Archive of Our Own

Tim disappeared on a Tuesday, which was rude, because Tuesday was Jason’s slow night.

Slow night, meaning he had only broken up one gun deal behind a laundromat, chased two teenagers off a stolen Ducati, and spent forty-five minutes on a rooftop in the Narrows pretending not to notice a stray cat trying to steal the foil wrapper from his sandwich.

By Gotham standards, that was basically a vacation.

Then Oracle said, “Red Hood, what’s your twenty?”

Jason stopped with one boot on the roof ledge and the other planted in gravel. Down below, a delivery truck rattled over a pothole, headlights jumping. The cat succeeded in dragging the sandwich wrapper under an HVAC unit like a trophy.

“Crime Alley,” Jason said. “Why?”

There was a pause. Not the kind Barbara used when she was checking feeds. The kind she used when she already knew something ugly and needed half a second to decide how much of it to say over comms.

Jason felt his shoulders go tight.

“Red Robin missed his last check-in.”

The city seemed to pull back from him by inches. Sirens kept going. Wind kept crawling between the buildings. Somewhere down by Sheldon Park, somebody shouted something drunk and joyful and stupid.

Jason said, “How late?”

“Twenty-three minutes.”

“That’s not missing.”

“He also missed the backup ping from his suit. His tracker dropped off near the Tricorner freight spur twelve minutes before check-in.”

Jason was already moving, sandwich forgotten, cat forgotten, slow night over. He kicked off the ledge and dropped into the next building’s fire escape hard enough that rust flaked under his boots.

“What case?”

“Trafficking route. Runaways, undocumented workers, a few kids out of Blüdhaven. We thought it was a shell operation using food distributors. Tim found a warehouse tied to a charity front. He was supposed to recon only.”

Jason laughed once, sharp and humorless, as his grapple fired.

“Yeah, because he’s famous for leaving those alone.”

“Hood.”

“I’m going.”

“Batman is already en route.”

“Good for him.”

“Hood.”

Jason landed on a billboard frame, swung under it, and hit a lower roof in a roll that sent pain up one bad knee. He ignored it. He was good at ignoring things. Had a whole personality built out of it, according to Dick, who was a bastard and also sometimes right.

Barbara’s voice softened, which was worse.

“Jason. We don’t know that he’s captured.”

“He’s not answering.”

“He could be underground. Signal shielding, jamming—”

“He’s not answering,” Jason said again, and this time it came out flat enough that Barbara went quiet.

Tim always answered him.

That was the thing. The stupid, dangerous thing Jason had let himself notice over the last year.

Tim ignored Bruce if Bruce sounded too much like Batman. Ignored Dick when Dick was fussing. Ignored Damian on principle if Damian started a message with Drake, because Tim had self-respect in weird little bursts. He ignored Steph only when they were in an argument and even then usually sent back a passive-aggressive emoji within twenty minutes.

But Jason texted him a blurry picture of a license plate at three in the morning, and Tim replied with the owner’s divorce history, shell company registrations, and one dry little line about Jason’s camera skills being an ongoing tragedy.

Jason sent “alive?” after a bad patrol, and Tim sent “unfortunately, yes” before the minute was up.

Jason called once, drunk on fear toxin and post-op pain after a warehouse explosion, not even meaning to, thumb finding the first number under recent calls. Tim had picked up before the second ring and said, “Hey, hey, I’m here. Where are you?”

So no. Tim not answering was not nothing.

Jason cut across Bristol Avenue, boots scraping wet brick, rain misting against the red of his helmet. He pulled up the map Oracle pushed to his HUD. Tricorner freight spur. Old municipal storage. Three warehouses with overlapping ownership, one fenced lot, one dead camera loop.

A bad place to disappear.

A worse place to disappear if someone knew how much Tim Drake could be worth to the right buyer.

Jason went faster.

By the time he reached the freight spur, Batman was already there, cape dragging through dirty rainwater, surrounded by enough broken bodies to make it clear the recon-only part of the evening had gone to hell immediately.

The warehouse door had been peeled open from the inside.

Jason landed beside a pallet of crushed lettuce crates and took in the scene in one sweep.

Six men zip-tied and unconscious. Two shipping containers open. One with blankets, water bottles, portable toilets, the sour stink of too many people kept somewhere too long. The other empty except for blood drops, scuff marks, and a severed length of grapple line.

No Tim.

Batman looked over from beside a concrete pillar. There was blood on one gauntlet. Not his.

“Jason.”

“Where is he?”

“We found evidence that he freed the captives before extraction. Witnesses say he drew pursuit away from them.”

Jason shoved past him into the second container.

The blood trail was small. Not arterial. A smear on the door frame where someone had grabbed it with a cut palm, more drops on the floor, then nothing. Jason crouched, touched one gloved finger beside the stain, and forced himself to breathe through the helmet filters.

Tim bled bright. Everyone did, obviously, blood was blood, but Jason knew the exact shade of it on Tim’s skin because of one bad night in a church basement when Tim had gotten glass in his side and kept trying to explain the difference between tactical retreat and letting a cultist get away. Jason had pressed gauze to him with both hands while Tim argued with a concussion and bled through Jason’s gloves.

This stain looked the same.

Jason’s jaw hurt.

“Witnesses?” he asked.

“Five victims,” Batman said. “Two adults, three minors. Red Robin opened the container from inside the warehouse, handed one of them a burner phone and told them to run east until they saw police lights. He stayed behind.”

“Because there were more.”

Batman’s silence was answer enough.

Jason stood. “Where?”

“We’re still searching.”

“Search faster.”

“Hood,” Dick said over comms, strained and breathless. “I’m coming from Blüdhaven. ETA eighteen minutes.”

“Make it twelve.”

“I’m trying.”

Jason moved deeper into the warehouse. The place had the wet, moldy smell of old produce and diesel. There were forklifts lined up by a loading dock, their batteries removed. A cheap office with papers dumped everywhere. Tim had been there; Jason could see it in the mess. Drawers opened fast but not stupidly. Router yanked and smashed. Security hub gutted. A pen on the floor with the cap bitten half to death.

Jason picked it up.

Red plastic. Wayne Enterprises conference pen.

Tim had a horrible habit of chewing pens when he was thinking. Jason had once watched him ruin three in a single case debrief and then look offended when Steph told him he had ink on his mouth.

There was a smear of blood on the cap.

Jason put the pen in a pouch without thinking about it.

“Oracle,” he said. “Pull every traffic cam east, south, and under the spur. Any vehicles leaving in the twelve minutes after his tracker cut out.”

“Already on it.”

“I want plates.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean I want the fake plates too. I want the expired plates. I want the ones that flashed once behind a bus and disappeared. I want—”

“Jason,” Barbara said, and something in her voice stopped him. “I know.”

He swallowed hard.

Batman was watching him.

Jason hated that. Hated the white lenses, the silent math, the awful shared terror sitting between them like something alive. Bruce loved Tim. Of course he did. Loved him in that Gotham way where nobody said the useful words until someone was bleeding out on concrete.

Jason loved Tim too.

That was newer. Or not new, exactly, just recently admitted to himself in the privacy of his own miserable head. It had snuck up on him through late patrols and diner coffee and Tim falling asleep on his couch with his mouth slightly open, laptop balanced on his stomach. Through stitches and arguments and Tim’s laugh when Jason knocked a mug off the counter with his hip and caught it before it shattered. Through Tim standing in Jason’s kitchen in borrowed sweatpants, saying, “You keep your spices alphabetized?” with the kind of delighted horror that made Jason want to kiss him until neither of them remembered paprika existed.

Jason had not done that.

Jason had done a lot of things in his life. Many of them bad. Many of them stupid. Somehow kissing Tim Drake had become the thing he was too chicken to try.

Now Tim was gone.

A phone rang.

Not Jason’s comm. Not the Cave relay.

His actual phone.

The cheap black one in his jacket pocket. The number only a handful of people had. Roy. Artemis. Two Alley clinic contacts. Tim, because Tim had taken it from Jason’s hand one night and put himself in under T, then changed his contact name to “Tim (Best Robin, Accept Reality)” while Jason was distracted by a knife wound.

Jason went still so fast the warehouse seemed to tilt.

He ripped off one glove with his teeth and grabbed the phone.

Blocked Number.

Everyone saw his face change. Batman stepped closer. Jason lifted one hand, warning him back, and answered.

“Yeah.”

Static.

Rain. Or traffic. Hard to tell.

Then breathing.

Shallow. Wet. Controlled badly.

Jason closed his eyes for half a second.

“Tim.”

The breathing hitched.

No answer.

Jason turned away from the others, not because it mattered, not because they could not hear through comms if they wanted to, but because whatever was happening on this line felt like something he needed to cup in both hands.

“Baby bird,” he said, softer. It slipped out before he could stop it. “Talk to me.”

A scrape. A cough swallowed down. Then Tim’s voice, thin and distant, said, “Pigeons own the courthouse.”

The line went dead.

Jason stared at the phone.

Batman said, “What did he say?”

Jason was already moving toward the office, toward the nearest surface he could use as a map. “Pigeons own the courthouse.”

Dick, over comms, said, “Is that code?”

Jason swallowed. “Old joke.”

“Jason.”

“Shut up, I’m thinking.”

Pigeons own the courthouse.

Three months ago, rooftop near the old Kane County courthouse. They had been watching a judge meet with a Falcone accountant in the alley behind a Greek restaurant. Boring stakeout. Cold wind. Tim had been hunched beside Jason behind a gargoyle with coffee in a thermos and a scarf wrapped up to his nose.

A flock of pigeons had descended on the courthouse steps like an occupying army.

Jason had said, “There’s your real organized crime.”

Tim had looked over, eyes red from no sleep, hair sticking up in weird directions, and said, “Statistically they do have better territorial control than the GCPD.”

Jason had laughed so hard he almost missed the accountant leaving.

Pigeons own the courthouse.

Courthouse. Kane County. Greek restaurant. Territorial control.

No. Tim would not waste a call on nostalgia unless it pointed somewhere.

Jason pulled up the city map in his HUD and searched old courthouses.

Three active. Two abandoned. One converted into a municipal records annex near the freight spur. Pigeons everywhere, because the upper floors had been empty for years.

“Old courthouse annex,” Jason said. “West of here. Does it connect to the tunnels?”

Barbara answered immediately. “Basement access to the old records transfer tunnel, sealed in 2009, allegedly. It runs under the spur and comes out near Dixon Bus Depot.”

