Red Hood snapped and confirmed one of the less popular theories: the two men are, in fact, related. “Red is right and he should say it,” said Red Hood to a bewildered policewoman. “Of course he’d say it’s [REDACTED] gross, he’s my little brother.” When asked about the conversation overheard by our reporter, the policewoman in question refused to give any more details and requested to remain anonymous.

It’s hard to be sure how such development came to be. The Red Hood has been active in Gotham for years as a mob boss and, more recently, a vigilante and ally to Gotham’s bats. While Red Robin is a newer vigilante, could it be that he was trained by the Red Hood? And how do the two brothers fit with Gotham’s oldest vigilantes? Unlike his older counterpart, Red Robin has been often spotted working side-by-side with the likes of Batgirl and Robin, making some question whether Red Robin is distancing himself from his criminal brother. However, sources spotted Hood being aided by Batgirl more recently. Could it be that his former sidekick is bringing Red Hood closer to the side of justice? More on the Red Twins as the story develops.

THE BIRDNEST

spoiler alert: RED TWINS

WonderWing: R E D T W I N S

send me a Signal: ~ * R E D T W I N S * ~

in the hood: uhhhh my bad?

yumm: dis is great

yumm: now im hoods stranged sidekick

yumm: i fucking hate u jason.

in the hood: hey, if you didn't want to be my sidekick you should've picked another color

yumm: screw u u dont own the color red

in the hood: I was born first

yumm: u died first 2

WonderWing: Tim!

spoiler alert: oof

send me a Signal: wow Tim that was too far

in the hood: I’ve never been prouder to be your brother I taught you so well Timmy

send me a Signal: … I stand corrected. I sometimes forget everyone in this family is clinically insane

“Hey Tim. There is discourse about you and Jason now.”

Tim lets out a whimper.

“So apparently some people still ship you two. But those people are being cancelled because shipping incest is problematic.”

“Steph, are you planning on going home? I noticed you took one of my drawers.”

“There’s fanart of you two.”

“I don’t want to see it. That'll scar me for life."

“I’m DMing it to you. By the way there is civilian Red Robin fanart and for some reason they made you blonde.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, I guess it’s more fun to ship people with different hair colors. Should we dye your hair?”

“Why.”

“That way when you finally hook up with Co-”

“Finish that sentence and I kick you out of this apartment for good.”

With the cat out of the bag, they start doing different damage control.

Red Hood is now openly working with the Bats, so Steph and Cass dismantle Hood’s former safehouses around Gotham which mostly means getting Jason’s books and bringing them to Tim’s place. Jason suggests the places should be converted into something useful for the neighborhood, such as libraries or a community center of sorts, so Tim starts working on what needs to be done by WE to make that reality. Tim also makes sure Bruce pretends not to know Jason is using a lot of money illegally acquired to getting himself new hideouts.

They dance around the topic a lot and nothing is really said until Steph brings it up. Steph, whose mother returned days ago. Steph, that definitely doesn’t want Jason to leave, because apparently she suddenly has a new favorite ex-Robin. Steph, that is currently eating homemade waffles in Tim’s kitchen, even though Tim is 83% sure she didn’t sleep over last night.

“Why doesn’t Jason just moves in?” she asks.

When neither boy replies immediately, she continues:

“I mean, it’s more practical, isn’t it? Tim’s place is already secure, he has a hero hideout downstairs and you two already work together all the damn time. Tim’s office can be converted into a room for Jason, because, let’s face it, I spend most of my free time here and Tim never uses it. I once saw him take his laptop with him to the bathroom and then return to the kitchen table instead of using the office. We wouldn’t even have to take the shelves, because Jason would fill them.”

They exchange a look.

“You know, she’s right,” Tim says. He shrugs like it’s no big deal, really.

He isn’t nervous at all while Jason stands there, his expression unreadable. It’s not like he enjoys way too much having his brother around and got way too comfortable with having a roommate and a half (if you count Steph) on the past weeks. Tim doesn’t care, he’s cool like that.

“I mean. I guess having you as a roommate beats living alone,” Jason finally says.

Tim fails to hide his grin. “We can start working in turning the office into a room this weekend.”

Jason smiles back and messes his hair.

Tim’s first theory is that Steph wants Jason off the couch so she has an official place to sleep, because apparently Jason’s cooking is that good.

His second theory is that she noticed how happy Tim is to finally share a house with family. The Wayne Manor had been home for a while, sure, but despite Alfred’s best efforts the place wasn’t the coziest. It wasn’t the same as sharing an apartment with a brother, bickering about sharing chores and openly discussing their night jobs before shifting the conversation to a video game they want to buy. Sharing actual meals and making sure one another wouldn’t end up dead in a ditch.

Tim decides to stick with his first theory, after all it’s easier for Steph to make Red Twins jokes if Jason and Tim are under the same roof.

Even without new gossip, the idea of vigilante brothers is too interesting for the general public to let go. Tim and Jason start acting mostly in the shadows and having no interaction with civilians at all and they’re still the topic of Gotham’s variety shows and online discussions from time to time.

Because they don’t slip again, Bruce has yet to bring up the subject with Tim, but the mystery remains. Who listened to all those conversations and how? Tim keeps expecting the other shoe to drop, to get a message demanding ransom for their secret identities, something, anything , but nothing happens. Nothing freaking happens and he’s never been this frustrated.

That is, until, it happens. The ultimate betrayal.

Dick’s next visit coincides with the time Cass is over for the week. Because Bruce is secretly a sap in the wrongest way, he suggests they all go patrolling together. Such great family time.

Despite their initial protests, they must all be the same kind of freak, because they all agree. They split up soon to cover more ground, but keep their comms on so it still feels they’re all in a big menacing group.

Red Robin is somewhere near the crime alley when Nightwing announces he noticed some of Two Face’s goons getting into a building. He checks his wrist pad for their locations and notices Nightwing isn’t that far from where he is. The next closest person is Red Hood.

“I’ll take care of it,” Nightwing says over the comms.

“Negative. Two Face himself might be there,” Batman intervenes. “Wait for backup. The Red Twins--” And he stops himself as though realizing what he’s saying.

“Batman!?” Red Robin gasps in a betrayed voice.

Nightwing is already having a laughter fit over the comms almost drowning the sound of Bruce’s disappointed sigh.

“I’m sorry, Red,” his father says and he even forgets to use Batman’s scary voice. “Nightwing and Batgirl have been saying it so much that-”

“Save it,” Hood groans. “And stop laughing, Jerkwing!”

The worst part is knowing that, even if he solves the mystery, the Red Twins thing is probably going to follow him to his untimely death.

Tim all but lost hope when he gets an email from Barbara. “To my favorite Red Twin” says the subject. He groans, but opens the email, because one does not simply ignore a message from Oracle. Then he almost drops his phone.

Attached there is a grainy picture of a young woman talking to Vicki Vale. The image had certainly been enhanced digitally as it’s probably from a shitty security camera, but you can still see the woman’s face clear as day. She looks like she’s handing Vicki something, her shoulders tense and her expression wary. The body of the message is, most likely, the woman’s personal info. Her name is Lisa Harris. She is 27 years old. She lives somewhat close to Jason’s territory. And, most importantly, Babs added to the end of the message:

The picture is from the night before the Red Twins article ;) Vicki didn’t talk to anyone other than her coworkers and our pal Lisa on that night.

Jason comes out of his room when Tim trips on the coffee table in his hurry to stand. “What’s up?”

Tim hands him the phone. Jason’s eyes grow wide. “I don’t care about subtlety. We’re both going after this chick.”

“Agreed.”

“Should we wait for Steph? She’s gonna be mad that we went when she’s in class.”

“Jason, Steph doesn’t live here.”

“Doesn’t she, though?”

“We’re not waiting for Steph. She’s not involved.”

“Aight, but when she’s bitching I’m gonna say I remembered her and you said no.”

They leave their bikes behind first for stealth sake, but mostly because the place they’re going isn’t that far from their place. Tim shivers at the thought of someone so dangerous living near him. He wonders what kind of information Lisa might have gathered and for how long she’d been watching them. Is she a new enemy? Perhaps a member of the league?

The shitty building she lives in doesn’t suggest that. It’s just another grimy Gotham apartment complex that didn’t age well. The place they’re looking for doesn’t have a balcony, only a useless fire escape so rusty it would probably crumble under any sign of flames. It’s a perfect hiding spot, because nothing suggests a villain lives there. It’s just a building, home to many underpaid bachelors, nothing too suspicious about it.

Red Robin reminds Hood of that before they nod to each other and split. Jason goes into the building with a ton of confidence, for such a big guy trying to go unnoticed. Tim uses his grapple to reach the right window, not trusting that fire escape for even a second.

The window is open and he finds himself looking at a place not that different from the one Jason lived before moving in with Tim. Mismatched furniture of the living suggests whoever lives there didn’t have money for fancy decor or that they don’t mind how the place looks. However, something about the place looks… well, lived in. It doesn’t look like a criminal temporary hideout, but rather someone’s place.

As he hesitates, a woman walks in. The woman of the picture, Lisa Harris. Her long blonde hair had been tied in a knot on top of her head and she’s getting ready for bed, if her oversized T-shirt and pajama pants say anything. She’s holding a bowl of cereal.

She reminds him of Steph and that causes him to hesitate for a second. What if this girl is innocent? Their evidence is circumstantial. Maybe she just happened to talk to Vicki Vale at the wrong time.

That hesitation costs him dearly. The woman appears to feel his eyes burning the back of her head. She glances at the window and their gazes meet.

Crap.

Lisa inhales sharply and drops her cereal bowl. Before he can reassure her of anything, she’s bolting for the door. He pats himself in the back for his backup plan, because just as she opens the door she runs right into Red Hood’s chest. Lisa stumbles backwards, her expression horrified.

“Knock knock?” Hood quips.

She lets out a squeak and guilt makes Tim wince. Once again he opens his mouth to tell her they’re not here to hurt her when she… vanishes.

She simply disappears right in front of their eyes.

“Shit, she’s a meta,” Hood hisses.

Red Robin’s thoughts fly a thousand miles per hour, finally making the conexions he stupidly missed for so long. Of freaking course. He was so used to dealing with a bunch of idiots in colorful costumes and assassins and whatnot he hadn’t taken in consideration that ninjas aren’t the only exceptional enemies they face. And if his theory is correct.

“She’s still here,” he says. “If I’m right, she can turn invisible. That’s how she’s been listening to private conversations.”

A soft gasp follows his statement and Hood is moving almost as fast as Red Robin’s insights. An invisible woman is still solid and her clumsy footsteps are still audible, so on the moment that follows Jason seems to embrace air.

“No!” She cries out, flashing in and out of sight for a few seconds.

“Careful,” Red Robin warns.

Hood is wearing his helmet, but Tim knows him well enough to know his brother is glaring at him as if saying duh?

Lisa tries to stomp on Hood’s feet, she squirms and grunts, but he doesn't budge. Apparently invisibility is her only power and she looks terrified.

“It’s okay!” Red Robin hurries to say. “We’re not going to hurt you!”

She turns her frantic gaze to him. Her brown eyes suddenly become watery.

Shit.

“Hood, let her go,” Red Robin says.

“Seriously?”

“Yes. You’re not going to try to escape again, are you, Lisa? We just want to ask a few questions.”

He wishes they had waited for Steph.

Lisa hesitates, paralysed, but slowly nods. Her eyes never leave Red Robin once their gazes met, not even to check whether Hood is going to let her go or not.

“Hood,” he calls again.

Groaning something about being too trusting, Jason lets her go. He is gentle about it, too, making sure to let her feet touch the floor carefully instead of simply dropping her. Regardless, as soon as she’s left to stand on her own legs, her knees give in and she drops on the floor. At that, Tim can tell even Jason is hiding guilt behind his helmet.

He shakes his head to regain focus and crouches in front of the woman. If at this point they just apologize and leave, they’ll have traumatizes this poor woman for nothing.

“Lisa Harris,” he starts. “That’s your name, right?”

She trembles when he says her name and that should have been the first red flag. He blames it on the stressful situation and moves on.

“I’m sorry for startling you,” he says. He keeps his expression empty, even if he again can tell Jason is cringing at the understatement. “No one here is going to hurt you. We just want some answers. Is that alright?”

Her hands are balled tightly on her lap as though she’s making a lot of effort not to move them - perhaps to punch them, defend herself? But again she doesn’t look prone to start a fight.

“You’re him,” she whispers, her voice heavy with… something. It almost sounds like affection. “You’re really the Red Robin. In my room.”

That red flag is harder to ignore. He is about to check for other shock symptoms when Hood calls.

“Hmm… Red? Are you seeing that?”

He follows his brother’s gaze… and his chin drops. On the wall opposite to the door hangs a giant corkboard. On the corkboard, held by black and red tacks there are dozens of Red Robin pictures. Some blurry, some taken from so far that you can barely be sure it’s really Red Robin or not, the infamous picture of the thumb war (demon horns had been disturbingly scribbled on Jason on that one) and… He doesn’t have words.

“You’re my hero!” Lisa claims.

“Is he? I couldn’t tell,” Hood says.

Red Robin punches his knee, which is all he can reach from where he is, and turns his attention to the woman in front of him.

“Lisa, for how long have you been following me?”

“Since you saved me,” she says. “Well… Hm. You didn’t save me. But you stopped a heist at the Central Bank a couple of months ago and I was there. I could've died without you.”

Aw, crap on a stick.

“Do you… do you know who I am?”

“You’re Red Robin,” she repeats.

“He’s asking about his identity behind the mask.”

The way she glares at Jason doesn’t suggest she had been shaking in fear moments ago. “He’s Red Robin,” she insists. “I don’t need anything else.”

“If you don’t know… how do you have so many…” Hood gestures vaguely at her creepy corkboard.

“I did detective work,” she says and glances at Red Robin as if expecting a pat on the back. “I noticed you always go on patrol on mondays, wednesdays, fridays and saturdays. Then if I wandered around long enough… It was just a matter of hard work and bit of luck, really.”

Damn. Now that Tim thinks about it, the one time he went on patrol spontaneously was also the night Vicki Vale found him by coincidence rather than magically knowing what happened.

“Fuuuuck,” Hood groans. “I told B patrol schedule was a dumb idea!” Then, in a deep growly voice, “ It’s a matter of efficiency Hood, don’t be paranoid. Who’s paranoid now, Batloser?”

“Not the time, Hood.”

“Right. Proceed.”

Red Robin sighs. “Why did you sell my pictures to Vicki Vale?”

At that, Lisa looks suddenly ashamed. “I.. I’m sorry. I thought… I thought you were involved with him and I panicked. I thought… I thought seeing what it would do to your reputation would make you see that he’s not good enough for you.”

