Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bruce came across the line item during a routine cache purge of the Mansion’s private servers. It wasn't the sort of thing that set off alarms, hadn't been shunted off to an exception report log--if Bruce hadn't glanced at the right screen at the right time, it was entirely likely he would have missed it altogether. 

But the schematic for the new Wayne Inc. R&D facility in the MENA region were giving him a migraine, and Bruce had looked up, rolling his shoulders to ease out some of the tension, and seen the line flash upwards on the screen. 

Google Search query: ‘what are types of condoms?’

He stopped the purge. Scrolled back. Stared at the line. 

A few brief assumptions came immediately. It hadn't been him, it wouldn't be Alfred, and the older kids: Dick, Jason, Barbara, they wouldn't have needed that information anyway. 

((Bruce didn't like knowing what he knew--unknowing it just wasn't possible, not with the way his head worked. ‘Like a psychedelic Kafkaesque nightmare,’ was how Jason had put it once. 

Which was hurtful, but at least the kid knew his depressing 20th century surrealists. That was something.))

Of course, that left Tim, so young, and so bloody precocious. It left Stephanie, who had never connected with anyone like she had with Barbara, and even then, might not have been comfortable asking the question. And it left… god, it left Damian, who was so little, and thought he was practically an adult. 

It was easy to pull up the metadata on the log, technically speaking. 

In reality, there was a tight fist of something curdling in his chest and it took several seconds longer than it should have done. 

The result, however, was remarkably unhelpful. The search had been entered on the terminal in the library, on Thanksgiving. It could have been anybody.  

Bruce sat back, in his chair, and stared at the screen. 

The thing was, there was no one on the League he could have talked to, if he was inclined towards that sort of thing, which he wasn't. Oliver and Barry, they had their sidekicks, but neither of them considered Roy or Artemis or Wally their kids. The same went for Arthur and Kaldur, and Diana and Donna. 

They were mentors. They weren't parents. There was no one he knew who would… understand. Who would've maybe been through this, before. Dick and Jason had been worldly before he took them in, a little too much, really, and Barbara had always had Jim. 

Well, no. 

There was one person who could help. 

He shook his head, and half-smiled: it should have occurred to him quicker. 

Bruce pulled out his cellphone, and dialed the number from memory. 

“Hi, Martha. It's Bruce. Do you have a minute?”

Tim was in his bedroom when Bruce knocked on the door. 

“Not now, Damian!” came the roared reply, and Bruce took that as a Come In.

“It's me,” he said, poking his head in. There was some kind of awful pop music blaring through the speaker system, and Tim jerked wide-eyed to the door, and then nearly fell out of his chair, turning it down. 

“Oh. Sorry, sorry. Is everything okay?”

Bruce frowned. Tim’s laptop was open on his desk, a word doc with a half-finished book report by the looks of it. “Catch-22. You like it?”

Tim shrugged. “It's alright. I’ve read it before, so.”

“Let me guess.” Bruce settled on the edge of his bed with a grin. “You were nine.”

“Eight,” Tim replied, smirking. “I thought it was a little obvious.”

“Of course you did. I always thought you might like Stoppard more.”

Tim nodded. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, yeah, that one was pretty good.”

“School’s going well, then?”

“Top of my class.” He tilted his head just slightly to the side. “Bruce, what's up? You already know my grades. …did Jason do something?”

“Jason? No. Did Jason do something?”

Tim shook his head. “Nah, it's just something Dick says. He says whenever Hood pulls a stupid stunt, you start compulsively checking in on the rest of us to make sure we aren't going bad.”

Well, that little shit. “Dick talks too much.”

Tim grinned even wider. “Yeah, he said you’d say that too. Come on, spill, what's happening?”

“I was… Ah. I glanced at the cache purge, today, and there was a google search that caught my eye.”

“Oh?”

“Types of condoms. That was the search.”

Tim flushed bright red. Good to know there were still some things the kid wasn't totally jaded about. “And you thought it was me?! Bruce!!”

