Work Text:
Conner had a slight problem with Community College.
He'd decided to go back to school to get another associate's degree, this time in Graphic Design to pair with his first in Visual Arts. All was well while he was applying again, until he needed a tuition waiver.
He'd spent time in the foster care system before the Kents adopted him and the government decided that was reason enough for him to not pay for college. He was sure he'd already given them the paperwork during his first degree. They said they needed it again.
So, Conner, as any normal twenty-two-year-old would, went to the social services office to spend his entire day there being confused and nodding at whatever the employees said.
From the moment he walked in, he felt out of place. Studded belt not through the loops of his pants. Fishnet peeking out under his shirt and along his forearms, tangled with a half dozen bracelets, some studded, some not, none of them matching on purpose. He stepped into the lobby and the security guard by the door gave him the kind of once-over that catalogued piercings and landed, unimpressed, on his boots.
Conner clocked him back and kept walking. He'd been getting that look since he was fourteen. It didn't sting anymore. Mostly.
The lobby smelled like burnt coffee and printer toner, fluorescent-lit in a way that made everyone look a little ill, rows of gray chairs bolted to the floor like someone had once had a problem with people stealing them. A number dispenser sat on a pedestal by the door, red digital display reading 47. He looked down at the ticket already crumpled in his fist. 112.
"You've gotta be kidding me," he said, to no one.
An older woman next to him didn't look up from her phone. "Started at eight. It's eleven-forty."
"Cool. Cool cool cool." Conner found a seat that didn't wobble and sat down to wait, because there was nothing else to do, and pulled out his own phone to text his mom.
Conner: they lost my paperwork again
Conner: or i lost it. unclear. either way im in county jail
Martha: It's not jail, sweetheart.
Martha: Do you need me to call anyone?
Conner: no im ok just bored. might start a fight for entertainment
Martha: Please don't.
By the time his number got called, it was almost one, and the woman at the front desk took one look at his intake sheet and said, "Oh, honey, you want Records. That's the third floor," like this was obvious, like the ticket dispenser and the forty minutes he'd spent watching a toddler methodically destroy a box of crayons hadn't been for absolutely nothing.
"The sign says Intake."
"Intake sends you to Records for anything older than five years. Adoption files go to Archive, which is under Records." She said it like a nursery rhyme, something she'd recited so many times it had lost all its edges. "Elevator's around the corner."
Conner thanked her with the flattest voice he owned and went to find the elevator, because starting a fight in a county building, however tempting, would probably not help his financial aid situation.
The elevator, when it finally opened, had one person in it already— a guy in a button-down with his sleeves shoved up to the elbow and a lanyard so overloaded with badges it looked more like armor than an ID. He was staring down at a folder like it had personally wronged him, dark hair falling messy over his forehead in a way that suggested he'd stopped bothering to fix it hours ago.
Conner stepped in. Hit the button for three. The doors slid shut.
The guy didn't look up.
Conner decided this was a personal failure on both their parts, because he was, by design, hard to ignore, and it took approximately four seconds of silence before his brain went say something and his mouth, with characteristic disregard for his brain's opinion, obliged.
"Rough day?"
The guy glanced up. Pale blue eyes, tired around the edges, the kind of tired that had nothing to do with lack of sleep and everything to do with whatever was in that folder. He looked at Conner— really looked, quick and assessing, boots to bracelets to the undercut Conner hadn't bothered styling this morning— and something in his face flickered. Not disapproval. Conner knew disapproval; he'd built an entire wardrobe around provoking it. This was closer to curiosity.
"Define rough," the guy said, a slight undertone in his voice that Conner couldn't quite define.
"I've been in this building since eight a.m. for a form that apparently does not believe in permanence."
"Which form?"
"I need a copy of my adoption paperwork to confirm I was in foster care for my second go around at college, previously submitted, previously lost, now needed again in triplicate for reasons no one will explain to me."
Something shifted behind the guy's eyes. Recognition, maybe, or fatigue. "Archive's backlog is bad. It's not you."
"That's reassuring, I guess, in the way that knowing a plane crash wasn't personal doesn't actually help once you're on the ground."
That got a huff of something that wasn't quite a laugh. The guy tucked the folder under his arm and, for the first time, actually turned to face Conner instead of the doors. "You have a flair for it."
"For what?"
"Bureaucratic tragedy."
"Yeah, well." Conner leaned against the rail, watching the floor numbers crawl. "I contain multitudes."
The elevator groaned upward at the speed of a building that had never once been renovated. Conner used the time to actually take the guy in— because if he was going to be stuck in a slow-moving box with someone, he might as well enjoy the view, and the view was, frankly, doing a lot for a wrinkled button-down and county-issued lighting. Sharp jaw. The kind of posture that suggested either very good genetics or a lifetime of being told to sit up straight. The lanyard read TIMOTHY J. DRAKE — SOCIAL WORKER, CHILD & FAMILY SERVICES, on the side it wrote YO HABLO ESPAÑOL, and underneath the photo, in smaller print, a string of numbers Conner assumed meant something to someone.
"Social worker," Conner said. "So you're the guy who decides what happens to my paperwork."
"I don't decide anything about your paperwork. I decide what happens to actual kids, which is somehow more chaotic than any form you'll fill out today."
"Bold claim."
"I had a nine-year-old bite a filing cabinet this morning. Out of spite. The cabinet did nothing to him."
Conner laughed— real, surprised out of him— and Timothy’s mouth did something complicated, like he hadn't meant to say that out loud but wasn't sorry he had. Conner decided he liked that. He liked it a lot, actually, the way this stranger's face kept almost-smiling and then reeling it back in, like he'd been burned before for showing too much and had learned to ration it.
