Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tim Drake wanted to be Robin.

Well, no. Not exactly.

What Tim wanted was for someone to be Robin.

Because Jason Todd was dead. Killed by the Joker in a warehouse explosion that left more fire than body. And Batman was unraveling. A storm of grief and rage, lashing out at criminals with fists that cracked bone harder than usual. Spiraling. Becoming someone Tim barely recognized. Not a hero. Not the man who once pulled a kid out of a circus tent and gave him a home.

A ghost. A weapon. A walking, festering wound.

So, no. Tim didn’t want to be Robin.

He just... needed there to be a Robin.

Someone to anchor Bruce. To remind him of who he was. Someone visible. Bright. Reckless in the ways Batman couldn’t be anymore… 

Unfortunately or maybe fatefully, Tim didn’t exactly qualify.

For one, his parents were alive. Sort of. In every instance Jack and Janet Drake were legally, medically, and technically his guardians. But alive was a loose term when it came to emotional and physical presence. They traveled. A lot. Business trips, archaeological digs, charity banquets.

Tim lived in a nice house with a housekeeper that came around most weekends. He went to private school. He had clean shoes, good posture, and a file at Gotham Academy that screamed ‘gifted, spoiled rich kid.’

He had friends. A structured, quiet life. One not built for capes and cowls.

And, annoyingly enough, he liked being Tim Drake.

But Gotham didn’t need Tim.

It needed Robin.

Luckily, Tim happened to know someone who fit the Robin profile almost perfectly.

Gritty background. Street instincts. Resourceful. Sharp. The kind of kid Bruce Wayne would take one look at and say, ‘Yes, this is exactly the kind of tragic teen I need for my ever-growing cult of traumatized children. One of us. One of us.’

That kid… Alvin Draper.

A street kid with no known family or connections and only a grainy security photo or two to his name. Practically designed in a lab to trigger Bruce’s savior complex.

Alvin Draper also happened to be Tim Drake.

All it took was a wig, colored contacts, a voice modulator he built from spare parts and spite, some layered hoodies to bulk up his frame, and a little Batcomputer rearranging courtesy of some late-night, anxiety-driven coding sessions. 

Tim became Alvin. Alvin became Robin.

And somehow, impossibly so, it worked. Which may be on account of the fact that Bruce had been running purely off of spite, grief and rage for months by the time Tim decided to intervene.

But a win is a win. 

Nightwing came home. Spoiler joined the fold.

His parents died.

Jason came back. Damian showed up.

Bruce 'died'.

Alvin got demoted. Became Red Robin.

Bruce came back.

And through it all, Tim remained. As Alvin. As Red Robin. As whoever they needed him to be.

~ ༝༚༝༚ ♡ ༝༚༝༚ ~

When Spoiler turned to him as they landed on a rooftop mid-patrol and asked, “How about I set you up with one of my friends?” he nearly fell off the building.

He quickly caught himself mid stumble as the blonde fired on, “There is this guy I study with - you ever heard of Tim Drake?”

Red Robin, aka Alvin Draper, as far as the Bat-Family knew, blinked behind his domino lenses. He mentally cycled through fifteen emergency exit strategies, and came up blank.

“...Tim Drake?” he echoed, dumbly.

“Yeah,” Steph said, balancing on the ledge like it was a tightrope, “My friend. Kinda nerdy, kinda cute. Looks like he’s permanently stressed about finals. You two would get along.”

Alvin was, in fact, very well-acquainted with Tim Drake. Had been for… well, his entire life.

“I… uh wait, what?”

“You’re both my friends,” Steph continued, adjusting her mask,  “He has helped me with research stuff, and you’ve got that whole ‘broody vengeance cryptid’ vibe. I figured, lunch or something. Introduce you guys.”

Red Robin’s brain promptly short-circuited.

She wanted to introduce Alvin to Tim. Meaning, she wanted him to meet… himself.

There were no protocols for this. No contingency plans. No scripts. Only the slow, sinking horror of a house of cards about to collapse under its own ridiculous architecture.

“You want me to meet him?” he asked, carefully.

“Yeah? I think you’d click.”

Tim, still Red Robin, still Alvin, did not want to click with himself.

He had never allowed Alvin Draper to meet Tim Drake. Not publicly. Definitely not in Stephanie Brown’s presence. Which was a problem, because Steph had the persistence of a raccoon with a crowbar and a locked fridge.

She hadn’t connected the dots between his two lives because Tim had gone full spy drama from day one. Custom Batcomputer scripts. Deleted records. Rewritten footprints.

