Chapter Text
Tim is entirely sure something is wrong. The constant speculation of something unfamiliar and unexpected happening is rising; no matter what happens,’ new’ is always awful for Drake. Steph went over horoscopes the last time he hung out with her and Cass for a ‘girls’ night’, his had been nothing but ‘new things are coming’ and the new training regimen Bruce had for him was focused entirely on ‘expecting the unexpected’, not to mention the seemingly new and confusing student body at school. Now, these things could be a coincidence, but Tim Drake was too scared and far too familiar with the unexpected to mark it up as a ‘coincidence’.
He’d been working himself into the ground because of it.
Constantly asking the others if they needed his skills or taking up patrols like a madman to get time away from himself. This sort of thing started to take its toll about two weeks in, but with the constant panicking and the new regimen. Tim was beginning to feel like being sent to a mental hospital and being forced into a straight jacket might be a healthier alternative to whatever the fuck he was doing now.
It was infuriating to say the very least.
Tim rubbed at his eyes, the sleep deprivation reaching its peak. Apart from the soulmate drama, he’d also been working on getting through to the League of Shadows. Cass had recently come to him with a favor (which was a rarity at all) that he look into any new sightings of assassins or operatives in the area. Any he had found were just sightings and had already been sent over to Cass and Bruce for looking into.
The stray thought of closing his laptop and going to sleep at… 3:04 AM. Seemed to be recurring, once he got started on a little project, he couldn’t tear his gaze away.
Hours upon hours of going through security footage and leftover League of Shadows filings that they had from months ago couldn’t have been decent on the boy's brain power but even at such a late (early?) time of the night (day???) he was able to pull his eyes together long enough to see the slight shift in pixels of a figure swinging into an alleyway, fast enough to avoid a good shadow but not bright enough to make out directly. This ruled out two options; it wasn’t a vigilante he was familiar with, and it most definitely wasn’t an up-and-coming villain. Just before Tim had blinked away his consciousness, he sent the clip to Bruce for investigation, very likely that the older man was more awake than Tim and would very likely continue to be awake till sunrise.
Honestly, Tim is kind of unsure about what he should expect from himself or whether to go with the flow because he should have known that once an unknown variable was presented to him, he wouldn’t go to sleep.
Now he was sitting out here on some dusty ass building and pulling at the spandex of his suit, making a mental note to get his suit upgraded because apparently, his body hit a growth spurt without him knowing and now made everything uncomfortable.
God, now he’s rethinking the stupid straitjacket thing again.
Tim refocuses back on what’s in front of him and takes the leap to another rooftop back to where the figure was spotted, watching for another chance at spotting the damned thing (you never know what it is, man-bat could be considered a thing!)
“Robin.” Bruce’s deep voice in his right ear comm sends a bolt right from the boy's feet up to his spine like an electrical shock.
“Loud and clear,” Tim responded once the aftershock of the jump scare didn’t affect the feeling in his legs.
Bruce’s sigh came through the comms much easier than a lot of people expect. “Why is your location out of the manor? I know you don’t have school tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have civilian responsibilities.” He scolded, Tim made a little mental note that he was Bruce right now and not ‘The Batman’ which is as big a difference as anything.
“I-I know B, I got the energy for the gala tomorrow. Promise.” Tim sighed as he kept his eyes focused on his surroundings.
“Not what I meant.” Bruce countered, waiting for a real response.
Tim glared in the general direction that Bruce usually stood in, but sighed again. “Just closing up some loose ends, I sent you the clips for them.” He reasoned with a frown. “Do you look at the things I-“
Bruce answers before he can finish. “Yes, I see it, but I have one of the others whose presence isn’t mandatory for the Wayne image on the mystery figure,” he scolds, much to Tim’s despair.
“I’ll be home in a second, B.” He sighed as he rubbed his eyes behind the familiar green domino mask. “I’ll get going now, Robin out.” Tim closed the comm before Bruce could react, god knows what he’d get when he gets home, but that couldn’t even be the furthest thing from his mind right now
Especially when he finally saw what he was looking for.