"Okay, respect. Did the cabinet survive?"
"Structurally, yes. Emotionally, we don't ask the cabinet how it's doing."
"Very professional of you."
"I contain multitudes," Timothy said, dry, tossing Conner's own line back at him without missing a beat, and Conner felt something in his chest do a small, undignified thing it had no business doing over a guy he'd known for ninety seconds in a government elevator.
The floor light blinked to 2.
"I'm Conner, by the way," he said, because it seemed rude not to, at this point, given how thoroughly he'd already decided to be charmed. "Since we're apparently doing this."
"Tim." A beat. "You're not actually required to introduce yourself to strangers in elevators."
"I'm not required to do a lot of things. I do them anyway. It's a whole personality."
"I'm noticing."
"Good or bad noticing?"
Tim looked at him again, longer this time, like he was deciding something. The elevator hit two and a half— as much as an elevator could hit a half— and hung there a beat too long, the way old elevators did, groaning like it also had opinions about the county's maintenance budget.
"Undetermined," Tim said. "I'll need more data."
"I can provide data. I'm extremely forthcoming." Conner gestured, vaguely, at all of himself — the fishnet, the bracelets, the two safety pins currently doing structural work on his jacket sleeve where a seam had given out sometime around finals week. "This is all the information. Free of charge."
"You're advertising."
"I'm informing you. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Advertising implies I'm trying to sell you something. Informing is just— facts. On the table. What you do with the facts is your business."
Tim's eyes dropped, just briefly, to the fishnet on Conner's forearm, and Conner watched him catch himself doing it and look back up like he hadn't. "Noted."
"You can look, man. I dressed like this on purpose."
"I wasn't—" Tim stopped. Regrouped. There was something almost endearing about watching a guy who clearly ran entire caseloads full of chaos for a living get thrown by a stranger flirting with him in an elevator. "I was reading your jacket."
"Sure you were."
"There's a patch. On the sleeve." Tim nodded at it — a small embroidered patch, half-crooked, that Conner had sewn on himself two years ago and never quite gotten straight. "Misfits?"
"You know The Misfits?"
"I know the skull. My brother’s boyfriend listens to them. I don't know the discography."
"Tragic. We'll fix that." Conner said it before he thought about it, easy, like it was already decided that there'd be a we, a later, some future tense where he got to fix Tim Drake's punk education, and the way Tim's expression flickered again— not annoyed, not put off, something warmer than either— told him it had landed fine.
Tim glanced down, then, at the black portfolio case slung across Conner's back— the reason he was slightly hunched, the reason his jacket sat wrong on one shoulder. "What's in the bag?"
"Portfolio. I'm supposed to bring current work if the school asks, I meet them after this. I didn’t want the heat to mess with any of it. Nobody asked."
"What kind of work?"
"Mixed media, mostly." Conner shifted the strap, self-conscious in a way he usually wasn't about this— usually he'd talk about his work to anyone who'd stand still long enough, but something about Tim actually asking, actually looking like he wanted the real answer, made him want to undersell it instead. "It's not that interesting."
"You just told me that dressing like this was a deliberate act of information distribution. I don't believe for a second you think your own art isn't interesting."
Conner laughed, caught. "Okay, fair. It's very interesting. I'm extremely talented. I contain—"
"Multitudes. Yes. I'm aware." But Tim was smiling when he said it, the real kind, not the rationed almost-smile from before, and Conner felt something in his chest lurch sideways at having earned it.
"I’d like to see it sometime," Tim said, and then, immediately, like he'd surprised himself by saying it out loud, glanced back down at the folder under his arm as if it required his urgent attention.
"Yeah?"
"If you wanted. I don't know anything about design. I'd probably ask embarrassing questions."
"I like embarrassing questions. It's the good kind of attention."
The floor light blinked to 3.
Conner felt the small, familiar disappointment of a good conversation running out of elevator. "This is me."
"Archive's down the hall, past Records. Ask for Mrs. Mendez. Tell her Tim sent you, she'll actually look instead of telling you to come back Thursday."
"You're giving me insider information."
"I'm saving you a Thursday."
"Chivalrous."
The doors began their slow slide open, county-pace, unhurried, and Conner stepped toward the gap, already composing the thing he'd tell his mom about the guy in the elevator, already a little sad about it— because that was how these things went, a good ninety seconds with a stranger and then a hallway and then nothing, a story with no ending, the kind that made for a fun text and nothing else.
"Hey," Tim said, before the doors fully cleared.
Conner turned.
"Do you want to get dinner sometime?" Tim said it flat, almost clinical, the same tone he'd probably use to read off a case number, except his ears had gone faintly, traitorously pink, and his eyes didn't leave Conner's face the way they would if this were actually as casual as he was playing it.
Conner blinked. Then blinked again, because his brain needed a second to process that the guy who'd spent the last three floors deflecting every single thing Conner had thrown at him had just— flipped the entire board.
"Woah." He put a hand over his heart, mostly for effect, entirely a little bit real. "Yeah— wait, am I being punked? Is there a camera in here? This feels like a bit."
"There's no camera. This building's budget doesn't extend to surveillance that works." Tim held the door open with one arm, patient, unbothered, like he had all day, like his ears weren't still pink. "It's a yes-or-no question."
"Yes. Obviously yes. I just—" Conner laughed, disbelieving, delighted, already digging his phone out of his back pocket before Tim could take the offer back; before this could evaporate into hallway and nothing the way he'd already braced for it to. "You could've led with that, you know. Instead of interrogating me about The Misfits."
