Chapter Text
“What’s the what? ” Tim asked, propping his phone between his shoulder and chin. The class was packed and he struggled squeezing behind other students to get to an empty seat.
“If I’m on a building that’s thirty feet tall and the width of the street below is twenty feet wide–”
“What?” Tim interrupted again, just before bumping into a girl by accident. The hall was pure chaos, and Tim barely had a chance to offer her an apologetic smile before scrambling to claim an empty chair a few feet away. “Where are you?” he asked against the cool screen of his smartphone. “I mean – thirty feet tall? In Gotham ?”
“Tim, ix-nay on the erd-nay – it’s a simple question. If the building is thirty feet tall–”
“Uh,” Tim interrupted, rifling through his pack in an effort to find his pencil bag. “I hate to break it to you, but no building in Gotham is thirty feet tall,” he countered, his voice nearly lost to the dull roar of the lecture hall – the place was a boisterous haze of mid-semester dread. “It’s an architectural thing. Each floor does have, like, a ten foot standard but you’ve got to calculate the interstitial space, and—”
“ Tim,” Jason said, half-serious. “Timbo-yo-himbo. Timbo-Slice . You’re making this way too complicated.”
Four shots of espresso told Tim otherwise. “But it’s not?” he offered, distracted as he thumbed through folders in an effort to find his textbook. “I’m just saying that it’s like, architecturally impossible. You’d have to–”
“Oi, bird boy.” Jason interrupted, and Tim went quiet – but more because the door to the hall made a familiar creaking noise and as his eyes lifted, he caught sight of his professor.
Crap.
A quick glance at the white industrial clock on the wall told Tim that his midterm was less than a few minutes from starting and his heart galloped; he hoped he’d gotten enough study time in to keep his GPA from dipping below its 4.0 precipice.
“— get through the question,” Jason was saying, and Tim felt his nerves rattle when he realized he hadn’t even noticed Jason had kept on. “So, Timbo, for whatever reason, the building is thirty feet tall. And the street below is twenty feet wide. So how would – ”
Tim frowned. “Okay, wait,” he stated, shaking his head in confusion. “You know the average two-lane street is thirty feet wide, right?”
“ TIM.”
“Jason,” Tim hissed back. The professor waved his hands, urging the class to silence. “I’ve got a test in T minus thirty seconds and I have no idea what you want from me.”
From the other end of the line, Jason made a noise; it was the same sound Jason typically made before throwing his hands in the air in frustration.
“ Bah! ” Jason snapped. “ Nevermind.”
The call dropped.
Tim shook his head.
The cacophony of panic in the lecture hall had dimmed, but he couldn’t help but notice the blonde girl sitting next to him was looking his way, one eyebrow raised.
“How would you know whether or not Gotham has a thirty foot tall building?”
Tim laughed and left it at that.
After all, he wasn’t about to tell her he’d been atop every one.
***
It was two days later when Tim received another call, only this time, he was making an intent and desperate jog up from the subway tunnel.
“Hello?” he answered breathily, convinced it was Bruce. After all, he was running late, and the account executives weren’t going to be able to start the meeting without his numbers.
“This a bad time?” Jason asked, but he barely gave Tim the opportunity to answer before he added, “I just wanted to know how to get salt out of water.”
It was a warm day; heat swelled in pockets around the city, the humidity making Tim’s skin feel damp. His backpack was heavy – he’d come straight from class – and his tie fell like a limp snake over either of his shoulders. He hadn’t found time to craft it into a knot.
“Salt out of water?” Tim questioned, taking a quick glance at his watch. When he looked back up, he weighed whether or not he’d save time by using the crosswalk farther up, near the business center plaza.
“Yeah. The easiest way.”
Moving briskly, Tim answered, “Just pour yourself a new glass, Jay. What are you making?”
It was no secret that Jason liked to cook, and Tim wondered what it would feel like to have even an hour of free time to romance his stove. He was pretty sure, by this point, it had collected a few months worth of dust.
“No, no,” Jason countered. “ Just, in general – how do you get salt out of water?”
Weaving through a tight throng of people lining up outside a rolling ice cream cart, Tim bit his lip and tossed a glance skyward. “Like, to survive? If you’re stranded on an island, or something?”
This time, Jason groaned. “This isn’t Lost , Timbo. I’ve just got a cup of water. The water has salt in it. How do I get the salt out? Without pouring a new glass,” he added for measure.
Tim had to rush to join the street-crossing crowd and took broad steps to keep up with the pedestrian flow. From between buildings, the sun finally caught him; it left him feeling half-baked and dry-mouthed from running.
