Archive of Our Own

Carmichael Creedy hadn’t planned to be on the roof of Gotham’s Plaza Hotel at midnight on a random Friday in April, but nothing seems to be going the way he expected tonight. So here he is: knees tucked to his chest, ass going numb on the concrete, shivering in the ever-present damp chill of this godforsaken city and realizing he has no idea how he’s going to get off the roof, when the air shifts around him and a literal superhero drops out of the sky.

He feels the arrival first, a sudden gust kicking up dust and ancient cigarette butts and making him sneeze. And then he rubs his nose and lifts his head just in time to see—he blinks, hard—Superboy come to a halt inches above the roof.

Superboy, who has one hand on his hip and is saying: “You’re early, I thought you said y—yyyou’re not, uh, who I was expecting to see.”

And all right, Carm is a bit tipsy—he’d taken the scotch when it was offered, earlier, not caring what else might be in it, just needing to steady his hands—but he’s pretty sure he didn’t get dosed with anything. Which means that’s probably the actual, literal Superboy hovering five feet away from him.

“What,” Carm says. It’s dark, obviously, but Superboy catches the moonlight like a beacon, floating just outside all the shadows crisscrossing the roof. He has his hands on his hips, the super-shield or whatever it’s called practically beaming off his chest. Even from here Carm can see that his cheekbones are like, crazy defined. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, I could ask you the same question.” Superboy crosses his arms. “This isn’t exactly a popular hangout spot for—normal people. Especially at this hour.”

Carm lifts an arm, waving at the bare roof around them. “Does it look like I’m here to hang out?”

“Well, that doesn’t make it any better,” Superboy says. He narrows his eyes. “And you’re not here because this is one of the few camera dead zones in the city? Rooftop-wise.”

“No,” Carm says slowly. “Also, that’s ridiculous. This is the Plaza. Surely they have security cameras.”

Oh, god, there’s going to be a record of his breakdown. That realization is nearly enough to bring on actual tears, but he manages to hold them back because Superboy is still right there, for some reason.

“Nice try. The cameras have been dead for over a year,” Superboy says, giving Carm a suspicious look.

“Why would I know that?” Carm says. Honestly, maybe he is hallucinating. “Why do you know that?”

He swears he can see maybe-hallucination-Superboy blush. “Hero reasons,” Superboy says, and clears his throat. “So. Why are you up here?”

Carm feels his teeth grind together. His subconscious is really so fucked for conjuring up Superboy right now. “None of your business.”

“Hey, whatever,” Superboy says. “It’s just kind of cold, is all, and I doubt that jacket has thermal lining.”

Carm’s jacket is designer denim that he got for $40 at the thrift store behind the Blüdhaven church that was shut down for some cult activity a few months ago. He ate nothing but ramen for two weeks after buying it. It has a small coffee stain on the cuff. It does not have thermal lining. He’d finally gotten the vague smoke smell out of it, but now it kind of smells like cigars, and he is not going to be sick about that in front of Superboy on top of everything else about this whole situation.

God, of course he’d (maybe) see Superboy again when he’s in possibly the most pathetic state he’s been in his life, including 1) that time he got kidnapped and tossed in some random farm cellar for a whole day, 2) the time he got sick at his own birthday party and spent half the night vomiting over the side of his father’s yacht and no one except Brian even noticed, and 3) the first time he bathed in a rest stop bathroom with a pack of wet wipes. Carm has always been a bit vain about his looks, he knows, but this outfit would make even his old fashion-illiterate classmates weep. The pants aren’t even tailored.

“My jacket is great,” he says. “It’s Armani.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” Superboy’s eyes flicker over him, then across the rest of the roof. The wind whistles a little around the giant exhaust fans. Somewhere in the distance a siren starts wailing. “You should still probably leave.”

“You should probably leave,” Carm snaps. “I was here first.”

Superboy holds up his empty hands. “Yeah, okay. I’m not here to argue. If you say you’re good, then I’m out of here.” He hesitates. “You sure you’re good?”

“I’m fine!” Carm says shrilly. Nothing about this conversation makes sense, like it could possibly be happening here, now, to Carmichael Creedy on a random Friday night in Gotham. Though, he hasn’t been back to Gotham in…over a year, now, or a bit longer, so maybe the city is just meting out all the bullshit he missed out on at once. Superboy on the roof. The client on the thirty-fourth floor. The Metropolis Meteors in the lobby—

“Okay,” Superboy is saying, starting to rise back toward the sky. “Well, try not to freeze, then.”

Carm squints after him and decides Superboy does, in fact, look real. He’s taller than the last time Carm saw him in person, years ago, and he lost his original leather jacket at some point. The new one has subtler spikes over the shoulders, which Carm thinks is probably a smart choice stylistically, because Superboy’s shoulders are broad enough that he doesn’t need the extra help. His hair is still curly, still longer on top, and there are at least three studs glinting along the shell of his ear. He’s grown into everything that came across as a little too loud and a little too much about his teenage self, and Carm is once again in danger of bursting into tears as Superboy turns in midair to leave.