He knew he was starting to get too complacent with how well everything had been going lately. He had even started staying at the manor every Sunday for brunch in Alvin’s civvies. Curses! This was terrible, awful - a complete mess of his own creation. 

So, Tim saw two options:

• Tell the truth – Risk emotional fallout, trust issues, and a full-blown identity crisis across the entire Wayne Family and Co.
  
  
• Lie (badly) - Which he had already committed to the moment he opened his mouth.

“Actually…” Red Robin said, with the confidence of a man speedrunning a string of terrible life decisions, “We’ve already met.”

Steph blinked, “Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah. Kind of. Uh… we dated.”

Silence.

A siren howled in the distance. Somewhere, a dog barked. Time slowed.

“You! Wait… you dated Tim Drake?” Steph repeated, expression frozen somewhere between fascinated and horrified.

“Briefly,” Red Robin said, committing to the lie like a man diving headfirst into traffic, “It didn’t work out.”

Steph’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

“Oh my god,” she said, voice pitched somewhere between a whisper and a scream, “He’s your ex?”

“I mean... yeah?” Red Robin offered, praying for spontaneous combustion.

Steph stared. The wind tugged at her cape, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“You dated Tim Drake,” she said again, like she could manifest an alternate timeline where that sentence actually made sense.

“Like, dated dated? As in dates? Like, ‘Friday night, do you want to split an appetizer’ dates?”

Red Robin nodded, mock solemnly. 

“We tried Italian once,” he said flatly, “He doesn’t like olives.”

Steph looked devastated, “Tim doesn't like olives?”

“I know,” he sighed, screaming at himself in his head to just shut up already, “He said they were too salty. I said that was the point.”

She groaned and flopped down onto the ledge, legs swinging, “God, that’s such a Tim thing to say.”

Red Robin sat beside her, hands clasped between his knees, mentally calculating the odds of faking his death in the next 30 seconds.

But Steph was watching him now. Really watching. Not partner-on-patrol watching. More like suspicious-Bat-vigilante-who-smells-a-lie watching.

Tim hated that.

“It was brief,” he said, already sketching out three new identities in his mind, “Civil. Mutually agreed-upon breakup. Very boring.”

Steph narrowed her eyes, “Tim doesn’t do ‘boring’. He does color-coded itinerary binders and psychological compatibility charts.”

“Exactly why we broke up,” he said quickly, leaning too hard into the lie now, “We were... incompatible.”

Steph looked stricken, “I was going to set you two up. Like, on purpose.”

The horror in her voice would’ve been funny if Tim wasn’t actively dying inside his own cowl.

Gotham churned beneath them, noisy and grim. A chopper swept overhead. Somewhere in the distance, shouting. Always shouting.

He scrubbed a hand down his face, “Can we maybe circle back to this conversation in, say, never? We’ve got a patrol route.”

“Unbelievable,” Steph muttered, shaking her head, “You really are as weird as him.”

The silence stretched between them, taut and awkward, until Steph finally stood and started walking away, across the roof.

Tim allowed himself one second - just one - to quietly panic.

Then he followed her, cape dragging behind like a shadow that no longer belonged to him.

He silently prayed to everything he could think of that there would be no way this would come back and bite him in the ass later.

~ ༝༚༝༚ ♡ ༝༚༝༚ ~

It had been an entire week since the rooftop incident. Steph hadn't mentioned anything after patrol to Alvin nor when Tim had met up with her for their normal study sessions. He had foolishly assumed that that the blonde was going to simply brush off the entire interaction.

Oh what a silly thing to think.

Tim was sitting across from Steph at one of the tables in Gotham Public Library fingers flying over the keyboard of his laptop as he chugged his lukewarm coffee that Steph had so graciously gotten him. 

He fell into his usual rhythm as he normally did during these things, working on his school work switching to casework every now and again when he thought the other wouldn't notice. 

“You’ve been quiet lately,” Steph said, sipping her iced coffee with a paper straw. Simple conversation starter, he thought nothing of it as he responded. 

“Just busy,” Tim replied, “Assignments, backlogged projects, all that jazz.”

The girl nodded slowly. Quiet for a moment.  Single moment before-

“Do you know an Alvin Draper?”

Tim’s soul left his body as he spluttered.

“I hate him.”

The bitterness of this statement made Steph pause and even made Tim slightly shocked.

Did he hate himself? Does hating your own alias count as self hate? What even is his life? Wait - no this is not the time for this crisis. Later.

“You hate him?” Steph raised a brow - dammit she hung around Alfred too much.

“Uh yeah. Messy break up. Complicated situation.”

