Chapter Text
Peter gets lost in Gotham three separate times before noon.
In his defense, the city is built like somebody actively hated urban planning.
The streets fold into each other at impossible angles, elevated trains scream overhead every twenty minutes, and every building looks like it’s either haunted or hiding classified government secrets. Peter has seen at least four gargoyles that were definitely moving earlier and one child casually eating cotton candy outside a crime scene.
At this point, he’s choosing not to ask questions.
Three weeks in Gotham and he still hasn’t adjusted to the atmosphere of the city. New York had always been loud, alive in this constant kinetic way, but Gotham feels heavy. The air itself seems exhausted. Even during the daytime the skyline sits under layers of gray clouds like the city is perpetually deciding whether or not to rain.
The Gotham Tech and Engineering Expo is being held downtown inside a convention center large enough that it could have its own zip code. Peter only came because the entry was free and with the hope that maybe there would be something here that could help him get back home.
Unsurprisingly, the convention center is warm, crowded, and full of engineers, which makes it the closest thing to comfort Peter has found since falling into this dimension.
There is something comforting about being surrounded by people who care too much about very specific things. People arguing over circuitry, waving their hands around while discussing coding languages, complaining passionately about corporate shortcuts in product design. It reminds him of college expos back home, of ESU labs and cramped internship workshops where everyone looked vaguely exhausted and overcaffeinated but deeply alive.
Gotham’s version is… different, admittedly.
Mostly in the sense that there are at least four armed security guards stationed beside a robotics booth and one of the sponsors appears to manufacture military drones under the branding of “urban peacekeeping solutions,” which is frankly a terrifying combination of words.
Still, it is familiar enough that Peter finds himself relaxing for the first time since arriving in this universe. Well. Relaxing as much as someone can while dimensionally stranded.
He was adrift in a sea of experimental tech. Somewhere on the ground floor, a man was losing a shouting match with an AI-assisted espresso machine that had reportedly tried to psychoanalyze his childhood trauma before frothing his milk.
Peter still felt vaguely threatened by the machine’s existence.
Adjusting the fraying strap of his messenger bag, Peter retreated toward the upper levels where the crowds began to thin. He was starting to feel a tingle at the back of his head. It wasn't quite his Spidey-sense, more like a localized migraine caused by the sheer amount of "revolutionary" tech that was, frankly, garbage.
He stopped in front of a suspended kinetic battery prototype, its internal components rotating behind reinforced glass with a low, rhythmic hum.
“Oh, wow,” he breathed, the headache receding as his brain instinctively began to pull the machine apart. The energy retention system was breathtakingly aggressive. Most firms would have bulked the casing to handle the heat, but this team had clearly fought a bloody war against their own budget to keep it this elegant.
Then his eyes tracked to the manifold configuration, and his face scrunched. “Oh, no. No, no. Why would you do that?”
“The universal lament of engineers everywhere,” a voice remarked from his right.
Peter startled so violently his shoulder clipped the edge of the display with a hollow thwack. “Wh—!”
“Easy there,” the stranger said, looking unfairly amused.
Handsome was the first word Peter’s brain supplied. The guy was tall, with dark hair that possessed a sort of calculated messiness Peter usually associated with people who didn't have to worry about rent. He wore a crisp suit, but he was holding his coffee cup with the white-knuckled grip of someone who was on his fourth venti of the afternoon and was currently seeing in 4K.
“You okay?” the stranger asked, a playful, caffeine-fueled glint in his eyes.
“My dignity is currently a smudge on that glass, but physically? I’ll survive,” Peter muttered, rubbing his shoulder.
“It happens to the best of us.”
Peter eyed the man’s polished silhouette suspiciously. “See you say that, but you don’t seem like someone who’s ever walked into a glass door in your life.”
“I haven’t,” the man admitted, his grin widening into something surprisingly teasing. “I usually just trip over flat surfaces when I’m reading schematics. It’s a much more specialized form of clumsiness.”
Peter let out a genuine laugh, the tension in his shoulders dropping. “Okay, fair. I’m Peter.”
“Tim,” the man said, shifting his coffee to offer a hand.
Tim’s grip is warm, rougher than Peter expected. There are calluses across his palm that don't match the expensive watch or the WayneTech badge clipped lazily near his jacket pocket. Interesting.
The handshake was brief but firm, and Tim didn't pull away immediately. Instead, he leaned into Peter’s space, nodding toward the battery with an unexpected intensity. “So, talk to me. What’s the ‘Oh no’?”
“The manifold,” Peter said, the technical irritation bubbling back up. “The airflow distribution is gorgeous on paper, but it’s a total fantasy once you factor in the Gotham climate. The casing seals are too rigid. You’ll get microscopic fractures within the first winter because of the salt-air crystallization.”
Tim went incredibly still, looking like he was processing the math in real-time. For a heartbeat, the sleepy amusement faded from his face, replaced by the unmistakable look of someone mentally rebuilding the entire system from scratch.
“Wait,” Tim said, stepping closer, his eyes darting across the rotating core. “If the crystallization occurs at the seal interface, you’re suggesting the thermal expansion would exceed the tolerance of the carbon weave?”
“Exactly!” Peter’s hands started moving, tracing the lines of the prototype through the glass. “You’re treating the casing as a static variable, but in this humidity, it’s a dynamic one. It’s going to fight the internal heat until the whole thing just... snaps.”
Tim’s face lit up with a sudden, razor-sharp excitement. “You saw the stress-test failure point from a visual inspection? We’ve been arguing about that in the lab for three weeks, and the lead dev keep insisting that the weight-to-power ratio justifies the rigid seal.”
No one’s given Peter this much attention in a long while, and he totally does not shove his hands into his hoodie pockets before he could start fidgeting visibly.