“Rude.”

“Hood.”

“What? She is.”

“I was trying to learn more about him, you know? I was. When I found out he was your brother, I realized you had no option, right? Family is family. I even told the news again to clean your record.”

So he had a stalker. A stalker concerned about his love life, no less, that’s… great. Just great. Of all the scenarios he considered they’d have to face, this is not one of them. Before he decides what to do, however, Lisa speaks up again.

“You sound so… nice.”

Tim stares at her in confusion, unsure whether to thank her or not. Regardless, she didn’t sound like she was complimenting him.

“I mean… aren’t I supposed to be?”

“No! I mean… you’re… you’re dark and brooding and serious and you don’t waste time with civilians unless forced…” She frowns and Tim figures she’s thinking about the night with the strippers. “You’re… the night.”

Jason snorts. Tim punches his knee again. “Lisa, I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of Batman, not me.”

Her expression twists in such fury both vigilantes prepare to restrain her, but instead of directing her anger at them, Lisa scoffs.

“Don’t get me started on Batman! All that crap about being mysterious and working alone? Then he joins the freaking Justice League? Just… Batman, in the middle of a bunch of rainbow wearing clowns. And then… all those freaking kids. Why does he have so many kids?”

“Lady, we ask ourselves that everyday,” Tim admits.

Lisa is wearing the same expression Krystal had when Red Robin denied his relationship with Hood.

“I’m sorry, Lisa, I’m grateful that you admire me, but you can’t keep following me like this.”

Her eyes teary again, Lisa swallows dry. “Clearly, if you’re sorry about it.”

They can’t exactly take her to Arkham for taking pictures. Tim feels less bad about the whole thing when the woman stands and starts telling them in a very loud voice to get the hell out of her house.

“Fine,” Jason says, heading to the corkboard. “But I’m taking this.”

“Take it,” she shouts. “I don’t need it anymore. You’re just like Batman!”

And that’s how Red Hood and Red Robin find themselves standing in the middle of a dusty hallway, Hood with a conspiracy board under his arm.

Well, that happened.

In the end, Steph was furious about them going to the stalker’s house by themselves, but there was not a lot she could do except doodle on every picture of the stalker board.

There must be something very wrong with their sense of humor, because their text group becomes a mess of jokes about the stalker Robin being stalked. At that Tim has no problem exercising Jason’s lessons in holding grudges and refuses to help them with any of their cases unless they stop it. The thing is that all of them find the whole thing hilarious.

All of them except Duke.

“Give it a while,” Tim tells him. “You’re the most recent acquisition to the family. In due time your idea of funny will be just as warped as ours.”

“Hm. When was the last time you slept, Timmy?” Duke asks.

“Tuesday.”

“Today is Tuesday.”

“Hahahaha yeah.”

“... Jaaaaasooon! Come over here! Tim is going into The Ring territory! Do something about it!”

Bruce doesn’t find it funny either. He isn’t happy that there’s a deranged meta he didn’t know about, but Tim thinks that was the least surprising part of the whole ordeal. He reckons a lot of metas doesn’t want to be a hero or a villain, they’re just regular people that live regular lives and happened to win in the metagene lottery.

Or… well. In Lisa’s case, not so regular.

And that’s why upon hearing the story for the first time, Bruce completely freaks out. He starts considering possibilities from scaring the woman as Batman - “That’s a terrible idea, dad, you heard she likes that shit,” says Dick over facetime - or having her arrested - “Father, having bad taste in men is hardly a crime. She has yet to do anything to harm Timothy” Damian helpfully reminds him - and finally to fill out a restraining order - “For who, Karen?” Jason snaps. “Red Robin? Or you want to walk into that nut job and tell her she’s not allowed near Tim Drake-Wayne?”

Long story short, it’s chaos. Tim has had enough of a crazy night, so he sits back near the training area of the cave and sips the tea Alfred made him. Bruce is doing Tim’s stressed out circuit, pacing back and forth around the cave while his children follow him - Damian is holding the phone higher than his head so Dick can talk to Bruce at eye level - and they try to talk him out of doing anything stupid.

Most of them, anyway. It looks like Duke is definitely looking into the possibility of a restraining order.

Cass detaches herself from the mess and heads towards Tim. She looks calm, as Cass always does, and some of that calm transfers to him. When she takes a seat by his side, he smiles at her.

“Okay?” she asks.

Tim shrugs. “Weirded out, mostly. I’ll be fine.”

She points at her then signs Tim’s house as a question. She’s asking him if he wants her to come over.

While Cass is one hell of a bodyguard, Tim thinks of Steph, who’s most definitely playing with his video games back at home, and of Jason, whose schedule mostly matches Tim’s, hence he is, more often than not, at one shout of distance. Tim can’t think of any place that feels safer than his home right now.

“I’m fine. Jay and Steph are taking care of me. I’ll just have to be twice as careful during patrol,” he says.

Cass nods, satisfied. She gives him a forehead kiss and leans against his side. The two of them watch their family yell at each other for the next ten minutes, matching serene smiles on their faces.

Bruce settles for keeping Lisa under occasional watch.

Barbara stalks her online and finds that Lisa has left a Red Robin fanclub (Tim did not know those existed) and closed all of her threads on the Red Robin subreddit (Tim knew about those, but kept his distance), making it seem that learning that Red Robin is just a polite-ish kid really killed her love.

Bruce says he’ll keep tabs on her because he know she’s a meta, it’s not like he’s being overprotective, he totally knows Tim can take care of himself, really.

Other than that, Bruce is way too happy about Jason’s new living arrangement. He even almost smiles.

Tim… is fine. The whole thing is creepy, for sure, but he finds out that his siblings making so many jokes about it makes it easier to handle. Yay for their unhealthy coping mechanisms.

He doesn’t think he will ever be okay with media, though. It’s annoying enough that he has to deal with reporters as Tim Drake-Wayne, he definitely doesn’t need the attention as Red Robin.

Luckily for him, his siblings help him with that too. One time he’s wrapping a gang bust with Nightwing when a reporter comes running towards them, begging for a few answers. Red Robin cringes inwardly realizing there are no close buildings to use his grapple, but before he can say anything, Nightwing squeezes his shoulder.

“Go, Timmy. I’ve got this.”

Tim smile. “Thanks, Dick.”

And he leaves the silent and swift way only a Bat can do.

Things are great. As great as they can be in Gotham, at least. Tim wakes up at 9am - an early time for a vigilante, but he got at least 5 hours of sleep, so that’s something - and heads to the kitchen. He finds Steph (who still swears she doesn’t live with them) and Jason bickering over pancakes they’re making. Smiling to himself, Tim mumbles a good morning and starts washing the dirty dishes from last night.

The peaceful morning is interrupted by Steph’s phone buzzing. She use a paper towel to clean her hands before checking it and…

“Uh… Timbers?” she calls.

He freezes, the pan he’s washing suddenly forgotten. “What now?”

Steph is trembling with contained laughter when she hands him the phone. Duke just sent her a link to a news article. Tim clicks and finds himself staring at the headline RIVALRY BETWEEN HEROES? followed by a clear picture of Nightwing and a blurry shot of Red Robin.

The article follows:

After dealing with an infamous gang of contrabandists that operated near Gotham’s harbor, Nightwing and Red Robin went their separate ways without much courtesy. Despite the short collab, it appears that Red Robin didn’t appreciate Nighwing’s help, his farewell words being a sarcastic “thanks” followed by calling Bludhaven’s hero a “dick”.

Tim raises his eyes to the other two. Steph is hiding her face into the crook of Jason’s neck, her shoulders still trembling a bit. Having read the article over Steph’s shoulder, Jason is biting his lip.

Tim deadpans: “This is the funniest shit that ever happened to me.”

The three of them explode in laughter and they cackle for a good minute, until the three of them are breathless and their cheeks hurt.

“I-I want to print that and frame it,” Steph manages between giggles. “Let’s hang it on the living room.”

“Good… ahaha… Good work, Timbers,” Jason says, smiling wide. “For that, you can have extra pancakes.”

Tim is still grinning when he goes back to his dish duty. Maybe being under the media attention isn't so bad after all.

#batfam #red robin #tim drake #jason todd #red hood #stephanie brown #red bros #poteto writing #lmao here take this

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bluethursday · 5 years

Text

Friendly Neighbourhood Robin

The Villains on occasion, do Tim a favour or two. The Batfam is a bit confused. This is a prompt-fill for Yufei (you are the best) *smiles*.

Tim stands crouched on a streetlamp, perching himself like a cat, the air is still and nothing is breathing tonight. He can see a figure moving in the dark, pouncing from rooftop to rooftop.

“Well, well, well, Baby Bat,” calls out Selene Kyle, holding the goods from a heist around her neck in the form of a diamond necklace. It is very cat burglar cliche if Tim doesn’t say so himself.

Blinking down at Catwoman, Tim gives her a wave. This close, he can see her holding a brown paper bag with grease stains on the bottom.

“I brought you…breakfast?” She offers, waving the baggie. Unsure of what the meal should be called.

Tim shouldn’t but he knows Selena well enough to trust the food, he’s hungry and he’s been out all night on patrol. Shimmying down the pole he swings himself down to grab the baggie, and stand beside the nice lady who brought him food.

Opening the bag Tim finds that he is in possession of what looks like a double cheeseburger and fries from one of the slummiest, yet most delicious joints in Gotham. It was shut down twice for health and safety violations.

Grinning up at Selena he says, “Thanks, Catwoman.”

Ruffling his hair Selena replies, “No worries kiddo, you helped me out in a tight spot at the Wayne party, it was the least I could do.”

Tim had served as an excellent distraction for Miss Kyle as she ran away fast as she could from one of the Gotham city council members who was convinced he could…solicit…her services. Tim dropped a wine glass on his crotch, entirely by accident of course. He was really, very sorry.

…

Joker stands at attention monologuing on about something to do with gas, and schoolchildren and killing, as Damian and Tim sit bound to each other by meters of sail rope. They’re back to back and not pleased with where they currently are in life.

Somewhere in his monologue Joker kicks a random floor knife backwards towards the bound heroes, and gives Tim a pointed look and a cough, before going on to say, “Batsy one and two will never get out of here alive, by the time Batman comes, I’ll have you dead…two little birdies in the garden.”

Which would ordinarily be very disturbing if he had’t just helped them out. They were wrapped up in rope like the world’s worst Christmas present. He gave them a knife. Ergo, he was giving them an exit plan. He also conveniently left the room he had no reason to leave while loudly exclaiming that he’d be gone for exactly thirty minutes to check on the other hostages.

It was such bad acting it almost felt like a trap. Tim pulled the knife close to his body with his feet, grabbed it and cut them free.

“It’s a trap.” Damian hissed.

Tim rolled his eyes, not that anyone could see the motion under the domino. “It could be, but either way we’re free. Let’s contact B. We’ll deal with the maybe-a-trap on the way.”

About two weeks ago, Tim had rolled Joker into a dumpster to hide him from some of Black Mask’s thugs, He didn’t think the clown was awake at the time, he also never expected repayment for his actions. But here he was, not dead, witnessing a cheesy looney tunes style villain monologue from one of the creepiest clowns in Gotham. It was…not reassuring but it was nice be…thanked…Tim guessed? Not that, not killing someone was usually a thank you, but in this case, Tim would take it.

“Come on Demon Bird, stop stalling,” Tim continued, grabbing Damian by the hand before repelling out the window.

…

Jay gaped in shock as he watched Slade give Tim a bo staff. Just give it to him. On a rooftop. It even had a little blue bow on it. It was a gift.

Pulling out a gun, after recovering from the shock, Jason pointed it at Slade and screamed, “What the fuck do you think, you’re doing Slade?”

Slade, creepy motherfucker that he was, stroked Tim’s cheek, as he purred out, “I’m leaving young Timothy a gift.”

Okay. Ew. “Back away from the little boy Deathstroke.”

“Relax, Jason. I’ll be out of your hair in a moment, though if you do pull that trigger you’ll find that you’ll be short one Red Robin.”

Who hit on someone, and then used that same person as a hostage? Jason kept the gun trained on Slade’s face.

He watched the assassin stroke Tim’s cheek one more time before running off. Tim, that moron turned to Jason, and waved the shiny new bo.

“Look,” he said. “I’ve got a new staff. Isn’t that nice?”

No. No that was not nice. Jason grabbed the thing and spat out, “We’re getting this tested, why the fuck is that creep even giving you things anyway in the first place?”

Tim kicked him in the shin, “It’s my staff. He’s just being nice.”

Jason raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “He’s Deathstroke he doesn’t do nice.”

Tim grumbled the entire way home, and was far too smug when the bo turned out clean. He helped out Rose the other day. He prevented her from getting caught by the police during an unexpected ambush, but throwing her out a window and into a tree. Slade was honestly just being nice. But it was funny to watch Jason panic so Tim was going to keep that information from him.

…

“Tim,” Batman started. “It has come to my attention that some of the villains are being…lenient towards you.”

That wasn’t an actual question so Tim waited.

“Do you have any idea why?” Bruce asked.

“Nope.” Tim replied. He lied. He knew exactly why. He was being a good samaritan. It’s not like the others didn’t help people get their penguins out of trees, or rescue lost cats, or help mentally unstable men find their things. It was just that Tim had the luck of running into villains pretty often, and those villains paid him back. Sometimes in increasingly questionable ways, but who was Tim to turn down a gift, even if that gift were a dead rat.

They hit lighter, created openings for him to escape, and sometimes gave him food. The highlight of his week was when Joker of all villains, tried to give him food, that wasn’t even poisoned. The muffin had a bite taken out of it, but it wasn’t poisoned, and if it was diseased Tim hadn’t noticed yet. They split it. J was cool when he wasn’t trying to kill everyone around him. Or having a mental breakdown.

Maybe if the Bats were nicer, they too would get half eaten muffins but until that point, Tim saw no need to enlighten them.

Bruce glared at him, and returned to his information map as though it would give him the answer Tim wouldn’t.

Smiling Tim turned, and left. He wondered if Ivy was growing apples again, he was craving some and she’d let him pick stuff in her garden if he helped prune the plants. Best grocery store on town.

…

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purge-that-urge-rhackathon · 4 years

Text

Touchy

Commission prompt: Jackothy (though if you want to add Rhys I won’t complain 👀): After having his face scarred, Jack realizes the only way he can see and feel his own face again is if he goes to see Tim. The other doppelgängers use tech which isn’t the same, who knows what they look like underneath? And Tim is... oddly ok with that (not at first tho; Jack was annoying. Still is but it’s oddly charming now) He spent his whole life being overlooked, and Jack focused solely on him is intense... basically Timtam gets a little too heated when Jack looks at and touches his face. Tim thirsts.

