Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At eighteen, Tim Drake thought he was living a successful life.

He was running a multibillion-dollar company. He was Red Robin, a solo hero and not just some kid sidekick anymore. He'd saved Gotham. He'd saved the world . He'd literally brought Bruce back from the dead. That should count for something .

Sure, half his paycheck went to energy drinks and last-minute hotel rooms when he crashed too far from a safehouse. Sure, he slept three hours a week on a good month. Maybe his family dynamics were a flaming trash fire and his friends still weren’t speaking to him after the whole cloning debacle.

And okay—he didn’t have a spleen anymore.

But he was fine. He was good . He was successful .

So imagine his surprise when Bruce looked him dead in the eye and said:

“You’re fired.”

Tim’s arms dropped to his sides. “ What do you mean I’m fired? ”

Bruce, because of course he was Bruce, didn’t even flinch. “Tim, listen—”

“I’ve been running the company for over a year. I saved the company. You can’t just fire me.”

Bruce gestured for him to calm down, like that ever worked. “You need to have experiences for people your age.”

“I have experiences. I’ve smoked weed, like—at least once.”

“Tim.”

“I have friends!”

“Friends who aren’t superheroes.”

“They’re real ! They just also happen to have capes and trauma.”

“You need people who aren’t in constant mortal danger,” Bruce said, like it was that easy. “Go to college. Go to a party. Meet people. Have fun.”

“I have fun,” Tim insisted, deeply offended.

“When’s the last time you laughed?”

“...Ironically or unironically?”

Bruce sighed. “It’s final. Effective immediately. You’re no longer the CEO of Wayne Enterprises.”

Tim gaped at him. “What am I supposed to do now? Knit? Fight crime less ?”

“Maybe take some low-key classes at Gotham University,” Bruce suggested. “I heard they have a good photography department.”

And that’s how Tim Drake—former CEO, spleenless insomniac, caffeine-based lifeform—ended up at Gotham U, sitting in a lecture hall surrounded by eighteen-year-olds who thought “cloning fiasco” was a sci-fi trope and not a phase of life.

If Bruce was going to fire him from his own company, Tim was damn well going to get a business degree and fire Bruce right back.

Call it karmic justice, with a minor in petty.

The class was excruciating .

It was one of those required general education courses—Sociology 101, or as Tim mentally titled it, Why Are We Still Talking About Durkheim in 2025?

He sat in the back of the lecture hall, strategically out of the professor’s line of sight. His notebook was open, but not for class. Instead, it was filled with his latest analysis of Scarecrow’s updated fear toxin—a new compound intercepted just last week, loaded with a previously unknown additive that somehow made the gas stickier , both physically and psychologically. It clung to brain chemistry like a codependent ex.

Tim scribbled notes in tight, caffeine-fueled shorthand, tapping his pen against the side of his temple. The new compound didn’t respond to standard neutralizers. It was stronger. Smarter. He was halfway through calculating a counter-agent when a soft, thoughtful little “huh” broke into his concentration.

A pencil hovered over his page, held in a hand that wasn’t his.

Tim blinked. A stranger was leaning across the shared desk, pencil poised, his gaze focused entirely on the toxin formula like he was the one who’d been obsessing over it for days.

And wow, okay—Tim wasn’t shallow, but this guy looked like every tired bisexual’s worst distraction. Messy black hair, like he’d run his hands through it on the way to class. Sharp cheekbones. Ice-blue eyes that practically glowed . And trailing up his ear, an absolutely illegal number of tiny star-shaped piercings that somehow made him look both dorky and devastating.

Tim blinked again, dazed, as the guy glanced at him with an infuriatingly smug smirk.

“There,” he said, like he was doing Tim a favor , “I fixed your formula. Now it should work the way you want it to.”

Then he leaned back like he hadn’t just casually corrected a criminal chemical weapon recipe mid-lecture.

Tim stared down at his notebook.

There it was—in neat, slightly messy handwriting, the exact chemical configuration Scarecrow had used. Fixed. Perfected. Annotated, even, with a little arrow pointing to the previously unknown compound, labeled: ionic bonding = too weak, switch to covalent for sustained fear response.

Tim’s brain stalled. Rebooted. Blue-screened.

“How— ?”

“Nice to meet you,” the guy said, reclining in his chair like this happened every Tuesday. “I’m Danny. Engineering department.”

Tim managed to tear his eyes away from the formula. “Tim,” he said automatically.

Danny tilted his head. “As in Tim Drake-Wayne ? Everyone’s been talking about you.”

And just like that, Tim’s internal alarms lit up like a Bat-Signal on steroids.

Hot. Smart. Mysterious. Knew chemical warfare off the top of his head. Knew who he was . Possibly magic.

Yep. This guy was definitely suspicious.

Officially? Tim was putting him on a watchlist.

Unofficially? This guy was a rogue on the making

By the time Sociology mercifully ended, Tim had stopped taking notes on fear toxin and started a list titled:

Possible Threats Danny Represents

• Chemical rogue (see: casually corrected a bioterror formula mid-class)
  
  
• Charming (suspicious)
  
  
• Unreasonably attractive (weaponized?)
  
  
• Knows my name (unverified friend or foe)
  
  
• Possibly hallucinated???
  
  

Danny stood up, slung a battered backpack over one shoulder, and stretched like he hadn’t just rewritten Gotham’s next nightmare gas. Tim’s eyes might have lingered. For research purposes .

“I gotta run,” Danny said, already halfway to the door. “Engineering class.”

Tim blinked. “Oh.”

A beat.

Another beat.

“Right,” Tim added helpfully, realizing far too late that he’d followed Danny out of the classroom like a lost Roomba.

Danny waved over his shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Tim!”

Then he was gone, swallowed by the horde of college students who actually enjoyed being alive.

Tim stood frozen in the hallway, clutching his notebook, which now contained both a detailed breakdown of Scarecrow’s newest formula and a doodle of a stick-figure Danny labeled: ???

He checked his schedule.

English Literature.

Great. Nothing like deep metaphors about death and moral decay to calm a spiraling paranoia.

He tried to focus. Really. But the entire class was a blur of Victorian repression and iambic pentameter, and all Tim could think about was Danny: his dumb perfect hair, the chemical correction, that little smirk like he knew exactly how off-balance he’d knocked him.

Was he a rogue in the making? A vigilante? A civilian with a suspiciously hot vibe and an intimate knowledge of terror gas?

By the time the professor started discussing the symbolism of fog in Bleak House , Tim had made up his mind.

He was going to find that man and spy on him like a normal, emotionally stable person.

It didn’t take long. Danny wasn’t exactly subtle .

Tim followed the faint scent of oil and ozone around the back of the engineering building, where—yep, there he was—Danny, crouched in the grass with what looked like a machine in mid-assembly. He had goggles pushed up on his forehead, a multitool between his teeth, and about six different wires running from a battery pack to something that buzzed when he poked it.

Tim ducked behind a trash can, absolutely not being weird about this.

Observation Log:

• The machine is making a noise like a coffee grinder having an existential crisis.
  
  
• Danny is muttering to himself in what might be latin curses or possibly bad math.
  
  
• His hoodie says “NASA” but he just licked a wire. Unclear if irony.
  
  

Every time Danny adjusted something, the contraption lit up in new, questionable ways. At one point, a nearby squirrel fainted. Tim made a mental note of that.

Fifteen minutes in, Tim was 85% sure this guy was either a genius or building a death ray out of spare parts and spite.

Then Danny stood up, stretched again (rude), and checked his phone.

“Ugh, physics,” he muttered, grabbing his bag. “Hope no one steals the prototype again.”

Again?

Tim’s eyes went wide.

Danny jogged off toward another building, leaving his Frankenstein machine humming softly behind him.

Tim stayed behind the trash can, visibly sweating .

This wasn’t just a hunch anymore.

Danny, engineering student / chaos gremlin / alleged hot person, was officially under investigation.

As soon as he was sure the coast was clear, Tim popped out from behind the trash can like a raccoon on a mission.

The machine sat in the grass, humming softly. It had wires sticking out like Frankenstein’s overworked cousin, and one of the blinking lights was flashing in Morse code . Probably.

Tim squinted. “That’s definitely a countdown.”

It wasn’t.

Probably.

He crept closer, crouching next to the thing like it might explode if he breathed wrong. It had a power core made from, of all things, a modified toaster. And the rest of it looked like a Roomba and a drone had a deeply illegal baby.

Tim poked it. It beeped.

He flinched back, hand already on his utility belt before remembering he was technically on a college campus and technically still just “Tim.” Not Red Robin.

“Okay, so either this is a science project... or Danny is weaponizing household appliances. Both valid.”

He reached out again, touching the blinking panel gently. A small hologram blinked to life above it, blueprints swirling in the air. They were... incredible . Detailed schematics, strange readings, tech from systems Tim couldn’t fully recognize. There were pieces of it that looked half-rocket tech, half quantum theory.

His eyes narrowed. “This is either alien or villain. Possibly both.”

Tim did the only reasonable thing he could think of.

He unplugged it, scooped it up in both arms like a football, and booked it to the parking lot.

Some time later, Tim’s phone buzzed in his pocket. A calendar notification popped up:
2:00PM - Modernist Poetry. Don’t forget the group discussion! :)

He looked down at the humming, slightly sparking machine now buckled into the passenger seat of his civilian car and muttered, “Yeah, I’m skipping that.”

Twenty minutes later, he was in the Nest, dragging the machine into his personal workshop like he’d just adopted a very complicated gremlin.

A new text buzzed on his phone.

Alfred:

Master Tim, I was under the impression you were attending university today.
Did the campus explode?

Tim:

Not yet. Will keep you posted.

He set the machine down, wiped his hands on his hoodie, and stared at it like it was about to bite him. It probably would. He powered up the Nest’s scanners and started running diagnostics, muttering to himself the whole time.

“If this thing turns out to be a coffee maker, I’m going to commit arson.”

It whirred cheerfully. Tim glared at it.

The day had gone from “annoyed by Sociology” to “accidental felony” real fast.

And somehow, it was all Danny’s fault.

Chapter Text

The next few weeks passed in a blur . A caffeine-fueled, sleep-deprived, probably-legally-questionable blur.

Tim went to class— reluctantly —because apparently “you can’t just hack your way into a diploma” was a thing Bruce cared about now. He still worked as Red Robin, patrolling Gotham’s crime-ridden streets and fighting people with names like “Captain Bludgeon” and “The Molotov Mime.”

And, of course, there was his newest unpaid and unsolicited job: Keeping Gotham Safe from One (1) Hot Possibly-Rogue Engineering Student .

Tim had followed Danny across campus, into the city, and once, accidentally , into a Smoothie shop where Danny had ordered something called a “Death by Mango” and tipped the cashier five bucks. Suspicious.

He watched him build weird machines, pass his classes with barely any effort, and charm literally everyone who spoke to him for more than five seconds.

It was exhausting.

So now, on a rare afternoon where he wasn’t chasing rogue chemistry majors or getting punched in the spleen he no longer had, Tim was holed up in the Nest, assembling everything into a neatly compiled case file titled "DANIEL FENTON: Rogue in the making"

There were charts. Maps. Red string. Three pie charts labeled “Destructive power,” “Technical Skill,” and “Menace Potential” with deeply unscientific ratios. He had video clips, photo evidence, and his annotated breakdown of the toaster machine’s power source that Tim had stolen from his backpack when he wasn’t looking.

Tim took a sip from his eleventh espresso shot of the hour and leaned back, feeling very accomplished.

That lasted exactly eight seconds.

Because Bruce walked into the Nest holding a manila folder thicker than Tim’s criminal record in alternate timelines. It had “CONFIDENTIAL” stamped across the top and a discreet Wayne Enterprises logo in the corner.

Tim froze mid-sip.

Bruce raised a brow. “Are you drinking espresso out of a beaker?”

Tim looked down at the beaker.

Then up at Bruce.

“No,” he said.

Bruce didn’t blink. He dropped the folder on Tim’s desk with a soft thud that somehow sounded judgmental.

Tim stared at it. “Should I be worried? Is this about the drone I accidentally hijacked? Because in my defense—”

“This is about your new… interest .”

Tim’s soul left his body. HOW DID HE KNEW.

Batman was truly an all seeing entity.

Bruce flipped open the file and turned it toward him. Inside were official documents. Records. A WE-sponsored grant application. Photos.

And smack in the middle: a glossy headshot of Danny Fenton.

Tim choked on his drink.

“ Why do you have a headshot? Is this a background check or a dating profile?!”

Bruce ignored him. “Daniel Fenton is one of the top engineering students in the state. He was granted a full scholarship through Wayne Enterprises for his work on clean energy and subdimensional stabilization.”

Tim blinked.

“Subdimensional—what now?”

Bruce kept going. “He’s also been contracted as a part-time consultant through WE’s Applied Sciences division. His inventions are being tested in low-risk urban environments.”

Tim’s brain was short-circuiting. “Wait. Wait. Wayne Enterprises hired him? ”

Bruce nodded. “He’s scheduled to intern directly under Lucius this summer.”

Tim slammed the espresso beaker down. “ You gave the suspicious maniac with toaster-based bombs direct access to Lucius?! ”

Bruce folded his arms. “He’s not suspicious, Tim. You’re sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, and wildly biased.”

“I’m not biased !” Tim gestured at the board, where Danny’s face was currently printed next to a sticky note labeled “Possible Alien.”

Bruce stared.

Tim slowly reached out and peeled that one off.

“I am a professional .”

Bruce closed the file and turned to leave. “Maybe you should actually talk to him.”

Tim gaped. “Talk to him?! Like socially ?”

Bruce’s voice echoed back down the hallway. “Or romantically. I don’t care anymore.”

Tim stood there, frozen, betrayal in every fiber of his being.

He turned to the board, then back to the beaker.

“…Maybe just one more espresso.”

Later that week, Tim walked into the university lab like he owned the place.

Which, technically, he kind of did. Or at least funded it.

The lab was quiet except for the soft whir of machines and the low, steady hum of something that was either very high-tech or seconds from exploding. Tim wasn’t sure yet. He spotted Danny hunched over a table near the back, surrounded by tools, wires, a tablet, and—was that a chunk of concrete with teeth marks in it?

Definitely seconds from exploding.

“Hey,” Tim said casually, like he hadn’t spent three nights practicing this opening line in the mirror.

Danny looked up and smiled. “Oh, hey, Tim! What brings Gotham’s most mysterious billionaire heir to my nerd cave?”

Tim shoved his hands in his pockets. “I, uh, had a chemical compound I couldn’t quite crack. Thought you might be able to help.”

Danny blinked. “You thought I could help?”

Tim slid the tablet toward him with the chemical formula already pulled up. “It’s based on the new version of Joker venom that showed up last week in the news. WE has won the concession to create the antidote but we are somewhat stuck. I’ve narrowed it down to the base alkaloids, but the delivery compound is... weird.”

He lied effortlessly, he had already made the antidote a couple of days ago.

Danny picked up the tablet, glanced at the screen, and started muttering under his breath. “Okay, so that’s an unstable nitrogen compound… with trace amounts of dioxin… but if you stabilize it with a chlorinated hydrocarbon and—oh, this one’s new. You’ll need to rebalance the compound with an inverse protein helix. Then boom—neutralized.”

Tim blinked. “You just came up with an antidote in, like, forty-five seconds.”

Danny shrugged. “It’s just chemistry. Honestly, I’m better at this than I am at math. Don’t tell my calculus professor.”

Tim stared, feeling personally attacked by the way Danny’s brain worked.

“What are you working on, anyway?”

Danny’s eyes lit up. “Okay, so it’s a dual-scanning system I’ve been prototyping—it’s for first responders. During disasters like mudslides or earthquakes, it’s hard to find victims trapped under rubble. So this scanner uses a combination of infrared imaging and biofeedback sensors to locate them and identify injuries in real time.”

Tim’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? That’s—actually amazing.”

“I know, right?” Danny grinned, practically bouncing with excitement. “It’s non-invasive, quick, and could save lives and help prioritize victims. But I’m stuck trying to get it to function through anything deeper than ten feet of debris. The signal scatters too much and loses cohesion.”

Tim walked over, examining the device. “Have you tried adjusting the resonance frequency of the biofeedback loop? Maybe bounce the signal off naturally occurring minerals underground instead of trying to force it through.”

Danny’s eyes widened. “Wait—that could actually work. You’d have to sync it with a topographical map and factor in density changes…”

“We could run a few tests using different ground composites,” Tim offered. “See how the signal holds.”

Danny leaned forward, close enough that Tim could smell his cologne—warm, slightly electric, somehow citrusy—and said, “You just want to help so I owe you a smoothie.”

Tim blinked. “...You owe me a smoothie?”

“I owe anyone who saves me more than three hours of coding a smoothie,” Danny grinned. “It’s a very generous employee benefits package I made up.”

“I accept.” Tim smirked. “I like mango.”

Danny nodded sagely. “Death by Mango. Excellent choice.”

Tim suddenly remembered exactly why he was suspicious of this guy in the first place.

And hated how charming that damn smirk was.

As they leaned over the scanner, heads close together, arguing over signal scatter and pulse modulation, Tim had to admit something terrifying.

This might be worse than a rogue on the making

This was a supervillain on the making.

After an hour and some change, the scanner prototype worked.

It actually worked.

At the end it took half an hour more of tweaking frequencies, rerouting signal processors, and Danny saying things like “Now we just pray to the god of wires and hope this doesn’t explode,” the scanner managed to pick up a heat signature through a full concrete block and accurately display a simulated broken femur.

Tim, who was not used to things working without explosions or dramatic screaming, stared at the screen like it owed him rent.

“That’s…” he cleared his throat. “That’s impressive.”

Danny grinned. “Right? Told you the ancient gods were watching over us. Speaking of—lab hours are up. Wanna grab that smoothie?”

Tim froze.

His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

“Uh. I. Yes. Smoothies. Of course. Hydration. Fruit-based liquids. Social activity. That’s normal. I’m normal.”

Danny tilted his head. “...Are you okay?”

“I’m fantastic,” Tim said too fast. “I love smoothies. I dream of smoothies. I—why are we still here? Let's go before the smoothies evolve legs and escape.”

Danny blinked, his face getting a mirthful smile as he picked up his stuff. “Okay then. Smoothie time.”

Fifteen minutes later, they entered a small, cozy-looking smoothie bar called Smooth Criminals, which definitely was the same place Danny had visited before and Tim had followed him into.

But now that he wasn’t being a creep, Tim spotted her behind the counter the second they walked in.

Steph also spotted him, did a full double take, and immediately narrowed her eyes like she was watching a once-feral alley cat try to pass itself off as someone's pet.

Tim locked eyes with her and panicked. He subtly brought his hand up to his neck and did a frantic slashing motion, mouthing DO NOT.

Steph blinked.

He pointed to Danny. Then to himself. Then made an awkward cross shape with his fingers like a complete dork. Then double-thumbs-upped. Then mouthed again: YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.

Steph raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and plastered on her best “Welcome to hell, I mean, how can I help you” smile.

“Hi Danny! Welcome back. What can I get you guys?”

Danny stepped up, oblivious to Tim’s silent mental breakdown. “Hey Steph, I’ll have the Mango Mayhem. Extra ice, less sugar.”

Tim, still mildly short-circuiting, looked up with the expression of a man whose soul had just been ejected into the astral plane.

“I’ll have the—uh—uh—death. I mean. Mango. Mango Death. Wait. Is that a real smoothie? Is that a curse ? Are you cursed? Am I cursed?”

Steph didn’t blink. “One Mango Mayhem. One Death by Mango. Got it.”

Danny leaned over to Tim and whispered, “You okay?”

Tim nodded way too many times. “Yep. Just… you know. Smoothie-induced existential dread.”

“Totally normal,” Danny replied brightly.

Steph handed them the smoothies with the straightest face known to man. “Enjoy your fruits. Don’t die.”

Tim mouthed I owe you my soul as he grabbed his cup.

Steph mouthed back we will talk later as they walked away.

Chapter Text

Tim landed lightly on the rooftop next to Nightwing, already mid-rant.

“I’m just saying—he’s suspicious. No one should be able to fix a chemical compound for Joker Venom with a pencil and a shrug! He didn’t even hesitate! He just looked at it and said ‘huh.’ That’s villain behavior.”

Nightwing tilted his head, clearly trying not to smile. “So your concern is that this guy… is too smart?”

“No,” Tim snapped, pacing. “I’m concerned that he’s smart, charming, willing to talk to strangers, and has access to extremely niche tech. That’s villain origin story 101.”

Oracle’s voice crackled over the comms, chipper and amused. “So to summarize, you’ve met one (1) hot boy and now you’re spiraling.”

“I am not spiraling,” Tim hissed.

“Uh-huh,” Barbara continued. “And what’s he done besides help you with your homework and build life-saving tech?”

“He smirked at me, ” Tim said, scandalized.

There was a pause.

Jason’s voice entered the chat, gleeful and far too loud. “Wait—wait wait wait—Timmy’s got a crush on a possible rogue?”

“It’s not a crush,” Tim growled. “It’s investigative suspicion. I’m protecting Gotham.”

“By stalking a STEM major,” Nightwing muttered, sipping from his water bottle.

Tim pointed a dramatic finger at him. “You weren’t there. He’s building a device that can see through walls and diagnose injuries. Who just casually does that?!”

“Someone who wants to help people?” Oracle offered. “You know, like… us.”

Jason was cackling so hard it echoed through the comm. “Oh my god, if Tim starts leaving hearts in the scanner blueprints, I’m telling Alfred.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Oh, I’m daring. ”

“Guys,” Tim groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “I’m being serious.”

“Sure you are,” Nightwing said, clapping him on the back. “Let us know when your supervillain boyfriend takes you hostage so we can send you matching couple ransom funds.”

“I hate all of you,” Tim muttered.

Jason snorted. “That’s just the fear toxin talking, babe.”

So, if his family wasn’t going to take his suspicions seriously— clearly because they were all suffering from a collective case of brain fog —Tim had no choice but to go full detective mode.

He had to do the legwork. The field research. The classic Bruce Wayne maneuver: awkwardly talk to people like a human being.

It was hell.

The first student he approached blinked at the photo Tim held up on his phone. “Danny? Oh yeah. Definitely rogue-coded.”

Tim perked up. “Exactly! Thank you. Finally, someone with sense.”

The guy shrugged. “But, like… the cool kind. You know? Like, ‘robs billionaires and feeds the hungry’ rogue. Not ‘tries to melt the mayor’ rogue.”

“…What does that even mean?”

Next stop was a small group of exhausted-looking art students painting protest banners in a corner of the quad.

“Oh, Fenton? Yeah, he helped us rewire our entire lighting setup for the exhibition. Brought us pizza, too. Said capitalism rotted his soul. Love that guy.”

“He’s definitely gonna be a rogue,” one girl added, sipping from a thermos with a drawing of a raccoon wielding a Molotov cocktail. “But, like… a sexy one.”

Tim wrote SEXY ROGUE — ART DEPT. OPINION in his notes and died a little inside.

The engineering faculty were worse.

Every single professor spoke about Danny with the tone of someone who had long since accepted their fate.

“Oh, Mr. Fenton? Yes, I’m aware he is building a working teleportation rig in the back storage room. No, I’m not going to stop him. That thing runs on microwaved hot pockets and spite. Do you want to be the one who tells him no?”

“I saw him hack a city drone once using only a stylus and a megaphone made from a rope, a squirrel and a megaphone,” one TA said dreamily. “It was so hot.”

“Shouldn’t someone report him?” Tim asked weakly.

“To whom ?” the TA shot back. “The university? The cops? God? Please. We all know he’s going to rogue. We're just trying to squeeze out as much good tech as we can before he snaps and turns the gym into a laser cannon.”

