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The older Jason arrived in Gotham wearing a broken Batman symbol and Tim’s blood on his gauntlets.
That was the part Tim kept coming back to, even after the scanners stopped screaming and the Cave lights settled from emergency red into their usual blue-white glow. The blood was not his. He knew that. Bruce had tested it twice because Bruce did everything twice when the first answer hurt to look at. The DNA profile matched Tim Drake, but not exactly. Different world. Different chain of damage. Different end.
Still Tim’s blood.
Still Jason’s hands.
The rip in time had opened above the East End at 1:43 a.m., right in the middle of a sleet storm, tearing a red wound through the sky over Crime Alley. Tim had been closest. Tim was always closest to things he should have been farther from. He had followed the energy spike across three rooftops and reached the old Monarch Theater in time to see something huge crash through the marquee and hit the street hard enough to crack pavement.
For three seconds, Tim thought it was Bruce.
Then the figure stood.
The suit was Batman, but wrong in every way that mattered. Larger through the shoulders. Heavier armor. Red plating under black. A red bat across the chest like someone had cut the symbol out of Jason’s helmet and hammered it flat over his heart. The cowl had pointed ears and a red visor that glowed through the sleet, inhuman and furious.
Tim had gone still on the rooftop opposite.
The figure looked up at him.
The storm moved between them.
Then the cowl split open at the jaw and Jason Todd’s voice came through, older, rougher, and wrecked beyond recognition.
“Tim?”
The name sounded like being found and accused at the same time.
Tim did not answer fast enough.
The older Jason hit him like a building.
He crossed the gap between the theater and the rooftop in a grapple assisted burst, all mass and speed, landed hard enough to break brick, and slammed Tim backward before Tim’s staff cleared its holster. Tim’s spine hit the rooftop access door. A gauntleted hand caught his throat, not choking, not yet, but pinning him with terrible control.
Tim’s own Jason was big.
This Jason was bigger.
Older. Broader. Thick through the chest and arms in a way that made the armor seem less like protection and more like a warning to anything foolish enough to get near him. His jaw was visible beneath the broken cowl, stubbled and scarred, mouth pulled tight with something worse than anger.
Tim had one hand on the older Jason’s wrist and one on the emergency beacon at his belt. His heart hammered against the pressure of Jason’s glove.
“You got slower,” Tim said.
Jason froze.
The visor stared down at him.
Then the glove loosened by half an inch.
Tim inhaled.
Jason’s voice came out low. “Prove it.”
“Your second Robin suit had a cracked left shoulder seam from the time you got thrown through the greenhouse roof. You used to hide cigarettes in the loose panel behind the Cave’s east workbench. You think Jane Austen is funny. You once told Dick that if he ever called you Little Wing in public again you’d replace all his escrima sticks with pool noodles. You never did because Alfred said pool noodles were tacky.”
Jason stared.
The hand dropped from Tim’s throat.
Rain slid down the red visor. Tim could see his own distorted reflection in it: wet hair, split lip from the impact, eyes too wide.
Jason lifted the cowl.
Tim stopped breathing.
It was Jason.
It was not.
The face was older by at least fifteen years. Maybe twenty. The scar at the corner of his mouth had deepened. There were lines at his eyes that looked earned badly. The white streak in his hair was wider, threaded back through black that had gone silver at the temples. His nose had been broken more than once since Tim last saw any version of him. A jagged scar cut from his hairline to the edge of one eyebrow, faded but ugly.
He was beautiful in a way that made Tim angry.
“You’re twenty-one,” Jason said.
Tim’s pulse stuttered.
“Yes.”
Jason’s face moved through several emotions too quickly for Tim to name. Grief first. Then fear. Then fury, because Jason had always treated fear like an insult.
“You’re twenty-one,” he said again, worse this time.
Tim swallowed. “And you’re extremely dramatic for a hallucination.”
Jason made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had not broken halfway.
Then he looked down.
At his own gauntlets.
At the blood.
His expression closed.
Tim saw the retreat happen. Saw the older Jason rebuild himself in front of him, piece by piece, until the man in the red bat suit was not the one who had said Tim’s name like it hurt.
When Bruce arrived, Jason had already put the cowl back on.
⸻
The quarantine room in the Cave had been designed for metahumans, poisons, magic artifacts, and family members too stubborn to admit they were infected.
Jason hated it immediately.
“Cute,” he said, standing in the middle of the reinforced glass chamber with his arms crossed over the red bat symbol. “You still got the cage.”
Bruce stood on the other side, expression hard enough to pass for stone if Tim did not know where to look. “It is temporary.”
“Sure.”
“We need to determine what brought you here.”
Jason’s mouth curled. “That what you need?”
Bruce did not answer.
Tim watched from the console with a tablet in one hand and three monitors of temporal readings in front of him. His head hurt. His throat still remembered the shape of Jason’s glove.
Barbara was on comms. Dick was pacing. Damian had said nothing since seeing the older Jason remove the cowl in the med bay, which was more concerning than if he had started a fight.
The younger Jason had not arrived yet.
That was probably for the best.
Tim had no idea what would happen when Jason Todd met the version of himself who had apparently become Batman and survived long enough to look like Bruce’s worst regret in red plating.
“You’re from a different time branch,” Tim said.
Older Jason’s head turned toward him.
The room seemed to narrow around that look.
Tim forced himself to continue. “Your suit’s temporal signature doesn’t match Earth-0. It has the same energy pattern as the rupture we tracked over the East End. Seventy two hour decay, maybe less if the breach destabilizes. You’ll be pulled back when it collapses unless we anchor you.”
“Don’t.”
Tim blinked. “Don’t anchor you?”
“I go back.”
Bruce’s jaw shifted. “Jason.”
The older Jason smiled without humor. “Don’t start.”
“What happened in your Gotham?”
Jason’s smile vanished.
Tim knew, before Jason spoke, that Bruce had asked the wrong question.
“What always happens,” Jason said. “Gotham eats what you give it.”
Dick stopped pacing.
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
Tim’s tablet chimed. He looked down because he needed something to do with his hands.
Temporal decay stable. Seventy-two hours. Maybe seventy-three.
Three days.
The older Jason’s gaze had not left him.
Tim felt it like a hand between his shoulder blades.
Bruce said, “We need someone to monitor you while you’re here.”
Jason laughed.
It was a horrible sound.
“Still assigning babysitters?”
Tim looked up sharply.
Bruce’s expression did not change, but his silence had weight.
Dick said, “Jay—”
“Jesus. Don’t call me that.”
Tim’s chest tightened, unexpectedly and annoyingly.
Jason turned slightly, attention back on Bruce. “Let me guess. You?”
Bruce said, “Tim.”
The room went dead quiet.
Tim’s fingers tightened around the tablet.
Jason went still behind the glass.
“No,” he said.
Bruce’s eyes flicked to him. “Tim is the most qualified to track time instability and—”
“No.”
The word came out from Jason like a gunshot.
Tim stood. “I’m right here.”
Jason looked at him.
The red visor was lifted now, cowl open, his face visible and furious.
“I said no.”
Tim tilted his head. “I heard you.”
“Then try listening.”
Damian moved one step forward.
Bruce lifted one hand, stopping him.
Tim set the tablet down. “You don’t give me orders.”
Older Jason looked at him with something almost desperate under the anger. “I do when you’re too young to know better.”
That landed wrong.
Tim felt it hit a place he did not like people touching.
Too young.
As if twenty-one was not old enough to have scars. As if being younger than Jason made him a child, made him easier to dismiss, easier to protect, easier to put in a box and label fragile because this Jason had apparently lost a Tim somewhere and decided grief counted as what. authority?
Tim walked closer to the glass.
Jason watched every step.
“I’m not your dead robin,” Tim said.
A flash of pain crossed Jason’s face so nakedly that Tim almost regretted it.
Jason’s voice went quiet. “No. You’re worse.”
Dick inhaled sharply behind him.
Tim’s pulse slowed.
Jason stared at him through the reinforced glass. “You’re alive. and you don’t listen.”
The words should not have done anything to him.
They did.
Tim stood there in the Cave, with Bruce and Dick and Damian behind him, and felt heat slide under his skin because this older, ruined Jason sounded like he knew him. Not in the way the others knew him. Not as a case file, a brother, a responsibility, a kid who had grown up too fast under everyone’s worried eyes.
Like a man who had once put his hands on Tim and learned exactly how he broke.
That thought was intrusive and awful and impossible to look away from.
Tim lifted his chin. “Then I’m perfect for the job.”
Jason’s mouth tightened.
Bruce said, “It’s settled.”
Nothing was settled.
That was obvious from the way Jason looked at Tim like the next seventy-two hours might kill them both.
⸻
The first twelve hours were clinical.
Mostly.
Tim told himself that.
Jason refused to stay in the Cave, and Bruce, after a long silent argument that made everyone in a twenty-foot radius want to leave, allowed him access to one of the satellite safehouses under supervision.
