Chapter Text
Jason Todd sits next to Roy Harper in a conference room in Dundee, Scotland, as Roy enumerates the services by which he and Jason provide their clients with a seamless conflict resolution experience. The woman across the conference room table stares at the two young B-list vigilantes, probably wondering if actual mercenaries would be lower-maintenance.
She has just glanced over Roy's shoulder at the wall clock with reasonable subtlety when Jason's phone vibrates. He pulls it out of his pocket and frowns at the name Gotham TD.
"'Scuse me," he says, pushing away from the table.
Roy throws him a half-desperate glance, but it's not like Tim is calling with pleasantries, and Jason steels himself against whatever calamity is waiting on the other end of the line. He steps into the hallway and closes the door to the conference room.
"Hey," he says lowly.
"Hey," says Tim's voice, clipped with urgency. "Where are you?"
Jason frowns at the empty hallway. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Tim says. There's a pause, and the urgency in his tone is tempered with confusion when he asks again, "Where are you?"
"I'm in Scotland." Jason waits, but Tim doesn't say anything. "With Roy." He huffs impatiently. "Is something going on?"
"No," Tim says. "Did you-- did you take everything with you?"
Everything is a tremendous overstatement, but he did close up one of his Gotham safehouses before he left, putting all his ballistics into safe storage like a responsible vigilante. Jason imagines Tim standing in the empty loft, frowning at the rafters, phone pressed to his ear.
"I wasn't sure how long we'd be gone," Jason says. His mouth twists, but his irritation is mediated by the uneasiness in Tim's voice. "You catch the game last night?" he asks. It's one of five Bat-family codes for asking someone undercover if they need help. If Tim were under duress, he would answer with the countersign, Afraid I missed it.
Instead, Tim says, "No, no-- sorry, I'm fine. I was just surprised. You didn't..." There's a short pause. "Do you know when you'll be back?"
"If I don't get back in this fucking conference room, it might be later today."
"Yeah, I'll let you go. Just, uh-- tell Roy I said hi, I guess? And text me your travel plans. I've got investor meetings all day on Thursday and Friday, but I can make sure we have stuff for fajitas."
Jason squints at the empty hallway. "Are you and I gonna have fajitas?"
"Or whatever, we can see what you're feeling when you get back."
"Okay," says Jason, but he doesn't hang up, listening to the quiet on the other end, still waiting for the rest of the story.
After a moment, Tim says, "Take care of yourself, okay?"
"Okay," Jason says again, reflexively, before the line disconnects.
+
Jason does not text Tim his travel plans.
He and Roy get a small gig in Dundee; Roy says they're being vetted for bigger jobs, but Jason suspects that their client supposes (not incorrectly) that Roy would be harder to get rid of with an outright rejection.
In any case, Jason's back in Gotham a few days later, and he's been rolling Tim's invitation around in his mind.
It wouldn't be the first time food has brought them together or helped to heal rifts in the family, but he and Tim have settled into a fairly amicable relationship in the last few years. Tim has some invasive tendencies, but they extend from his basically amoral attitude toward knowledge in general, and Jason has to admire that pragmatism. Plus Tim is able to ask Jason for help or offer his own without taking anything over, even when Jason's out of town, which in the crime-fighting world is pretty rare.
So it's not peace-making, and they don't have any overlapping cases at the moment; the only other reason Jason can think that Tim would invite him for food is to propose a new joint project or to talk about a family problem, and Jason isn't thrilled about either option-- but his curiosity wins out. After he finishes unpacking, he calls, standing in his safehouse kitchenette, phone on speaker on the laminate countertop.
"Jason," Tim answers, voice a little high and strange-sounding. "Hey."
"Hey," Jason says. "Just got back into town and remembered you said something about fajitas."
"I did, yes," says Tim. "I was hoping you'd forget about that."
Jason snorts. "Figures. You welching?" He opens the mini-fridge, but inside are only a jug of water and a jar of peanut butter.
"No, no," Tim says, "I am more than happy to make us fajitas. But, funny story. You should know that earlier this week there was something called a confluential dimensional convergence, and I'm from another reality where you and I are roommates, and that's why I called you to find out where you were. Sorry I interrupted your meeting."
"Okay--" Jason says, shutting the fridge. "Try that again."
Tim laughs and says, "uh--" and then he explains how he figured out pretty quickly after hanging up with Jason that he was in an alternate reality, even though his own world is similar; he ran some tests and then followed up with Bruce. Together they deduced that he and the Tim Drake of this world happened to be doing the same thing at the same time, and there was enough overlap of brain-wave activity and, whatever, stars in alignment, that the two realities crossed. "I woke up in his bed," Tim concludes, "and he presumably woke up in mine. B is working on switching us back."
"And where is your bed?"
"Like I said, our worlds are pretty much the same, he didn't wake up in the middle of World War Three or anything. I live in the penthouse. He wouldn't be in any immediate danger. And presumably he's smart enough to not go out and drum some up."
Jason shakes his head, staring into one of the kitchen cupboards, which is likewise mostly empty: several boxes of tea, a packet of taco seasoning, a half-empty box of baking soda.
"Says you."
"Well, it happened," Tim says. "And now there's nothing to do but wait. I'm sure he's fine. B's running some kind of vortex audit, I guess, and I'm supposed to keep a regular sleep schedule to increase the likelihood that we switch back naturally."
There's a pause while Jason holds a can of corn up to the overhead light, squinting at the expiration date, and in the silence Tim adds, "Though I don't know how I'm supposed to do that, since I'm not allowed to patrol, or attend meetings, or do any of the things that I would do in my actual life. I've been playing a farm game on my phone."
His voice is light, chatty, halfway complaining about a decision that Bruce made-- and it does seem, in fact, that this is not the Tim Drake that Jason knows.
The two of them get along fine now that Jason isn't trying to kill Tim, or humiliate him, or lure him into a life of crime, but Tim just isn't a very casual person, in Jason's experience. Watchful with intent, friendly with intent; banter always weighted with motive. Jason cannot imagine Tim Drake playing a farm game on his phone.
After a moment, Tim says, "Do you still want to come over for fajitas?"
"You're at the penthouse?" Then Jason frowns, looking up from the can of corn. "Wait, fucking hold up, in your reality I live in the penthouse?"
Tim laughs again. "It was a hard sell, believe me."
+
In person, there turn out to be many casual differences between the two Tims-- alt-Tim frowns less overall, he talks more, he curses more-- but at the top of the list of differences is the cheer with which alt-Tim receives Jason's presence. When Jason wanders from the penthouse elevator into the kitchen area, the look Tim gives him is almost one of relief.
"Wow, you really are cooking fajitas," says Jason, setting down a six-pack. "I was ninety-eight percent expecting take-out."
Tim shakes his head, leaning over a cutting board, slicing a red onion into thin ringlets. "What am I, Mrs. Doubtfire?"
"You do have like six thousand wigs."