“It's okay! It's okay if you did, I just thought, maybe we need to have a discussion--”

“NO!” Tim’s voice sounded like a nine year old’s. “No, we do not, oh my GOD.” Seriously, red as a tomato. “Why would you--oh my god, I want to die.”

“So it wasn't you.”

“No! No it--Look, if I ran a search like that, first of all, you would never find out!”

Bruce stared at him.

“Okay, you wouldn't find out unless you went looking,” Tim relented. “Did you go looking?”

“No. It was in the cache.”

“I know how to delete cache memory, dude--”

“Don't call me dude--”

“And anyway, we have sex ed at school, Bruce, jeez. It wasn't me, okay?”

“Okay.” Bruce got up, walked up to Tim, rested a hand on his shoulder. “And you're doing good? You're okay?”

“Yeah,” Tim said. His color was coming back to normal. He smiled a little. “I’m alright, Bruce. I promise.”

Bruce pulled the door shut to his room, and Tim dragged his second laptop out from the recessed storage area, the one with the hardline connection to the main Cave servers, booting it up and accessing the history logs. He had a feeling he knew exactly who had run the search. 

Stephanie was on the parallel bars in the Cave, when he arrived, going through a series of complicated flips, no doubt one of Dick’s old routines she had decided to personalize. 

It was good to see someone using the gymnastics equipment again. Jason had relied on brute force, for all his innate grace, and Tim preferred hand-to-hand, to the smoke and mirrors act the first Robin had perfected. 

Evidently, Steph was glad to see Bruce too. She landed perfectly, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and then loping over to Bruce, stretching up to kiss him on the cheek before finding a towel for herself. 

“Hey boss.”

“Hello Stephanie.”

She looked at him curiously, twisting open a bottle of water. “What's up? Is something wrong?”

“Why does everyone always assume something's wrong? Maybe I just want to talk.”

“Everyone?” She frowned, and then chugged down half the bottle. “Who's everyone?”

“My children. My various children, scattered all over Gotham.”

She squinted at him. “I know you're trying to be funny but a, don't, it's horrifying, and b, you do have various children scattered all over Gotham, so that's just a weird thing to say.”

“It's called observational humour,” Bruce replied, deadpan.

“Yeah, okay, sure it is, Captain Holt, what's this about?”

“I came across a search query in the server history, for. For types of… condoms?” The tips of his ears were prickling. 

Stephanie’s jaw dropped. “And?!”

“And I know we haven't had the talk--”

“Because we don't need to! I’ve had the talk, okay, Bruce, holy sh--ishkebob! I don't need another, I’m very scarred, thank you!”

“You’ve had the talk?” He narrowed his eyes. “With whom? Barbara?”

“What? No. No, I kind of liked this boy, and I told Dick, and Dick told Jason, and Jason completely overreacted--”

“You like someone?” Bruce demanded. “Who? What's his name? Does he go to your school?”

“See? Exactly like that! Jason reacted exactly like that! Mental, the two of you. Anyway, he made me go talk to his girls, you know, the sex workers down by Bentham Mills, and they told me about all the kinds of protection I could use and about douches and shots and Hep-C and genital warts and--just. There was a lot. There was a powerpoint. I do not need more trauma, okay man?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” Steph muttered at the ground. “I’m not looking at a boy again till I’m twenty-nine, you can count on that.”

There was something about the way she was holding herself, angled just slightly away from Bruce and so he was careful when he said, “And what about girls?”

Steph looked up at Bruce slowly. Her eyes were huge. “Um.”

It was the cautiousness there, that twisted into his heart like a jagged harpoon. “Steph, you don't think I care about that, do you?”

“I didn't--um. I wasn't sure? I haven't really, uh, told… people. Just. Um. Just Conner, actually, after he told me about the Kryptonian thing.”

“The Kryptonian thing?”

“Yeah, you know, like how they're all biologically pansexual? Kara told him about that.”