There’s a new Superboy sometimes, an obviously younger one who popped up when the original was gone for a while, but this one is still the Superboy in Carm’s mind. Kind of seared into his mind as Superboy, actually, because he’s around Carm’s age and back when Carm was sixteen and Superboy was presumably sixteen-or-so, Superboy was very publicly filmed kissing a boy. Kissing Tim Drake, of all people, which Carm couldn’t let go of for months until he realized maybe, for him, it wasn’t about who Superboy kissed but that he had kissed a boy at all, and people still loved him.

(Even if Tim Drake had apparently broken up with him, people still loved Superboy. And Carm only had further proof that there was clearly something wrong with Tim Drake.)

Which—hang on a minute.

“Wait,” he says, uncurling enough to crane his neck after Superboy. “No way. Don’t tell me you were here to meet Tim Drake.”

Superboy freezes, then drops back down to the roof. “What?” he says, and Carm has a feeling that if Superboy were his sixteen-or-so self right now, his voice would’ve squeaked halfway through the word.

“Dude,” Carm says, shocked out of his own despair for the first time since setting foot in the hotel. “Are you serious?”

“No,” Superboy says, and his posture relaxes with an easy laugh. “Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

But Carm heard that almost-squeak, and he’s not a complete idiot. “Oh, you’re just sneaking around a”—he unwraps his arms to do air quotes—“‘camera dead zone’ in Gotham planning to meet someone else? Don’t try to tell me you’re here for a lover’s tryst with Batman.”

Superboy audibly chokes on whatever he was going to say next. “Um. No. But that doesn’t mean I’m…”

Carm arches an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Look, I don’t know if you’re delusional or just desperate, but Tim Drake is basically engaged now.”

He sees pictures of them sometimes, usually in the tabloids. Tim Drake and his boyfriend, some no-name farm boy (Conner, his name is Conner) with soft curls and a baffling tendency to talk about dairy cows and mispronounce Yves Saint Laurent in interviews. It’s almost like he thinks the whole thing is funny, even though the tabloids report every rare quote they get from him and Tim Drake with breathless urgency. They’ve been together for years, disgustingly and obviously into each other even through the relative privacy they manage to keep. Last month Carm used the wifi at work to open Instagram and saw a post from Tim Drake’s personal account pop up on his feed: a rare selfie, Conner pressing a kiss to Tim’s temple, their faces half out of frame and almost artfully blurred, the whole thing radiating this casual, dreamlike quality.

Brian had liked the post. So had 20 thousand other people, but Instagram shows people you follow first, so. Can saw that Brian liked it. Which isn’t something he thought about more than once. A day, at least.

“Tim is not engaged!” Superboy says, way too fervently.

Carm gives him a pitying look. “Dude.”

“No one has proposed yet,” Superboy insists. “They haven’t even—I mean, I doubt they’ve seriously talked about it, they’re only twenty-two. Or so. Not that they wouldn’t get married, I mean, but maybe they’re not sure that’s even on the table, yet, like maybe they haven’t had that conversation, so it’s not like anything official has happened—”

Oh, god, this is sad. And here Carm thought he was the most pathetic guy on this rooftop right now.

“You can’t do this,” he tells Superboy seriously.

“Do…what?”

“Keep chasing after Tim Drake. You don’t. You don’t want to be someone’s secret, okay? Especially not someone like that.”

Superboy stares at him.

Carm waves a hand. “Like—some rich guy who thinks he can have it all, but won’t actually include you in that. You don’t have to settle for that, you’re literally a superhero. That should be obvious.” Honestly, if a superhero can’t have a modicum of self-worth, what chance did the rest of them have?

Superboy cocks his head, just enough for Carm to catch the motion against the glittering skyline behind him. “Aren’t you some rich guy?”

A beat. Carm is turned into the wind; he can hear the breeze in both ears. That’s something he learned in sailing camp, years ago, how to figure out the direction of the wind. Carm was always good at it—good at knowing which way he was supposed to go. Good at following.

(Brian had been at camp with him, the second summer he went. Carmichael had insisted. They were seventeen. Superboy had been caught kissing a boy six months ago and everyone still loved him. Carmichael sat in the cockpit of his boat and watched Brian lean out over the water, shoulders brown under the sun, and thought about Superboy as he let his ankle rest against Brian’s leg on the deck.)

“So I know what I’m talking about, don’t I?” Carm says. Then: “Wait, you remember me?”

Superboy shrugs and taps his temple. “Kinda photographic up in here. Also, Tim mentioned you a few times? Creedy, right?”

“Tim Drake mentioned me?”

“Apparently you pulled some sort of senior prank that accidentally foiled a Mad Hatter scheme…?”

Carm groans and buries his face in his knees again. That had been embarrassing, especially once his dad’s lawyers had gotten involved. He’d forgotten it quickly enough, though, in the rush of graduation and everything that came after, that summer.