Jason expects Tim to snort or possibly say something defensive about undercover work, so he's taken back by the warmth in Tim's face when he glances up at Jason with a shit-eating grin. "As we've discussed," he says, "that is strictly a comfort thing."
His hair is shorter than it was the last time Jason saw him, and he's wearing jeans and a thin red Rogue One t-shirt; it's the first time in nearly a year that Jason has seen him out of uniform and not gussied up in Wayne attire.
Out of recent habit and fresh from Roy's half-hearted charm offensive in Europe, Jason is wearing a collared button-up and slacks, what Roy calls his "respectable people clothes," and he suddenly feels more out of place than usual in Tim's company. He wishes they were both in uniform-- battered and exhausted, maybe, handing take-out containers between them. Everything is simpler when you have only enough energy to scrape sewer muck off your face.
Jason starts pulling out drawers, looking for a bottle opener.
"Top drawer next to the fridge," says Tim. "Open me one?"
Jason grins. "Hell yeah. I been trying to get my Tim to have a beer with me for forever. Let's get wasted and you can tell me all his secrets."
"Well, the first secret is that a six-pack is probably not enough to get both of us wasted." He glances up at Jason. "You've been trying to get your Tim to have a drink with you?"
"In an extremely passive way, and mostly to irritate him. No offense."
"None taken," Tim says, though he shakes his head ruefully. "Did it work?"
"Probably, dude is easily irritated."
"Buzz-kill," Tim says. His expression is a little grim, brow gathered, and suddenly he looks much more like regular Tim. "You guys hang out at all?"
"Not outside of work and the occasional ironic family function." Jason opens two beers and hands one to Tim. "Kinda curious to hear how your Jason ended up rooming with you." But Tim just shrugs and brings the bottle to his mouth, and then Jason notices the avocados on the counter and says, "Shit, are you making real guacamole?"
Tim tosses him a lime. "No, you are."
+
For the next couple of hours, they make fajitas and then eat them in front of Downton Abbey, killing a six-pack, and it's actually pretty relaxing.
It is an absolute fact that Roy is easy to be with-- and it's been a huge change in Jason's life to work with someone who is not actively trying to fix him-- but Jason's investment in Roy is increasingly becoming a little too sharp to be comfortable. As their partnership winds on, Jason finds himself falling into old habits of care-taking, and he spends, as a result, a lot of their time together either low-key fretting over Roy's physical and emotional well-being or staring at him with probably really obvious longing.
Meanwhile, Tim's whole idiom has always been one of stability and fussy competence. While Jason has never felt much of an affinity with him, he also never felt like he had to take care of him.
Tim chats with him about Septimus Spratt and then about Alfred, briefly about Bruce-- then about Roy and the job in Scotland-- and it's easy, and Jason forgets, for a while, that Tim is an interloper, a different Tim, a bro of some other Jason. Jason would have thought that living with Tim would be mostly side-eyeing and carefully worded questions-- but in the peace of an alt-reality version of his apartment, hanging with an alt-reality version of his roommate, Tim's seriousness seems more like calm.
When they've finished off the fajitas and they're on the last of the beers, Jason says, "Okay," and spreads his arms along the back of the couch, loose-limbed. "So what do you think of this reality?"
Tim smiles. "A+, would visit again."
"Yeah? What's different?"
"Not much. The Blades still suck." Tim shrugs, mouth pursing, before taking a drink. "I noticed your Tim's working a shit-ton of cases."
"Yeah, everywhere you look he's got something going on." At an unreadable glance from Tim, Jason adds magnanimously, "But he's good about staying in his lane."
"You guys work together much?"
"Sometimes. I'm in and out of Gotham these days, and Tim's pretty self-sufficient. And he likes to have everything mapped out way ahead of time. I'm kind of a wild card."
Tim's mouth twists fondly. "Not enough scoundrels in his life?"
Jason snorts. "Yeah, I'm definitely the Han Solo of this operation. Roy is my wookie." He grins, then, picturing real-Tim's exasperated face. "You are definitely the Princess Leia."
It occurs to Jason belatedly how that could be misconstrued, but Tim seems to take it in stride, smirking around a long draught of his beer.
He wipes his mouth and says, "Well, Han, you're welcome to crash here tonight, if you want. See how the other Jasons live."
Jason has to laugh at that. "Yeah, I don't know, Timmers-- I'm gonna guess that you and your Jason are probably the outliers. I imagine most realities don't go in the roommate direction."
Tim looks sideways at him. "Maybe not. Do you ever stay over?"
"Not the penthouse type."
"Tim ever invite you to stay over?"
Jason raises an eyebrow. There's something unnerving in Tim's face as he watches Jason, clearly mining for info. The warmth of the roommate is there, but with the scrutiny of the detective mixed up in it: Tim Drake's familiar watchfulness, for all that the body is wearing a Rogue One t-shirt, curled up on the sofa like a friend.
"You look like that's not the question you wanna ask, babybird." It's an old nickname, a little rusty, but drawn out by that sidelong gaze. "You guys aren't super-villains, are you? Or when you say 'roommates,' do you mean you keep Jason chained up in a dungeon?"
Tim grins. "Am I putting off creepy vibes?"
"More like secretive vibes."
"Sorry," he says, smile mellowing, dropping his eyes. After a pause he adds, "I'm just curious, but I'll be straight up about it. How about this--" He glances back up. "You answer a question for me, honestly, and I'll answer one for you? Whatever you want to ask about. Your chance for prime Timothy Drake blackmail material."
Jason smirks, as Tim grins back at him-- but the truth is that Jason doesn't really have much interest in learning more about Tim than he already knows, despite his joke about finding out Tim's secrets. He knows plenty about Timothy Drake, and they get along fine, and Jason feels some distant apprehension at the thought of increasing his involvement. Probably because he's already more invested in this clan of assholes than is strictly advisable.
"Okay," he says anyway. "Shoot."
Tim cocks his head. "You said your Tim doesn't drink, but you brought a six-pack with you. Why?"
Jason shrugs, then sips his beer, considering. "Partly as a joke," he says finally, "partly outta nerves." If alt-Tim wants to traffic in seriousness, Jason can provide him with seriousness. It's not like it will matter once they switch back. "I don't spend a lot of casual time with the family."
Tim nods thoughtfully, and Jason asks, "What did you expect my reason to be? Assuming I answered honestly."
"I thought maybe you and Tim had the type of relationship where he doesn't drink, but he drinks with you."
Jason cocks an eyebrow. "That the relationship you have with your Jason?"
"My turn for a question, right?" Tim asks. Jason nods. "Where do you live now, since you're not living here?"
"Uh." Jason squints. "Different places, I guess? Me and Roy travel for gigs. I've got a few bunkers in the northeast, a couple of safehouses in town. Sometimes I crash in the Cave just to stress Damian out."
"You like that, all the moving around?"
"My turn for a question, right?" Jason echoes. Tim nods, smiling ruefully.