This is the first part of the commission :D Subsequent parts on my ao3 here. My masterlist archive of bullshit i write can be found linked at the top of the blog or here.

Handsome Jack was many things.

A hero, in short, opener of vaults and defeater of monsters, and CEO of the most powerful company in the galaxy.

And the price of that power had been his face.

Sure, Jack tried to buy into his own propaganda as much as he expected his employees to, but he couldn’t really lie to himself, even if he desperately wanted to. The ironic fact that he’d fashioned himself a mask of his own face wasn’t lost on him, but denial was a powerful thing.

He was scarred, disfigured with an injury which refused any kind of correction be it medical, scientific, or bordering on alien technology. The mask had been the logical next-step to try to regain some semblance of what he’d lost, and for a time, the power and re-branding that came with seizing an empire for his own was a good distraction.

He’d tried. Oh how he’d tried.

Every day that he looked in the mirror, mask or no, it bothered him just a little bit more until he couldn’t just ignore it. The mask began to overwrite his memories of his true features, making him panic in need of removal, only to have his ruined, panicked face stare back at him from the bathroom mirror.

The mask functioned as his face, but it just wasn’t. And without it, he still didn’t look like himself; not as he truly remembered. The damage his face had sustained did more than just wound his vanity. The deep fissure of old scar tissue bothered him sometimes if he stubbornly left the mask on for too long, and without that technologically-superior second-skin, he was almost totally blind in his left eye. Forgetting his face made him fear he was forgetting himself, and Handsome Jack the CEO of Hyperion wasn’t afraid of anything.

The logical next-step to quell the fear of ignominy was quite clear.

“Rhysie?” Jack spoke up, startling his personal assistant from whatever he’d been doing at his desk as he looked at the younger man. “Call up Timothy for me, would ya kitten? It’s about time for a quality-check. Make sure he’s still on-brand. And by on-brand, I mean me. Heh, get it? Because he’s me; Mr. Hyperion.”

Rhys gave Jack a depreciating moue. “If you’re going to say something about him being on you, or you being on me, or vice-versa, don’t bother. You’ve made that joke before,” Rhys snarked back, the snort Jack gave making the PA grin despite himself. “Get some new material, first.”

“Look at you, thinkin’ you’ve got me figured out,” Jack teased. “What color underwear am I wearing today, cupcake?”

“I’m surprised you even know about underwear, Jack.”

Two for two. It made the CEO genuinely grin.

Rhys was a good little assistant. Even if his creepy fanboy-gazes had eventually stopped after a few months of working for him, he still blushed when Jack brazenly flirted with him, though the older man never took it too far. Rhys was efficient, and despite Jack’s teasing, he did know the older man better than any past secretary or other idiot that couldn’t carry out Jack’s iron will the way he wanted.

Jack had gone through… a lot of personal assistants. The ones that had nervous breakdowns were one thing. The incompetant ones he certainly didn’t miss, but a couple had at least been amusing until Jack had had to airlock them.

And then came Rhys. The younger man wasn’t just good at his job, but he was one of a very few people to act normal around the older man despite his obvious hero-worship; to tease him back and roll his eyes at Jack’s too-sweet coffee-orders, and laugh at his dirty jokes, or come right back with ones to challenge them.

Jack knew it said a lot about him that he enjoyed an (ex)-creepy fanboy as the one to handle the personal details of his day, but he also felt just a little bolstered by the fact that Rhys still flushed pink sometimes over some of his more creative innuendos, despite the back-talk and rolled eyes. It reminded him that even after years of wearing the mask-- of no one seeing his true face- that he could still make a pretty, leggy PA blush. Despite the fact his face wasn’t exactly a face.

He was insecure. He was vain.

He knew he was vain, but the choice to rebrand himself after the branding-incident was wrought from insecurity above anything else, and he lied to himself about that as well. He changed his name to reflect what he wanted to believe: Handsome Jack. That he came into this world good-looking-- and so help him god- he wouldn’t let current-circumstances let anyone forget that fact.

Reminding himself, however, was where Tim came in.

“Tim is still on Elpis finishing that… thing,” Rhys informed with a slight, distasteful raise of his pouty lips. “When did you want me to set it up?”

“That thing,” Jack began, ignoring Rhys’ question to grin a little, “is going to make me even more stinkin’ rich than I already am, kiddo.” Rhys gave him a further-displeased look. “Oh come on, you liked the idea of eternal youth.”

“Spreading some Shuggurath-derived wrinkle cream on your face isn’t the same thing as eternal youth, Jack.”

The CEO didn’t miss a beat, and didn’t allow himself to dwell on the subtext Rhys didn’t even know he was on to. “It won’t just be the face, kitten. My scientists are gonna make it work on everything.” The regenerative-properties the creatures had were promising, according to the eggheads in R&D. Jack shot him a smirk. “Balls, too.”

“Gross.”

“What, you some too-good-for-nice-smooth-balls type?” Jack gave an exaggerated look over his desk. “You?”

Rhys put his face in his flesh hand. “I’m more disturbed by the fact you’ve got Tim out there milking them, Jack.”

“I was just being nice saying that.” Jack’s grin grew. “He’s not milking them for the compound so much as--”

“Aaaaand file that under things I definitely do not need to know about before lunch,” Rhys quickly interrupted, ignoring the older man’s grin and murmuring about ‘protein’ strands and regenerative ‘slimes’. “When do you want me to have him come up once it’s done?”

Jack knew exactly when he wanted Tim here: after-hours in private once Rhys had already left for the day.

He needed this. He needed it badly and couldn’t hold off any longer.

It had been over a month since Jack’s last ‘quality check’, and while Tim submitted to them without issue, too many not-between-missions-checks might raise the double’s suspicions as to what Jack was really doing. Looking at photos of the double were one thing (and good to help him hold out against the fear of losing himself in his mind’s eye), but it wasn’t the same as touching the planes of your ‘own’ face.

Good thing Tim was on a relatively-safe job collecting samples from the otherwise-dangerous creatures; Jack would be able to look and feel to his heart’s content under the guise of genuine quality-control when he knew there wasn’t a threat at all.

“That job’s almost finished though, right?” Jack asked conversationally. “Day after tomorrow? Did Timtams send you an update?”

Rhys’ lips pulled thin. “Yes. And he sent pictures, too.” Pictures Rhys honestly didn’t need to see, though Tim’s comments on each one were funny at least. The one the annoyed-double had sent of himself covered in… Well, Rhys wasn’t sure Shugguraths had entrails, but the caption of ‘Hyperion Beauty Cream coming to a store near you!’ made the image amusing at least.

It was still a gross assignment though.

Jack grinned at Rhys’ sour look. “Heh, neat. Send those to my comm, wouldja sugarplum?”

“If you have nightmares, it’s not my fault,” Rhys warned as he did as Jack asked. “There. Sent. Ew.”

“You could always send me some nicer pictures to give me sweet dreams, Rhysie,” Jack purred, teasing a bit even as his heart rate spiked at his PA’s words. Rhys just rolled his eyes with a little blush and a muttered “buy me dinner first” which made Jack relax a bit through a smirk.

There was no way Rhys could know what was going on in Jack’s head-- his words were coincidence was all, and Jack knew he was getting paranoid again- but the promise of his double’s return from Elpis was a relief that kept his worries carefully contained.

No one knew what was going on in his head. No one knew that Handsome Jack-- most powerful man in the whole goddamn galaxy who put the word ‘handsome’ into his own name- suffered from poor self-image. And no one would, as far as Jack could help it.

Hell, no one would believe that at any rate, either, which Jack was immensely grateful to his PR team about.

He was just tired. Stressed. Seeing Tim would help matters. Feeling him would help a lot more.

The taunting nightmares were keeping him from restful sleep; looking into a dream-mirror to pull off his mask only for nothing to be beneath it but a horrifying blankness, and in the dream (and sometimes still once awake) Jack really couldn’t recall what his face had once looked like. Putting his actual hands on his double would soothe his psyche a great deal, the tactile-sensation further embedding the shape and feel and perfection of Tim’s own face back into Jack’s subconscious.

Rhys set up the meeting, and now all Jack had to do was wait.

It hadn’t been easy to not watch the clock, or to keep his foot from tapping anxiously under his desk days later, but once Rhys had packed up-- asking multiple times if Jack would like him to stay- the CEO was pacing the space behind his big desk waiting for Tim’s return.

Elpis loomed outside the large window, it’s pink glimmer lending an ethereal-quality to Jack’s office as Rhys got the main-lights as he’d left. Only the light on Jack’s desk remained on, the rest of the office bathed in Elpis’ glow. To think he’d once wanted to crack the proto-planet like egg, only for it to be key to his recovery.

The Shuggurath research was extremely promising. That the creatures could generate other creatures-- not that Rathyds were particularly useful themselves; moon-Rakks, Jack called them- lead down some very interesting paths.

Rathyds shared a few qualities with the Shuggaraths that spawned them, but genetically they were different creatures. Shuggaraths bred just like anything else to create more Shuggaraths, but the fact they were capable of creating a second, unique animal held implications which got Jack very excited indeed.

The skin that was scarred by Eridian-technology refused any attempts to change it, while minor nicks and cuts that Jack got while shaving around the thing healed back up just fine. By his own observations (and tests several techs did before he airlocked them for what they saw) his normal skin was fine and unaffected by the depth of the brand, while the scar itself was… different.

Genetically different, but still a part of him.

Jack believed that the weird moon-dwelling animals were key to healing his face. Whatever protein or enzyme or slimey bits that they contained might be able to rewrite the damaged cells and reverse the scarring, or at the very least, minimize it to not need the mask anymore. The ugly, bulbous creatures created much more elegantly-designed animals somehow, and if that was possible, then maybe it could be applied to himself as well.

He could be normal again. Be handsome again, without the necessary moniker.

Until that happened though, Jack had Tim to get by, and he was antsy as ever to see the younger man.

“Did you forget to pay the power bill?”

Jack spun around on his heel, a grin on his face even though he’d been taken by surprise from hopeful, antsy thoughts. “Timmy! There’s my favorite double! Flip ‘em back on, wouldja kiddo?”

Tim rolled his eyes, but he had a smile on his face as he did just that, and crossed the office towards Jack’s desk. His mission had gone well, and he’d brought back more than enough samples to last quite some time. The confidence he felt over it was all over his face; especially from the lack of injury he’d come back with this time. “I think you’re gonna be impressed.”

“That so?” Jack said with a raise of his brow, impatience over wanting to get his hands on the other man’s face kept carefully tramped down. “How’s that gorgeous face, kiddo?”

“I’m more worried about my jacket,” Tim responded with a sour look. There had been… a lot of slime. “Did Rhys show you the pictures?”

“Not the ones I wanted to see,” Jack said with an implicit smirk, forcing himself to walk slowly towards the double as Tim climbed the steps to the dais Jack’s desk was on. His eagerness wasn’t something he wanted to showcase.

“Of Rhys, or of me?” Tim joked right back, grinning at Jack’s surprised bark of laughter.

“Cute, Timtam. Real cute.” Tim smirked unapologetically, and Jack knew well the mischievous look on the double’s face. So Tim was in a playful mood, then. The mission must’ve gone very well indeed. That was beyond excellent. “You feel free to send me whatever pics you feel like, handsome. I’m a big fan of close-ups.” The smile on Jack’s face was genuine, even if he was dying to get his hands on the body double. “Remind me to give you a raise, too.”

“Add that to the extra vacation days you also said you’d give me.”

Jack grinned as they stood before one-another. Tim was giving him a doubtful, accusing tilt of the head, and Jack’s fingers itched so badly to rove over Tim’s face that he didn’t even bother teasing the younger man. “I did say that, didn’t I?” He raised his hands to Tim’s face, the double patiently waiting for Jack to remove the mask himself. It was something the older man insisted upon-- part of the nightmare he badly needed to address- to remove the mask and find no damage beneath. “Echo Rhysie about it. Now let’s see that gorgeous face.”

Jack tried to keep his fingers steady as he reached for the double’s face, and Tim waited far more eagerly than he wanted to appear.

Tim didn’t necessarily care for these ‘brand-checks’ at first. Jack already demanded most of his time, and what little free time he did have, he didn’t want to waste on his boss making sure he still “looked right”.

Pfft, as if Tim wasn’t a professional.

Tim wasn’t exactly vain himself, but he did take pride in his acting skills, and no one was a better Jack than him. That was just a fact. Because there were no other Jacks like him. None who’d undergone extensive plastic surgery, modulator-implants, and actually fought side-by-side with the CEO before he was the CEO. Tim might not have been much pre-surgery, but Jack had seen his potential, and Tim had risen to all expectations. And he was proud of that.

None of the other doubles knew Jack the way Tim did, either, not to mention actually looked like him. The others used tech which was fully reversible. What he did was an art, regardless of his personal feelings on the matter.

So needing to be checked if he was ‘on-brand’ was insulting to his professionalism at first, and annoying at best, even if it was always the same. Jack’s scrutiny had made him uncomfortable, as if Tim could lose everything he’d managed to gain after being overlooked for so long in his life. And Tim hadn’t liked it.

He liked it now.

Jack had nice hands. He’d know. It wasn’t an awful thing to be so casually handled by him, and regardless of how long he’d known Jack now, the intense focus of such a powerful man always got his heart beating just a bit faster.

Jack’s hands were expert in the removal of Tim’s own mask, the CEO undoing the clasps before setting the material down on his desk. His attention came back to Tim, and at that moment the double watched him carefully for the change that would occur in the older man during the reveal.

Jack was… different during these checks, but not necessarily in a bad way.

He always took a moment after the mask was fully removed-- eyes darting about Tim’s face as if to check that everything was still there- before a sort of almost relief settled into the older man’s eyes. And then came Tim’s favorite part: the quirk of Jack’s lips as the man cupped both his cheeks in his large, warm hands, and firmly brushed his thumbs over Tim’s cheeks.

Tim used to blush heavily when Jack had first started demanding these checks. The intensity of the CEO’s focus had made poor Tim go entirely red in the face, and he had trouble meeting Jack’s eyes the first few times. Jack’s hands were always surprisingly gentle if not firm on him, the inspection a lot more like a full face massage than anything else. The touches and traces of fingers and thumbs over the bridge of his nose, under his left eye, the bottom of his cheeks, all made Tim want.

They hadn’t at first, though. Tim was observant, and the simple fact alone that Jack wanted to inspect under the mask-- where no one else ever saw anyways so what would it matter if he had some blemish or something?- made him think.

Tim wondered sometimes if Jack ever forgot that he knew what the CEO really looked like under the mask, or if he thought Tim might be repelled by it, and thus hid what Tim suspected were the true reasons for checking. The double had his own suspicions on what Jack was really doing.