Jason’s stomach dropped.

Dixon Bus Depot.

A trafficking route using distributors, freight, and buses.

Tim was alive. Tim had a phone. Tim was leaving clues.

Tim was hurt enough he could not talk.

Jason put his glove back on.

“I’m going to the annex.”

Batman said, “We go together.”

Jason looked at him then. Really looked. Bruce’s mouth was a hard line. His cape was soaked. His eyes, behind the cowl, were doing that terrible thing where the mask failed in tiny increments.

Any other night Jason might have fought him just to fight him.

Tonight he did not have the time.

“Keep up,” Jason said.

They ran.

The annex was six blocks west, a squat stone building with boarded windows and graffiti curling up the columns. Jason went in through the second floor because the front door had enough tripwire alarms to embarrass a beginner.

Batman took the roof. Jason took the hall.

Inside smelled like dust, bird shit, and old paper. Jason moved fast, gun up, helmet scanning heat signatures. Nothing human. Rats in the wall. Pigeons in the rafters, offended and flapping.

“Basement clear?” Batman asked.

“Getting there.”

Jason found the stairwell door chained from the inside. He cut it with bolt cutters, quiet enough, and descended into the dark.

Halfway down, he found a smear of blood on the wall.

Tim had been here.

There was no body at the bottom. No Tim. No captors. Just an old basement full of filing cabinets, a broken vending machine, and a tunnel entrance with the concrete seal drilled out.

Jason crouched by the entrance. Fresh scrapes. Boot marks. Drag marks from something heavy. A torn strip of black fabric caught on rebar.

He touched it. Familiar weave. Cape lining.

Tim had gone through.

He had either escaped or been moved.

Jason chose escaped because the alternative made his vision go red in a way that was not useful yet.

The tunnel was low, damp, and full of old city rot. Jason went first, despite Bruce’s silent disapproval. He had more armor. He also had less patience.

Fifty yards in, the tunnel split. One route caved in. One continued south. On the wall, in black marker, someone had drawn an arrow.

At first Jason thought it was from the smugglers.

Then he saw the shape. Too clean. Too deliberate. A little hooked tail at the end.

Tim.

“South,” Jason said.

They found the phone two hundred yards later.

It was a burner, cracked screen, battery pulled out and placed beside it. Tim had left it in the mouth of an old drainage pipe where Jason would see it if he was looking and miss it if he was rushing.

Jason was both proud and so scared he could taste metal.

Barbara said, “I’m pulling signal history. It pinged a tower near Dixon six minutes ago.”

“He’s ahead of us,” Batman said.

“Or they are,” Jason said.

The tunnel ended behind a maintenance shed near Dixon Bus Depot. The depot was open twenty-four hours, though nobody with options used it after midnight. Fluorescent lights. Old coffee. People sleeping on bags. Security guards paid not to notice certain vans.

Jason stepped out into the rain and saw everything Tim must have seen: buses idling at bays, taxis cutting through, people smoking under the awning, a white van with a dented rear door pulling away from the far curb.

“Oracle,” Jason said. “White van, no side windows, dent in rear door, leaving Dixon northbound right now.”

“Plate?”

Jason zoomed in.

“Covered in mud.”

“I’m looking.”

Batman moved toward the van.

Jason caught his arm.

Bruce looked down at his hand like he might remove it.

Jason said, “Too obvious. If Tim is watching, we spook them.”

Batman went still.

A bus hissed at Bay 4. People shuffled forward. A woman yelled at a kid to zip his coat. A man in a Tigers cap dropped his duffel and cursed.

Jason scanned faces.

No Tim.

Then his phone rang again.

Blocked Number.

Jason answered before the first ring finished.

“Tim.”

This time there was more background noise. Bus station announcements. Someone arguing nearby. Tim breathed once, twice.

“Two teeth,” Tim whispered.

Jason pressed the phone hard to his ear. “Say again.”

“Dog’s got two teeth.”

The line crackled.

Jason’s heart punched against his ribs. “Where are you?”

A faint laugh, nearly soundless. Then a cough that made Jason’s hand tighten around the phone.

“Tell Hood,” Tim breathed, like he was reciting something to himself. “He’s a terrible detective.”

Then dead.

Jason exhaled through his teeth.

Two teeth. Dog.

“What does that mean?” Bruce asked.

Jason looked across the depot.

Greyhound logo.

Dog.

Two teeth.

Two broken letters on the sign.

The old Greyhound sign above Bay 2 had two letters flickering in and out, bright teeth in the rain.

Jason was moving before he explained.

Bay 2 was half-empty, a bus to Keystone loading late. Jason scanned the platform. Muddy footprints. A smear of blood on a metal bench. Vending machine humming. Trash can overflowing.

Tim had been here minutes ago.

Jason looked under the bench and found a paperback shoved behind the leg.

He knew it before he picked it up.

It was one Tim had mocked him for reading. A battered drugstore mystery Jason bought from a charity bin because the cover had a detective with a gun and an expression of deep constipation. Tim had called the plot “aggressively heterosexual and mechanically unsound.” Jason had kept it in the safehouse bathroom out of spite.

This copy was not Jason’s. It was a bus depot copy, water-swollen, pages bent. But Tim had folded the corner of one page down.

Jason opened it.

Page 217.

Someone had circled three words in pen.

river / under / saint

“Barbara,” Jason said. “Give me all Saint-named streets, churches, shelters, anything near the river and bus routes.”

“Jason—”

“Now.”

Barbara typed. He could hear it. He could also hear Dick breathing hard over comms, probably almost there, probably terrified enough to make jokes if anyone gave him an opening.

“Saint Agnes Shelter near the East River overpass,” Barbara said. “Closed last year. Also Saint Mark’s underpass by the Robinson rail bridge. Saint Jude’s Outreach—”

“Saint Agnes,” Jason said.

Batman said, “Why?”

“Tim volunteered there during the winter overflow two years ago. He complained about their coffee for a week.”

He did not wait for Bruce to answer.

He ran.

The city blurred into wet neon and black asphalt. Jason drove this time, because the Batmobile was too recognizable and Jason’s bike could cut alleys that Bruce’s tank could only threaten. Batman followed in the car anyway, probably grinding his molars. Dick patched in from three blocks behind. Barbara fed them traffic cams, satellite angles, police scanners, everything.

Jason listened with half his head.

The other half was still on Tim’s voice.

Your voice helps, he had almost said, except he had not yet. Jason did not know why his mind supplied that. Maybe because Tim had sounded like he was holding himself together around the idea that Jason would answer.

Jason would answer.

Every time.

Saint Agnes was a brick building wedged between a liquor store and an overpass, windows boarded, front steps littered with wet leaves. The sign still hung above the door, one chain broken so it tilted sideways.

Jason cut the engine half a block away and went in silent through the rear kitchen entrance.

Inside, the shelter was empty.

No heat. No lights. No Tim.

But there were signs of recent use. A blanket on the floor. Food wrappers. A first-aid kit opened and mostly empty. Blood on gauze. A stolen phone charger plugged into an outlet that should not have had power.

Tim had stopped here to patch himself.

Jason picked up the gauze and had to close his fist around it for one second, hard.

The blood was darker now. Too much of it.

In the corner, under a metal prep table, someone had left a bottle cap.

Red plastic.

From a brand of terrible cherry soda Tim only drank on stakeouts because he said the sugar content could probably restart a heart.

Jason turned it over.

Inside, scratched with something sharp, were three letters.

M A T

“Mat?” Dick asked from the doorway, rain dripping off his hair. He had not bothered with the full Nightwing mask; just domino and armor and an expression Jason hated because it was too close to his own fear.

“Maybe start of a word,” Batman said.

Jason looked around the kitchen. Mat. Match. Matrix. Material. Mattress.

No.

“Matilda,” Jason said.

Dick blinked. “What?”

“Matilda.”

Barbara made a questioning noise.

Jason was already pulling up the map.

“Tim had a case with a girl named Matilda from Saint Agnes. She ran messages through the old textile district because nobody checks kids on bikes. He got her into a foster placement. She told him about the basement of a mattress warehouse where people hid when the cops swept the underpass.”

Dick stared at him.

Jason glared. “What?”

“You remember that?”

Jason shoved the bottle cap into a pouch. “I listen when he talks.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Good. Great. Fantastic. Maybe if they all survived the night Jason could throw himself into the river.

Barbara cleared her throat. “There’s a defunct mattress wholesaler, Matson Sleep Supply, two miles east. Could be ‘Mat,’ not Matilda. Building backs onto the service road under the Robinson rail bridge.”

Jason was already heading for the bike.

Batman followed. Dick followed. The whole damn city seemed to follow, sirens and rain and the sour glow of streetlights.

Matson Sleep Supply was not where they found Tim.

It was where they found the people Tim had been trying to save.

Seven of them in the basement. Three adults, four teenagers. Cold, scared, alive. One had Tim’s emergency foil blanket around her shoulders. One had a black domino mask clutched in both hands like a relic.

Jason’s throat tightened when he saw it.

The girl holding the mask could not have been more than sixteen. She stared at the red bat on his chest when he came down the stairs, then at Batman behind him, then at Dick.

“He said you’d come,” she said.

Jason crouched in front of her slowly, like she was a spooked animal. He kept his voice low.

“Red Robin?”

She nodded. Her face was filthy. There was a bruise at her hairline and dried blood at one nostril.

“Where is he?”

“They took him.” Her fingers tightened on the domino. “He got us out of the van. He had a knife. I don’t know where he got it. He cut the zip ties and told us to run inside. Then one of them grabbed me and he went back.”

Jason’s hands curled.

Batman asked, very gently for Batman, “How many?”

“Four. Maybe five. One had a tattoo here.” She touched the side of her neck. “A bird skull.”

Jason knew him. Or knew of him. Ricky Voss, called Rook because Gotham criminals had no taste and less imagination. Mid-level runner for whoever had taken over part of Black Mask’s old transport network. Sold people, guns, stolen meds, anything that fit in a van and made money.

“He was bleeding,” the girl said, and Jason forced his attention back to her. “Red Robin. He was limping but he kept smiling at us like it was okay. He said if a man in a red helmet came, we should give him this.”

She held out the domino.

Jason took it like it might break.

There was something stuck to the inside. A micro-SD card.

Tim had pulled his mask apart to hide evidence while being hunted.

Of course he had.

Jason wanted to kiss him and strangle him and wrap him in blankets for a month.