Tim’s supervision.
The safehouse was in Bristol, hidden beneath an abandoned carriage house on a Wayne property that technically belonged to one of Bruce’s shell trusts. Tim had used it twice in the past year. Jason knew the place in his timeline, apparently, because he bypassed the first door before Tim finished entering the code.
“Different encryption,” Tim said.
“Same paranoia.”
“You should let me clear rooms first.”
Jason glanced back at him. “You always this funny?”
“You always this condescending?”
“Yeah.”
“At least you’re self aware.”
Jason’s mouth twitched.
That was the first almost smile Tim got out of him.
He should not have counted it.
Inside, the safehouse was warmer than the Cave and less dramatic, which helped. Concrete walls. Two worktables. Medical cot. Small kitchenette. A narrow hallway leading to the bathroom and sleeping quarters. Jason moved through it like he remembered where everything was and hated that he remembered. His gaze caught once on the sleeping quarters and slid away.
Tim noticed.
Tim always noticed.
He set his laptop on the table and began the scan calibration. “I need to check your suit.”
Jason removed the cowl and set it down with a heavy click. “Suit’s fine.”
“The suit was exposed to the rupture.”
“The suit has been exposed to worse.”
“Temporal contamination can decay molecular bonds.”
Jason looked at him.
Tim looked back.
Jason sighed through his nose and began removing armor plates.
Tim had seen Jason shirtless before.
His Jason- The current one. The one who haunted Tim’s peripheral vision in the Cave and insulted his coffee habits and showed up bleeding in places he pretended he did not know Tim kept stocked with sutures. That Jason was big, scarred, beautiful in a rough edged way Tim had spent years not thinking about.
This Jason was bigger.
The years had filled him out and carved him down at the same time. Broad chest. Thick shoulders. Heavy arms marked with old scars. There was a long healed gash down his left side, silver against skin. A gunshot scar near his hip. The autopsy scar stark and familiar across his chest, joined by others Tim did not know. His body looked like a map of every fight he had won badly.
Tim’s throat went dry.
He kept his eyes on the scanner.
Mostly.
Jason was watching him.
Of course he was.
“Problem?” Jason asked.
Tim made a note on the tablet. “Your shoulder plate is cracked.”
“That’s not where you were looking.”
Tim did not lift his head. “Your temporal signature is strongest near the chest symbol.”
“Cute.”
“You’re contaminating the equipment.”
“You’re blushing.”
Tim stopped typing.
Jason’s expression had changed. Less anger now. More caution. More awareness.
Tim looked up. “You keep saying I’m too young.”
Jason’s jaw tightened. “You are.”
“For what?”
Jason said nothing.
Tim stepped closer with the scanner. “For monitoring you? For making decisions? For surviving Gotham? Or are we talking about something else?”
Jason’s eyes went dark.
Tim had not meant to push that hard.
Or maybe he had.
The last few months of his life had been full of things he had not meant to do. Bernard’s texts going unanswered for hours, then days. Tim standing on rooftops watching his Jason disappear into Crime Alley instead of going home. Tim telling himself that normal was a choice he could make if he kept choosing it hard enough.
Bernard was kind. Bernard was funny. Bernard touched Tim like Tim was something he might keep if he was patient.
Jason touched nothing patiently. Jason had never known how.
This older Jason stood two feet away from him with scars all over his chest and grief in his mouth, and Tim felt seventeen terrible realizations gathering in the room.
Jason said, “You got someone?”
Tim blinked.
“What?”
Jason’s eyes dipped to Tim’s phone on the worktable. The screen had lit up with a message.
Bernard.
Tim did not look at it.
Jason did.
His mouth tightened.
Tim’s chest went hot, then cold. “That’s none of your business.”
“No,” Jason said, voice rougher. “Guess it’s not.”
“He’s not—” Tim stopped.
Jason’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
Tim hated him.
“He’s a civilian,” Tim said, which was not an explanation but felt like one.
Jason looked down at the armor plate in his hands. “That how you’re playing it this time?”
“This time?”
Jason’s fingers tightened around the plate until the material creaked. “Forget it.”
Tim stepped closer before he could think better of it. “Did I have someone in your timeline?”
Jason’s expression shut.
“Jason.”
The name came out softer than Tim intended.
Jason flinched anyway.
That did something to Tim.
He looked at this older Jason, this man wearing Bruce’s shape and Jason’s anger and a future Tim’s blood, and realized he could hurt him just by saying his name.
Jason set the armor plate down.
“Scan’s done,” he said.
“It isn’t.”
“It is for now.”
He walked away before Tim could stop him.
Tim let him go.
The phone buzzed again.
Bernard.
Tim turned it face down.
⸻
At eighteen hours, Tim started seducing him on purpose.
He did not call it that at first.
At first it was just heat. Tactical heat, he told himself, which was an absurd phrase he would have mocked if anyone else used it. The safehouse’s heating system ran too hot near the kitchenette and too cold near the sleeping quarters, so Tim stripped off his Red Robin armor down to the compression shirt beneath. That was practical. The shirt clung to his back with dried sweat from patrol, so he changed it. Also practical.
The only clean shirt in his go-bag was sleeveless.
That was less practical.
Jason was in the kitchenette cleaning a knife he had not needed to use, because apparently some habits survived the multiverse. He looked up when Tim came out of the bathroom and went very still.
Tim pretended not to notice.
He crossed to the table, leaned over his laptop, and reached for the coffee he had forgotten to drink. The sleeveless shirt pulled tight across his shoulders. The hem rode up slightly at his waist.
Jason’s eyes tracked the movement.
Tim’s pulse picked up.
There was a strange satisfaction in it, sharp and bright. This Jason had been trying so hard not to look at him. Trying so hard to treat him like a danger zone instead of a person. Tim wanted to make that impossible.
Maybe it was cruel.
Maybe Tim had learned cruelty from the best people in Gotham and dressed it up as curiosity.
Jason set the knife down. “Put on a jacket.”
Tim looked over his shoulder. “I’m warm.”
“You’re exposed.”
“To what? The coffee machine?”
Jason’s jaw worked.
Tim turned back to the laptop before he smiled.
The second time was less accidental.
At hour twenty-one, Tim stretched on the floor because his back had locked up after the warehouse fight. Jason had moved to the far side of the room with a book he was pretending to read. Tim knew he was pretending because he had been on the same page for seventeen minutes.
Tim sat on the mat by the worktable and bent forward, one leg extended, the other folded inward, fingers reaching past his ankle. He had taken off his boots. The sweatpants he had borrowed from the safehouse storage sat low on his hips. The sleeveless shirt had ridden up enough that the cool air hit his lower back.
Jason turned a page he had not read.
Tim shifted into the next stretch, slow.
He felt the look before he saw it.
“What?” Tim asked, not lifting his head.
Jason’s voice came out clipped. “Nothing.”
“My form bothering you?”
“Your judgment’s bothering me.”
Tim glanced over. “That’s constant.”
Jason shut the book.
There was something in his face now that made Tim’s mouth go dry. A hunger held in place by anger. Or anger held in place by hunger. With Jason, the difference had never been reliable.
Tim pushed himself up onto his hands. “My shoulder’s tight.”
Jason said nothing.
“Old injury,” Tim added. “I usually have someone help with it.”
That was a lie.
Mostly.
Jason knew it was a lie.
He stood anyway.
Tim’s heart gave one hard kick.
Jason crossed the room slowly, like every step was an argument with himself. He stopped behind Tim on the mat.
“Show me,” he said.
Tim sat up straighter. “Left side.”
Jason knelt behind him.
Tim had made a mistake.
He knew it immediately.
It was one thing to be looked at. Looking could be managed. Tim could hold his posture, control his breathing, pretend his skin was not waking up under Jason’s attention.
Jason’s hands were different.
They settled on Tim’s shoulders, large and warm, thumbs pressing carefully along the muscle near the base of his neck. Tim’s entire body went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with calm.
Jason noticed. Tim felt the pause.
Then Jason continued.
“Here?”
Tim cleared his throat. “Higher.”
Jason’s thumb dug in.
Tim’s head dipped forward.
The sound he made was too soft to be called a moan, but not by much.
Jason’s hands froze.
Tim closed his eyes.
For a few seconds, neither of them moved.
Then Jason said, low, “You are playing a very stupid game.”
Tim’s pulse hammered.
He opened his eyes and looked at the floor between his knees. “I asked for help stretching.”
Jason’s laugh had no humor in it. “Sure you did.”
“You could say no.”
“I should.”
“But you aren’t.”
Jason’s thumbs pressed into his shoulders again, harder this time.
Tim’s breath caught.
Jason leaned closer. Not enough to touch beyond the hands. Enough that Tim felt the heat of him at his back.
“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” Jason asked.
Tim’s fingers curled against the mat.
“I think you know exactly what I’m doing.”
Another pause.
Jason’s breathing had changed.