He clears his throat. “So do you work for WayneTech or are you just weirdly invested in battery technology?”
Tim lifted an eyebrow. “What gave it away?”
“You said ‘we’ earlier.”
“Maybe I’m stealing company secrets.”
“You’re dressed like the company secrets.”
Tim nearly choked on his coffee.
Peter looked unbearably pleased with himself for approximately three seconds before remembering he was flirting. Possibly.
Accidentally.
Probably accidentally.
“The badge was also kind of a giveaway.”
Tim looks down at his own chest like he forgot it existed.
“…in my defense, I haven’t slept in like thirty hours.”
That wrangles a smile from Peter. It’s alarming to him that he’s been smiling more in this conversation than he has in the whole time since he’s been stuck in this dimension.
“Also, your lead dev is a madman,” Peter said. “Theoretically, you could fix it by replacing the carbon weave with ceramic-doped polymer. It’d absorb the thermal stress without sacrificing the conductivity.”
Tim stared at him, his coffee completely forgotten. “The ceramic doping would provide a buffer for the crystallization. Peter, that’s... that’s actually brilliant! We were looking at high-tensile alloys, but the polymer elasticity is the missing link.” He looked like he wanted to hug Peter or perhaps drag him to a whiteboard. “Most people just stand here and say ‘cool blue lights.’”
“Most people have actual, well-balanced lives,” Peter quipped.
“That feels unrelated,” Tim countered, his grin now wide and uninhibited.
“It’s really not.”
They spiraled into a debate for the next ten minutes, a rapid-fire exchange about oscillation frequencies and controlled inefficiency that left both of them breathless and grinning. Tim was keeping up, and not just keeping up, but pushing back, his questions getting more complex and his excitement more visible with every sentence.
Then, the world outside their bubble intruded.
A muffled, rhythmic thump-thump-thump echoed from some distance away honed in all on Peter’s superhearing. The heavy, unmistakable sound of a Gotham PD tactical frequency chirping on a nearby security guard’s radio, followed by the distant, shrill scream of a specialized siren.
Peter’s Spidersense was buzzing. It gave him a sharp, electric spike at the base of his skull. Trouble. Close. Too close for Spiderman to be hanging out at a tech expo like nothing’s wrong, like there are no people who don’t need his help.
“I— uh,” Peter stammered, the animated joy vanishing instantly. He looked toward the exit, his posture shifting into something guarded and tense. “I actually just remembered I have a... thing. A very urgent thing.”
Tim’s expression shifted from excitement to immediate concern. “Is everything okay? You looked like you just saw a ghost.”
“Just Gotham, you know?” Peter said, offering a weak, jagged smile. He stepped back, his eyes already tracking the quickest route to a window or a roof. “This was amazing, Tim. Seriously. Best conversation I’ve had in months. But I gotta go before the—uh—traffic gets bad.”
“Wait, Peter, I didn't even get your—”
“Ceramic polymer, Tim! Don’t let the lead dev talk you out of it!” Peter called out, already half-blending into the crowd.
Tim stood there, clutching his lukewarm coffee and staring at the spot where Peter had been. He felt like he’d just been hit by a very intelligent, and now that he thought about it, a very mysterious whirlwind.
“Either that guy just rewired your brain chemistry,” a voice drawled from behind him, “or you’re having a stroke.”
Tim didn't even turn around. “Can you not materialize behind me like a Victorian ghost, Steph?”
Stephanie leaned against the display case, a smirk playing on her lips. “No can do. It’s in the job description.”
“Oh, wow. It’s bad. He looks like he just discovered a new element,” Duke wandered over followed by a scowling Damian, clutching a stack of brochures and a free WayneTech frisbee.
Damian squinted at Tim like one would a foul-smelling subway puddle. “Drake spoke to one attractive civilian and lost all higher brain function. It was embarrassing to witness from the mezzanine.”
Tim’s ears turned a sudden, scorched-earth red. He opened his mouth to retort, but for a second, only a faint, panicked sound came out. He pointed a finger at Damian.
“He wasn’t— it wasn't about that,” Tim sputtered, finally turning to his siblings. He tried to scowl, but his eyes were still bright. “He identified the structural failure in the kinetic core in under sixty seconds. Visually. Do you have any idea how high his spatial reasoning would have to be? It was... it was impressive.”
He cleared his throat, his gaze darting to the corner of the room. “The fact that he was cute is completely irrelevant.”
Steph smirked knowingly but Duke blinked, his posture straightening. “Wait, actually? That manifold issue you’ve been losing sleep over?”
“And then he told me that perfect efficiency is ‘violating universal laws’ and suggested a ceramic-doped polymer fix,” Tim added, a helpless grin returning to his face.
Steph groaned, throwing her hands up. “There it is. God forbid you meet someone normal who wants to talk about movies or, I don't know, feelings. No, you find the one guy in Gotham who talks in equations.”
“He was incredible,” Tim muttered, glancing back at the crowd one last time, taking out a tablet tucked in his suit blazer, starting on bypassing three different security protocols to pull the high-definition feed from the overhead cameras.
"So that’s our guy," Steph commented, leaning over to look at the grainy image of a brown-haired boy in a faded t-shirt.
"Drake, he’s avoiding every line of sight in the room instinctively," Damian huffed, inspecting the boy’s movements with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “He has the temperament of a cornered animal. Or a corporate spy.”
“Or just a guy who’s lived in Gotham for more than a week,” Duke pointed out.
"I don’t think so," Tim said, a small, almost manic grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watched the footage of Peter’s clumsy escape. "He’s brilliant and he’s terrified of being noticed.”
"So... you're stalking him?" Duke asked, only half-joking.
Tim finally looked up, his eyes wide and burning with a familiar, obsessive light. “He’s definitely something,” Tim said. “And I’m definitely finding him again.”