"I was gathering data."
"And?"
"Sufficient data," Tim said, and recited his number while Conner typed it in with fingers that weren't quite steady, which was new, which was a lot, actually, for a Tuesday that had started with a lost tuition form and a security guard giving him the stink-eye.
The doors started to close. Tim caught them again with his palm, unhurried, and looked at Conner for one more second— really looked, the way he had in the elevator, except now there was nothing to hide it behind.
"Go find Mrs. Mendez," he said. "Tell her I sent you."
"Yeah." Conner stepped backward into the hallway, grinning like an idiot, fully aware he was grinning like an idiot and choosing not to care. "Yeah, okay. I will."
The doors closed. The elevator hummed back down. Conner stood in the hallway outside Records for a solid ten seconds doing nothing but holding his phone against his chest like a middle schooler, before a woman with a stack of folders shot him a look that suggested he was blocking foot traffic, and he moved.
He found Mrs. Mendez. He mentioned Tim's name. She looked up, gave him a slow, assessing once-over not unlike the one Tim had given him in the elevator, and said, "Ah. So that's where he ran off to," which told Conner absolutely nothing and also everything he needed to know.
Her desk sat at the back of Archive, walled in on three sides by filing cabinets that looked older than Conner; gray metal with hand-labeled tabs faded past legibility. She had him fill out a form— different from the one Intake had given him, naturally— and disappeared into a back room that smelled like dust and cold storage, gone long enough that Conner had time to read the entire bulletin board twice, a rotating cast of flyers for anger management courses and a missing cat named Biscuit that had apparently been missing since March.
"You're smiling," she said, when she came back, sliding a manila folder across the desk. "People don't usually smile in here."
"It was a nice elevator ride. Had a rough day." Conner opened the folder to check it was what he needed— verification letter, dates, a signature he didn't recognize from a caseworker who'd probably moved counties years ago— and felt something small and unexpectedly heavy settle in his chest at the sight of his own name typed out in a stranger's official handwriting from eight years back. Eight years. He'd been fourteen in this file. Some version of him that still flinched at raised voices and hadn't learned yet that the Kents were going to stick around.
He closed the folder before it could turn into a whole thing in the middle of the strange room.
"Rough in a good way, from the look of it," Mrs. Mendez said, not unkindly, watching him over her glasses.
"Is Tim usually—" Conner didn't know how to finish the question. Charming? Dry? The kind of guy who asked you out with his ears going pink and his voice completely flat, like the two things had nothing to do with each other?
"Tim's usually exhausted," she said. "Whatever you did to make him tell you to tell me you sent him— I'd recommend doing it again. It means he likes you." She stamped something on the folder, official and final, and slid it the rest of the way across the desk. "You have everything you need. Sorry it took you so long."
"I've lost the whole day to this building, but I’m not gonna blame you."
"Most people do." She said it like a curse both. "Tell him Yvonne says hello, next time you're up here bothering him during his lunch."
Conner didn't ask how she already knew there'd be a next time. He had a feeling everyone in this building operated on information he didn't have access to yet.
Financial aid took another forty minutes and a clerk who squinted at his verification letter like it might be counterfeit before finally, grudgingly, stamping it and telling him the waiver would process in six to eight weeks. By the time Conner walked out into the parking lot of his college, the high of the elevator had mellowed into something quieter and steadier— not nerves exactly, more like the sensation of having stepped off a ride that was still spinning slightly behind his eyes.
He didn't text Tim first. He'd decided that he wasn't going to be the guy who did that— not when Tim had already made the first move and done it well, deliberate despite the pink ears. Conner figured the least he could do was let the guy catch his breath before he started blowing up his phone, so he drove home, told his mom the whole story in more detail than she probably needed, and made himself wait it out.
—
Tim texted first, that night— a little after ten, a single line with no preamble, the kind of message that told Conner this was a guy who thought in bullet points even when he wasn't at work.
Tim: Dinner Friday. I know a place that isn't terrible.
Conner: low bar
Conner: im in
Tim: Good.
Friday came. Conner spent forty minutes on his hair for a date that lasted, in total, eleven minutes.
He'd picked the spot Tim texted— a hole-in-the-wall noodle place two blocks from the county building, cheap and good, apparently Tim's go-to on days bad enough to need actual food instead of vending machine granola bars. Conner got there early, claimed a table by the window, ordered a water he didn't drink, and spent the first ten minutes rehearsing an opening line he'd already used once in the elevator, because apparently that was as far as his material went.
His phone buzzed at 6:52, eight minutes before Tim was supposed to walk through the door.
He read it twice before it fully landed, and then sat there another minute with his thumb over the reply, feeling something small and disproportionate twist in his chest— not anger, nothing close to that, more the flatness of watching something he'd built up in his head deflate all at once. He looked at the empty seat across from him. He looked at the water glass, sweating a ring onto the table. Then he flagged down the waiter, ordered the noodles to go instead, and typed out a reply that was, he thought, pretty admirably calm given the actual size of his disappointment.
He ate the noodles alone on his own couch forty minutes later, container balanced on his knee, and texted his mom a single line— got stood up, kind of, it wasnt his fault though— because he needed to say it out loud to a person outside the situation; needed to let the disappointment exist somewhere before he buried it under dont apologize for doing your job dude.
Martha: That doesn't sound like being stood up, sweetheart. It seems his job is demanding.
Conner: i know. im not mad. just a little bummed
Martha: You're allowed to be a little bummed and still be understanding. Those aren't opposites.