(Two days since graduation, high and free and alone with Brian in the Harrows’ big house, the afternoon stretching endlessly in front of them—)

“Aw,” Superboy is saying. “If it helps, I thought it was kind of funny. I also thought your name was kinda funny, no offense.”

“Why were you even talking to Tim Drake about that,” Carm says into his jeans. Despite the chill there’s sweat still drying at the small of his back, prickling. Annoying. “This is what I mean, see, that happened like a year after you broke up. It’s pathetic to still be hanging on to a guy like that. You’re not supposed to be pathetic.”

“Ah…” Superboy says. “I mean, he and I can still be friends, right?”

“No!” Carm lifts his head to give Superboy what he hopes is a very incredulous look. He isn’t sure how good Superboy’s night vision is; Carm read a list of his known powers in Teen Vogue once (Brian’s sister left it lying around, all right) but he can’t remember much beyond something about telekinesis. Other than the obvious flying and super-strength and all that, of course. And not, as it turns out, super-social-sense. “You can’t just be friends after—you know—whatever you were. And if he told you that, he’s either lying or he must not have liked you all that much.” Carm wipes his arm roughly across his nose. The cold’s getting to him after all. “If he really liked you he wouldn’t be able to stand even looking at you after letting you go. So.”

(So what is this? Brian asked, right after. Carmichael was in Brian’s bed, his shirt off, skin slowly cooling under the AC vent. Brian leaned against his closet door, hair damp and curling from the shower, expression calm. Expectant. He was smiling, just a little, like he couldn’t help it.

What do you mean? Carmichael had asked, even though he knew.)

“Oh, wow,” Superboy says. “Uh.” He moves closer then, the toes of his boots settling on the concrete, and then the rest of him lowers to sort of crouch across from Carm. He’s balanced on the balls of his feet, keeping oddly still. Not needing to shift his weight. Probably 90% floating, Carm realizes, and gets irritated all over again that a guy who can float could still let some jerk like Tim Drake string him along. “There’s kind of a lot to unpack, there. But—”

“It’s just not a good look, is what I’m saying,” Carm adds before Superboy can work up to whatever platitude he was going to offer. Probably something noble and hero-y about not owing people things and not being owed in turn. “And if you are going to be someone’s sidepiece, you should at least be more discreet about it. People love you, but that’s—I mean, people talk. The tabloids would love that headline if they even thought it might be true. Don’t you have anyone managing PR for you?”

Superboy lets out a soft huff. “Oh, I do.”

“Then you should know that if Tim Drake is making you sneak around to see him, that’s bad news. It’s not like it’s because of his family.” Well, Carm doesn’t know about the dead Drakes’ stance on things, but Tim Drake has been in and out of the Wayne family orbit since high school, and Cassandra Wayne is definitely dating a woman. And aside from the fact that Tim is out already, Bruce Wayne was waving from a goddamn float at last summer’s Pride Parade. Until Condiment King crashed the party, anyway. “Which means he just doesn’t care enough. Or he’s a stupid coward who doesn’t want to fuck things up, so he tosses you aside because he—he can’t—”

His nose is running again. Carm swipes at it angrily.

“Hey,” Superboy says, and his voice is quieter this time. Softer. “I know I already asked, but. Are you okay?”

(Thiiiiis, Brian had said slowly, instead of calling Carmichael out on it. He gestured between them, and Carmichael let himself be distracted for a moment, watching Brian’s hand. He could still feel the ghost of it on his hip. Us? I mean, what comes next?

The cool air, which had been pleasant until then, suddenly felt like it was leeching all the warmth from Carmichael’s body. Something squirmed in his belly when Brian said us, low in his navel where his skin was still tacky with—

Carmichael sat up. His head took a minute to catch up with his body, fuzzy. Right. They’d been smoking before they—earlier—which was probably why he had just forgotten, for an hour, that the rest of the world still existed. That Brian, who was part of that world, wore his big stupid heart on his sleeve. That even if he was capable of being discreet, Brian was going to another city for college, where he would be very visibly a student athlete.

That most people still loved Superboy, but Carmichael’s father, very loudly, did not.

Carmichael reached for his shirt. Aww, Harrow, he said, was that your first time? Do I need to give you The Talk?

Shut up, Brian said mildly. Just, like. Are we doing it again? Rutgers isn’t so far away, so, if you—

Brian, Carmichael said, and then stopped. This wasn’t, he said, like—be for real.

Silence. A tiny divot formed between Brian’s eyebrows. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

Carmichael managed to get his shirt over his head. I gotta go, he said, and left.)

“Carmichael,” Superboy says when Carm doesn’t answer.

“I’m fine,” Carm rasps. “And it’s Carm, now. Or you can call me Carmichael, I guess, it doesn’t matter. You can call me whatever you want.”

“Carm,” Superboy says immediately, “are you okay?”