“Boil it?” Tim tried. “Like, to evaporate the water?”
There was a slight pause before Jason said, “You’re a genius. I wasn’t sure if it was that, or – you know, nevermind. Thanks!”
The call dropped, and Tim lowered his phone, staring at the screen as it faded to black.
Tim thoughts didn’t linger too long; Tiffany Fox, his ever-present secretary, was waiting for him in the courtyard with a pile of dockets in-hand. She had a water bottle too, and a pinched expression that said I’m sorry.
He wondered if he looked as exhausted as he felt. Unlikely, he thought.
After all, he was working off of four shots of espresso.
***
Three days passed with relatively no contact, at least until Tim was artfully rappelling from building to building just a bit past midnight. He was lightheaded from running off minimal food intake, debating whether or not it was worth drifting into Damian’s territory just to pilfer a protein bar.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
It caught Tim off guard when the line in his ear went crackly, barely welcoming a low but distinct voice.
“You up?”
Tim decided that to be an overstatement.
“ Why? Can’t sleep?” he replied easily, landing with practiced precision on a rooftop ledge. It was a conglomerate tower, one that had a view of the city that was startlingly attractive. The dimmed flicker of traffic looked a bit like stars mulling on rivers of shadow, and above, the moon seemed only a hairsbreadth away.
“You got me,” Jason sighed, wistful. “Sometimes I lie awake and think, I wonder what Tim is doing right now. Are we looking at the same stars?”
Tim scraped his boot across cement, drawing a line in the dirt that had collected there. It was only on nights like tonight, in the stillness of everything, that he remembered Jason’s favorite pastime was flirting.
“I’m watching an SUV make an illegal U turn,” he replied. It was also on nights like tonight, in the stillness of everything, with only Jason’s voice in his ear, that he had to remind himself not to fall for it.
Jason hummed. “Better get on that,” he said. “First it’s illegal U-eys, then it’s dark alley exchanges.”
Chewing the edge of his lip, Tim said, “I had no idea minor traffic violations were the gateway drug to organized crime.”
“Nothing feels better than the rush of running a red light, Tim.”
It was impossible not to huff a laugh, though Tim blamed it on his creeping exhaustion. He offered, “Except sleep, maybe,” just before throwing a palm to his mouth, half-stifling a yawn. “And apparently illegal U turns.”
A small bridge of silence settled between them, though Tim heard Jason clicking his tongue – a habit Tim recognized from the occasional case they’d taken together. He wasn’t sure Jason was aware of it.
“How much longer are you going to be out?” Jason asked, pulling Tim from his wandering thoughts once again; Tim was hesitant to admit he’d been wondering the same thing.
Damian was on patrol – Tim knew that for sure; they’d overlapped routes enough times over the past few weeks for Tim to piece together the teen’s schedule. Common sense told him that Bruce was handling the west end, simply because he had a corporate brunch in the morning.
With another yawn, Tim remembered that he was supposed to be attending as well. “Why?” he questioned with a sigh. “Do you need something?”
Jason clicked a familiar beat with his tongue before saying, offhandedly, “A bedtime story.”
“Okay?” Tim replied, half amused and half convinced that Jason must be as tired as himself. Below, the sound of thinned-out traffic hummed; a siren sang in the distance, but Tim merely licked his lips.
“Once upon a time,” he started, “the Red Hood believed Gotham had a building that stood thirty feet tall. Unbeknownst to him, it—”
“Oi—” Jason interjected, pointedly, but Tim simply raised his voice, intent to continue, trying not to let humor bubble into his words.
“— impossible for buildings to be that tall,” he stated, matter-of-fact, “especially in metropolitan areas, and –”
“Hey, Mr. No-Help-At-All,” Jason spoke loudly enough that Tim’s words were driven to a short run of sweeping laughter. Jason added, “It’s not my fault you take the simplest questions and turn them into rocket science.”
Clearing his throat, Tim raised an eyebrow – he still had no idea what Jason was getting at. He was about to ask when Jason’s voice crept over the comms.
“How did your test go?”
Tim blinked, caught off guard by the change of subject. “My what?”
“When I called, you said you had a test.”
“Oh,” Tim said, thinking back to the midterm. It already felt like a month had passed since. “Good.” He didn’t add by some miracle because he didn’t really want to get into how go-go-go he was these days, and how half the time, he felt like he was winging it.
“ Hm,” Jason hummed. “ Is college hard?”