Even the dean shrugged helplessly. “He’s just… inevitable, Mr. Drake-Wayne.”

“You’re okay with that?!”

The dean gave a resigned sigh. “Look, when you see a kid dismantle a vending machine with his mind, you stop asking questions. Besides, have you seen his shoulders? No jury will convict him.”

Tim stared at her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I’m realistic and this is Gotham.”

By the time Tim staggered out of the administration building, clutching his notes like they were a manifesto, he was pale and haunted.

Everyone knew.

Everyone.

Not only did they know— they were rooting for him.

Rooting for the rogue.

Tim stared into the middle distance.

“…I live in a society.”

Tim found him in the outdoor lab space again, surrounded by a mess of wires, paint canisters, PVC tubes, and what looked suspiciously like rocket fuel. Danny had his sleeves rolled up and was crouched over a half-assembled contraption, goggles perched on his nose, humming along to some chaotic techno track blaring softly from his phone.

He’s so cool, Tim thought helplessly, watching as Danny tightened a bolt with the kind of focus that could probably kill lesser men.

Then he shook himself. No. Focus. You’re here to interrogate him about villainy, not develop a morally-compromising crush.

Clearing his throat and trying to look casual—which meant standing weirdly straight and blinking too much—Tim stepped closer. “Hey.”

Danny didn’t even glance up. “Hey, Tim! Give me two seconds, I’m at the fun part.”

Tim watched, entranced, as Danny carefully slid a small metal canister into a sleek, cannon-like tube. There was a soft click and Danny’s grin widened.

“…Are you building a rocket launcher ?”

Danny finally looked at him and shrugged. “For paintballs, yes. The physics are tricky—gotta make sure I don’t accidentally launch someone into orbit, you know? But the trajectory math is killer. Wanna try it once I calibrate the firing valve?”

Tim blinked. His heart said yes. His common sense screamed ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELF?

He cleared his throat. “So, uh, while you’re... launching paint into low-Earth orbit... what’s your stance on, like… villains?”

Danny’s hands paused mid-weld.

Tim froze. Too obvious. Be cooler, damn it. Pretend you're not investigating him.

Danny tilted his head thoughtfully. “Villains?”

“Yeah, just… y’know. In theory. Hypothetically. Like, what’s your take? On villainy. As a concept.” Tim smiled like a politician in a scandal.

Danny leaned back, wiping his hands on his already-stained pants. “Oh, that’s a loaded question.”

“I love loaded questions,” Tim said, internally screaming.

Danny tapped his chin. “I mean, society’s kind of messed up, right? Systems are failing. People in power don’t care. So I get why someone would snap. The problem is they always go for the wrong targets. Like, why hold a hospital hostage when you could take out a couple hedge funds and redistribute their ill-gotten gains? Priorities, people.”

Tim went completely still.

Danny continued, now actively ranting as he reattached a coil to the launcher. “Like, if I had the means—hypothetically—I’d redesign the entire disaster response system. Airdrop supplies. Build autonomous rescue drones. Make sure people actually survive a crisis instead of being left to rot. But instead villains are out here turning bridges into spaghetti or releasing toxic gas because someone stepped on their shoe in third grade.”

Tim had gone from flushed to pale to ashen. His soul was leaving his body.

Danny finally looked up, frowning. “Hey, are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost.”

“I’m fine,” Tim squeaked. “Completely normal. Very healthy. Full of... red blood cells.”

Danny narrowed his eyes. “You sure? You’re making a face like my roommate after he accidentally drank my coffee. It was foamy.”

“Nope, no foam here. I’m just... interested. In what you’re doing. The paintball... rocket... death launcher. Thing.”

Danny perked up immediately. “Oh! Okay, so, the idea is to simulate heavy combat environments for training purposes, right? But also make it fun. I’m adding a pressure sensor so it can adjust force depending on range. Like a smart cannon. And the paintballs are filled with non-toxic gel that marks impact zones and can be tracked in real-time via drones. See?”

Tim leaned in, watching as Danny pulled up a program on his tablet that showed a simulated battlefield with tiny dots representing each splat of color-coded paint. His eyes shone with manic joy. “Once it works, it could double as a tool for search-and-rescue drills. I just have to tweak the propulsion system so it doesn’t break bones.”

“You are the most terrifyingly competent person I’ve ever met,” Tim whispered.

Danny beamed. “Thanks! You’re sweet.”

Tim tried not to melt into a pile of Red Robin soup.

Later that afternoon, after surviving Excel Basics for Business (a class Tim could probably teach in his sleep thanks to handling the family's taxes since the tender age of eight ), he headed toward one of the unused classrooms near the labs. Steph was already there, sitting backwards in a chair like a delinquent in a ‘90s teen movie. Duke was leaning against the whiteboard with a froyo cup in hand.

Tim blinked. “What are you doing here?”

Duke gestured with his spoon. “It’s Tuesday. Steph and I have froyo on Tuesdays.”

Steph added, “But I wanted to come see how you were doing, since you ghosted all of us and went full stalker on Hot Lab Guy.”

“I have more important things to do,” Tim muttered, glancing toward the hallway like a man preparing for battle.

Steph looked around the art room they’d commandeered. “Right. What are we doing again?”

Duke, entirely too calm about the situation, said, “We’re hiding from the new guy in Tim’s sociology class.”

Steph frowned. “Why?”

“Tim’s convinced he’s dangerous.”

“I’m telling you , he is dangerous!” Tim snapped, arms flailing slightly for emphasis. “Just... not the kind of dangerous Bruce would believe me about.”

Steph narrowed her eyes. “So instead of calling in back-up, your brilliant strategy is to hide us in a disused art room like Scooby-Doo extras?”

Tim waved her off. “He’s not that kind of dangerous! He’s... civilian dangerous.”

Duke raised an eyebrow. “What does that even mean ?”

“It means he’s the kind of guy who casually builds high-tech machinery during lunch breaks, critiques villain philosophies while constructing paintball rocket launchers, and flirts like a Bond villain. We have to handle this like civilians. ”

“By hiding?” Steph deadpanned.

But before Tim could answer, his head snapped toward the door. “ SSHHHH! He’s coming this way!”

Without another word, Tim rolled under the teacher’s desk with practiced, possibly-too-military precision.

Steph blinked, sighed, then vaulted into the supply closet.

Duke stared at both of them for a second, looked down at his froyo, shrugged, and climbed into the cabinets like a disappointed raccoon.

They waited in absolute silence as the sound of footsteps got closer. Danny’s voice floated faintly from the hallway.

“...No, I swear, I left it charging by the 3D printer. If it exploded again, that wasn’t my fault—this time. Dude, I swear, the ratio was correct…”

The trio was still tucked in their ridiculous hiding spots when the door creaked open.

Danny walked in, clearly mid-phone call, balancing a suspiciously high-tech-looking lunchbox in one hand.

“—yeah, I always eat my lunch in an empty room, Tuck,” Danny said, with the kind of long-suffering tone reserved for best friends and war buddies. “Yes, I know how sad that is, but you don’t get it . The bullies here make Amity Park’s look like kittens on Prozac. Like—one guy tried to trip me with a lacrosse stick. I’m not even sure that’s physically possible.”

He dropped the lunchbox on the table, still talking.

“Honestly, the only redeemable thing about this school is the walking eye candy. Didn’t I tell you? There’s a Wayne in my sociology class. Yes, there is! I’m not joking! Tim- yummy -Drake. The cheekbones, Tuck. The cheekbones. ”

Tim covered his face under the desk, dying quietly

“And get this,” Danny continued. “I saw Bruce- Daddy -Wayne pick him up yesterday. Dick- Take-Me -Grayson was with him. I got pics . I’ll send them—hold on, I forgot to grab a drink.”

He turned and walked out of the room, whistling.

There was a beat of pure silence.

Then Duke fell out of the cabinet, wheezing. Steph burst out of the closet, doubled over in laughter.

Tim sat up from beneath the desk like a reanimated corpse, face bright red and full of righteous fury.

“It’s not funny!”

“Oh my god ,” Steph gasped, wiping a tear from her eye. “You’re the walking eye candy.”

“I have receipts !” Tim hissed, waving a USB drive like it was a dagger. “Everyone agrees he’s rogue material! Even the dean thinks it’s just a matter of time!”

“Wait,” Steph said, pausing mid-laugh. “ Is that the guy you were stalking online the other night?”

“I was researching—!”

“Awwww,” she crooned. “Does Timmy have a crush and is too shy to talk to him, so he hides instead?”

Tim, vibrating worse than the time he drank twenty five cups of coffee “No! I am investigating a threat —!”

“Tim and Soc Guy sitting in a tree~,” Duke sing-songed, completely useless.

Steph chimed in, “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

Tim threw his hands in the air and screamed internally. Then externally. Then internally again .

Because worst of all?

He could still hear Danny humming from down the hallway.

So, after that whole terrible debacle, Tim resorted to going back to his roots.

Namely stalking.

Which meant following Danny Fenton when he entered an empty classroom with zero witnesses, closed the door behind him, and started talking—to no one.

Tim had followed at a safe distance, peeking through the barely-cracked door like a nosy Victorian ghost. And sure enough, there was Danny: pacing around the room, waving his hands animatedly and speaking out loud .

“—I’m just saying, maybe I don’t want to call Vlad for help. Nope, I don’t care if he has ‘relevant expertise,’ he also wears a cape and says ‘foolish boy’ unironically. That’s villain behavior!”

Tim blinked.

There was no one else in the room.

No Bluetooth in his ears.

No phone.

No visible comms device.

Danny paused mid-rant to adjust something on what looked like a solar-powered jet engine stapled to a toaster, then turned to thin air and said, “Look, I’m not saying the last prototype exploded but like, if it had, would that not have been kinda awesome?”

Tim’s brain short-circuited.

He's talking to ghosts. Or invisible henchmen. Or an AI. Definitely rogue behavior. No one normal debates toaster-based propulsion tech with invisible people.

That was it.

If his family wasn’t going to take Danny seriously as a potential threat to Gotham, then he would.

He was Red Robin. He could handle this. He could handle anything.

Even… whatever Danny was.

So Tim took a deep breath, straightened his posture, walked into the room with his best impression of a normal, not-deranged human, and said, “Hey.”

Danny flinched like he hadn’t expected anyone to be there, spun around, and then relaxed when he saw Tim. Actually—he beamed.

“Hey! Tim!” Danny said, cheerful and completely unbothered that he’d just been caught yelling at the air.

Tim’s rational brain screamed that this was bad. That this was very dangerous.

Tim’s stupid little gay heart was dancing the conga while chanting ‘ He smiled at me!!!’

“Yeah,” Tim said, coughing. “So, uh. I’ve been thinking.”

Dangerous words. A classic Tim Drake opening line.

“I’ve got some free time lately,” he lied through his teeth. “And I was wondering if you needed help with your… project?”

Danny stared at him.

Then lit up like a Christmas tree on caffeine.

“Seriously?! Yes! Yes! I mean—I won’t make you do the soldering ‘cause the last guy almost lit his eyebrows on fire, but yes! I’ve been trying to build a miniaturized concrete demolisher, but the power supply keeps melting and turning into a sentient blob or exploding and burning metal into a liquified goo. So if you’ve got steady hands or good ideas or just moral support while I yell at plastic—”

Tim, already walking over to the workbench: “Yeah. I’m good with power circuits and chemistry. And moral support. I guess.”

Danny grinned like he had just won the lottery.

And Tim had to remind himself  that this was definitely, completely an undercover op and not a date.

Chapter Text

Tim didn’t know what he expected when he cracked open the door to Lab Room 4C while skipping his Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility class (He had WRITTEN the book for that class, for crying out loud)

Maybe a new prototype for the wound scanner.

Maybe Danny tinkering harmlessly with solar batteries.

Maybe— hopefully —not a live coil of what looked suspiciously like a repurposed car engine strapped to a microwave with pulsing neon wiring.

“Danny, hey. What are you doing?”

Danny, crouched on a rolling chair with safety goggles askew on his forehead and a wrench in his mouth, looked up mid-spark shower. Tim was half sure Danny was supposed to actually wear the safety goggles on his eyes instead of his forehead.

Ten, Danny spat the wrench into his hand, then grinned.

“I’ll tell you if you close the door.”

Tim blinked.

The room was already slightly hazy with smoke. A suspicious hum was coming from the contraption in the corner. And something—was that a toaster again?—was leaking purple goo.

Tim hesitated. “Danny, the university personnel would never approve of that.”

“Oh.” Danny shrugged, leaning back and reaching for a soldering iron with the kind of casual recklessness that should’ve been a red flag. “Let’s see, uh… oh, that’s right—it’s crazy, it’s almost like the university’s personnel are not here! ”

He made jazz hands at the walls like he was inviting the institution itself to fight him.

Tim sighed. Loudly. He walked in anyway, letting the door click shut behind him like he hadn’t just signed a liability waiver with God.

“You’re going to blow something up,” Tim muttered, setting his bag down and pulling on gloves. “A wing of the building. The power grid. Maybe the concept of physics.”

Danny tilted his head and offered the soldering iron with a devilish smile. “But you’re here, which means you’re either enabling me or you secretly wanna help.”

“…You’re insufferable,” Tim said, but he took the iron anyway.

“Yet you want in on the fun.”

Tim rolled his eyes but started inspecting the wiring.

There was a pause as they worked in sync—Tim tracing the lines, Danny adjusting the power core (which was absolutely made out of a blender motor), and for a few brief moments, the chaotic energy of the room settled into something that almost resembled harmony.

“So,” Tim said slowly, tapping a capacitor. “What is this? I can’t decide if it’s a power source or a war crime.”

Danny grinned, fiddling with a panel. “It’s a kinetic energy recycler. You throw it, it absorbs impact, stores the energy, and then uses it to power small tools or devices. Good for disaster zones with no electricity. Or, you know, just… very dramatic recharging methods. ”

Tim blinked. “…You built a self-charging grenade battery.”

“I prefer ‘punch-powered generator,’” Danny said. “But yeah. Basically.”

“…You’re ridiculous,” Tim muttered, trying not to smile.

Danny leaned in, eyes sparkling. “But are you having fun ?”

Tim paused.

Then shrugged, just a little. “Is still debatable.”

Danny’s grin widened. “You are definitely having fun.”

Tim, already calibrating the output dial, tried to hide his blush “…Shut up and hand me that multimeter.”

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

Tim stopped in the doorway, arms full of circuit boards, and just stared .

The lab bench—if you could still call it that under all the wires, battery packs, exposed coils, and glowing green tubes—was surrounded by at least three fire extinguishers, a bucket of what he hoped was water, and a large sign that read:
“EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS: MAY EXPLODE. COOL THO.”

Danny was on the floor, halfway inside a metal casing that looked like someone had fused a leaf blower with a drone and then decided it should also function as a hoverboard. He was wearing goggles, singed gloves, and the biggest, proudest grin Tim had ever seen on someone surrounded by what appeared to be controlled chaos.

“Oh my god,” Tim said, slowly setting down the circuit boards. “That looks super dangerous.”

Danny popped his head out from under the casing, smeared in what might’ve been oil or maybe powdered Uranium. “It is.”

Tim blinked. “There is no way that’s gonna get approved by the university.”

Danny stood, dusting himself off and holding up what appeared to be a handlebar attached to an energy coil with a singular red button.

“Good thing,” he said cheerfully, “I’m not asking for the academic’s approval. ”

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “Danny, no. This is why your file has three warning notes and a university-wide clause named after you.”

“And yet,” Danny said, wiggling the handlebar at him like it was an invitation to sin, “you keep coming back.”

Tim grumbled under his breath but stepped closer anyway, eyeing the hoverboard-abomination-thing. “…What is it even supposed to do?”

“Remote-controlled evac platform,” Danny said brightly. “It activates with this switch, flies to the GPS coordinates of a person in danger, and carries them out automatically. You know. For when people are stuck under rubble or too injured to walk.”

Tim tilted his head. “That actually doesn’t sound insane.”

Danny beamed. “Thanks!”

“…Except for the fact that you’re testing it here , in a closed lab , with no safety harness , and no flight clearance. ”

Danny looked thoughtful. “So what you’re saying is… I need a volunteer.”

Tim took a very long pause.

He stared at the machine.

He stared at Danny.

Then at the handlebar.

Then finally let out the long-suffering sigh of someone who knew he’d already lost the battle the moment he walked through the door.

“…If I die, I’m haunting you.”

“Joke’s on you,” Danny said, grinning and handing over the controls, “I would love if you came to haunt me.”

With a muttered curse after tripping with his own feet and a final prayer to physics so Danny didn’t notice his red ears, Tim climbed on.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

The rest of the building was dark. Quiet. Peaceful.
Lab 4C was not.

Tim was vibrating.

Literally.

“Is the room vi–vibrating right now?” he asked, voice pitched slightly higher than usual, his knee bouncing at a rate that could generate clean energy.

Danny, still peeling off his hoodie as he entered, blinked at him. “How much coffee have you had today, Tim?”

“Tw–twelve?”

Danny froze. “Twelve?”

Tim looked defensive. “Hey! Caffeine is my superpower! ”

Danny opened his mouth, then closed it, clearly recalculating whether or not this was his problem. Unfortunately for both of them, it was not.

“You finished the recalibration specs?” Danny asked, dropping his bag and pulling out a handful of notes that looked like they’d been scribbled on the back of a burrito wrapper.

“I did you one better,” Tim said, launching himself across the room to a whiteboard and scribbling a full equation chain in seconds. “The third output line wasn’t accounting for the heat loss in the outer casing. So I rebalanced the resistance variables to account for ambient radiation decay.”

Danny’s eyes lit up, bouncing over the numbers. “That’s why the wave function was glitching. Okay, okay, okay—wait. If we add a copper coil to the base ring instead of steel, we could double the feedback loop and stop the voltage loss.”

Tim was already nodding, grabbing another marker and drawing an imaginary diagram midair like he could see the machine in front of them. “Right. So if we modulate the core to adjust for the frequency shift—”

“—then the entire stabilization array realigns automatically,” Danny finished, eyes wide with delighted disbelief. “You’re actually seeing this in your head, aren’t you?”

Tim, eyes twitching and pupils fully dilated, just grinned. “Do you think in math too?”

Danny held up a hand. “ Quick! What’s the expected feedback curve if we invert the polarity of the resonance chamber? ”

“Negative 0.36, stabilizing at 13.6 MHz after 3.5 seconds!” Tim shot back instantly.

Danny’s laugh was near-maniacal now. “YES! That’s what I got too!”

The two stared at each other for a beat—an extremely charged look, magnetic in and on itself, almost like the world around them disappeared and just the two of them remained—and then simultaneously turned back to the whiteboard.

“Okay,” Danny muttered, halfway to himself and halfway to Tim, “so what if we override the failsafe and just let the coil jumpstart from the main line—”

“—it’ll blow the capacitor unless we buffer the output through a sub-circuit delay, yeah, yeah,” Tim mumbled back, scribbling a sideways chart that definitely wasn’t meant to be sideways.

They were talking in fragments now. Equations. Symbols. Sound effects. Pointing to invisible machines and making explosion noises, laughing through math like other people laughed through movies.

If anyone had walked into the room at that moment, they would have thought they’d lost their minds.

And maybe they had.

But the sparks of genius and something more flying between them were bright enough to light up the whole lab.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

Empty energy drink cans littered the counter. One of the overhead lights had started flickering an hour ago, but neither of them had bothered to fix it. The hum of an overloaded circuit board filled the air, joined only by the furious scratching of marker against whiteboard and the faint sound of a calculator key being pressed like it owed someone money.

“Carry the two…” Tim mumbled, eyes flicking between Danny’s notes and his own matrix.

“Carry the four,” Danny corrected, not looking up from the soldering iron he was wielding like a conductor’s baton over a mess of glowing wires.

“Right.” Tim made the correction on the board and stepped back to look at the numbers. “Oh man, the university is not going to like that.”

Danny leaned up, stretched his back with a wince, and grinned, all teeth and no remorse. “Well, have you considered that perhaps I do not give a shit what the university likes?”

Tim snorted and turned back toward the desk, double-checking the calculations again just to be sure they wouldn’t accidentally invent a miniature black hole. It was late. He could tell by how his thoughts were starting to wander into dangerous territory—like finals.

He took a sip from his now-cold coffee and broke the silence. “You know, finals are coming up faster than I thought.”

“Yeah, I should probably, like… study or something.” Danny didn’t sound even a little bit worried. “But I think most of my professors are just relieved I haven’t blown up a lab. Yet.”

“Sounds like you’re winning hearts and minds.”

Danny snorted. “Eh, hearts maybe. Minds? Unclear.”

Tim leaned against the edge of the table and turned toward him. “You heading back to Amity over the break?”

Danny’s hands slowed a little as he set down the tool. “Actually… no. I think I’m staying in Gotham.”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. My parents are retired now, and they’re currently on some world-traveling second honeymoon or possibly ghost-hunting tour—honestly, it’s a blur. My sister’s got a trip to the Bahamas with her boyfriend, so…” He shrugged. “It’s just me.”

Tim hesitated for a moment, glancing at the invention they’d been hammering away at for weeks now. It wasn’t even remotely finished.

“Well,” he said, a little slower, “if you want to keep working on this during the break, you could use my apartment. I’ve got a second room I use for projects. It’s quiet, and, you know, doesn’t close at 10 PM like the lab.”

Danny blinked at him, clearly surprised—and then, slowly, grinned like he’d just won the lottery.

“Wait, seriously? You’re offering me a secret science lair? ”

“I wouldn’t call it that,” Tim said quickly.

Danny put a hand on his chest. “Too late. It’s canon now.”

Tim shook his head, but he was smiling despite himself. “Bring your own snacks. I’m not sharing my emergency Cheez-Its.”

“Deal.” Danny stuck out his hand like they’d just signed an intergalactic peace treaty. “Operation Unapproved Invention lives on.”

“And hopefully doesn’t get us arrested,” Tim muttered, already regretting everything and nothing at the same time.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

After finals –where Tim may or may not have passed his classes without studying but also made him realize that at this rate, he was going to be an average student and not top of his class – Tim and Danny set shop in Tim’s apartment.

The second bedroom had long since stopped being a bedroom. It now looked like a small tech start-up had exploded inside it. Half-assembled machines cluttered every surface. Wire tangles crawled up the walls. Schematics covered one whiteboard, and the other was littered with equations and doodles of very poorly drawn cats labeled “timothy” and “daniel.”

Danny was cross-legged on the floor, peering into the open guts of their invention with a small flashlight between his teeth. Tim was hunched over a secondary monitor, running simulations with the kind of focus normally reserved for life-or-death situations.

There was a long, comfortable silence filled only by the soft clack of keys and the hum of old Gotham plumbing—until Danny cleared his throat, sheepishly.

“Don’t be mad,” he said, in the kind of tone that guaranteed the next sentence would be madness, “but we’ll need to buy another processor for the computer.”

Tim turned slowly, blinking. “What? Why? I just bought it.”

“I may or may not have… spilled some coffee while taking it out of the box.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Danny!”

Danny winced and held up his hands. “To be fair, it was your coffee.”

“You grabbed the cup by the lid!” Tim groaned. “Who does that?”

“People with weak wrists and a strong sense of optimism,” Danny said, unapologetically. “Besides, it wasn’t all over it. I dried it off! It just… doesn’t work anymore.”

Tim pressed his hands to his face. “Do you sabotage all your friendships like this, or am I just lucky?”

“You’re special,” Danny grinned, crawling up beside Tim to peek at the screen. “Besides, I figured you’d like a reason to upgrade to the newer model. You’ve been eyeing it.”

Tim didn’t look up, but his ears went red. “Stop being weirdly charming when you break expensive things.”

“Noted.” Danny leaned a little closer, pointing at a fluctuating data spike on the screen. “Hey, I think we should move this coil’s delay up by two seconds and reroute the current through the stabilizer.”