And it’s so nice of him. Superboy is just—not nice, actually. Carm grew up in Gotham’s upper crust; he knows the difference between nice and kind. Superboy is kind. Carm remembers that rescue at the farmhouse, how gently Superboy held Tim Drake. (Who apparently had cracked ribs, and it took Carm far too long to understand that he watched that happen and did nothing.) He remembers those Tiktok compilations he’d searched obsessively after the whole kiss incident, the way Superboy smiled at people—not the smile he had for cameras and journalists, but the one for people, this full and unguarded thing. He’s been in the press less often recently, but Carm still looks him up sometimes just to see if that smile is still there. And it always is.

“Listen,” Carm says. He’s thinking about that smile, and not thinking about Brian or room 3402. “I have an idea.”

Superboy raises his eyebrows.

“Don’t meet Tim Drake,” Carm says. He shakes his head, feeling his too-long hair resettle. It works best when it’s just a bit windswept-looking. There’s not much to be done about the rest of him, but he inherited good bone structure and he literally just showered, so it could be worse. “It won’t end well, you know it won’t. But I’m already here. And I’m like—I’m pretty attractive, under this jacket, and I won’t make any promises so I won’t even disappoint you. If you want to just get your rocks off and call it a day…” Carm spreads his hands. “I’m available.”

“Oh,” Superboy says. “Uh. No, thanks.”

“Oh my god,” Carm whispers, before letting out a mortified little wail and burying his face in his knees again.

“No offense,” he hears Superboy say, and he has the gall to sound sincere about it. “It’s just, I know I kind of have a reputation, but I don’t really do that.”

“No, because you’re too hung up on Tim fucking Drake,” Carm says between his teeth.

“Well…” Superboy says. “Even I wasn’t, you’re very clearly not okay.”

“I’m fine,” Carm shrieks, and promptly bursts into tears.

(The next day he booked himself a two-week trip to Iceland. He got back the day before he started the internship his dad set up, so it was understandable that he didn’t have time to see Brian before the start of Rutgers’ fall semester. And then things went how they always do, for people who go different ways at that age.

Only, Carm kept checking Brian’s instagram, even years later, even after Carm got disowned and dropped out of school and couldn’t afford a decent data plan for a while and spent those months in his car, picking up wifi at cafes and libraries until he finally got a somewhat steady job at Blüdhaven’s third-nicest gastropub. Brian’s instagram was a constant, during all that; he saw pictures of Brian in a grad cap at Rutgers and in a tux at his sister’s wedding and holding a Meteors cap after last year’s draft. He didn’t interact with them or anything, because it already felt like he was doing something wrong just by lurking, but it also kept him a bit more sane, he thinks. Knowing Brian’s life kept going the way it was supposed to.

So he knows what Brian looks like, now, his current haircut and his team colors and the way his shoulders fill out a shirt, which means when Carm crossed through the lobby of the Plaza Hotel twenty minutes ago—still tasting scotch on the back of his teeth, still jittery from adrenaline, because when his manager at the restaurant that’s almost certainly laundering money for one of Bludhaven’s organized crime syndicates said he knew of a possible side gig for him, it turns out Martin wasn’t talking about Carm’s little web design business but the more obvious kind of side gig that happens at someone’s hotel room after 10pm—and the thing was, even if Carm was stupid enough not to realize until he got here, he did still need the money—so after all that was said and done, and he was back in the lobby—he’d glanced up and seen a very familiar set of shoulders below a familiar haircut under a familiar ball cap over by the reception desk—

He doesn’t remember. He’d just found himself on the roof. Feeling the wind, being alone. Vaguely aware that the roof door had locked behind him, and finding that he didn’t care as much as he should, and feeling only vaguely scared about that, too.)

“Look,” Carm says when he’s regained control over himself. His throat aches, he can feel his heartbeat behind his eyes, and he finally lost his battle against crying, but his voice at least comes out somewhat steady. “Don’t you—” He hiccups. So much for that. “Don’t you have hero-ing you should go do? Or something?”

Superboy lets out a little hum. He’s moved closer sometime in the last minute of Carm’s hysterics, but not close enough to be uncomfortable. Just out of reach, but still there. “Do you have somewhere you can go?” Superboy asks. “That isn’t a roof.”

“Y-yeah,” Carm says, thinking of his car. It’s five blocks away because the Plaza charges $54 a night for parking. He still isn’t sure how he’s getting down there.

“Or someone you can call?” Superboy presses.

“I don’t need to call anyone.”

Something about the way he says it makes Superboy keep looking at him with that careful expression. “I know a few people, here,” Superboy says. “If you’ve had a rough night and need support, or someone to talk to—”

“I’m just having a breakdown!” Carm tells him. “It’s not that deep!”

“You’re having a breakdown forty-two stories high,” Superboy says, direct in a way Carm finds weirdly grounding.

It’s like something inside him deflates. “I’m not gonna jump,” he mutters.

“Good,” Superboy says evenly. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“The door just…locked behind me.”

Superboy glances toward the door on the other side of the roof. “Do you want a lift to the lobby?”

“No!” And oh, he absolutely fails to sound chill about that. Superboy is back to looking unconvinced. “No, I’ll just…stay here.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna be an option, bud.”

“And what gives you the right—” Carm starts, but then Superboy’s head tips up just as the back of Carm’s neck gives an ominous prickle.