“Really? Well I’m friends with Alvin and he said that the breakup between you both was mutual,” she said, casually, as she placed her latte off to the side focusing more attention and pressure on the already panicking teen.

“Yeah well it wasn’t. Far from it,” he blurted, “He broke up with me. Over text. On my birthday…”

Tim internally winced cause damn did he make Alvin sound like an ass…

The blonde’s mouth dropped open a flash of anger igniting behind her eyes, “… Wait when did you both break up?”

Tim Drake did not, historically, make good decisions under pressure. 

“Last year,” the teen said quickly as he hunched further over his laptop wanting this conversation to hurry up and die. He silently wished a rogue attack would break out and save him from this situation.

Instead of Steph analyzing every word he said like he thought she would, the girl stands abruptly and slams her hands down on the table, shouting; “That bastard!”

This earns her a few disgruntled glares from the other people in the library as well as some shushing her as she plops back down in her chair not looking the least bit sorry as she hisses out a pissed;

“Did he know?”

Tim stares at her for a full minute only able to let out a small, ‘huh?’ in response. His friend continues, “About your parents.”

Oh. Oh no. It appears Tim had forgotten one small detail that made Alivn look even more like a dick than he already did. The teen quickly reassured Steph that it was fine and Alvin probably didn't even know his parents died when he broke up with him. He practically pleaded for her to drop the topic so they could get back to studying.

The other huffed but reluctantly decided to relent tho the look in her eyes suggested this was anything but over. 

Ah… Oh well current crisis averted; it's Alvin’s problem now.

~ ༝༚༝༚ ♡ ༝༚༝༚ ~

Jason and Alvin stand across from each other. Alvin, focused but calm, adjusts his gloves while Jason cracks his knuckles, a smirk crossing his face. It had been weeks since the two were able to spar so the boy was definitely looking forward to this.

Without warning the older male lunges forward a blur of motion. Playing dirty was just his style.

There is no conversation as the two spar. Jason is a flurry of punches, each aimed to take Red Robin off balance. Alvin counters, stepping aside just enough for Jason’s fist to graze past his ribs. He grabs Jason’s arm mid-punch, twisting it with precision to force him off-balance.

The two exchange a series of quick strikes - timing perfect, bodies moving with speed and grace, the sound of punches landing and being blocked echoing in the cave.

Jason steps back, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead, his grin never fading, “Alright, kid. Let’s see if you can take a hit, huh?”

Then in the blink of an eye, he throws a punch at Alvin’s face - a decoy. The vigilantes' reflexes are sharp; he dodges to the side. But Jason’s other fist follows almost instantly, landing square in his ribcage. ‘Alvin’ stumbles, breath escaping sharply.

 “Nice one... I didn’t see that coming,” Alvin grins, but there's a hint of frustration in his voice. He rubs his ribs where the blow landed.

Before Jason can retort, a sudden movement catches both of their attention from the shadows. A figure emerges, moving with speed and precision - Stephanie - her movements almost silent. Guided by palpable anger

In a flash, Stephanie swoops in, a well-placed punch to Alvin’s jaw knocking him off balance. She shouts something as his head snaps back with the force of the blow, and before he can recover, she’s already on him, using his moment of confusion to wrap her arms around his neck, locking him in a chokehold.

“You asshole!” She seethes as she keeps him in the chokehold.

Jason just chuckles and shakes his head sitting down on the bench not offering any help just simply watching the on coming shitshow. 

‘Alvin’ struggles for a moment, then shifts his weight, planting his feet firmly on the ground. With a sudden motion, he sweeps his leg behind hers, sending both of them crashing to the mat. Alvin immediately rolls and springs to his feet, panting eyes widened with confusion as he rubs his aching jaw.

“Steph! What the hell man–?!”

But the girl doesn't let up as she sends a barrage of punches his way, each one fueled by anger and frustration.

“You broke up with him over text?! What is wrong with you? On his birthday? Do you even understand how mad I am right now? Tim is a good guy! How dare you–”

At least that is what Tim thought she was saying he was too busy trying to avoid getting his face pummeled into oblivion. He could faintly hear Jason make his escape like the traitor he is. Tim had to think quick less he became the victim of Steph wrath.

He called out a jumbled, “TimcheatedonmewithhisfriendBrenard!” as he held his arms up in a defensive position, eyes clenched shut as he braced for the next punch only for it to never come. As soon as he opened his eyes he saw that Steph had stormed off presumably to confront Tim about this…

Someone just put him down already, jeez. 

~ ༝༚༝༚ ♡ ༝༚༝༚ ~

Despite Tim deciding to try and lay low for a while it seemed like that would not be happening anytime soon. Steph was pacing around his apartment like a caged animal as she listened to Tim’s made up side of the situation that didn't even exist in the first place. 