Tim tilted his head, just slightly, giving him the line of his throat.
Jason’s hand slid from Tim’s shoulder to the side of his neck.
It was not a grab. It was barely pressure. Thumb under the jaw, fingers along the pulse. The same place Jason had pinned him when he first appeared, only now Tim’s body recognized the danger and wanted it.
“Twenty-one,” Jason said, like he was reminding himself.
“Adult.”
“Younger than you think.”
“Old enough.”
“For bad choices, yeah.”
Tim looked back at him.
Jason was close enough now that Tim could see the silver at his temple, the dark stubble on his jaw, the way his eyes had gone nearly black.
Tim said, “I choose badly all the time.”
Jason’s mouth tightened.
Tim thought Jason might kiss him.
Jason let go instead and stood.
The loss of his hand felt like cold water.
“Stretch yourself,” Jason said.
Then he walked away.
Tim stayed on the mat, breath shallow, body hot and frustrated and alive.
He should have felt embarrassed.
He felt challenged.
⸻
By hour twenty-six, Jason had taken to leaving the room whenever Tim changed clothes.
Tim took that personally.
He also took advantage of it.
The rupture had stabilized enough that Barbara could project a return window. Forty-six hours left, maybe forty-eight if the outer edge held. Bruce wanted older Jason back in the Cave for another set of scans. Older Jason refused. Tim backed him up because the safehouse data was cleaner, which was true, and because Bruce looking at the two of them through observation glass made Tim feel sixteen and guilty, which was inconvenient.
His Jason still had not come by.
That was stranger than it should have been.
Bruce had informed him, apparently. Dick had sent three messages, each worse than the last.
sooooooo
how’s grandpa hood
do i need to emotionally prepare for murder or flirting or something else whats the vibe
Tim had ignored all of them.
His Jason had sent nothing.
That bothered Tim more than he wanted to admit.
It bothered him so much he showered too long, staring at the safehouse bathroom tile while hot water beat against the back of his neck, thinking about the current Jason hearing there was an older version of himself in Gotham. Had he laughed? Gotten angry? Avoided the Cave because seeing what he might become was too much? Or because Tim was there?
Tim did not know.
He hated not knowing.
When he came out of the bathroom, he had a towel around his waist and nothing else.
Jason was at the table, reading through a file on Mercy Row Freight that Tim had pulled up to test multiversal overlap. His head snapped up.
Tim stopped in the doorway.
Water dripped from his hair onto his collarbone.
The air between them went tight enough to break.
Jason’s eyes moved over him. Face, throat, chest, towel, bare thighs, the bruise at his hip from patrol. The look was quick and hungry and furious with itself.
Tim’s skin heated under it.
“I forgot my clothes,” Tim said.
Jason stared at him.
The lie was pathetic.
Jason knew.
Tim knew Jason knew.
The towel sat low on Tim’s hips. He watched Jason’s jaw flex.
“Then go get them,” Jason said.
Tim crossed the room instead.
Jason’s hand closed around the edge of the table.
Tim stopped near his go-bag, which was beside Jason’s chair. He crouched slowly, towel pulling higher over his thighs as he unzipped the bag and rummaged through it as if he had not packed it himself.
Jason’s breathing had become very controlled.
Tim took his time.
“Problem?” he asked.
Jason’s voice was rough. “You’re being cruel.”
Tim looked up.
That landed differently.
The hunger was still there, obvious now. Jason’s eyes were dark, his mouth tight, shoulders held too still. But there was hurt under it too. Something old and scraped raw by the sight of Tim alive and wet-haired and young and doing this on purpose.
Tim swallowed.
“I’m trying to get you to stop looking at me like I’m a memorial,” he said.
Jason went very still.
Tim stood, clutching a clean shirt in one hand.
Jason’s chair scraped back.
For one second Tim thought he had pushed him away again.
Then Jason was in front of him.
Big. Close. So close Tim had to tilt his head back.
Jason did not touch him.
That made it worse.
“You think this is about me not wanting you?” Jason asked.
Tim’s breath caught.
The towel felt suddenly useless. The room felt too hot.
Jason leaned in, slow enough that Tim could move if he wanted.
Tim did not move.
Jason’s mouth stopped near his ear.
“I have wanted you since you landed on that roof and told me I got slow,” Jason said, voice low and scraped raw. “I want you every time you open your smart fucking mouth. I want you when you’re typing with your hair in your face. I want you when you pretend you didn’t set your shirt riding up on purpose. I want you so bad I can’t think straight when you stand near me.”
Tim’s whole body went hot.
Jason’s breath shook.
“And that is why I’m trying to stay. the hell. away. from you.”
Tim turned his face slightly.
Jason’s mouth was an inch from his.
“You think I want to be protected from you?” Tim asked.
Jason’s eyes flashed.
“I think you have no idea what it means to be wanted by a man who already buried you once.”
Tim’s chest tightened.
There it was.
The future between them. The dead Tim. The one whose blood had been on Jason’s gauntlets. The one who had maybe loved him, maybe been loved by him, maybe died before either of them could say anything cleanly. Tim felt a strange ugly jealousy of a corpse who had his face.
“I’m not him,” Tim said.
Jason’s expression twisted.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” Jason’s voice broke rougher. “That’s the problem.”
Tim’s fingers tightened around the shirt. A pang in his heart.
Jason stepped back like it cost him something.
“Get dressed,” he said.
Tim looked at him, breathing hard.
Then he dropped the shirt.
Jason’s gaze flicked down.
Tim reached for the towel.
Jason caught his wrist.
“Tim.”
His name came out almost pleading.
That should have stopped him.
Instead it made the want worse, because Jason Todd did not plead. Jason Todd fought, bled, left, lied, came back wrong, made every soft thing sound like a threat. Hearing this older Jason almost beg made Tim feel powerful and sick with tenderness and too young, maybe, but not innocent.
Tim said, “I want you to look at me.”
Jason’s grip tightened.
“I want you to touch me because I’m here,” Tim said. “Not because I died somewhere else.”
Jason stared at him.
The storm outside had passed hours ago, but Gotham still sounded wet through the walls. Cars hissing through slush. Distant sirens. The Cave’s muted beeps from Tim’s open comm line.
Jason released his wrist.
Tim let the towel fall.
Jason’s eyes dropped.
The room changed.
Tim stood there naked and shaking once, not from cold, while Jason looked at him with an expression that could have been violence if it did not hurt so much.
“Beautiful,” Jason said, almost under his breath.
The word hit Tim hard.
His throat tightened.
Jason saw that too.
Of course he did.
His gaze lifted. “That what you needed?”
Tim could have lied.
He did not.
“Yes.”
Jason’s mouth parted.
Then his control snapped.
He kissed Tim like he was angry at both of them for surviving long enough to make this possible.
Tim stumbled back into the edge of the table, and Jason followed, one hand at Tim’s jaw, the other at his bare waist, hot and rough and shaking. Tim grabbed Jason’s shirt, dragging him closer, desperate for the weight of him, the proof of him. Jason’s mouth was hard, teeth catching at Tim’s lip, tongue pushing in when Tim gasped.
It was over too quickly.
Jason wrenched himself back, breathing hard.
Tim reached for him.
Jason caught both his wrists and held them against Tim’s own chest.
“Say stop and I stop,” Jason said.
Tim’s pulse thundered.
“Say slow and I slow down. Say anything like you’re scared and this ends.”
“I’m not scared.”
Jason’s eyes were black.
“You should be.”
Tim leaned forward as much as Jason’s grip allowed and brushed his mouth against Jason’s. “I’m not.”
Jason made a sound low in his chest.
Then he let go of Tim’s wrists only to grab his hips and lift him onto the table like he weighed nothing.
The size of him hit Tim then. Jason’s hands spanned his hips. Jason’s body forced his knees apart when he stepped between them. Jason’s chest was broad under Tim’s palms, his shoulders huge beneath the black shirt, his mouth at Tim’s throat. Tim moaned.
Tim arched.
Jason’s teeth closed on the side of his neck.
“Fuck,” Tim said, fingers digging in.
Jason dragged him closer to the edge of the table, rough enough that Tim’s breath punched out. His bare cock brushed against Jason’s clothed stomach. Tim jerked, oversensitive and mortified by how much just that did to him.
Jason looked down.
Then back at Tim.
“Oh,” Jason said, voice ruined. “You’re so easy.”
Tim’s face burned. “Fuck you.”
Jason smiled against his jaw. “Trying.”
He shoved the files aside with one arm. Tim’s laptop skidded dangerously near the edge. Tim caught it out of reflex, and Jason laughed, breathless and disbelieving.
“Of course you save the laptop.”
“It has data.”
Jason bit his shoulder.
Tim’s complaint dissolved.
Jason’s hand wrapped around him, hot and calloused and sure, and Tim’s head fell back. Jason stroked him slowly at first, watching with an intensity that made Tim feel more naked than being naked had. Tim’s thighs bracketed Jason’s hips. He could feel Jason hard through his pants, thick against him.