“Rob,” Superboy says to something over Carm’s shoulder, “how long have you been there?”

Carm whirls around, overbalancing and scraping his palm on the concrete when he catches himself. He can’t see anyone among the bulky fans and satellite dishes, but he suddenly knows they’re not alone up here.

“Long enough,” a voice says, dry, and Carm jumps.

Rob, Superboy had said, and Carm frantically wonders if this is Robin. He tries to look for the outline of Robin’s swords—katanas, whatever they’re called—but he still can’t even make out the edge of a shadow. Even if it’s not Robin, though, it’s surely someone Bat-adjacent.

“Okay, so,” Superboy says. “Thirty minutes? I think he might need something to eat.”

“I don’t need anything,” Carm says, and he can hear the little whine in it but also can’t bring himself to care. He’s humiliated himself enough tonight already, and it’s not like it matters what one of Gotham’s weird cryptids thinks of him, anyway.

“…Fine,” the vigilante behind him says. “Thirty minutes.”

Carm doesn’t see anything move, but the prickle on his neck recedes a moment later.

“You’re hungry, right?” Superboy says. Something has relaxed in the set of his shoulders, and Carm feels a bit loose and dizzy himself, like it’s infectious. “You look hungry. Being on a roof for a while will do that to you.”

Are you stupid, the snarling thing in the back of Carm’s mind wants to say. I just propositioned you and I look like a mess and we just got stalked by a bat and you care if I’m hungry?

Shut up, he tells that part of himself, with more conviction than he thought he had in him right now, and says: “I could eat.”

“Hell yeah,” Superboy says. “Batburger time.”

◐

Superboy does, in fact, take them to a Batburger drive-thru. Carm’s shoulders relax slightly when the employee barely even blinks at Superboy floating outside the window, Carm clinging to his shoulders in what must be the world’s most awkward piggyback. Though, Carm thought he’d be hanging on for dear life, but it feels weirdly secure as they fly. Like there’s some invisible support around him.

“Hey,” he says when they touch down to eat at one of the little patio tables. Carm only ordered a side of french fries, his stomach too unsettled for much else, but his appetite is starting to stir at the smell. He pops one in his mouth. “Don’t you have like, telekinesis or something?”

Superboy lights up. “I am so glad you asked.”

◐

“I can just go now,” Carm says as he wads up his now-empty box of fries. Superboy has a takeout bag on the table in front of him, but he hasn’t opened it yet. “I can also pay you back. I, uh, have some cash on me.”

“Nah,” Superboy says. “We do have one more stop, though.”

After which, Carm’s fingers still greasy from the fries, Superboy flies him to an apartment building in the West End. There’s a window already open on the top floor, waiting for them.

And inside that window, sitting crosslegged on the couch and engrossed in something on his laptop screen, is Tim freaking Drake.

He looks up and snaps his laptop shut, watching calmly as Superboy sweeps inside and deposits a spluttering Carm on the edge of the living room carpet.

“This is our next stop?” Carm says, just as Tim tilts his head up at Superboy and says, “I got your message.”

“What message,” Carm demands, turning to Superboy. “What did you tell him?”

Superboy shrugs, giving him a wry grin. “Not much. Just that I ran into you, and it seemed like you could use a familiar face.”

“And of all the faces in the world, you picked Tim Drake?” Carm slaps a palm to his forehead. “My god, you need to get a grip.”

“Oh, come on now,” Tim says mildly. “I know you were raised to be a more gracious houseguest than that.”

Carm glares at him. “Like you don’t know what this is about.”

Tim actually looks a bit surprised by that. “Do I? Why don’t you enlighten me. You’re the one standing in my home, after all.”

“Be nice, Tim,” Superboy says, and Carm feels his own cheeks warm. “Also, I brought you a burger. Riddlerized.” Superboy holds up the takeout bag. “Apparently that’s an option now.”

Tim makes a face.

“I’ll just put it in the fridge,” Superboy says, and hovers away.

Tim lets out a put-upon sigh, like having a superhero personally bring him takeout is the world’s greatest burden, and sinks back onto the couch. “You can sit,” he tells Carm.

For lack of anything else to do, Carm lowers himself onto the edge of an armchair. It’s more comfortable than he expected; this whole apartment is more comfortable than he would’ve expected, honestly, even with the breeze through the still-open window. The Drake fortune might’ve gone belly-up, but Tim surely has access to Wayne cash—Carm would’ve bet on a giant penthouse suite with outsourced interior design, but this living room is relatively small by that standard, enough so that the open floor plan means Carm can still see Superboy over in the kitchen. There’s a bookshelf spilling over with board games in the corner, and a knit throw blanket over the back of the couch that clearly looks handmade. The dark wood coffee table, too, looks like it might be custom. My home, Tim said, and it actually feels like it.