Tim stared at the numbers for a second, brain catching up. “That… actually makes a lot of sense. If we time the ignition with the pressure shift, we might stabilize the energy flow.”

“Exactly.” Danny tapped his finger against the monitor, dangerously close to Tim’s hand. “That, and I want to see how many city blocks we don’t blow up this time.”

Tim chuckled despite himself. “Your standards are inspiring.”

“Thank you, I try.”

Their hands brushed as Tim reached for the keyboard, and Danny didn’t move away. Tim didn’t, either. His brain absolutely registered it, filed it under “important” and then immediately shoved it into the "deal with later" folder. Because right now?

They had calculations to break.

“You know,” Danny said after a moment, still close, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you actually enjoy this.”

“I enjoy not dying,” Tim replied, eyes fixed on the screen. “And maybe... maybe I like the work. A little.”

“Careful,” Danny said softly. “You’re dangerously close to admitting you like working with me.”

Tim’s lips twitched. “Well, don’t get used to it. You’re still on probation.”

“Oh no,” Danny deadpanned, “my heart. Shattered.”

Tim finally looked at him, and for a second the room felt a little warmer, a little more alive than glowing circuits could explain.

Then Danny clapped his hands. “Alright, let’s blow something up—figuratively.”

Tim shook his head and turned back to the simulation. “Not figuratively if you keep handling hardware like that.”

“No promises.”

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

Tim adjusted the lens of their latest project—something between a particle accelerator and a light show from hell. The prototype crackled faintly as Danny tightened a wire, a little too close to a dangerously overclocked capacitor.

“Okay, okay,” Danny said, voice humming with excitement, “we activate the core, observe the reaction, and then we turn it up to eleven, observe that reaction, and we do it at least three or four more times.”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think the GCPD is going to approve of that experiment. Not after the last fifty calls they got about us last week.”

“What are you, crazy ?” Danny grinned, brushing his knuckles against Tim’s arm. “I’m not asking for anyone’s approval but yours .”

Tim froze. Just for a split second. Then cleared his throat, very quickly. “Yeah. Of course not. I—I don’t know why I said that.”

Danny didn’t stop smiling. If anything, he leaned in just a little more. “You okay there, Tim?”

Tim blinked rapidly. “Yeah. Fine. Totally normal heart rate and everything.”

They returned to their work in a buzz of quiet tension and sizzling electricity. Tim tried very hard not to think about how warm Danny’s hands were when they’d brushed earlier, or how easily he could match his calculations in midair, or how his grin was actually distracting now that it was aimed directly at him.

God help him, it was kind of... infuriatingly hot.

“So,” Danny said casually, still rerouting power, “was that Batman earlier?”

Tim looked up too fast and hit his head on the desk lamp. “What?”

“Last week. You know. When the GCPD showed up and then suddenly Batman and that guy in blue showed up right after. I thought it was weird they didn’t say anything about your totally functional laser beam aimed at a fire hydrant.”

“Ah,” Tim said, rubbing his head. “That.”

Danny tilted his head. “They didn’t exactly... seem mad.”

“Yeah, well.” Tim coughed into his sleeve. “Turns out when you’re me, they let things slide.”

Danny gave him a long look. “What does that mean? Are you, like, paying the police or something?”

“Of course not, but Bruce is friends with Batman” Tim deflected, suddenly extremely interested in a smudge on the monitor.

Danny narrowed his eyes. “You know, your lab equipment did look suspiciously Bat-funded.”

Before Tim could dig a deeper hole, Danny leaned back with a dramatic sigh. “Well, regardless of how many billionaires are secretly in love with you, I personally think it’s super hot when someone breaks eight different safety codes in one build session.”

Tim, whose brain was already buffering, made a sound that might have been a laugh or a gasp. “Wha—wait—you think I’m hot when I break safety codes?”

Danny gave him an innocent look. “You’re not the only genius in the room, Timothy.”

Tim turned a bright shade of red and returned to his calculations with renewed urgency. “I’m going to rerun the power balance simulation now. For reasons. Science reasons.”

Danny chuckled and got up to grab two energy drinks from the mini-fridge. “Sure. For science .”

Earlier that week, Nightwing had leaned in close after the Bat-visit and whispered, “We’re proud of you, baby bird. Look at you, hanging out with your boyfriend. Who’s also probably on a watchlist, but hey, love is love.”

Tim still hadn’t recovered.

And Danny, who didn’t even know Tim was related to Batman, let alone occasionally was Batman-lite, just kept building weapons of possibly mass destruction with the kind of chaotic joy that had Tim mentally adding “incredible” to every trait list he ever made.

Dangerous? Maybe.

Unstable? Probably.

Hot?

Unfairly.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

The low hum of dormant machinery filled the room. Blueprints and wires were scattered around like confetti at a particularly nerdy parade, energy drink cans stacked like proud little monuments to bad decisions.

Tim was warm.

That was the first thing he noticed. His cheek was pressed against soft cotton, the steady thump-thump beneath it grounding. His legs were tangled with someone else's, a denim-clad thigh cushioning his knees, strong arms loosely caging him in, chest rising and falling slowly against his back.

Danny.

Oh no.

He shifted slightly, trying to remember at what point they’d sat down—just for five minutes, just to take a break—and then promptly passed out. Danny had ended up slumped against the wall, and Tim must have curled up in the space between like a laptop in sleep mode: closed but still running a thousand thoughts a minute.

He was still deciding if it was worth it to gently extricate himself when he heard the faint click of a phone camera.

His eyes snapped open.

Standing a few feet away, framed dramatically by the open door and bathed in the pale dawn light, was none other than Dick Grayson. Grinning. Grinning like the big brother menace he was.

“Oh my god, ” Dick whispered, not even trying to contain the delighted squeal in his throat. “ This is better than the laser death ray.”

Tim flushed instantly, heart leaping into his throat. “Dick—what—how—?!”

He tried to scramble away, but Danny grumbled in his sleep, letting out a sleepy, annoyed hum. Instead of releasing Tim, his arms tightened around him, dragging him a few inches closer and pressing a nose directly into Tim’s hair.

“Too early,” Danny mumbled. “Smells like coffee. Stay.”

Tim made a helpless noise in his throat, half-flail caught somewhere between mortified panic and very confusing comfort.

“Danny!” he hissed quietly, tapping at Danny’s forearm like a trapped cat. “Let go!”

Danny’s only reply was a contented sigh and a lazy nuzzle into the crown of Tim’s head.

Dick took another picture.

“Seriously?” Tim whisper-yelled.

“What? I’m capturing a moment, ” Dick whispered back, leaning in to show Tim the screen. “Look at this lighting. You’re practically glowing. Couple aesthetic. You’re welcome.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you love me.” Dick winked. “And I love that you found a boyfriend who builds weapons of mass destruction as love language.”

“He’s not—he’s—Danny doesn’t even know I’m—”

“A vigilante? Yeah, I gathered,” Dick said, and then lowered his voice with mock drama. “But he knows you’re soft for him. Look at you.”

Tim gave up and slumped against Danny’s chest again with a deep, defeated groan.

Danny sighed in his sleep, arms giving Tim another absent squeeze.

Dick snapped one last photo. “This one’s going on the Batcave fridge.”

“You’re the worst. ”

“I’m the best big brother you’ve got. Now shh—some of us are enjoying the domestic vibes.”

Tim buried his face deeper into Danny’s hoodie, cheeks flaming, and tried very hard not to think about how nice it felt to be held like this.

Or how maybe... just maybe... he didn’t mind being caught.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

The lab was somehow colder than Tim remembered it being before break—chilled tile floors and humming machines that hadn't warmed up yet for the semester. Still, it was familiar. Their corner of chaos in an otherwise sterile academic building.

Danny dropped his bag onto their usual bench with a loud thud , cracking his knuckles as he eyed the dormant device they’d left mid-assembly in December. “Home sweet extremely-flammable home.”

Tim stepped in behind him, arms full of components, a thermos of tea tucked under his chin. “Please don’t say that so close to open circuitry.”

“I’m just saying, if something doesn’t explode at least once, are we even innovating?”

Tim gave him a withering look over his glasses as he dumped the parts on the table. “We’re already on a university watchlist, Danny. I’m not getting on an FBI one.”

Danny grinned and plopped down beside him. “Yet.”

They worked in sync, like they'd never taken a break. Notes and tools exchanged with no words, calculations muttered under their breaths that the other picked up and finished without thinking. And while there was still the usual smirks and eyebrow lifts, the flirting had settled into a rhythm—less frantic, more comfortable . Like exhaling.

Tim paused as he finally slid the processor into the core module. The prototype flickered to life, a soft hum pulsing from its center as lights traveled through the coil like neon veins.

“Wow,” Tim breathed.

“I know,” Danny replied, matching the awe in his voice.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the glow, like they’d just cracked open a star.

“If NASA could see this—”

“The NASA is not going to see this,” Danny cut in smoothly, nudging Tim with his elbow. “Unless they plan on crawling through three layers of 'totally-not-explosive' grant paperwork and three semesters of unpaid student labor.”

Tim snorted, finally allowing the proud little smile that tugged at the corners of his lips. “They'd never survive our documentation chaos.”

“Exactly. It’s too powerful. Too dangerous. Too full of last-minute changes scribbled in my handwriting and equations only you can decipher.”

Tim leaned slightly closer, bumping Danny’s shoulder with his own. “That’s because you keep inventing new variables.”

“Hey,” Danny said, mock-offended. “That’s called creativity. Science needs drama.”

Tim shook his head, fighting down the flutter in his chest as he turned back to the console. “Well, let’s make some drama, then.”

Danny grinned. “I thought you'd never say it like that.”

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

Tim’s living room didn’t look like a living room anymore. Blueprints blanketed the walls, post-its crowded every surface, wires and components littered the floor like high-tech confetti. The half-finished invention hummed softly in the center of it all like some forbidden heart.

Tim stood next to it, wide-eyed, vibrating slightly.

Danny, sitting cross-legged on the couch with a soldering pen in one hand and a piece of toast in the other, squinted at him. “Tim, are you okay? You are… shaking a bit.”

Tim blinked—twice, rapidly. “I ordered something called hyper espresso online and holy shit it’s strong. I only drank one cup and now I can see smells .”

Danny stared at him for a beat. “…Gimmy some.”

Tim wordlessly pointed to the kitchen counter where the offending mug still steamed next to the rest of the box, half of which had hazard labels that clearly weren’t ironic. Danny stood and made his way over, his eyes lighting up like a kid in a cursed candy store.

“Are we technically inventing or hallucinating the next phase of our project?” Tim asked from where he stood, very possibly floating.

“Why not both?” Danny said cheerfully, pouring himself a cup.

Within moments, they were hunched over the project again—Tim pacing and talking a mile a minute, while Danny scribbled designs with one hand and recalibrated a chip with the other.

Their bodies moved like synchronized chaos: one tossing out ideas, the other immediately catching the thread and weaving it into blueprints only they understood. Danny would throw a look at Tim over his shoulder, and Tim—despite the over-caffeinated static in his brain—would catch it, blush, and fire back with a teasing, “Eyes on the invention, Fenton.”

“I am ,” Danny would say with a smirk. “It just happens to come with a pretty lab assistant.”

“I'm the lead engineer !”

“Sure, sugarplum.”

Tim nearly dropped the coil he was holding. “Don’t call me that while we’re soldering volatile components!”

And yet, neither of them stopped working.

Because somewhere between the hazy thrill of invention and caffeine-induced madness, they’d found a rhythm.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

The lab smelled faintly of burnt metal, industrial-strength glue, and triumph. A light mist of chemical vapor floated in the air like victory confetti. Before them stood it —a gleaming, towering Frankenstein of chrome, wires, carbon alloy panels, and tubing.

Its general shape was… ambiguous. Somewhere between a car, a rocket, and a deep-sea vessel. It hummed gently, like a predator stretching in its sleep.

Tim stared up at it, hands on his hips, half in awe, half in disbelief. “Danny,” he breathed, “this… this wasn’t the original project.”

“It was going to help first responders,” Danny replied, fiddling with the giant red knob on the side of the chassis.

“It still can,” Tim defended weakly. “If the first responder needs to drive into space. Or through the Mariana Trench. At Mach 7.”

Danny grinned, running a hand through his hair, a streak of grease across his cheek. “What do you think? Should we go for it?”

Tim glanced at the nuclear core indicator slowly shifting into the green zone. The entire building rumbled with anticipation. Or instability.

“…Yeah.”

Danny hesitated, hand over the ignition control. “Tim, I don’t think the university is going to like us turning this on.”

Tim met his eyes and grinned with caffeinated recklessness.

“Danny? The university is not here .”

Danny beamed. “God, I knew you were the fun one.”

With a single turn of his wrist, the control clicked. The lights in the room dimmed. Somewhere across campus, a power grid let out a defeated wheeze.

The machine roared to life with a deep-throated vrrmmmm , its panels shifting like armor plates locking in. Tim and Danny stood shoulder to shoulder in the flickering glow of the control panels, watching the thing breathe.

“Tim,” Danny said, eyes wide. “I think we built a Transformer.”

Tim, equally wide-eyed: “I think we built God.”

They both started laughing uncontrollably, the kind of laughter that came from being too tired, too proud, and too far past the line of reasonable decisions to care.

“You’re driving it first,” Tim added, still giggling.

“Only if you ride shotgun.”

“Deal.”

Chapter Text

“Are you serious, B? This is highly inappropriate. You’re running surveillance on Tim and his boyfriend?”

Bruce, unflinching as always, merely turned the monitor slightly in Dick’s direction. “Did you know that Fenton got Tim Hawaiian pizza?”

Dick blinked. “But Tim hates Hawaiian.”

Bruce nodded, grim. “But he ate it. Without complaint.”

Dick’s mouth dropped open a little, like someone had just revealed a critical plot twist in a soap opera. “No.”

Bruce tapped the screen with the subtlety of a nuclear warhead. “Watch.”

Dick had already pulled out his phone, fingers flying as he accessed the live transcription from the surveillance feed he and Oracle technically weren’t supposed to have installed in Fenton’s lab. But honestly, if Bruce was allowed to spy, they might as well have fun with it.

The grainy video stream loaded, showing the chaos of the lab: metal parts scattered everywhere, handwritten equations taped on the walls, and a very large machine that looked suspiciously like a Transformer built by caffeinated gremlins.

And there they were: Tim, hunched over a circuit board, soldering something that probably violated seventeen federal safety regulations. Danny stood beside him, holding out a Red Bull with a straw like it was a chalice of ambrosia. Tim sipped from it without even looking up.

“Oh my gosh,” Dick whispered, melting. “They’re so cute.”

Bruce remained stone-faced, arms crossed, but his gaze softened slightly.

“Also,” he added after a pause, “how exactly does a fourth-semester college student get a private lab that size, within walking distance of every class he shares with Tim?”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me—was it coincidentally funded by a donation from a shell company that just so happens to trace back to Wayne Enterprises?”

Bruce didn’t answer.

“Unbelievable,” Dick muttered, though he was smiling. “You’re matchmaking via academic grant money.”

“They need time together.” Bruce replied, completely serious. “Also, Fenton is likely to blow something up eventually. It’s better if he’s doing that under Tim’s supervision.”

Dick glanced back down at the screen just as Danny leaned over and ruffled Tim’s hair, only to get an elbow to the ribs and a bright red Tim in response. The machine behind them sparked ominously.

“Oh no,” Dick muttered. “They’re in love and armed.”

Bruce only sighed. “Just as long as they are not pointing at each other.”

“Too late.”

A year and a half ago.

“Mr. Fenton, please explain to me again,” Bruce said, voice clipped with patience that was rapidly thinning, “why are you here?”

Across the desk sat a teenager who looked like he hadn’t slept in three days but still somehow radiated the confident energy of someone about to ruin a man’s whole career. Daniel Fenton. College freshman. Applied for a WayneTech grant under Electric and Mechanical Engineering with a proposal for a state-of-the-art air filtration system capable of detecting and eliminating radioactive particles from the atmosphere.

Bruce had already approved the project. Hell, he’d been impressed. Then the boy showed up in person.

Danny leaned forward, eyes sharp and smile dangerous.

“My godfather,” he said slowly, “who owns VladCo—hates Wayne Enterprises. He’s obsessed with surpassing you at this year’s tech conference.” He smiled wider. “So I took it upon myself to make sure you’re winning, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce blinked. Slowly.

Danny continued, leaning his elbows on the desk, practically vibrating with petty vengeance. “I want him to know I helped bring about his doom. I want to be the reason his empire falls apart in front of him. Maybe some tears, too. Just a few. Enough to make him cry in his evil wine cellar or whatever.”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose with a tired sigh that could only be described as father-shaped.

This—this exact brand of youthful chaos was unfortunately familiar. It was the same energy Jason had when he’d declared war on a Gotham drug lord because the man had tried to steal someone’s library card. The same tone Damian used when plotting how to “accidentally” expose a corrupt teacher to Interpol. The same deeply personal vendetta wrapped in engineering genius that Tim had once weaponized to crash a tech bros’ crypto server for fun.

Bruce knew this energy.

He also knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop it.

“What are your motivations?” Bruce asked, already bracing for whatever came next.

Danny grinned. “Spite.”

Bruce gave a long exhale. “Of course.”

This had all come after the proper, polite interview, of course—where Danny had detailed his scientific background, referenced his summer internship at STAR Labs, and disclosed his unfortunate familial tie to Vlad Masters, CEO of VladCo.

Bruce had already decided to approve the project. But now? Now he was going to make sure Danny didn’t accidentally fall into a vat of chemicals and become the next Riddler.

The kid was officially flagged under the “Possible Future Rogues” watchlist.

It was a shame Danny wasn’t an orphan—Bruce would’ve adopted him on the spot. Still, perhaps a long game could be played. He had pulled a few strings to get Steph and Cass together, after all. Maybe Duke? Though Danny might be a few years too old. Dick? No, too old for him. Jason might already be dating someone...

Maybe Tim?

Tim could match his energy. They could be mad scientists together. Contained villains. Equal parts caffeine and catastrophe.

Yes. That might work.

🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇

Danny strolled down the Gotham sidewalk, humming a tune only he could hear, a rustling bag of snacks swinging cheerfully from one hand. The streetlights flickered above him—Gotham ambiance, he assumed, not supernatural. Probably.

He was on his way to Tim’s apartment. Tim had texted earlier about watching that new horror movie, Children of the Cementery or something—the one where ghost kids haunted grave robbers. Romantic? Not technically. But potentially romantic? Definitely.

Danny had plans .

He wasn’t going to say it was a date. Not out loud. But he was wearing his cleanest shirt, which had only minor burns near the hem—nothing visible unless someone stared (and if Tim stared that long, Danny would take it as a win). His hair was combed. Mostly. He even brushed off the ecto-smudge from his sneakers.

He was, by Amity standards, glistening .

Which is why it was deeply rude when three guys in ski masks came out of nowhere, shoved something cold and metallic into his ribs, and yelled:

“There’s the Wayne brat!”

Danny blinked. “Wait, what?”

A bag was shoved over his head. He dropped the chips. Somewhere in the confusion, he heard, “Grab him, he’s one of Wayne’s kids!”

“No I’m not!” he tried to argue, but someone jabbed him in the ribs and yelled, “Shut up, rich boy!”

Danny squawked as he was manhandled into the back of a van. Metal walls, duct tape, a suspicious smell like sadness and expired Axe body spray—it was a budget kidnapping, which honestly? Insulting.

He sat there, arms pinned between two beefy goons, the bag still over his head, doing the mental math of how many witnesses were around versus how badly he wanted to phase through the floor and disappear.

Too many people.

And he’d worked so hard on this shirt.

This was so embarrassing.

He sighed loudly. “Can I at least get the chips back?”

One of the goons growled. Danny slumped further in protest.

Worst part? Tim was probably going to think he bailed on the not-date. The horror. Literally. Tim was going to have to watch haunted children alone .

Now that was criminal.

After a pitiful car ride and an even more pitiful villain monologue, Danny was unceremoniously dumped onto a dusty concrete floor, his shoulder bag tossed somewhere behind him. The goons—because of course they took him to a warehouse , Gotham was nothing if not committed to clichés—grabbed him by the arms and tied him to a chair with enough rope to secure a jetliner.

He stared at them, unimpressed. “Seriously? This much rope? Are you planning to kidnap a kraken after this?”

“Shut up,” grunted Goony McForehead Scar.

Danny groaned. “God, that’s original. Do you guys get lines from a Gotham henchmen handbook or something?”

“Gag him,” said one.

“I dare you,” Danny deadpanned. “You’ll regret it the moment I start humming Nickelback on repeat.”

They stared at him for a beat, clearly unsure if he was joking. He wasn’t.

Eventually, one of them pulled out a phone and dialed a number on speaker, stepping aside with the swagger of someone who thought this was their big break.

“It’s ringing,” whispered the shortest one.

“Shut up, it’s ringing,” snapped the one doing the calling.

Danny tilted his head dramatically. “Can I please request a snack while you all cosplay low-tier Bond villains?”

“Shut. Up!”

The line clicked.

“This is Bruce Wayne,” came a calm, gravelly voice. “How did you get my personal phone number”

The man holding the phone immediately puffed up. “We got one of your kids.”

There was a pause.

“…Which one?” Bruce asked. Flatly. Suspiciously.

Danny snorted.

“The tall one.”

Another pause.

“…You’re going to need to be more specific.”

“The tall one ,” the goon repeated, now sounding unsure.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Wow. Great hostage profiling. Really narrowing it down there.”

The goons glared at him.

Then Bruce spoke again, slower this time. “Does he have any weapons?”

They all looked at Danny.

He grinned. “I mean, this face is a lethal weapon. Ask your girlfriend.”

“Shut up! ” one hissed, clearly rattled.

Another goon patted Danny down just to check, coming up empty. “Uh. No weapons.”

A quiet pause.

Then Bruce said evenly, “What’s the demand?”

Meanwhile, Danny thrashed dramatically in his chair. “Ugh!! I had a plan! A ten-step plan! It involved snacks, shared trauma, exactly two inches of couch-distance, and Tim realizing I have incredible taste in movies and men. You ruined it!”

One of the goons cautiously asked, “Wait, are you actually dating him?”

Danny stilled. “...Am I not? Oh my Ancients, what if this was just a friends thing? What if I misread all the coffee-sharing and lab flirting and the time he held my hand during a power surge? No—no, I refuse. I wore cologne for this.”

“You wore what ?”

“I tried , okay?!”

Back on the call, Bruce was absolutely silent.

“…Mr. Wayne?” one goon asked nervously.

Bruce finally spoke again. “Just… text me the address.”

And then he hung up.

Danny, still tied up, gave a long, dramatic sigh. “I can’t believe this. If I die here, tell Tim he’s allowed to keep the Red Bull I left in his fridge.”

“Shut up!”

Danny only grinned. “You’re just jealous you’re not part of the slow-burn romance arc.”

As the goons grumbled their way to the kitchen, Danny was left alone for all of thirty seconds after the call ended before he decided that silence was overrated.

“Well,” he drawled loudly, shifting dramatically against his ropes, “I give this kidnapping a three out of ten. Points for effort, but wow, execution? Tragic. Where’s the themed villain speech? The dramatic lighting? At least offer me a juice box or some ominous classical music.”

One of the goons—twitchy, poorly shaved, clearly regretting his life choices—snapped, “Can someone shut him up?”

“I told you,” Danny said smugly, “you gag me, and I go full Nickelback.”

“What's Nickelback?” asked one of the younger ones.

Danny turned to him slowly, like a cursed animatronic. “Oh, sweet summer child.”

Before anyone could move, he cleared his throat.

And then—horribly, proudly—he began to sing.

“ LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH— ”

“OH MY GOD GAG HIM!”

There was a scramble. A rag was shoved into his mouth with all the desperation of men trying to prevent a summoning ritual.

Danny just gave them all a Look as they stepped back in satisfaction.

Then he started humming.

Badly.

Aggressively.

Off-key.

And still, undeniably, Nickelback.

Muffled through the gag came the tune of “Far Away,” with all the emotional intensity of a karaoke performance at gunpoint.

One goon dropped the wrench he was holding.

Another clutched his head and groaned. “Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP. ”

The youngest one whimpered. “Is this… psychological warfare?”

“This is a war crime, ” the biggest goon muttered, eyes wide.

Danny only smiled around the gag. His eyes glowed just a little too green, and he switched songs. Something about “Rockstar” and “ I’ll have a quesadilla! ” had them scattering like rats from a flood.

One goon darted to the door. “I—I need air. I need— sanity! ”

Another was trying to call someone. “Yes, I’d like to report a hostage situation, yes I’m the hostage—HE’S SINGING AGAIN—”

And Danny just kept humming.

Because if they wouldn’t let him leave?

He’d make them wish they had.

By the time Red Robin crashed through the skylight, most of the goons were already on their knees— voluntarily. A few were hiding behind crates, one was sobbing into his sleeves, and another had written “HELP ME” on the floor in chalk, like some haunted house attraction.

The last one standing barely lifted his wrench before Red Robin slammed into him, knocking him clean into a pile of oil drums.

In under three minutes, the warehouse was cleared.

Danny blinked up from the chair, admiring the way Red Robin’s cape flared in the light, the way his mask sat perfectly on his stupidly symmetrical face, and the way his shoulders flexed while cutting through his restraints.

He let out a low whistle. “Wow. That was hot.”

Red Robin froze.

Danny coughed. “I mean—uh, thanks. For the save. Definitely not swooning. Definitely not into vigilantes. Nope. I already have my eye on someone. Much cuter. Way smarter. Doesn’t wear spandex.” He stood and rubbed his wrists, then muttered under his breath, “Still, damn…”

“You okay?” Red Robin asked, visibly trying to move past the flirtation.

Danny grinned and stretched his arms. “Physically? Sure. Emotionally? Jury’s out. But hey, Its all jokes and games until someone starts the underground karaoke”

“Underground karaoke?”

“Just an expression. Just that, when I moved to Gotham to go to school I did not expect the amount of maiming I’d get.” He glanced around at the chaos. “College pamphlets never warn you about this.”

Red Robin tilted his head. “Have you thought of switching campuses?”

Danny snorted. “I won’t let some assholes stop me from gaining knowledge. I know the Ancients are watching me as we speak. Nocturn especially. Probably hoping I’ll fail.” His expression shifted, eyes glowing faintly, smile stretching far too wide. “I feel him, you know. Lurking. Judging. Waiting.”

There was a long silence.

Red Robin took a careful step back.

“…Right,” he said slowly.

Then Danny shook off the moment like water, brightening instantly. “Anyway! Thanks for the save! I owe you one, Bird Boy.”

And before Red Robin could say a single word more, Danny turned on his heel and strolled out of the warehouse like he hadn’t just been kidnapped, tied up, and psychologically tortured a small gang of criminals.

After a couple of streets, his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Tim: Still good for movie night?

Danny stopped walking.

He stared at the message, then sighed and typed back.

Danny: Can’t make it. Something came up :’)

The response was almost immediate.

Tim: What happened? Are you okay??

Danny rolled his eyes fondly, thumbs flying.

Danny: Got kidnapped lol

His phone rang. He answered with a casual, “Yo.”

“Danny?!” Tim’s voice was sharp, worried. “Are you okay? Where are you? Who kidnapped you? Do I need to call someone? Do you need to call someone?!”

Danny winced at the volume. “I’m fiiine. I'm heading back to the dorms. No big deal.”

“No big deal?? You got kidnapped! You need to go to the police! ”

Danny snorted. “Police are narcs. I didn’t even get stabbed, Tim. Like, not even once! That’s a win in my book.”

There was a pause on the line, like Tim was trying to decide if he should be impressed or horrified.

“…Stay where you are,” Tim finally said. “I’m coming to get you. You’re staying at my place tonight. You need food. And probably to wear off the shock. And—Danny, you seriously should at least go to the police”

But before Danny could answer, Tim hung up.

Danny lowered the phone and looked down at it, blinking.

Then he smiled—genuine and warm, his heart doing a little flip.

“Maybe,” he muttered to himself as he resumed walking, “the not-date isn’t entirely ruined.”

And maybe—just maybe—Tim was cuter than any vigilante in Gotham.

Even if he did overreact a little.

Danny hummed happily, sending his location to Tim and sitting on the curb.

Best near-death evening of his week.

Chapter Text

“Finals week,” Danny muttered to no one in particular, crouched over his makeshift lab table — which, in a previous life, had probably been a kitchen counter. He poured a thick, suspiciously orange liquid into an old Batburger soda cup labeled “shampoo A.” Around him, various half-labeled containers filled with bubbling or glowing substances cluttered the surface. “Or my final week. Stay tuned next week to see if I pass my classes… or pass away. ”

His apartment was, generously, a fire hazard. Realistically? A condemned science experiment. A bare mattress on the floor, one wonky chair, and a single table covered in lab equipment he’d Frankensteined from salvage. His prized possession — a centrifuge built from a busted bike wheel — whirred softly in the corner.

Earlier that week, Danny had stumbled across a half-finished page of formulas in the university lab, tucked into Tim’s Marketing notebook. The notes weren’t in Tim’s usual handwriting — scribbled faster, messier, definitely during a sleep-deprived haze. But Danny, a gremlin gremlin at heart, had recognized the structure almost immediately.

Fear Toxin.

Scarecrow’s new blend. Stronger. Nastier. Probably not FDA approved. Also? Possibly perfect for helping a half-dead college student stay awake long enough to cram for quantum physics.

He'd taken a photo and immediately decided to recreate it. For science . For academics . For ghost ADHD enhancement .

Which was how Tim found him: half-sprawled across the table, holding a cut-down wine bottle filled with an ominous purple sludge under a heating lamp. He was high on fumes, adrenaline, and vibes.

Tim had picked the lock — silently, professionally. Danny hadn’t expected to need to give Tim a key, now he knew otherwise. Apparently when Danny hadn’t answered any of his texts for five hours, he got concerned. Predictably so, he stalked him into his apartment.

“What the fuck, Danny?!”

Danny didn’t even flinch. “ Tim, shhh, I am counting! ”

Tim froze in the doorway, wide-eyed, as Danny squinted through the haze and adjusted the dropper. He knew his hand trembled slightly, pupils dilated, a manic grin stretching on his face. He had drank some arsenic before starting this concoction after all, that always gave him such a sugar rush.

“What—what are you doing?! Is that shampoo? Are those Batburger cups? Is that my— is that the Fear Toxin recipe?! ”

Danny huffed. “ Was your Fear Toxin recipe. I improved it.”

“Improved—Danny, that is bioterrorism! ”

Danny set down the dropper with a triumphant flourish and declared, “It’s finals week, Timothy. If I fail thermodynamics, someone’s getting possessed.”

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “You are an actual gremlin.”

Danny winked. “ Your gremlin.”

“I’m calling Bruce.”

“Tell him I made shampoo venom. He’ll be proud.”

Tim groaned and walked toward him, already reaching for gloves. “We're neutralizing this right now. Then you're getting coffee and maybe an exorcism.”

Danny pouted. “But it tastes like purple.”

“ So does death. ”

“PFF, it’s fine,” Danny said, brushing dust off his pants as he stood. He wandered over to a teetering pile of unlabeled containers stacked in the corner like a shrine to OSHA violations. “I put all the ones I didn’t use over here. I mean, it's obvious what’s inside, right?”

“Danny, where is the lab safety?!” Tim hissed, following him with the frantic energy of someone fully expecting spontaneous combustion.

“Lab safety? Oh, yeah, totally. I’ve got my goggles…” Danny patted the top of his head. “Right here, on my forehead. Gloves? Uh…” He shoved a hand into his hoodie pocket and yanked out one (1) rubber glove. “Boom. Glove. And I’m in a jumpsuit!” He gestured to what was clearly a pair of overalls stained with… something. “Hood up and everything. Fully certified chaos gremlin chic.”

“We need ventilation. Where’s the vent? Or a fan? A window?! ”

Danny blinked. “Vent? Why would I need a vent?”

“ To breathe?! ”

“I am breathing. See? ” Danny took an exaggerated inhale that immediately turned into a cough. “Just a little spicy air in here.”

Tim stormed over to the soda cups stacked along the table and picked up one that was slowly melting. “What is this?! It’s glowing and eating through the plastic, Danny!”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Danny said brightly. “That one’s cetrimonium chloride. Shampoo base. You’d be amazed what you can isolate from household stuff. Shampoo, bleach, Tide Pods—”

“How do you know that!”

“It smelled like pepper, so I put him into the Dr Pepper container, you know, for labeling”

“That’s not a label, that’s just vibes!”

Danny gasped, scandalized. “I’ll have you know, my vibe-based identification system is 95% accurate! ”

“And the other five percent?”

Danny took a casual sip from another bottle.

Tim paled. “Wasn’t that one glowing?!”

Danny licked his lips. “Tastes like Sprite. Probably was Sprite.”

“You are going to die,” Tim said, voice tight, “and I’m going to have to explain to Bruce Wayne why one of his top interns got chemically un-alived recreating a terrorist's fear serum in a studio apartment with no windows.”

Danny shrugged. “Eh. He’ll understand. Finals week.”

Tim’s eyes caught on the centrifuge in the corner — a mess of duct tape, wires, spinning metal, and what Danny swore was the heating element from a waffle iron. He didn’t remember at the moment but was 43% sure they were from a waffle iron. Tim marched over with the wrath of God on his step.

“What is this abomination?!”

Danny beamed. “That’s my centrifuge!”

“This is a lawsuit waiting to happen!”

“Relax.” Danny waved him off, walking back to his wine bottle-beaker contraption. “It holds together just fine. I upgraded it with a new bike chain.”

Tim stared up at the ceiling, muttering something that might’ve been a prayer. Or a death wish. Hard to tell with the fumes.

“I don’t understand how you got this far in the build,” he said, rifling through the table for notes. Danny had left there the crumbled napkin and cereal cardboard where he had improved the formula. It had even his barely legible math scribbles and a cartoon ghost flipping the bird. “Where’s the rest of the blueprints?! The rest of the formula? I know I had at least two more pages of formulas in my notebook.”

Danny blinked at him like he was the weird one.

“ That’s it?! ” Tim waved the napkin like a white flag. “No revisions? No annotations?! Nothing?! ”

“Tim,” Danny said solemnly, setting the wine bottle down with reverent care, “science is a journey, not a map. ”

“There is one machine in this entire apartment.”

Danny grinned. “Yeah, but it does, like, three things. Four, if I kick it just right.”

Tim stared at him.

Danny smiled sweetly. Innocently. Like he hadn’t just implied his toaster-powered lab might explode if you looked at it wrong.

“…You’re not allowed to be alone anymore,” Tim muttered.

“You volunteering?” Danny said with a wink.

Tim groaned. “ Why are you like this?”

“I’m haunted by knowledge and ADHD. Also caffeine.”

Tim’s gaze swept over the apartment again, taking in the scorched wall outlet, the duct-taped death centrifuge, and finally landing on the mattress shoved in the corner.

Danny was proud of that one, it had taken half an hour to get that mattress. He was saving up for a frame. No blankets yet but since the apartment didn’t have windows it was fairly tempered. He was thinking of investing on more pillows as currently he had just a single pillow that looked like it had seen combat, and a lumpy mattress that had maybe, maybe escaped a junkyard.

Most of his money went to his machines, and to pay for his parents' bills since they had no idea how to make money, let alone pay taxes. And he was still paying for the fine they have gotten from the IRS for all the years they had not paid a cent. Between him and Jazz, they were hoping to finish paying that fine in three years tops.

Tim pointed. “Is that where you sleep?”

Danny followed his finger. “Yeah. Sometimes. I mean, I don’t sleep much anyway.”

Tim blinked slowly, the way someone does when they’re trying to hold in the scream building behind their eyes. “That’s—Danny, what?! ”

“Sleep is for the weak,” Danny said, already rummaging through a drawer for more unlabeled vials. “Besides, I get more done this way. Time is an illusion, etcetera, etcetera—”

“Nope.” Tim grabbed him by the back of the hoodie like a mom with a rowdy toddler. “ Nope. That’s it. You’re done.”

“Wait—wait, I was just about to test if it makes my blood scream or not—!”

“Exactly why we’re leaving.” Tim maneuvered him to the door with the grim efficiency of someone who’s had to extract people from weirder situations.

Which, rude, he was supposed to be Tim’s weirdest friend!

Danny flailed a little. “But my experiment—”

“Can explode without you. Think of it as scientific independence.”

Tim yanked the door shut behind them, then pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled furiously on a sticky note from Danny’s kitchen counter. In bold, block letters he wrote:

BIOHAZARD — DO NOT OPEN
(Seriously. Don’t. )

He stuck it to the center of the door, then added a doodle of a frowny face with X-ed out eyes for extra clarity.

Danny blinked at it. “That’s dramatic.”

“You were drinking glowing shampoo in a room with no windows. I’m underreacting. ”

“Fair.”

Tim looped an arm around his arm and started walking them toward the stairs. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to get food— real food, not whatever radioactive thing you’ve been sipping—then we’re going back to my place where you’re going to take a shower, sleep in a bed with actual sheets, and not die of chemical exposure or academic burnout. ”

Danny groaned. “Ugh, domesticity.”

“Cry about it in a pillow that isn’t stuffed with wires and regret.”

“Okay, that’s a little harsh,” Danny muttered, but he didn’t resist. Not when his stomach growled so loudly it echoed down the hall. “...Can I bring my fear juice?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Half the bottle?”

“ No. ”

Danny sighed, but leaned into Tim’s shoulder anyway. “Fine. But only because you’re cute when you’re bossy.”

Tim nearly tripped on the stairs.

The place Tim dragged him to was way too nice for a guy who regularly died when he hit his little toe on a table. It had actual lighting that didn’t buzz like dying flies, tables that weren’t repurposed from scrap metal, and waitstaff that didn’t look like they were moments from a nervous breakdown.

Danny, holding a menu he had no intention of reading, peeked over the top at Tim—who was still glaring at him like he could force vitamins into Danny through sheer willpower.

Adorable.

He liked flustering Tim. He liked the way his ears turned red whenever Danny leaned in too close. Or when he called him cute. Or when he winked, because come on, he was legally required to be a menace.

“So,” Danny drawled, resting his chin on his hand. “You come here often? Or just when your favorite guy nearly poisons himself with homemade nightmare juice?”

Tim sighed. “I come here when I want to avoid being implicated in chemical warfare.”

“Aw, babe, you’d never snitch on me. You like me too much.”

There it was—Tim stiffening slightly, eyes flicking to the side like they were trying to escape the heat suddenly radiating from his face.

Red. So red. Gotcha.

Danny smirked and kicked him lightly under the table. “You okay? You look a little… flustered.”

“I’m fine,” Tim said through gritted teeth. “Eat your fries.”

“I like it when you get all serious. Real commanding. ”

Tim nearly choked on his water.

Absolutely worth it.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

By the time they got back to his apartment, Danny was operating on 6% battery and pure sarcasm.

“I can’t believe you’re making me sleep,” he whined as Tim pushed open the door. “I could be doing science right now.”

“You were melting plastic in your living room.”

“ For a good cause. ”

“You labeled a bottle ‘Probably Not Acid’ and then drank from it.”

“I was, like, seventy percent sure it was Sprite.”

Tim tossed his keys on the counter, turned around—and caught Danny mid-yawn.

“Hah. Gotcha.”

Danny scowled. “Betrayal. Treachery. I’ve been played.”

Tim steered him gently but firmly to the bedroom. “Congratulations. You’re the tragic antihero of your own sleep-deprived arc. Now get in bed before I sedate you.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I know six pressure points that would prove otherwise.”

Danny grumbled all the way to the bed like a cat being forced into a carrier. He flopped dramatically onto the mattress like he’d just been shot. Tim rolled his eyes and bent to undo his boots.

“I could’ve done that,” Danny muttered.

“You would’ve passed out halfway through the first one.”

Which, as it turned out, was not far off.

By the time Tim looked up, Danny was already out cold—mouth slightly open, one arm flopped over his head like he’d just survived a fainting couch.

Tim sighed and grabbed a blanket from the closet.

He didn’t mean to be careful with the tucking-in part. It just kind of… happened. Danny looked peaceful, for once. Less like a half-feral chemistry gremlin and more like someone Tim wanted to keep safe.

Always had. Probably always would.

He pulled the blanket up to Danny’s shoulders and turned to leave—only to be yanked off balance by a sudden weight around his wrist.

“Wha—”

Danny, completely unconscious, had grabbed Tim’s sleeve in his sleep. In the next two seconds, he managed to roll over and drag Tim down beside him like a weighted blanket made of regret.

“Not again,” Tim whispered into the dark as he felt an arm wrap around his waist.

This was the fourth time this month.

He sighed and flopped onto his side as Danny buried his face in Tim’s shoulder with a content hum.

“I hate you,” Tim muttered.

Danny snored softly in response.

Danny was a cuddler, and only actually slept whenever he was clinging into Tim like he was his personal teddy bear. Tim had discovered that the first time he had managed to extract himself from Danny’s grip just to have him wake up in a startle not even ten seconds later. Danny had mentioned that he liked having a heartbeat near him otherwise the world felt too quiet. Tim didn’t know what made Danny so skittish that he had to cling to people like that, but for what he had gathered from his tales of the crazy experiments he did with his parents, he had an idea.

Tim knew what neglect looked like, and even if Danny adored his parents to bits Tim couldn’t cover the sun with a finger.

So he resigned himself to the next hours of Danny napping.

Tim woke up disoriented.

Not because of some sudden noise or movement—but because it was too quiet . And too warm . And something heavy was draped over his chest like a personalized, smugly-scented furnace.

He cracked one eye open and confirmed what he already suspected: he was still in bed. With Danny. Who had migrated in the night from casual cuddling to full octopus mode.

An arm was slung over his ribs. A leg hooked around his calf. Danny’s nose was squished against Tim’s neck like he was trying to merge with him via osmosis. One of his hands had found its way up under Tim’s shirt and was resting against his stomach like that was a completely normal place to store his friend’s icy fingers.

And Tim—Tim “Red Robin” Drake-Wayne—had missed patrol.

He blinked at the ceiling. Then sighed.

This is my life now.

Carefully, trying not to wake the sleeping rogue hazard fused to his torso, Tim reached around the bedside table in search of his phone. It buzzed the moment he picked it up. Battery: 20%.

He opened it.

And instantly regretted it.

Group Chat: 🦇🖤 Disappointment League 🦇🖤

[10:24 AM] Steph: U ALIVE OR DEAD NERD
[10:32 AM] Steph: srsly tim u missed check-in
[11:01 AM] Cass: (sent a knife emoji)
[11:02 AM] Jason: maybe he finally gave in and slept forever. RIP. pour one out
[11:10 AM] Dick: Guys. GUYS. What if he’s with Danny 😍
[12:00 AM] Steph: (image attached)

— Image: Tim curled up in bed with Danny plastered across his chest like a clingy, black-haired barnacle. Tim’s arm was tucked around him protectively, their faces entirely too close. —

[12:01 AM] Steph: guess who broke in and FOUND THE BODY ALIVE AND SNUGGLING??
[12:01 AM] Steph: do u want a framed copy or should i just send it to bruce now?
[12:01 AM] Jason: DEFINITELY send it to B
[12:02 AM] Dick: awww they’re cuddling 🥺 my little brother is growing up
[12:03 AM] Damian: Burn that image. Then yourself.
[12:04 AM] Cass: save to scrapbook 💖

[3:05 AM] Bruce: We will be discussing this later.

Tim closed the phone and dragged a hand down his face.

Danny, still asleep, nuzzled into him like a smug cat that knew exactly what it was doing.

“I should’ve stayed in bed forever,” Tim muttered.

Then again, he was in bed. With Danny. Who was warm, and kinda glowing in places, and didn’t seem to be letting go any time soon.

He could probably panic about the group chat after a few more minutes of this.

Maybe.

Probably.

Definitely.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there, overthinking every single line from the group chat, but he felt the shift immediately when Danny stirred.

A hum against his collarbone. A stretch. A lazy inhale.

“Morning,” Danny murmured, voice rough with sleep, muffled by Tim’s shirt. “You’re comfy. I’m stealing your mattress.”

“You’re on me , not the mattress,” Tim replied, dry. “Let go. I have to get up.”

“No.” Danny grinned, the word childish and defiant.

“Danny.”

“I said no.” And then—to Tim’s horror and exasperated, sinking amusement—Danny rolled with him. Literally rolled them across the bed, tugging Tim with him like a weighted blanket as he laughed. “You’re warm and grouchy. My favorite combo.”

“Danny, I swear— ”

“Admit it,” Danny sing-songed, grin widening, “you missed this. You missed me.”

“I saw you yesterday.”

“And yet!” Danny squeezed him in a dramatic hug. “Look how clingy I’ve become. Tragic.”

Tim rolled his eyes, bracing a hand against Danny’s chest and giving him a firm push—finally dislodging him with a dramatic flop and a thud onto the floor.

“Ow!” Danny whined through his laughter, lying flat on his back like a dead starfish. “Rude.”

“That’s what you get,” Tim said, trying not to smile. He sat up and ran a hand through his hair, pausing halfway as Danny peeked up at him over the edge of the bed.

“You know,” Danny said casually, still lying like roadkill, “I really enjoy your company.”

The words were so soft, so light—delivered with the same tone as one of his jokes—and yet something about them clanged inside Tim’s chest like a dropped wrench. He blinked.

“Oh.” Then, after a beat, way too flustered “Um. Breakfast? You want some?”

Danny propped himself up on his elbows, grinning. “Depends. Are you making it?”

Tim gave him a dry look. “I’m offering. Not promising it’ll be edible.”

“Sold,” Danny said, hopping up and ruffling his hair as he passed. “Worst case, I’ll just eat more of your peanut butter straight out of the jar like a gremlin.”

“You what? ”

“Too late,” Danny called from the hallway. “It’s a tradition now.”

Tim rubbed his face and groaned.

But even as he got up to follow, stomach fluttering in that way it only did when Danny was being Danny, he couldn’t help smiling.

Tim had made the mistake of leaving Danny alone in the kitchen for all of twenty seconds.

“Okay,” Danny said as Tim walked in, already perched on the counter and halfway through opening every cabinet like a raccoon with ADHD, “good news: I found cereal. Bad news: no milk. Better news: peanut butter exists.”

“Danny.”

Danny turned, a spoon already full of peanut butter in one hand and a triumphant smirk on his face. “You said breakfast. This is breakfast.”

Tim sighed and took the spoon away. “Sit. I’ll make eggs or something.”

“I am sitting. Counter’s just a seat with better altitude.”

Tim ignored that and started cracking eggs into a pan. He could feel Danny watching him, like a heat source just outside his peripheral vision.

“You’re very domestic like this,” Danny said after a minute, clearly delighted. “Is this a normal thing? Do you wake up and cook for all your emotionally unstable friends you cuddle with at night?”

Tim made a noise that was half scoff and half desperate attempt not to blush . “Only the ones who I break into their apartment and own glowing Tupperware full of joker chemicals.”

“Special treatment. I knew it.”