Bruce hadn't, in fact, known. Funny, how Clark had never mentioned that. His chest felt strangely hollow. 

“I see.” He knelt on the ground. “Come here, sweetheart.”

Steph skipped the way there, and Bruce took her small, clever, calloused hands in his. There was grip talc coating her palms. It left white, powdery streaks over the gauntlets. Bruce squeezed gently. “There is nothing, nothing about you, nothing you can do, that will make me less proud of you, do you understand?”

She nodded, hard, twice. Her eyes were bright and unblinking, and Bruce brushed under the lower lid just in time to catch the first tear. “There's nothing about you that will make me love you less.”

She swallowed, and flung her arms around his neck. They stayed like that for a long moment. “Love you too, big guy,” she mumbled into the joint of the ‘suit, where the epaulets connected to the cape. 

Bruce held her a little tighter. 

Damian was perched on the rooftop above Rutherford Plaza, behind the dragon gargoyle on the Bank Of America building, where someone in the family had fixed up a couple of anti-slip rubber holds, for when it rained. There was a HVAC unit right behind, venting hot air into the night, warming the stone. In its own way, it was almost cozy.

“Is this about the google search?” he asked immediately, when Bruce landed beside him.

Bruce stared at the side of his face. “Red Robin talks too much.”

“Yes,” Damian agreed. “Incidentally, it wasn't me.”

Oh thank god. “Wasn't it.”

“The search was on Thanksgiving.”

“It was,” Bruce confirmed.

“It was made on incognito mode, which is useless in the Manor. Which everyone who lives in the Manor knows, which means it wasn't made by someone who lives in the Manor.”

“Go on.”

“We weren't alone at home on Thanksgiving. Didn't the alien visit?”

“If you think Superman ran the--”

Damian scoffed. “That half-breed mouthbreather was with him.”

“...Superboy?”

Damian made a face. “Him.”

Bruce paused. Hadn't Connor spent the whole day in… in Tim’s room?

“Robin?”

“Yes?”

“We don't ever talk about this again.”

Damian shot him a blank look. “Obviously.”

Clark sat down at the kitchen table, with a bowl of milk and a carton of Honey Nut Cheerios, in a completely dark apartment at nine in the evening, and said, out loud, “How come everyone but me gets a polite knock on the door?”

“Driving into your city is the knock on your door,” replied the weird lump on Clark’s ugly secondhand sofa.

Clark flicked on a light. The lump resolved into the shape of Bruce Wayne, in jeans and a ratty hoodie, five o clock shadow and a baseball cap jammed low, the bill casting his face in darkness.

“Nice duds. Who’d you steal them from?”

“Do you really think I only own turtlenecks?” Bruce asked half-curiously.

“Like a bad B-movie villain,” Clark confirmed, and then shook out a small mountain of cereal into his bowl.

“Martha knows you eat like that?”

Clark narrowed his eyes. “Don't you go gossiping to her again. I’m still catching shit about how I drink my coffee.”

“Six packets of sugar, for every cup, and I’m the one to blame.”

“Because I’m at risk for diabetes, right. I forgot how much you care, Bruce.”

“It's unnatural.”

“What's this even about.”

Bruce smirked. “Nice segue, there, James Bond, real smooth. It's about your kid.”

“My--what? Connor?” Clark had a spoonful of soggy cereal halfway to his mouth. It was dripping on to the table now. “Crap, what did he do?”

“Why do you assume he did something?”

“Didn't he?”

“Yes, but the immediate assumption is worrying in a number of ways. He googled something, while he was visiting the Manor, with you, on Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.” Clark frowned. “Okay. I’m sorry, I thought it was--I’ll talk to him, about respecting other people’s--”

“He googled types of condoms.”

Clark dropped the spoon.

“Yes.”

“Are you-- Are you sure.”

Bruce stayed silent, and Clark looked away, scrubbing the back of his neck. “Of course you are,” he muttered to himself. “Jeez. I’ll--talk to him, I guess.” His discomfort was palpable, shimmering like a desert mirage. Bruce was having a hard time feeling sorry for him. “God, I thought we had more time before this.”