He’s suddenly aware that it’s the first time he’s been in the same room as Tim since some museum charity gala a few years ago, and even then Tim had disappeared after the appetizer course. The old grandfather clock in the corner currently reads 1:35, but Tim doesn’t look like he was dragged out of bed for this. He’s dressed in some sort of athleisure, joggers and a technical shirt, though Carm can’t make out the brand. Probably some tiny, bespoke label. His hair is longer than it was in the last official pictures Carm saw, brushing the collar of his shirt, and there’s the shadow of a bruise under his jaw.

Carm only realizes he’s staring when Tim reaches up to tap the bruise with one finger. “Partner yoga,” he says. “I suggest never trying it with your siblings, even if someone has a Groupon.”

“I’m an only child,” Carm says.

“You never know,” Tim says vaguely. He reaches for his laptop. “Anyway. Why don’t you tell me what—”

“Listen,” Carm interrupts. He figures he might as well take advantage of the moment, considering talking to Superboy has gotten him absolutely nowhere. He looks toward the kitchen; Superboy is still out of sight behind the fridge door. He lowers his voice and leans toward Tim. “Superboy’s like, a really good guy.”

“Of course he is,” Tim says, sounding oddly pleased.

“So you should stop fucking stringing him along.”

Tim blinks at him.

“Seriously.” Carm jabs a finger in Tim’s direction. “It’s so obvious. You’re hardly the brightest bulb in the bunch, but even you have to know you can’t dump someone and keep seeing them anyway. People get ideas.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. He’s got one leg folded up on the couch, propping himself lazily against his knee like he couldn’t care less what Carm thinks about all this. Carm grits his teeth as Tim says, “How do you know I’m the one who broke up with him, anyway?”

Carm scoffs. “I was there at the New Year’s gala. Junior year.”

“I recall,” Tim says, dry.

“Superboy’s the one who showed up there, not the other way around. You said you’d already broken up, and he’s the one who was chasing you.” Brian had kept calling Carm for a while, before Carm stopped answering at all. “I don’t know what possessed you to think you could possibly do better than that, but you made your bed, Drake.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s anything romantic, still,” Tim says, shaking his head. “We went through a…” He seems to think for a moment. “Traumatic situation together, when we were kids. It’s only natural we would stay in touch.”

Carm gives him a look that, he hopes, makes his thoughts on that perfectly clear. It’s like Tim thinks Carm could’ve possibly missed the dopey look Superboy wore on the way through the window. “You’re just going to hurt him more,” Carm hisses. “And he doesn’t deserve that.”

Tim sits back. The look he’s giving Carm is different now, some subtle shift, but Carm doesn’t know nor care enough about the intricacies of Tim Drake’s face to decipher it. “…I will take that under advisement,” Tim says, eventually.

Superboy chooses that moment to come back, touching down between Carm and the couch. “Well, I should go,” he says. “Places to see, people to save, all that.” Then, more seriously, looking right at Carm: “Are you good here?”

Carm shrugs one shoulder. He’s warm, he realizes. He hadn’t noticed just how cold he’d been before, like Gotham had seeped down to his bones, until the chill was gone. “Thanks for the fries,” he says.

“You’re welcome,” Superboy says. “And next time, try under a tree, maybe, or a nice park bench. For having a breakdown.”

Carm stares at him. “Thanks?”

Tim clears his throat. “Yes, thank you, Superboy, we’ll be fine,” he says. “And.” He pauses, glancing toward the ceiling for a moment, like he’s collecting himself. “I think it might be best,” he says, “if, perhaps, we don’t meet socially for the time being. To avoid further confusion.”

“Yeah,” Superboy says sadly. “Of course. We wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression.”

Tim nods. “I’m glad you understand.”

Superboy starts to back away toward the window, then pauses. “But, Tim,” he says, pressing a hand over his chest. “If you ever change your mind…if you can find it in your heart to forgive me…I’ll always—”

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. “Get out of my house.”

“Yep,” Superboy says, “going,” and then he’s out the window with a whoosh that sends the small stack of mail on Tim’s kitchen island tumbling to the floor.

“And he wonders why I won’t take him back,” Tim says with a sigh.

◐

It’s weird, to be sitting in Tim Drake’s living room. Moreso, somehow, than sitting on the Plaza roof, though it’s certainly more comfortable.

It’s even weirder to have Tim Drake settle back down on the couch, retrieving his laptop from the coffee table and arranging himself like he’s about to give some sort of presentation.

“I feel like I should just go,” Carm says for like the fifth time.

“I feel like you’re already here, so you might as well hear me out,” Tim says. He clicks something on his keyboard and turns the laptop to face Carm. “There you go. Brian Harrow is staying in room 2250.”

On the screen is something that looks like a reservation confirmation, the Plaza logo in the upper corner. Carm gapes. “How did you get that?”

Tim waves him off. “I know the owner of the hotel. I can send you back over with a driver; they’ll let you up to his floor.”

Carm realizes that somehow Superboy must’ve messaged Tim a lot more information than he said he did. Something like, This guy’s crashing out on the roof. I saw the Meteors here. Didn’t you go to school with one of their new players?