He thought about that for a while, chopsticks going still over the container, and decided his mom was right, the way she usually was about this kind of thing, and let himself be a little bummed for exactly as long as it took his phone to ring again— Cassie this time, calling instead of texting like she always did when she'd decided a situation warranted an actual voice.
"You've been weird all week," she said, no hello, some show playing low on her end that she muted halfway through the sentence. "Roxy said you got bailed on twice by a guy who hasn't actually taken you to dinner yet."
"He's tried. The county keeps taking him hostage."
"That's either really sweet or really convenient, and I genuinely can't tell which from here." A pause, something shifting on her end, a couch cushion maybe. "Do you like him, though? Actually like him, not just 'he's hot and said something clever in an elevator' like him."
Conner thought about it— really thought about it, chopsticks abandoned in the container — and found the answer arrived faster than he expected. "Yeah. Actually like him."
"Okay. Then it's really sweet." He could hear her smiling through the phone, the same satisfaction of somebody getting exactly the answer she'd been fishing for. "Tell the county to get its act together. I want to meet him."
"You're going to interrogate him."
"Obviously. That's what I'm for." A beat. "Go finish your noodles. Text your mom back if you haven't, she's going to worry."
"Already did."
"Good boy." She hung up before he could tell her not to call him that, which was, he decided, extremely on brand— and he texted Tim back a few minutes later, once he'd actually finished the noodles.
Tim: I'm so sorry. Emergency placement just came in, I have to go do a home visit tonight. Can we push to Saturday?
Conner: oh no is everything ok??
Tim: Kid's fine. Situation's not great but he's safe, which is the part that matters tonight.
Tim: I really am sorry.
Conner: dont apologize for doing your job dude. saturday works
Saturday did not work either.
He'd made it further this time— actually cooked, which for Conner meant something closer to careful assembly than real cooking, a box of pasta and a jar of sauce doctored up with whatever herbs were still good in the cabinet. Roxy leaned in the kitchen doorway, watching him set the table for two with the focus of somebody supervising a crime scene.
"You lit a candle," she said. "You never light candles. You've lived here two years and I've seen you light a candle exactly zero times before tonight."
"It's a date. Sort of. If he shows up."
"The social worker?"
"The social worker." Conner stirred the sauce, avoiding her eyes, because Roxy had a way of asking follow-up questions with just her face. "What?"
"Nothing." She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve, the picture of somebody with a comment she was absolutely going to make anyway. "Just seems like a weird thing to fall for, is all. Guy whose whole job used to be deciding where kids like us ended up sleeping at night."
"He doesn't decide that anymore. Not for me, obviously. I'm twenty-two."
"I know. I'm just saying. Bet that's a strange thing to sit with." She shrugged, already moving past it, grabbing an apple off the counter like the observation cost her nothing, and Conner filed it away somewhere he didn't examine too closely, because he had a candle to keep lit and forty minutes left before Tim was supposed to walk through the door.
He was stirring the sauce again when his phone lit up on the counter.
Tim: Court got moved up. I have to prep testimony tonight instead of tomorrow, it's a whole thing.
Conner: court??
Tim: Custody hearing. Not mine, obviously. I testify sometimes.
Conner:ok that is genuinely more interesting than dinner. rain check?
Tim: You're being extremely understanding about this and I want you to know I noticed.
Conner: ill collect on it later
Conner: in the form of you owing me a REALLY good dinner
Tim: Deal.
Roxy didn't say anything when he turned off the burner and blew out the candle. Just took one look at his face and pulled two forks out of the drawer instead, splitting the pasta between them without asking, which was, in its own way, exactly the right thing to do.
They ate standing at the counter, and Conner thought about something Tim had mentioned over text, idly wondering, not for the first time, what it would be like to date a guy whose job occasionally required him to stand in front of a judge and speak for a kid who couldn't speak for himself yet. He decided, chewing, that it was a pretty good thing to admire about somebody, even if it kept ruining his dinner plans.
Roxy's comment sat with him longer than he wanted it to.
The third attempt lasted four hours before it collapsed, a Tuesday this time, Tim canceling from what sounded like a stairwell— background noise Conner couldn't place, someone shouting name that wasn't Tim's, a door slamming somewhere behind the call.
"I have to go," Tim said, breathless in a way that had nothing to do with excitement. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I really wanted—"
"Go," Conner said, already up off his couch like he could do something from forty minutes away, which he couldn't, which was its own quiet frustration he didn't say out loud. "Is it bad?"
"I don't know yet. That's why I have to go." A pause, the sound of a car door, keys. "I'll call you."
"You don't have to call me tonight. Call me when it's over. Whenever that is."
"Conner—"
"I mean it. Go do your job. I'll be here."
Tim didn't say anything for a second, just breathing on the other end of the line, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped a register, quieter, like he'd stepped away from whoever else was in that stairwell. "Most people would've stopped answering by now."
"I'm not most people. Also you're not canceling because you don't want to see me, you're canceling because a kid needs you more than I do. I’d rather you help a kid than eat a meal with me."
"I still feel like crap about it."
"Feel like crap on your own time. Go."
He heard the smallest exhale— something that might've been a laugh, if it had more room to be one— and then Tim was gone, the call cut, and Conner sat back down on his couch and didn't hear from him again for six hours, until a text came through at one in the morning that said only:
Tim: Kid's with his grandmother now. Good outcome. Sorry again about tonight.
Conner: you did your job. thats not something to be sorry for
Conner: go to sleep tim
He didn't hear back. He assumed Tim had actually listened, for once, and gone to sleep.