Jason kissed down his chest.
Tim’s hands went into his hair.
The white streak was damp from the shower steam still lingering between them. Tim tugged without meaning to.
Jason groaned.
Tim’s eyes opened.
Jason’s hand tightened around him.
“Do that again,” Jason said.
Tim did.
Jason’s hips jerked forward against the table.
The sound that came out of him was rough enough to make Tim’s stomach flip. He was still clothed, still holding Tim by the cock, still larger and older and stronger and trying to pretend he had not just given Tim leverage.
Tim smiled.
Jason looked up and saw it.
“Careful,” he said.
Tim tugged his hair again.
Jason surged up and kissed him hard, hand moving faster. Tim grabbed at his shoulders, lost in it too quickly, too embarrassingly quickly. Jason’s voice found his ear.
“Look at you,” he said. “All that work to get me to touch you, and now you can barely handle it.”
Tim shuddered.
Jason stilled for half a second.
Then, lower, “You like that too?”
Tim squeezed his eyes shut.
Jason’s mouth brushed his cheek. “Praise?”
Tim’s body answered before he did.
Jason laughed, quiet and wrecked.
“Pretty, pretty boy,” he murmured.
Tim’s hips jerked into his fist.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “There it is.”
Tim grabbed his wrist. “Jason.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I know enough.”
Jason kissed him again, slower now, hand still stroking, thumb dragging over the head until Tim’s entire body tightened.
“You wanted me to look,” Jason said against his mouth. “I’m looking.”
Tim moaned.
Jason’s grip on his hip was bruising. “You wanted me to touch. I’m touching.”
“Please.”
Jason went still.
Tim’s face burned red. He had not meant to say it. Or he had, but not like that, not so open, not so helpless.
Jason stared at him like the word had punched through his armor.
Then his expression changed into something so hungry Tim almost leaned back.
“Please what?” Jason asked.
Tim’s breath shook.
Jason’s hand slowed again, cruel and deliberate.
“Come on,” Jason said. “You started this. You can ask.”
Tim hated him for making him say it.
Tim wanted him more for making him say it.
“Touch me more.”
Jason’s mouth twitched. “Doing that.”
“Jason.”
“Say what you want.”
Tim looked at him, furious and naked and shaking on the worktable. “I want your mouth.”
Jason’s eyes darkened.
“Good,” he said.
The word alone nearly broke him.
Then Jason sank to his knees.
Tim forgot how to breathe.
Jason pulled him closer, dragging him to the edge of the table with rough hands under his thighs, and put his mouth on him without hesitation.
Tim’s hand shot to Jason’s hair.
“Oh my god.”
Jason hummed around him.
Tim’s whole body jerked.
Jason was good. Terribly, unfairly good. His mouth was hot and wet and confident, taking him deep enough that Tim’s vision blurred, then pulling back to lick slow, filthy circles around the head. His hands held Tim open, thumbs pressing into the inside of his thighs. Tim could not stop looking. Older Jason on his knees between his legs, gray at his temples, scar at his brow, mouth stretched around Tim’s cock like he had been starving for it.
Tim made a sound so wrecked he did not recognize himself.
Jason pulled off just enough to mumble, “Beautiful.”
Tim came almost immediately.
It took him by surprise, a sharp rush that tore through him before he could warn Jason. His hand tightened in Jason’s hair, thighs shaking, breath breaking into a hoarse moan. Jason swallowed him down with a groan like it hurt him not to, mouth gentle only when Tim started trembling from too much.
Tim sagged back on one hand, chest heaving.
Jason stayed kneeling for a moment, forehead pressed against Tim’s thigh.
Tim looked down at him.
Something in his chest caved.
He touched Jason’s hair, softer now.
Jason closed his eyes.
For three breaths, they stayed like that.
Then Jason stood.
Tim saw the wet shine on his mouth and almost got hard again despite himself.
Jason wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked at Tim with an expression that made Tim feel pinned harder than the table did.
“We’re done for now,” Jason said.
Tim blinked. “What?”
Jason picked up the towel and wrapped it around Tim’s waist with hands that were still shaking. “You’re going to eat something, drink water, and get dressed.”
“You’re kidding.”
Jason’s mouth tightened. “I’m about ten seconds from bending you over this table.”
Tim’s body reacted so visibly that Jason groaned and looked away.
“That,” Jason said, pointing at him without looking, “is not helping.”
Tim slid off the table, towel clutched at his hips.
Jason gave him space.
Tim hated that too.
“You didn’t—” Tim stopped, glancing down.
Jason’s pants were painfully tight.
Jason’s jaw flexed. “I know.”
“I can—”
“Later.”
“Why?”
Jason looked at him then.
The answer was in his face before he said it.
“Because if I fuck you right now,” Jason said, voice low, “I’m going to do it because I missed you. And you deserve better.”
Tim’s throat tightened.
Jason turned away.
Tim stood there, towel loose around his hips, feeling both wanted and rejected and seen too clearly.
His phone buzzed on the worktable.
Bernard again.
This time, Jason looked at it and laughed once, without any humor at all.
“Yeah,” he said. “Eat something, Drake.”
Then he walked into the bathroom and shut the door.
Tim sat on the edge of the table and picked up his phone.
Bernard’s message was sweet.
He put it down without answering.
⸻
At hour thirty-four, Tim called his Jason.
He did it from the roof of the carriage house with one of Jason’s hoodies pulled over his head and the Gotham winter biting at his bare ankles because he had not bothered finding socks.
The phone rang six times.
Tim almost hung up.
Then Jason answered.
His Jason. Younger. Current. Alive in the same timeline, somewhere in the city, with his own red helmet and his own terrible habits and his own ability to make Tim’s chest hurt without trying.
“What?” Jason said.
Tim closed his eyes.
Of course that would be the greeting.
“Are you avoiding me?” Tim asked.
Silence.
Wind moved across the roof. Below, through two floors of concrete and steel, older Jason was probably pretending not to listen and absolutely listening.
Current Jason said, “You got the old fuck under control?”
Tim’s mouth twitched despite himself. “You sound jealous.”
Jason laughed. “Of myself? That’s a new low even for Gotham.”
“You haven’t come by.”
“Been busy.”
“You're such a liar.”
A pause.
Then, quieter, “Didn’t figure you needed two of me making your life worse.”
Tim looked out over the snow dark lawn, the carriage house roof dusted white.
His throat tightened.
“You usually don’t care what I need,” Tim said.
Jason’s voice sharpened. “Bullshit.”
The word came fast enough to hurt.
Tim’s hand tightened around the phone.
“You care,” Tim corrected softly. “You just pretend you don’t.”
Another silence.
This one was worse.
Jason said, “You okay?”
Tim nearly laughed.
He thought of older Jason kneeling between his legs. Older Jason calling him beautiful. Older Jason saying he would not use Tim as a grave. Older Jason looking at him like he had missed him across two decades and one dead future.
He thought of Bernard, kind and normal and wrong in a way Tim was only beginning to understand had nothing to do with Bernard at all.
He thought of his Jason on the other end of the phone, younger and meaner and still not yet turned into the man downstairs, still able to be reached if either of them stopped lying long enough.
“I don’t know,” Tim said.
Jason’s breathing changed.
Tim wished he could see his face.
“What did he do?” Jason asked.
“Nothing I didn’t ask for.”
The silence went lethal.
Tim winced. “Jason.”
“You fucked him?”
Tim looked down at the snowy roof.
Current Jason’s voice came back rougher. “Tim.”
The name did something to him. Different from older Jason. Less grief. More impact. A punch through the ribs.
“It’s complicated,” Tim said.
Jason laughed. “Yeah, I bet.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Wasn’t trying to be.”
Tim stared out at Gotham’s distant glow. “I wanted to understand something.”
“And did you?”
Tim’s eyes stung, which was ridiculous and probably wind-related.
“Yes.”
Jason did not ask.
Tim wanted him to.
He said, “I think I’ve been wanting you for a long time.”
Nothing.
Then Jason breathed, “Which one?”
Tim closed his eyes.
There it was.
The whole impossible, ugly thing, cut down to two words.
Tim answered honestly.
“You.”
The line stayed open.
For a second, Tim thought Jason had hung up.
Then Jason said, “You shouldn’t say shit like that when there’s an older version of me in the room.”
“He’s not in the room.”
“He’s listening.”
Tim glanced at the roof hatch.
Probably.
“Let him.”
Current Jason’s laugh was soft and furious. “Jesus, Tim.”
“I don’t know what to do with it yet.”
“What, me?”
“Yes.”
“Join the club.”
Tim smiled, small and painful.
Jason went quiet again. Then: “You with Bernard?”
Tim’s chest tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s an answer.”
“It’s a bad one.”
“Yeah.”
Tim pressed his thumb against the cold phone case. “I should go.”
“Tim.”
“What?”
