Chapter Text
It was a horrible Monday morning. The sky was grey and it seemed as if the rain would start pouring down at any given moment. The streets were filled by people with black umbrellas and cars honking to each other, trying to find a way out of the horrible traffic. In the middle of it all stood a young man, dressed in an impeccable black suit, with a red tie, and purple eye bags. A group of ladies giggled to themselves as they saw the back of the guy, already imagining the dreamy Chris Hemsworth face that he probably had. The giggles ended once they saw his face.
To say he looked horrible was an understatement. It was as if he had been punched the night before, ran over by a truck, and thrown out of the fifth floor of a building. He looked dead, as dead as Death itself. Scratch that, if Death had found him standing in the middle of the street like that, it would have offered him an appointment with its therapist.
You may be asking, why is he standing in the middle of a busy street, if not the busiest?
Well, there is a very simple answer.
“Mom, why is the guy over there acting like a pig?”
“A pig?”
“Yes, he is making oink oink!”
“Ignore him, darling. It’s just a normal Monday”
Ah, the classic sight of a Tim Drake sleeping in the middle of a crowd. Gothanians had already become used to the sight of the poor boy falling asleep wherever he could on his way to the Wayne Tower. Some pitiful citizens would hand him the remainings of their morning coffees, while tourists would screech in terror when they saw Tim’s dead body for the first time.
They couldn’t blame him, at least not as much as they would want to. The poor boy was barely 17 years old and yet he was already the CEO of a very important company. They would place bets on what type of job the boy had, which assignments were the ones that made him pull all-nighters. The Wayne family would only smirk every time they heard of the bets. None of them were even close.
Last night, Tim Drake, better known as Red Robin, had been responsible for stopping the Riddler from exploding a hospital. It had taken him two hours to decipher the riddle (he was losing the hang of it), and once he had the answer, the Riddler thought it would be a good idea to keep him running from one side of the city to the other as he searched for the button to stop the bombs. Throughout the night, he had been run over by a taxi, bumped into three brick walls and fell out of a three-story building without his grappling hook.
Jason had had the time of his life when Tim returned to the mansion. Alfred didn’t say anything, but Tim knew he was also dying inside.
So, he thought Gotham could stand his civilian self-falling asleep everywhere in exchange for keeping the city safe.
“What did Mr. Wayne make you do this time?”
Tim opened his eyes at the sound of a sweet voice and the smell of caffeine. He grabbed the coffee being extended to him and gulped it all down in one swift shot.
“What didn’t he make me do”, he answered to the tiny French girl that was better known as his personal guardian angel. The blue-eyed angel in question was smiling at the corpse.
“Kinky”
“Gross, that’s my father you weirdo”
Tim chuckled as he allowed himself to be dragged through the street by Marinette Dupain-Cheng, or Nettie as he liked to call her.
It had been a year ago the first time he met her. As always, he was dead, resting against a shop’s entrance. He had ended up there by accident, being pushed by the masses to the side until he ended up resting against the wall. With his pale face and dark eyebags (as well as the tiny bit of drool on the corner of his mouth), he surely gave Marinette the scare of her life.
Straight out of Paris, Marinette had decided to open up a bakery as far away from Paris as she could. So, she found Gotham, where a certain Bruce Wayne offered her to be his go-to designer when he saw one of her fashion shows promoted by the Agreste Brand.
On her bakery’s opening day, she had the luck of finding Tim Drake’s corpse right outside of her store. She did what every sane Parisian would do and punched him straight in the stomach.
After Tim had vomited all he had left inside of his body, Mari had offered him a free coffee and a croissant as an apology. Less to be said, it was the start of a beautiful friendship. Mari looked at their relationship as a sort of game. Every morning she played “Guess where Tim Drake is asleep”, immediately followed by “How much caffeine can I give to a teenager without giving him a heart attack”. Believe her, it is more than you would guess.