He’d been there when Jack had been branded. It made an impression on him for multiple reasons: the way Jack handled the pain; the visceral reaction to seeing-- essentially- himself be branded, skin ruined and blistered. The way Jack was still somehow strong after the fact and overcame it all. Yeah, Tim had changed his entire being into someone else, but it had been more or less voluntary, and wholly expected. What Jack went through…

Well.

Tim had been there for it and he still couldn’t imagine going through that himself. Not without totally breaking. Him and Jack maybe butted heads sometimes but he admired the hell out of the older man, and even a bit more than that.

It was part of the reason he submitted to these examinations. There was something pitiful and desperate and utterly human in the way Jack’s thumbs sometimes slid up his cheekbones, palms sliding down to turn his chin this way and that between his big hands. Jack might’ve poked fun about telling him not to break Jack’s investment in ‘his’ face, but there was something a little too real behind his concern. It made Tim ache for the Jack he knew right before the man was betrayed. He knew what the scarring looked like, but such superficial things, ironically, didn’t matter to the double.

Tim tilted his head as Jack’s thumb slid down the side of his neck, hoping the older man wouldn’t register the hard thump of his heart, and then Jack breathed out in clear relief before letting Tim go. He tried to hide his disappointment that it was over already.

Tim’s voice wasn’t as confident as he would’ve preferred, but he kept the excited tremor from it, at least. “Everything still in one piece?” he joked as Jack looked at him a few moments more.

The CEO raised a brow, cocky-smile back in place. “Why, got something more interesting to show me, Timtam?” He waggled his brows in what was clear tease as Tim rolled his eyes.

“I only got a little electrocuted, and nowhere interesting,” the double replied.

Jack didn’t miss the slight pinkness to Tim’s actual cheeks (the sight was going to be in his dreams tonight for its rareness, that much he was certain) but the older man didn’t comment on it. “Interesting for you, or interesting for me?” He gave the double a wink.

Tim felt his heart thump hard in his chest, deciding to play a little with the older man in lieu of getting to truly indulge; Jack flirted with everyone. It didn’t mean it was real, or that he meant it. Tim still liked it, though. “I’m not stripping to let you find out. It’s cold in here.”

Jack snorted and retrieved the mask from his desk. “You can always send me pictures. Don’t forget about that!” Jack handed the mask back to Tim. He never liked putting the mask back on the double himself, and Tim never questioned it. It was something he preferred to watch Tim do; something his subconscious would have to reconcile as an active choice to cover his unharmed face.

“There would have to be pictures for me to even send,” Tim muttered as he put things back in place.

“I like your thinking, pumpkin! Let me know if you need any inspiration.”

Tim snorted but left on his way as Jack shooed him out.

The CEO collapsed into his chair once the office was again left in Elpis’ pink glow. He felt more relaxed than he had all month, and with the relief of Tim’s visit finally washed over him, he knew he was going to get a very good night’s sleep indeed.

He wasn’t even mad that he didn’t have any dirty dreams that night, instead happy to sleep like the dead.

He’d need to take advantage of all the rest he could get now, before the shame of his true face caught back up to him again.

Chapter 2 will be found at my ao3 :)

kofi | ao3 | commission ‘info’

#jackothy #rhackothy #handsome jack #timothy lawrence #borderlands fanfic #rhys the company man #rhack #rhys #fanfic #my fic #i keep getting carried away im having a super fun time and like i know the first part is a lot of exposition but bare with me! :D #WOOOOO :D hehehe my ot3 <3 <3 <3 THANK YOU FOR THIS PROMPT

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descendantofthesparrow · 5 years

Text

Daughter of the honorable thief – Harry Hook x reader – part 2

Harry Hook x Daughter of Robin Hood!Reader

key

h/c- hair color

e/c- eye color

h/l- hair length

s/c- skin color

y/n- your name

clothing reference:

—Harry—

Harry sighed as he entered the cafeteria, he quickly surveyed the room, taking note of where his sister and friends were sitting, noticing that Gil was missing from the group, shrugging it off, Gil was probably just getting out of literature class and that was quite a ways away from the cafeteria.

Harry crossed the room to the lunch line, and grabbed a tray, quickly loading it with corndogs, grapes, strawberries, Doritos, chocolate pudding, and root beer. Shuffling out of line, he quickly made his way over to his crew, wincing as he sat down, the pain killers did nothing to help with the soreness.

Uma frowned at the sound and gave him a look ‘do you want me to do something about it?’ Harry shook his head, he didn’t want Uma to get in trouble for using her magic…even though she couldn’t technically get in trouble for it, just because she was fairly new and a vk, people would accuse her of evil and try to send her back.

Harry huffed and started to eat, before Evie ran in she quickly scanned the hall, before spotting them and rushing over, “Harry! Uma!!”

The two turned and looked, surprised, Evie never sought them out unless to dress them in her new outfits, but this evie didn’t look excited, just scared and worried.

“what is it blue?” Uma grumbled, raising her brow, evie skid to a stop, panting slightly before blurting;

“Gils been cornered by some jocks and he’s outnumbered!” Harry bolted up, ignoring the screaming of his head and limbs, “where?!” Harry rushed past her, hearing her turn and follow him, “east hall! Last I saw they had him pinned!”

Harry quickly made his way to the east hall, as he arrived, he saw gil being pinned with his arm pinned to his back, Gils shouts of pain as it was twisted and the boys laughed as they jeered at Gil.

“come on say it~!! Unless you want your arm broken~!”

“u-uncle!!”

“Im sorry! I didn’t hear you~!”

“Gah!!”

Harry had enough, red encased his vision, to hell with the ‘vks cant fight’ rule, Gil was worth being sent back over.

Harry bolted forward, slamming his shoulder into the one pinning Gil, planting himself between them, raising his fists and sneering.

“oh look whos here~!”

Heric, son of Hercules, smirked, sending his fist towards Harry’s face, Harry quickly stepped right and Gil spurred forward, catching Heric’s jaw with his fist and sending him to the ground. 1 down, 5 to go.

Miliana, Tinkerbell’s daughter, squeaked as Calvin tried to trip up Harry and twist his ankle, she had once been terrified of the son of Hook, but he had shown her that just because he shared the name, did not mean he was his father, now the Scottish boy acted as an adopted brother.

Miliana squeezed her eyes shut as Harry dodged him, but was punched in the gut by Cory, son of cubby, and keeled over, but quickly regaining balance and socking him the nose, blood spurting from Cory’s face, tears filling his eyes.

Miliana turned to ally, daughter of Alice, and muttered; “let’s go get fairy godmother, this is going too far”

Alice nodded, turned tail and bolted for FG’s office, Miliana quickly patted her cousin’s shoulder. Patton, Periwinkle son, turned and rose his brow, Miliana gestured to the brawl, and he nodded, shedding his jacket and ramming into Calvin, slamming him to the ground.

Quickly turning, Patton placed himself behind Harry and Gil, creating a triangle. Nathanial, son of Nibs, snarled and socked Harry’s cheek, cutting his skin with the auradon ring all Auradon boys wear (as far as I know, every single scene with any Auradon boy has that golden ring).

Harry growled and twisted his hips, swinging his leg into the red-haired boy’s side, hitting his kidneys. Nathanial hissed and kneeled over, holding his waist, before Harry right hooked him, his rings breaking the boy’s skin, sending him tumbling down to the ground.

Calvin, recovered from his fall, grabbed Timothy and Gavin, sons of the raccoon twins (as far as I know they don’t have names, they just call themselves the twins), and the three rushed harry and slammed him against the wall, Harry grunted from the force of the slam, internally wincing from his head screaming in pain and begging for him to stop and rest.

Calvin brought his fist back and swung it forward, sending it in Harry’s stomach, Harry’s body tried to bend forward but the two boys kept him pinned against the wall, not letting the shock wave of the pain diffuse.

Calvin smirked and brought his fist back, Harrys eyes winded and he knew he had no leverage he had two fully pinning him and a third holding him down with one hand, Gil and Patton were occupied with the others he didn’t have an out, he closed his eyes and waited for an impact.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!”

Harry was released suddenly and he let out a pained groan and slid down, cracking open his eyes, he saw Gil rush to his side and kneel down next to him, worry in his eyes. Harry waved him off and slowly stood to his feet.

He could hear the boys try to place the blame on him and Gil, saying that they were just walking to the cafeteria and the two ambushed them, they demanded the two be sent back to the isle, Harry and Gil froze, neither of them wanting to go back to the place where their parents could use them like puppets.

But FG just frowned and held her hand up, prevented the boys from speaking any further.

She turned to harry and Gil, raising her brow; “boys? Would you please tell me your side of the story?”

Harry recounted that Evie had rushed into the cafeteria and had told him that gil had been cornered and Heric was about to break his arm when he got there.

Heric, now awoken from his blackout after Gil got his jaw, tried to rebuttal the claim, but Miliana quickly spoke up and backed up Gil’s claim.

FG turned to Evie and raised her brow, Evie nodded and confirming that the boys had started it with attacking Gil, and Harry and Gil had just used self-defense.

“Alight, Children!” she clapped her hands together, a soft spark of blue smoke emitting from them for second, before she spoke once more, her voice louder than it was a few moments ago “this is an official announcement, if attacked or provoked, the villain children are permitted to fight back, with the highest consequence being detention. Those who attacked them will be suspended, or at the most extreme, expelled. That is all.”

FG nodded and gestured for the boys to follow her, before turning to Harry and Gil, “have Uma heal those injuries up, they look nasty”

They nodded, slightly surprised at the suggestion of Uma using her magic to heal them, and quickly made their way back to the cafeteria, stopping when they say (y/n) sitting with Uma and Harriet, Ginning and laughing.

Harry and Gil shared a glance before shrugging and walking over to the three girls. Uma and Harriet glanced up and paled, both jumping up and rushing over to them, Uma cupping Gil’s face and Harriet tittered over Harry like a worried mother hen.

“holy shit you two! What happened?!” Harry winced as Harriet prodded his cheek, blood leaking out from the broken skin.

“some gakit cunts cornered Gil and I had ta go in and help em out”

Umas eyes widened in fear, “you dolts!! You’re gonna get sent back for fight-“ Harry slapped his hand over Umas mouth, chuckling softly, “don’t worry Uma, FG announced that the VK’s are allowed teh fight back when provoked, ya know, self-defense”

Uma breathed a sigh of relief, good, now they couldn’t get in trouble for protecting themselves.

Uma started to push them out the cafeteria to the nurse’s office. “well come on you idiots, get to the nurse’s office to get those-“ Harry once again interrupted Uma, “FG said ye could heal us up, ya know…with yer magic~!’

Uma stopped, Fairy Godmother….suggested magic?! Uma shook the weirdness away, she had her boys to worry about.

Uma focused and clutched her necklace, her eyes glowing turquoise.

“by the power of the sea, heal all your injuries”

Teal smoke shadowed Harry and Gils cuts and bruises and they disappeared in a wisp. Harry’s head moaned in relief for the spell had also healed his head injury.

Harry plopped down next to (y/n) who had resumed a conversation with Uma and Harriet. “so (y/n)” Harry called, (y/n) paused and turned to him, raising her brow “what made ye come over teh our table?”

The (h/c) girl sighed and took off her cap, ruffling her hair. “ the preppy spoiled brats here don’t like the way I dress, im not preppy enough for them, nor do I dress like pastel preppy princess. So they make sure I never have room to sit with anyone, I saw Uma and Harriet sitting here and I thought ‘hey they might let me sit’ and they did so here I am!”

Harry snorted, seriously? Wow for the children of ‘heroes’ they sure were judgy and harsh. Harry smirked “well yer welcome teh sit with any of us when ye want, ye seem more someone wed like hanging out with”

(y/n) grinned, plopping her hat back on her head and turning back to her food, starting to dig into her (favorite lunch) before a disgusted snort came from behind them

“Ew! (y/n)?! what are you doing with these…boorish pirates?!” Ariana, the cousin of Audrey, stood behind them, dressed in pastel blue with pink highlights, her honey blond hair in an intricate braid, disgust clear on her face.

“ugh, come along, let’s get you to some more…civilized company” Harry, Uma, gil, and Harriet made a face, offended at her tone and words, but Ariana ignored them and tried to grasp (y/n)’s wrist and pull her away, but (y/n) burst out laughing before she could.

“pftt HAHAHA!!” tears streamed down (y/n)’s face, she gasped for air, holding her stomach.

“Oh~ that’s rich~! You seem to be under the impression that I actually give a fuck~!”

Ariana balanced and gasped, spitting her words, trying to convince (y/n) to come with her and be perfect.

“but they’re thieves!!! They-“

“stop right there princess” you growled out, voice and face dark, standing up to her full height, glaring at the princess. Ariana paled and squeaked.

“you seem to forget who my father is, Robin Hood, king of the thieves. So that’s means im a thief too,” (y/n) gave a dark shit-eating grin and spoke in a quiet voice where only Ariana and the four pirates could hear her.

“if you insult them you insult me, fair warning you spoiled brat, I don’t hold back, especially with entitled assholes who think they own the world, now get lost” Ariana nodded and bolted, her heels sounded on the floor as she hysterically ran off.

(y/n) took a deep breath, calming herself, before sitting back down and resumed eating her food, before she looked up, seeing the four pirates staring at her in shock and awe, “wha?”

Uma shook her head, “nothing, just never seen an Auradon kid act like that” once more (y/n) burst out in laughter, quickly calming herself, grinning at them, sipping her (fav soda/drink).

“well I ain’t exactly an Auradon kid, after all, my dad was almost sent to the isle”

Gil gasped and leaned forward, eager to hear why “really?! Why?”

(y/n) snorted, a slight grim look in her eyes, “my dad is one to look out for the little guy ya know? Steal from the corrupt rich and give to the poor. Ya know all that stuff, but he tried to steal the crown jewels, to sell it and give to those who were still in a funk.” (y/n) shrugged, but her eyes were still grim, Uma whistled, a grin forming on her face.

“wow, never thought id hear of an honorable thief before now, but I did!”

(y/n) giggled, the grim look leaving her eyes, looking down at her food with a smile, before reaching into her pocket and withdrawing

…

Ariana’s wallet.

“do you think she’s gonna miss this~?”

The four pirates stared at (y/n) in shock, their jaws dropping, holy shit.

“what?” (y/n) snickered, waving around the blue diamond crested wallet, leaning on her hand and smirking.

“Just because we’re in Auradon, doesn’t mean I’ll be goody two shoes~”

—end of part 2—

Comment or message me for part 3

#its here its finally here!#i started this november of last year #and now in june i post part 2 #harry hook #harry hook x reader #descendants harry hook #harry hook descendants #descendents #descendants #disney descendants #harry hook imagine #x reader #daughter of robin hood #honorable thief

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yobaba30 · 5 years

Link

This.Is.Fucking>Brilliant.