“He said one more thing,” the girl whispered.

Jason looked at her.

“He said to tell you he’s sorry about the museum case.”

Dick’s head snapped toward Jason.

Jason went very still.

The museum case.

Six weeks ago. A smuggling ring moving antiquities through a private museum gala. Tim in a suit that fit too well. Jason undercover as security, because apparently he had the right kind of face for “may commit violence if the shrimp runs out.” The job had been boring until it was not. Tim had hacked the donor database from behind a decorative screen while Jason stood guard, and afterward they had ended up in the closed exhibit wing waiting for extraction.

There had been a painting behind Tim. Some saint full of arrows, gold leaf halo cracked with age. Tim’s tie had been loosened. His hair had fallen into his eyes. He had looked exhausted and bright and a little mean in the way he got when he was proud of them for surviving something annoying.

Jason had almost kissed him.

He had leaned in half an inch before his nerve failed.

Tim had looked at his mouth.

Then the comms came back and Dick made a joke about rich people naming every room a gallery, and the moment shattered.

Sorry about the museum case.

Jason closed his eyes.

Dick said, softly, “Jay.”

Jason stood. “Get them out.”

“Jason—”

“Get them out,” he repeated. “Oracle, run the card.”

“I’m on it,” Barbara said. Her voice had gone thick, but her hands were steady. Barbara’s hands were always steady. “It’s uploading now.”

Batman stayed close, but not close enough to touch.

Jason appreciated that, maybe.

The file on the SD card was short and ugly. Tim must have recorded it from inside the van before freeing the captives. Audio mostly. A few seconds of shaky video: floor, boots, a man’s tattooed neck, a route list clipped to the dashboard.

Barbara froze one frame and enhanced.

“Route numbers,” she said. “They’re moving between bus depots, river service roads, and an old stormwater access network. Final transfer point looks like… hold on.”

Jason waited by not waiting. He checked weapons. Reloaded. Cleaned blood that was not his off the grip of one gun. Paced once, twice, stopped because the rescued teenagers were watching and he did not need to scare them worse.

“Jason,” Barbara said. “The route list has initials. R.B.S.”

“Robinson Bridge South,” Tim said from Jason’s phone.

Jason nearly dropped it.

Blocked Number.

He put it to his ear so hard the edge bit skin.

“Tim.”

Breathing. A dragging sound. Wind.

“Robinson Bridge South,” Tim repeated. His voice was worse. Quieter. “Old stair access under the theater. They’re moving—” A pause. His breath hitched. “Moving two more. I lost them after Matson.”

“Where are you?”

“Stairs.”

“What stairs?”

A faint, frustrated noise. Very Tim. Still Tim. Jason held onto it.

“Collapsed. Not fully. I’m… very annoyed.”

Jason barked a laugh before he could help it. It came out cracked.

“Yeah? You filing a complaint?”

“Several.”

Dick made a sound behind him that might have been a laugh or a sob. Jason ignored him.

“Can you move?”

Silence.

“Tim.”

“Some.”

“Can you hide?”

“I am a delightfully compact person.”

“You’re a pain in my ass is what you are.”

“Favorite pain?”

Jason pressed his knuckles against his own thigh until the armor creaked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Favorite.”

The line stayed open. Tim breathed. Jason could hear him trying not to sound like he was hurting. It made something brutal and useless rise under Jason’s ribs.

“Red,” Tim whispered.

“I’m here.”

“Your voice helps.”

Jason stopped breathing.

Tim continued, words fuzzed around the edges. “I knew you’d answer.”

“Every time.”

“I wanted to kiss you after the museum case.”

The world narrowed to that one stupid, miraculous sentence.

Jason’s eyes burned.

Around him, the warehouse basement was too bright, too cold. Batman looked away. Dick covered his mouth. Barbara was very quiet in his ear.

Jason said, “Tell me in person.”

Tim breathed out something that might have been a laugh.

“Bossy.”

“Yeah. You can complain in person.”

“I’m cold.”

Jason closed his eyes hard. “I know. I’m coming.”

“Ricky Voss has two vans. One blue. One white. Bird skull tattoo. There’s a girl, maybe twelve, pink hoodie. She hid under the seats. Find her first if—”

“No.”

“Jason.”

“I’m finding both of you.”

A long pause.

Then Tim said, very softly, “Okay.”

The line clicked dead.

Jason lowered the phone.

For two seconds, nobody spoke.

Then Barbara said, “I have him. The call bounced off a tower by Robinson Bridge. Old theater stair access is under the south pedestrian ramp. There was a partial collapse after the earthquake retrofit; city sealed it, but the service door still shows up in old plans.”

Batman said, “We move now.”

Jason was already halfway up the stairs.

Robinson Bridge South was all concrete ribs and rusted railings, the kind of ugly infrastructure Gotham built like it expected the world to end and wanted to be blamed afterward. The old theater beneath it had once been a vaudeville house, then a porn theater, then a church for nine months, then an illegal poker room, then nothing. The city sealed the main entrances years ago and forgot about the service stairs because Gotham forgot about everything unless blood made it interesting.

Jason arrived first because he drove like a felony.

He ditched the bike behind a dumpster and went over the railing onto the lower service walkway. Rain blew sideways off the river, needling under his jacket collar. The bridge groaned overhead as a train passed, vibrations rolling through concrete and bone.

The service door was ajar.

Fresh scrape marks. Mud. Blood.

Jason did not wait.

Inside, the stairwell dropped into black.

“Thermals?” Batman asked behind him.

“Interference from the old steam lines,” Jason said. “Because of course.”

“I take left. Nightwing takes upper.”

“I go down.”

Batman did not argue. Maybe he knew better. Maybe he heard something in Jason’s voice and decided this was one of the nights where standing in his way would cost both of them.

The stairs were narrow and slick. The rail had torn loose in places. Jason descended with one hand on the wall, gun raised, helmet picking up bits of heat and motion that might have been rats or might have been Tim’s breathing if Jason let himself get stupid about it.

Two flights down, he found the first body.

Alive. One of Voss’s men, unconscious, zip-tied with his own belt, a swelling bruise on his temple. Tim’s work, probably. Efficient, mean, gorgeous.

Jason kept moving.

Three flights down, the stairwell opened into a maintenance landing. A blue van was parked half through a service entrance, rear doors open. Empty cuffs on the floor. Blood on the bumper. A pink hoodie sleeve caught in the door latch.

Jason’s heartbeat tried to crawl up his throat.

“Girl in the pink hoodie,” he said. “She was here.”

Dick’s voice came over comms. “I’ve got movement on the upper walkway. Two hostiles, one civilian. Going quiet.”

Batman said, “White van on south service road. Pursuing.”

Jason looked at the blue van, the empty cuffs, the blood trail leading down.

Tim had said find her first.

Jason hated that Tim knew him well enough to be right.

A small sound came from under the van.

Jason crouched.

The girl was wedged behind the rear axle, knees to her chest, one hand clamped over her own mouth. Twelve, maybe younger. Pink hoodie. Eyes huge.

Jason lowered his gun immediately.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, you’re okay. Red Robin sent me.”

Her eyes filled.

“He said you’d be scary.”

Jason swallowed around something sharp. “Yeah, he’s rude like that.”

“He fell.”

“Where?”

She pointed down.

Jason looked over the broken edge of the lower stairwell.

The next section had collapsed into a jagged slope of concrete, rebar, old plaster, and twisted metal. Below it, maybe twenty feet down, was the theater’s lower access corridor. Dark, flooded in places, full of debris.

“Did he move after he fell?”

The girl nodded shakily. “He got up. He made me hide. Then the bad man came and Red Robin ran at him so he wouldn’t look under the van.”

Jason’s hand tightened against the concrete edge.

“Where’s the bad man?”

“He went that way.” She pointed toward the south tunnel. “Red Robin went down.”

Jason breathed in. Out.

“Nightwing,” he said. “I have the girl. Need extraction on lower landing.”

“On my way.”

The girl grabbed his sleeve when he shifted. Her fingers were freezing.

“You’re going to get him?”

Jason looked at her hand, then at her face.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to get him.”

She released him.

Dick arrived thirty seconds later, gentle and bright in the dark the way Dick could be when he needed to make terrified kids believe the world still had soft places. He wrapped the girl in his jacket, despite the rain, despite the cold, and gave Jason one look over her head.

“Go,” Dick said.

Jason went.

Getting down the collapse without bringing the rest of it with him was a bitch. Jason had done worse with broken ribs and a concussion, but he still cursed under his breath the whole way because the alternative was thinking about Tim falling through this, Tim making himself get up afterward, Tim bleeding in the dark and using his last good minutes to hide a kid under a van.

At the bottom, the old theater corridor smelled like river water and rot. Torn posters still clung to the walls in strips, faces from old shows peeled into ghosts. Jason’s boots splashed through two inches of black water.

“Tim,” he called, low.

Nothing.

He followed the blood.

It was not a lot at first. Smears on the wall. Drops on concrete. Then more where someone had leaned heavily, dragged a shoulder, maybe fallen and gotten up again.

Jason found another of Voss’s men around the corner, groaning on the floor with a broken nose and one arm zip-tied to a radiator pipe. A strip of cape fabric was stuffed in his mouth.

Jason crouched beside him.

The man’s eyes went wide.

Jason removed the gag.

“Where’s Red Robin?”

The man spat blood and tried to smile.

Jason punched the radiator pipe beside his head hard enough to dent it.

The smile vanished.

“End of the corridor,” the man gasped. “Stairwell gave. Voss went after him.”

“Why?”

“He had the drive.”

“What drive?”

“The route ledger. Buyers. Drop points. Everything.”

Jason stood.

The man said, panicked, “Hey, hey, you can’t leave me here. The water—”

Jason looked at the rising water around the man’s boots.

“You’ll float.”

Then he kept going.

The corridor ended at a stairwell that had once led backstage and now looked like the city had chewed it up and spit it out. Concrete slabs leaned at bad angles. Rebar hung like vines. Water dripped steadily somewhere deeper in the dark.

Jason saw Voss first.

Bird skull tattoo on the neck. Big man. Cheap tactical vest. Knife in one hand. Gun on the floor six feet away, too far from him, which meant Tim had knocked it loose.

Voss was standing over a gap in the debris.

“Come on out,” Voss said. “You’re making this boring.”

Jason shot him in the knee.

Voss hit the ground screaming.

Jason crossed the space in three strides and kicked the knife away.