Conner's coworker, Bart, caught him staring at his phone during a lull at the coffee shop the following week, already three sentences into an unrelated tangent about the new pastry case before Conner even registered he'd been asked something.
"—so anyway that's why I think the blueberry ones sell faster, it's a color thing, people trust blue, it's a whole psychology thing I read about— are you even listening to me? Dude, you've checked your phone like six times in the last ten minutes."
"Sorry. What?"
"That's what I'm saying!" Bart threw a hand up, nearly knocking a stack of cups off the counter, catching them without looking. "Who is he?"
"Who's who?"
"The guy. There's always a guy when you go quiet like this. Last time it was that journalism major who ghosted you for a TA, the time before that—"
"Okay, we don't need the whole history." Conner set the phone face-down, finally, and went back to steaming milk he didn't need to steam. "His name's Tim. He's a social worker. We've had, um. Three almost-dates."
"’Almost-dates’."
"He keeps getting called away. Kid stuff— emergency stuff." Conner shrugged, aiming for casual and mostly missing it. "It's not on him. I get it. I just — really wanted the noodles, is all."
Bart squinted at him over the top of the machine, chewing through the last bite of a muffin he'd definitely stolen from the pastry case and would definitely not pay for. "You've dated, what, three guys since I've worked here. You didn't text any of them this much when things were actually going well."
"This is different."
"I know. That's my whole point, dude, keep up." Bart said it around another bite, unbothered, already moving on to refilling the syrup pumps before Conner could argue.
Conner didn't have a good comeback for that, so he didn't try to find one, just steamed the milk a little longer than it needed and let it sit there uncontested, because Bart wasn't wrong, and Conner wasn't in the mood to argue with something true.
By the second week of cancellations— four now, each one for a reason Conner couldn't argue with even when he wanted to, even when he'd already changed his shirt three times and picked a restaurant and mentally rehearsed what he'd say— Tim had started apologizing less like it was routine and more like it actually cost him something.
Tim: I need to stop doing this to you.
Conner: doing what?
Tim: Canceling. You've rearranged your schedule four times for a guy who keeps getting pulled into other people's emergencies.
Conner: tim. i work at a coffee shop three days a week and go to school the other four. my schedule is not exactly precious cargo
Conner: also i wasnt kidding about the multitudes thing. patience is one of them
Tim: I don't want you to have to be patient with me. I want to actually take you to dinner.
Conner: so take me to dinner. eventually. im not going anywhere
Tim: You say that now.
Conner: i say that always. try me
Tim didn't respond to that one for almost twenty minutes, long enough that Conner had started to worry he'd said something wrong, before a reply came through that made his chest do the same undignified thing it had done in the elevator two weeks earlier.
Tim: Okay.
Tim: Give me a few days. I'll figure something out.
—
The text came on a Thursday, out of nowhere, a little after noon.
Tim: Don't make plans tonight. I'm not promising anything, I just don't want you to have plans I ruin later.
Conner: ominous. i like it
Conner: no plans. standing by
Conner spent the rest of his shift trying not to read too much into it and failing completely. Bart clocked it within twenty minutes— of course he did— and spent the better part of an hour rattling off unsolicited opinions on what Conner should bring, none of which Conner asked for and most of which he privately filed away anyway.
"Tacos. No, wait— noodles again, if it worked once, why mess with a system? Unless he's sick of noodles. Is he sick of noodles? You should ask if he's sick of noodles."
"I'm not texting him to ask if he's sick of noodles, Bart."
"Your loss. Options are a love language." Bart said this with the total confidence of a guy who had never once made it to a second date, around a mouthful of what was allegedly Conner's lunch, but Conner let it go because he was too busy checking his phone to fight about a sandwich.
Two o'clock came and went with no cancellation text. Three o'clock, same. By four, Conner had clocked out, gone home to change, and talked himself in and out of three separate outfits before landing on the one he'd worn the day they met, on the theory that if it had worked once in an elevator it could work again in a lobby.
—
Conner had gone back and forth on the food for longer than he'd admit out loud, standing in front of the counter at the Thai place three blocks from his apartment for a solid five minutes while the guy behind the register waited with the patience of a man who'd clearly seen worse indecision. He didn't know what Tim liked. He didn't know if Tim liked spice, or noodles, or anything at all beyond what Conner had gathered from a single elevator ride and two weeks of texts— that he ran on caffeine and stubbornness, mostly, and forgot to eat when a case got bad, which Conner had picked up on by the way Tim's texts got shorter and more clipped the longer a shift ran.
He ordered two of everything he liked best, on the theory that overwhelming choice was a decent substitute for actually knowing someone, and carried the bag into the social services lobby like a man walking into a job interview.
The same security guard from two weeks ago clocked him at the door, looked at the bag, looked at Conner's face, and— for reasons Conner would never fully understand— smiled, small and knowing, and waved him through without a word.
Tim came out of the elevator at a near-jog, tie loosened, sleeves shoved up past his elbows, hair doing the same messy thing it had done the first time Conner saw him, like he ran his hands through it under stress and had apparently been under stress most of the afternoon. He stopped a few feet away, a little out of breath, and looked at Conner like he was checking he was actually real.
"Hi," Tim said.
"Hey." Conner lifted the bag, a small offering. "I hope you like this type of food. If not, I can get a different kind — there's a burger place two blocks that way, a taco truck usually parks by the bus stop around now, I did some recon—"
"I like Thai food."
"Okay. Good. That saves me a trip." Conner rocked back on his heels, a little more nervous than he'd expected to be, standing in a lobby that smelled like burnt coffee under fluorescent lights that made everyone look faintly ill, holding a bag of pad see ew like it was the most important thing he'd ever carried. "I figured you probably haven't eaten. You get weird about eating when a case runs long. I noticed."