Marinette opened the bakery’s doors, sitting Tim in one of the many velvet sofas the store had. In front of him, he already had another cup of coffee waiting for him and a plate of mint and coffee-flavored macaroons.
“What did I do to deserve you?”, he cried as he started eating.
“Nothing. At least not yet”
“Yet?”, he spoke with three macaroons in his mouth. “What do you need?”
“First, for you to learn how to eat”, she threw one of the cushions to his face. “Really. One would think that the Wayne kids would have more manners”
Tim smirked and gulped down the food.
“What can I say, we are adopted”
“Dick is also adopted, and he doesn’t act like an animal”
“He was an error in the algorithm. We are still making studies to find what went wrong with that one”
Meanwhile, Richard Grayson sneezed in the Wayne Building. He apologized as he let out a single bad word: dammit.
“That makes sense. Back to the matter at hand…”, she exchanged the already empty cup with a newly served one. Tim made lovey eyes at her and tried kissing her hand as a joke, but she immediately slapped him as a joke.
“If you want me to model for your new line, you don’t even have to ask. Actually, I already predicted you would do it, which is why I have taken the sad decision of having a Brazilian”
“A Brazilian?”
“That’s right”
“To model for my line?”
“No one else’s”
“On the balls?”
“Even on the balls”
“Just to be clear, I recorded this conversation and you can’t back down from it”
“I hate you”
“I know”
Finally, Mari picked up the last cup and went to the back of the shop, leaving the dirty plates ready for washing. She went to the front once more, sporting her usual pink apron. It was full of little red birds, robins. It had been a birthday gift from Tim, but he hadn’t expected for Mari to use it as much as she did. The sight of Mari wearing it always made Tim smile.
“Anyways, as much as I love you modeling for me, I was going to ask for something else”
Tim stood up from the sofa and went to the restroom to wash his face, brush his teeth and comb his hair (Mari always had a toothbrush and a hairbrush waiting for him every morning). He made sure to leave the door open to continue the conversation.
“What else would be better than my Brazilian?”
“Honestly? Nothing, but I really need you. Your father decided that it would be a great idea to have a dinner party in honor of my next line. As always, he decided to invite a lot of famous people and designers to make me more known”
“Where’s the problem in it? Do you want me to talk him out of it?”
“No! I am really grateful for the event, and it will really help my career. The problem is that between the invited designers is Gabriel Agreste, and wherever he goes…”
“Adrien follows behind”
“Exactly”
“So,” an evil smirk appeared on his face as he fixed his tie, “you want me to get the other Wayne boys together to make your ex learn a lesson?”
“Tim, no violence in my special night”
Whenever Mari used that tone on him, he knew she was being serious. Like a scolded puppy, he gave a sheepish grin.
“Right, sorry”
“I want him to learn a lesson, yes, but not in that way. I want to make sure that he knows very well who exactly he lost and how much he fucked it up. Also, I don’t want him to try anything on me”
“I second that idea”
“Great! Because, at least for the night, you’ll be my dearly beloved boyfriend”
At that moment, Tim Drake was very grateful for many things.
He was grateful for meeting such a wonderful friend. He was grateful for Bruce admiring that same wonderful friend and giving her all the respect and admiration she deserves. He was grateful that two years ago Adrien Agreste cheated on her because it is thanks to that he got to meet her. He was grateful for her parents that taught her to make such an awesome coffee.
But most of all, he was grateful that he was inside the bathroom as his cheeks went as red as they could and he started having a coughing spree.
“Everything ok in there Timmy?”, Mari called.
“Yes”, he managed to reply. “It just got a little cold in here”
“You need to take care of yourself, you know?”, she said as she went into the bathroom. She laid her hands on top of his shoulders. In the mirror, Tim could see the image of a very flustered boy and a very beautiful girl that was smirking as if she was the devil and she didn’t even know it.
“I can’t allow my boyfriend to get sick before our special night”
She gave him a peck on the cheek as she went back to the kitchen to have everything ready for her costumers.
One day of those, Marinette was really going to murder him.