Over their shared channel, Tim heard the faint sound of an ambulance – one of the privately owned ones that typically stationed themselves near the harbor. It caused Tim to tip his head sideways, drawn in that direction.
He’s patrolling the docks? Tim wondered.
“Depends on the content, I guess,” he thought aloud. “Also the professor. Though most of the time I end up figuring it out for myself. Attendance is probably going to be my downfall.”
It was only half-true. Mostly, he’d been able to skate by using Wayne Enterprises as an excuse. Most professors were delighted to let him skip a class here and there due to corporate obligation – though, a majority of the time, even though he’d given the old Wayne heir song-and-dance, his absence was related to stitches he couldn’t risk pulling in public.
“B keeping you busy?”
As if there was ever any question , Tim wanted to say, but instead he found himself reaching for his grappling gun, feeling fidgety, wanting something to do.
“ I’m keeping me busy,” he replied, taking a quick breath before he rappelled to another building, and to another, and to a third, where he landed with a smooth jog onto a rooftop peppered with plants carefully situated to abide by the rules of feng shuey.
“ Your integrity is awe-inspiring ,” Jason commented, sounding a bit distracted before he asked, “Hey, how do you figure out percentages without a calculator?”
Tim made his way through a maze of bonsai trees, pausing at the opposite edge of the rooftop. Surprised for the second time, he raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Percentages,” Jason repeated. “Without a calculator.”
The question lingered, and Tim frowned as he stepped up and onto the ledge, peering out and to the east, his eyes taking him past city limits for just a moment. Beyond was a formidable spill of black eternity; the ocean, ink-colored in the pitch black of night.
He hummed in thought, before asking, offhandedly, “What are you trying to figure out?”
“No, no,” Jason huffed. “I don’t want you to figure it out. I want to figure it out.”
Tim was running his own calculations as Jason spoke, systematically narrowing down where Jason could be. There were twenty lookout points on that side of town, but only four were near ambulance checkpoints – where they waited until dispatched for a call.
“Is this like, a Deadshot thing?” he questioned, still stuck on Jason’s random interrogation regarding building height and street width. “I know you were kind of impressed by that security vid B intercepted, and I mean – I really think, I mean, he may be able to calculate trajectories off building height and, you know, percentage stats but, I mean, I don’t even think I could do that on the fly.”
“How do you even do that,” Jason seemed to wonder aloud.
“Do what?” Tim asked, just before taking a deep breath and moving a few buildings closer to the pier, letting out a huff when he landed and was forced to shake out his wrist.
“Travel so far left field, that I can’t even—“ Jason cut himself off with a sound of feigned exasperation, and said, “Can’t a guy just want to do math in his head?”
Rung by rung, Tim made a quick climb to the top of a closed-factory smoke-tower, pleased to see a familiar shadow seated on the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse next door.
“I wasn’t aware you couldn’t,” he answered honestly.
“Percentages ,” Jason felt the need to clarify, and Tim released a long sigh before saying, “Fancy meeting you here.”
“What?” Jason asked, and Tim waited, happily perched, watching as Jason tipped his head back and turned just far enough for Tim to fall within his range of vision.
“Oi, I thought we had this conversation. This here is Hood’s part of town.”
Tim ignored the empty threat and rode a line to the warehouse roof, holding his arm high as he retracted his cable. Jason hadn’t bothered standing – in fact, and oddly, he wasn’t even Red Hood at the moment – he was Jason Todd, seated with his legs dangling lazily off the rooftop’s ledge.
“Wow,” Tim said, turning off their channel while wandering forward. “ You’re living life on the edge.”
“Ha ha,” Jason tipped his head back, just far enough so that Tim could see him roll his eyes. It also opened up a clear view of his lap, which was full of a wrinkled, scribbled-in book.
“You’re reading?” he asked, watching as Jason tugged a cord dangling at his chest, effectively pulling a bud from his right ear.
Matter-of-factly, he looked Tim in the eye and said, “I’m studying.”
Tim’s lips pressed together and his eyes darted from Jason’s expression to the tattered book beneath his hands, and he said, “Did a book tell you that there’s a building in Gotham that’s thirty feet tall? Because –“
“ Oh my god, ” Jason’s words came paired with an expression that made it seem liked he was being murdered, slowly. “Let it go .”
Tim laughed and closed the gap between them, pure interest driving him to take a seat next to Jason. He sat sideways, cross-legged, and peeled his mask back from his face.
“What are you studying?” he asked, genuinely curious. Leaning in, he eyed the content of the book – recognizing questions about percentages while also spotting long lines of penciled-in notes filling up the side margins of the page.