“Did you,” Bruce said. “Why. Did you conveniently forget the part where he’s sixteen?”

“He’s also two!” Clark shot back. “Been around for two years in the body of a sixteen year old, how the fuck am I-- This didn't exactly come with a manual, Bruce.”

“Parenthood rarely does,” Bruce replied sharply. “Even if you don't want to admit that's what it is.”

Clark was silent. His breathing was harsh and loud, and he was staring at the table top like the secrets of the universe were encoded into the pattern of the wood grain.

“He came out to Stephanie, did you know that?”

Clark’s neck cracked up, to stare at Bruce.

“Yes, you missed out on that. You’ll miss out on a lot more, the longer you stay away. And a day will come, when you’ll look at that boy, who once thought you were the center of his universe, and you won't recognize him at all.” Clark’s hand had curled into a fist in the table, and begun to shake. It was a fist that could stop a jetliner, could shatter moons, could alter the face of whole worlds. Bruce didn't care. Bruce carried on, relentless.

“You’ll realize, then, that you lost your chance. You wasted it, because you were too afraid, too cowardly, too bloody stupid to realize what a gift the universe had given you,” and Bruce was standing up now, and Clark was too, “and it won't matter by then, because it’ll be too fucking late.”

“Shut up,” Clark hissed.

“Don't make my mistakes,” Bruce said, in that same harsh whisper. “Don't do what I did, don't turn your son away--”

“He is Luthor’s son!” Clark roared.

Bruce stalked forward, gripped Clark's shoulder. “He doesn't want to be. You're the parent he chose, Clark. So choose him back, before he starts thinking he chose wrong.”

“What if I fuck up.” His voice was no more than a whisper.

Bruce smiled. What if I fuck up. You won't fuck up more than me, is what he wanted to say. But it wasn't what Clark needed to hear. “You already fucked up. Now, are you going to fix it?”

Connor found Bruce in the Batcave a few weeks later.

“Hey, B. Am I…. Um, am I interrupting?”

Bruce set the search program to run in the background and turned around in his chair. “Yes. What.”

“I could come back later,” Connor offered, shuffling his feet in that alarmingly Clark-ish way he had about him.

“Or we could finish this now, and I get to avoid a second interruption.”

Connor’s eyes were huge and spectacularly blue, the shade of the Mediterranean viewed through a shard of bottle glass. “Oh. Okay.” Clark’s eyes. He looked a lot younger than sixteen. “I just wanted to say I was sorry?”

“About.”

“That search I did? On the library computer?” There was a bright band of pink across his cheekbones. “I’m really sorry, Bruce. It won't happen again.”

“I see.”

“Um. Yeah, that's all I--”

“A few facts, Connor, that I want you to remember. Primarily, that Tim is still fourteen, and you are, at least physically, sixteen, who puts only one of you above the legal age of consent. Two, if you think you can hide anything involving my sons from you, you are deeply mistaken--”

“No! Bruce, no, it's not like that. Tim isn't-- He doesn't like me like that.” Connor paused. “Does he?”

“That's a question you’ll have to ask him. And three. There is only one person in the world who can neutralize Superman. In comparison, to such a person, you would not even be a challenge.”

“That person would be, uh, you?”

“Yes.”

Connor gulped, which Bruce found gratifying.

“I like him a-- a lot, Bruce,” he said, really quiet, like it was a secret, and maybe it was, “but-- but it's not. He’s my best friend,” he said, emphasis heavy on those last two words, “and I would rip my eyes out of my head before I did anything to hurt him.”

“Good,” Bruce replied evenly, and started to turn back around, when Connor said, “So it's the age thing, right? That's the only problem? Because I can wait. I don't mind waiting for as long as it takes, it's just-- It's not because I’m a guy, right?”

“No,” Bruce said, and then, and then for who knows what goddamn reason, he tacked on, “That would be rather hypocritical.”