Tim didn’t dignify that with a response. He focused on the eggs. Focused very hard. Not on how Danny had rolled out of bed and was currently wearing one of Tim’s hoodies—probably borrowed without asking, probably on purpose because it was Tim’s favorite. Not on the way his legs swung lazily off the counter like he owned the place. Not on how his hair was still sticking up in every direction from sleep.

Just. The. Eggs.

“I could get used to this,” Danny said after a beat, voice a little softer. “Y’know, waking up safe. Having someone there.”

Tim faltered.

His chest did that tight ache thing again—the one Danny always seemed to trigger with an offhanded comment, like he didn’t realize the weight of what he was saying.

Danny looked up at him with those too-blue eyes, unbothered and open in a way that made Tim want to fold in on himself and also never look away.

Tim cleared his throat. “You... do wake up safe.”

“I know. I meant...” Danny shrugged, suddenly less intense. “You know. With you.”

Tim focused harder on the eggs. “Breakfast is almost ready.”

“Deflecting, I see.” Danny slid off the counter and stood beside him, entirely too close, peeking into the pan. “Wow, look at that. Functioning adult behavior. I’m proud.”

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Oh, absolutely ,” Danny said brightly. “You’re easy to fluster and weirdly good at eggs. It’s a compelling combo.”

Tim tried not to smile. He failed. “Sit down before you distract me into burning them.”

“Fine, fine.” Danny retreated back to the table, dramatically plopping into the seat and resting his chin on his arms. “So, are you gonna feed me now, or should I keep licking spoons of peanut butter and pretending it’s brunch?”

Tim slid the eggs onto a plate and set it in front of him, sitting down with a quiet laugh. “Eat before I kick you out.”

Danny dug in with a grin. “Make me.”

And honestly, Tim thought as he watched Danny eat with exaggerated delight, he wasn’t sure he could.

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

It wasn't his fault.

Really, it wasn’t.

He’d genuinely been trying to do the cure for cancer—or at least a strong caffeine alternative—on his walk back from campus to his apartment. The plan had been simple: grab some clothes (Tim had instituted a strict no sleeping in your science dungeon rule after the fear gas Incident™), then head over to Tim’s for the night. Nothing complicated.

He’d even been productive! He picked up a few chips, a snowcone, and a handful of very suspicious but very shiny chemicals from the university’s discard bin. The snowcone was a mistake—it kept freezing his tongue—but he was committed.

Anyway. The problem started when he decided to swing by the cemetery.

In his defense, he had reasons . Ectoplasmic ones. There was a leyline that ran through Gotham’s older cemetery plots, and it made the whole place buzz with low-level ambient ghost energy. Also, Davey—the nice ghost who haunted Section C and only spoke in rhyming puns—was great company. Danny liked to check in on him.

What he didn’t expect was to trip over a poorly placed grave marker and go flying, snacks and chemicals launched into the air like a technicolor fountain.

“Fiddlesticks ! ”

The offending bag of radioactive-blue chips arced through the air and hit the ground with a suspiciously cheerful plop . For five seconds, everything was fine. No ghosts screamed. No alarms blared. The world remained mercifully undead.

Then the earth rumbled under his feet.

Danny blinked.

“…That’s not ideal.”

The grave beside him cracked open like a rotten egg. A hand—gray, desiccated, and way too squelchy —broke through the soil.

And then another.

And then five more .

Danny took one horrified step back and watched in growing horror as what could only be described as Night of the Living Brainless Corpses unfolded in real time.

“Okay!” he clapped, yelling to the suddenly very active graveyard, “In the name of the Ghost Zone and the Realms Beyond and the King who May or May Not Be on Academic Probation— go back to bed! ”

The zombies did not go back to bed.

They groaned. They lurched. One of them had a traffic cone stuck on its leg. Danny didn’t want to know how.

“Alright. Cool. That’s fine. No big deal.” He was already backing up. “I didn’t want my snacks anyway. Or my experimental chemicals. Or my bag —hey, rude!”

A particularly aggressive corpse had snatched his messenger bag and was dragging it through the dirt like a prize. Danny lunged, missed, and immediately rerouted his life priorities toward survival .

He bolted for the nearest mausoleum.

The climb up wasn’t elegant. His snowcone died a noble death, launched into the air as he scrambled up the ivy-covered side and collapsed on top of the stone roof.

“Great,” he muttered, peering down at the growing horde below. “Fantastic. Stuck on a haunted tomb in the middle of a zombie flash mob. Just your average Tuesday.”

He peeked at his now zombie-stolen bag. Chemicals? Gone. Chips? Tragically crushed. Only one glowstick had survived, flickering weakly in the dirt like a dying firefly.

Danny sighed.

“I swear,” he said aloud to no one, “if I get eaten before Tim finds out I passed finals, I’m gonna be so mad.”

Danny lay flat on the cold stone roof of the mausoleum, staring at the cloudy Gotham sky above him. Somewhere below, a zombie was gnawing on his chemistry notes, and another was trying to shove a pigeon into its eye socket like it was a monocle. The pigeon looked personally offended .

He sighed.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself, “I could... technically end this.”

He could . If he went full ghost, summoned the crown, called the Realm to order, he could probably send these meat-sacks back to the dirt where they belonged. Just bam , eldritch horror mode, glowing eyes, voice that made grown men cry—undead party canceled.

Except...

That would be a lot of ghost king energy in one place. Gotham was already a swirling cesspit of bad vibes and supernatural drama. The last thing he wanted was to become a blip on the Justice League’s radar because he lit up the necro-o-meter like a Christmas tree.

What if Constantine showed up?

What if the Zone noticed?

What if his bag of chips was somehow the key to necromantic resurrection and he’d just triggered a mini-apocalypse with his bad snacking habits?

He sat up, stared down at the zombie gnawing on a spark plug like it was beef jerky, and muttered, “Screw it. I’m going ghost.”

He stood, arms raised, bracing for transformation—and—

Nothing.

No chill. No flash. No transformation sequence.

He tried again.

And again.

And—

“…You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said aloud, half-horrified, half-offended. “I can’t die ?”

That shouldn’t have been a surprise, and yet it still hit like a brick. Whatever necromantic trash magic had jumpstarted these corpse-muppets must’ve anchored the local death energy. He was stuck. As human . In a zombie outbreak.

“Cool, cool cool cool cool cool,” he said, pacing on the roof. “Change of plans. Call backup. No shame. I’m not dying with Cheeto dust under my fingernails.”

He pulled out his phone. Two bars of signal. 50% battery. Enough to text Tim.

Me:

hey so i might be a bit late coming back
unrelated question
do you still have that batman hotline thingy?
like direct line to the man himself?

He stared at the message for a beat.

Me:

i may or may not have accidentally resurrected the dead lol

Three dots appeared. Then disappeared. Then came back with a vengeance.

❤️Handler❤️:

WHAT.
DANNY.
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN RESURRECTED THE DEAD.
HOW.
WHERE.
HOW MANY.
DO THEY HAVE WEAPONS.
ARE YOU INJURED.
ARE YOU STILL AT THE CEMETERY.
I’M CALLING YOU RIGHT NOW ANSWER YOUR PHONE

Danny stared at the incoming call.

Then silenced it and texted back.

Me:

can’t talk rn
on a roof
no weapons but one has a traffic cone
might have eaten my notes
please don’t tell bruce yet
maybe wait like. 10 mins. 15 if you love me

The call came again .

Danny groaned and flopped back onto the roof.

"God, I'm going to owe him breakfast for a month."

The cemetery lit up like a rave—if raves featured growling corpses and capes descending from the sky like goth bats in a community theatre production.

Danny squinted into the darkness just in time to see Batman land with a dramatic thud, flanked by two more color-coded vigilantes and a fourth dropping in with a flourish that screamed “look at me.” Red and black, blue and black, red and guns. All matching aesthetics. It was like a depressing Power Rangers reboot.

Danny sat cross-legged on the mausoleum roof, arms crossed, watching as Red Hood kicked a zombie in half and muttered something that was probably a curse. Nightwing was flipping through the air like this was a Cirque du Soleil audition, and Batman had already started tossing batarangs like they were candy on Halloween.

And right in the middle of the mess, Red Robin beelined for him.

"Are you okay?" Red Robin asked, voice crisp and concerned.

Danny blinked up at him. “Define okay. Physically? Sure. Emotionally? Rude of you to ask.”

Red Robin crouched beside him, visibly scanning for injuries, and Danny huffed.

“Also,” he added with a glare, “I said Batman . Not the entire furry brigade .”

RR froze. “...Furry—?”

“Seriously, how did you all arrive in under ten minutes? Were you waiting outside the cemetery for drama to happen?” He gestured vaguely at the chaos below. “Like, was this scheduled ? Do y’all do this often?”

"You texted Tim about a necromantic outbreak," RR snapped. "You think he wouldn't call backup?"

Danny grumbled. “Batman would’ve been enough.”

Red Robin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Danny.”

Danny stood up, brushing dirt off his pants and gesturing to the weird glowing mist swirling under the zombie's feet. “Okay, listen. I can fix this. I just need a few things.”

Red Robin stared at him like he was about to throw him over his shoulder and forcibly remove him from the crime scene. “You're joking.”

“Nope. I'm very serious right now,” Danny said cheerfully. “I need some cardboard, the mold from that birch tree over there, maybe some limestone—there’s a cracked gravestone that should do—and my water bottle , which is currently being used as a soccer ball by the undead down there.”

RR’s jaw tensed under the mask. “You want me to get you supplies while you... what? Brew up a potion on a gravestone like some cryptid chemist?”

Danny arched a brow. “Yes. Because I’m already a cryptid chemist. You should see my apartment.”

"You're not a vigilante," Red Robin argued. "Let the professionals handle it."

Danny crossed his arms, annoyed. “ Shove it, Birdman. I started this, I’m gonna finish it. Fast. Because if I’m not back soon, Tim’s gonna kill me.”

Red Robin made a strangled noise.

Danny ignored it and added, “Seriously, he already made me promise to sleep and not skip meals and I’m pretty sure if I bring home zombie guts , I’m gonna get grounded.”

“…You do realize he’s not your—”

“He is now , okay?” Danny snapped. “Just grab the mold. You’ll know it when you smell it.”

Red Robin groaned audibly but leapt off the mausoleum with practiced ease.

Danny smiled to himself, watching him go.

“Man,” he muttered, “Tim really is going to kill me.”

It wasn’t his best idea.

No, scratch that. It was actually one of his worst ideas. Somewhere between drinking fear gas and letting Tucker mix espresso with ghost energy drink. But desperate times, desperate zombies, yada yada.

Danny was crouched behind the mausoleum now, chemicals and fungus balanced precariously on a slab of headstone like it was a back-alley lab table. Red Robin had actually followed instructions for once—muttering the entire time, but still—dropping the moldy bark, cardboard scraps, and the zombie-kicked water bottle in a heap next to him before diving back into battle.

Danny pulled out his phone, glanced at the flood of unread messages from Tim, and winced. “He’s gonna murder me. I’m going to be so grounded. No more couch privileges. He’ll revoke cuddle rights.”

A zombie groaned nearby, and Danny flinched, muttering, “Okay okay okay—shut up, I’m working!”

He dropped the water bottle, cracked it open, mixed in the mold, scraped powder off the limestone, and then… hesitated.

His thumb hovered over the screen of his phone.

“…Sorry, old pal.”

With a dramatic sigh, he pried the back panel off and bit into the battery casing, immediately spitting it out and hissing through his teeth.

“Tastes like bad life choices,” he muttered, eyes watering, but he worked fast—tearing out the lithium, the copper wiring, the micro capacitors. He had to make this now , before someone got hurt. Before Tim decided Danny wasn’t worth the mess anymore. Before—

Boom.

Red Hood blasted a zombie’s kneecaps off five feet away and cursed like it was a sport. Danny poked his head up from his makeshift lab.

“Hey, red helmet guy!” he yelled.

Red Hood paused, narrowed his eyes through the visor.

“You should probably run if you want to keep undeadness. I'm not joking. You reek of zombie and this will put you underground. If you got a rebreather, turn it on now.”

Red Hood stared, then muttered something that was probably not family-friendly and vaulted onto a crypt next to Nightwing, who was already yelling something about “what the hell is he doing down there?!”

Danny swirled the mixture in his now battery-acid-laced water bottle, chucked in the last ingredient, shook it violently, and hoped the ghosts weren’t watching.

Then, with the kind of dramatic flair that would make Dorothea proud, he stood up on the headstone, reared back, and hurled the bottle into the horde of zombies like it was a molotov cocktail.

It hit the ground. Fizzed . Then exploded in a small burst of ectoplasmic smoke, green and misty and glowing at the edges.

Danny ducked. The shockwave of ghostly calm washed over the cemetery.

The zombies all froze.

Then, like the world’s creepiest flash mob, they turned, groaned in slow unison, and started walking back toward their graves with dazed, glassy eyes. Some of them even clasped hands like they were in some sort of messed up kumbaya circle , shuffling and swaying toward eternal slumber.

Nightwing’s jaw dropped.

Red Hood snorted.

Batman didn’t say a word, which somehow made it worse .

Danny stood up slowly, wiped a smear of goo off his cheek, and whispered, “Tim is never going to forgive me.”

Then louder, to the air “I saved your lives! You're welcome! Also, if someone dies of lithium poisoning, don’t blame me, blame yourself for staying too close, and maybe science.”

He stumbled off the headstone, legs shaking now that the adrenaline was wearing off. His hands trembled as he looked at his ruined phone, with his cracked screen and dissolved corner.

Dead to the world.

Figures.

“…Does someone have a working phone? I need to text my handler –I mean Tim– that I lived to tell the tale.”

Chapter Text

Most of the time when Tim attended a gala, he did so as a Wayne. But tonight, he was feeling petty—specifically, Bruce-directed petty—so he arrived as a Drake. To most, that distinction meant little. To Gotham’s elite, it was the difference between a bloodless socialite and a calculating predator in Valentino.

Timothy Jackson Drake , CEO of Wayne Enterprises, had a sharper edge than his Wayne counterpart. The Drakes were new-old money; they hadn’t been around long enough to adopt the Wayne tradition of relaxed luxury. No rumpled silk or effortless charm tonight. Tim stepped out of the car looking immaculate—designer suit straight off the runway, every line crisp, not a single hair out of place. Not even a whisper of a dark circle beneath his eyes betrayed his usual insomnia. If Gotham’s tabloids were keeping score—and of course, they were—he’d just secured his place as this season’s top-tier eligible bachelor.

His plus-one was Stephanie Brown, radiant as ever in a deep purple and gold dress that shimmered beneath the gala lights. She had been his ride-or-die since they were sixteen, and even now, dating Cass, she would murder him—capital M, no hesitation—if he ever dared bring someone else. Whether she stayed by his side all night or vanished to do her own thing, it didn’t matter. Tim treated her exactly as the occasion demanded: looping back to check in between rounds of networking, catching her for five songs on the dance floor at precisely the right moments, and making sure they exited the event together like any perfect social duo. Five dances. No more, no less. After that, she’d disappear like smoke in a back alley until it was time to leave.

There was a difference in how he carried himself depending on which name he used. As a Wayne, he was relaxed—aloof when needed, calculating when it mattered. But as a Drake? That calculation never left his eyes. He wore it like armor. Like his mother, he had presence: a subtle, poised confidence that suggested he knew all your secrets and wouldn’t tell a soul… unless it suited him. He’d inherited her poise, but the easy laugh that followed? That came from his father. It lulled people into thinking he was harmless.

Timothy Drake was a master of quiet manipulation. He didn’t force you to agree with him—he let you convince yourself. A conversation with him was a chess match you lost three moves ago, and you’d still shake his hand, smile, and thank him for it. He always got what he wanted in the long run. That wasn’t arrogance. It was a proven fact.

(It was also why he was the only one who could lie to Batman and actually get away with it.)

Moments like these reminded the rest of the family— the Waynes —that Tim had simply borrowed Bruce’s morality. It wasn’t innate. It wasn’t homegrown. His real moral compass had been forged in the world of boardrooms, legacy trusts, and six-figure private school scandals. It was what made Dick wary of him. It was what made Bruce quietly panic on rare nights when he let himself imagine Tim— really imagine Tim—turning rogue.

Because if Timothy Jackson Drake ever decided to stop playing nice?

There wouldn’t be a single soul in Gotham who could stop him.

These kinds of galas were always the Wayne family’s favorite—for one specific reason. Because when Tim attended as a Drake , he didn’t bother hiding what he was. Ruthless. Surgical. Polite. And devastating.

The difference wasn’t just in the name tag. It was in the way his smile never quite reached his eyes, in the clipped precision of his compliments, in how every seemingly innocent remark left someone’s social credibility bleeding out on the floor while Tim refilled his champagne. The Wayne kids had him tagged. Literally. He knew it. He’d caught the comms chatter once. They didn’t bother to stop him—just sat in the corner like gremlins with hors d’oeuvres, listening in with popcorn and smug little grins as he quietly dismantled CEOs and congressmen like it was a parlor game.

If you asked each of them, they could recite— verbatim —their favorite insult he’d ever delivered. Most were too subtle for the press to catch, but that didn’t stop journalists from trying. There were entire blogs dedicated to collecting “Drake Quotes,” as if every time Tim opened his mouth at a social event, it was a cultural moment. Which, okay, fine. It kind of was.

His favorite memory? That time a video leaked of him politely backhanding Lex Luthor into corporate freefall. The man had barely finished blinking when LexCorp’s stock dropped six points and Drake Industries— his company—spiked. The media called it “strategic PR.” Tim called it Tuesday.

When he entered the room, he was the predator. Everyone else just hadn’t realized it yet. Oh, he was still charming. Still generous. Still the boy who’d lend you a pen and hold the door open. But if you crossed him—if you disrespected him or, worse, someone he cared about? That same boy would hand you a glass of vintage champagne with one hand and take your career apart with the other.

It always caught people off guard, the transformation. His siblings never forgot it— couldn’t forget it. Because unlike the rest of them, Tim hadn’t learned this after joining the family. He’d been raised here. He’d survived here. The polite, feral precision wasn’t something Bruce had taught him. It was something Bruce had inherited when he took Tim in.

Bruce had forgotten that once. First gala post-adoption, he’d pulled Tim aside, ready to coach him through the evening—how to handle the media, which hands to shake, who to avoid. Tim had blinked at him, stone-faced, and politely reminded him he’d attended more of these things by age eleven than Bruce had hosted. The reminder had landed. Hard.

Dick had done something similar. Fresh off his own gala trauma, he’d approached with all the gentle, big-brother concern in the world, wanting to help Tim navigate the social shark tank. But before he could even open his mouth, Tim had vanished—already halfway across the ballroom, holding court like he’d never left it. Like he belonged there.

And maybe… he never had left. Not really.

Because the truth was, for all the masks Tim wore, for all the identities he rotated between, this was the oldest one. The original. The suit he’d been stitched into before he ever put on a domino mask.

The suit he wore when it was time to hunt.

Tim made his usual lap around the gala floor, his arm hooked loosely with Steph’s as they drifted from cluster to cluster. From the outside, it looked effortless—two young elites mingling with Gotham’s finest, charming smiles and glass clinks and laughter. But behind the pleasant façade, Tim’s voice was low, his words precise.

“Three city council members, all with campaign donations tracing back to Falcone. That’s new,” he murmured, eyes scanning the room. “And isn’t that the CFO of Cobblepot’s new energy front?”

Steph tilted her head, following his gaze with a lazy smile. “Sure is. Can’t believe he showed up with his wife and his mistress again. Think they’re besties now?”

Tim hummed. “There’s a PR disaster waiting to happen.”

“Better that than Brucie spilling champagne again”

They wove through the crowd like sharks through open water. Tim catalogued movements, microexpressions, drink choices. Every detail was a data point. And Steph, to her credit, kept up. She always did. But she was also annoyingly good at reading him .

“You’re on edge,” she said suddenly, elbowing him lightly as they passed the open bar. “What’s up, Timmy? Is the champagne not bubbly enough for your capitalist blood tonight?”

He rolled his eyes. “Funny.”

“I’m just saying…” She grinned, leaning in. “You’d be way more relaxed if you’d brought Danny.”

Tim nearly choked on his sip of wine.

“I—what?” he coughed. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Oh come on , you’re so tense I can practically see the crime board forming behind your eyes. You miss him.”

“Steph,” he hissed, glancing around to make sure no one overheard. “He would be eaten alive at a gala like this.”

She wiggled her eyebrows. “And you’d jump in to save him like some tuxedoed prince.”

He gave her a withering look. “You’re the worst.”

“And you’re deflecting.” She grinned triumphantly. “God, Tim, you’re so obvious. I can practically see your little bat-heart forming hearts around his name.”

“I do not —”

“You do . And it’s cute. And if you don’t text him after this gala, I’m doing it for you.”

“Please don’t.”

“No promises.”

Tim sighed and looked away, trying to focus back on the room. But now he was thinking about how Danny would have reacted to the gaudy chandelier, or the absurdity of tiny gold leaf hors d’oeuvres, or the look on his face when Lex Luthor inevitably tried to start a pissing contest. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

And, yeah. Maybe Tim did kind of want to see it.

Danny had left at the beginning of the week citing some family and business drama with his godfather. Something about going to beat the hell out his stupid face or about a crown and a ring. When Tim had tried to dig more into it Danny had deflected his curiosity by creating a joker venom antidote in the form of hard candy that Tim had to replicate to present to Bruce. When he realized what Danny had done it was too late and his friend –roommate? Best friend?- was gone.

Unfortunately for Tim, privacy at a Wayne-attended gala was a myth. And subtlety was dead the moment Dick Grayson appeared out of thin air like a smug tuxedo-clad poltergeist.

“ Danny , huh?” Dick drawled from behind them, a glass of champagne in hand and the grin of an older brother who’d just caught you writing your crush’s name in your math notebook.

Tim flinched. “Were you eavesdropping?”

Dick raised a brow. “This is Gotham high society, baby bird. If you don’t want people listening, don’t speak in public.”

Steph, gleeful traitor that she was, immediately beamed. “He misses him.”

“I do not,” Tim said, already regretting every life choice that had led to this moment.

“You’re glowing ,” Dick said, poking Tim’s cheek. “Like a teenage girl talking about her summer camp boyfriend. Is Danny your summer camp boyfriend?”

“He’s not my anything,” Tim muttered.

“Yet,” Steph sang under her breath.

Dick’s grin widened. “Oh, this is adorable. When are we officially meeting him? You know, outside from zombie outbreaks and that time he ‘accidentally’ found the cure for Mr Freeze wife’s sickness. Is he coming over for game night? Do we need to be on our best behavior? Wait, should I scare him a little? To be honest he scares me a little but I will give him the shovel talk if needed—”

“ No ,” Tim snapped. “No scaring. No interrogating. No background checks. And for the love of God, don’t say anything to Damian.”

“Too late,” came a flat voice from the left, where Damian had apparently materialized out of pure spite.

Tim groaned. “Why are all of you like this?”

Damian crossed his arms, expression neutral but eyes far too interested. “Are we truly to believe someone voluntarily tolerates you, Drake?”

Steph wheezed. “Oh my God—”

Dick clinked his glass against Tim’s. “To young love. May it survive us.”

Tim seriously considered drinking the entire flute in one gulp.

They were never letting this go.

Suddenly, Bruce’s voice crackled through the comms—too loud, too fake, and unmistakably in Brucie Wayne mode.

“ Mr. Masters! I didn’t know you would come to the gala! ”

That alone was enough to make Tim pause mid-step. But it was the calm, velvet-smooth reply that nearly gave him a stroke.

“ Mr. Wayne, a pleasure. I was in Gotham visiting my godson and decided to accept the invitation. I hope it wasn’t too short notice. ”

“Oh my God,” Dick breathed, one hand covering his mouth like a dramatic theatre aunt witnessing a soap opera twist. “Tim, look!”

Tim spun around so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash.

And there he was.