“Things,” Jason said, sounding torn between defeat and secrecy. Tim lifted his gaze, not expecting to find Jason staring stubbornly in the opposite direction.
“Um…” Tim started, feeling a bit like he’d wandered into something he wasn’t supposed to see. “Are you getting a certification?”
What Jason would need a certification for, Tim had no idea. Maybe he was trying to get a gun license.
At the thought, Tim puffed an unexpected laugh.
“This is why I don’t invite you to parties, Timbo.”
Tim sat back, suddenly aware of their isolation, of the lone weather vane lamp above them that spattered them with damp, flickering light.
He whispered, “Is this a party?”
Jason frowned and sat back, his leather jacket slipping sideways, revealing a smooth spread of black underarmor. “You: Is this a party? Me: an intellectual...” Jason said, then holding up his book, motioning to it – the movement causing it to flop closed, revealing its nature.
GED Prep: Smart Guide to Success
Tim’s thoughts stumbled. He wasn’t sure what to react to first. He said, “Did you just meme me?”
Jason rolled his eyes and threw a glance heavenward. “ That’s what you’re stuck on?”
Wide-eyed, Tim nodded intently before shifting to pull his phone from his back pocket. “June 12th,” he said, much in the tone of dear diary . “Jason surprises the world with his knowledge of meme vernacular—“
“I surprised you ,” Jason attempted to correct. “And who uses the word vernacular ?”
Holding up a finger, Tim looked upward, catching Jason’s eyes with his own. A bit studiously, he listed, “Lingo, knowledge, patois—“
“If you were a dinosaur, you’d be a thesaurus.” Jason interrupted, tone completely flat.
“That was terrible,” Tim said, laughing.
“Hey, hey. I have two loaded pistols on me,” Jason stated, puffing his chest, doing that faux-threatening thing he liked to do that always brought Tim’s quick wit to the surface.
“And here I thought you were just happy to see me.”
With most flirtations that Jason seemed to drag from the depths of Tim’s socially awkward soul, the words came paired with immediate, heart-pounding regret and a creeping flush that he was sure could be seen by the League’s space station.
Jason seemed unphased – he simply huffed out a sigh and stared off into the distance. “At least I have my good looks.”
It took Tim a moment to connect the dots, his eyes darting to the prep workbook.
“Jason,” he said, very seriously. “You are really smart.”
“How would you know?” Jason asked, distantly.
Tim didn’t want to admit that Dick had told him, and that Alfred had confirmed. Jason had genius-like intellect mixed with the more common problem of a lack of motivation.
Ever the detective, Tim put two and two together once more.
“You never got a chance to get your diploma,” he solved on his own, putting together a mental timeline. It seemed like such a moot thing. “It’s just a piece of paper, Jay.”
The light struck Jason in an introspective way, lending shadow to the sharp angles of his jaw, darkening his eyes. “Easy to say when you’ve got one,” he replied.
Tim opened his mouth to argue, but decided to take a moment to think on it. He supposed Jason was right; it wasn’t fair to have an opinion when he not only had a diploma, but was nearly finished with college.
“This last month makes so much more sense,” he ended up saying instead, thinking back to Jason’s random phone calls, to his odd questions. He leaned backwards, pressing his palms to the cooled ledge pavement, and took a breath. “Okay,” he said, breaking the small silence that had settled between them. “It’s not that I mind your calls, but I am so everywhere that I just don’t think it’s practical. I can totally help you study, but it’s going to have to be on my schedule.”
Jason raised a brow at Tim, not having expected the offer.
“How long do we have?” Tim asked, lips parted in question.
Jason’s gaze danced to the book and he bled a defeated sigh. “Two weeks.”
Tim blinked.
“And I’m busy too, you know,” Jason threw back. “Why do you think we don’t have any thugs to chase down tonight?” he motioned towards the serene scene that surrounded them.
Tim couldn’t argue that, and so he said, “I’ll be home tomorrow night and the next between midnight and 4am,” he said. “Just text me before you head over. Now, you’re working on percentages tonight?” he asked, and Jason nodded quickly, picking up the workbook before flipping through to where he’d left off.
“I just don’t quite get how they got here…” he said, running his finger across the page.
Tim nodded, tossing a quick glance to Jason’s gaze before settling his attention on the problem.
“No problem. This one might actually be kind of easy. Let me teach you a trick,” he said.
A lone siren sounded in the distance, and water from the pier gently sloshed not too far from where they were. Time slipped by, unnoticed.