Jason’s voice was rough. “Don’t let him hurt you.”
Tim swallowed.
“He won’t.”
“You sure?”
Tim thought of older Jason’s hands shaking as he wrapped the towel around Tim. The way he had left the room because restraint cost him more than indulgence. The way he had said Tim deserved better, sweet despite it all.
“Yes,” Tim said. “I’m sure.”
Current Jason exhaled.
“Okay,” he said.
It was not okay.
They both knew that.
Tim ended the call anyway.
When he turned, older Jason was standing by the roof hatch.
Of course.
He wore a black thermal shirt and sweatpants, arms crossed, hair damp from his shower. Without the armor, he looked more human. Larger somehow, because there was no cowl to make him symbolic. Just Jason, older and tired and watching Tim with a guarded expression.
“You heard,” Tim said.
“Some.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
Tim pushed the hood back. “Are you angry?”
Jason’s mouth twisted. “At myself, mostly.”
“Which one?”
That almost got a smile.
Then it vanished.
“He loves you,” older Jason said.
Tim’s breath caught.
Jason looked out over the lawn instead of at him. “Badly. Stupidly. Probably in ways that’ll make both of you miserable before he figures out how to do it right.”
Tim’s chest hurt.
“He never said.”
“Yeah, well.” Jason’s voice was dry. “We’re idiots.”
Tim stepped closer. “Did you?”
Jason’s face shut.
“Did you tell your Tim?”
Jason looked at him.
The answer was old and terrible.
“No,” he said. “Not until it didn’t matter.”
Tim’s throat tightened.
The cold wind moved between them.
Jason’s gaze dropped to Tim’s bare ankles. “You’re going to freeze.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re twenty-one and still lying like shit.”
“I lie very well.”
“Not to me.”
Tim looked at him.
Jason held the look for a long moment, then shook his head like he hated himself and reached for him.
The kiss was different this time.
Still rough. Jason did not seem capable of kissing gently at first. His hand slid into Tim’s hair and pulled his head back, mouth hard on his, teeth catching with enough pressure to make Tim gasp. But under it was something like surrender. Jason was not pretending this was only Tim pushing. He wanted. He had admitted it, and the admission had taken the lock off something.
Tim went up on his toes, arms around Jason’s neck.
Jason lifted him.
It was nothing to him. One arm under Tim’s thighs, the other at his back, hoisting him off the roof like Tim weighed less than the armor he wore on patrol. Tim’s legs wrapped around his waist instinctively.
The size difference hit again, dizzying and hot.
Jason’s mouth moved to his jaw. “You like being carried?”
Tim’s face heated.
Jason huffed. “Of course you do.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
Tim kissed him.
Jason carried him down through the roof hatch one-handed like a show-off, which should have been ridiculous, but Tim was too busy grinding against the hard line of him through sweatpants to care.
Jason nearly missed a step.
“Little shit,” he muttered.
Tim smiled against his mouth.
That got him shoved against the wall halfway down the stairs, Jason’s body pinning him in place, one hand under his ass, the other flat beside his head. Tim gasped as his back hit concrete, then moaned when Jason rolled his hips up.
Jason’s eyes went black.
“You trying to make me lose it?”
“Yes.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Tim dragged his mouth along Jason’s jaw. “I thought you liked me honest.”
“I like you breathing.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Jason laughed once, breathless, and kissed him hard enough to bruise.
They barely made it to the bedroom.
⸻
The bedroom had one bed because all Gotham safehouses were either overfunded bunkers with no comfort or underfunded holes with no planning. This one had at least been stocked by someone who understood injuries, paranoia, and sex enough to leave a real first-aid kit, weapons in the walls, clean sheets, and lube in the bedside drawer.
Tim noticed the lube.
Jason noticed Tim noticing.
For a moment, they stood on opposite sides of the bed, both breathing too hard.
Jason’s face had gone tight again. The restraint was back, but damaged. Tim could see the cracks in it. The way his hands opened and closed. The way his gaze kept catching on Tim’s mouth, his throat, the hoodie hanging too large on his body.
Tim reached for the hem.
Jason said, “Tim.”
Tim stopped.
“Last chance to slow down.”
Tim looked at him.
Older Jason Todd, future Batman, impossible grief in human shape, asking him to slow down while looking like slowing down might kill him.
Tim pulled the hoodie off.
Jason’s eyes moved over him.
Bare chest. Bruises. Low-slung sweatpants. The marks Jason had already left near his shoulder.
Tim pushed the sweatpants down.
Jason’s breath caught.
Tim stepped out of them.
Naked again. On purpose. Less shaking this time.
Jason’s gaze went over him with such open hunger that Tim felt it like touch.
Tim climbed onto the bed and knelt in the middle of it.
Jason did not move.
Tim rested back on his heels. “Are you going to make me ask for everything?”
Jason’s mouth parted.
Tim tilted his head. “Because I will.”
Jason crossed the room in three strides.
The bed dipped under his weight. Tim barely had time to inhale before Jason was on him, pushing him onto his back, one hand behind his head to keep it from hitting the wall, mouth crashing against his. Tim opened for him immediately, fingers gripping the back of Jason’s shirt.
Jason kissed like he was trying to prove something to both of them. Tim let him. Tim wanted the pressure, the weight, the edge of teeth. Wanted this older Jason’s hunger, not because it belonged to a ghost, but because it made Tim understand the shape of something he had been avoiding in his own life.
Jason’s body covered his.
He was huge over Tim, one knee between his thighs, one arm braced beside his head, the thick line of him pressing hard through his sweatpants against Tim’s bare hip.
Tim reached down.
Jason caught his wrist and pinned it to the mattress.
Tim’s breath hitched.
Jason’s eyes sharpened.
“You like being held down too.”
Tim’s face burned.
Jason leaned closer. “How much of you did he miss?”
Tim knew who he meant.
Bernard.
The name did not need to be said to enter the room.
Tim looked away.
Jason’s hand tightened around his wrist. “Look at me.”
Tim looked.
Jason’s voice dropped. “Does he know?”
Tim’s pulse hammered. “Know what?”
“That you like being pushed.” Jason’s thigh forced Tim’s legs wider. “That you like being told you’re good. That you like acting like you’re in charge until someone bigger makes you stop thinking for five fucking minutes.”
Tim made a sound he could not stop.
Jason’s eyes went darker.
“No,” Jason said, answering for him. “He doesn’t.”
“Jason.”
“He touch you like this?”
Tim’s face heated. “That’s not fair.”
Jason’s smile was sharp and wounded. “I know.”
Tim should have stopped him.
He did not want to.
Jason leaned down and kissed the side of his throat, then bit just hard enough to make Tim arch.
“He doesn’t know what you need,” Jason said against his skin. “But I do.”
Tim’s hips jerked.
Jason’s hand slid down his body, over his chest, stomach, hip. “I know exactly what you want.”
“Because of him?” Tim asked, breathless before he could stop himself. “Your Tim?”
Jason went still.
Tim regretted it immediately.
Then Jason’s forehead dropped against his shoulder.
“For a while,” he said, voice rough. “Maybe.”
Tim’s throat tightened.
Jason lifted his head.
“But right now?” His hand wrapped around Tim’s cock. “I know because you’re telling me.”
Tim gasped.
Jason stroked him slowly, almost cruelly, eyes fixed on his face.
“You think I need a ghost to read you?” Jason asked. “You’re right here. You’re hard in my hand. You blush every time I say good. You stop breathing when I call you beautiful. You keep pushing me because you want me to push back.”
Tim’s back arched.
Jason’s thumb dragged over the head of his cock.
“You want rough,” Jason said. “But you want someone watching close enough to know when to stop.”
Tim’s eyes stung.
Jason saw that too.
His mouth softened, barely.
“There you are,” he said.
Tim came close to breaking from the words alone.
Jason kissed him before he could.
It got rough again fast. Tim’s hands went under Jason’s shirt, dragging at warm skin and muscle until Jason pulled back long enough to strip it off. The sight of him knocked Tim breathless all over again: broad chest, heavy shoulders, scars under the muted safehouse light. Jason shoved his sweatpants down and kicked them off, and Tim’s mouth went dry.
He was bigger than Tim expected.
Tim stared.
Jason’s ego, unfortunately, noticed even through the ache in his face.
“Problem?” he asked.
Tim swallowed.
Jason’s gaze dropped to Tim’s cock, then back to his face.
A crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “That what you wanted to know?”
“Shut up.”
Jason crawled over him. “You started seducing me in a towel and now you’re shy?”
“I’m uh, reassessing logistics.”
Jason laughed, and the sound hit warm under Tim’s ribs.
Then Jason kissed him softer, which was worse.
Tim’s hands found his back. Jason’s skin was hot under his palms. He could feel the strength of him, the weight held in check. Jason’s cock brushed against his thigh and Tim shivered.
Jason reached into the drawer for the lube.
The click of the cap was almost too loud.