The easy comfort of dinner is slipping away from them in pieces, and in its place is a weird half-serious tension, a challenge toward audacity, that reminds Jason of his relationship with real-Tim.
Jason would've thought that tension was made of competition-- or the friction between dissonant moral codes, maybe, or a quiet acknowledgement of the uneasiness of their truce: their shared past of violence and hurt, now papered over by resolve. But none of those square up with the Tim in front of him, and Jason feels a sizzle of something. Curiosity, with an edge of restlessness.
"Why you so concerned with how much me and Tim hang out?"
Tim looks down at his beer bottle. "Morbid curiosity, I guess," he says, after a moment. He shrugs a shoulder. "Being here this last week-- I don't know, it reminds me of when things weren't as good for me."
Jason's isn't sure how he feels about that-- his presence in Tim's life is pretty minimal-- but there's something about it he doesn't like.
Tim's got a pretty good gig for a vigilante. His stability is hard-won, but there are lots of people who fight just as hard for stability and never get it. He has a shit-ton of funding, loved ones he doesn't have to lie to, the credibility that comes with being all up Batman's ass, and-- with Bruce focused more and more on the Justice League-- almost complete autonomy. For a crime-fighter, he's got it made. What the hell does alt-Tim see when he looks around the penthouse?
Tim shrugs again and adds, "It's been lonely."
Jason takes a long sip of his beer, frowning. Tim has plenty of people in his life to whom he could confess being from an alternate reality-- plenty of folks to invite over and feed fajitas and be like, wow, life is fucking weird, right? So it's hard to imagine Tim suffering overmuch for want of a roommate. He also doesn't seem like the kind of person who is much susceptible to loneliness.
"Tim's tight with the family," he says. "And he's got a lot of friends around."
Tim glances sideways at him. "I guess I'm just trying to figure out if you're one of those friends."
"Your Jason ever try to kill you?"
Tim turns to him fully, eyes narrowed. "Not really, and that was a long time ago. He was--"
"You don't have to defend him to me, Timmers." Jason holds up his hands. "I'm just saying, relative to that, we're best buddies. We're just fine."
"But relative to actual buddies..."
"Not so much."
Jason watches Tim drop his gaze to the coffee table. The idea of any Tim being upset over not having Jason around is so foreign it barely computes. "That bother you?"
Tim doesn't answer for a long moment, but then he shakes his head.
"I guess it shouldn't," he says. "Not if you're happy."
And that's a normal enough sentiment, on its own. Even aside from the family thing, the well-wishes that they all secretly have for each other, underneath the vacillating resentments-- as a crime-fighter you'd certainly prefer someone as historically volatile as Jason Todd to be happy, or whatever the Bat-equivalent of happy was.
But in Jason's mind, the serious look on Tim's downturned face combines with the Tim of this whole evening: Tim knowing Jason's favorite foods and TV shows; his prodding at Jason's relationship with real-Tim; his face lit with relief while Jason moved around him in the kitchen, making jokes.
Jason finishes the last of his beer and then sets the empty bottle on the floor at his feet.
"So," he says. "When you say you and your Jason are 'roommates.'"
Tim huffs a laugh. He doesn't look up from the coffee table, and a moment goes by before he says, "I'm pretty obvious, huh?"
"Ironic for someone with so many wigs."
Tim laughs again, and he glances up at Jason, his face limned with affection. Jason looks away.
"Wondered why you were being so cagey about the roommate thing," he says, running a hand over his face.
"Was that a dungeon pun?"
Jason laughs shortly against his palm. "Okay, cool it on the jokes for a second. I'm gonna need a moment to process this."
"What," Tim says, "it's so hard to believe there's a version of you that wants to hit this?"
His tone is teasing, but he pushes himself up off the couch as he speaks, carrying his beer into the kitchen. Putting distance between them, giving Jason space.
"Yeah, kind of," Jason says. "Nevermind about the whole... brotherly bond thing, huh?"
"I dated Steph," Tim says, shrugging. "I fooled around with--" He sets his beer on the counter with another short laugh. "Wow, you weren't kidding about me telling you other-Tim's secrets."
"How do you know they're not just your secrets?" Jason asks, watching him from the sofa. Whose name almost fell out of Tim's mouth? Cass's? Dick's?
"I've been benched for a week, you think I haven't been snooping around this place?"
"You didn't know that we weren't--" Jason shakes his head. "Dating," he adds.
It doesn't seem possible that he and Tim could date. Even if they were fucking, surely it wouldn't be like that. Serious and volatile, maybe; Bat-style sexual catharsis; faces rubbed raw on the brick of an alleyway. Not cozy, not fajitas and Netflix.
"I thought maybe... I don't know, it was secret for a while, me and my Jason. There was a long pre-cohabitation period."
Jason laughs thinly. "Yeah."
Yeah, he can just imagine.
And he can imagine that news finally dropping in the Bat Cave-- crazy, edgy Jason Todd copping handjobs from fastidious, overachieving Tim Drake in the shadowed rafters of the warehouse district. The months leading up to it: Bruce catching something strange in the grainy footage from a security camera, thinking, Is he..? No, surely not. Dick finding Jason in the penthouse in civilian clothes, and Jason smirking at him from this very sofa while Tim says, "Yeah... Jason's been helping with a case."
He can imagine them in the midst of that secrecy, coming back to the penthouse after a patrol-- Tim helping Jason out of his armor, running an antiseptic cloth over some superficial cut, pressing a kiss to his shoulder; the two of them making dinner with the same ease as they did earlier this evening, when Jason chopped veggies while Tim asked about his flight.
A big beast of uneasiness stirs around inside him. He shakes his head.
"Sounds like a story I need to hear."
"Not much to tell, really," Tim says. "You were going through something difficult, and it came out that we both had similar romantic situations, I guess, plus we had a lot of other stuff in common." He shrugs, leaning against the kitchen island. "A few months later we hooked up. We did that for about a year and a half, then I got injured, and you set up in the penthouse to help me. And by the time I was recovered we were both-- used to it, being here with each other. The whole thing was pretty normal." He taps his fingers on the countertop. "I mean, except for the crime-fighting. And living in a penthouse."
Jason shakes his head again slowly, turning that over in his mind.
The idea of himself getting used to it-- waking up in this demented Architectural Digest apartment and helping Tim wrap his busted ribs or whatever, his broken foot; getting into giant fights with him about his drinking coffee despite his concussion; lying back down with him in the evening, maybe reading to him from case files while he rested his eyes.
And long before that: A few months later we hooked up.
Jason can see it taking time for that particular seed to germinate-- their closeness that wasn't quite friendship, altered by a new awareness as they circled around each other. Assisting on missions, passing each other on patrol, nodding at one another from across the Hall of Justice-- and meanwhile it lay quietly between them, the possibility of sharing more than a history of brutality and a network of allies.
A posted advertisement for hot Robin-on-Robin action. A bright neon marquee that said Robins! Robins! Robins!