He sinks back in his chair, face burning. “I can’t do that,” he says. “I can’t…I haven’t seen Brian in years. In what world could I just turn up at his hotel room?”

Not to mention the fact that he never wants to step foot in the Plaza again, thank you very much.

Tim looks at him for a long moment, like he’s studying Carm’s face. Carm looks away.

“My family has a suite at Knights Stadium,” is what Tim says next, and at first Carm thinks he’s just, like, rubbing it in until he adds: “We get to visit with the team after, if we want. You can have my ticket for tomorrow’s game. I wasn’t planning to go, anyway.”

Oh. Carm swallows. “It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t want to see me.”

Tim is still looking. He shifts, leaning forward a bit. “I saw Brian, you know. Two months ago. His parents invited Bruce to their box at the opera. Brian asked if I’d heard from you recently. It was the first thing he said, actually, after hello.”

Carm stares at the knit blanket, numb. It’s nice, he thinks. Blue and white, almost skylike.

“He doesn’t know about your dad,” Tim says.

Carm jerks his head up. “What do you know about—”

“I think he’d want to,” Tim tells him, and gets up. “Up to you, but, it doesn’t seem like it could possibly make things any worse. Water?”

Carm watches him go to the kitchen and fill a glass. He barely has a limp, Carm notices. Like, only if you look for it, which seems pretty unbelievable considering how bad off his leg was after that kidnapping junior year. That tiny, horrible part of Carm’s brain is trying to pick at that, find something he can snap back at Tim to get him to change the subject, but Carm is too exhausted to follow up on it.

“I’d offer you my guest room, but my little brother left a bunch of his spare suits in there and it’s a bit of a mess,” Tim says, coming back and setting the glass on a coaster. Carm is about to roll his eyes at the flex that Tim’s family needs a whole room for their spare suits—also obscure and bespoke, no doubt—but then Tim continues: “You can take the couch tonight, if you don’t want to go all the way back to Blüd. I have an early morning so you probably won’t see me. I’ll have the ticket transferred to you.”

It’s like talking to a particularly stubborn brick wall. “I don’t have anything to wear to a baseball game.”

“My boyfriend’s family gets me various Metropolis teams’ apparel every year,” Tim says, taking a sip of his own water. “It’s all very silly, but there’s a drawer full of stuff. You can take your pick.”

“There’s nothing I can say that will make you listen, is there?” Carm says, and grabs his glass. He is thirsty; before he realizes it, the water is gone. “Like, nothing at all?”

“Unlikely.” Tim seems to debate with himself for a minute before adding: “Also, Lou’s Gastropub is definitely a mob front. Even the Yelp reviews mention it.”

“Obviously!” Carm says. “That’s not my fault, I don’t finance them. They’re just the only place that even responded to my application.”

“Hmm.” Tim looks thoughtful. “You were actually good at school. I remember that.”

“Thanks,” Carm says sarcastically. “Yeah. That 4.0 high school GPA is really coming in clutch right now.” He doesn’t know if it actually matters, honestly. The lack of permanent address and relevant job experience seem to overshadow anything else about him anyway.

“The Catherine Todd foundation is always looking for tutors,” Tim says, casual, like he doesn’t really care that Carm has gone wide-eyed in front of him. “I’m on the board. They pay well, and there are multiple branches. They’ve got deals with local trade schools and community colleges, too, where employees can take classes, up to two a semester.” Tim pauses, brushing an invisible piece of lint off his knee. “The foundation just opened a Metropolis branch, too, if you find yourself going to a lot of Meteors games in the future.”

Carm stares at him. Tutoring. He never even considered tutoring. He’d found himself with, abruptly, nothing left of his life but his Lexus and a bunch of college friends who disappeared along with his bank account. The Lexus had been gone in short order too, sold to pay for motel rooms and a used Subaru and gas and cheap food. He hadn’t known what to do, or how to do it, or who to ask. Every job he knew about was out of reach to him, part of his old world of business and college and networking. He’d eventually stayed in one of the new shelters in Bludhaven long enough to wander around looking for Help Wanted signs, and took the first thing that called him back.

And now Tim Drake says: tutoring. Says: trade school and community college, like it’s obvious, like there are so many options for Carm that his father couldn’t possibly take away, too.

“But…” Carm starts, and finds he doesn’t have anything to say. No protest that doesn’t just feel like panic, some deeply ingrained instinct to remove himself from a situation before his father can find out how bad he fucked it up. Instead, he says: “Why are you helping me?”

Tim smiles distantly. “Call it a favor for a fellow former kidnappee.”

Carm clenches his teeth. “Be serious. I was an asshole to you.”

“If I refused to help everyone who was ever an asshole to me, family holidays would get very awkward,” Tim says. Then he slumps back against the cushions for a moment, appearing tired for the first time since Carm arrived. “I don’t know,” he says. “Are you going to be an asshole forever?”

“I don’t know!” Carm throws back. “Maybe!”

Tim shrugs. “Then you’ll be an asshole with baseball tickets, I suppose.”