Danny.

Standing next to Vlad Masters , who was already oozing billionaire energy in a blood-red silk tie and predator smile. But no one in the room was looking at him .

No, they were all looking at Danny .

Danny, in a deep-black designer suit that fit obscenely well, jacket tailored to the millimeter, shirt collar open just enough to be distracting. His hair was styled back—barely—and he looked like he was absolutely bored out of his mind. But the look? The look was working overtime.

The way the soft lighting hit his cheekbones? Unholy.

The subtle shine on his lips? Unforgivable.

The slight frown that said someone please kill me so I can stop talking to these simpleton rich people ?

Deadly.

The collective thirst in the room was palpable . There was actual sighing.

Steph blinked twice. “I take it back. He wouldn’t be eaten alive. He’d be devoured. ”

“I hate everyone here,” Tim muttered.

Dick clutched Tim’s shoulder. “Oh, you’re so screwed. ”

Because Danny spotted them then. His eyes flicked up, locked with Tim’s across the room—and widened.

He gave a tiny wave.

Tim, an alleged genius, waved back like a malfunctioning animatronic.

“Daniel, say hello to Mr. Wayne” Master’s voice called for Danny’s attention back to the current conversation they were having with Bruce.

“Bruce, nice to see you outside of the office, when was the last time we saw each other, last monday?”

“What-”

“Hello Danny, is nice to see you well”

Steph wheezed beside him. “Oh no. He’s hot and he likes you back . You’re never recovering.”

Tim wished the floor would open and swallow him whole.

No such luck.

Tim made his way across the room, carefully navigating socialites, politicians, and the black hole of attention that now orbited around Danny Fenton . He stopped just shy of the little circle that had formed around them, slipping in like he belonged—which, of course, he did.

Danny noticed him instantly. His lips curved into a slow smirk, and for a moment Tim forgot how to walk like a normal person.

Before he could open his mouth, the older man beside Danny turned to him with all the ease of a practiced politician.

“I recognize you, you are Timothy Drake aren’t you? Vlad Masters, ” he said smoothly, extending a hand. “And this is my godson—and heir— Daniel Fenton. ”

Danny did not extend a hand.

He was too busy looking at Vlad like he was an ant smeared across his windshield.

Tim shook Vlad’s hand politely, even as something cold and instinctive curled in his gut. That look from Danny wasn’t annoyance or teenage disdain. That was loathing , carefully buried under social polish. And somehow, Vlad didn’t—or couldn’t—call him on it.

Danny’s eyes slid back to Tim, and something in his posture shifted.

Gone was the goofball who had caught popcorn in his mouth on Tim’s couch while wearing fuzzy socks and arguing over sci-fi plot holes. Gone was the man who had been playing Barbie girl with Tim while they created a sentient drone out of a walkie talkie and a polaroid. In his place stood someone razor-sharp and poised, with a scathing gaze that could rival any of Gotham’s old-blood debutantes.

Tim stared for a beat too long.

He didn’t understand how Danny got away with treating a man like Vlad Masters —multi-billionaire, industrial titan, known egomaniac—like a piece of gum stuck to his shoe. But Tim decided, very quickly, that he was going to follow Danny’s lead.

He turned just slightly away from Vlad, body angled like the man was now background noise. Danny noticed immediately, his lips twitching into a pleased little smirk. Vlad, on the other hand, visibly bristled.

Close by, Bruce caught Tim’s eye. The faint nod he gave him screamed well done . After all, Vlad Masters was a competitor in more than one industry. Seeing Tim subtly snub him like that was nothing short of satisfying.

Tim turned back to Danny. “You didn’t tell me you were coming tonight.”

Danny sighed and shot Vlad a look that could curdle wine. “I didn’t know until last minute. Vladdie here thought it’d be a fun surprise.”

Vlad’s jaw ticked.

Tim hummed thoughtfully. “Mm. Yes, spontaneous public appearances with people who make you want to jump start your villain career. Always a delight.”

Danny barked out a laugh, and just like that, there he was again—Tim’s Danny, peeking through the high society armor.

Tim smiled, stepping closer, just enough to be obvious. There were two ways to annoy Bruce, and since acting like a Drake had not worked tonight since Brucie was too busy scouting the party for something well… “Well, I can’t say I’m mad you showed up. You clean up incredibly well.”

Danny arched a brow. “Are you hitting on me?”

“Would it work if I was?”

“Depends,” Danny said, head tilted, smirk now full force. “Are you offering to rescue me from my godfather and whatever bored heiress is about to try to make me her next husband?”

Tim’s grin sharpened. “Only if you let me cut in on your next dance.”

“Only if you promise not to step on my toes.”

Behind them, Vlad looked like he was developing a twitch.

Bruce looked like he was trying very hard not to look smug.

Steph, somewhere nearby, was definitely recording.

And Tim?

Tim was planning the rest of his evening around how many dances he could get away with before Danny ghosted the party.

Tim had never been one to court scandal lightly—but if he was going to jump into one, he might as well do it the Drake way, go headfirst in designer shoes and with his hand tangled in Danny Fenton’s tie.

He reached up, fingers catching the silk just below Danny’s throat, and gave a slow, deliberate tug.

Danny’s eyes widened a fraction—just enough to catch—but the smirk that followed was wicked. Predatory. He leaned in without resistance, letting Tim draw him close like a man humoring the devil at his shoulder.

Tim didn’t say anything.

He just offered his hand.

Danny took it.

No hesitation.

A few gasps rippled through the crowd like distant wind chimes as they stepped onto the dance floor together. Tim had no interest in the gossip, only in the sharp line of Danny’s jaw, the warmth of his palm, and the fact that Danny was letting him lead—even though he was half a head taller and clearly could have reversed their roles without breaking a sweat.

Danny moved with him easily, like they’d done this before. Maybe they had, in some past life. Tim didn’t care. He just let himself fall into the rhythm, turning them smoothly among the swirling elite as chandeliers glittered overhead.

Danny leaned in just slightly, his voice low and amused near Tim’s ear. “So,” he said, “are we doing this because you want to see your family’s brains explode—or are you just trying to annoy Vladdie ?”

Tim huffed a laugh and turned them into a slow pivot. “Can’t it be both?”

Danny’s smile was all teeth. “Dangerous,” he said. “Might start rumors.”

Tim arched a brow, glancing up at him under his lashes. “Good. Rumors keep people guessing.”

“You are trouble,” Danny said fondly.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not,” Danny replied, hand tightening ever so slightly around Tim’s. “But you start a fire like this, don’t be surprised if you can’t put it out.”

Tim’s pulse stuttered at that—not fear, not even nerves, just the delicious thrill of walking a social tightrope with someone who could not only match him, but tip him off for the fun of it.

“Promise?” Tim said, voice light.

Danny leaned down, just enough that his lips brushed past the shell of Tim’s ear as they turned again. “ Absolutely. ”

Around them, the murmurs were rising. Eyes were following every twirl, every touch, every inch that shrunk between them.

Tim let them stare.

If they were going to talk, he was going to make it worth their while.

Tim noticed Dick cutting across the room the moment the song began to wind down—his older brother moving with purpose, eyes sharp despite the wine glass in his hand and the easy smile he was throwing at some senator.

Which meant Tim had maybe fifteen seconds before he was intercepted.

So, he smiled—sharp and knowing—then slid a hand up to Danny’s chest and tugged him in again by his tie. The murmurs around them surged like a wave crashing through crystal.

Danny’s brows flicked up in interest, but he followed without question as Tim leaned close enough to say, “We’re leaving the floor. Don’t look back.”

Tim didn’t wait for a reply.

He pivoted, still holding the tie loosely in hand, and guided Danny toward the tall French doors at the side of the ballroom like a dog on a leash. A few couples turned to stare. Someone dropped a canapé. Tim didn’t look back.

They slipped outside and let the heavy glass doors close behind them, the cool night air from the balcony wrapping around them like a balm. The buzz of conversation and string instruments was muffled now, replaced by the quiet hush of Gotham’s city lights blinking just beyond the railing.

For a long beat, neither of them spoke.

And then they both cracked.

Danny broke first, shoulders shaking as he barked out a surprised laugh, one hand covering his face. “Did you see the look on that guy’s face—when you pulled my tie like that—?”

Tim wheezed around his own laughter, bracing a hand on the balcony railing. “I thought that woman next to Lex was going to faint. Steph is never letting me live this down.”

“I thought Dick was going to short-circuit.”

“Give him a second. He probably still is.”

Danny leaned against the railing beside him, still chuckling, his breath puffing in the cold air. “So. That was a hell of a scene.”

Tim shot him a sideways look. “You really weren’t planning to come?”

Danny shrugged. “I wasn’t lying. Vlad only decided last second. He gets a certain way when he thinks he can make a ‘statement.’”

“And the statement was bringing you ?” Tim asked, eyebrows raised.

Danny grinned. “Apparently I’m his heir. You know—rich, charming, powerful, devastatingly handsome. All the usual.”

Tim scoffed and nudged him lightly with an elbow. “You looked like you wanted to die.”

“I did want to die,” Danny replied dryly. “Until you pulled the tie.”

That earned another laugh out of Tim, softer this time. “Well. I didn’t hear you complain.”

“Might have given me some revelations” Danny winked. “You flirt like a shark in bloodied waters.”

Tim smirked, resting both hands on the railing now. “What can I say? You bring out the best in me.”

“Clearly.”

They stood there a moment longer, the quiet laughter fading into something warm and steady between them. Gotham glittered below, all sharp edges and shadows, and inside, the gala kept turning without them.

But out here—Tim could breathe.

And judging by the way Danny bumped his shoulder against his, grinning like a devil—so could he.

Danny hummed—a low, thoughtful sound that sent a prickle down Tim’s spine. It was the same tone he used when staring at unstable tech, the kind that fizzed and sparked ominously before doing something catastrophic and unforgettable, like the time their deathray started to play ‘Never gonna give you up’.

Tim turned his head just in time to see the glint in Danny’s eye.

Then Danny's fingers hooked onto Tim's tie and gave it a sharp tug.

Tim gasped—an involuntary little sound—and staggered half a step forward, eyes wide. His balance went sideways, his brain melted from his ears, and before he could fully recover, Danny’s hand slid down to grip his wrist and guided—no, pinned —him gently back against the cool marble railing.

Trapped.

The city glittered behind Tim’s shoulder, but his focus narrowed to the ghost-smirk in front of him. Danny, all six-foot-something of smug villainous menace in a suit, leaned in just enough to loom without crowding. The grip on Tim’s wrist was light, but pointed—playful.

“You looked like you were having fun back there,” Danny said, voice velvet and smoke. “Didn’t know Gotham’s golden boy could be such a menace in the ballroom.”

Tim swallowed. His pulse did something unhelpful . “I wasn’t the one turning the socialites into drooling wrecks.”

“You pulled my tie twice.” Danny’s grin widened, eyes gleaming. “I think I’m allowed a little payback.”

Tim tried to rally, but he could feel the heat rising to his face. “So your idea of payback is public humiliation?”

“Please.” Danny rolled his eyes. “This is Gotham. They’ve seen worse. I could’ve started floating.”

Tim snorted, almost managing to feel normal for half a second.

Until Danny’s thumb brushed lightly across his pulse point.

“...You’re blushing,” Danny noted, clearly delighted.

“I am not —”

“You are. That’s adorable.”

“You’re impossible. ”

Danny leaned in closer, so close Tim could feel his breath ghost over his lips. “Then stop me.”

Tim stared at him for one beat too long.

Then muttered, “ Fuck it .”

He reached up, grabbed Danny’s tie again, and yanked him down into a kiss.

Danny made a surprised sound—a laugh more than anything—and then kissed back like he’d been waiting all night for permission. One hand slid to Tim’s waist, the other curling behind his neck, steadying them both as the distance disappeared.

The kiss wasn’t neat. It wasn’t practiced or delicate. It was heat and ridiculous tension snapping all at once—two people with too many sharp edges finally crashing into each other.

Tim’s hand fisted in that expensive silk tie like a lifeline.

Danny kissed like he wanted to devour .

When they finally broke apart, Tim was flushed, breathless, and wide-eyed. Danny looked far too smug.

“I told you,” Danny said, grinning. “You bring out the best in me.”

Tim panted. “You are so lucky I like you.”

“Yeah?” Danny bumped their foreheads together, eyes still closed. “Good. Because I’m about to become your problem in every headline tomorrow.”

Tim exhaled a shaky laugh. “You already were.”

They barely had a second to breathe.

Tim’s fingers slid into Danny’s hair, dragging him back down as their mouths met again. It was messier this time—less hesitation, more want. Tim let out a muffled noise, fingers curling tight in Danny’s hair as his other arm wrapped around his neck, pulling him in like he could fuse them together.

Danny responded by pressing in, crowding Tim back against the cold marble of the banister with enough force to make the railing dig into Tim’s back. He didn't care. His pulse thundered in his ears. One of Danny’s hands gripped his waist, the other anchoring to the banister beside him, effectively caging him in.

Tim’s mind buzzed. He was about to cause a real scandal. Gala scandal. Page six headline scandal. Bruce will absolutely get ten calls from the board scandal.

And all he could think was worth it.

Danny's teeth grazed his lower lip and Tim nearly melted on the spot.

Then—

“ Tt. Must you defile the balcony like a pair of hormonal pigeons?”

Tim flinched like he’d been caught doing a crime.

Which, to be fair, he kind of had.

Danny didn't even look ashamed. He just sighed and dropped his forehead to Tim’s shoulder in defeat as Tim groaned audibly and let his head thud back, looking at the roof.

“Hello, Damian,” Tim said with the resignation of a man facing his own public execution.

Damian stood in the open balcony doorway, arms crossed, face a mask of judgmental superiority that probably made lesser men cry.

“I was coming to warn you that Father is attempting to corner Masters for a marriage proposal,” he said dryly. “But clearly you’re otherwise occupied. ”

Danny lifted his head just enough to look at Damian and, infuriatingly, gave him a lazy grin. “I’ll have you know this is an important diplomatic engagement.”

Damian’s eye twitched. “You are a menace.”

Danny’s grin sharpened. “Thanks.”

Tim sighed again, letting his hands fall from Danny’s neck, though he didn’t step away. “Okay. Okay. We’re done. You’ve ruined the moment. Go do your little assassin glide somewhere else.”

Damian arched an eyebrow. “You’re welcome for saving you from further public disgrace.”

He turned on his heel with a huff, muttering about brothers with no sense of shame.

Danny watched him go, then turned back to Tim with a wicked look in his eyes.

“So…” he said, voice low and teasing. “Round three once he’s gone?”

Tim laughed, leaning into him again. “God, I hate how into you I am.”

“Too late,” Danny murmured, brushing a kiss just beneath Tim’s ear. “You already kissed the man.”

By the time they walked back into the ballroom, Tim was very aware that everyone had seen them disappear and everyone had noticed how long they’d been gone.

He was hanging off Danny’s arm, and Danny—smirking like a man who’d just committed arson and gotten away with it—had the audacity to look completely unbothered. Unhurried steps, perfect posture, suit immaculate, and eyes half-lidded like he wasn’t causing an entire room to double-take.

Tim resisted the urge to fix his slightly askew tie. He wanted them to notice. He just didn’t expect to enjoy the way Danny leaned into the theatrics so much.

Somewhere across the room, Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. Steph had very clearly lost a bet and was handing Cass twenty bucks. Dick was straight up giving them the thumbs up.

And then Vlad Masters swooped in.

“Daniel,” Vlad said sharply, with that fake smile that made it look like he wanted to bite someone. “There you are. I was wondering where you’d disappeared to.”

Danny barely slowed his steps. He didn’t even turn to face him fully. “Had to take a call,” he said blandly, eyes scanning the room like Vlad wasn’t even worth looking at. “My business partner needed clarification on the London project.”

Tim nearly snorted. That was definitely a lie.

Vlad’s smile twitched. “Ah, yes, your business partner. You know, I was thinking perhaps you should let me handle that end—”

“No thanks,” Danny said, finally looking at him with a grin that was all teeth and nothing close to friendly. “We’ve seen how well you handle things. I’ll take it from here.”

Tim watched Vlad’s eye twitch. He’d seen people flinch under Tim’s own brand of gala warfare, but this— this was art.

Vlad visibly tried to collect himself. “Daniel, perhaps we should speak privately—”

“Mm, busy.” Danny’s gaze was already drifting away, focused back on Tim with a softer expression that somehow made it all worse. “Besides, you like mingling. Go. Mingle.”

Tim, arm still looped through Danny’s, leaned into the touch just enough to make it obvious. “You heard the man, Masters.”

Vlad’s jaw clicked. “You—”

“Vlad,” Danny said flatly. Just that. Not loud, not angry. But his tone dropped into something dangerous.

Vlad backed off.

Actually backed off.

And Tim—Tim was living. This wasn’t his usual battlefield, but God, did he love watching Danny operate like he owned the place. He looked at home here in a way that made everyone else seem small.

As Vlad retreated, Danny exhaled slowly and muttered, “Cockroach in a tux. How is that still his face after all these years?”

Tim grinned. “That was brutal.”

Danny just shrugged, eyes twinkling. “I learned from the best.”

“Oh?” Tim raised an eyebrow. “Me?”

“Please,” Danny teased. “I was terrifying long before I met you.”

They walked further into the ballroom, all eyes following them, and Tim couldn’t help the wicked little smile curling at his lips. Let them talk. Let the whispers grow. Because right now? They looked untouchable.

And he’d never felt more like a power couple in his life.

As they drifted past a cluster of frozen socialites whispering behind crystal flutes, Tim leaned in, lowering his voice just enough to feel conspiratorial.

“So,” he murmured, “where did that come from?”

Danny tilted his head, amused. “That?”

“You know what I mean.” Tim gestured subtly toward where Vlad had slinked off to, tail thoroughly tucked. “The way you just... commanded the entire room. You’ve got everyone wrapped around your pinky.”

Danny shrugged one shoulder. “Been doing something like this since I was fourteen, you learn on the go.”

Tim blinked. “Wait, what ?”

Danny grinned. “Yeah. Once a quarter. The kind with violins and five forks and enough perfume in the air to knock you out cold. My teachers started dragging me to his circuit early in my career.”

“Your teachers?” Tim narrowed his eyes, studying him. “So it was because you’re his heir? Master’s heir?”

Danny’s grin faltered for a heartbeat. Not enough that anyone else would notice. But Tim did.

“Not quite because of that,” Danny said, voice going smooth in the way that meant he was deflecting . “I had... another reason to be there.”

Before Tim could press further, the air shifted.

Steph’s voice broke through the crowd like a battering ram. “ Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, did you just try to start an international incident with your tongue?”

Cass appeared right behind her, raising both eyebrows in delighted judgment as she handed Tim a bottle of water like he’d just come off a football field.

“Hydrate,” she said, entirely serious.

Tim groaned and dropped his head against Danny’s shoulder. “Please tell me they didn’t see—”

“Oh, no, we saw ,” Steph said. “We heard. Half the ballroom knew you were making out with Danny . ”

“Your face,” Cass added. “ Red. Like dress.”

“Leave me to perish,” Tim muttered.

“Nope.” Steph looked at Danny, eyes narrowing in faux suspicion. “And you, mystery date. Who gave you permission to be hot and ruin my ability to make fun of Tim without getting secondhand flustered?”

Danny, shameless as ever, gave her a wink. “The invitation clearly didn’t specify a dress code or a charm limit.”

Steph made a strangled noise. “Tim. Marry him. Right now. ”

“Working on it,” Tim muttered, not even joking.

Cass leaned in closer to Danny and whispered, “You made Bruce twitch.”

Danny’s smirk sharpened. “Did I?”

Cass gave him a solemn nod and patted him on the arm like he’d earned a medal.

Steph grabbed Tim’s hand. “Alright, come on, hot stuff. Time to do another lap and let people see you two again so the gossip circle keeps spinning.”

Tim groaned, but Danny was already letting her pull them along, still somehow looking regal and untouchable despite being wrangled by Steph’s chaotic orbit.

As they moved back into the spotlight, Tim couldn’t help glancing up at him again.

Not quite because of that.

The words lingered like smoke. And now Tim was dying to know what Danny had meant.

But for now? He had a job to do.

He adjusted his tie, smirked for the crowd, and let Danny take his hand again.

If they were going to start a scandal tonight, they might as well make it legendary .

By the time the gala ended, the ballroom looked like a warzone of champagne flutes and exhausted millionaires. Tim had ditched the Drake persona somewhere around the third time Danny made him laugh so hard he snorted into his wine. He hadn’t danced with anyone else. Hadn’t looked at anyone else.

Danny had left first, after Masters had practically begged for them to leave the party. And only after he had deposit Tim in Stephs awaiting arms like a true gentleman.

And now, well past midnight, Tim slipped through the front door of the penthouse like a guilty teenager. Steph had been a miracle, running interference with Bruce, claiming Tim had a “migraine” and couldn’t possibly deal with more socializing, not when his “hot mystery boyfriend” had definitely licked his neck on the balcony.

(He’d have words with her later. Possibly involving duct tape and a very long lecture.)

He toe’d off his shoes in the dark and padded quietly toward the living room—only to pause, mid-step, and blink.

Danny was hanging upside down from the couch, head nearly grazing the floor, legs hooked over the backrest, dressed in sweats and a t-shirt two sizes too big. He had a screwdriver in his teeth and one hand deep inside the belly of a very illegal-looking black box.

With a small click , something detached, and Danny pulled out what looked suspiciously like a stealth security cam.

“Gotcha,” he muttered triumphantly. Then he looked up—technically down—and spotted Tim frozen in the doorway.

He grinned, upside down. “Hey, babe. How’s the scandal mill?”

Tim didn’t answer. He just... stared for a second. At the mop of tousled black hair. The threadbare ‘Amity Park Ghost Hunter Club’ t-shirt. The bare feet. The ink stains on Danny’s fingers. The little burn scar on the side of his wrist.

And the breath in Tim’s chest unspooled, tension slipping from his spine like it had never been there. Because this was Danny. His nerd. His chaos gremlin. His popcorn-catching, ghost-rambling, snort-laughing disaster of a person.

Not the cold, gorgeous creature who’d ruled the gala with a smile that could cut glass.

That version was a weapon.

This was home.

“You’re taking down the gala cameras,” Tim said, voice low.

Danny shrugged, still upside down. “They saw me leaving embarrassing red marks on your neck. Figured I’d disarm them before Bruce gets the notification and looks at how I messed up your pretty face.”

Tim blinked again. “They recorded our make out session?”

Danny spat out the screwdriver and grinned like a gremlin. “And they don't automatically upload the footage to the cloud, by the way, so we are owners of the only recording of our first kiss. Great reference image.”

Tim dragged a hand down his face. “You’re the worst.”

“ Your worst,” Danny sing-songed.

Tim stared a second longer. And then he said, like he hadn’t just made out with this boy in front of Gotham’s elite, like he hadn’t pulled him close by his tie and danced like they were in a romantic comedy:

“Do you wanna be my boyfriend?”

Danny blinked. Slowly. Then he righted himself, flopping off the couch and landing in a tangle of limbs and smugness.

“Timothy Drake,” he said, “we made out in front of like five senators. ”

Tim flushed. “I’m aware.”

“There are memes .”

“I know. ”

“You dragged me around from my tie like a dark romance novel cover.”

Tim gave him a flat look. “Is that a no?”

Danny rolled his eyes fondly and stepped closer. “If that didn’t clue you in, then yeah. The answer’s yes, you dumbass.”

Tim smiled. Honest and quiet and wide.

Then Danny leaned in, kissed his forehead like he was sealing a deal, and said:

“Now help me break into the encrypted cloud archive. I want the footage of Lex’s face when you handed me your champagne and told him I was prettier.”

Tim smirked. “I am a menace.”

