Chapter Text
Lyle never needed to wonder ‘how did it come to this’. He could point back to the exact date and time of day, when the door of his small bar swung open, and all conversation between the handful of patrons died a sudden death.
Kid Flash, either bold as brass or too dumb to notice, walked right inside with his bright yellow costume and little red boots. To make matters worse, he dragged along a second, even smaller kid - though at least the boy with a cape seemed to have the good sense to look rightly alarmed. Most of the guys inside wore regular clothes, but off in one corner, Heatwave and Mirror Master were decked out in full gear, weapons obvious on the table between them, both men just as obviously staring at the two pipsqueaks with baffled suspicion.
Didn’t matter to the Kid, though. He came straight up to the bar’s counter dragging his buddy, and put on exactly the sort of great big grin Lyle’s nieces used when they were trying real hard to politely ask if they could break a rule. “Hi! Can we use your phone real quick?”
Lyle blinked. So did half his patrons. “...the phone.”
“Mmhm!” Kid Flash nodded towards the old landline Lyle kept up on the wall. “Our comms kinda got fried and Flash isn’t around, so-”
“KF,” his little friend hissed, casting a quick glance at the nearest guys, who made no effort to disguise how they were glaring right back.
“What? Dude, it’s fine-”
Getting over his shock, Lyle thumped a hand down onto the bartop to draw their attention. “Phone’s only for paying customers.” Saying that, he cast a glare of his own around the room, saw how it immediately made most of the patrons ease back down.
Kid Flash winced, turning an apologetic expression on his friend. The smaller boy sighed and grumbled something under his breath, but nonetheless pulled a crisp twenty dollar bill from one of his belt’s little pouches. “Do you have any soda?”
Lyle grabbed them a couple of root beers.
“Thanks. Keep the change.”
And with that, the boys became patrons themselves, and thankfully everybody else inside the bar understood Lyle’s biggest, firmest, ‘broken under no circumstances’ rule: no picking fights with other customers. Now, if someone came in to cause a scene, they either ignored Lyle or he flat refused to serve them, which lit the green light for the rest of the room to ‘escort’ the troublemaker to the door. But once money and drinks changed hands, that was that, everybody enjoyed their beverages in peace Or Else.
In the back corner, Mirror Master and Heatwave scooted their weaponry out of sight, but otherwise went back to sipping and swapping complaints like nothing happened. And slowly, the rest of the bar followed suit.
Kid Flash chugged down his root beer in five seconds flat, before letting out a belch that wasn’t half bad for a middle schooler. “Okay! Can I please use the phone now?”
Lyle tipped one shoulder up in a shrug. He stayed put as the Kid came around the far end of the counter, one eye on the smaller boy still fiddling with his own bottle. “Don’t have bars like this where you’re from, huh?”
“Oh, sure. But I’d get shot full of holes in ten seconds if I tried walking into one,” boy replied flatly. “Or grabbed and tossed into a box until Batman showed up.”
That gave Lyle pause. “You’re the Bat’s kid?”
The child who couldn’t have been more than ten, maybe twelve years old at a stretch, lifted one hand to wiggle his fingers in a wave. “Yep. Robin, nice to meet you.”
What the actual hell.
Following that new train of thought got derailed, though, as Kid Flash’s phone call went through. “Hey, it’s me! Look, I know you guys thought me and D- uh, Robin- were just gonna go do some normal stuff, but we kinda interrupted a bank robbery-” Ah, that was the job Miggen was talking about the day before, “-and we’re fine! But there might have been an EMP emitter around that went off, and our comms kinda aren’t working, and since I can’t carry Rob back and he doesn’t want us to just take a bus in our costumes-”
By this point Robin had dropped his head onto the counter, both hands still gripping his bottle of root beer. Age him up a bit and swap the drink for a beer, Lyle thought he’d fit right in with the usual I’m surrounded by idiots patrons who came in to groan about friends and co-workers at the end of a long week.