Tim’s heart started beating harder.
Jason noticed.
“Still with me?”
“Yes.”
“You done this before?”
Tim huffed. “I’m twenty-one, not a Victorian ghost.”
Jason’s mouth twitched. “That’s not what I asked.”
“Yes,” Tim said. “I’ve done this.”
Jason’s expression shifted at whatever he heard in Tim’s voice.
“With him?”
Tim looked away.
Jason caught his jaw, not hard, turning his face back.
“I'm not judging.” Jason said.
Tim’s mouth tightened. “It sounds like jealousy.”
“It is jealousy.”
The honesty hit harder than any denial would have.
Jason leaned closer. “I’m jealous of a civilian I’ve never met because he got to touch you while I was in another universe burying a version of you. I know it’s ugly.”
Tim’s breath shook.
“I didn’t ask you to be pretty about it,” Tim said.
Jason groaned and kissed him hard.
His fingers were slick when they slid between Tim’s thighs. Tim tensed at the first touch, then forced himself to breathe. Jason waited, mouth against his cheek, until Tim nodded.
The first finger was careful.
Almost too careful.
Tim made an impatient sound.
Jason laughed against his jaw. “You always this demanding?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
Tim froze.
Jason froze too.
The past from the wrong future sat between them for a second.
Then Jason kissed his temple.
“Sorry.”
Tim turned his face. “It’s okay.”
“It isn’t.”
“I know.” Tim wrapped his legs around Jason’s waist loosely, pulling him closer. “Keep going anyway.”
Jason’s eyes searched his.
Then he did.
The stretch was slow at first, slick and full and maddeningly controlled. Jason watched him through all of it, reading every twitch, every sharp breath, every time Tim’s nails dug into his shoulders. A second finger made Tim arch. A third made him swear, half from discomfort and half from wanting more.
Jason’s voice stayed low at his ear.
“Breathe.”
“I am.”
“Liar. In.”
Tim inhaled.
“Good.”
Tim shuddered.
Jason’s fingers pressed deeper, curling just right.
Tim’s hips jerked. “Fuck.”
“There?”
Tim nodded, words gone.
Jason did it again.
Tim’s head tipped back. Jason kissed the exposed line of his throat.
“That’s it,” Jason murmured. “Good boy.”
Tim groaned, helplessly, shamelessly, and Jason’s control slipped another inch.
“I’m going to fuck you,” Jason said, voice rough enough to drag over Tim’s skin. “But you say slow if it’s too much.”
Tim grabbed his face and kissed him.
Jason lined himself up.
The first push stole Tim’s breath.
Jason was big, too big for a second, the stretch sharp enough to make Tim’s hands fly to his shoulders. Jason stopped immediately, shaking above him.
Tim could feel the restraint in his whole body. The tremor in his arms. The way his jaw clenched. The way he closed his eyes like looking at Tim would make him move.
Tim breathed through it.
Jason kissed his cheek. His mouth. The corner of his eye.
“Talk to me,” Jason said.
Tim swallowed. “Give me a second.”
“You have it.”
Jason stayed still.
Tim’s body adjusted slowly, heat spreading through the edge of discomfort, turning heavy and deep. He shifted his hips, experimental, and both of them groaned.
Jason’s eyes opened.
Tim looked up at him.
“Okay,” Tim said.
Jason moved.
Slow at first. Almost unbearably. He pulled back and pushed in with careful force, watching Tim’s face like it was the only thing in the world. Tim clung to him, legs tightening around his waist, breath catching every time Jason filled him.
Then Jason found the angle.
Tim cried out.
Jason’s hand came down over his mouth.
The gesture was instinctive, not quite hard, but it lit Tim up everywhere.
Jason stared at him.
Tim stared back over the edge of his hand.
Jason’s eyes went black.
“Oh, you like that too,” he said.
Tim nodded before he could stop himself.
Jason’s hand pressed more firmly over his mouth.
“Fuck,” Jason breathed. “Pretty little thing.”
Tim made a sound against his palm.
Jason started fucking him harder.
The bed frame hit the wall. Tim’s hands gripped Jason’s wrist, not to pull him away, just to hold on. Jason was rough now, hips snapping in a rhythm that drove the air out of Tim’s lungs and the thoughts out of his head. The size of him was everywhere. The weight of him. The strength. The hand over Tim’s mouth, the other gripping his hip hard enough to bruise.
Tim loved it.
He should not have. Or maybe he should. Maybe that was the point. Jason had been right. Tim wanted rough, but he wanted rough from someone who watched him like this. Someone who noticed every signal and every breath. Someone who made restraint feel as present as force.
Jason pulled his hand away from Tim’s mouth.
Tim gasped. “Jason.”
“Say it if you need me to slow down.”
Tim shook his head frantically.
Jason’s smile was not kind, but it was alive. “Greedy.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck, Tim.”
Jason hit that spot again and Tim’s back arched.
“There?” Jason asked.
“Yes.”
“There,” Jason said, more to himself, and then he kept hitting it, deep and hard, until Tim’s eyes rolled back.
Praise started spilling out of Jason in rough fragments.
Good. Beautiful. Taking me so well. Just like that. Fuck, look at you.
Tim lost track of what sounds he made. Jason caught some with his mouth, swallowed others, let the rest fill the room with the slick, filthy sound of skin and breath and the bed hitting the wall.
Then Jason’s jealousy came back like a blade.
He pushed Tim’s knees higher, folding him open, making the next thrust so deep Tim sobbed.
“He ever fuck you like this?” Jason asked.
Tim’s nails dug into his back.
Jason’s voice went harsh and possessive. “Answer.”
“No.”
Jason groaned.
“No, he doesn’t know,” Jason said, hips punching forward. “He doesn’t know what you need. He doesn’t know you need someone bigger to hold you down when you get like this.”
Tim moaned.
Jason kissed him, then bit his lower lip.
“I do,” Jason said. “I know. I know exactly what you want.”
“Yes.”
“I fuck you better than him?”
Tim’s face burned so hot he almost turned away.
Jason caught his jaw.
“Say it.”
Tim’s breath broke. “Yes.”
Jason’s control shattered further.
“Say my name.”
“Jason.”
“Again.”
“Jason.”
“That’s right.” Jason thrust harder, his voice rough and wrecked at Tim’s ear. “I’m so much bigger than him, aren’t I? You feel that? Feel how much you wanted this?”
Tim could barely breathe.
“Y-yes.”
“Pretty boy,” Jason said, and the tenderness under the filth nearly undid him. “You needed someone who knew what to do with you.”
Tim came without warning.
It hit him hard, bowing his body under Jason’s, pleasure ripping through him so sharply he almost blacked out at the edges. Jason kept fucking him through it, not gentle, not yet, dragging it out until Tim was shaking and clutching at him, oversensitive and wrecked.
Jason’s rhythm broke.
He buried his face in Tim’s neck, hips stuttering.
“Where?” he rasped.
Tim wrapped his legs tighter around him. “Inside.”
Jason groaned like that hurt him.
He came deep with a rough broken sound, body locking over Tim’s, arms shaking with the effort not to crush him. Tim held on through it, feeling the heat of him, the weight, the way Jason’s breath came apart against his throat.
For a while, neither of them moved.
Then Jason shifted too quickly and Tim hissed.
Jason froze.
“Ribs?”
“No.” Tim swallowed. “Just… everything.”
Jason lifted himself with visible effort. His face had changed completely. Hunger gone, replaced by concern so stark it made Tim want to hide.
“Too rough?”
Tim shook his head. “Good rough.”
Jason’s mouth twitched faintly. “That a technical term?”
“It is now.”
Jason touched his cheek.
Tim leaned into it before he could stop himself.
The older Jason’s expression went soft and destroyed.
“There you are,” he said again, quieter.
Tim’s chest cracked open.
He realized then, lying under Jason Todd in a safehouse with his body still shaking and his heart doing something stupid and enormous, that the future had not made him want Jason.
It had removed the excuse.
Tim had wanted his Jason for years. In arguments, in alleyways, in med bays, in the brief moments when Jason’s rough hands had touched him for practical reasons and Tim had replayed it afterward like evidence. He had wanted Jason’s attention, his anger, his competence, his care. Bernard had been sweet because Tim had been trying to choose a life that did not make him ache.
But Tim’s ache had a name.
It had always had a name.
Jason kissed his forehead.
Not his mouth. His forehead.
That was worse.
Tim’s eyes stung.
Jason noticed. “Tim?”
Tim covered his face with one arm. “I’m fine.”
Jason made a quiet sound of disbelief and carefully pulled out. Tim hissed again despite himself, and Jason murmured something low and apologetic, one hand on his hip. He left the bed only long enough to get a warm cloth from the bathroom, moving with a limp he had been hiding all day.
When he came back, Tim turned his face into the pillow.
Jason sat on the edge of the bed. “You gonna let me clean you up?”
Tim’s voice was muffled. “You’re very bossy after sex.”