“Boring enough?”

Voss tried to reach for the gun. Jason stepped on his wrist. Something cracked. Voss screamed again.

“Where is he?”

“Fuck you.”

Jason looked down into the gap.

At first, he saw only broken concrete and shadow.

Then a hand.

Bare fingers, scraped bloody, curled weakly around a piece of rebar.

Jason’s whole body went cold.

“Tim.”

No response.

He dropped to his knees at the edge, helmet light cutting into the dark. Tim was wedged below the collapsed stair, half on his side, one leg pinned under a slab of concrete too big to move by hand. His suit was torn at the ribs. His hair was wet with blood or water or both. One arm was tucked under him at an angle Jason did not like.

But his chest moved.

Jason almost made a sound. Bit it back so hard his teeth clicked.

“Tim,” he said again, softer. “Baby bird, look at me.”

Tim’s eyelids fluttered.

It took a second. Then another.

Blue eyes, unfocused and dark with pain, found the red helmet.

His mouth moved.

Jason leaned closer.

“Terrible detective,” Tim whispered.

Jason laughed. It came out ruined.

“Yeah, yeah. You can put it in my performance review.”

Tim’s fingers slipped on the rebar.

Jason reached down and caught his hand.

Skin to glove. Cold. Too cold.

“I’ve got you,” Jason said.

Tim’s eyes closed.

“Pink hoodie?”

“Safe. Nightwing has her.”

A tiny breath. Relief, even through all that pain.

“Good.”

“Yeah. Good. Now you focus on staying awake.”

“Bossy,” Tim mumbled.

“You keep saying that like it’s new information.”

Batman’s voice came over comms. “Status?”

“Found him. Lower backstage stairwell. Leg pinned. Need extraction gear and medical now.”

“On my way.”

Barbara said, “EMS staging two blocks out. Alfred is monitoring.”

Jason barely heard her. He was looking at Tim’s face.

Tim was trying to stay conscious. Jason could see it. The little twitch between his brows, the tiny movement of his lips like he was counting. He had taught himself how to endure in ways nobody should have had to learn. Jason knew that look because he had worn it. He hated seeing it on Tim.

Voss groaned behind him.

Jason turned his head.

Voss had dragged himself half an inch toward the gun with his unbroken hand.

Jason picked up a chunk of concrete and threw it at him. It hit Voss in the shoulder and knocked him flat.

“Stay there.”

Tim’s eyes cracked open.

“Did you just… throw a rock?”

“Concrete. Different genre.”

Tim made a small sound. It might have been a laugh. It turned into a cough, and the cough turned ugly fast. Jason tightened his grip on Tim’s hand.

“Easy. Hey. Slow.”

Tim breathed through it, face gone gray.

Jason wanted to tear the whole building apart.

Instead he kept his voice level.

“You did good. The kids are out. We got the route ledger?”

Tim blinked sluggishly.

“Drive,” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Boot.”

Jason scanned him. One boot was visible, the other trapped under the concrete. He reached carefully, feeling along the outer seam of Tim’s accessible boot until he found a hidden pocket. Of course. Tim had compartments in compartments. Jason pulled out a small encrypted drive wrapped in plastic and tucked it away.

“Got it.”

“Good,” Tim said. Then, after a pause, “Wanted to tell you in person.”

Jason’s throat closed.

“Save it.”

“Rude.”

“Yeah, I’m very difficult. You can file another complaint.”

Tim’s fingers shifted weakly against his palm.

“I meant it.”

Jason froze.

Tim looked so young like this, which was unfair, because he was not. He was a grown man with a dangerous job and a brain that made half of Gotham’s criminals wake up sweating. But pain stripped people down. So did cold. So did the dark. Tim looked like every version of himself at once: the kid who had shown up with a camera and a theory, the Robin who had built himself out of everyone else’s grief, the adult who sat in Jason’s kitchen and pretended he did not want to be asked to stay.

Jason squeezed his hand.

“I know.”

“After the museum case,” Tim whispered. “I thought you were going to.”

“I was.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Jason laughed under his breath. “Because I’m an idiot.”

Tim’s mouth curved, barely.

“Yeah.”

“Glad you’re still mean. Real reassuring.”

Tim’s eyes drifted shut again.

Jason leaned down, panic snapping sharp in his chest.

“Hey. Tim. Keep those eyes open.”

“’M tired.”

“I know.”

“Cold.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

The endearment landed between them, exposed and helpless.

Tim’s eyes opened a little.

“Sweetheart?”

Jason’s face burned under the helmet. Ridiculous. Tim was pinned under a collapsed stairwell and Jason was embarrassed by his own mouth.

“Head injury. You hallucinated it.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah.”

“Say it again later.”

Jason bowed his head until the helmet nearly touched Tim’s knuckles.

“Anything you want.”

Batman arrived then, followed by Dick and a rescue unit Jason barely noticed except as hands and tools and voices. The next twenty minutes were hell in the practical, grinding way of rescues. Stabilize the debris. Jack up the slab. Brace the shift. Keep Tim talking. Keep him breathing. Keep Jason from crawling down there and trying to bench-press concrete through sheer terror.

At one point Batman put a hand on Jason’s shoulder.

Jason did not shake it off.

That was how bad it was.

“Pulse is thready,” Alfred said over a private medical line, voice clipped with worry. “Keep him responsive if you can, Master Jason.”

“I’m trying.”

Tim faded in and out. He knew his name. He knew Jason. He knew the drive mattered and asked about it three times. He knew the girl in the pink hoodie was safe and relaxed every time Jason told him, like the information kept falling out of his head and hurting him anew until Jason put it back.

He also, at one point, mumbled, “Your helmet is stupid.”

Dick choked.

Jason said, “I’m leaving you here.”

Tim smiled with half his mouth.

The slab finally lifted enough.

The medics slid Tim free.

He screamed once when his leg came loose.

Jason would remember that sound forever. He knew it immediately, the way some sounds entered the body and took up residence, unpaid, unwanted. He held Tim’s shoulders through it because Tim’s hand had found him blind and desperate, and Jason said nonsense into his hair. Practical nonsense. Breathe. Here. Almost done. I’ve got you. Pink hoodie’s safe. Drive’s safe. You’re safe. I’m here.

Tim passed out before they got him on the stretcher.

Jason walked beside him all the way to the ambulance.

Batman handled Voss. Dick handled the freed captives. Barbara handled the evidence. Alfred talked the EMTs through details he had no business knowing and they had enough sense not to question.

Jason handled Tim.

At the ambulance doors, one of the EMTs put a hand up.

“Sir, you can’t—”

Jason looked at him.

The EMT reconsidered his life.

“Fine. Sit there. Do not touch anything unless I tell you.”

Jason climbed in.

Tim looked even worse under ambulance lights. Too pale. Blood at his temple. Lips blue-tinged from cold. Oxygen mask fogging with each shallow breath.

Jason sat where the EMT pointed and did not touch anything.

For about eleven seconds.

Then Tim’s hand twitched on the blanket, searching.

Jason took it.

The EMT glanced at their hands and said nothing.

Good man.

The ambulance pulled away from Robinson Bridge, sirens cutting through Gotham rain. Jason sat with Tim’s cold fingers wrapped in his and thought about every call.

Pigeons own the courthouse.

Dog’s got two teeth.

Tell Hood he’s a terrible detective.

Your voice helps.

I wanted to kiss you after the museum case.

Jason had spent years learning the shapes fear could take. Rage, mostly. Humor sometimes. Silence. Bad decisions. Running headfirst into a fight because at least bullets were honest.

This fear had a different shape.

It was Tim’s hand in his.

It was Tim breathing because Jason had answered.

It was the horrible knowledge that Tim had called him not because Jason was the best detective, or the strongest fighter, or the person with the most resources.

Tim had called because he knew Jason would pick up.

Every time.

Jason bent over their joined hands and pressed his forehead to Tim’s knuckles.

The EMT pretended not to see that too.

Jason decided he liked him.

⸻

Tim woke up in the Cave medbay because Gotham hospitals asked too many questions and because Alfred could put the fear of God into a trauma surgeon while wearing a cardigan.

The first thing he registered was pain.

That was annoying but not unexpected. It came in layers: leg, ribs, shoulder, head, throat raw from either screaming or intubation or both. His mouth tasted like cotton. His brain felt like someone had removed it, rinsed it in club soda, and put it back in at a slight angle.

The second thing he registered was warmth.

Blankets. Heated ones, probably. IV fluids warmed. Compression on his injured leg. Someone had done a good job.

The third thing was Jason.

Not visually. Tim’s eyes were still closed.

But Jason had a presence when he was trying to be quiet. It was actually louder than when he was making noise. Jason trying to be quiet meant Jason holding himself still by force, anger and worry tucked into the corners of the room, breathing measured like he was counting ammunition.

Tim tried to open his eyes.

Bad idea. Light attacked him.

He made a small, involuntary sound of disgust.

Something shifted beside the bed.

“Hey,” Jason said. Low. Rough. “Take it slow.”

Tim opened his eyes again because apparently he had learned nothing.

Jason was sitting in the chair beside the bed. No helmet. Hair damp and sticking up like he had run his hands through it too many times. He had changed out of armor into a black T-shirt and jeans, but there was still a smear of grime along his jaw and bruising across one cheekbone. His eyes were red-rimmed.

Tim stared at him.

Jason stared back.

“You look terrible,” Tim rasped.

Jason’s face did something complicated. It almost smiled. Almost broke.

“Yeah, well. You look like you lost a fight with a building.”

“I won.”

“Sure. Building’s in custody.”

Tim tried to smile. It hurt, but most things did.

Jason reached for the cup on the side table, then stopped.

“Water?”

Tim nodded.

Jason held the straw to his mouth with exaggerated care, like Tim was a bomb. Tim took two small sips and then turned his head away. Jason removed the straw immediately. No fuss. No lecture.

Tim wanted to cry, which was stupid, so he closed his eyes.

A warm hand settled lightly over his wrist, above the IV tape.

“Too much?”

Tim shook his head. Then winced because shaking his head was also stupid.

“Okay,” Jason said. “No head movements. You got a concussion.”

“How bad?”

“The kind where Alfred makes that face.”

Tim cracked one eye open. “Oh. Funeral bad?”

“Will lecture you for a month bad.”

“Same thing.”

Jason huffed softly.