On Sept. 1, with a Category 5 hurricane off the Atlantic coast, an angry wind was issuing from the direction of President Trump’s Twitter account. The apparent emergency: Debra Messing, the co-star of “Will & Grace,” had tweeted that “the public has a right to know” who is attending a Beverly Hills fund-raiser for Mr. Trump’s re-election.

“I have not forgotten that when it was announced that I was going to do The Apprentice, and when it then became a big hit, Helping NBC’s failed lineup greatly, @DebraMessing came up to me at an Upfront & profusely thanked me, even calling me ‘Sir,’ ” wrote the 45th president of the United States.

It was a classic Trumpian ragetweet: aggrieved over a minor slight, possibly prompted by a Fox News segment, unverifiable — he has a long history of questionable tales involving someone calling him “Sir” — and nostalgic for his primetime-TV heyday. (By Thursday he was lashing Ms. Messing again, as Hurricane Dorian was lashing the Carolinas.)

This sort of outburst, almost three years into his presidency, has kept people puzzling over who the “real” Mr. Trump is and how he actually thinks. Should we take him, to quote the famous precept of Trumpology, literally or seriously? Are his attacks impulsive tantrums or strategic distractions from his other woes? Is he playing 3-D chess or Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots?

This is a futile effort. Try to understand Donald Trump as a person with psychology and strategy and motivation, and you will inevitably spiral into confusion and covfefe. The key is to remember that Donald Trump is not a person. He’s a TV character.

I mean, O.K., there is an actual person named Donald John Trump, with a human body and a childhood and formative experiences that theoretically a biographer or therapist might usefully delve into someday. (We can only speculate about the latter; Mr. Trump has boasted on Twitter of never having seen a psychiatrist, preferring the therapeutic effects of “hit[ting] ‘sleazebags’ back.”)

But that Donald Trump is of limited significance to America and the world. The “Donald Trump” who got elected president, who has strutted and fretted across the small screen since the 1980s, is a decades-long media performance. To understand him, you need to approach him less like a psychologist and more like a TV critic.

He was born in 1946, at the same time that American broadcast TV was being born. He grew up with it. His father, Fred, had one of the first color TV sets in Jamaica Estates. In “The Art of the Deal” Donald Trump recalls his mother, Mary Anne, spending a day in front of the tube, enraptured by the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. (“For Christ’s sake, Mary,” he remembers his father saying, “Enough is enough, turn it off. They’re all a bunch of con artists.”)

TV was his soul mate. It was like him. It was packed with the razzle-dazzle and action and violence that captivated him. He dreamed of going to Hollywood, then he shelved those dreams in favor of his father’s business and vowed, according to the book “TrumpNation” by Timothy O’Brien, to “put show business into real estate.”

As TV evolved from the homogeneous three-network mass medium of the mid-20th century to the polarized zillion-channel era of cable-news fisticuffs and reality shocker-tainment, he evolved with it. In the 1980s, he built a media profile as an insouciant, high-living apex predator. In 1990, he described his yacht and gilded buildings to Playboy as “Props for the show … The show is ‘Trump’ and it is sold-out performances everywhere.”

He syndicated that show to Oprah, Letterman, NBC, WrestleMania and Fox News. Everything he achieved, he achieved by using TV as a magnifying glass, to make himself appear bigger than he was.

He was able to do this because he thought like a TV camera. He knew what TV wanted, what stimulated its nerve endings. In his campaign rallies, he would tell The Washington Post, he knew just what to say “to keep the red light on”: that is, the light on a TV camera that showed that it was running, that you mattered. Bomb the [redacted] out of them! I’d like to punch him in the face! The red light radiated its approval. Cable news aired the rallies start to finish. For all practical purposes, he and the camera shared the same brain.

Even when he adopted social media, he used it like TV. First, he used it like a celebrity, to broadcast himself, his first tweet in 2009 promoting a “Late Show With David Letterman” appearance. Then he used it like an instigator, tweeting his birther conspiracies before he would talk about them on Fox News, road-testing his call for a border wall during the cable-news fueled Ebola and border panics of the 2014 midterms.

When he was a candidate, and especially when he was president, his tweets programmed TV and were amplified by it. On CNBC, a “BREAKING NEWS: TRUMP TWEET” graphic would spin out onscreen as soon as the words left his thumbs. He would watch Fox News, or Lou Dobbs, or CNN or “Morning Joe” or “Saturday Night Live” (“I don’t watch”), and get mad, and tweet. Then the tweets would become TV, and he would watch it, and tweet again.

If you want to understand what President Trump will do in any situation, then, it’s more helpful to ask: What would TV do? What does TV want?

It wants conflict. It wants excitement. If there is something that can blow up, it should blow up. It wants a fight. It wants more. It is always eating and never full.

Some presidential figure-outers, trying to understand the celebrity president through a template that they were already familiar with, have compared him with Ronald Reagan: a “master showman” cannily playing a “role.”

The comparison is understandable, but it’s wrong. Presidents Reagan and Trump were both entertainers who applied their acts to politics. But there’s a crucial difference between what “playing a character” means in the movies and what it means on reality TV.

Ronald Reagan was an actor. Actors need to believe deeply in the authenticity and interiority of people besides themselves — so deeply that they can subordinate their personalities to “people” who are merely lines on a script. Acting, Reagan told his biographer Lou Cannon, had taught him “to understand the feelings and motivations of others.”

Being a reality star, on the other hand, as Donald Trump was on “The Apprentice,” is also a kind of performance, but one that’s antithetical to movie acting. Playing a character on reality TV means being yourself, but bigger and louder.

Reality TV, writ broadly, goes back to Allen Funt’s “Candid Camera,” the PBS documentary “An American Family,” and MTV’s “The Real World.” But the first mass-market reality TV star was Richard Hatch, the winner of the first season of “Survivor” — produced by Mark Burnett, the eventual impresario of “The Apprentice”— in the summer of 2000.

Mr. Hatch won that first season in much the way that Mr. Trump would run his 2016 campaign. He realized that the only rules were that there were no rules. He lied and backstabbed and took advantage of loopholes, and he argued — with a telegenic brashness — that this made him smart. This was a crooked game in a crooked world, he argued to a final jury of players he’d betrayed and deceived. But, hey: At least he was open about it!

While shooting that first season, the show’s crew was rooting for Rudy Boesch, a 72-year-old former Navy SEAL and model of hard work and fair play. “The only outcome nobody wanted was Richard Hatch winning,” the host, Jeff Probst, would say later. It “would be a disaster.” After all, decades of TV cop shows had taught executives the iron rule that the viewers needed the good guy to win.

But they didn’t. “Survivor” was addictively entertaining, and audiences loved-to-hate the wryly devious Richard the way they did Tony Soprano and, before him, J.R. Ewing. More than 50 million people watched the first-season finale, and “Survivor” has been on the air nearly two decades.

From Richard Hatch, we got a steady stream of Real Housewives, Kardashians, nasty judges, dating-show contestants who “didn’t come here to make friends” and, of course, Donald Trump.

Reality TV has often gotten a raw deal from critics. (Full disclosure: I still watch “Survivor.”) Its audiences, often dismissed as dupes, are just as capable of watching with a critical eye as the fans of prestige cable dramas. But when you apply its mind-set — the law of the TV jungle — to public life, things get ugly.

In reality TV — at least competition reality shows like “The Apprentice” — you do not attempt to understand other people, except as obstacles or objects. To try to imagine what it is like to be a person other than yourself (what, in ordinary, off-camera life, we call “empathy”) is a liability. It’s a distraction that you have to tune out in order to project your fullest you.

Reality TV instead encourages “getting real.” On MTV’s progressive, diverse “Real World,” the phrase implied that people in the show were more authentic than characters on scripted TV — or even than real people in your own life, who were socially conditioned to “be polite.” But “getting real” would also resonate with a rising conservative notion: that political correctness kept people from saying what was really on their minds.

Being real is not the same thing as being honest. To be real is to be the most entertaining, provocative form of yourself. It is to say what you want, without caring whether your words are kind or responsible — or true — but only whether you want to say them. It is to foreground the parts of your personality (aggression, cockiness, prejudice) that will focus the red light on you, and unleash them like weapons.

Maybe the best definition of being real came from the former “Apprentice” contestant and White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman in her memoir, “Unhinged.” Mr. Trump, she said, encouraged people in his entourage to “exaggerate the unique part of themselves.” When you’re being real, there is no difference between impulse and strategy, because the “strategy” is to do what feels good.

This is why it misses a key point to ask, as Vanity Fair recently did after Mr. Trump’s assault on Representative Elijah E. Cummings and the city of Baltimore in July, “Is the president a racist, or does he just play one on TV?” In reality TV, if you are a racist — and reality TV has had many racists, like Katie Hopkins, the far-right British “Apprentice” star the president frequently retweets — then you are a racist and you play one on TV.

So if you actually want a glimpse into the mind of Donald J. Trump, don’t look for a White House tell-all or some secret childhood heartbreak. Go to the streaming service Tubi, where his 14 seasons of “The Apprentice” recently became accessible to the public.

You can fast-forward past the team challenges and the stagey visits to Trump-branded properties. They’re useful in their own way, as a picture of how Mr. Burnett buttressed the future president’s Potemkin-zillionaire image. But the unadulterated, 200-proof Donald Trump is found in the boardroom segments, at the end of each episode, in which he “fires” one contestant.

In theory, the boardroom is where the best performers in the week’s challenges are rewarded and the screw-ups punished. In reality, the boardroom is a new game, the real game, a free-for-all in which contestants compete to throw one another under the bus and beg Mr. Trump for mercy.

There is no morality in the boardroom. There is no fair and unfair in the boardroom. There is only the individual, trying to impress Mr. Trump, to flatter Mr. Trump, to commune with his mind and anticipate his whims and fits of pique. Candidates are fired for giving up advantages (stupid), for being too nice to their adversaries (weak), for giving credit to their teammates, for interrupting him. The host’s decisions were often so mercurial, producers have said, that they would have to go back and edit the episodes to impose some appearance of logic on them.

What saves you in the boardroom? Fighting. Boardroom Trump loves to see people fight each other. He perks up at it like a cat hearing a can opener. He loves to watch people scrap for his favor (as they eventually would in his White House). He loves asking contestants to rat out their teammates and watching them squirm with conflict. The unity of the team gives way to disunity, which in the Trumpian worldview is the most productive state of being.

And America loved boardroom Trump — for a while. He delivered his catchphrase in TV cameos and slapped it on a reissue of his 1980s Monopoly knockoff Trump: The Game. (“I’m back and you’re fired!”) But after the first season, the ratings dropped; by season four they were nearly half what they were in season one.

He reacted to his declining numbers by ratcheting up what worked before: becoming a louder, more extreme, more abrasive version of himself. He gets more insulting in the boardroom — “You hang out with losers and you become a loser”— and executes double and quadruple firings.

It’s a pattern that we see as he advances toward his re-election campaign, with an eye not on the Nielsen ratings but on the polls: The only solution for any given problem was a Trumpier Trump.

Did it work for “The Apprentice”? Yes and no. His show hung on to a loyal base through 14 seasons, including the increasingly farcical celebrity version. But it never dominated its competition again, losing out, despite his denials, to the likes of the sitcom “Mike & Molly.”

Donald Trump’s “Apprentice” boardroom closed for business on Feb. 16, 2015, precisely four months before he announced his successful campaign for president. And also, it never closed. It expanded. It broke the fourth wall. We live inside it now.

Now, Mr. Trump re-creates the boardroom’s helter-skelter atmosphere every time he opens his mouth or his Twitter app. In place of the essentially dead White House press briefing, he walks out to the lawn in the morning and reporters gaggle around him like “Apprentice” contestants awaiting the day’s task. He rails and complains and establishes the plot points for that day’s episode: Greenland! Jews! “I am the chosen one!”

Then cable news spends morning to midnight happily masticating the fresh batch of outrages before memory-wiping itself to prepare for tomorrow’s episode. Maybe this sounds like a TV critic’s overextended metaphor, but it’s also the president’s: As The Times has reported, before taking office, he told aides to think of every day as “an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.”

Mr. Trump has been playing himself instinctually as a character since the 1980s; it’s allowed him to maintain a profile even through bankruptcies and humiliations. But it’s also why, on the rare occasions he’s had to publicly attempt a role contrary to his nature — calling for healing from a script after a mass shooting, for instance — he sounds as stagey and inauthentic as an unrehearsed amateur doing a sitcom cameo.

His character shorthand is “Donald Trump, Fighter Guy Who Wins.” Plop him in front of a camera with an infant orphaned in a mass murder, and he does not have it in his performer’s tool kit to do anything other than smile unnervingly and give a fat thumbs-up.

This is what was lost on commentators who kept hoping wanly that this State of the Union or that tragedy would be the moment he finally became “presidential.” It was lost on journalists who felt obligated to act as though every modulated speech from a teleprompter might, this time, be sincere.

The institution of the office is not changing Donald Trump, because he is already in the sway of another institution. He is governed not by the truisms of past politics but by the imperative of reality TV: never de-escalate and never turn the volume down.

This conveniently echoes the mantra he learned from his early mentor, Roy Cohn: Always attack and never apologize. He serves up one “most shocking episode ever” after another, mining uglier pieces of his core each time: progressing from profanity about Haiti and Africa in private to publicly telling four minority American congresswomen, only one of whom was born outside the United States, to “go back” to the countries they came from.

The taunting. The insults. The dog whistles. The dog bullhorns. The “Lock her up” and “Send her back.” All of it follows reality-TV rules. Every season has to top the last. Every fight is necessary, be it against Ilhan Omar or Debra Messing. Every twist must be more shocking, every conflict more vicious, lest the red light grow bored and wink off. The only difference: Now there’s no Mark Burnett to impose retroactive logic on the chaos, only press secretaries, pundits and Mike Pence.

To ask whether any of this is “instinct” or “strategy” is a parlor game. If you think like a TV camera — if thinking in those reflexive microbursts of adrenaline and testosterone has served you your whole life — then the instinct is the strategy.

And to ask who the “real” Donald Trump is, is to ignore the obvious. You already know who Donald Trump is. All the evidence you need is right there on your screen. He’s half-man, half-TV, with a camera for an eye that is constantly focused on itself. The red light is pulsing, 24/7, and it does not appear to have an off switch.

#the apprentice (tv program)

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/sunday/trump-reality-tv.html

Great analysis by James Poniewozik🤔 To understand the wacky, outrageous, demented mind of Trump is to know that Trump is nothing more than a self-grandized TV character (D-rated).