He gathers Carm’s empty water glass and goes back to the kitchen. Carm twists to watch him, not sure if they’re still arguing. Not sure if he wants to be. Tim doesn’t say anything else, busying himself with the sink. Carm glances toward the entryway. He could probably just walk out. Tim might not stop him.

Before he can decide, a key turns in the front door.

“Honey, I’m home,” someone calls, and a young man enters. He’s wearing a canvas jacket and wire-rimmed glasses, a blue and black backpack slung over one shoulder.

Tim rolls his eyes, but even Carm can see it’s fond. “Nice of you to join us.”

“Aw, did you miss me,” the man says, and all at once Carm recognizes him as Conner Kent, boyfriend of Tim Drake. Conner hangs his backpack in the entryway, and Carm wonders if he was out studying, to get home this late. Maybe Conner is doing his postgrad at Gotham and the tabloids haven’t caught on yet. “We have a guest,” Conner says, eyeing Carm curiously.

“Yes,” Tim says. “Carmichael, this is my boyfriend, Conner. Conner, this is my…former classmate. Carmichael.”

“Carm,” Carm says quickly. He should stand, offer his hand, but he’s just…too exhausted. His grand idea of bolting out the door seems kind of laughable now.

“Nice to meet you, Carm,” Conner says, crossing the room to close the still-open window. He steps into the kitchen next, catching Tim around the waist and pulling him in for a kiss. “Hi,” he murmurs, just loud enough for Carm to hear from the sitting area. “All good?”

“All good,” Tim says back, just as quietly.

Conner smiles and hooks his chin over Tim’s shoulder, looking at Carm. “Are you hungry?” he asks. “Tim makes really good grilled cheese. When he doesn’t burn it, at least.”

“Thanks,” Tim says. “You’re really selling it.”

Carm’s stomach chooses that moment to remind him that all he’s had since breakfast were Batburger fries. It’s quiet, just a little rumble, but it’s like Conner hears him across the room anyway, because his smile widens and he says, “It really is good, I promise.”

“Okay,” Carm says after a long moment, and watches as Tim turns to pull a griddle pan out of a cabinet. Conner is already grabbing things from the fridge, cheese and onions and what Carm really hopes isn’t mustard, and in the yellow glow of the fridge light Carm watches Conner twist to kiss Tim’s temple in passing. Watches Tim lean into it, easy.

Carm wonders if this is what his own life could’ve looked like now, if he hadn’t been such a coward at eighteen.

Though, he thinks, Tim Drake obviously made some mistakes along the way, too. He broke up with Superboy, of all people. And he still managed to find his way here, to the easy warmth of this apartment, making grilled cheese at 2am with a man who is so clearly in love with him.

It’s enough to make Carm think that maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world, to take Tim up on those baseball tickets.

◐

“By the way, Tim,” Conner says later, sitting at the kitchen counter and halfway through his third grilled cheese that does, in fact, include mustard. “What are your thoughts on marriage? Generally.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. “Do you know how busy we are right now? Ask me again in five years.”

Though, even from across the room where Carm’s once again curled up on one of the armchairs, more than half asleep by now, the flush that blooms on the back of Tim’s neck is kind of a giveaway.

“Yeah, fair,” Conner says. “Also, Bart would kill me if I proposed without telling him first.”

“Was that you proposing? Cassie would kill you for that.” Tim pushes his stool back, carrying his plate to the sink. “Though…” He pauses, thoughtful. “I did already make a ring.”

Conner jerks his head up so fast it’s like his whole body blurs for a moment. “You what?”

Tim smiles, small and sharp. “About two years ago, actually.”

“Two years?”

“After we went on that, ah, extended trip. With Bart and Cassie. And we brought back some—”

“Tim. Holy shit. You made me a meteorite ring?”

“Technically it’s an asteroid ring, but, yeah.”

Now Conner is the one who’s bright red. “And you never mentioned it?”

“I mean, I was twenty,” Tim says. “And I didn’t want to presume—”

“You can presume,” Conner says. “You can presume all you want, Tim, like—presume away, you know I—I mean, you know, right?”

“You’re making it very clear, yes,” Tim says. And then, softer: “I know.”

A small noise; Carm realizes his eyes have drifted shut, and he blinks them open to see Conner has somehow gotten around the other side of the kitchen island, his hands on Tim’s hips, their faces tipped toward each other. Tim is sitting on the island—that must’ve been the noise, Carm realizes, him jumping up there, though it was so quiet—facing away from Carm, one hand resting on Conner’s shoulder.

“Con,” Tim whispers, the smile still obvious in his voice even with his back turned, “we have a guest.”

“I know, I know, I’m not actually,” Conner says nonsensically. “Just—really? You really made one?”

Tim’s hand drifts up, fingertips pressing against Conner’s cheek. “Maybe I’ll show you later,” he murmurs, and Carm watches Conner’s face absolutely light up.

His last thought before falling asleep is: Sorry, Superboy. Carm may only have been here a short while, may be leaving in the morning, but even he can see Tim isn’t going to change his mind anytime soon.