The medbay was quiet beyond them. Machines beeped. Water moved through pipes somewhere in the Cave. In the distance, someone typed at a console. Barbara, probably. Or Bruce pretending he was not hovering. Dick would be nearby too. Tim could feel the shape of everyone’s worry like bruises he had not found yet.

But Jason was the only one beside the bed.

Tim’s memory returned in pieces. The warehouse. The container. The kids. The van. The girl in the pink hoodie. The fall. Concrete. Jason’s voice in the dark.

Sweetheart.

Tim’s heart stumbled.

Jason noticed because of course he did.

“Pain spike?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Rude.”

“Also true.” Jason leaned forward, elbows on his knees, still touching Tim’s wrist like he thought Tim might vanish if contact broke. “What do you need?”

Tim looked at him.

There were many possible answers. Medically, morphine. Practically, a status report. Emotionally, probably something humiliating like a hug, though his ribs would object and Alfred would materialize from the shadows with a rolled-up newspaper.

Tim’s mouth, traitorous and dry, said, “You answered.”

Jason went still.

Tim swallowed. His throat hurt. He kept going anyway.

“Every time.”

Jason’s hand slid from his wrist to his palm. Careful around the pulse ox. Their fingers tangled awkwardly with tape and wires between them.

“Yeah,” Jason said.

“I knew you would.”

Jason looked down at their hands.

For once, he seemed to have no joke ready. No deflection. No theatrical ego. Just Jason, bare-faced and exhausted, sitting beside a hospital bed like leaving was physically impossible.

Tim loved him.

The thought arrived calmly, like it had been waiting for an opening.

It was not new. That was the ridiculous part. It had been there for months, maybe longer, wrapped in irritation and late-night coffee and the way Jason always checked Tim’s blind side without making a production of it. It had been there in safehouse kitchens and rooftops and the museum case. It had been there when Tim called, half-delirious and freezing, because if he had one voice left in the world, he wanted Jason’s on the other end of the line.

Tim loved him.

And he was so, so tired of almost dying with things unsaid.

“I meant it,” Tim whispered.

Jason looked up.

“About the museum.”

Jason’s thumb moved once against the side of Tim’s hand.

“Tim.”

“I wanted you to kiss me.”

Jason breathed in slowly.

“I wanted to.”

“You said that.”

“Yeah.”

“So.”

Jason’s mouth twitched despite everything. “So?”

“I have a concussion. You have to do more of the thinking.”

“Convenient.”

“Very.”

Jason looked toward the medbay door. Tim followed his gaze with his eyes only and saw no one, though that meant nothing in this family. Privacy in the Cave was a myth told to young vigilantes to make them complacent.

Jason looked back at him.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

“I noticed.”

“I’m not kissing you because you almost died and got sentimental.”

Tim gave him the flattest look he could manage while horizontal, drugged, and covered in wires.

“I wanted to kiss you six weeks ago in a museum with no head injury.”

Jason flushed. Actually flushed. It spread up his neck in a way Tim would have enjoyed more if he did not feel like a collapsed building had personally insulted all of his organs.

“Yeah, okay,” Jason muttered.

“And at the diner after the Falcone accountant case.”

Jason blinked.

“And in your kitchen when you were making chili and got cumin on your shirt.”

“That was paprika.”

“It was not.”

“It was absolutely paprika.”

“I was thinking about your mouth. I still noticed the spice.”

Jason stared at him.

Tim stared back, exhausted and stubborn and alive.

Then Jason laughed quietly, hand coming up to cover his face for a second.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’re impossible.”

“Concise diagnosis.”

Jason lowered his hand. The laughter faded. His eyes stayed soft.

“Alfred will kill me if your heart rate spikes.”

“Then be gentle.”

Jason’s expression changed.

It was small. Just the humor leaving his mouth, the fear settling into something tender and intent. He stood slowly, giving Tim plenty of time to object. Tim did not. Jason leaned over the bed, one hand braced on the mattress beside Tim’s shoulder, the other still holding Tim’s fingers.

Up close, he smelled like soap, smoke, rain, and Cave coffee. His cheek was bruised. There was a small cut near his lower lip.

Tim wanted to touch it.

He could not quite lift his hand.

Jason noticed that too. He always noticed too much and pretended he did not. He ducked his head and pressed his mouth to Tim’s forehead first.

Tim closed his eyes.

The kiss was warm. Brief. Careful.

Jason shifted down and kissed his temple. Then the corner of his eye. Then his cheekbone, avoiding the bruises like he had mapped them.

Tim made an embarrassingly small sound.

Jason paused.

“Okay?”

“Better than okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Stop making me answer questions.”

Jason smiled against his cheek.

Then he kissed Tim’s mouth.

It was soft enough to hurt.

Tim had thought about kissing Jason in a lot of stupid ways. Against an alley wall after a fight. In Jason’s kitchen. On a rooftop with blood drying under his gloves. During the museum case, with old paintings watching like saints had nothing better to do.

He had not imagined it like this: flat on his back, leg immobilized, ribs wrapped, mouth dry, Jason bent over him with one hand trembling against the bed because he was trying so hard not to lean too much weight anywhere. It should have been awkward. It was awkward. Tim’s oxygen cannula got in the way. Jason’s nose bumped his cheek. Tim’s split lip stung.

It was still the best thing that had happened to him in months.

Jason pulled back too soon.

Tim chased him about half an inch and immediately regretted every life choice that required abdominal muscles.

Jason put a hand on his shoulder, gentle but firm.

“Easy.”

“Terrible,” Tim murmured.

“Kissing?”

“Stopping.”

Jason’s face went soft and helpless.

“Oh,” he said.

Tim would have teased him for that if he had the energy. He did not. He settled for squeezing Jason’s hand.

From somewhere near the doorway, Dick made a sound like a dying teakettle.

Jason closed his eyes.

Tim opened his.

Dick stood half-hidden behind the medbay door with a tray of coffee cups in both hands, eyes wet and grin enormous. Bruce loomed behind him, looking like he had been caught witnessing a rare bird. Alfred stood behind both of them with a clipboard and the serene expression of a man who had already known everything and was politely waiting for the rest of them to catch up.

Barbara’s voice came over the speaker from the main computer.

“Finally.”

Jason pointed toward the door without looking away from Tim. “Out.”

Dick said, “I brought coffee.”

“Out with the coffee.”

“That feels unfair to the coffee.”

Alfred cleared his throat.

Dick retreated immediately.

Bruce remained for a second longer. His eyes moved from Tim to Jason, then to their joined hands. He looked tired. More than tired. He looked like a man who had spent the night imagining another dead son, another empty suit, another place where love had arrived late and useless.

Tim did not have the energy to manage Bruce’s feelings.

Jason did, apparently, because he said, quieter, “He’s okay.”

Bruce nodded once.

“Rest,” he said to Tim, voice rough.

Tim blinked slowly. “Working on it.”

Bruce left.

Alfred approached the bed, checked the monitor, adjusted the blanket, and gave Jason one mild glance.

“Master Jason.”

Jason tensed. “Yeah?”

“Do avoid tangling the IV line during romantic developments.”

Tim closed his eyes.

Jason made a strangled noise.

Alfred patted Tim’s shoulder once. “Very glad to have you back with us, Master Tim.”

“Thanks, Alfred.”

“Sleep now.”

It was not a request. Tim slept.

⸻

Recovery was boring, painful, and humiliating in the specific way of being known.

Tim hated being known when he could not turn it into an advantage.

Everyone knew too much.

Alfred knew when he was underreporting pain and silently adjusted medication timing without asking for Tim’s permission, which was rude but effective. Barbara knew he was trying to access the case files from the medbay tablet and replaced them with an audiobook app. Dick knew Tim got restless around two in the morning and started appearing with contraband milkshakes and gossip. Bruce knew Tim hated waking up disoriented and sat nearby in the dark doing paperwork with actual paper so the sound of pages turning gave the room a human rhythm.

Jason knew everything else.

Jason knew Tim wanted the door open but the curtains half-drawn. Knew he hated hospital gowns and somehow acquired soft sweatpants that fit over the brace. Knew he preferred ice chips to water when nauseous. Knew the exact face Tim made before he said something was fine when it was not fine at all.

Jason did not hover.

He was just always there in ways Tim could not argue with.

He brought food and did not comment when Tim ate three bites and stopped. He helped Tim sit up and did not make a thing of it when Tim’s hands shook. He changed bandages under Alfred’s supervision with a focus so intense Tim had to look away because being handled carefully by Jason was rapidly becoming a problem for his dignity.

They did not talk about the kiss for thirty-six hours.

This was partly because Tim slept through most of those hours and partly because Jason, for all his motorcycle-riding, gun-toting, crime-lord-posturing nonsense, had the romantic courage of a damp paper bag.

Tim found this endearing until it became irritating.

On the third day, Jason was sitting beside the bed peeling an orange with a pocketknife because he claimed it was easier and Alfred had threatened him twice about citrus oils near medical equipment.

Tim watched him separate a slice.

“Are we dating?”

Jason cut his thumb.

“Shit.”

Tim smiled.

Jason glared while reaching for gauze. “You did that on purpose.”

“I asked a clarifying question.”

“You waited until I was holding a knife.”

“I didn’t tell you to be dramatic with fruit.”

“It’s not dramatic. It’s efficient.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Jason.”

Jason wrapped his thumb with unnecessary aggression, then looked at him.

His ears were pink.

Tim’s heart did something very stupid and warm.

“Do you want to be?” Jason asked.

Tim blinked.

Jason looked almost angry with himself for saying it that plainly. He leaned back in the chair, arms crossed, then uncrossed them when he realized the posture looked defensive, then seemed annoyed that he had noticed that, too.

Tim had to bite the inside of his cheek.

“Yes,” Tim said.

Jason went still.

“Oh.”

“Yes, Jason.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re really sweeping me off my feet here.”

Jason looked at his immobilized leg. “Pretty sure that’s medically discouraged.”

Tim laughed. It hurt his ribs, but it was worth it for the way Jason’s face changed, wonder slipping through the cracks before he could hide it.

Jason leaned forward, elbows on knees.

“I want to,” he said. “Date you. Be with you. Whatever words we’re using that don’t sound like I’m fifteen and asking you to prom.”

Tim softened.

“I would go to prom with you.”

“Shut up.”

“You’d wear a red tie.”

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“We just started dating.”

“Fastest relationship in history. Real tragic.”

Tim smiled.

Jason smiled back, smaller, then reached for his hand.