"What was the difficult thing I was going through?" Jason asks.
Tim looks at him for a moment, face blank, before saying, "With Roy."
Jason returns Tim's blank gaze for a beat before turning to look at the dark TV screen.
Of all the things he can imagine talking to Tim about-- even rough things, things to do with Bruce or the Joker or the Outlaws-- Roy doesn't make the list. That secret shard of glass beneath the surface of Jason's skin, waiting for just the right impact to slice its way out and bleed Jason dry-- that Jason's feelings for Roy run a lot hotter and deeper than Roy's for him-- is not something Jason can imagine talking to anyone about, least of all Timothy fucking Drake.
But apparently, in some corner of the multiverse, one night he had-- Tim kneeling near to Jason on some rooftop, maybe, looking into his face and listening as Jason cut it open, spilling it all out.
And a couple of months later, Tim had crept nearer-- steadying himself against a smokestack, maybe, leaning in to put his mouth to Jason's, or to meet Jason, who had leaned in.
Jason clears his throat. "Who was yours?"
"What?"
"You said we had similar romantic situations. Who was your difficult thing?"
Tim grimaces half-heartedly. "It sounds like your Tim might not want me to tell you."
"Sounds like maybe he would if I asked."
"Maybe," Tim says. "You gonna ask?"
Jason imagines it for a split-second-- him sitting on this sofa, looking across the room at real-Tim; real-Tim standing there looking just as soft as this one does. He shakes his head, feeling another swell of dismay.
"Probably not."
Tim nods thoughtfully and looks down at his beer, and the silence stretches out between them, Jason's mind roiling with images, Tim thinking who knows what.
Jason should probably get up and go-- it's getting late, and now that he's back in town he should patrol, check in on a few things-- but he doesn't want Tim to think he's leaving because of what Tim has admitted, or because Jason is recoiling from the mention of Roy.
"You know," Tim says slowly, finally. "You could take a test drive."
Jason lifts his head. "Hm?"
Tim shrugs. He pushes away from the counter and saunters back into the common area. "You could see what it's like, risk-free. Nobody's the wiser once I go back, and I could use the company." He comes to stand in front of Jason, gazing down at him while Jason stares skeptically back.
Jason raises an eyebrow. "What, stay here and play alternate-reality house with you?"
Tim sets a hand on Jason's shoulder and then climbs forward into Jason's lap, straddling his thighs. "Something like that."
"Jesus, Tim," says Jason, catching Tim's hips in his hands.
Tim presses his knees into the couch on either side of him, then settles back against his thighs, his hands on Jason's arms. Jason leans back instinctively to accommodate his weight.
"We can't..."
Jason shakes his head, not even really ready to articulate what it is they can't do. They've been around each other enough, and on top of each other enough, that their position isn't necessarily sexual-- but Jason looks down at the soft red material of Tim's shirt gathered under his hands, heart beating faster. He squeezes Tim's hips reflexively.
"We don't have to," Tim says. He runs his hands up Jason's arms to cup his shoulders. "But I speak from experience when I say that we literally can."
"Is this--" Jason clears his throat. "What, is this how things started for you guys?"
"Me luring you to the penthouse with fajitas and then jumping you?" Tim grins. He looks completely at ease perched in Jason's lap, his thighs spread wide over Jason's. "No, you kissed me at one of your safehouses, after I stitched a stab wound on your arm." Tim's smile turns rueful, and he runs a thumb along Jason's shoulder, stroking him through the fabric of his collared shirt-- possibly a gesture of soothing that's so ingrained it's unconscious. "Actually a lot of our early sexy encounters involved you getting stabbed."
Jason huffs a laugh, staring at this other Tim. He can imagine that too.
He can imagine the quiet of the safehouse bathroom around them, Red Robin standing close, leaning over Jason's wound, that new awareness vibrating silently in the small space. His warm exhalations and lowered eyes, his fingertips landing just outside the corona of a local anaesthetic on Jason's arm.
And afterwards, Tim's cowl pushed back, his hair mussed and sweaty, his expression watchful as Jason rises to his feet. Jason crossing the distance slowly, watching Tim for uneasiness or exasperation or resolve but not finding any of those things-- instead seeing his head tilt, his normally grim mouth soften.
And a little while later, Tim wrapped in the sheets on Jason's mattress, murmuring to him in the dark-- lean and wry, familiar but new. Like the Tim currently sitting in his lap.
"Pretty romantic," he says lowly.
Tim smiles. "Worked on me."
Jason's eyes fall back down to his hands on Tim's hips, which he squeezes again, thoughts racing.
Tim Drake is arguably the world's second-best detective. When he gets back to this reality, he'll find Jason's hair in his bed, a second toothbrush in the bathroom trash bin. Jason will meet him with too much reticence or too much bluster, to cover, and he'll know.
And then that will be another nice thing that Jason has fucked up. Typical Jason Todd-- to push, to disrupt, to ask for more until it's ruined. It's how he got himself killed all those years ago; it's why he can't be at peace with anyone in the Bat family, that dysfunctional locus of stability. It's how he's slowly poisoning his relationship with Roy.
On the other hand, says a second voice, Tim forgave Jason for trying to kill him; he would probably forgive him for having sex with his horny doppelganger. Possibly the Bat family is dysfunctional because it was, in fact, built to withstand such transgressions.
With a slow, careful breath, Jason pushes up the hem of the soft t-shirt with his thumbs and slips his hands underneath, feeling the warm muscle of Tim Drake's abdomen, feeling Tim Drake's familiar gaze on him. He's accustomed, he finds, to having Tim's body this close to him.
"You're taking advantage of my poor impulse control," he murmurs.
"Your impulse control is just fine," Tim says. He tilts Jason's face up, and Jason watches his mouth crook in a fond smile. "But even if it weren't, I'm the best at strategic planning."
Jason shakes his head minutely, not enough to dislodge Tim's hand on his jaw. "You're a controlling asshole, aren't you."
"We prefer the term Princess Leia."
"Christ."
Tim laughs and pulls Jason's face forward.
It's jarringly strange when their mouths meet-- Tim's familiar features combining with the weight on Jason's lap, the softness of his mouth-- but Tim leans into it, head tilting, fitting against Jason with long practice.
They trade kisses with their mouths mostly closed, Jason acclimating to the press of Tim against him, the feel of Tim's face under his hands, the feel of his waist and shoulders, the feel of the short soft hair at the nape of his neck.
Jason has kissed a handful of guys in his life, but there's always been an undercurrent of grim awareness to it: the inevitable aftermath, the harm he might be doing, if it's a civilian; the points of exit and placement of weapons, if it's not. Now, it's just a loop of cognitive dissonance as Tim hums contentedly against him, his familiar bulk solid and warm in Jason's hands. After a few minutes, Tim's mouth opens, and Jason brushes his tongue tentatively against the edge of Tim's. Tim smoothes his thumbs along Jason's cheeks with a sound of hunger.