Danny’s grin matched his. “Yeah. And now you’re my menace.”

Chapter Text

Danny was walking home with the biggest grin on his face, practically floating down the sidewalk like gravity was optional. Night sky overhead, hoodie half-zipped, earbuds in but not playing music—just there to dissuade any well-meaning civilians from trying to talk to him. Life was good .

Tim had been called away mid-makeout session by a panicked Lucius Fox, which was already funny, but the reason ?

Apparently Bruce "I Bought the Moon on a Whim" Wayne had tried to handle Wayne Enterprises' financial reports personally.

In tax season.

Without Tim.

"He's going to bankrupt the company in a week," Lucius had said, in that ‘I am deeply exhausted and probably drinking under my desk’ tone.

Danny had laughed so hard he fell off the couch.

Now, on his way back from a late-night astronomy class—where his professor had given him extra credit for finding an unregistered near-Earth object and naming it “Timothy-420” before the faculty caught it—Danny was just basking in his own brilliance and the mild chaos that clung to Tim like a designer cologne.

And the best part?

Tim hadn’t even denied Danny’s running theory about the macros being used to embezzle just enough funds to cover one (1) secret mistress, several rich-boy toys, and a statistically probable lovechild.

“If it’s not true,” Danny had purred, mouth pressed to Tim’s jaw, “ correct me.”

Tim had blinked once, sighed through his nose, and gone back to kissing him.

Win.

While he was waiting for his bus he pulled out his phone -the new one, courtesy of Tim’s trust found- and was scrolling through his social media when that eerie feeling crawled up the back of his neck—the kind that said something was watching. Something not-quite-alive.

Danny turned his head sharply.

Across the intersection, heading in the opposite direction, a bus passed. Flickering interior lights. Smudged windows.

And one window, in particular, showed a face.

Wide, hollow eyes. Gaunt features. A soul like cracked porcelain, fizzing at the edges, lit from within by something wrong. That wasn’t a ghost—ghosts were whole. This? This was a Vegas slot machine of metaphysical trauma. Soul shards practically ringing with spiritual tinnitus. Fragmented. Splintered. Barely tethered to its own plane.

Casino currency, Danny thought. That guy could punch a monk and get change back in bad luck.

Their eyes met.

I looked at him…

And he looked at me…

Danny sometimes hated his ADHD.

They kept staring at each other until the bus left the station.

He blinked.

“Oh no,” he whispered, equal parts disturbed and deeply offended. “I’m being narratively foreshadowed. ”

He glared at the street like it owed him rent.

“Goddammit, not today. I just got laid. I’m wearing my nice socks. ”

His phone pinged again. A text from Tim.

❤️Handler❤️:

 I’m dying.

 Bruce just asked me how to input receipts into a spreadsheet.

Please tell me you’re not doing anything crazy.

Or do tell me you are doing something crazy so I can ditch this disaster of a man who FIRED ME and proceed to undo all my hard work

Danny huffed.

Me:

no crazy. just cursed. will explain at home. pls save ur dad from financial jail.

❤️Handler❤️:

my dad is Alfred. Bruce is a cautionary tale with abs.

Danny chuckled darkly, pulling his hoodie up higher.

“Fine. Bring it on, haunted tax season. I’ve got memes, a boyfriend with inheritance, and zero patience for narrative pacing. Let’s dance.”

And with that, he blipped out of existance, no longer going home.

Meanwhile Constantine was having a crisis.

He had dealt with demons, devils, eldritch gods, and once, a haunted IKEA.

But this?

This was worse.

The bus screeched along the edge of Gotham’s eternally damp district, rattling like it was barely held together with duct tape and nihilism.

“Fuck,” John whispered. “Fuck me sideways with a—”

He hadn’t imagined it, he was sure of it. Through the window across the street, waiting to get in the same bus with him. A guy—no, not a guy. Something wearing a guy’s face. The aura of something with bright toxic green eyes contained on a human's body.

Eyes too bright. Power too old. The kind of aura that screamed this isn’t from around here —and not in the friendly alien way. No, this was from the realms. And John knew exactly what it was. The Ghost King, Crown of Realms, Judge of the Dead energy. John had read about this. He’d warded for this. He’d had nightmares about this kind of malevolent royalty.

The creature had blinked. Right. At. Him.

John practically somersaulted off the bus at the next stop, trench coat flapping, fingers already reaching for every banishment spell he knew.

He was gonna go straight to the Cave. Go to Bats. Lock himself in a magic circle. Eat an entire pack of nicotine gum and pray this eldritch Starbucks barista didn’t follow him—

And then he stumbled right into it. Silver hair. Glowing scars. Cloak like living shadows. The crown above his head looked like it was forged from dying stars.

“Oh no,” John said flatly. “Oh hell no.”

He raised his hands, chanting under his breath, about to teleport. 

And froze.

Because he couldn’t.

Because there was a hand fisted in the front of his shirt.

A cold, gloved hand.

The Ghost King was floating in front of him. In full regalia. The air crackled. Glass shattered behind them. Time itself seemed to hesitate.

“You,” said Phantom, voice like a funeral dirge wrapped in static, royal command and a tone of pure glee. “You soul whore of a man. You are coming with me, and you are going to fill the paperwork that will stop you from selling your soul like it is common currency. Understood?”

John understood everything. That this was not a request. That he’d be lucky to survive. That the gods had abandoned him.

He nodded.

“Lovely,” said the Ghost King with venomous sarcasm, and then ripped open a swirling green portal like it was made of wet paint and pure spite.

John opened his mouth to scream something witty and vaguely British—

And then they were gone.

The portal closed behind them with a snap.

One very traumatized bus driver lit a cigarette with trembling fingers and muttered, “I’m moving to Metropolis.”

🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦

Tim was freaking the fuck out.

Not the usual kind of freak-out, like when Damian decided to spar with Jason and Tim somehow ended up with a punctured lung and two weeks of petty revenge. No, this was worse.

This was Bat-Alarm-Detected-An-Ultra-Class-Magical-Entity-In-Gotham levels of panic.

A red alert had gone off across every Bat-device—phones, comms, secure lines, even the old pager Bruce refused to give up out of spite and stubborn nostalgia. And this wasn’t just some low-level warning. This was a siren— the siren. The one that only triggered when the magical threat level went past “City-Level Catastrophe” and hit “We’re-All-Gonna-Die-Unless-Someone-Sacrifices-a-Goat-Or-a-Soul.”

The alert read:

UNCLASSIFIED ENTITY DETECTED — ZERO TO UNKNOWN RANGE. VISUAL CONFIRMED. GOTHAM BLOCK 42. PORTAL ACTIVITY DETECTED. HUMAN CIVILIAN ABDUCTED.

And the worst part?

No video. Nothing. Every camera in the area had gone black the second the entity appeared.

Tim stared at the screen, bile creeping up his throat.

Knowing Danny—and his boyfriend’s absolute magnetism for chaotic bullshit—Tim was 99% sure he was somehow involved.

He immediately called him.

Straight to voicemail.

“Okay. Okay. Not a problem. Maybe he left his phone in his bag.”

He pulled up the apartment feed. (Spy cameras. Not weird. Totally normal boyfriend behavior.)

Empty. Lights off. No movement. Not even the hum of the fridge.

“Maybe he’s still on campus,” Tim muttered, already switching to the university’s surveillance. Lecture halls. Lab entrances. Side doors. Nothing.

He opened the feed for Danny’s secondary lab—the one Tim had labeled “biohazard apartment” in his files, where Danny did most of his shirtless, questionably safe experiments.

Still nothing. The last motion detection timestamp was over an hour ago.

That’s when he hit Barbara’s line.

“Babs, I need facial recognition on Daniel Fenton across the city grid. Timestamp: last thirty minutes. Priority red.”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Tim… we found him. Bus stop near Gotham Heights. Security footage cuts out five seconds later. The whole block goes dark. Same block that triggered the Bat-alert.”

Tim didn’t respond at first. He was staring at the paused security frame on his screen.

Danny.

Looking directly into the camera.

And then—gone. A flash of green energy. Feed shattered.

Tim pressed both palms against his face and dragged them down with a groan.

“Oh, you asshole. What did you do.”

His brain was already spiraling. Kidnapped? Really? By a supernatural entity?? Why did his boyfriend always attract the weirdest shit?

“Fuck.”

He started pacing, fingers twitching near the emergency League line. He could call Zatanna. Or Raven. Or Constantine—he was supposed to drop by anyway to talk about Danny’s recent accidental necromancy incident.

But first—

Tim opened their private encrypted chat app. The one Danny insisted on having “for fun spy vibes.”

Me:

ANSWER YOUR PHONE PLEASE.
If you don’t reply in the next five minutes, I’m invoking the Boyfriend Protocol and activating the tracker I implanted in your arm.
I know you encrypted it. I helped you set it up. I will dismantle it with my teeth if I have to.
I am spiraling and am five seconds away from an aneurysm. Please respond.

He hit send.

And waited.

Seconds ticked by.

Still nothing.

Tim didn’t want to call Bruce.

Not because he was afraid—okay, maybe a little —but because he knew the second Bruce picked up, everything was going to escalate. Like nuclear-launch-code level escalate.

But then again, the Bat-Alert already had triggered across the entire system. Which meant…

He tapped the line.

Bruce picked up before the first full ring.

"Report."

Tim didn’t waste time. “The unclassified entity? I think it took Danny.”

A pause. The kind that was so sharp and sudden it made Tim’s spine straighten. “Daniel Fenton?”

“Yes, my Danny, ” Tim snapped, stress bleeding into sarcasm. “You know, *five-foot-ten, sarcastic, scientifically reckless, occasionally glowing—*that Danny.”

Another pause. Longer.

Then Bruce said, tightly, “The Watchtower received the alert as well. Zatanna is en route. So is Superman.”

Tim blinked. “ Superman? ”

“The energy readings were… off the charts,” Bruce said. “J’onn couldn’t identify the signature. It bypassed all magical filters and psionic shields. This isn't just a Gotham problem.”

Tim groaned. “Of course it isn’t. Because of course Danny couldn’t just get kidnapped by a regular eldritch being. It had to be the kind of thing that makes Clark drop everything and come running.”

Silence again.

And then, with a level of carefully repressed emotion Tim wasn’t used to hearing from Bruce: “He’s important to you.”

Tim’s voice cracked with panic, but he didn’t slow down. “Yeah, he’s my boyfriend, B. He’s annoying and brilliant and emotionally stunted and also possibly an ancient deity hostage—but he’s mine. ”

Bruce made a soft sound, nearly imperceptible—like a man coming to terms with something he wasn’t emotionally equipped for.

Tim paced hard enough to make the floor creak. “I swear to god, he probably mouthed off to the entity and got himself abducted out of spite. This is so Danny. This is peak Danny behavior.”

“Where was he last seen?”

“Bus stop in Gotham Heights. Right before the whole block went dark. I have nothing after that, just green portal residue and a scream of magical nonsense.”

Bruce’s voice shifted into full tactical mode. “I’ll coordinate with Zatanna when she arrives. We’ll start tracing magical energy backwards from the portal. Superman will run satellite sweeps.”

Tim slumped onto his chair, finally letting the weight of it settle. “Thanks, B.”

“We’ll find him,” Bruce said.

Two hours later, Tim’s phone rang. He was flying through Gotham’s rooftops trying unsuccessfully to find Danny with the desperation of someone who is about to lose their reason to live.

Was he being dramatic about someone who was only officially dating him for about three months and midterms? Maybe. But Tim was an obsessive motherfucker and latched onto what was his in an unhealthy way. 

Anyway, his phone, his human phone, rang as he was swinging.

He nearly dropped it in his rush to answer. Unknown number— not a good sign.

Dick landed next to him and instantly recognized the police annex.

“That is coming from the GCPD”

“Hello?” he barked, halfway out of his mind, the other half pulling up the satellite feed for dimensional breaches.

“Hey, babe,” said a sheepish voice on the other end. “So, uh… any chance you could come bail me out?”

Tim froze. “Danny?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re at the police station ?”

“Technically, yeah. I mean, I got moved here after the EMTs gave up trying to keep me in the ambulance next to Superman—long story, we’ll circle back—anyway, I need a ride, and bail money.”

Tim blinked at nothing for a solid three seconds. “Danny. Why are you in police custody?”

There was a beat of silence.

Then, casually: “I, uh… I might’ve punched Superman in the face.”

Tim sat back down with all the grace of a collapsed lung. “ You what. ”

“ Knocked him out, actually,” Danny said brightly. “He got better though! He even broke out of his own ambulance to come ask the cops to let me go. He’s right here.”

Tim hung up.

Then dialed Bruce.

“Change of plans,” he said. “Danny is at the GCPD. With Superman. He apparently punched him in the face.”

“…What.”

Fifteen minutes later, Tim pulled up to the Gotham City Police Department with Bruce behind the wheel and Dick riding shotgun –who had said he needed to hear the story behind this–, Bruce and Tim grim-faced and deeply tired, Dick with the face of a child about to enter a candy eating contest.

Inside the station, chaos had clearly preceded them. Several officers looked like they were caught between awe and horror. One receptionist was hiding under the counter. Another was asking someone if they had any protocols for "someone assaulting Superman."

And in the middle of it all Superman was holding a bloodied rag to his nose.

“Superman?” Tim asked, wide-eyed as they approached. “What the hell happened to you ?”

Clark, looking both baffled and mildly impressed, lifted the rag. His nose was swollen. And very clearly broken.

“The kid broke my nose,” he said.

Tim turned to Bruce.

Bruce blinked, deadpan. “He broke Superman’s nose.”

“ I couldn’t break Superman’s nose,” Dick muttered behind them, taking out his phone and taking a picture. “I don't think anyone can break Superman’s nose”

“Technically, it was self-defense,” came Danny’s voice from the holding area behind the front desk. He was holding onto the bars of the jail like he was part of the Cell Block Tango skit. “He grabbed me from behind and I didn’t know it was him. Just— instinct. ”

“You punched him hard enough to floor him!” one of the officers yelled from the back.

Danny shrugged, unrepentant. “That sounds like a him problem.”

Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “I swear to god, I’m going to staple your hands to your pockets.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Clark winced. “I did try to vouch for him,” he added. “Told them he didn’t mean it. But, uh… well, they tased him after and that went… badly.”

Bruce turned very slowly to look at Danny. “Did you retaliate when the police tased you?”

Danny looked away. “Define ‘retaliate.’”

“Oh my god,” Tim said, voice cracking. “I’m dating Gotham’s most powerful cryptid and he just broke Superman’s face.”

Danny beamed. “You love it.”

Tim didn’t deny it.

And Constantine, you ask?

No one noticed he was missing until three weeks later , when he reappeared at the exact same bus stop he’d vanished from—smoke-stained coat, hollow eyes, and the unmistakable aura of a man who had seen things.

When the League called for a debrief, John just stared at them.

“I can’t talk about it,” he said flatly, lighting a cigarette with a hand that trembled just slightly. “Sworn to secrecy.”

Because, really—how did one begin to explain what happened?

How did you explain that kid , the one who kept flickering between a glowing guy with bedhead, a goddamned eldritch entity with stars in his ribcage, and a full-blown spectral monarch in a floating crown and cape had dragged John Constantine through the Realms, made him apologize personally to over a hundred demons for “being a soul-hoarding jackass,” and then watched—calmly, regally—as said demons surrendered their soul contracts to the Ghost King “as compensation for wasting His Majesty’s time.”

John tried to protest. Something about magical jurisdiction. Autonomy. The sanctity of contracts.

The king had just raised an eyebrow and said, “ Mine now. ”

And they were.

So now?

Now John Constantine technically belongs to a death god barely old enough to drink in America. Who has decreed that John’s afterlife will consist of working as the Realms’ tax auditor.

That’s right.

John Constantine was now the eternal collection agent for all the damned souls who skipped out on their fees, pacts, and magical IOUs.

He was going to spend eternity tracking down deadbeats across the Infinite Realms, armed with a clipboard, a flaming sword, and too much authority.

And he hated  it.

But also…

…well.

Once he realizes he’s been granted full jurisdiction, unrestricted methods, and a free pass to make even minor infernal nobles cry over their dodged soul dues?

Oh, he’s going to love it.

He’ll never admit it out loud. But eventually, someone’s going to find him cackling madly while chasing a Level Nine demon through a plane of regret, screaming,

“YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD HIDE YOUR LEDGERS, YOU SLIMY LITTLE GOB OF SIN?! I’VE GOT A WARRANT SIGNED BY THE BLOODY KING HIMSELF!”

Danny, meanwhile, will be watching from his floating obsidian throne, sipping ecto-tea and kicking his legs like a child, giggling while Tim perches on his lap, dressed with silks and golds, and reads a report aloud:

“Another 72 soul pacts recovered from illegal trades, Your Highness . Mr. Constantine sent an invoice stapled to a demon’s forehead. Again.”

“ Adorable, ” Danny will say, leaning towards Tim and kissing the back of his hand, to which Tim will blush like it was the first time. Then Danny nuzzles into his back running his nose up and down Tim’s neck in complete and utter adoration. “Remind me to give him another promotion.”

Chapter Text

Tim, fully suited up as Red Robin, was sprinting across the Gotham rooftops—focused, precise, every movement calculated. The city was unusually quiet tonight, but the residual buzz of magical alert levels still had him on edge. He needed to clear his head, and patrol helped.

That was, until a figure landed beside him mid-leap.

"Suspect," Stephanie said loudly, phone held up in front of her like she was recording a documentary. "Codename: Red Robin. Occupation: vigilante. Suspected to be dating a civilian. Civilian in question has openly declared hatred for vigilantes in multiple public and private settings."

Tim nearly stumbled.

"Spoiler," he hissed, voice sharp in his comms, “I am in the middle of a case. ”

She matched his pace easily, angling her phone to catch him from a very unflattering low angle.

“Subject just turned a deep shade of crimson. Guilty conscience confirmed,” she narrated. “Witness reports claim the civilian boyfriend once called Batman ‘a walking red flag with too much leather.’”

“Spoiler, stop it. ”

“You stop it. You’re blushing so hard I’m gonna get a heat signature warning on my phone.”

"I’m working! You can't just ambush me like this during patrol!"

“And yet,” she sing-songed, flipping mid-air to land beside him again, “here I am. Gotham's favorite menace and investigative journalist. Now tell me, Red—how does it feel to be in love with someone who thinks you’re a fashion disaster and a moral contradiction?”

Tim groaned, vaulting over a chimney.

“I swear to god, if you post any of this on your TikTok—”

Steph’s grin was positively evil.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Unless you make it to ten million views, then all bets are off.”

“I’m calling Spoiler Protocol.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I invented Spoiler Protocol.”

Steph gasped. “ You monster. ”

He finally spun around to face her mid-jump, voice pitched low and dangerous. “Seriously, I’m tracking a suspect. There’s possible cult activity. Ritual circle. Glowing runes. Gotham’s cursed again.”

She blinked. “Oh. Okay, but—does this mean your boyfriend might show up all wild and wet again? Because if I miss Danny roundhousing another celestial being into next week, I’m gonna be very upset.”

Tim just sighed and picked up speed.

“I hate you,” he called over his shoulder.

“Aww,” Steph chirped. “You’re just mad because your boyfriend punched Superman and now the League likes him more than you.”

“ I said I was working! ”

Steph's laughter dragged into the night making Tim tense up, anxious and stressed. That’s why, when he got startled he just reacted.

One second, Red Robin was perched on the edge of the rooftop, tracking a suspected smuggler through the sights of a birdarang. His mind was sharp, focused. His body tense with anticipation. The city hummed below, dark and damp in the early hours of the morning.

Then—fingers. On his shoulder.

Tim reacted on instinct.

The birdarang in his hand twisted, blade flipped, wrist jerked—every muscle moving in perfect, trained sync. There was no time to process. No time to think. Just threat. Just response.

And then— impact.

The silence afterward was deafening.

A wet, gurgling gasp broke it.

Tim turned just in time to see his attacker stumble back a step. Pale hands flying to his throat. Blood—bright and arterial—gushed through Danny’s fingers as he crumpled to his knees, eyes wide in shock.

“ Danny?! ” Tim’s voice cracked, raw with horror.

He was on the ground in a flash, catching Danny’s body before it could fully collapse. His gloves slipped on blood as he tried to apply pressure to the wound—pressing so hard it had to hurt—but it didn’t matter. The cut was too deep. The blood too fast. There wasn’t enough time.

Danny choked, spasming slightly in Tim’s arms as another surge of crimson spilled from his mouth.

“Oh my god, no—no no no, stay with me—Danny, please— ” Tim’s voice shook as he pressed harder, panic a wildfire in his chest.

Danny, meanwhile, flailed one hand weakly, trying to grab Tim’s shoulder. He made a noise, a bubbling wheeze that sounded suspiciously like a groan of exasperation. His other hand kept waving, gesturing wildly toward his own throat and then the skyline like he was trying to make a point.

He was trying to talk.

Trying to talk while actively drowning in his own blood.

“Hhggghhhkk—so—hhghkk— embarrassing, ” Danny managed to gurgle, blood spraying from his lips like a horror show. His face was flushed—more from flustered frustration than blood loss, somehow.

Tim’s jaw dropped. “ What?! ” he snapped, somewhere between disbelief and hysteria. “Danny, you’re dying, can you not be embarrassed right now?!”

Danny waved his hand at him again as if to say no, no, it's fine —as if he hadn’t just taken a blade to the throat from his own boyfriend. He tried to smile. Failed. Choked again. His eyes rolled, but not from pain—from mortification.

He patted Tim’s cheek with cold fingers. “‘S gghhhggg ok– babe”

This was it. This was how Danny was going to go out. Not in battle. Not in glory. But by surprise neck-stabbing from his very panicked, very traumatized boyfriend.

Tim was still trying to stop the bleeding, heart pounding in his ears, vision tunneling.

“Oh my god. I killed you. I actually— Danny, please— don’t you dare die like this. I will resurrect you just to strangle you again if you die like this! ”

Tim ripped off his visor with shaking hands.

If his boyfriend was going to die , the least he could do was see him. Let Danny see his eyes, his face, let him see how much this hurt. How much he was hurting. How sorry he was.

“T-hhggkkk Tim?!”

Tears spilled freely as Tim clutched Danny closer, pressing his gloved hand tighter against the gaping wound in his neck.

“ Please, ” he whispered, voice cracking, “ Please, Danny— I didn’t know it was you. I thought— I didn’t know—*”

Danny’s body convulsed again, a horrible wet noise catching in his throat as another wave of blood spilled down his chest. He tried to speak—God, why was he trying to talk right now ?

A weak, gurgling " 'ts alright, " came from between his clenched teeth.

Tim’s heart shattered even more.

"You're literally dying, you idiot—stop comforting me! "

" N'not your f-fault, " Danny tried to insist, but it was drowned in a horrible choking sound.

He gagged. Cursed under his breath. Tried to sit up and failed.

Then, in the middle of it all, blood pouring from his mouth like he was in a B-horror movie, he tilted his head, eyes glassy and unfocused, and slurred: “Holy shit– ggllgg  Red– ggglllgg you– furry?! ”

Tim blinked. “What?!”

Danny gestured feebly to the red domino mask on the ground. “Y’know—cough cough– wings , pointy– ears, red suit—so dramatic—hhrrk—I thought you were just—hhhggh— athletic Batman fanboy! ”

“ You’re bleeding out and calling me a furry?! ”

“I mean—” Danny coughed up another mouthful of blood—“if the cowl fits—hurrrk—”

Tim stared. Mouth open. Expression torn between horror, exhaustion, and absolute disbelief.

And then he realized something else.

Danny… wasn’t dying .

In fact, he wasn’t even fading. Still heaving and drenched in blood, yes, but somehow not deteriorating. Not growing pale or cold. Just… stuck in a very gross, very dramatic loop of gurgling and wheezing and trying to explain himself.