“I want it,” Jason said, quieter. “I just need you to know I’m probably gonna be weird about it.”

“Jason.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m weird about everything.”

“True.”

“And I already know you.”

Jason’s mouth tugged to one side.

“Yeah,” he said. “You do.”

Tim held up his free hand as much as the IV allowed.

“Kiss me.”

Jason glanced toward the medbay door.

“Nobody’s there,” Tim said.

“You’re lying.”

“Probably. Kiss me anyway.”

Jason stood, bent carefully, and kissed him.

It was still gentle. Tim was still hurt. There were still too many wires, too many bruises, too much Cave around them. But this kiss had less fear in it. Jason’s hand cupped Tim’s jaw, thumb warm along his cheek. Tim turned into it as much as he could, mouth parting under Jason’s with a quiet sigh.

Jason made a low sound in response, then immediately pulled back like he had startled himself.

Tim opened his eyes.

Jason’s face was flushed. His mouth was wet.

“Okay,” Tim said, slightly dazed. “Prom upgraded.”

Jason laughed and pressed one more kiss to the corner of his mouth.

From the main computer, Barbara said, “For the record, nobody’s there, but comms are not the same as nobody.”

Jason looked up at the ceiling. “I’m changing every password in this Cave.”

“You can try.”

Tim smiled until he fell asleep.

⸻

The case did not end when Tim was rescued.

Cases rarely had the decency.

The drive Tim stole from Voss turned out to be the kind of evidence that made Barbara swear under her breath and Bruce cancel two meetings. Routes, names, buyers, transport schedules, payoff records, police contacts, medical staff willing to look the other way, fake charity partnerships, shell companies stacked like dirty dishes.

Tim was not allowed to work on it.

This was unacceptable.

He waited until Jason went upstairs to shower and Alfred was dealing with Bruce’s latest attempt to exist on coffee and guilt, then reached for the tablet Barbara had so insultingly restricted.

He got through the first two lock screens in under a minute.

The third one displayed a message.

TIMOTHY JACKSON DRAKE-WAYNE, NO.

Tim stared.

Then another line appeared.

YES, I USED YOUR FULL FAKE-RICH-PERSON NAME.

Then:

REST.

Tim narrowed his eyes.

A final line appeared.

JASON WILL TELL ME IF YOU TRY A DIFFERENT DEVICE.

Tim looked toward the door.

Jason leaned against the frame with wet hair, sweatpants, and the smug expression of a man who had betrayed him in advance.

“Wow,” Tim said.

Jason sipped coffee. “You’re very predictable when concussed.”

“I’m breaking up with you.”

“You already used that joke.”

“You used it.”

“Then get your own material.”

Tim sank back against the pillows, annoyed and fond and exhausted.

“I need to know what’s happening.”

Jason’s face softened.

He came into the room, set the coffee aside, and dragged the chair close with his foot.

“I know.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“Jason.”

Jason leaned forward, forearms on his knees.

“Voss is in custody. The captives are safe. Pink hoodie’s name is Lila. She’s with a social worker Alfred trusts. The ledger is good. Babs and Bruce are building cases. Dick and Cass hit two transfer points last night. Nobody got moved before we got there.”

Tim closed his eyes.

Some tight, ugly thing in his chest loosened.

“All of them?”

“All the ones from the ledger.”

“What about unlisted routes?”

“Working on it.”

Tim nodded, then regretted nodding.

Jason’s hand landed gently on his knee above the brace.

“Hey.”

Tim opened his eyes.

“You did good,” Jason said.

Tim swallowed.

“I lost them.”

“You got them out.”

“Not all of them.”

“You got enough information for us to find the rest.”

Tim looked away. The Cave ceiling blurred.

“I had Lila under the van,” he said. “And Voss came back. I knew if he looked down, he’d see her. I couldn’t move right. My leg was already bad. I thought if I made noise—”

“You gave him something to chase,” Jason said.

Tim nodded once, carefully.

“That was the right call.”

“It was also stupid.”

“Yeah. Good calls are like that sometimes.”

Tim laughed weakly. “That your professional assessment?”

“That’s my whole career.”

Jason’s thumb moved against the blanket. Slow. Grounding without making a speech about grounding. Tim appreciated that more than he could say.

“I heard you,” Tim said.

Jason’s brow furrowed.

“In the stairwell. Before you got there. On the phone.” Tim stared at their hands. “I kept thinking if I could call you one more time, I could stay awake long enough.”

Jason’s fingers curled in the blanket.

Tim kept talking because if he stopped he might lose nerve, and he had nearly died in a basement with a route ledger in his boot. He was too tired to be subtle.

“I wasn’t just calling because you know the city. I mean, you do. And you know the stupid things I say when I’m half-delirious, which is operationally useful.”

Jason’s mouth twitched.

“But I called you because I wanted you,” Tim said. “There. On the line. I wanted your voice.”

Jason looked down.

For one horrible second Tim thought he had said too much.

Then Jason stood so abruptly the chair scraped back.

Tim flinched, more from surprise than fear.

Jason froze.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Jason rubbed both hands over his face, careful of the bandaged thumb.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I’m just—give me a second.”

Tim waited.

Jason paced once to the foot of the bed and back. His movement had none of the caged anger Tim was used to seeing after bad cases. This was different. Too much feeling with nowhere to put it, maybe.

Finally Jason stopped beside him.

“You can’t say stuff like that while stuck in a bed,” Jason said, voice rough.

Tim frowned. “Why?”

“Because I can’t climb in there and hold you like I want to.”

Tim’s entire brain went quiet.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Tim looked at the bed. Looked at the wires. Looked at Jason.

“The left side has room.”

Jason stared at him.

“Alfred said I’m supposed to avoid sudden movement,” Tim said. “You’re not sudden.”

“I’m heavy.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Your ribs—”

“Carefully, then.”

Jason’s expression had gone painfully soft again.

“You sure?”

Tim lifted his hand.

Jason took it.

Getting Jason into the medbay bed was logistically stupid. It involved moving one pillow, two monitor wires, the blanket, Tim’s injured leg, Jason’s long limbs, and both of their dignity. Jason cursed under his breath twice. Tim laughed once and had to stop because ribs. Alfred appeared in the doorway halfway through, took in the scene, and said, “Mind the IV,” then left.

Jason looked after him.

“I don’t understand this family.”

“You’re part of it.”

“Explains why I don’t understand myself either.”

But he settled in.

Carefully. So carefully Tim’s chest hurt for reasons that had nothing to do with injury. Jason lay on his side, one arm tucked under the pillow, the other resting lightly over Tim’s waist above the bandages. He kept most of his weight off the mattress. His body was warm along Tim’s uninjured side.

Tim exhaled.

Jason’s hand flexed.

“Okay?”

Tim turned his face into Jason’s shoulder.

“Yeah.”

Jason pressed his mouth to Tim’s hair.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

The Cave hummed around them. Machines beeped. Somewhere far off, Bruce and Barbara were probably dismantling an international trafficking network with spreadsheets and rage. Dick was probably pretending not to cry over a child’s rescued hoodie. Damian was probably saying something cutting because he was worried and did not know what to do with it.

Tim should have been thinking about the case.

Instead he thought about Jason’s arm around him.

“Sweetheart,” Tim murmured.

Jason tensed.

Tim smiled into his shirt.

“You said it in the stairwell.”

“Again with the hallucinations.”

“You said I could ask you to say it later.”

Jason was silent long enough Tim wondered if he had pushed too far.

Then Jason’s lips brushed his hair again.

“Sweetheart,” he said quietly.

Tim closed his eyes.

It was embarrassing how much that helped.

⸻

Lila visited on the fifth day.

Tim was awake, bored, and losing an argument with Jason about whether a person recovering from a severe concussion should be allowed to watch security footage.

“It’s not work,” Tim said. “It’s visual enrichment.”

“You’re not a zoo animal.”

“Then stop treating me like an anxious meerkat.”

Jason looked at him for a second.

“Okay, first of all, that’s insulting to meerkats.”

Dick arrived before Tim could respond, knocking on the medbay doorframe with one knuckle.

“Visitor,” he said.

Lila stepped around him, half-hidden in an oversized hoodie and too-clean sneakers someone had clearly bought that morning. Her hair was braided neatly. The bruise on her forehead had faded to yellow at the edges.

She held a paper bag in both hands.

Tim pushed himself up too fast.

Jason’s hand landed between his shoulder blades immediately.

“Slow.”

Tim ignored him mostly, but slower.

“Hi,” Tim said.

Lila looked at him. Her eyes darted to the brace, the bandages, the IV bruising, the stitches near his hairline.

“You look better with the mask,” she said.

Jason barked a laugh.

Tim smiled. “That’s fair.”

She came closer, still clutching the bag.

“I brought you something.”

Dick looked suspiciously emotional behind her. Jason looked like he had already decided he would kill for this child, which was sweet and concerning.

Lila handed Tim the bag.

Inside was a pack of red pens, a cherry soda, and his domino mask, repaired with uneven black stitches.

Tim’s throat closed.

“I know it’s probably not right,” Lila said quickly. “Mr. Nightwing said you have, like, spares and stuff. But you gave it to me and I thought maybe—”

“It’s perfect,” Tim said.

She looked at him.

He meant it. The stitches were crooked. The material was scratched. It would never sit right again, not for patrol. But Tim held it in his hands and felt the moment under the van, her terrified breathing, his own blood in his mouth, the absolute certainty that Jason would come if Tim could just leave enough of a trail.

“It’s perfect,” he said again.

Lila’s face crumpled a little, then tightened like she was embarrassed by it.

Tim knew that expression.

Jason probably did too. His hand was still at Tim’s back, warm and steady.

“I told you he’d come,” Lila said.

Tim looked at Jason.

Jason looked away first, jaw working.

“You did,” Tim said softly.

Lila stayed for eleven minutes. She told Tim that the social worker had a dog, that Dick bought terrible vending machine cookies, that Batman was “really awkward” but gave her a phone number to call if anyone scared her. She asked if Red Hood always looked like he wanted to bite people. Tim said yes. Jason said he was sitting right there. Lila said she knew.

When she left, Tim held the repaired mask in his lap.

Jason was quiet.

Tim looked at him.

“You okay?”

Jason leaned against the side table.

“Should be asking you that.”

“I asked first.”

“Brat.”

“Boyfriend,” Tim corrected.

Jason’s mouth did something pleased before he could stop it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

Then, quieter, “I hate how good you are with them.”