Their kisses get wetter, then, longer, harder, until Tim is bowed over him, arms tight from clutching the sofa on either side of Jason's head, and Jason is holding onto the bare planes of Tim's flexing back, his head tipped back, letting Tim lick into his mouth again and again.
Jason will readily admit he's got trust issues, and he doesn't have a lot of experience (or really any experience) with kissing people he trusts-- but he does trust Tim, actually, which he hadn't quite realized before. He probably shouldn't trust this alternate reality version-- but it's easy, easy to forget he isn't the Tim of this world, somehow mellowed and open, somehow hungry, somehow breathing hard while Jason scrapes teeth along his jaw.
A few minutes later, Tim says, "Bed?" breathlessly, shifting against Jason's hard-on.
Jason noses at his throat, chest lifting and falling. "You are going to get me in so much trouble."
+
Jason does not end up patrolling that night. He ends up in Tim Drake's bed with an alternate reality version of Tim, who just laughs when Jason suggests that they use one of the guest bedrooms. This Tim closes Tim's bedroom door and sets Tim's alarm system, just like real-Tim would, presumably, and then he turns on the bedside lamp and lets Jason look at him, kneeling on the bed with a fond smile.
Jason pulls Tim's t-shirt off and then runs his palms up his chest to his muscled shoulders.
Jason has fucked men before-- mostly one-offs during the years he traveled after leaving the All-Caste-- but the slow sex on a horizontal surface was pretty much confined to one brief sad fling, last year, with a red-haired bartender. He rubs a thumb along the line of Tim's jaw, eyebrows drawn together.
"What do you want," he says.
"It's your test drive," Tim says. He turns to kiss the tips of Jason's fingers. "It's whatever you want. And it'll probably still be a few days until Bruce figures out how to send me back, so there's no hurry."
Jason brushes his hand over Tim's mouth. "Yeah, unless you guys switch back while we're fooling around. That'll be hard to explain."
"I think your Tim would have to be doing the same thing in order for that to happen." Tim leans back, grinning, pulling Jason down over top of him. "In that case, I think it wouldn't be all that hard to explain."
They rut together that first time, Tim's boxer briefs pulled down just over his hips, just enough for Jason to grind against him, holding them together with a spit-slick hand.
The whole time, Jason's gaze catches on pieces, things he knew, now recontextualized: Tim's scarred chest, his strong hands digging into his pillow, the sweat on his long, straight nose. His face is a familiar mask of concentration, and he murmurs in a voice Jason has heard over comms a thousand times, only now he's saying things like "so good" and "shit, Jason" and, while Jason grinds against him, "yeah, fuck me, fuck me--" When he comes, he says, "yes," his strong body bowing, flexing against Jason's fist as he comes. Jason's eyes roll closed at the sound, groaning from deep in his chest, and he follows Tim over the edge, adding to the mess on Tim's stomach in thick ropes.
They lay there together afterward, wet, breathing hard.
Eventually, Tim gropes for a box of tissues on the bedside table and wipes them off while they kiss lazily, Jason's mind a warm blank.
"Stay, okay?" Tim says.
Jason sighs deeply and tips his head against Tim's shoulder. He should leave-- he thinks about the Tims switching in their sleep like they did originally, and he shouldn't trust a doppelganger enough to rest here-- but he's been on the road and hasn't slept well in weeks, and his body is comfortable and sated, and the penthouse is nearly as fortified as the Manor.
"Do you have any more avocados," he says, after a long moment.
Tim laughs. "Yes, you weirdo."
"Not for sex stuff," Jason says, rolling off of Tim and turning his face into the pillow.
"I know."
"More sex though," he mumbles.
Tim curls around him as he turns, arm around his waist, and Jason feels the slant of Tim's smile against his shoulder. "Okay."
With all his years of experience waking up in dungeons or prison cells or dangling upside down wrapped in limbs of ivy, Tim Drake swims to consciousness and realizes without opening his eyes that something is amiss.
He pretends to sleep while he indexes facts:
-- He remembers falling asleep in the penthouse last night around 2AM.
-- He is lying in a bed, under sheets, wearing only his boxer briefs.
-- There is someone behind him-- a man, muscular, probably around six feet tall-- with an arm thrown over his chest in a loose pin, breathing slowly.
-- Tim's arm is curved over the arm of the other man so that their curled hands lie next to each other.
-- Tim is currently pursuing 32 open cases, and only two of those, to his knowledge, involve anyone who could conceivably drug Tim and bypass the penthouse security.
Tim slowly moves his hand to the wrist of the arm, setting his fingers carefully to the pulse. The pulse is slow. The arm stays limp.
Tim cracks his eyes open.
The room is dark, but the green pinprick of light from the security monitor on the wall is enough to illuminate Tim's familiar walls: he is sleeping in his own bed next to a man who is also sleeping.
Carefully, incrementally, Tim turns toward the pillows, lifting himself enough to look at the person sleeping behind him without dislodging the arm. The man's face is half-buried in a pillow, but there's a familiar scar running along the exposed shoulder. Tim risks pushing himself up further, pulling on the pillow to uncover more of the man's features.
All of the coiled tension leaves Tim's body in one great irritated huff.
"Jason?"
He shifts under Jason's arm, putting inches between them, rolling onto his elbows. Jason's eyes open, and when he sees the shadowy outline of Tim staring down at him, his head lifts off the pillow.
"What's wrong," he says, voice alert.
"What are you doing?" Tim asks, scowling.
Jason stares at him. "What?" Tim watches him, and in the silence Jason pulls his arm away. "Was I talking?"
"Are you..." Jason likes trouble, and he likes to make trouble, but he advertises it: he smirks, he cajoles. He doesn't spoon up behind you and then feign confusion. "Were you drugged? Are you injured?"
Jason puts a hand on the small of Tim's back and says, "Baby, what's wrong?"
And again, with perception born of long experience, Tim realizes that something is not right.
He stares at Jason for a long moment.
Jason's warm open palm rests on his back where the sheet has gathered, and in the faint light Tim can see his eyes scanning Tim's face through the darkness.
"Nothing," Tim says. "I think... Just a bad dream."
Jason lifts himself slightly to get a better look at Tim. "You wanna talk about it?" He runs his palm up Tim's naked back in a gesture that is clearly meant to soothe. Tim keeps himself from recoiling, but he sits up, pulling away.
"No, I-- I'm gonna get some water."
He waits for Jason to stop him-- for someone to stop him-- but Jason only rubs at his eyes and says, "You coming back?"
Tim slips out of bed, eyes combing the floor of the dark room for discarded clothes, pieces of uniform, anything that might help to explain the situation unfolding around him, but the room is clean.
"Yeah, go back to sleep."
He pulls a pair of sweatpants from the bureau and grabs his cellphone from the bedside table. He keeps his peripheral vision open, alert, but Jason makes no move except to lie back in the bed, eyes tracking him in the dark.
+
The rest of the penthouse confirms that something is up, for extreme values of up.