That same shadowy figure swung up and in feet first into an alleyway as soon as possible. Soon after there, came a collective groaning of pain and a sticky string sound. Tim grimaced and soon made his way over to the high ground. Now, when someone puts the words groan and sticky together in the same paragraph, one would think this story is going to turn into something gross.
It’s not.
No, what was waiting for Tim on the other side of that alleyway is a guy just about his height knocking the absolute shit out of Joker goon. Tim, without much else in thought, very awkwardly held up his phone to take a video; this was a familiar situation now that he thought about it.
“Woah! Not a very warm welcome-!” The figure yelped as he jumped out of the way of the goon brandishing a baton around, just when Tim thought things couldn’t get weirder the figure jumped up onto the building wall and strung up the last of the goons. “Hellooo? Anybody know a fast pass to LA?.. maybe a bus ride..?” The figure called out as he peeked around.
Tim watched him carefully, keeping his steps light and his breathing even lighter.
“Maybe an uber..?” The voice muttered as the figure peeked around. “God.. not even a flasher..?” He murmured, walking out of the alleyway. “What kind of place is this..”
Tim reacted quickly, hand on his Bō staff. “Freeze! Hands where I can see them!” He shouted.
The figure immediately threw his hands up and spread his fingers, dropping his bag of… fruit. “I’m unarmed! My id is in my bag!” The figure shouted rather quickly.
Tim paused and looked at him before the bag, going back and forth. “Who are you?”
The boy, or at least he assumed so, the figure in front of him didn’t seem much older than he was. “Uh.. I don’t really give a name out.. defeats the whole purpose of a secret identity?” He muttered.
At this point Tim was a bit frustrated, mostly curious and confused, but frustrated nonetheless. “Are you.. a hero at the very least?
Again the figure hesitated. “I—.. I mean I think so? I did just stop those robber guys from taking the.. the whatcha-ma-call it’s from that old lady.” He muttered, the little usage of ‘whatcha-ma-call it’ made Tim crack the tiniest smile though he did his best to remain calm and stoic to better have control of the situation.
“You.. think?”
“Good and bad is sort of.. Morality left up to its own— Y’know what forget it.. I uh.. yeah I’m a hero..” the boy muttered before cutting himself off.
“Right.. well you can’t always rely on that, it is Gotham city.” Tim commented, lowering his Bō staff.
This made the figure pause before giving a snort. “Gotham city? Dude, this is New York.” He hummed.
The figure walked over to it, frowning. Tim could see the person more clearly. Well it didn’t seem human.. more spider and hybrid if anything. Tim felt his stomach churn and hoped to god that he wouldn’t have to report that there was a meta in the city.
The boy whipped his head around, now taking a better look at Tim and even giving an awkward grimace. “I feel like I was given a dose of LSD..”
Tim, ever the joyful, “dude, you barely sound old enough for a driver's license.” He muttered
The boy seemed to take this extremely offensively and gasped. “That’s a lot coming from a guy with heightened shoes.”
This got Tim to pause, or at least rework his mindset for a moment. “They aren’t heightened, it’s for grip.”
The boy laughed. “Yeah, and I’m a league baseball champ; Shohei Ohtani.” He spat sarcastically.
“Would you just-“ Tim cuts himself off. Deep breaths, all good things, all good things. “Do you have a name I can call you by?” He asked about all things.
The boy paused, staring at the newspaper for a moment. “Spider-Man.” He answered.
Tim laughed. “Spiderman?”
“No, no. Spider-Man.” He corrected
“That’s what I said.”
“The hyphen is important.”
Tim frowned, grumbling to himself. “How would you even be able to tell?”
Spider-Man gave a small scoff as he crossed his arms, newspaper rolled up in his right hand. “Cause you’re saying it too fast.”
“Spider-man?” Tim tried again.
The other boy gave a thumbs up. “There we go, it’s all in the name.”