“Oh?” Double-blink, jaw-drop. “Ohhhhh.”

Subtlety was not his strongest suit, then. Bruce wondered if Clark was to blame for that, or Luthor.

Connor was grinning. “You know, Ma kept saying you're basically this nice guy who's like, very poorly socialized, but I always figured she was just being too nice. Guess I should listen to her more, huh?”

Bruce turned back to the computer screens to hide his smile. “Get out of here, kid.”

He scampered out, half-running, half-flying up to the Cave exit that led back into the Manor. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a talk with Tim anyway.

Or sic Jason on the kid. He seemed to have an idea about how to do this sort of thing right.

Who would've thought.

Clark found Bruce in the Watchtower’s docking bay, on a gurney, half buried underneath the Javelin, three access panels lying discarded to the side, fiddling with a spitting mass of wires.

“Hey,” Clark called.

“Hand me a socket wrench, would you?”

Clark slid it across the floor. He could see Bruce's feet, sticking out from underneath--the hem of dark blue jeans and a pair of heavy, steel-toed safety boots. “Didn't know you ran maintenance on this hunk,” Clark commented. He could hear the steady creak of metal on metal.

“We took a hit, yesterday, coming out of hyperspace.” Bruce’s voice was muffled. “The dampeners absorbed some serious shocks, and not without cost. Ideally, we’d get them replaced, but spare parts for interstellar spacecraft aren't exactly available on eBay.”

Bruce slid out, one hand clamped on the edge of the Javelin. He was in a black vest and jeans, a streak of black grease on one cheek, sheened with sweat, the vest clinging to him in ways that could only be described as illegal, and also, unfair to Clark's general sense of balance and well-being.

“Clark?”

Clark blinked. “Sorry. Did you say something?”

“I asked you-- Yes. I asked you if something was wrong.”

“No! No.” Clark swallowed. Bruce was getting up now, wiping his hands on a rag and scrubbing his hands through his damp, tousled hair. “I just… I realized I never said thanks.”

“For? Toss me that bottle.”

Clark lobbed the water bottle behind him in a gentle underhand throw. Bruce snatched it out the air and started to chug it down. There was heat radiating off his body in… waves. Clark watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed rapidly, and felt the slow, hot slide of blood to his cock.

“For knocking some sense into my head, before,” Clark forced himself to say. “About Connor.”

“It's going well, then?”

“Yeah. It really is. He actually likes Smallville, god knows why, but he’s spending weekends with me. We did paintball and cheeseburgers last week. It was fun. He's a pretty great kid.”

“Good,” Bruce said. He smiled faintly, and it changed his face, made him go from sexy to… heartbreaking. “I’m glad, Clark.”

“We talked a lot, you know. It was a pretty interesting conversation.”

“Was it.”

“Connor seems to be under the impression that you're not actually straight.”

Bruce turned still, very still, but Clark could read the faint uptick in his heartbeat. “Is that what this is about.”

He didn't manage to hold back a glare. “Are you really going to do this, Bruce? Dodge the question? Now?”

“Are you asking me a question?”

“Sure,” Clark snapped. “Sure, here's my question. Why would you let Connor think something like that?”

“Because it's the truth. And watch your tone. I don't think people in glass houses should be throwing stones, and right now, you're not looking so good.”

“I’m sorry,” Clark replied sharply, “but what the sweet motherfuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you don't get to accuse me of being in the closet, when you've been there for all these years too.”

Clark felt like he’d been whacked over the head with a kryptonite two-by-four.

“But. But I haven't,” is what he said after a long pause. “You know I was--That I--You’ve always known how I felt about--You know.” Clark paused, and listened to the ragged sound of his own breathing. Bruce was quiet and unblinking, his face unreadable. His heartbeat, on the other hand, was stumbling into the triple-digits. “You’ve always known,” Clark insisted, and then, weakly, “Haven't you?”

“Known what.”