Tim blinked.

“With who?”

“Scared kids. People in trouble. You get all…” Jason gestured vaguely, like the concept of Tim being gentle was personally difficult. “You.”

Tim looked down at the mask.

“I was one.”

Jason did not answer.

Tim traced the uneven stitches with one thumb.

“Scared, I mean. Not trafficked. Not like that. But when I started, after Jason—after you were gone, and then after my mom, and my dad, and everything, I spent a lot of time being very competent because if I stopped, I had to be a person. And people noticed less if I was useful.”

Jason was very still.

Tim’s voice stayed even. He was proud of that.

“So with kids like Lila, I know the look. The one where they’re trying to become useful before anyone decides they’re inconvenient.”

Jason sat on the edge of the bed. Slowly. Carefully. Their knees touched above the blanket.

“You were never inconvenient.”

Tim laughed once, low and disbelieving.

Jason did not look offended. He looked like he wanted to find every person who had made Tim laugh like that and have a private conversation with them in a locked room.

“You weren’t,” Jason said. “I’m saying it anyway.”

Tim swallowed.

“Jason.”

“I know. You don’t gotta believe it right this second.”

Tim’s eyes stung.

There it was again, the thing Jason did right without making a performance of it. No demand. No speech. Just the words put down beside Tim like food, like a blanket, like something he could pick up when his hands worked.

Tim leaned forward carefully.

Jason met him halfway.

This kiss was different from the medbay ones. Still careful, because Tim was still held together with medical tape and spite, but deeper. Tim touched Jason’s jaw, thumb brushing the bruise there. Jason exhaled into his mouth, hand sliding to the back of Tim’s neck, warm and broad and so gentle Tim felt undone by it.

When they parted, Jason rested his forehead against Tim’s.

“You’re good,” Jason said.

Tim closed his eyes.

“So are you.”

Jason huffed. “Debatable.”

“Not to me.”

Jason did not answer.

But his hand stayed at Tim’s neck for a long time.

⸻

The first time Tim walked again, he threw up.

This was not his finest moment.

In his defense, his leg felt like it belonged to someone else, his ribs screamed every time he put weight on the crutches, and the Cave floor had the audacity to tilt under him.

Jason handled it well.

He got one arm around Tim’s waist, kept him from hitting the ground, grabbed the basin Alfred had placed nearby because Alfred was never surprised by the human body’s betrayals, and murmured, “Okay, I got you, I got you,” while Tim retched miserably into a plastic tub.

Tim wanted to die for about forty seconds.

Then he wanted to apologize.

Then he remembered Jason hated unnecessary apologies and would probably make that face.

So he said, hoarse, “Physical therapy is homophobic.”

Jason paused.

Then he started laughing.

It was not mean. It was startled and relieved and too loud for the medbay, and Tim loved him so much in that moment it made him dizzy all over again.

Alfred took the basin with professional discretion.

“Perhaps we will limit today’s attempt to standing.”

Tim, still leaning heavily into Jason’s side, said, “Cowardice.”

“Medical prudence,” Alfred said.

“Same thing in nicer shoes.”

Jason snorted. “You’re arguing with the guy who controls the pain meds.”

Tim considered this.

“Alfred is wise and correct.”

“Better,” Alfred said.

Jason helped him back into bed. It should have been awful. It was awful, physically. Emotionally, it was complicated by the fact that Jason’s hands were warm and certain at his waist, his shoulder, his good hip. He moved Tim like Tim was breakable without making him feel weak. That was a balance most people failed at.

Once Tim was settled, sweaty and pale and annoyed, Jason wiped his face with a cool cloth.

Tim tolerated this for three seconds.

“I can do that.”

“I know.”

Jason kept wiping.

Tim let him.

The cloth moved over his forehead, his temple, carefully around the stitches. Jason’s brow was furrowed in concentration. There was a tiny line between his eyebrows. Tim wanted to kiss it.

So he did.

Or tried to.

He leaned forward and kissed the air near Jason’s chin because his depth perception was still recovering from concussion and medication.

Jason stared.

Tim stared back.

“That was supposed to land better,” Tim said.

Jason’s mouth twitched.

“You missed my whole face.”

“Temporary setback.”

Jason leaned down. “Try again.”

Tim kissed him properly this time.

It was brief because Alfred was still in the room and because Tim’s body had very strong opinions about staying upright. But Jason smiled against his mouth, and Tim felt the shape of it for the next hour.

Later, when Alfred left and the Cave quieted, Jason sat beside him with the repaired domino mask in his hands.

“You keeping this?”

Tim looked over.

“Yeah.”

“Can’t use it on patrol.”

“I know.”

Jason turned it carefully, thumb near Lila’s crooked stitches.

“She wanted to fix what got broken.”

Tim’s chest ached.

“Yeah.”

“Kids shouldn’t know that feeling.”

“No.”

Jason set the mask on the side table.

Tim watched him.

“Do you?”

Jason’s gaze flicked to him.

“Do I what?”

“Want to fix what got broken.”

Jason’s face shut a little, not against Tim exactly, but against the old room in his head where that question lived.

Tim waited.

Jason looked at the mask.

“Used to think so,” he said. “Then I thought maybe I was the broken thing. Then I got bored of that because it’s depressing and self-important.”

Tim smiled faintly.

Jason shrugged.

“Now I don’t know. I think sometimes you can’t fix it. You just… make it useful, maybe. Or make it softer to carry. Put some ugly stitches in it and call it yours.”

Tim looked at him for a long moment.

“That was almost poetic.”

“Tell anyone and I’ll deny it.”

“Already recording.”

Jason looked horrified.

Tim smiled.

Jason kissed him to shut him up.

Tim let him do that too.

⸻

The last call came a week after the rescue.

Tim was out of the medbay by then, installed in one of the Manor’s guest rooms because Alfred had threatened to sedate Bruce if he tried to convert the Cave into a long-term recovery suite. Jason had moved into the armchair by the window like a stray cat with trauma and a duffel bag. Nobody commented. Nobody had a death wish.

Tim woke at 3:17 a.m. to Jason’s phone ringing.

He knew the sound before he was fully awake.

Not Jason’s main phone. The cheap black one. The one Tim had called.

Blocked Number.

Jason was out of the chair instantly.

Tim pushed himself upright, pain sparking along his ribs.

Jason answered.

“Yeah.”

Silence.

Then a voice.

Not Tim’s.

“Red Hood,” said Ricky Voss.

Jason’s face went empty.

Tim’s blood turned cold.

Voss was supposed to be in Blackgate medical custody. Leg wound. Broken wrist. Concussion. Under guard.

Jason put the phone on speaker without looking away from the dark window.

Tim reached for the bedside table where his emergency knife was not, because Alfred had found it within ten minutes of him entering the room and removed it with deep disappointment.

Voss laughed wetly.

“You really came running for him.”

Jason said nothing.

Tim’s hand curled in the sheets.

Voss continued, “Cute. Didn’t know the little bird had you on a leash.”

Jason’s eyes flicked to Tim. Stay calm, they said, without words.

Tim was calm.

Tim was so calm he could feel his pulse in his teeth.

Barbara’s voice came through Jason’s comm, tinny and alert. “Tracing.”

Jason said, “You calling to flirt, Voss?”

“I’m calling to offer a trade.”

“You don’t have anything I want.”

“I got names your little drive doesn’t. Buyers who paid cash. Cops. Doctors. Judges. You want them, you come alone.”

Tim was already shaking his head.

Jason watched him, face unreadable.

“Where?”

“Robinson Bridge. One hour.”

The line went dead.

For three seconds, the room was silent.

Then Jason said, “No.”

Tim blinked.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to say we can use this.”

“We can.”

“No.”

“Jason.”

“He’s baiting me.”

“Obviously.”

“Then no.”

Tim stared at him.

Jason stared back, stubborn and scared and alive in the moonlit room.

Tim softened first.

“Okay.”

Jason blinked. “Okay?”

“Yes. Okay. You’re not going alone.”

“I’m not going at all.”

“We should still tell Barbara to trace it.”

“Already doing that,” Barbara said in their ears. “Also, hi, Tim. You should be asleep.”

“Hi, Babs. Voss escaped?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “Someone used his name to pull him into a fake medical transport two hours ago. Guards were drugged. He’s loose, but not for long.”

Jason’s expression darkened.

Tim pushed the blanket aside.

Jason pointed at him. “No.”

“I’m getting my laptop.”

“You’re getting a lecture.”

“I can do both.”

Jason opened his mouth.

Tim held up one hand.

“I am not going into the field. I am not suggesting you go alone. I am suggesting I sit in this bed, with my laptop, while you and the rest of the family set a trap for the man who just called your private phone.”

Jason’s jaw worked.

Tim added, softer, “He used the calls. He made it about that.”

Jason looked away.

There it was. The real wound. Voss had found the shape of something tender and put his thumb in it because men like him could not imagine love except as leverage.

Tim reached for Jason’s hand.

Jason came to him immediately, like the movement had been waiting.

“He doesn’t get to make that dirty,” Tim said.

Jason looked down at him.

Tim squeezed his fingers.

“I called you because I love you.”

The room went very still.

Jason’s breath caught.

Tim had not planned to say it like that. In a guest room at 3:22 in the morning, hair probably flattened on one side, wearing a borrowed T-shirt and a brace, with Barbara absolutely listening and possibly recording for blackmail.

But there it was.

True.

Jason sat on the edge of the bed like his knees had stopped negotiating.

“Tim.”

“I do,” Tim said. His voice shook a little but he did not stop. “And he can use the phone, and the blocked number, and the bridge, and whatever else he thinks matters, but he doesn’t get the part where I knew you’d come. That’s ours.”

Jason’s face crumpled for one second.

Only one.

Then he leaned in and kissed Tim hard enough that Tim made a startled sound into his mouth.

Jason pulled back immediately, horrified.

“Shit. Ribs. Sorry.”

Tim caught the front of his shirt.

“Again, but slightly less homicide.”

Jason laughed, breathless and wrecked, and kissed him again.

This time it was careful. Still urgent underneath, but controlled. His hand cupped Tim’s cheek. Tim kissed him back with everything his injured body would allow, which was not much, but Jason seemed to understand anyway. Jason always understood too much.

When they separated, Jason rested his forehead against Tim’s.

“I love you,” he said. Quiet. Raw. Like the words had cost him something to dig up and he was handing them over muddy and whole. “I’m bad at it, but I do.”