"To ask whether any of this is “instinct” or “strategy” is a parlor game. If you think like a TV camera — if thinking in those reflexive microbursts of adrenaline and testosterone has served you your whole life — then the instinct is the strategy."

"And to ask who the “real” Donald Trump is, is to ignore the obvious. You already know who Donald Trump is. All the evidence you need is right there on your screen. He’s half-man, half-TV, with a camera for an eye that is constantly focused on itself. The red light is pulsing, 24/7, and it does not appear to have an off switch."

The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV

Understand that, and you’ll understand what he’s doing in the White House.

By James Poniewozik | Published September 6, 2019 | New York Times | Posted September 8, 2019 9:00 AM ET |

Mr. Poniewozik is the chief television critic of The Times and the author of “Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television and the Fracturing of America.”

He syndicated that show to Oprah, Letterman, NBC, WrestleMania and Fox News. Everything he achieved, he achieved by using TV as a magnifying glass, to make himself appear bigger than he was.

If you want to understand what President Trump will do in any situation, then, it’s more helpful to ask: What would TV do? What does TV want?

It wants conflict. It wants excitement. If there is something that can blow up, it should blow up. It wants a fight. It wants more. It is always eating and never full.

From Richard Hatch, we got a steady stream of Real Housewives, Kardashians, nasty judges, dating-show contestants who “didn’t come here to make friends” and, of course, Donald Trump.

It’s a pattern that we see as he advances toward his re-election campaign, with an eye not on the Nielsen ratings but on the polls: The only solution for any given problem was a Trumpier Trump.

#trump #trump administration #president donald trump #trumpism #maga #donald trump jr #donald trump #u.s. news #u.s. presidential elections #us politics #politics #politics and government #u.s. politics #republican politics

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audreycritter · 7 years

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Stabilized

This should go up on AO3 soon and I'll add the link. I'm still on official hiatus from fic prompts and chapter updates, but I'm writing other things as I have time and inspiration strikes. This was spawned out of a brief conversation about a specific line of dialogue and it was fun to write. It got sappy and I do not apologize. Stabilized Gen/Family Bonding Tim Drake + Bruce Wayne Rated T for Language ~2500 words The Batmobile roared into the Cave and the engine cut-off, plunging the bay into silence. Only voices from the medical unit carried over when Batman leapt out of the car. “How is he?” he called, pulling back his cowl as he hurried up the steps. “Dazed and a little incoherent,” came Alfred’s reply. “I'm still assessing him now.” Bruce had been on patrol with Damian when Oracle had informed him over the comm that Tim had been taken back to the cave with a head injury of unspecified severity. Cassandra had found him and then had fallen silent on the comms after letting Oracle know. He climbed the steps to see Tim perched on the edge of the gurney, a bucket in his hands. It looked freshly rinsed. Cass was sitting on the countertop with her arms wrapped around her folded legs. Alfred was prepping a CT scanner they'd invested in after an earlier nasty head wound. “Is Robin with you?” Alfred asked, glancing over as Bruce took in the scene. “He's with Batgirl,” Bruce said, not taking his eyes off Tim. “Miss Cassandra might appreciate your help in engaging Master Timothy’s attention.” “Listen,” Cass said, when Bruce took a step closer to them. Tim had still not noticed his arrival, or if he had, he had given no indication of it. “Tim. Tell me again. Becoming Robin.” “So,” Tim said, his word slurred. He leaned forward over the bucket and nearly toppled off the gurney. Cass slid forward, a tangle of limbs unfurling and stretching toward him in the same instant Bruce put a hand on Tim’s shoulder and gently pushed him upright again. “So,” Tim repeated, “you know, you know the first part.” “Green. Girls. Fast cars,” Cass supplied, weight braced on her hands on the countertop. She held her body aloft, an inch above the surface, by her splayed palms. Bruce’s heartbeat stuttered, knowing and hating this origin story. He loved Tim but he tried not to think often of why Tim was there. “Exaaaactly,” Tim said. “Gone. So, B, you know B, he's a fucking disaster. Like Cass you don't even know how bad. He was erratic and violent and reclusive like a baby kangaroo. Cass, don't laugh at me, I'm serious,” Tim’s voice took on a pleading tone and Cass was in fact, giggling behind her hands. She'd dropped back to the counter to cover her face. “Baby kangaroos are dangerous, Cass. They have really strong legs but they hide, too,” Tim sounded near tears. “Okay,” she said, consoling. Bruce felt like he wasn't doing much to help other than ensuring Tim wouldn't topple over, but he was also reluctant to miss the rest of the story from Tim’s perspective. “He was hiding and I knew where to find him,” Tim said. “I snuck in. Who gives a fuck about rules, not me. I never have. Anyway I found him, and he was all like, ‘What are you doing here, punk? Aren't you Jack Drake’s kid?’” Bruce had half-anticipated this part of the story, but he has not anticipated that Tim’s voice would rise to a falsetto while imitating Bruce’s lines instead of dropping to a lower octave. He had to stifle a sudden laugh. Cass’ eyes were shining and Bruce realized belatedly she'd said “again” earlier. She had wanted him to hear this. “Then what,” Cass prompted when Tim’s attention began to drift. “Oh,” Tim said. “Oh yeah. So. So, I found him. And he was angry. But I just told him the truth. I said, ‘bitch, you need some kid to stabilize you, and I guess I have to be it.’” Bruce, despite his twinges of guilt and amusement, could not actually argue with the truth of this summation. “I seem to remember more pleading on your end, Master Timothy,” Alfred interjected a bit defensively. “No, that's pretty much it,” Bruce said with a wry grin. Cass beamed at him unabashedly. Tim turned as if surprised and looked up at Bruce standing next to him. “Hey, bitch,” he said in a sluggish tone. “I mean, Bruce,” he amended without apology. “Hey, kid,” Bruce said. “They told me you hit your head.” “That's stupid,” Tim spit out bitterly. “Something else hit my head, not me. I'm not an idiot.” “Brick wall,” Cass said. “That,” Tim said forcefully, pointing a finger at her. “What Rainbow Daughter said.” “True name,” Cass clarified for Bruce. “Secret.” “The scanner is ready,” Alfred said. “Master Timothy, if you might lie back?” “Try and make me,” Tim said. “I can go back out there. I'm fine!” “Tim,” Bruce said, a little sternly, and Tim sighed and reclined on the bed, still clutching the bucket. “Has he been nauseous?” Bruce asked Alfred. “No,” Tim answered. “I just like this bucket.” “Ask him questions,” Alfred said. “Keep him awake, if you might.” “Favorite dinosaur?” Cass asked before Bruce could think of anything. “Velociraptor,” Tim answered with a scoffing noise. “What kind of question is that.” “Movie?” Bruce asked and Cass gave him an alarmed expression. From inside the portable scanner Tim sniffled hard and bit back a sob. “Dumbo,” he whispered a second later. “Favorite happy film,” Alfred amended, giving Bruce a severe look. “One must specify.” Cass added a reproving frown to this, and a nod, as if it was common sense. Inside the machine, Tim sniffed again and answered in a steadier tone, “No such thing. Is Bruce still there?” “Yes,” Bruce answered. “Tell them. There are no happy films,” Tim insisted. “I'm sure there are some happy films,” Bruce countered slowly, looking to see Alfred’s still disapproving reaction to this concession. “But you haven't seen any,” Tim said sourly. “You can't think of any. Art is misery.” Bruce, who had been feeling slightly bewildered by his apparently massive misjudgment moments before, knew immediately that this was something he could salvage. “That isn't true,” he argued, ignoring the absurdity of disagreeing with a stubborn teenager who had a probably massive concussion. “What about the photo essay on abandoned research labs in Gotham?” “The one I did for Wired?” Tim asked hesitantly. “Yeah, that was fun.” In the corner of Bruce’s line of sight, Cass bit her lip to hold back a pleased smile. “Nikon or Canon?” Bruce asked next, dragging a wheeled stool over to the gurney and sitting down. “Digital or traditional?” Tim asked, his whole body now otherwise still. “Both,” Cass said. “I guessed.” “Canon for digital, Nikon for traditional,” Tim said. “Were you right?” “Yes,” Cass said quietly, despite having no proof of this. Bruce didn't doubt her. He himself had been fairly certain. “Hell yes,” Tim said triumphantly. “Sibs know shit.” “Sibs know shit,” Cass repeated solemnly, like it was a vow of some kind. For all the weight they gave it, Bruce supposed it might have been. “I'm gonna sleep,” Tim announced with a yawn. “It's so cold in here.” “Tim,” Bruce said, instead of trying to persuade him otherwise. “Which USSR camera model did you prefer?” “You don't remember that,” Tim said as if it were obvious fact. “No way.” “Of course I do,” Bruce said, because he did. “Zorki-6,” Tim said with a fond sigh. “Why?” Bruce asked, because he wanted to keep him talking and because he'd always been curious about the antique camera Tim had spent a long spring season taking everywhere. He'd come to Bruce’s office after school most afternoons to sit on the couch and do homework and fiddle with the settings. He'd take pictures from the window, or traipse around the building with the camera, and develop them in the darkroom at the manor afterward instead of going home. But Bruce has never asked-- Tim had been skittish about his art then, likely to tuck it away if anyone paid attention. “Because no one else that I knew had one,” Tim said. “And it smelled like your old briefcase.” Bruce was so acutely aware of Cass sitting nearby and Alfred beside him overseeing the machine as it powered down that it didn't take much effort to retain his face’s composure, but there was a moment where it nearly broke in surprise and sentimental warmth. “Good smell,” Cass said. “Hell yes,” Tim said again. “One of the best. Like vanilla extract.” Bruce was frozen on the stool while they discussed this and he exchanged a look with Alfred that told him, without words, that his semblance of facial control was likely a myth. “Ew,” Cass said. “Bitter.” “I told you, you can't taste it,” Tim said. “Extract is gross to taste.” The machine rolled back and Tim was prone on the bed, still, the small bin wrapped in his arms. “This is just a cursory glance,” Alfred said, “but I don't see anything concerning. His heart rate is still a tad elevated.” A suspicion bloomed in Bruce’s mind and his frozen limbs moved again. He slid the stool down toward Tim’s head and leaned over the bed, looking into the boy’s face. “Tim. How many shots of espresso did you get in your red eye tonight?” “Oh,” Tim said, thinking. “Before I fought with the wall.” “Yes,” Bruce said, a smile quirking one side of his mouth. “Uh,” Tim said, meeting Bruce’s gaze and then looking down at the bin. “You’re going to be pissed.” “I won't be,” Bruce said, promising to himself as much as Tim. “If you tell me, you might get to sleep soon.” “I'm so tired,” Tim allowed. “Really. Like, it's been days. Fudge. I'm so tired.” “C’mon,” Bruce said, and he felt Cass move behind him before he saw her at his elbow. Cass bent forward and kissed Tim’s forehead. “You tell,” she said. “Or else.” “Seven,” Tim whined with a hand over his eyes. “Seven, okay? And maaaaybe a Red Bull. I'm a robin. It gives me wings.” “Well, that solves that mystery,” Bruce said, sitting up. “Al, mark this one down as a minor concussion and an excess of caffeine consumption.” “Master Timothy,” Alfred said, aghast. “You ought to know better.” “I said don't be mad!” Tim protested. “Master Bruce made such a promise,” Alfred replied sharply, with worry in his voice. “You will be staying here for a few days, is that understood?” Tim nodded sullenly and stuck both arms in the air, suddenly, the bin clattering on the floor when it fell. “Carry me,” he ordered. “I can't feel my legs.” Cass reached over and prodded his knee; Tim’s leg jerked away. “Liar,” she said simply. “I'm compromised.” Tim jiggled his arms, held out in a zombie-like fashion. “Somebody. I don't want to sleep in the cave.” Bruce stood up and slid an arm under Tim’s shoulders and another under his knees. Tim slumped against him, unresisting, as he straightened. “Night, Timmy,” Cass called from her reclaimed perch on the counter while Alfred muttered under his breath. When Bruce glanced back, she'd scooted down to hug the older man around the neck and Alfred patted her hands. “How bad is your headache?” Bruce asked as he climbed the steps in the cave. “Middling,” Tim mumbled against the batsuit Bruce was still wearing. “And anxiety?” Bruce prompted next, knowing from experience the side effects of that much caffeine. He'd gotten a few stern lectures from Alfred when he hadn't been much older than Tim. “Um,” Tim said, “pretty shitty. How'd you know?” “When was the last time you asked me to carry you?” Bruce questioned in reply. “I think the answer is probably never.” “I was serious about my legs. They fell asleep,” Tim said, his head still turned against Bruce’s chest as Bruce side-stepped through the narrow door. The boy sounded almost asleep already, but more lucid than earlier. “I didn't want to fall in front of you guys.” “Hm,” Bruce said. He rounded the corner and began climbing the second set of stairs. Tim had never, even with muscle, been very heavy. “I miss you,” Tim mumbled when they reached the top. “I try really hard not to be bitter about Damian, but I miss how things were before. When it was us.” “Me, too,” Bruce said, knowing he meant it and that no one else was around to hear. He knew Damian would take it the wrong way and was glad he was still out, but he felt the same way about each of them as Robin. He did miss the days when he was out on the rooftops with Tim. “I know it wouldn't be the same,” Tim said, as if consoling himself. “Handle,” Bruce prompted, stopping at the door. Tim flopped his hand over and swung it wildly around, reaching without looking. When his fingers landed on the knob, he turned and his grip slipped off. “It's locked,” he complained. “I don't know where I left the key.” “I can kick it open,” Bruce said, considering. “But Alfred might be upset. I could pick the lock. Or we can go down the hall and you can steal my bed for the night.” “Where would you sleep?” Tim demanded groggily, and Bruce took that as his cue and headed further down the hall. “The couch in my office,” Bruce said. “Or a guest room.” “Your bed has good pillows,” Tim mumbled when Bruce worked the knob with his knee and pushed the door open. He carried Tim across the room to the bed and stood there for a moment, then dropped him abruptly onto the comforter. “Bruce,” Tim complained, laughing. He crawled under the covers until all but the top of his head had disappeared and from under the thick blankets, he sighed. Bruce sat on the edge of the side table and reached over and ruffled Tim’s hair. “You did stabilize me, you know,” he said quietly. “I know,” Tim said in a drifting tone. “You can't keep doing this, Tim,” Bruce said when Tim rolled over and pressed his hand against Bruce's outstretched hand. “Come by my office. Or we can patrol. But you need sleep. And less caffeine.” Tim nodded and yawned. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry.” “You're a good kid, Tim,” Bruce added. He wished he said it more often. “You too, bitch,” Tim said, and then he giggled. It sounded young and childish coming from him. “Sorry. Sorry. I mean, thanks. My heart is still going crazy.” It was Bruce’s turn to yawn. “You okay?” he asked. “I need to get out of this suit.” “Mhm,” Tim said. “M’good. Night, Bruce.” “Goodnight, Tim,” Bruce answered, standing. “Shout if you need something.” The answer was a soft snore. Bruce closed the door behind him and stopped to pick the lock to Tim’s door on the way down the hall. It was unlocked. Bruce grinned.