Clark laughed, a brief airless thing, dragging his palm over his face. This was not how this conversation was supposed to have gone at all. “I thought… For years, you know, I thought you were being kind. I thought you decided the easiest way to deal with my--my feelings was to ignore them. But then I realized that's not like you, you wouldn't--I saw how you were with your kids, and how you were as Bruce Wayne, and then I figured maybe all of it was just an act. Maybe you didn't want people that way. Which. Which was fine. I was your friend, that was enough, that was an honor--” He broke off abruptly.

“Your feelings,” Bruce said. His hand was clenching around the water bottle now, held at a drunken sideways angle. There was water pouring from the rim, a steady glug-glug filling the quiet. “For me.”

“I love you,” Clark said, simply. “I always have. I thought you knew.”

“You what.” Each syllable was crisp, perfectly enunciated.

Each word rang with fury.

Of course he was angry, Clark thought. Of course he didn't--Why had he opened his goddamn mouth. Why had he…

“I--” Clark exhaled unsteadily.

There was a cold knife of agony running down his chest, like a mortician’s scalpel, cleaving open skin and sinew and fat. It felt like his insides were being pumped out of his body, were dripping to the floor in great slow dollops of bloody viscera, pooling around his numb feet.

“Please understand, this changes nothing. We’ve always been friends, Bruce, and we always will be. There's nothing that-- This doesn't have to-- This changes nothing, I swear to you.”

There was a jump in Bruce's jaw that hadn't been there before, unsteady and erratic. Clark could hear the uneven flutter of that vein, that rigid thrum of blood.

“This changes everything,” Bruce snarled back and strode forward. Clark braced himself, for the hit, reminded himself to turn with it or Bruce would crack and shatter his--

Bruce's hand was not a fist, and it curled around the back of his suit, twisted in the fabric between his shoulder blades. It was a good thing after all, that Clark had held himself so lax, because he was being dragged into-- into Bruce's chest, and there was another hand angling his jaw, and for all the restrained violence of those hands, Bruce’s mouth brushed his gently, softly, with careful, trembling restraint.

When Bruce pulled away, their lips clung for a brief second. His eyes were dark, his color high.

“Bruce,” Clark said dumbly. His hands had, at some point curled around those narrow, firm hips, had slid beneath the vest to find hot, smooth skin. It was too much. It was all too sudden and too much, and Clark surged forward and found that mouth again, open and hungry and wet, a harsh groan vibrating past those lips, and buried himself there, at the task of finding the spot on Bruce's throat that made him hiss and grind his hips against Clark's. He could feel Bruce hard in his jeans, could see his cock straining against the metal teeth of the zipper.

“Bruce, god, wait, wait, do you-- I’m-- Do you want this?”

Bruce pulled back and glared, but there were deep purple bruises blossoming along his jaw that undercut that pretty neatly. “Do I look confused, Kent?”

Maybe he wasn't angry. Maybe this is just how he looked when he was-- Clark palmed the bulge in his jeans, agaisnt the root of his cock, and Bruce choked, mouth dropping open and eyes going hooded and dark.

No, that's what he looked like when he…

“Your rooms,” Bruce murmured. “Now. And if anyone sees us, I swear to god, I’m going to make you regret it.”

Clark smirked. “Oh, I’ll take that action.”

“I won't stay after.”

“No one will see us,” Clark swore fervently, wrapped his arms around Bruce, and sped them out of the room.

epilogue, sort of. 

Connor picked up on the third ring. “Yo.”

“It's me,” Tim replied, and heard the faint exhalation on the other end.

“Hey,” Connor replied. “‘Sup?”

Tim shrugged. He flipped onto his back. The cement was cold even through the Robin suit, but that was okay. It was a rare clear night in Gotham. Tim let him left leg dangle off the Manor’s rooftop’s edge, and stared at the sky. “Patrol was boring. Just got home.”

“Sucks, dude. Wanna play some COD? I just got my system hooked up.”

Tim scowled. “I thought you wanted to come here and try out the PS4.”