“I was bossy during sex.”
Tim almost laughed.
Jason’s hand touched his thigh. “Tim.”
Tim looked back.
Jason’s face was tired. Older. Human.
Tim nodded.
Jason cleaned him with a care that made the roughness feel more intense in retrospect. He wiped between Tim’s thighs, his stomach, the mess on his skin. He checked the bruises at Tim’s hips, the bite marks near his shoulder, the redness at his wrists from where Jason had held him down. Every touch was practical and reverent and a little embarrassed, as if tenderness was somehow more indecent than the things they had done.
Tim watched him.
Jason pretended not to notice.
Eventually, Tim said, “He loves me?”
Jason’s hand paused.
“My Jason,” Tim clarified, though he did not need to.
Jason looked at the cloth in his hand. “Yeah.”
“How do you know?”
A faint, bitter smile. “Because I know what it looks like when I’m trying not to.”
Tim’s throat tightened.
Jason set the cloth aside and pulled the blanket over him.
Tim caught his wrist.
Jason looked down.
“What if I mess it up?” Tim asked.
“You will.”
Tim stared.
Jason shrugged with one shoulder. “He will too.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It’s honest.”
Tim let out a breath that might have been a laugh.
Jason lay beside him carefully, on his back, leaving space he probably thought Tim needed.
Tim moved into it.
Jason’s arm came around him after a hesitation.
The silence settled.
For a while, it was almost peaceful.
Then Tim said, “I need to break up with Bernard.”
Jason’s arm tightened.
“I mean,” Tim continued, because his mouth had never once saved him, “I should have done it before this. Before you. I think I knew.”
Jason was quiet.
Tim looked up. “Say something.”
Jason’s eyes were on the ceiling. “I’m not the guy who gets to give you advice on clean endings.”
“Did you have any?”
“Clean endings?”
“Yeah.”
Jason’s mouth twisted. “One or two. They didn’t stick.”
Tim studied his profile. “What happened to me? In your timeline.”
Jason closed his eyes.
Tim thought he would refuse.
Then Jason said, “You died buying me time.”
Tim’s breath caught.
“Jokerized militia had the lower city. Bruce was gone. Dick was in Blüdhaven trying to keep the bridges open. Damian was—” Jason stopped. Swallowed. “You were twenty-eight. Too smart for your own good. Still lying like shit when you were hurt.”
Tim’s fingers tightened against his chest.
Jason’s voice got rougher. “You locked me out of the tower system and redirected the drones manually. Gave us twelve minutes to evacuate the shelters.”
“And?”
“And the tower came down.”
Tim did not speak.
Jason’s arm held him tighter.
“They found you two days later,” Jason said. “I found you.”
The room went very still.
Tim understood the blood on the gauntlets then.
His chest hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Jason’s laugh was raw and quiet. “For dying in a universe you’ve never been to?”
“No.”
Jason turned his face toward him.
For a second he looked almost angry.
Then the anger broke.
He kissed Tim softly, and Tim let him.
Jason’s hand in his hair. Tim’s mouth against his scarred chest. Their legs tangled under the blanket. The room warm now, finally, because at some point the safehouse heating had kicked in and neither of them had noticed.
Tim slept against him.
This time, he did not dream.
⸻
The second time they had sex was morning, and it started because Tim was an idiot.
Jason woke before him. Of course he did. Older Jason apparently slept like a soldier expecting the ceiling to collapse, which was to say barely. Tim woke slowly to the smell of coffee and the low murmur of Jason’s voice in the main room.
He was on comms with Barbara.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Tell B I’m not coming in for another scan until the breach starts pulling at my bones.”
A pause.
“Because I know what that feels like.”
Another pause.
“I’m not being dramatic.”
Tim smiled into the pillow.
Jason said, “He’s asleep.”
Barbara said something Tim could not hear.
Jason went quiet.
Then, softer, “Yeah. He’s okay.”
Tim’s chest warmed.
He probably should have put on clothes before leaving the bedroom. He put on Jason’s hoodie instead. It was huge on him, falling off one shoulder, hem nearly to mid-thigh. He found his underwear somewhere near the foot of the bed and decided against it.
He padded into the main room in bare feet, hair messy, thighs bare under the hoodie.
Jason looked up from the table.
The comm went silent.
Tim leaned against the doorway. “Morning.”
Jason stared.
Barbara’s voice crackled faintly from the comm. “Oh my god, did he seriously just stop talking because Tim walked in?”
Jason grabbed the comm and muted it.
Tim smiled.
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “You’re trouble.”
“You knew that.”
“You walking around like that on purpose?”
Tim looked down at himself, then back up. “Like what?”
Jason leaned back in the chair.
His gaze dragged over Tim, slower now, with none of last night’s restraint to soften the impact.
“In my hoodie,” Jason said. “Bare legs. Bite mark showing.”
Tim’s hand went automatically to his shoulder.
Jason’s smile turned dangerous.
“Did I leave that?” he asked.
Tim’s face warmed. “You know you did.”
“Want more?”
The heat in Tim’s stomach woke up fast.
Jason pushed the chair back.
Tim should have stayed where he was. Instead he crossed the room and stopped in front of him, close enough that Jason could put both hands on the backs of Tim’s thighs.
He did.
His palms were warm.
Tim’s breath caught.
Jason looked up at him. “Sore?”
“Yes.”
“Too sore?”
Tim shook his head.
“Words.”
“No.”
Jason’s hands slid higher.
The hoodie hem bunched over his wrists.
Jason found bare skin and exhaled.
“You really didn’t put anything on under this.”
Tim’s voice came out steadier than he felt. “Forgot.”
“Liar.”
Jason pulled him down onto his lap.
Tim gasped as he straddled him. Jason was already half-hard under the sweatpants, heat and pressure right where Tim was sore enough to feel every brush. Jason’s hands locked around his hips.
The position was obscene in daylight.
Tim liked that.
Jason leaned in and kissed the bite mark on his shoulder. “You going to tease me all day?”
“We only have thirty-something hours left.”
“That a yes?”
Tim rolled his hips.
Jason’s grip tightened. “Fuck.”
Tim smiled.
Jason looked up, saw the smile, and laughed under his breath. “You’re proud of yourself.”
“A little.”
“Brat.”
Tim shivered.
Jason’s eyes warmed with filthy recognition. “Still like that too.”
Tim grabbed his shoulders. “You talk too much.”
Jason’s hand came down on his ass.
The slap was not hard enough to hurt badly, but it shocked a gasp out of him. Heat flashed through his body so fast he almost hid his face.
Jason froze. “Okay?”
Tim nodded quickly.
Jason’s hand soothed over the spot. “Words.”
“Yes. Good. It’s good.”
Jason’s face changed.
He did it again.
Tim moaned.
Jason groaned like the sound had gone straight through him. “Christ, Tim.”
Tim rocked down against him, the hoodie riding higher. “You started it.”
“You walked in looking like this.”
“You could have ignored me.”
Jason’s laugh was rough. “I’ve got twenty years of evidence saying I can’t.”
Then his mouth was on Tim’s.
This time there was less hesitation. Jason kissed him with a morning’s worth of hunger and the memory of last night under both their skins. Tim moved against him, slow at first because he was sore, then harder because Jason’s hands kept guiding him. Dry friction turned slick when Jason shoved his sweatpants down just enough and wrapped a hand around both of them.
Tim’s head fell back.
Jason kissed his throat. “Too much?”
“Not enough.”
Jason cursed.
The second slap to his ass was harder.
Tim’s hips jerked into Jason’s fist.
“There you go,” Jason murmured. “That’s what you wanted.”
Tim groaned.
Jason used his free hand to pull the hoodie down off one shoulder, exposing more of the bite. He kissed it again, then bit beside it, adding another mark with deliberate pressure.
Tim’s nails dug into his shoulders.
Jason’s jealousy came back softer this time, but it came.
“He ever mark you?” Jason asked.
Tim’s eyes half-opened.
Jason stroked them together, slow and firm.
“Bernard,” Jason said, the name rough in his mouth.
Tim’s stomach flipped.
“No.”
Jason smiled against his skin. “Good.”
The possessiveness should have annoyed him.
It did not.
It made him hotter.
Jason felt that too, because his hand tightened and his voice dropped. “You like being mine for a little while?”
Tim’s breath caught.
Jason stopped stroking.
Tim made a frustrated sound.
“Answer.”
“Yes.”
Jason’s eyes sharpened. “Yeah?”
Tim leaned forward, forehead against his. “Yes.”
Jason’s mouth found his, and the pace turned rougher. Tim rode his hand, his cock sliding against Jason’s, both of them slick and breathing hard. It should have been too much after last night, but the soreness made it better somehow, made every drag feel deeper in his body. Jason talked to him through it, low and filthy, calling him beautiful, calling him good, telling him he looked so pretty falling apart in his hoodie.
Tim came first again, shaking in Jason’s lap, face buried against his neck.