Something in Tim's face went soft, unguarded in a way it hadn't been even in the elevator. "You noticed that from texts?"
"I told you. Multitudes. Observational skills is one of them."
Tim huffed, the same almost-laugh from two weeks ago, and reached out — not for the bag, but for Conner's free hand, lacing their fingers together like it was the easiest thing in the world, like they'd done it a hundred times instead of zero. "This is perfect. I know a spot in the courtyard, off the east wing. Nobody uses it, there's actual grass instead of gravel, and it's usually quiet unless the HVAC unit is having an episode."
"You had a courtyard this whole time and made me stand in a fluorescent lobby holding a bag of noodles."
"I was busy having a crisis about whether you'd actually show up."
"I texted you I had no plans. Where else would I be?"
"You'd be surprised what many cancellations does to a person's confidence."
Conner squeezed his hand, once, deliberate. "I told you. I'm not going anywhere."
Tim looked at him for a second too long, something working behind his eyes that Conner didn't have a name for yet, and then tugged him toward the elevator instead of answering, like the words had gotten stuck somewhere he wasn't ready to unstick them from.
The elevator doors slid open, county-slow, and they stepped in together. Tim hit the button for the ground floor— down, the courtyard apparently accessible through a door off the east wing on the first level— and the doors closed behind them, and for a second neither of them said anything, the bag of takeout crinkling faintly between them as Conner shifted his grip on it.
"Two weeks," Tim said, finally, looking at the numbers instead of at Conner. "I kept thinking you'd get tired of it. Everyone gets tired of it eventually."
"I'm not everyone."
"I'm starting to get that."
The elevator hit the fourth floor, still descending, the number ticking down slow enough that Conner had time to set the bag down on the floor of the elevator; before he stepped into Tim's space and kissed him.
Tim made a small, surprised sound against his mouth, hands coming up to fist in the front of Conner's jacket like he needed something to hold onto, and then he was kissing back, hard— two weeks of canceled dinners and stairwell phone calls and one-in-the-morning texts collapsing into the space between them all at once. Conner backed him into the elevator wall, gentle about it, one hand braced by Tim's head and the other sliding to his jaw, thumb along his cheekbone, and Tim made a sound low in his throat that Conner was going to think about for the rest of the week.
He tasted like the energy drink he probably shouldn't have had this late in the afternoon. His hands had moved from Conner's jacket to his shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric there like he was anchoring himself, and when Conner tilted his head to get the angle right, Tim exhaled hard through his nose and pulled him closer instead of pulling away, one leg bracketing Conner's, the mirrored wall of the elevator cool against Conner's own back where he'd braced a hand there for balance. Somewhere above them the motor hummed, patient, indifferent, carrying them down one slow floor at a time while neither of them paid it any attention at all.
"You," Tim said, breathless, when they broke apart long enough for him to get a word out, "have exceptional timing."
"I have been thinking about doing that since I saw you."
"That was two weeks ago."
"I told you. Patient." Conner kissed him again, shorter this time, smiling into it in a way that made the angle mostly fail as an actual kiss and neither of them cared. "Extremely patient. It's a whole personality trait."
The elevator dinged, third floor, and neither of them moved for a second— and then it dinged again, and the doors slid open on an older man in a cardigan who took one look at them, pressed together against the elevator wall with a bag of Thai food abandoned on the floor, and said, mild, unbothered, "I'll wait for the next one," and let the doors close again without stepping in.
Conner started laughing against Tim's collarbone, helpless, and felt Tim's chest shake with it too, both of them dissolving into it the way you did when the adrenaline had nowhere else to go.
"We should probably," Tim said, still catching his breath, "actually make it to the courtyard."
"Probably, yeah."
Neither of them moved until the doors opened on the ground floor, and even then it took Conner a second to remember the bag was still on the floor, still crinkled, one of the containers tipped slightly on its side.
—
The courtyard was, as promised, mostly empty— a rectangle of real grass hemmed in by the building's east wing, a few concrete benches, a struggling tree in the center that had clearly been fighting the HVAC runoff its entire life and losing gracefully. Tim led him to a bench in the shade, and they sat close, knees knocking, the bag of food between them getting steadily demolished as they talked.
Conner learned things in pieces— that Tim had done a semester at a state school before switching to a program that let him work while he finished his degree, that he had a near-superstitious ritual about eating lunch at his desk that involved not answering the phone for the first bite, always broken within thirty seconds, that he'd once gone eleven hours without a bathroom break because a case had needed him and he'd genuinely forgotten his own body existed. Tim asked things back— about the Kents, about the farm Conner had grown up on for the back half of his childhood, about why Graphic Design after Visual Arts, and listened to the answers like they mattered, like Conner wasn't just filling silence.
"You went into foster care at fourteen," Tim said, at one point, careful about it, the way someone asked a question they already half-knew the shape of. "Can I ask what happened, or is that—"
"You can ask. It's not a secret." Conner picked at the noodles left in the container, considering how much of it he wanted to say. "My dad couldn't keep me. Not— not in a terrible way. He just couldn't handle a kid and his business, and the system did its thing, and I bounced around for about a year and a half before the Kents took me in. They adopted me at sixteen." He shrugged, a small, contained motion. "It worked out. Not everyone's does. Mine did."
"I'm glad," Tim said, simple, no pity in it, which Conner appreciated more than he knew how to say.
"You probably know a hundred versions of that story that didn't work out."
