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1.
“You won’t be able to walk after I’m done with you, Timothy.”
Dick did not, despite gravity's best efforts, go careening down the stairs. A lifetime of acrobatics minimized things to a stumble instead, which he figured could be forgiven after hearing--
That .
Snapshots of the last few months played out in his head.
Damian, recently returned from a long stint out west with the Titans, had gone through a growth spurt while he was away. His voice dropped by several noticeable octaves and from the first night home, he and Tim had this... this tension .
Which wasn't weird, by itself. Because, really; when, in their entire history, were Damian and Tim not tense around each other?
Except that, viewed back through the lens of what he'd just heard, their interactions took on a much different tone.
Prolonged eye contact he'd brushed off as glaring might have been heated for another reason entirely. Long debates seemed more playful than acerbic. And the touching-- All the nudging, flicking, brushing, shoving; maybe that wasn't--
Oh, god.
They were flirting .
His baby brothers were flirting with each other .
Flirting with each other, alone in the Batcave, where Damian had apparently gotten it into his head that they should--
Oh he could not let this happen.
"Guys!" Dick blurted, scrambling down the stairs at breakneck speed.
He skipped the last four steps entirely in favor of leaping, rolling, and then rocketing around one of the displays to find--
Tim and Damian looking at him curiously, both fully dressed, standing on opposite ends of the training mats.
"Uh," Dick said, eloquently. "What... Whatcha doin', little brothers?"
Damian arched an aristocratic eyebrow. Tim cocked his head.
"Training?" he said, as if that should've been obvious. ( Which, to be fair, it sort of was. )
Dick's shoulders sagged.
"Oh. Oh, alright."
They were just training. Damian had been threatening Tim, not... Gosh, wasn't he silly? Where had he gotten the idea they were flirting? That was absolutely ridiculous!
Dick grinned, fears assuaged.
"Alright, cool! Let me get changed and I'll join you."
"Okay, sure," Tim said, still looking at him as if he'd grown a second head.
Damian scoffed.
2.
"I don't know, I think you're a little... overdressed ."
Jason paused, halfway through the safehouse window.
He couldn't be positive about what he'd just heard, but it sounded a lot like Tim. Which wasn't strange, in and of itself, because Tim was leading this little sting operation he was joining in on. The thing he'd said though, that was kind of weird.
"Am I?" spoke a voice he only recognized as Damian's after a few seconds of thought. Jesus but the kid sounded different now. "I thought you liked this shirt."
"I'd like it better off of you and on the floor, actually."
O...kay.
If the first thing had been weird, that was weirder .
Jason thought back to patrol two weeks prior. What was it Dick had been going on about? Something, something, getting the wrong idea about Damian and Tim? There'd been some allusion to their little brothers flirting, he remembered that much, because he'd told Dick to quit sexualizing everything.
Except. Well.
Well .
Unlike Dick, Jason approached this incredibly strange landmine with all the grace he felt he could afford it. Which was to say; he strode across the room and marched right into the tiny bedroom where the voices were coming from.
He found Damian buttoning the cuffs on an understated silver-gray button down. Tim, already dressed to the nines, was shoving a luridly crimson shirt into a drawer like it had personally offended him. The shirt on Damian was still open all along the front ( and, okay, when had the baby bat gotten that ripped ? ) and Tim's tie was slightly askew, but other than that...
Jason squinted at them.
"Huh," he said.
"Is that meant to mean something, Todd?" Damian drawled.
"Huh," he repeated, then turned around and walked back out.
3.
Batman was having a good night.
Gotham was unexpectedly quiet ( probably something to do with the inclement weather ) and patrol was uneventful. A handful of thefts, a few kids taking a car for a joyride; hardly worth remaining on the streets on nights like this. But he did, albeit selfishly, because tonight he had both Red Robin and Robin as his backup. And it had been too long since he'd seen his younger sons.
So, it was a good night.
Or, at least it was, until he dropped down near Robinson Park and heard Red Robin say;
"Oh, fuck, you're bigger than I thought you were."
And then Robin scoffed;
"You can take it."
" Boys ."
Red Robin, midway through helping to hoist Robin up into a particularly tall ginkgo tree, tilted his head backwards to look at his mentor.
"Oh hey, B," he said conversationally. "Slow night for you too?"
With tremendous effort, Batman reigned in the urge to inform them that he could've gone his whole life without hearing those two sentences said in their voices. Instead, he asked;
"What are you two doing?"
"My grapple broke," Robin said, matter-of-factly.
"And there's a cat in the tree," Red Robin added.
"...Really?"
As if in response, the tree mewed.
+1
" Don't keep me waiting, Timothy. "
Caught off-guard, Stephanie laughed.
"Dude, what the fuck?" she said, giving her phone an incredulous look. "Was that Damian ?"
Tim's laughter seeped from the phone's speaker, lighthearted and warm.
"Yeah," he said. "Sorry, he's being a pain."
"I'll bet," Stephanie snorted. A thought occurred to her a moment later. "Why's he even there? I thought you were home."
" I am. "
He didn't elaborate, which earned the phone another sideways stare.
" O -- o kay," Stephanie drawled, drawing out the 'o'. "What's the demon doing over at your place?"
" He's staying the night, " Tim sounded nonchalant about it, like this was a normal thing. " But hey, I gotta go. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? "
"What? Why?" she frowned at her phone. "Just cause the twerp wants the wifi code or something?"
" Well-- "
Tim cut himself off with a startled squeak. There was the sound of fumbling, like the phone had been dropped, then a gasp.
Concerned, Stephanie lurched up from her lazy sprawl, opening her mouth to ask Tim what was going on. Before she could, there was another, breathy sound. If she didn't know better, she'd think it was a moan.
And then, of all things, Damian's voice purred;
" Habibi, I told you not to keep me waiting... "
"Damian, Dami, hold on," Another gasped breath, choked off by an aborted mewl. "Wait a second, I gotta--"
" All you need to do is lie there, beloved, and let me -"
Stephanie slapped her open palm down on her phone screen so fast it was a miracle the thing didn't crack. Blessedly, the call disconnected, though from whose end she couldn't be sure.
For a prolonged moment, Stephanie just sat there, staring into space.
"Oh," she said to her empty apartment. " My god ."