#Bruce Wayne #Tim Drake #fic blogging #batman #batfam #batfic

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gorgeousdan · 7 years

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30 Kisses for 30 Years

summary: It’s Phil’s thirtieth birthday and Dan is determined to give him thirty kisses. Meanwhile, Phil’s been having domestic thoughts. word count: 2, 735 warnings: innuendos, kissing, making out, hickeys, so much fluff that you’ll die

Phil could feel something crawling under his skin when he woke up that morning.

Dan was curled into his side, his cheek pressed to Phil’s chest through a sleep shirt, the duvet thrown haphazardly over the two of them. Their legs were tangled in a mess of limbs, their toes curled together. They usually didn’t sleep together. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other or love cuddling, neither of those were true, but they were both quite large. Legs got tangled together in a way that was uncomfortable and it was inconvenient to get out of a cuddle when you needed to pee and Phil snored. Loudly. Honestly, it was easier to have separate bedrooms and separate beds.

But last night Dan had came into his bedroom complaining that their apartment was too cold because their radiator was broken and London was unforgivingly nippy. So Phil had lifted his duvet and offered the space underneath it and Dan had crawled under and curled up by his side and had fallen asleep within minutes.

So usually Phil didn’t have an excuse to watch his boyfriend sleep. As creepy as it might be, Dan was beautiful like this. Phil had no idea how one person could be so incredibly radiant, or how he had gotten so incredibly lucky. Staring at Dan like this, beautiful and amazing and all his, Phil couldn’t help but wonder and want. He let his hand trace the gentle shape of Dan’s arm until he got to his boyfriend’s hand, tangled their fingers together and let his ring finger catch on Dan’s for a second.

“Mh,” came a noise from his boyfriend. Phil could feel Dan smile against his chest and then his deadweight hand was alive again, laid their tangled fingers against his side. “Good mornin’,” Dan slurred gently, let his eyelids flutter open to smile at his boyfriend.

Phil smiled back down at him. Something about dating someone for eight years made it so that you didn’t really care if they saw you with ten chins or with sleep in your eyes or even after probably drooling for eight hours straight because you know they see you with the same radiance as you see them. It was nice. “Good morning.” He shifted a bit, got his arm out from where it was asleep under Dan to trace the curves of the side of his body. “I believe it’s someone’s birthday.”

Dan chuckled softly, his voice still full of sleep, low and groggy. “Is it really?” He stretched out himself before tangling his fingers with Phil’s again. “Who would that be?”

“Dunno,” Phil answered. He pulled Dan so that his boyfriend was laying on top of him suddenly. Dan squeaked out a little laugh, his legs going to either side of Phil’s to straddle him. Dan sat up in this position momentarily before Phil pulled him back in for a deep kiss. With Dan’s cocky smile gone finally, the two of them kissed like this, Dan’s hands tangled in Phil’s hair. Dan sat up to pull away but Phil was feeling desperate and needy and chased his boyfriend’s lips. Dan let him, moved so his bum was sitting in Phil’s lap before kissing back with the same amount of passion.

When Dan finally pulled away, his face was flushed and his lips were bruised and he looked at Phil’s lips like he had never wanted anything more. “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you,” Phil answered. He ran a hand up Dan’s back, pushed up the sweater that Dan had been wearing.

Dan laughed. “You’re a horny little shit, aren’t you?”

Phil smirked at him. “You should be happy I don’t have to take viagra yet.”

“Ew, gross,” Dan answered, but he laughed so Phil knew he didn’t mean it. Phil went in for another kiss because morning birthday sex sounded really good, but Dan dodged it. “I don’t think so,” he answered. “We’re having a special birthday day, old man.” Dan pressed a gentle kiss to Phil’s cheek before swinging his legs over Phil’s. “Three, by the way.”

Phil cocked an eyebrow at this. “Three what?”

“Three kisses,” Dan answered. Phil watched as he stood from his bed and walked towards the door. “I’m gonna give you thirty. Thirty kisses for thirty years.”

Phil laughed. He followed Dan to the hallway and leaned against the door as Dan walked to their kitchen. “That’s cheesy for you, Dan Howell,” he called into the hallway.

“Shut up and get dressed, Phil Lester!” Dan called from the kitchen. He turned into the hallway momentarily, pointed a mug at Phil. “I mean it.”

So Phil had been having domestic fantasies.

As he buffed shampoo into his hair, he realized that’s probably fairly obvious. He couldn’t help it, though. After being in a relationship with Dan for eight years, it was only a matter of time before he started to have them. He had a bad habit of watching too many romcoms with Dan curled by his side, and with every wedding scene he couldn’t help but picture the couple being him and Dan instead.

In the beginning of their relationship, they had talked about getting married and settling down a lot. However, after the existential crisis of 2012, Dan had admitted through teary, red eyes and wheezing breaths that growing older scared him shitless. Phil wasn’t offended, it wasn’t like Dan hadn’t wanted to get married and own a house with kids and a dog with him, specifically. It was more of a fear of being an adult, generally. So Phil had laid off, let their relationship regrow naturally and beautifully and as just boyfriends. And that was amazing and magical and something so much stronger than it had been.

But recently, Phil couldn’t help but think that Dan was ready. He’d first had the thought in 2015, two whole years ago, when he caught Dan scrolling through Japanese wedding venues. Phil’s heart caught in his chest every time they passed by a cherry tree and, as Dan wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close on the top of Mount Fuji, Phil had thought for sure “this is it.” But, as they walked through the Japanese airport to go back to London, Phil rolled his suitcase beside him with a smile on his face and feeling refreshed and in love, sure, but without a ring on his finger.

Two years later, it occurred to Phil as if an omen in a dream one night. Dan was never going to propose to him. One of Dan’s greatest fears was rejection and as silly as Phil might know it was, how could he not say yes to being forever Dan’s?, Dan couldn’t help but fear the worst. So, as much as Dan might be dreaming and hoping and wanting and wandering, it would never happen if Phil left the ball in his court. Since when did he start making sports metaphors? They really had been watching way too many sports animes.

Like many things in Phil’s life, it was up to him.

Phil walked from his bedroom dressed in a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Dan smiled at him from where he was actually making breakfast, pancakes and bacon and eggs that maked Phil’s mouth water. Phil came up behind his boyfriend, wrapped an arm around his waist to kiss his cheek. “Hi,” he said softly. “Need help?”

Dan snorted a laugh. “Even if it wasn’t your birthday, I wouldn’t want help from you anyway.” Phil was pretty notorious between the two of them as a bad cook.

Phil let out an offended, indigent huff anyway. “Fine, I get it, you don’t love me.” Dan laughed as Phil let go of his waist to put a hand to his forehead like a swooning maid. “I’ll always have Timothy.”

Dan laughed again. He looked over his shoulder at his boyfriend. Smiley Dan would forever be Phil’s favorite kind of Dan, soft and kind and happy. “Who’s Timothy?”

“Uh, my new houseplant?” Phil replied. He shot Dan a look that said ‘you should have known that.’

Dan chuckled in reply. “Right.” He turned off their stove and looked over at his boyfriend. “Pancakes?”

“Please,” Phil answered quickly. Dan laughed at the fact that Phil was crowding him in his excitement for pancakes. Dan took Phil’s shoulders and pushed him back down to a chair. Phil’s hands came up to rest on either side of Dan’s waist and he smirked up at his boyfriend. “Damn, Nicki,” he joked.

“That joke’s about as dated as you,” Dan answered teasingly, but he straddled Phil to drop down in his lap anyway. Phil laughed. There was a difference between Dan actually being sexy and Dan being jokingly sexy and, with his head rolled back and an exaggerated moan, this was obviously a joke. Phil placed a gentle kiss on the exposed expanse of Dan’s neck before proclaiming, “pancakes, please.”

Dan huffed out another laugh. “God damn,” he answered as he rolled off his boyfriend’s lap into standing. “You know you’re dating an old man when he wants pancakes over sex.”

Phil chuckled, raised his hands in defense. “Hey, if you wanted to have sex while I was eating pancakes, that would be a birthday wish come true.”

Dan turned to him just to laugh again. “Pervert.” As he scooped a pancake onto a plate, he announced, “five, by the way.” He passed the plate to Phil, who took it with a gracious smile.

“Oh, so it counts if I kiss you, huh?” Phil asked. He cut into his pancakes and scooped some into his mouth, moaning in appreciation. Dan didn’t cook often, but when he did it was good. “I thought the thirty kisses had to come from you.”

“Nah,” Dan answered. He leaned forward to grab a piece of bacon from Phil’s plate. “The kisses just have to be between us. Otherwise you could sneak more than thirty and that would just be unacceptable.”

Phil hummed his understanding. “Wouldn’t want that,” he teased. Dan rolled his eyes, but the smile on his face gave him away as fond.

“Does the length of the kiss play into it?” Phil asked. He stood and crossed the room, let his arms fall over the length of his boyfriend’s chest. “Like what if I do-” he paused, leaned forward to press a long, firm kiss to Dan’s neck. Dan moaned appreciatively, and Phil smirked against his skin. “-that?”

Dan’s eyes rolled back. Phil smiled at how sensitive his boyfriend was. “If you left a hickey, Phil Lester, I swear to god-”

“Relax, no hickeys. I know the drill.” Phil moved so that he was sitting across from Dan again. He was true to his word, the red mark on Dan’s neck would be gone in a minute or so. “I’m just saying,” he scooped so more pancakes into his mouth. “Did that count as one or-”

“-two,” Dan answered. “I think longer kisses will count as two.”

“So seven, then?” Phil asked.

“Seven,” Dan answered.

Eight was exchanged as a quick peck as Dan handed Phil a coffee. Nine, ten, and eleven were exchanged quietly as they watched the Great British Bakeoff. It wasn’t a very romantic show, but any excuse to kiss was a good one.

Twelve and thirteen was a two-for-one kiss, as Dan meant to give Phil a quick peck and Phil pulled him in for something that was long and dirty and had Dan sighing into his mouth. Fourteen, fifteen and sixteen were scattered down Dan’s neck. Seventeen-and-a-half was a kiss that accidentally turned into a bite, a small mark on Dan’s neck that was followed up by the other half of seventeen. After a lazy afternoon of lounging together, eighteen was a quick peck as Dan told Phil to get ready to go out.

Dan had laid out an outfit for Phil, apparently. A nice shirt with a jacket and a pair of pants he usually reserved for weddings or fancy parties or, in this case, fancy dates. Phil pulled each item on and was in the middle of tying a tie around his neck when Dan came behind him. Dan looked as beautiful as ever in a similar suit, minus the tie he had now taken over tying around Phil’s throat. He pulled it tight and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of Phil’s neck. Nineteen.

“What do you have planned, Dan Howell?” Phil turned so he could see Dan properly, wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him into another kiss. Twenty. “Hi, by the way. You look amazing, did I mention that?”

“I never tire of hearing it,” Dan replied with a cheeky smile. “You’re not allowed to know where I’m taking you. It’s a surprise.” Dan leaned back to pull his phone out of his pocket. “Which we’re going to be late for if we don’t leave.” He dropped a kiss to Phil’s cheek before walking towards the door. “C’mon!”

“I’m coming!” Phil answered. He stalled in his room for a minute, let his fingers run across a box that had been waiting for him for too long in a drawer.

Dan peaked his head from Phil’s doorway. “Are you coming or not?”

Phil laughed softly. “Relax yourself, I’m coming.” Dan rolled his eyes with a fond smile, and Phil dropped the box in his pocket before following after him.

It was up to Phil.

Kiss twenty-two and twenty-three were exchanged on the taxi ride to the restaurant, because Dan was beautiful and radiant and there was no way Phil could not kiss him. The place Dan took Phil to was gorgeous, the interior lavious, the food incredible and mouthwatering. Kisses twenty-four through twenty-six were exchanged during the course of the meal, one as a thank you and one because Dan had chocolate on his lips and Phil was a bit of a sugar addict. When the bill came Phil nearly choked, but Dan, grownup and well-off and everything Phil knew he would be from age eighteen, didn’t even bat an eyelash at it, swatted Phil’s hand away when he tried to pay, leaving a soft kiss on his lips instead.

The two of them walked hand in hand down the same pathway that had inspired Dan to write the Urge, a glass of wine in each of their free hands. It was beautiful in the twilight, and Dan look so radiant and glowing that Phil had to kiss him again. It was in this soft glow that he knew what he had to do. After all, if it wasn’t him and it wasn’t now, when and who? Jesus, he had been reading a lot of John Green novels.

“Dan, wait,” Phil stopped his boyfriend and pulled him to the side of the street, out of the way of everyone else. Dan gave him a confused look. Phil cleared his throat and then laughed softly. “You’re gonna let me talk, yeah?”

Dan seemed to consider it for a minute. “Yeah?” He answered. “What’s up?”

“So I’m thirty,” Phil started with a soft laugh. “And everyone’s been joking about me having a secret wife and a baby and, like, it’s all a joke obviously, yeah? But I’ve been thinking,” he paused. “It might be nice-”

“You’re marrying a woman?”

Phil laughed. “No, you dingus. You.”

“Oh,” Dan answered. Then, again, “oh!”

“So,” Phil dropped to his knee and took Dan’s hand. “If you would like to be my husband, I promise that we can lounge in bed all day and I’ll make breakfast whenever you want and I’ll pick up my socks. Well, I can’t promise that but the rest of it.” He brought Dan’s hand to his lips and softly kissed his palm. “Also, it would be really mean to say no to me on my birthday.”

Dan laughed through tears that had welled up in his eyes. “I mean,” he nodded quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Dan pulled Phil into a hug and the two of them stood like that for a while, oblivious to the stares of everyone around them. “D-” Dan sniffled before laughing again. “Do you have a ring or-”

“Oh!” Phil reached in his pocket for the ring and slid it onto Dan’s finger. “There. All mine.”

Dan chuckled. “All yours,” he whispered.

Thirty.

AUTHOR’S NOTES:

Happy birthday Phil!

Fun fact: I’m queuing this post so it’s currently the 27th and I’ve just written this during my theology final in my Catholic school. Every once in a while, my teacher will look up at me and I’m sure she knows I’m writing gay fanfiction.

I know this isn’t a prompt and everyone wants me beheaded for that but I wrote gratuitous smut for Phil’s twenty-ninth and I feel like he deserves more.