It is Tim's home, but it is not Tim's home. It mostly looks the same except for scattered stacks of books that aren't Tim's books, jackets that aren't Tim's jackets, two freshly-used toothbrushes, a fridge full of food in plastic containers.
One of the living room walls is entirely devoted to black-and-white photographs of familiar faces; the portraits are a terrible idea from a security standpoint, like an itemized list of people someone could target to get to you, but under current circumstances the exposition is helpful. There's one of Starfire and Arsenal, one of Damian and Titus, one of Young Justice out of uniform and for some reason standing around in matching Applebee's t-shirts. There's an oversized portrait of Alfred standing in a Christmas tree lot, in a winter coat and tweed flat cap, frowning speculatively at a balsam fir; and another one of Bruce leaned against a kitchen counter, looking deeply exhausted, saluting the camera with a coffee mug that says Who are these people.
Tim unlocks his cellphone and finds the date and time that he expected, which (probably) rules out amnesia or time travel. His most recent text exchange is with Jason, a mix of domestic alerts (Traffic sucks on renfield and dinner w/ G on the 16th) and indiscernible references (lol blue foreverrr and you called it I will never find that bird) going back months and months. In his phone's camera gallery he finds a surprising number of casual shots-- an old man texting on a park bench; a woman playing the saxophone on a subway platform; a photo of two pigeons mating, which he apparently texted to Jason three days ago-- but mostly pics of family that match the photos on the wall, and dozens and dozens of Jason. Jason is looking away in most of them, even the ones where he's half-dressed, as though he's learned to ignore Tim taking pictures of him.
There's one photo from just yesterday: Jason and Stephanie sitting at one of the outdoor tables at a bistro on Andru Street, Steph talking and gesticulating with a bagel while Jason watches her with a half-smile.
Tim hears his bedroom door open and shut, and then Jason is standing in the mouth of the hallway, his face exhausted in a familiar way, hair a dark mess.
"You okay, babybird?" he asks. The well-worn nickname is made alien by his serious expression, by the unguarded slope of his shoulders.
"Yeah," says Tim. "I just..."
He places his phone face-down on the sofa and looks over at the wall of photos.
There are several possible explanations for what is happening. Amnesia and time travel are still possibilities. It's possible that Tim has been transported to an alternate universe. It's possible that Tim is in the grips of an illusion-- enchantment or mind control-- in which case Jason might be part of the illusion or else a victim alongside Tim. It's possible that the situation is not an illusion, Tim's senses not under attack, but that Jason is being mind-controlled; he could conceivably have arranged all these adjustments to the penthouse tonight while Tim slept, drugged (though the phone records would have been difficult to pull off).
But at the center of all these explanations is the very idea of it: Jason and Tim living together in the penthouse, by all appearances, some kind of cozy Bat-couple. Either it happened or else someone had the idea it could happen. Red Robin and the Red Hood intertwined, settled, devoted, pressed against each other in the dark.
Tim shakes his head. "Just thinking."
"You wanna be alone?" Jason asks.
He says it in the same way he asked Tim if he wanted to talk about his nightmare, when they were in bed together; his expression is calm, not overwrought with concern, watching him from the doorway, as though he's ready for whatever Tim wants.
This is probably what it would be like, Tim thinks, if Tim and Jason somehow did have that relationship. Sleepless nights, frank questions, thick skin; extending and withdrawing in learned patterns. The quiet solidarity of shared trauma.
Tim is so struck by it that he doesn't answer. He watches Jason cross the living room to him.
"Checked in with Steph," Jason says, nodding at the wall of photos. "She's at the Reservoir. Everybody's doing all right."
He pulls Tim close, and Tim leans against Jason's broad chest, mind racing as Jason's arms circle around him. At a loss, he lets his hands rest on Jason's hips.
Jason presses a long kiss to his temple. "Everything's okay."
+
Afterwards, Jason heads back to bed and lets Tim wander downstairs to his lab. It makes sense: this is how it would be between them, Tim figures. Sometimes Tim stays up all night. He runs a variety of tests on himself and then waits for the results to populate, thumbing grimly through the photos on his phone.
He finds that he is not suffering any cranial damage or the tell-tale neural chemical clouding of mind control-- which would not be impossible to fake in the context of mind control, but is highly elaborate, and probably not worth it just for Red Robin's passcodes, even if you are Ra's al Ghul. His scans do show, however, a fading corona of the electromagnetic agitation that is symptomatic of dimensional travel.
So by early morning, when Jason comes downstairs in sweatpants, no shirt, with two bottles of kefir and a granola bar, Tim is sufficiently convinced that he is real. He is really Jason Todd, and he really lives here, and he is really attempting to bring his own dimension's Tim Drake some breakfast.
"Morning," Jason says, glancing at the variety of scans scattered across the monitors. "You got some exciting stuff going on here."
"Yeah, weird dreams last night," says Tim. He didn't want to use many passcodes until he'd eliminated mind control as a likelihood, so he hasn't had much time to investigate this reality-- and until he gets more information, he's on guard against disclosures. Just because Jason is here, offering comforts, bringing him kefir, doesn't mean he's one of the good guys. "Just running some tests."
Jason sits on a rolling stool and hands Tim a bottle of yogurt. "Self-introspection for nerds?"
Tim grins. "This isn't how you do it?"
"Mine involves way more ballistics." Jason rolls closer and glances at a display of Tim's hormone levels. "How's everything look?"
Tim shrugs. "I don't know what all of it means, but it doesn't look any different from last week."
"No news is good news, right?"
"That's what they say."
Tim glances away from the screen and sees Jason watching him with a half-smile.
As familiar as Jason is, the sight of him in Tim's lab catches Tim a little off-guard. He's leaned back against the edge of the monitor bank, sitting close, but there's nothing aggressive in his posture, even as he looks right into Tim's face. This is Jason in the light of day, he supposes, or at least in the light of subterranean fluorescents: Jason awake and playful and not shadowed with concern; Jason barefoot and shirtless in Tim's lab, grinning.
It suddenly occurs to Tim that at some point soon Jason is probably going to kiss him on the mouth. That Tim will need to kiss him back to keep his cover until he can verify more about this reality-- that they'll kiss, and then Tim will know what it's like to kiss Jason Todd. Tim's heart-rate kicks up a little.
"You gonna try to get some shut-eye," Jason asks, "or you going into the office?"
"I was planning to work here today. You?"
Jason shrugs. "Just the conference call at three. Need to read over some stuff on the Andrews thing, get ready for tonight, then we gotta be at the GMA by nine."
Tim nods. Jason drops a hand onto Tim's knee, and his head tips forward until his nose touches Tim's bare shoulder.
"Missed you this morning," he says, voice low. "You got time to come back upstairs?"
He brushes his mouth against Tim's shoulder.