It took Connor a lot longer to reply than it should have. Something wet and cold snaked down his spine. “This is easier,” he finally said, quietly, like he didn't believe it either.

“Bullshit. What's going on.”

Connor laughed softly. “You know you ask questions just like Himself, right?”

“I know.” It was hard to keep the anxiety at bay: Tim could fill it crawling up his chest, clotting up in his throat like drying blood. “Connor… Is it. Did I do something. Is it. Is this because of Thanksgiving?”

“What? No! Tim. God, why would you even…”

“Because,” Tim squeezed his eyes shut. There was a stinging he could feel there, and he really didn't want Connor to hear him crying. “Because I was stupid, okay? I thought, if I said anything, and you weren't-- You didn't feel the same way-- You're my best friend. I didn't want to-- to fuck that up.”

“It's the same,” Connor said quietly. “I--Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Connor whispered.

Tim could hear the smile in his voice, and then he snapped, “Then why the fuck are you avoiding me?”

“Uh. Because.”

“Yes?”

“Because, um. You're… fourteen?”

“And.”

“And that's-- You're not of age?”

“And? It's not like I’m going to report you, asshole, and it's not like I’m not emotionally developed enough, okay? I’ve seen enough shit to last most people six lifetimes, I get to--” He breathed in once, twice, until the shake in his voice had gone away. “I get to have this one thing, okay, this one good thing, this one thing I want--”

“You think I don't want to?” Connor asked harshly. Tim could imagine how white his knuckles would have gone around the phone, how he would be trembling on the edge of control to make sure the phone didn't snap under his grip. “You think I don't--”

“Then why--”

“Because Bruce will--” And then Connor clicked his jaw shut, realizing his mistake just a second too late.

“That son of a bitch,” Tim swore. He leapt up, shimmied down a pipe, hopping to a branch, and back-flipping onto a window ledge, slipping in soundlessly. Bruce occupied the apartments in the south-east wing, and Tim stalked like a shadow through the dark, empty corridors, moonlight shining brightly through the mullioned windows.

The thing about the comms they used was that they had been fine-tuned with Superman's input, which meant they were sensitive enough to pick up on details and relay them with crystal-perfect accuracy, that wouldn't necessarily be audible to human ears even in direct exposure.

For instance, when Tim drew up to Bruce's door, he heard Connor squawk, “Holy shit dude, do not open that door, do NOT!” but he didn't pay attention, jamming his shoulder into the lock and shoving it open, only to find--

“Clark?” Tim said blankly. He had almost not recognized the man, because Clark wasn't wearing his glasses. Or his shirt, for that matter. Tim’s genius brain took in the... very complex visual data, uncomprehending.

Clark was flushed, and shirtless, and balanced up, on his forearms, and underneath him was---

“OH MY GOD!” Tim screeched.

Bruce pushed up, looking sweaty and flushed and a little distracted. “Tim?” he asked, his voice rough and low. His mouth was a little swollen, because, because--

Because of Superman, his brain provided. Because they were fucking. Because Superman and Batman were fucking. Because your DAD was having SEX. With Connor’s dad.

“Oh my god,” Tim was whimpering. “Oh my god.”

“I think he's broken,” Clark stage-whispered, and Bruce looked up to glare at his--boyfriend? Partner? Lover???

There was a whoosh of air at Tim’s side, and suddenly, Tim could hear Connor’s real life voice, saying, “Uh, hey guys, so I’m just going to, to take him away, okay?” There was a big, warm arm coming around his shoulder. “Come on, buddy, let's get you to bed, okay?”

“Oh my god,” Tim couldn't stop saying. “Oh my god.”

“Connor…” Bruce called out dangerously, and Connor tossed a thumbs up in the air without looking back. “Just tucking the kid in. Still terrified of you, B.”

Tim could somehow hear Batman’s answering smile. “Good lad.”

And then, quieter, darker -- except Not Quiet Enough, You Monster -- “Now… Where were we?”