Tim smiled.

“You’re doing fine.”

“I threatened fruit earlier.”

“The orange deserved it.”

Barbara made a noise over comms.

“Happy for you both, truly, but the violent human trafficker is still loose.”

Jason closed his eyes. “I hate this family.”

“You love us,” Tim said.

“Debatable.”

“Not to me.”

Jason kissed his forehead and stood.

The next hour was the first time since the rescue that Tim felt like himself in a way that did not hurt. Not physically; physically, everything still hurt. But mentally, the pieces clicked.

Barbara traced the call through three relays to a burner near the east riverfront. Bruce found the stolen medical transport abandoned under an overpass. Cass spotted one of Voss’s men near the bridge and followed him without being seen. Dick coordinated with GCPD’s one trustworthy unit. Damian, who had been silent until then, appeared in Tim’s doorway with a laptop, a scowl, and a mug of tea.

“Pennyworth says if you insist on working, you will drink this.”

Tim accepted the tea.

“Thanks.”

Damian looked toward Jason, then back at Tim.

“You are both insufferable.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “You just here to provide commentary?”

“I am here because Brown said if I did not witness the culmination of Drake’s humiliating romantic subplot, I would be left out of family dinner conversation for weeks.”

Tim closed his eyes. “Stephanie knows?”

“Everyone knows,” Barbara said.

Jason muttered something under his breath.

Damian looked at him with mild disgust.

“Your courtship has been obvious for months.”

Tim opened one eye. “Your what?”

“Courtship.”

Jason pointed at the door. “Out.”

“No. I am assisting.”

Damian assisted by standing near the wall and insulting the encryption on Voss’s burner network until Tim felt almost fond enough to tolerate him.

Almost.

The trap at Robinson Bridge went clean because Voss expected Jason angry and alone, and Jason arrived calm with Batman in the shadows, Nightwing above, Cass behind, and Tim in his ear.

Jason did not kill him.

Tim knew what that cost.

He heard it in Jason’s breathing when Voss laughed. Heard it in the silence after Voss said something about Tim’s calls that made Dick’s voice sharpen over comms and Bruce go very, very quiet.

Jason said only, “You should’ve stayed in custody.”

Then Cass dropped from the dark like judgment and kicked Voss into a puddle.

It was deeply satisfying.

By dawn, Voss was back in custody, this time with federal attention, Wayne lawyers, Oracle’s evidence package, and enough protective layers around the rescued witnesses to make retaliation expensive and unlikely. The names Voss claimed to have were mostly bluff. Mostly. The few real ones would matter. The case would keep going for months.

But the immediate threat was done.

Jason returned to the Manor just after sunrise, wet from rain and river mist, bruised at the knuckles, alive.

Tim was waiting in the kitchen because he had bullied Damian into helping him down the stairs and then sworn him to secrecy, which had lasted exactly five minutes because Damian immediately told Alfred, who allowed it on the condition that Tim sit in a chair with his leg elevated on another chair and consume toast.

Jason came in through the back door.

He stopped when he saw Tim.

Tim raised one hand.

“Before you start, I had assistance.”

Jason looked at Damian.

Damian sipped tea. “I was coerced.”

“You offered.”

“I offered under the assumption you would be pathetic without supervision.”

Jason blinked slowly.

“Too early for this,” he decided.

Alfred set a plate in front of him. “Eat, Master Jason.”

Jason obeyed because he was not suicidal.

He sat beside Tim, close enough their shoulders touched. For a while the kitchen was quiet except for rain against the windows, Damian’s spoon clicking against a mug, Alfred moving around with the calm satisfaction of a man who had all his children alive in one room.

Tim looked at Jason’s hand.

Bruised knuckles. Split skin.

He reached for them.

Jason let him.

“Did you do the thing where you punch walls instead of people?” Tim asked quietly.

“Maybe one wall.”

“Jason.”

“It was a bad wall.”

Tim sighed.

Jason turned his hand over and caught Tim’s fingers.

“He tried to make it ugly,” Jason said. His voice was low enough that maybe only Tim heard. “The calls.”

Tim nodded.

“He failed.”

Jason looked at him.

Tim smiled faintly.

“You answered,” Tim said. “That’s the part I remember.”

Jason’s grip tightened.

Then, in Alfred’s kitchen, with Damian pretending not to watch and Alfred absolutely watching with the corner of his mouth turned up, Jason leaned over and kissed Tim.

Not urgently this time. Not because Tim was injured in a stairwell or waking up in medbay or saying love for the first time in a moonlit room. Just because they were there, alive, together, and Jason could.

Tim kissed him back.

Damian made a gagging sound into his tea.

Alfred said, “Master Damian, manners.”

“They are doing this in a communal food preparation area.”

Jason pulled back just enough to say, “Want us to move to the dining room?”

“Absolutely not.”

Tim laughed. His ribs complained. Jason’s hand immediately steadied him, warm at his side.

“Worth it,” Tim said.

Jason smiled at him.

It was small, and tired, and so fond Tim almost could not look directly at it.

⸻

Two weeks later, Jason gave Tim a phone.

Tim was on Jason’s couch by then, because recovery had moved from the Manor to Jason’s safehouse through a series of negotiations that involved Alfred, Barbara, and one very detailed spreadsheet Tim had made to prove Jason’s apartment was medically acceptable.

The spreadsheet had categories.

Jason had been offended by his low “bathroom accessibility” score and spent six hours installing grab bars.

Tim had given him a revised rating.

Jason had called him a bureaucratic menace and made soup.

The safehouse was warm now. Jason had fixed the heater after the first night because Tim’s toes had gone cold and Jason took that personally. There were extra blankets on the couch, a pill schedule taped to the fridge, and a stack of library books Jason claimed were for himself even though half were mystery novels Tim had mentioned liking once.

Tim’s repaired domino mask sat on a shelf beside Jason’s cracked helmet from a case neither of them talked about much.

It looked right there.

Ugly stitches and all.

Jason came in from the bedroom holding a small box.

Tim looked up from the laptop he was absolutely not using for casework.

Jason narrowed his eyes.

Tim closed the laptop.

“Good choice,” Jason said.

“I was ordering groceries.”

“You were reading an arrest report.”

“Grocery-adjacent.”

Jason sat beside him and handed him the box.

Tim opened it.

Inside was a phone. Black. Plain. Good model, but not flashy. Already in a protective case. There was a tiny red sticker on the back, badly placed, like Jason had regretted it halfway through and committed out of spite.

Tim turned it on.

One contact was pinned at the top.

Jason.

Under it, in parentheses: Answers Every Time.

Tim’s throat tightened.

Jason looked at the coffee table. “If you hate it, I can change it.”

Tim stared at the screen.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“It’s maybe a little much.”

“It’s exactly enough.”

Jason glanced at him.

Tim set the phone carefully on his lap.

“You’re very sentimental for a crime lord.”

“I’m retired.”

“You were never officially employed.”

“Then I’m freelance.”

Tim smiled.

Jason nudged his good knee with his.

“There’s a tracker in it.”

“Obviously.”

“Disabled unless you turn it on.”

Tim looked at him.

Jason looked back, steady.

“Your choice,” Jason said. “Always.”

Tim loved him so much it made him briefly, embarrassingly quiet.

He reached for Jason’s hand.

Jason took it.

“I’ll turn it on for patrol,” Tim said. “And if I’m working a dangerous case. And if I’m injured.”

Jason’s face shifted.

Tim added, “And if I just want you to find me.”

Jason swallowed.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Jason lifted Tim’s hand and kissed his knuckles.

Tim let himself have the full feeling of it. No emergency. No audience. No blood. Just Jason’s mouth on his hand, the heater clanking, rain tapping at the window, Gotham ugly and alive outside.

“Your contact name is terrible, by the way,” Tim said.

Jason snorted. “Here we go.”

“It’s emotionally effective but aesthetically clunky.”

“Can’t believe you’re negging my romantic gesture.”

“I’m workshopping.”

“You’re recovering.”

“I can multitask.”

Jason leaned back against the couch, pulling Tim carefully with him until Tim was tucked against his side. The movement was easy now, or easier. Tim’s ribs still ached. His leg still needed the brace. The nightmares still came in weird flashes: concrete dust, cold water, Voss laughing somewhere above him. Sometimes he woke up reaching for a phone he did not have in his hand.

Jason always answered anyway.

Sometimes with his voice.

Sometimes with his arm around Tim’s waist.

Sometimes just by turning toward him in the dark and mumbling, “Here,” sleep-rough and certain.

Tim rested his head against Jason’s shoulder.

“I love you,” he said.

Jason’s hand stilled in his hair for a second.

It still caught him off guard. Tim hoped it always did a little. Not painfully. Just enough that Jason kept realizing he could have it.

“Love you too,” Jason said.

Tim smiled against his shirt.

Then his new phone buzzed.

He picked it up.

A message from Dick.

Is Jason being normal about the phone or did he do something insane like make his contact name “answers every time”?

Tim stared.

Jason leaned over.

“Do not answer that.”

Tim started typing.

Jason made a grab for the phone. Tim twisted away, laughing, and immediately lost because he was still injured and Jason had reach. Jason caught him gently around the waist before he could jostle his ribs, stole the phone with one hand, and held it above his head.

“That’s medical interference,” Tim said.

“That’s boyfriend privilege.”

“Abuse of power.”

“File a complaint.”

“With who?”

“Me. I’ll ignore it.”

Tim looked up at him.

Jason looked down.

The laughter softened first. Then the air between them.

Jason lowered the phone.

Tim forgot about Dick, the message, the case files, the whole stupid city for a second.

Jason kissed him.

Tim had kissed Jason in fear, in relief, in pain, in a medbay with people watching, in a kitchen at dawn. This one was different because it did not have to prove anything. It wandered. Jason’s mouth was warm and a little chapped. His hand slid into Tim’s hair, careful near the healing cut. Tim touched his jaw and felt Jason smile into the kiss when Tim tugged him closer.

Outside, a siren wailed three blocks over.

Neither of them moved.

Gotham could wait thirty seconds.

Maybe forty-five.

When they finally parted, Jason rested his forehead against Tim’s.

“You still think I’m a terrible detective?” he asked.

Tim pretended to consider.

“You found me.”

Jason’s expression went quiet.

Tim brushed his thumb over Jason’s cheek.

“Every time,” Tim said.

Jason kissed him again, softer.

“Every time,” he promised.