"I know a lot of versions. I try not to compare them to each other. Every kid's different." Tim was quiet a second, turning his water bottle in his hands. "I had one, my second year on the job. Reminded me of you, a little. Same kind of stubborn."
"Yeah?"
"He's doing okay now. I still think about him."
Conner reached over, not for any reason beyond wanting to, and took Tim's free hand, threading their fingers together on the bench between them the same way Tim had done in the lobby. Tim glanced down at their hands, then up at Conner's face, something soft and slightly stunned in his expression, like he hadn't expected the gesture and didn't quite know what to do with how much he liked it.
"You wear all of it— the piercings, the fishnet, the boots— like armor," Tim said, after a while, turning Conner's wrist over gently to trace one of the studded bracelets with his thumb. "I don't mean that as a diagnosis. I just mean I noticed it, walking in."
"Everyone notices it. That's the point of it."
"Is it armor, though? Or is it just what you like?"
Conner thought about that longer than the question probably warranted, watching Tim's thumb move over his wrist. "Both, maybe. Started as armor, back when I was younger and it mattered more what people thought when they looked at me. Somewhere along the way it just became— mine. I like how it looks. I like that it still makes people clock me at the door, honestly. Keeps things simple. You know what you're getting."
"I like what I'm getting," Tim said, plain, no performance in it, and Conner felt his ears go warm the way Tim's had in the elevator two weeks earlier— a fair trade, he figured, for making the guy blush first.
"Can I ask you something," Conner said, after a minute, turning the question over before he actually let it out, "and you can tell me if it's weird."
"Go ahead."
"Can I date you, even though I had a social worker?" He said it half-joking, testing the water, because it had occurred to him, somewhere between the elevator and the second cancellation, that the guy he was falling for professionally adjacent to the exact system that had once decided where Conner slept and who he lived with— that there might be something strange there, some line he wasn't supposed to cross, and he wanted to ask it out loud before it turned into something he just quietly worried about instead.
Tim looked at him for a second, deadpan, unimpressed in the way that meant he found the question absurd rather than offensive. "Your social worker was probably born twenty years before me. We're the same age. I think we're good."
Conner blinked, then laughed, loud enough that a woman crossing the courtyard glanced over. "Okay, fair. Very fair. I hadn't actually done the math or thought about it for more than like five minutes" He was going to have to tell Roxy she'd overthought that one.
"I did the math and thinking for you. I do math and thinking for a living, in a sense." Tim bumped his shoulder against Conner's, dry, casual, like he hadn't just dismantled two weeks of low-grade anxiety in a single sentence. "For what it's worth— I get why you asked. It's not a weird question. I've had people ask me variations of it before, about the job in general. It doesn't offend me."
"I wasn't trying to be weird about it."
"I know. You were trying to be careful." Tim's thumb moved, slow, over the back of Conner's hand. "I like that you asked instead of just— not asking, and letting it sit there."
"Yeah, well." Conner leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder, warm in the shade of the struggling courtyard tree. "I contain multitudes. Communication's apparently one of them, who knew."
"You've said that three times now."
"It's a good line. I'm workshopping it."
"It's not landing better with repetition."
"Rude. I bring you lunch and this is the thanks I get."
Tim's phone buzzed then, against the bench between them, and Conner watched his whole body go still for a fraction of a second, the reflexive brace of a guy who'd had this exact sound ruin four attempts at dinner in two weeks. Tim glanced at the screen— read whatever it said— and, instead of standing up, instead of the apologetic scramble Conner had gotten used to, he turned the phone face-down on the bench and left it there.
"Not an emergency?" Conner asked.
"It's my supervisor asking if I'm still at lunch." Tim picked his water bottle back up, unbothered, settling more solidly against Conner's side like he was making a point of it. "I'm still at lunch."
"Bold."
"I've used every ounce of goodwill I have canceling on you. I'm cashing in the rest of it on forty more minutes in this courtyard."
"Only forty?"
"I have a two o'clock. I don't control the two o'clock." Tim tipped his head back against the bench, eyes on the tree, on the patchy grass, on anything but Conner for a second, like he needed the room to say the next part without an audience. "I want you to know the cancellations weren't— I wasn't testing you, or losing interest, or any of the things people usually assume when someone flakes four times. The job just doesn't care what else I have going on. It never has."
"I know. I told you, I'm not most people."
"You did say that. I believed you less at the time than I do now."
"And now?"
Tim looked back over at him, something steady and a little wondering in his face, like he was still doing the math on how he'd ended up here— a courtyard bench, a container of half-eaten pad see ew, a guy in fishnet and safety pins who'd apparently decided, somewhere in a ninety-second elevator ride, that Tim Drake was worth being patient for.
"Now I believe you completely," Tim said. "Which is a problem, because I have a two o'clock, and I really don't want to go to it."
"Go to your two o'clock." Conner kissed his temple, quick, easy, the kind of gesture that assumed there'd be a later to follow it up in. "I'll be here. I told you. Not going anywhere."
"You keep saying that."
"I keep meaning it."
Tim's phone buzzed again on the bench, insistent this time, and he groaned, a real, human sound of complaint, and Conner laughed and helped him gather the empty containers, both of them slower than they needed to be about it, drawing out the last few minutes of a lunch that had taken two weeks and four cancellations to actually happen.
"Same time tomorrow?" Conner asked, as they walked back toward the door, hands still loosely linked, the bag of trash swinging from Conner's free hand.
"I make no promises about tomorrow."
"I'm not asking for promises. I'm asking if you want to."