“Okay… so let me get this straight,” Steph said finally while Tim laid on his couch and continued staring at the ceiling fan praying it would fall on him, “You didn't cheat on Alvin. Brenard is just a friend but Alvin didn't believe you.”

Tim hums, closing his eyes simply not having the energy to go on. He really debated on just revealing his identity but couldn't bring himself to destroy his web of lies he worked oh so hard on.

Steph sighs and flops onto the couch next to him rubbing a hand down her face and shaking her head, “You two are so messy.”

~ ༝༚༝༚ ♡ ༝༚༝༚ ~

Nothing that had happened so far could have compared to the absolute horror of what happened on Saturday night. Red Robin had just finished a patrol with Damian showered and made his way through the halls of the manor to the safety of the room he would normally sleep in.

He was intercepted by Steph who slipped a brochure into his hand without a word.

A glossy, pastel brochure.

For couples therapy.

Alvin stared at the pamphlet like it was radioactive.

“You’re clearly not over him,” Steph said with the complete and utter confidence of a woman who was not aware she was emotionally waterboarding her friend with his own lies, “And I think you’d feel better if you had some closure.”

“I have closure,” he responded, a bit too defensive for anyone to believe, not even himself.

“I dunno. You talk about him a lot–”

“That’s because you ask about him a lot!”

Steph smirked, “See? You’re still mad. You need closure.”

“I need to fake my death,” he muttered, not able to argue with the madness he created anymore.

~ ༝༚༝༚ ♡ ༝༚༝༚ ~

Tim absentmindedly stared at the swirling dark liquid in his coffee cup as he tried to focus on what Stephanie was talking about. Gotham Public Library was usually the one place he could get some quiet to think... but today, nothing felt right.

He had been working up the courage to do this for weeks. Ever since that godforsaken night in the Batcave, when his entire web of lies started unraveling piece by piece. He could feel it in the air. Steph was this close to figuring out that Alvin Draper wasn’t a different person, but... well, him. Her suspicious, knowing gaze made him feel like he was slowly suffocating under the weight of his own deception.

And now, he was tired.

Tired of pretending. Tired of overthinking. Tired of living in the constant fear that one day she’d corner him and crack the case wide open.

“Steph, we need to talk,” he said, voice tight. He could already hear the heavy sigh that would come from her once she figured it out.

Steph furrowed her brow, “Yeah, I know. You've been super weird lately.”

He was starting to feel like he was standing on a ledge, the wind howling around him as he faced the drop. There was no point in dragging it out anymore. He had to say it.

“Look,” he began, feeling the warmth of the coffee seep through the paper cup and into his palms, “I… I lied.”

She blinked. Then blinked again. 

“What?”

“Okay, not lied, I guess. But I sort of omitted some things. And by 'some things,' I mean... well, I’m actually Alvin Draper.”

Steph’s eyes widened. The silence between them stretched so long, Tim thought he might just fade away into the walls.

“Wait, wait, wait.” She leaned forward, her hands gripping the edge of the table. “So... all this time, you’ve been… Alvin?”

“Yeah. I am Alvin. I created him. He is me. And I… am him?" Tim paused, running a hand through his hair, “I’m sorry. This is a mess.”

Steph stared at him for a long time. Then, without warning, she burst into laughter.

Tim blinked in confusion, “What?”

“Oh my God. No way– I just thought that you both were just, like... really bad at being in relationships.”

He couldn’t help but let out a breath of relief, “You’re not... mad?”

“Mad? Oh, no, no, I’m not mad,” She wiped a tear from her eye, “You’ve basically been a walking soap opera for weeks. Seriously?” 

She leaned back in her chair, looking absolutely delighted, “Tim Drake, master of espionage, best hacker in Gotham… but can’t hide a basic identity for five minutes? How did you hide it from everyone else for so long? You folded like a camper chair as soon as I started poking around!”

Tim groaned, his face sinking into his hands, “This is so embarrassing.”

Tim buried his face in his hands again, but this time, he was laughing. The tension, the stress, the never-ending anxiety of hiding himself — it felt like it had just melted away.

“You’re... you’re really not mad,” he repeated, still in disbelief.

“Mad? Nah. This is like... the best thing that’s happened to me all week,” She grinned.

Tim is silent for a moment before he breaks out in small chuckles lined with relief as Steph joins him. The dissolve into a comfortable silence and for the first time in three years Tim can breath freely.

“...”

“...”

“Wanna bet on how long it takes the others to notice?”

“Fuck yea.”