“S-so—hrrk—ah, ye—h,” gasp “, so I was, well, huurrk—" Danny wheezed again, flopping slightly, " I didn't mean to— "

Tim winced.

" Bejuh, I'm fine, " Danny slurred, " j-just give it a minute, peuh—"

Tim, numb with confusion, leaned back and stared at him. Not even crying now. Just observing. Processing.

Danny’s face went bright red under the scrutiny.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he mumbled, blood still dripping from his chin. “It’s weird. ”

“You’re the one who got stabbed in the throat and is apparently fine and talking through it. ”

Danny sputtered, coughed, gagged some more, and then proceeded to heave for what Tim timed was five entire minutes.

Five minutes of retching. Choking. Trying to apologize through bloody teeth.

Until finally, with a dramatic wheeze and one last wet gag, Danny pushed himself upright, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and stood. Just. Stood. Like a person who hadn't just bled out in front of their significant other.

“…Uh. Sorry about that,” Danny said sheepishly, eyes avoiding Tim’s. “I, uh… that was… kind of a lot, huh?”

Tim continued to stare at him, lips parted, visor dangling in one hand.

Danny shifted nervously. “Soooo… you’re a vigilante? Like. A full-on crime fighting night time rooftop-jumping vigilante?”

“…yes?” Tim managed, barely.

Danny threw his arms up. “What the fuck , Tim?! I’ve been trash-talking vigilantes to your face for the last six months! ”

Tim blinked. “I know. ”

“You didn’t think to say anything?!”

“You were bleeding out through the neck ten seconds ago!! ”

Danny paused.

Then shrugged. “Yeah okay, that’s fair.”

Tim groaned, dropped his head into his hands, and muttered, “I am going to kill you for real now, please proceed to die.”

Danny rubbed the back of his neck, then shoved both hands into his hoodie pocket and struck something solid. With a bright "Oh!" he pulled out a tightly wrapped loaf.

“Uh. Here. For your troubles.” He held it out.

Tim stared blankly. “…You’re offering me bread? ”

Danny shrugged, suddenly sheepish. “Plum and cashew. It’s good. Phantom-forged, if that helps?”

Tim slowly reached out and accepted the strange, still-warm loaf with the wary hands of a man accepting a cursed artifact.

Then it hit him.

“The target, ” Tim snapped, head jerking up. “ Shit. ”

He spun around, scanning the streets below, rooftops, fire escapes— nothing . The rooftop he’d been watching for the past half hour was empty , the crate was gone, and there wasn't even a footprint left behind.

“Damn it,” Tim hissed. “ The perp’s gone. No trace of him. ”

Danny blinked and peered over the edge. “Aww, damn. Sorry, babe. I probably scared him off when I—uh—broke the laws of biology just now.”

Tim shot him a look. “You think? ”

Danny grinned sheepishly, then gestured to the edge of the building. “Well, since you’re free now… care to tell me what that was about?”

Tim turned back slowly. “No, you tell me. Because you should be dead. Like clinically, medically, unmistakably dead. That wound should have killed you in under a minute. ”

“Yep,” Danny said cheerfully, plopping down on the ledge and swinging his legs. “It usually does.”

“… Usually?! ”

Danny kicked his heels. “Okay, so—full disclosure? I’ve been dead this whole time.”

Danny made jazz hands.

Tim stared.

Danny gave him a small wave. “Hi. Ghost. Boo. And also, uh—surprise—I’m technically the Ghost King.”

Tim blinked.

Danny held up a finger. “And I might or might not be illegal in, like, all of the continental U.S. Definitely blacklisted in Nevada. And Oregon. Possibly Florida. But I think I’m chill in Hawaii, so I’ve got that going for me.”

There was a long, painful silence.

Tim made a small, wounded noise.

Then, like his entire relationship was a red string board in his head, everything started snapping into place.

“…The radium,” Tim whispered.

Danny tilted his head. “Huh?”

“You drank radium. I watched you drink radium like it was lemon tea, and you said— you said— ”

“‘Tastes a little stale today’?”

Tim pointed at him in wild accusation. “You said ‘gasoline doesn’t mix with arsenic’ and I thought it was a joke! ”

Danny laughed nervously. “I mean. It was funny.”

“You revived the dead !”

Danny shrugged. “To be fair, I mixed Gallium and Iridium instead of Gallium and Cobalt. Easy mistake.”

“You exploded my microwave and said it was because it had ‘too many buttons’!”

“To be fair, it did. ”

“You were kidnapped by an interdimensional entity and came back with a puppy! ”

Danny brightened. “He’s cute, right? Is my ghost dog, I named him Cujo.”

Tim buried his face in his hands. “I thought you were just eccentric. I thought you were one of those art school disaster guys who ate weird things and had strong opinions about clouds. I didn’t realize you were cosmic. ”

Danny patted his back. “Still a disaster guy. Just with, you know, jurisdiction over death.”

Tim slowly looked up, eyes wide. “Danny. What the hell. ”

Danny offered him a sheepish little smile.

And bit into the plum-cashew bread.

Tim stood in front of the Batcomputer, eyes bloodshot and gestures increasingly wild, as Bruce watched him with the impassive stare of a man who once fought an immortal caveman and still found this baffling.

“I swear I’m not concussed,” Tim said, probably for the fourth time. “I didn’t hallucinate it, I didn’t misread anything, I checked my own vitals , and his . Repeatedly.”

Bruce remained silent. Calm. Analytical.

Tim took that as encouragement. Mistake.

“So. Danny died when he was fourteen—don’t ask how, I didn’t get that far—and now he’s, um, a half-ghost, which is apparently a thing . And not just any ghost. He’s—” Tim hesitated, then sighed, shoulders dropping. “He’s the Ghost King. Capital G, Capital K. That’s why he bleeds but doesn’t die. That’s why he can phase through walls. And explode microwaves. And eat radioactive cereal like it’s Froot Loops.”

Bruce said nothing. His hands were steepled under his chin. His eyes flicked once— once —to Danny, who was standing behind Tim, politely holding a Tupperware of suspiciously glowing cookies and smiling like the world’s friendliest eldritch horror.

Tim pressed on. “He also said he’s technically banned in forty-nine states, but we have to double-check if Hawaii’s safe. And he, uh—he owns a dog now. We own a dog now. Don’t ask.”

Silence.

Tim looked desperately between Bruce and Danny.

“…Please say something.”

Bruce exhaled, slow and steady. Then turned to Danny.

“Do your royal duties allow you to marry Tim?”

Tim made a noise like a dial-up modem crashing into a blender.

Danny lit up. “I certainly will try!”

Tim let out a strangled, “ What?! ”

Bruce nodded, solemn. “Good. I expect a proper courtship. No less than a year of it, and grandkids to pass down your title once you retire.”

Danny saluted. “Yes, sir.”

Tim, vibrating with mortification, covered his face. “I hate this family.”

From the shadows, Dick leaned in from the hallway with a shit-eating grin. “I think it’s sweet. Ghost royalty? You always did have a thing for guys who could kill you.”

“ He already did! ” Tim hissed.

Danny tilted his head. “Only briefly.”

“ That’s not helping! ”

Bruce, completely unfazed, turned back to the monitor and began typing. “We’ll need to update the files. What’s your full name and sovereign title?”

Danny, still beaming, said, “Daniel James Fenton, High King of the Infinite Realms, Warden of the Veil Between, High Protector of the Zone, Scourge of the Fright Knight, and—uh—Supreme Bureaucrat of the Undead Tax Code.”

Bruce didn’t blink. “We’ll need to clear that with J’onn.”

Tim, still covering his face, muttered, “I need a nap. Or maybe holy water.”

Danny leaned in and kissed the top of his head. “I can get you ghost holy water. It smells like s’mores.”

Tim whimpered.

Chapter Text

Life went on.

Tim and Danny fought (over patents, ethics, and who left the containment core running), made up (with kisses, ghostly sparkles, and more than one explosion), and invented marvels the world simply wasn’t ready for. Most of them were immediately confiscated by Batman, the Justice League, or both.

It wasn't that Tim and Danny meant to create threats to global security. It just… happened.

Like the time they accidentally invented sentient aquatic life inside an aquarium for a school project. A very advanced, interdimensional aquarium. Aquaman was furious .

“Did I consent to babysitting an entire aquatic civilization with diplomatic complaints about the filter settings?” he’d demanded.

They both said no, but to be fair, they were already halfway into inventing a micro-ecosystem of tiny airborne dragons, so they were a little distracted.

Eventually, Danny became that famous inventor. The one whose name made scientists weep, theorists scream, and engineers weep again but for different reasons. No matter where Red Robin was—across Gotham, off-world, mid-battle—Danny would find him . He’d arrive in a new form of transportation never before seen by modern man, toss Tim a homemade lunch, kiss him like no one was watching (even if everyone was), then vanish again in a blaze of eldritch neon.

Which was how the League ended up talking about The Incident .

The one where Tim twisted his ankle while fighting the Black Lantern Corps during an interdimensional convergence. Chaos, blood, and horror all around—and then, through the mist of death and despair…

BOOM
A tank burst through a dimensional rift, cobbled together from a microwave, a hair dryer, an electric kettle, a coffee maker, a 90s box TV, a bicycle, and half a car.

It ran over Superman.

Clark had been halfway through a heroic speech when he was flattened by what looked like a toaster with treads and glowing runes.

Danny climbed out of the tank window, horrified. “Oh my Ancients, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hit the actual Superman! I was aiming for the lich guy with the axe!”

Superman, still on the ground, wheezed through laughter. “ This —this is what it’s like to be normal! I love it!”

The tank is still parked outside the Watchtower to this day, labeled DANNY'S (DON'T TOUCH, EVEN YOU, BATMAN) .

Then there was the plane incident .

At Dick’s request, Danny built a “portable stealth aircraft.” The brief said small , but Danny took that as “fun-sized with cosmic implications.”

The result? A sleek, impossible plane the size of a car , yet somehow roomy enough for the entire Batfamily, four extra vigilantes, a mini kitchen, and a ghost sauna.

Bruce still refuses to acknowledge how it works. “Physics says no,” he muttered the first time he boarded it.

Dick christened it The Night Flyer , graffitied it with his symbol and a swarm of tiny, glow-in-the-dark cartoon ghosts. He insists it runs on vibes and brotherly love . Danny won’t correct him.

Somewhere, in a pile of confiscated blueprints, is a schematic labeled:
‘Project: Aquarium World 2 — Now With Dolphins Who Pay Rent’

Batman is watching it very closely.

And that’s how the years passed.

Between dares from the Batkids for Danny to drink sulfuric acid ("It tasted like Sprite, what do you mean this is hazardous material?"), and Batman begrudgingly requesting Danny help dispose of all the toxic waste in Gotham—
Which, in hindsight, may not have been the best idea.

Because that turned into the biggest ghost frat party Gotham had ever seen.

There were spectral barbecues in Crime Alley, neon ectoplasmic hookers drifting through high society fundraisers, and backyard wrestling matches between actual eldritch entities and several confused members of the GCPD.

Tim was paraded around on a floating throne as “the king’s future king” —apparently, marrying the Ghost King will make him a higher-ranking royal by ghost law. He could technically command Danny, which concerned Bruce deeply.

“Is my son… a love tyrant?” he muttered, watching Tim casually delegate interdimensional diplomacy between bites of his sandwich.

Even Gotham’s rogues joined in. Scarecrow challenged a ghost to a fear-off and lost . Riddler hosted ghost trivia. Harley and Ivy made everyone flower crowns. No one knew what happened to Joker and no one asked.

Gotham didn’t sleep for three days. Then, somehow, everything returned to normal.
(Except for the ghost rave graffiti still faintly glowing under Crime Alley.)

Danny even dipped a toe back into the hero community. Partially . Mostly when Tim bribed him.

“Come on,” Tim would say, “just this once. I’ll let you take the Baby Fenton Batformer into the field.”

It was an eight-foot mech that looked like a bat-themed toddler with a cannon launcher and a rattle that emitted sonic blasts.

Danny couldn’t say no.

But like all things, the chaos slowed down eventually.

Graduation came.

Tim stood by the mirror, watching with fond pride as Danny wrestled his way into his ceremonial gown, muttering something about how polyester should be illegal in the Infinite Realms.

Tim had graduated last semester (of course he had—skipping a full year like the overachieving genius he was) and was now working full-time at Wayne Enterprises. The joke had long evolved from “Tim’s ghost sugar baby” to “Tim’s future husband is wearing space gemstones casually like it’s not a diplomatic crisis.”

Danny’s earrings—crafted from space peridots, Martian opals, and black diamonds—glittered under the sunlight streaming through their shared apartment. Tim had personally gone off-planet to collect each one.

Sure, the world thought he’d just bought them. But whatever the public didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

“I can’t believe your parents are going to miss seeing you walk the stage,” Tim sighed, trying to sound nonchalant but failing to hide the disappointment. He’d never met the Fentons. They were cryptids to him. The in-laws that may or may not exist. Like Bigfoot. Or Dan.

Danny shrugged, straightening his gown with a huff before stepping closer. “Jazz is here. That’s more than enough.”

“They did say they were proud of me,” he added, a little quieter. “But yeah… They’re currently chasing sightings of a ghost ship near Antarctica. Honestly, I couldn’t make them come even if I tried.”

He leaned in and kissed the tip of Tim’s nose. “Also, it’s probably for the best. No nuclear weapons in the auditorium this time.”

Tim blinked. “This time?”

Danny grinned.

Tim entered the auditorium, casually scanning the rows of folding chairs until he spotted Jazz.

She was hard to miss.

Even seated, she radiated presence. Her long red hair framed a face that smiled too wide and eyes that saw too much . Tim had long since accepted that Jazz didn’t look eldritch, but she had the energy of someone who could give the Spectre therapy and win .

But it wasn’t her that made Tim stop in his tracks.

It was the couple sitting beside her.

The woman was in a reinforced hazmat suit, pale blue with a matching visor, currently holding what looked suspiciously like a collapsible ectogun in her lap. The man next to her wore a larger, brighter hazmat suit— orange , for some reason—with what Tim was fairly certain was a grenade launcher propped casually against the seat between his knees like it was a bouquet of flowers. Both looked incredibly at ease. In fact, they looked proud .

Tim blinked. Checked his scanner discreetly.

Yup. Fully armed.

He walked over, slowly, like someone approaching a tiger that might be asleep—or might just be waiting .

“Hey, Jazz,” he said with practiced calm, eyes flicking to the duo beside her. “Um. Who are your friends?”

Jazz lit up with that same warm, slightly terrifying smile she’d greeted him with the first time they met. The one that made him feel like he was being politely vivisected.

“Tim!” she said brightly. “These are our parents. Jack and Maddie Fenton.”

Tim stared.

He looked at the woman, who gave a cheerful little wave while lightly patting what was definitely a plasma rifle.

He looked at the man, who—upon hearing his name—immediately stood up.

Jack Fenton was a mountain . Broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, and nearly glowing with enthusiasm, he towered over Tim like a human tank. Or maybe a dad-shaped nuke. Either way, the safety on that grenade launcher was definitely off.

Jazz didn’t stop there. “And this ,” she said, with just a little too much glee, to her parents “is Danny’s better half.”

Tim did not flinch.

He did not flinch when Jack’s entire face lit up.

“Well I’ll be a flamin’ banshee! You’re the one who stole our boy’s heart!” Jack boomed, and before Tim could escape, the man swept him up in a crushing hug.

Tim’s spine cracked audibly.

“I like you!” Jack said, still holding him aloft. “You got firm shoulders and you don’t even flinch when faced with a Class 7 thermoplasmic grenade launcher! That’s how I know you’re worthy of my son!”

“Air,” Tim wheezed, feet dangling a solid foot off the ground.

“Oh, sorry, son!” Jack dropped him like a sack of potatoes, then clapped him on the back hard enough to bruise a rib.

Maddie stood up next, adjusting her visor and extending a gloved hand with the kind of precision that said I have absolutely tranquilized a ghost mid-sentence before breakfast.

“It’s an honor to meet the boy who’s made our Danny so happy,” she said sincerely, as if she didn’t have a glowing containment thermos hooked to her hip like a purse.

Tim tried to smile. It was closer to a grimace.

“Pleasure,” he managed, only mildly concussed.

“Danny told us all about you,” Maddie continued. “You’re even more adorable in person! Shame about your parents, but on the bright side, now we’re your parents too!”

Jazz hummed in approval, leaning over to pass Tim a small gift bag with tissue paper poking out the top.

He opened it.

There was a topper full of fudge

Tim closed the bag it neatly. “Thanks, I'll use it for Danny’s cake.”

Jack fist-pumped. “ YES!! Wait, there’s cake?!”

Tim blanched.

Jazz just smiled wider.

Tim sat down next to Jazz just as the lights dimmed and the first of the graduates began walking toward the stage. Jazz, ever composed, offered him a program that smelled faintly of ghost repellent and glitter.

He took it without comment.

His heart was beating faster than it should. Not because he was nervous—no, he was proud . Proud of his boyfriend, who had saved worlds, invented impossible things, and somehow still managed to pass his classes despite constant interdimensional emergencies. Proud of Danny, who smiled like he’d never known fear, and laughed like the world was still good.

Then the announcer said Danny’s name, and the auditorium began to applaud.

Danny walked on stage in his black gown and cap, beaming like someone who knew he was about to trip and fully intended to commit to the bit if he did.

And then—

“WOOOOO!!! THAT’S MY BOY!!!”

Tim flinched just as Jack Fenton shot to his feet, hefted the grenade launcher , and—

CH-THUNK.

Tim’s brain processed exactly one thought: Oh my god, that’s not a confetti cannon.

From somewhere in the crowd, someone screamed “GRENADE!”

Then pandemonium .

Half the stadium dived under chairs. People screamed. One guy grabbed his girlfriend and rolled dramatically behind a row of folding seats. Another student tackled the dean. Security reached for their radios.

And then—

KA-BOOM!

A burst of color erupted overhead. Shimmering ghost-safe glitter and biodegradable confetti rained from the ceiling like a Fourth of July parade hosted by hallucinations. A single banner unfurled from the launcher’s barrel with the words:

WE’RE SO PROUD OF YOU, DANNY-BOY!!!

Danny, who had frozen mid-step, blinked through the glitter, mouth open. Then he let out a laugh so loud and bright it echoed across the stunned silence like a bell tolling joy.

People—who had been halfway to the exits—paused.

Some turned.

A small child pointed at Danny and whispered, “He sounds like a superhero.”

From the other side of the bleachers, someone muttered, utterly defeated, “Oh no. There are more Fentons now.”

Jazz clapped politely, unbothered. Tim just put his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with a mix of laughter and secondhand horror.

“I told them not to bring any heavy artillery,” Jazz said, not sounding at all sorry. “This is actually toned down.”

Tim groaned into his palms. “They brought a grenade launcher , Jazz.”

“Confetti grenade,” she corrected. “They left the real ones in the van.”

Danny wiped tears of laughter from his face and did a little bow, soaking in the baffled applause now beginning to pick back up.

As he made it across the stage, tassel bouncing, he looked right at Tim and winked.

Tim’s face flushed instantly.

Of course, Tim thought, this is my life now.

And he wouldn’t change a damn thing.

The ceremony ended with surprisingly minimal destruction. Once the security team confirmed the explosion was celebratory in nature and no one had, in fact, detonated a villain bomb in the auditorium, people slowly filtered back to their seats. Danny walked out with his diploma, still laughing, glitter in his hair and a crooked cap on his head, and Tim’s heart did the thing again.

Outside, the chaos tripled.

The courtyard had been set up for photo ops. Instead, it was now the staging ground for what looked like a ghost-hunting military camp. Jack had parked the Fenton RV on the lawn , turret slowly turning as if tracking pigeons. Maddie was arguing with a faculty member about whether her ecto-rifle could be in the official photos (“It’s ceremonial!” she insisted).

Tim stood with Jazz, watching Danny get mobbed by classmates and professors alike, all while awkwardly holding three different flower bouquets and a slice of pizza someone had shoved in his hand.

Tim was just partially sure that the reason everyone was so excited was because Danny managed to graduate without exploding the school. Which, to be honest, was a very real concern in Gotham.

Then the Waynes arrived. Bruce, flanked by Damian, Jason, Dick, Duke, Cass and Stephanie (who was just here for the popcorn), stared at the scene before them like they’d accidentally walked into a cosplay convention run by doomsday preppers.

“Those are my in-laws,” Tim said, arms crossed, completely resigned as soon as his family approached him.

“...You’re marrying the least terrifying one,” Damian said, sounding equal parts impressed and concerned.

Bruce took one look at the RV, the weapons, and Jack—who had just pulled Danny into a bear hug and nearly crushed his ribs—and muttered, “I need to update the prenup templates.”

“I love them,” Stephanie whispered, passing the popcorn that she had managed to get from somewhere to Cass. Cass for her part just nodded.

Dick leaned toward Tim. “So which one gave you ‘that talk’?”

Tim grimaced. “Jazz. With a PowerPoint. About ghost physiology and the geopolitical implications of dating the Ghost King.”

Jason, meanwhile, was already halfway to Jazz, who had put on her lab coat and glasses and was lecturing some poor parent about dimensional instability. He walked up, hands in his pockets, smiling like he was about to drop his most charming line.

“So,” he started, voice smooth, “you must be the infamous Jazz. I’ve heard you’re the brains of the operation.”

Jazz turned, eyes gleaming like a shark who smelled blood. “And you must be the one with the Lazarus Pit signature I sensed the moment I stepped in Gotham.”

Jason blinked. “...Uh.”

She smiled wider, tilting her head like she was observing a very amusing petri dish. “Tell me, do you frequently experience sudden rage episodes or prophetic dreams of eldritch dimensions? I’d love to run a few scans.”

Jason made a strangled noise, then walked back to the Waynes with a stiff, horrified smile. “She’s amazing. I need to lie down.”

“Don’t worry,” Jazz called after him. “I have a field lab in the RV!”

Danny finally made it to Tim’s side, dragging Jack and Maddie behind him. Jack was waving a prototype ghost gun like a party favor, and Maddie immediately tried to shake Bruce’s hand with a gauntlet still sparking softly at the fingertips.

“Mom, Dad,” Danny said, proudly. “This is Tim's family. Please don’t scan any of them without warning.”

Maddie’s smile was polite and terrifying. “Of course, sweetie. Unless one of them is actually undead.”

Bruce, ever unflappable, just extended his hand. “Bruce Wayne. It’s...a pleasure.”

Jack grabbed it with a grin. “You’re a big fella! You ever consider ghost-hunting? We’re always hiring!”

Dick looked between the Fentons, the Waynes, and the still-rotating turret. “So...when’s the wedding?”

Tim choked.

Danny laughed and immediately said, “As soon as I figure out how to legally marry someone in both the Ghost Zone and Earth without causing a paradox.”

Tim looked at Bruce for backup.

Bruce just nodded slowly, a glint of excitement in his eyes. “As long as there’s a safety clause for multi-dimensional collapse in the prenup.”

“Can do!” Danny chirped, slinging an arm around Tim. “Jazz already drafted it.”

Jason, from behind them, still looking flustered and pale: “I think I’m in love. Is that bad?”

Dick looked at him thoughtfully. “Only if you want to survive it.”

“...I need a nap.”

As family photos began, Maddie insisted everyone hold a ghost blaster “for symmetry,” and Jack pulled out a portable fog machine for atmosphere . Tim stood in the middle, Danny at his side, surrounded by chaos and love and very probably illegal technology. And for a brief, wild moment, he freaked out.

This is my family now. And I'm the sane one.

And then Danny kissed his cheek, glitter still on his face, and Tim’s heart settled while he smiled.

This is fine.