Tim feels a flush move up his sternum, up his neck and into the tips of his ears, but Jason is too close to see it clearly: head bowed, nose against Tim's skin, hand moving further up Tim's thigh. He's flirting, but Tim suspects that his ultimate goal is to get Tim back into the bed so he will sleep. This is how they operate, Tim supposes: Tim's research versus Jason's intuitions, Jason's nurturing against Tim's dogged overwork. The two of them so settled with each other that sex can be used to soothe.
It doesn't seem possible.
With a sigh, Tim touches Jason's hair experimentally-- and then Jason raises his head, and Tim leans in to meet him, and then their mouths are touching, warm and soft. Tim surprises himself with a strange half-sound, and Jason hums in response. He crowds tenderly into Tim's space, tilting his head.
One hand moves to span Tim's thigh, the other to sweep up his naked back. It feels like being surrounded, and Tim leans into him, mouth opening. His breath must be sour from the long night, but Jason doesn't seem to mind, nudging his tongue into Tim's mouth, stroking along the edge of Tim's, his hands on Tim squeezing a rhythmic counterpoint. The catch of Jason's stubble against his own twangs something deep down in Tim's stomach.
After a moment, Tim pulls back, breathing hard.
He stares at Jason with an intensity not really appropriate to the situation-- a man being gentled by his boyfriend in the mid-morning, after a long night of work-- but Tim figures Jason will write it off as a response to the nightmare that supposedly woke Tim last night. Probably a dream about loss.
He stares, and Jason watches him back.
"Let's go upstairs," Jason says, after a moment. Tim nods mutely. He should find a way to shut this down-- he is far more likely to give himself away in such intimate confines-- but he tells himself there's no safe way to do it. He watches himself touch Jason's arm as Jason pulls away to stand up.
In the elevator, Tim tries to follow his cues, but Jason seems content to look at Tim, expression thoughtful and fond, more relaxed than Tim has ever seen him, letting Tim touch his stomach, his hands. He kisses Jason until the elevator doors open, then he leads them to his bedroom.
Their bedroom, Tim supposes.
Once there, he hovers at the foot of the bed. He feels Jason's hand on his shoulder, and he turns, ducking to press his mouth to Jason's collarbone so that the lostness won't show on his face.
Jason lets Tim nuzzle against him for a moment, then he tips Tim's head back, and they kiss while Jason crowds him back onto the bed, up against the pillows. Tim lets himself be laid out like a suit of clothes. Jason folds his arms under Tim's shoulders, resting on his forearms over top of him, holding the back of Tim's head even as his mouth pushes down against Tim's over and over again. He settles over Tim, between Tim's legs, but tucks his knees up under Tim's thighs, using his greater bulk to support, not to oppress.
This part is not a surprise, Tim half-thinks as he digs his fingers into Jason's hair, as he tilts his head back to make room for Jason's kisses down his neck.
Everything in Jason's psychological profile suggests that he would be a considerate lover: eager to be valuable even as he holds himself aloof, empathetic and sensitive to the point of volatility. Jason doesn't have a lot of sex, as near as Tim can tell, but his aptitude for it is likely A+.
It's sustained interpersonal relationships that he seems to suck at, and that is the real surprise: that Jason is here doing this with a lover. A live-in lover to whom he brings breakfast; a lover, who, apparently, is Tim Drake.
Jason pulls back, and his mouth is wet, his hair mussed from Tim's hands, his cheek and jaw and collarbone all ruddy where Tim's unshaven face has scrubbed against them. He looks down at Tim with a half-smile, and Tim can't do anything, can only look back and think Jason while trying to index a thousand facts at once.
Then Jason reaches down to tweak one of Tim's nipples, and Tim yelps and bats his hand away, breaking the silence. Jason laughs-- he dips sideways, leaning to reach under the bed, drawing out Tim's shoebox like it's nothing, like it's their shoebox. He fishes out a bottle of lube and then shimmies out of his sweatpants, still smirking softly. Tim leans back against the pillows, still staring helplessly.
Tim's seen Jason naked before, of course-- but not while he was hard, not in a bed, not with his thighs holding Tim's legs open. Cognitive dissonance knocks around in Tim like a shoe in a dryer. He watches, one part of him objective, scientific, archival; one part shocked; and one part saying, well, why not?
That last part is the loudest, even as Tim's heart hammers in his chest.
Tim has seen Jason in a dozen intimate situations-- he's seen Jason passed out, Jason lost in madness, Jason on fear toxin, Jason with tears in his eyes. Why not Jason with his erection curved up towards his stomach, his eyes fixed on Tim's face?
Jason leans back over him, and Tim's hands come up, skimming along Jason's sides. He jumps a little when the tip of Jason's cock brushes his stomach, but he covers by reaching down and wrapping a hand around it.
Jason hums deep in his throat and thrusts lazily into Tim's fist. Tim has to push his tongue against an incisor to keep from moaning at the feel of it-- Jason's large body hanging over his; the obscene rocking of Jason's hips; the shift of soft skin over his hard length, smooth against Tim's fingers. Jason kisses at his jaw while Tim lets out a hard breath through his nose.
Then Jason's hands are at Tim's waistband, pushing down Tim's sweats, and Tim feels helpless to do anything but watch his own erection spring free, so close to Jason's hard, flushed length, then close to Jason's face as Jason moves down to pull the sweatpants off of Tim's legs. Tim surprises himself with a small moan.
Jason smiles and raises himself up on his knees so that he can squeeze lubricant onto his fingers-- then he's back, pressing a kiss to Tim's cheek and saying, "Lay on your side."
Tim complies, pulse racing.
Jason spoons up behind him, erection slotting along the crevice of Tim's ass. He stretches an arm out under Tim's head and winds the other one around him, wrapping a lube-slick hand around Tim's cock, then strokes him, slow and hard. He dips his head to lap at the seam of Tim's ear. Tim lets out a long breath, almost a whine, curling into the socket of Jason's embrace. Over the next few minutes, Jason jacks him faster, until Tim is panting against the bedsheets. He feels surrounded, held still, and wet-- Jason's tongue on his ear, on his jaw, the drag of Jason's precum against his ass, his own leaking cock in Jason's fist. It's so good, better than Tim would have imagined, a literal whole world away from the impersonal high-society hook-ups and the fretful, tentative exchanges with Conner that comprise most of Tim's experience with guys.
Wise-cracking, iconoclastic, volatile Jason Todd-- Jason Todd wrapped around him, touching him everywhere. Fuck, Tim thinks desperately.
"You gonna give it to me?" Jason murmurs, nosing against Tim's neck as he strokes him. It's the same familiar low voice he has used to goad Tim on rooftops, in alleyways, in the Cave, over comms. "You gonna give me your come?"
Tim nods, feet pushing against the blankets for purchase, flexing against Jason's hold. His orgasm is a captive thing inside him, frantic, struggling to escape. "Nngh," he says.
Jason kisses the skin behind his ear. "Babybird," he says reverently.