Tim stopped at the door, turned, and kissed him again— slower than the elevator, less urgent, more like a period at the end of a sentence he'd been trying to finish for two weeks. "I want to," he said, against Conner's mouth. "I'll text you when I know."
"That's all I need."
Tim went back to his two o'clock. Conner walked out past the security guard, who gave him the same small, knowing smile as before, and stepped into the parking lot feeling, for the first time in longer than he wanted to admit, like the wait had been worth every canceled dinner.
His phone buzzed before he'd even reached his car.
Tim: I made it to my desk. My supervisor asked why I'm smiling.
Conner: what did you tell her?
Tim: That it's none of her business.
Tim: I'm still smiling, for the record.
Conner: good. keep doing that it’s cute
Conner: ill bring lunch again thursday if court doesnt eat you alive first
Tim: Don't tempt fate.
Tim: But yes. Thursday.
Conner got in his car, and didn't start the engine right away, just sat there for a second grinning at his phone like an idiot in a county parking lot, fully aware of it and, for once, not caring at all.
---
Thursday arrived without incident, which felt, after two weeks of the county actively conspiring against Conner's love life, like a small miracle.
He got there early again— a bag from the taco truck this time, on the theory that he owed Tim variety after making him choose between five containers of Thai food the first time around— and the security guard at the door had stopped even pretending to be surprised, just tipped his chin at Conner and said, "He's upstairs, court ran long, but he's back," like Conner had become a fixture, like this was simply a thing that happened now, a guy showing up with lunch on Thursdays.
Tim came down slower this time, no jog, tie still knotted properly, looking like a person who'd had an actual, uninterrupted morning for once. He smiled when he saw Conner— not the rationed almost-smile from the elevator, not even the soft, stunned one from the courtyard, something looser than both, something that had clearly decided it didn't need to hold anything back anymore.
"You came back," Tim said.
"I said Thursday. I meant Thursday."
"People say a lot of things." But he was already reaching for Conner's hand, already tugging him toward the elevator with the same easy certainty as before, like it had become habit in the span of a single lunch. "Yvonne wants to meet you. Properly, she said. I don't know what that means and I'm slightly afraid to find out."
"I already met her. She stamped my folder."
"She wants a second round, apparently. My supervisor," Tim added, at Conner's blank look, "has decided you're the most interesting thing to happen to this office since the copier caught fire in March."
"The copier caught fire?"
"It's a whole story. Remind me to tell you about it when I'm not risking my job security by being late back from lunch again."
They rode the elevator up first this time, and Conner found himself genuinely charmed by the woman all over again, sharper in person than she'd been across a desk, the kind of dry that made Tim's own humor look inherited rather than incidental.
"So you're the one," Yvonne said, looking him over with the same assessing once-over from two weeks earlier, except warmer now, like she'd already decided the verdict and was just confirming it. "He's been insufferable. Smiling in the break room. Nobody smiles in the break room."
"I heard that's a theme in this building."
"It's a running theme, yes." She patted his arm, brisk, and turned back to her filing before Conner could formulate a response. "Go eat your lunch. Tell your mother Yvonne says her son has good manners, for a boy who dresses like he's about to start a fistfight."
"I haven’t started a fistfight since highschool"
"You look like you could. That's the compliment." She waved them off without looking up again, and Tim steered Conner back toward the elevator, visibly fighting a laugh the whole way.
"She likes you," Tim said, once the doors closed.
"How can you tell?"
"She insulted your clothes. That's how Yvonne flirts with people she approves of. If she'd ignored you, that would've been the actual problem."
"This building runs on a communication system I do not understand."
"Welcome to social services." Tim leaned against the elevator wall, watching him with an expression Conner hadn't quite catalogued yet— something unguarded, something that had stopped bothering to look anywhere else. "I meant to ask. Thursdays, generally. Is this a thing we're doing now? You showing up with food?"
"Do you want it to be?"
"I want a lot of things I haven't figured out how to ask for yet," Tim said it lighter than the words probably deserved, but Conner caught the true weight under it anyway, the same way he'd caught the pink ears in the first elevator ride, the same way he was apparently going to spend the rest of whatever this was learning to read the parts of Tim that didn't announce themselves. "But yes. I'd like it to be a thing."
"Then it's a thing." Conner closed the distance between them, unhurried this time, no urgency behind it, just the easy certainty that came from having done this once already and liked how it went. He kissed him slow, one hand at his jaw, and felt Tim's hands settle at his waist like they belonged there. "Thursdays. Tacos, or noodles, or whatever survives the drive over without getting cold."
"I don't actually care what the food is."
"Good, because my culinary range caps out at 'convincingly assembled by someone else.'"
Tim laughed against his mouth, and the elevator dinged— ground floor, no interruption this time, the doors sliding open onto an empty lobby— and neither of them moved right away, content to stand there a second longer before the day pulled them back into its separate directions.
"For what it's worth," Tim said, quiet, as they finally stepped apart, "I've been doing this job three years. Nobody's ever brought me lunch during a case week and told me to go do my job instead of apologizing for canceling. Most people take it personally."
"I'm not most people," Conner said, for what felt like the tenth time in two weeks, except this time it didn't feel like a line he was rehearsing, just a fact, plain and settled. "I told you. I contain multitudes."
"You really need a new line."
"I'm workshopping it. Give me time."
"I intend to," Tim said, and took his hand again, and led him out toward the courtyard — the same bench, the same struggling tree, the same forty stolen minutes that had, somehow, in the space of eight days, become the best part of both their weeks— and Conner went, easy, unhurried, already thinking about next Thursday before this one had even finished.