Please reblog if you enjoyed to help spread the word about the blog and my writing yada yada yada.

Thanks love y’all

-Seb

#personal #fic #phanfic #phan fic #phan #fanfic #dansmemeteam #phanfriendsnetwork #dsliceandangelbeannetwork

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iwritethat · 7 years

Text

Younger Batsis reader x Batfam: The Talk

A/N: Let’s say Bat-Sis is quite young and naïve in this part, I mean I didn’t learn about this until I was 9. Okay, I just thought this would be really funny to write so here goes.

Imagine asking your older brothers and Bruce what the birds and the bees mean.

Warnings: Mentions/descriptions of sexual intercourse.

>>>>——————–>

Yes, at some point in your life you had heard some innuendos, rumours of what birds and bees can apparently get up to and honestly this had your curiosity piqued. So who better to ask than your family right? Anyone. Literally anyone.

Well Bruce was hardly about so you went hunting the Manor for the next best person you could find. Your first destination was the library, it was the closest area and you wanted to avoid the Batcave for the moment - after all if the birds and bees were something bad you didn’t want to question your father about it and your brothers would save you from getting into trouble once they gave you the basics. Luckily for you Damian was in the library lounging on the couch reading a book, he’d probably know so you jumped on the couch next to him ready to ask.

“Yes (y/n)?” Damian started, not exactly sparing you a glance but acknowledged your presence none the less. “Do you know about the birds and the bees? You know, what they do and the talk?” You innocently began, hoping for some answers. “I don’t understand why they’d be associated with each other, birds and bees cannot interbreed (y/n). They’re different species.” Damian responded monotonously, still reading his book. “That’s what I said but I think there’s more to it Dami…” You commented, throwing you hands up in exasperation due to the lack of answers received from your brother. Though he had been in the League of Assassins for the majority of his life and you doubted they had many bees there, and the birds were probably used for target practice. “How so little sister?” Damian continued, now interested in your sudden intense ‘thinking face’. “It’s to do with ‘mating’ - I’ve gathered that much. I should ask the others. I’ll be back Dami, don’t worry.” You called, already getting off of the couch setting your new destination as the Batcave. “Enlighten me when you return. This is a strange custom I’m not familiar with.” Damian responded to which you nodded and ran out of the room.

Racing through the Manor you got to your fathers study and entered the Batcave from there, again it wasn’t deserted with Tim occupying the vicinity and your father just returning from patrol. “Daddy!” You yelled as you ran in and hugged him. “Hey, what are you doing running about the Manor?” He inquired, it was late after all. “Trying to get some answers.” You commented, whilst trudging over to the Bat Computer. “Then maybe I can help.” Batman suggested, removing his cowl expectantly. “What do the birds and the bees do?” You continued curiously, watching your fathers neutral expression falter for a moment and Tims light laughter in the background. “Uh - they refer to people, who like each other… and…” Bruce started, unsure of how to answer. This was not something he particularly wanted to discuss and had never had to tell a daughter considering most of his children already knew and if not he’d told the boys at young ages - never had he had to explain this to a young girl.

“It’s all to do with sex, that’s the appropriate terminology but ‘birds and the bees’ sounds nicer I suppose.” Bruce continued after you refused to accept his previous answer. “Okay then w-” You pushed further, wanting the full details of what this was but Bruce noticed and quickly interrupted. “Can’t answer right now, I have to go on patrol.” He instantly cut in pulling on his cowl. “Wait but you just got back!” You called out. “I know but my work is never done, you know that.” He explained, placing a kiss to your forehead and disappearing in the Batmobile. You stood with your arms folded staring at the exit to the Batcave when Tim joined you. “He’s not coming back anytime soon is he?” You asked the teen standing beside you, keeping your eyes focussed on the exit. “Nope.” Tim shook his, his features still holding an amused expression whilst you let out a long sigh and looked up to your older ‘brother’. “Tim what’s sex?”

Immediately the teen choked, and looked completely horrified. “(Y/n)! Why are asking me?!” “You saw what just happened! Who else am I supposed to go to? Besides, you promised as my brother that you will always be there to help me - I need your help.” You explain a matter of factly and Tim was clearly defeated. “Ah, okay (y/n)… um how to start it…” Tim hummed, taking a seat at the Bat Computer as you followed him. “Got it!” He stated, clicking his fingers. “It happens when two people love each other very much, and they have sex to make a baby and start a family.” Pleased with brief explanation that lacked any details concerning how sex worked. “So sex makes babies?” You confirmed. “Yes.” Tim nodded, hoping that was the end of everything and you were satisfied with his answer. “So I was made because my dad had sex with my mum.” You concluded, asserting your knowledge whilst Tim nodded again.

“Okay so how does the sex work? Does it just happen out of nowhere or is it like a ritual to get the baby? You’re being very vague Tim.” Was you only response to him, the inquiries still nagging at your mind. “Uh - I mean it’s - like a - it’s not a ritual.” Tim finally spat out after all the stuttering beforehand. You gestured for him to elaborate and he scratched the back of his head nervously. “It’s not a ritual because babies don’t exactly come out from thin air, they’re not delivered by storks either as much as Disney would have you believe. Not that Disney is a bad thing in any way but it isn’t accurate since princesses don’t exactly wear the big sparkly dresses - just look at Wonder Woman -” “Tim you realise your rambling about princesses… but since you’re not giving me an answer then I’ll look it up on the internet!” You cut in, pushing his chair out of the way whilst reaching for the keyboard. “NO!” Tim yelped jumping in front of you. “Timothy - move! Please.” You demanded but added a polite please on the end while attempting to move him over. “Trust me - you don’t want to that. The internet can be a dark place, especially for you.” Tim made clear and you were growing a little frustrated. “Fine! I’ll call Jason because he’ll tell me.” You muttered but apparently Tim wasn’t on board with that either. “Ah no - that’s probably a darker place to go! (Y/n) wait up!” But you’d already gone leaving Tim in the Batcave to get ready for patrol.

The first phone you found lead you to dial Jason’s number, if that of course was still his number or he’d got a new phone but whatever, you had to try because Jason was always straight with people. “What?” Jason’s frustrated voiced echoed through the phone but at least he’d picked up. “Jay! I need your help, please at the Manor.” You told him briskly, betting on the fact he was patrolling Gotham on his motorcycle anyway. “Ah hey (y/n), what’s up?” He questioned, tone softening once he realised it was his little sister. “It’s an emergency, well curiosity but I still need you to help me.” You continued, determination in your voice. “That’s great but I’m out on patrol, I have to save Gotham from itself remember.” He reminded you a matter of factly. “I’m willing to steal some money from my father and bribe Penguin to hold me hostage nicely until you come and save me. Then I get to ask you anyway but that would just be more effort for you, besides this way it’s easier for the both of us.” You threatened, half serious. “(Y/n) we both know that -” “Don’t test me Todd - I have Dad’s credit card right here and I know how to make bank withdrawals!” You exaggerated you tone, and you were quite pleased with how convincing it was. “Alright, alright fine. I guess I can make a brief detour.” Jason sighed, hanging up the phone. Obviously you both knew that you wouldn’t go through with the plan but you sounded serious and none of your brothers had any problems with helping you out.

Moments later Jason made his way into the kitchen, throwing you a pack of sweets in the meantime and placing his helmet on the table. “What’s the emergency?” Was the first thing he asked whilst leaning on the counter. “What’s sex, like how does it actually work?” You started, sitting at the table. “Oh god, alright. So traditionally it happens between a man and woman, but it can happen between the same sexes as well but we’ll stick to the basics yeah?” You nodded, and he took that as his opportunity to continue. “So you’re clear on what a penis and vagina are right?” Again you nodded, your expression more disgusted this time. “Well the penis goes into the vagina and bam that’s sex in one sentence.” Jason finished his brief definition but you were mortified and staring at him with horror. “Oh why! That’s so gross, ew Jason that’s horrible!” You managed, sticking your tongue out for emphasis. “Actually it’s not, people do it for pleasure. Cuz’ it feels good.” Jason continued.

“H-have you done it?” You questioned cautiously. “Yeah of course I have (y/n), and when you do 'it’ for the first time you lose your virginity. Which is a term for someone that hasn’t had sex before.” Jason answered honestly but became confused by your expression. “Ew that’s gross, don’t come near me ever again! - Wait, but you don’t have any children.” You over exaggeratedly stated, remembering the previous information you gathered. “Nah, people mostly have sex since it feels nice, not to have children.” He answered, his tone slightly unsure. “But Tim said people only have sex if they love each other and want babies.” You commented, then realisation your older brother who brought a his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Shit. They’ve been saying it’s all about love. Damn it, I bet they started with the whole 'when two people love each other very much’ deal. Shit!” You slowly nodded whilst Jason went on a cursing spree.

“(Y/NNNNN)!!!” You heard from down the hallway but didn’t even get a chance to check since the person sprinted into the kitchen in a matter of seconds putting both hands on your ears. You remained seated but tilted your head upwards to find the eldest, Dick Grayson above you. He smiled placing a quick kiss to your nose causing you to scrunch it up and turn your attention away from him, instantly prying his hands away from your ears. “What was that for?” You asked him. “Trying to save your innocence, Tim called saying how you were going to Jason about the birds and the bees so I had to save you.” Dick answered sending a smile over to Jason who rolled his eyes. “Too late for that, I already told her.” Jason smirked, though thinking on it he could have been more delicate.

“How far did you go?” Dick started quizzically, directing his attention to his younger brother. “Eh, we got to genitals and pleasure, nothing about tips and techniques. Don’t worry.” Jason replied, tone filled with amusement. “Ugh, alright just don’t take into account everything Jason said.” Dick began, taking a seat opposite you at the table. “Sex can be known as many things, sexual intercourse, making love etc. But it should be done with someone you love and trust. Not with just a random person like Jason has implied.” Dick continued. “Pfft, like you can talk.” You heard your brother mutter, receiving a glare from Dick and he watched Jason leave the room before continuing. “Especially not your first time, you definitely need to do that with someone you trust.” “That I agree with!” Jason shouted just as he left the kitchen. “When you lose your virginity right?” You inquired, Grayson nodded before continuing with his explanation.

“So babies emerge from a woman’s vagina after 9 months of pregnancy, so they get pregnant by having sex. Uh, this is where it gets… gross as you’d say. Hmmm, the male parts goes into the female part, because believe it or not women have 3 holes down there, so the male would uh - thrust into the female and when they’re both happy they release… ummmm. Well I mean the male releases sperm which swim around to find the egg to begin making a baby. The egg is in the woman by the way. Men have sperm, women have eggs. But people can wear protection to stop a baby being made so it’s a way of showing love for their partner instead.” Dick concluded his mini lecture leaving you once again, slightly terrified.

Then Jason returned with Tim behind him and regretfully you could tell that wasn’t the end of it. “So what have you done that as well?” You questioned Dick, sliding your hands away from your face where you’d placed them mid way through your eldest brothers answer. “Duh. This is me (y/n), it’s all in my name.” He grinned, trying to cheer you up a little. “Then you can stay away from me as well. Because ew.” You cried exasperatedly. “Aw don’t be like that, you’re still my little sister and I’m still going to hug you - like it or not.” Dick reminded you, amusement in his tone. “So does everyone have to do it?” You asked, considering the majority of older people you knew had been down that road. Almost immediately you received simultaneous variations of 'no’ from your brothers. “Definitely not, it’s your choice whether you do it or not, your future partner should respect that. Some people are even asexual and choose not to have sex at all.“ Tim chimed in, ruffling your hair. “And if they’re laying too much pressure on you I’ll ’talk’ some sense into them.” Jason followed on. “Thanks guys but still… you’re all kinda gross for the time being.” You commented. “Wait wait, has Tim even done it?” Jason questioned to no one in particular whilst looking at his replacement. “Oh yeah, have you?” Dick asked, staring at his younger brother who was scowling.

You didn’t want to know and you’d already lost two of your brothers to 'cooties’ so there was no way you wanted Tim to answer this - fortunately Damian chose the perfect opportunity to walk into the kitchen. “Did you find out what the birds and bees do (y/n)?” He calmly inquired. “No Damian! Don’t ask, don’t do it please it’s horrific. I don’t want you tainted too!” You yelped hopping off of the chair and embracing him in a hug. “What did you do to my sister?!” He yelled at the remaining 3 in the kitchen as your arms clutched his waist. “She’s our sister too.” Tim stated, glaring at Damian. “Shut it Drake, not by blood she isn’t!” Damian growled still awaiting an answer. Dick sighed before providing him with one. “We gave her the sex talk, you know - the birds and the bees.” “So this 'birds and the bees’ is another expression for sexual intercourse.” Damian confirmed, Dick giving him a nod.

“Okay so how does it all happen?” You continued your interrogation, wanting to know more about the subject so you didn’t embarrass your self in the future. “When you want it to happen and you feel ready.” Tim stated, Jason tutted and again came forward with a more realistic answer. “When the two people get turned on, it usually escalates from there.” Dick shook his head at Jason’s answer because why would you say that? “You just kind of know if you’re ready and want it to happen, it’s kind hard to give exact details. But please wear protection okay, I cannot stress that enough.” Dick suggested, his answer probably the most acceptable. “Drug them.” Damian monotonously commented. Everyone diverted their gaze toward him with a look of shock before reassuring you with yells of 'NO!’ ’(Y/n), trust us here, don’t ever do that!’ “That’s what my mother did. But we both know Talia doesn’t set the best example. Don’t do that.” Damian elaborated, pleased with his sense of humour - what did his family take him for?

“What is going on here Master Dick?” Alfred asked strolling into the kitchen with his usual calm and polite tone. Your brothers remained quiet so you decided to speak for them before Jason opened his mouth. “The demon spawn tried to make a joke and practically gave our sister advice for a prison sentence.” Jason’s comment earned a smirk from Damian before it fell eerily silent once again. “They were helping me learn about sex.” You brightly spoke, innocence ringing through it all, despite what you had previously heard. “What? You poor thing, come Mistress (y/n) we need to have a proper talk about this - your brothers aren’t the best examples when it come to this subject.” Alfred began, worry evident in tone. “I will speak with you all later.” Alfred sternly informed your older brothers before escorting you out. Despite all being trained by the Batman it was safe to say that they all shit themselves because Alfred was the most terrifying thing in this Manor and there was no way they were sticking around to face whatever punishment he had in store.

You on the other hand were taken by Alfred to give you the proper talk along with diagrams. You were starting to like you brothers’ explanation better because some cartoon diagrams/videos you may have needed to see but you definitely never wanted to.

#batfam #younger batsis #batsis #bruce wayne #batman #dick grayson #nightwing #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #damian wayne #robin #alfred pennyworth #dc #dc imagine #batfam imagine

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