“-no, we left the backpack with our regular clothes on the other side of the bridge,” Kid Flash went on. “Well, yeah, I could, but- look, Rob is from Gotham, if I left him alone for ten minutes there’s no telling what would be on fire when I came back.”
“Hey!”
Lyle almost snickered at the insulted expression on Robin’s face when he picked his head back up. A couple of other patrons also listening in did snicker, which just made the boy’s expression twist up even further.
“...where are we? Uh. So- do you, uh, remember that place Flash mentioned? The hole in the wall bar all the Rogues like to hang out at...?” Kid Flash abruptly pulled the phone away from his ear, wincing, and even from three steps away Lyle could hear a very loud voice on the other end.
“You are so dead,” Robin remarked.
“Shut up,” the Kid hissed back, before returning to his call. “I know, I know, but Rob bought us root beers and customers aren’t allowed to fight so it’s fine, we just- oh no. No, wait, you don’t need to-!” Lyle raised an eyebrow at the boy’s sudden panic. And understood it perfectly a moment later, when Kid Flash slumped in place and said in a very small voice, “Uh, hi Mom.”
Several more patrons in the bar snickered, or choked on their drinks, or otherwise looked like Christmas just came early. Robin’s head dropped back down onto the countertop.
“No. Yeah. Yes- I know that, but- yes, ma’am.” From what little of it Lyle could see, the Kid’s face appeared to be turning an even brighter shade of red than the color of his boots. “But I did do my homework!”
In the corner, Heatwave let out a startled bark of laughter, and Mirror Master went ahead and turned in his seat in order to watch the scene with a wide grin.
“That’s not due until next week!” Kid Flash continued to protest. “And it was on my desk, how did- you didn’t need to do that, I would have brought dishes down tonight!” The next pause dragged on, until the boy abruptly burst out, “Three WEEKS?!”
“I should’ve gone to bother Speedy instead,” Robin mumbled into the counter.
About forty minutes later, Flash turned up.
“So I guess you’re not coming on patrol with me tomorrow,” he said right off the bat, a slight smile tugging at his lips as he ruffled his Kid’s hair. The boy just grumbled, making a beeline for the door and very deliberately not looking at any of the guys who called out ‘good luck with your homework’ and ‘tell your mom we said hi!’
Robin downed the last sip of his second root beer, then slid another twenty dollar bill onto the bartop. “Are you gonna tell Batman about this?”
“Eh, only if he asks.” Flash aimed a look in Lyle’s direction. “I’m betting we don’t need to worry about anybody else mentioning this to him.”
“Are you kidding?” Robin scoffed, hopping off his stool. Twerp was so short Lyle could barely see the top of his head over the counter. “I’ll be lucky if the gossip about KF getting lectured by his mom doesn’t hit Gotham by tonight. And if Batman hears about it, he will be asking, and then it’ll be my turn to be read the riot act.”
He and Flash headed for the door, speedster keeping his head turned just enough to watch the rest of the room as they went. “Ah, come on, I know he’s got the big bad reputation as the Thing That Goes Bump In The Night, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain your boss is not actually as scary as my sister-in-law.”
The pipsqueak cackled as he headed outside, and for a split second, hearing that sound but not being able to see the boy making it, Lyle could maybe understand why he was allowed to run around a city like Gotham after dark.
Flash lingered for half a second, again peering in Lyle’s direction. “Thanks, man. I’ll make sure they don’t bother you again.”
Lyle just shrugged at him. “I don’t have a problem with paying customers. And neither does anyone else here, if they know what’s good for ‘em.”
“Still. I appreciate it.” And with that, the speedster took off.
When the door swung shut, Heatwave let out an exaggerated groan. “Alright, that was a good show, but I hope the goody-two-shoes don’t make a habit of coming in here.”
Lyle considered the concern for a moment, but then shook his head, dismissing it. Kids learned their lesson, and like hell Flash, or any other heroes for that matter, would be interested in crashing a Rogue bar for their downtime. This would make for a one-time story, a good laugh, but nothing more.
(He wondered later if that conviction was what caused the universe to decide on proving him wrong.)