And then Tim is coming, pushing helplessly up on his elbow to thrust into Jason's fist. He breathes between his teeth, watching Jason's hand squeeze him, watching sunlight catch on Jason's fingers where they're coated in the wet threads of Tim's release. Jason gentles incrementally around him, pressing kisses into Tim's hair.
Finally, he lets Tim go to jack a lubed, come-soaked hand around himself, once, twice, then he moves the hand to Tim's hipbone, holding him in place. He thrusts against the crevice of Tim's ass, a wet drag against Tim's skin, the sensation simultaneously too much and way too little.
"Wait," Tim says, pulling away. "I want--"
He pushes at Jason, who falls back under his hand. Tim shifts to his knees, and Jason's legs fall open. It's a half-familiar choreography between them, almost as though they're in the field-- focused motions, wordless demands, the smell of sweat-- except Tim moves over Jason to lick a stripe up his erection, tasting his own jizz, and Jason pushes his head back into the coverlet and says, "Yeah, baby--"
Tim jacks him at the base while he holds the head of Jason's cock in his mouth; he moves his tongue in steady strokes, dizzy with want, laving along the underside, occasionally dabbing at the knuckle of his own moving fist. He listens to Jason murmur "fuck" and "Tim"-- and soon Jason's knees draw together and he bends forward, nearly sitting up. He bows over Tim with a hand buried in Tim's hair and fills his mouth with come.
Tim swallows, breathing through his nose and thinking lunatic, sex-drunk, sleep-deprived thoughts like yes, yes, he knew it, he knew Jason would be like this.
After a moment, Jason lets go of Tim's hair and sinks back down onto his elbows. Tim laps at his tender cock, just to feel Jason shake, and then he sits back, breathing hard. He keeps his eyes on Jason's wet dick, his splayed thighs, so he won't have to meet Jason's eyes-- but Jason finds his hand and tugs until Tim is lying next to him.
Tim sinks into the pillow, throwing an arm over his eyes, pretending to be more exhausted than he feels. He draws in another deep breath, working to slow his heart rate.
They lie together in silence for a long moment. Tim wants to take his cues from Jason-- how do they act, what do they say to each other after sex; what even do normal people in a committed relationship say to each other after sex. But again Jason is quiet, running his hand along Tim's arm.
After a moment, Jason rolls against him and noses at his neck.
"I have to run out, but there's leftovers in the fridge," he says. He sets his hand heavily on Tim's neck, thumb stroking up and down. "That lasagna was pretty great, huh?"
"So good," Tim says. "But I'm gonna try to sleep for a while."
"You gonna clean up first?"
Tim should-- he's kind of gross-- but he's tired from the mostly sleepless night, and he finds himself reluctant to wash Jason's touch off of him. He wants to doze for the next couple of hours with Jason's smell on him, Jason's taste in his mouth, before he rallies to find his way back to his own world.
Tim runs a hand through Jason's hair, eyes still closed.
"Nah, I'll just have to shower again for the GMA tonight."
"Good point." Jason rolls away from him. Tim watches through half-closed eyes as Jason ducks into the en-suite and comes back with a hand towel, which he tosses to Tim. "Speaking of which, Alfred dropped off your blue tux."
Tim huffs a tired laugh, dabbing at himself. "I promise I'll shower before I put it on."
"Yeah," says Jason, "you better."
+
Tim gets a few hours of sleep, then rouses himself in the early afternoon. He sits back against the headboard, looking wistfully around the space that an alternate-reality version of himself shares with Jason. There are stacks of Jason's paperbacks, a potted plant, more framed photos, a bunch of Star Trek figurines. All Tim's cables and circuit pieces have been corralled in a plastic tub to make room for a line of ceramics on the dresser.
He left his phone in his lab, so he pokes at the security monitor on the bedroom wall. There's a cleaning crew on the top floor but no other heat signatures on any of the other family floors or the secret subterranean floors. Jason's gone-- as are, Tim discovers, the lasagna leftovers-- so he grabs another kefir and a protein bar and heads to his lab.
Over the next hour, he reads about their world.
He finds that it's largely the same as his own, with people inhabiting different roles but mostly the same allegiances. Roy Harper officially rejoined the Titans a year ago, and since then Jason has all but replaced Dick as the Bat affiliate in their midst. That seems to have earned Jason some cache where Damian is concerned, which is almost unthinkable, but there it is, in the print on Tim's screen.
The quasi-stability with the Titans and Damian seems to have given Dick permission to sink further into the world of espionage, and Tim has to dig hard in his own encrypted files to find any information about that. Tim's own projects aren't as far along in this reality, but cash flow is still healthy, and on the crime-fighting front it's clear that partnering with Jason has been useful, even if it's probably also nerve-wracking and infuriating.
In total, this world's Bat family is a well-balanced system of interventions. Bruce at the most macro, the galactic; Dick and Cassandra in the pit of secret, underground global power networks; Jason and Stephanie in the world of organized crime; Damian with the Teen Titans; and Tim, Barbara and Alfred securing the foundation with money, technology and intel.
It's a version of what they have in Tim's own world, only codified, settled, limned with trust.
As for Jason's personal dossier, Tim is relieved to find that it contains mostly the same information Tim has back home. Tim hopes that he is not someone who continues to log detective files on a live-in romantic partner, but if he's honest with himself, he isn't sure he's not.
The most recent full-length entry mentions Jason dissolving the Outlaws-- and after that the reports devolve into loose notes about Jason's initiatives and reminders about cities Jason likes and movies he enjoyed, as well as a kind of creepy hyperlinked list of anyone who knows the Red Hood's secret identity.
There's a separate photo folder inside the dossier, with older files that are mostly Red Hood photos-- a few grainy stills of Jason out of uniform, his John Doe mugshot-- and newer photos that match several of the framed portraits on their living room wall. Jason frowning down at blueprints; Jason talking on the phone; Jason reading in bed with the sheets gathered around his waist, shafts of sunlight making shadows of the scars on his muscled arms.
Captured in still footage, it's clear how expressive Jason's face is, even at rest. Tim knows you could look at photos of himself all day long and not know anything about Tim Drake, but Jason seems so present, so personified.
He's like Conner, in that way. Conner's face shows happiness and regret and skepticism so easily, and on some level Tim always ascribed that to his near-invulnerability-- like song-birds, who evolutionarily could afford to be vocal, even the ground-feeding ones, because they could fly away at the first sign of danger. But that doesn't apply to Jason. Jason has accumulated more trauma than any of them except maybe Cass, and yet he seems to have the fewest defenses. He is close to the surface, somehow.
With a sigh, Tim shakes his head. He takes a last look at the library of photos, lovingly categorized by location and named by date, and clicks the folder closed.
Then he hears, from probably two inches behind his head, the sound of the hammer of a revolver clicking into place.
His fingers splay open on the keyboard.
He slowly raises his spread hands.
"I'm from an alternate reality," he says. "I really am Tim Drake. Just not your Tim Drake."
"That's great," says Jason's low voice. "Where is mine?"