Jason followed with a groan, both arms around him, holding him down against the mess between them.
Afterward, Tim stayed there.
Jason’s hand moved up and down his back under the hoodie.
The comm crackled from the table.
Barbara’s voice, tinny and dry, said, “I muted myself for ten minutes. I deserve hazard pay.”
Tim closed his eyes.
Jason reached over without dislodging him and shut the comm off entirely.
“Oops,” he said.
Tim started laughing and could not stop.
Jason’s chest shook under him.
For a moment, absurdly, it was easy.
⸻
It stopped being easy at hour fifty-nine.
The rupture reopened early.
Tim was in the middle of recalibrating the return anchor when every screen in the safehouse flashed red and the windows shook hard enough to rattle dust from the frames. The air turned electric. Jason grabbed the table with one hand, face going pale under the scars.
Tim stood. “Jason?”
Jason’s jaw clenched. “There it is.”
The time signature spiked.
“Already?” Tim’s hands flew over the keyboard. “The collapse window was another twelve hours.”
“Guess the universe got sick of me.”
“Do not joke right now.”
Jason looked at him, and for one sharp awful second, Tim saw his Jason in him so clearly it hurt.
“I’m not joking,” Jason said.
The pull hit like a pressure wave.
Jason staggered.
Tim ran to him.
Jason caught him with one arm and shoved him behind his body automatically, as if the multiverse itself could be punched if it got too close. Tim pushed around him, furious.
“Sit down.”
“Bossy.”
“Jason.”
Jason sat.
Tim strapped the sensor bands around his forearm, then his chest. His hands were steady because they had to be. Temporal readings crawled across the monitor in jagged red lines. The breach had reopened over Crime Alley, same as before, but the energy was unstable. If Jason did not go through during the next window, the universe might try to correct the mismatch by ripping him apart molecule by molecule.
Tim hated magic. He hated time travel. He hated Gotham. He hated the fact that he had barely gotten thirty-six hours with this man and somehow that was enough to make losing him feel like someone had found an old bruise and pressed both thumbs into it.
Jason watched him.
Tim did not look up. “Stop staring.”
“Can’t.”
“Try.”
“Been trying for two days.”
Tim’s hands paused.
Then kept moving.
The safehouse door burst open thirty seconds later.
Current Jason came in wearing the red helmet and carrying enough weapons to make it either rescue or murder.
Tim looked up.
For one second, both Jasons stared at each other.
The room itself seemed embarrassed.
Current Jason took off the helmet.
His gaze moved from older Jason’s bare chest and sensor bands to Tim wearing older Jason’s hoodie and nothing visible beneath it.
His expression went unreadable.
Tim’s stomach dropped.
Older Jason sighed. “Well, this is fucking awkward.”
Current Jason’s jaw flexed. “You always this helpful in the future?”
“Worse.”
“Great.”
Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can we not do this during a temporal collapse?”
Both Jasons looked at him.
The resemblance was unbearable. Different ages, different damage, same eyes when Tim used that tone.
Current Jason looked away first, muttering, “Yeah, okay.”
Older Jason’s mouth twitched.
Tim pointed at him. “You too.”
The twitch became almost a smile.
The work took twenty minutes.
Long enough for Bruce and Barbara to come on comms. Long enough for Dick to arrive as backup and immediately decide to stay outside because, in his words, “the emotional radiation in there is above my pay grade.” Long enough for Current Jason to help Tim stabilize the anchor without once looking directly at the hoodie again.
Tim noticed that.
Tim noticed everything.
Older Jason noticed too.
When the readings finally stabilized, the return window was twelve minutes.
Twelve minutes left.
Tim’s chest went tight.
He hated that there was no time for a clean conversation. Maybe Jason had been right. Clean endings did not stick.
Older Jason stood slowly, pulling the sensor bands off. The red-bat armor was stacked on the table, repaired enough to survive transit. He began putting it on piece by piece.
Current Jason watched him with an expression Tim could not read.
“You become Batman,” Current Jason said.
Older Jason clipped the chest plate into place. “Try not to.”
Current Jason huffed without humor. “That bad?”
Older Jason looked at him.
For once, his face showed all of it. The decades. The losses. The weight of a cowl that had never fit because it had belonged to a man neither of them had ever stopped needing and resenting.
“It means something went wrong,” older Jason said. “More wrong than usual.”
Current Jason’s mouth tightened.
Older Jason looked at Tim.
Tim forgot how to breathe.
Then older Jason looked back at his younger self. “Tell him.”
Current Jason went still.
Tim’s chest clenched.
“Don’t wait until it doesn’t matter,” older Jason said.
Current Jason’s eyes flicked to Tim.
Then away.
“Fuck you,” he muttered.
Older Jason smiled faintly. “Yeah. Sounds right.”
The breach warning chimed.
Ten minutes.
Tim picked up the cowl from the table and handed it to him.
Older Jason took it.
Their fingers touched.
Tim wanted to say too many things. Thank you. I’m sorry. I wanted you. I wanted him. You made me understand. You were not a mistake. I hope I was loved where you came from. I hope you survive going back.
What came out was, “You should have told him.”
Jason’s face softened.
“I know.”
“Your Tim.”
Jason looked at the cowl.
The red visor reflected safehouse light.
“I know,” he said again.
Tim swallowed.
Jason lifted a hand, then stopped, glancing once at Current Jason like he was asking permission and hating himself for needing to.
Current Jason looked pained.
“Jesus,” he said. “Hug him or whatever.”
Tim’s throat tightened.
Older Jason pulled him in.
It was careful at first because Current Jason was there, because Bruce was on comms, because the universe was ending its tolerance for them. Then Tim wrapped his arms around him and Jason’s control cracked. He held Tim hard, one arm across his back, one hand in his hair, face buried against his temple.
Tim closed his eyes.
For a second, he let himself be held by the man Jason might become if everything went wrong and love survived anyway.
Jason’s voice was rough against his hair. “Be good to him.”
Tim laughed wetly. “Which one?”
“Both of you.”
Tim pulled back enough to look at him.
Older Jason kissed him.
It was not chaste. It was not filthy either. It was goodbye, and it hurt.
Current Jason made a sound somewhere behind them and turned away.
Older Jason rested his forehead against Tim’s for one second.
Then he let go.
The cowl sealed over his face.
The red-bat Batman walked out into the snow with five minutes left on the clock.
Tim followed him to the roof.
Everyone did. Bruce in the shadows near the carriage house. Dick on the adjacent roof with a grapple ready. Barbara in their ears, unusually quiet. Current Jason standing beside Tim and not touching him.
The rupture opened over the East End like a red wound.
Older Jason stood on the roof edge.
Then he looked back.
At Tim.
At Current Jason.
“Try harder,” he said.
Then the breach took him.
Red light swallowed the roof. Wind slammed into them hard enough that Tim staggered. Current Jason caught his arm. For a second Tim saw older Jason in the rupture, outlined in red, cape torn, armor burning at the edges, one hand lifted like he might reach back.
Then he was gone.
The sky closed.
Snow began falling again.
Tim stood there, breathing hard, wearing another Jason’s hoodie, Current Jason’s hand still wrapped around his arm.
Neither of them spoke.
Bruce stepped back first, his cape shifting in the wind. Dick followed him with a look at Tim that was too gentle to survive. Barbara said she would debrief in the morning and cut the comm before anyone could argue.
Then it was just them.
Tim and Jason.
The one who stayed.
Jason let go of his arm.
Tim immediately missed the contact.
Jason stared out at the place the breach had been. “So.”
Tim closed his eyes. “Please do not start with so.”
Jason’s mouth twitched, then faded. “Did you mean it?”
Tim looked at him.
Jason still would not quite meet his eyes.
“What I said on the phone?” Tim asked.
“Yeah.”
Tim wrapped his arms around himself against the cold. The hoodie smelled like older Jason. Underneath it, Tim’s skin still remembered his hands. His body was sore from him, marked by him, changed by the knowledge he had given.
And Jason, his Jason, stood two feet away looking like the answer he had been avoiding for years.
“Yes,” Tim said.
Jason’s jaw tightened.
Tim stepped closer.
Jason did not move.
“I need to talk to Bernard,” Tim said. “Properly. Cleanly. I should have done it before.”
Jason’s laugh came out sharp and self-punishing. “Great. Love being the reason you dump your boyfriend.”
“You’re not the reason.”
Jason finally looked at him.
Tim held his gaze.
“You’re why I can’t keep lying about the reason,” Tim said.
The wind moved between them.
Jason’s expression cracked in one small place.
Tim wanted to touch him.
“I don’t know how to do this without hurting people,” Tim said.
Jason looked down at the snow. “Me neither.”
“I know.”
“That supposed to be comforting?”
“No.”
Jason huffed.
Tim stepped closer anyway.
“This is going to be messy,” Tim said.
Jason’s eyes lifted. “Yeah.”
“You’re going to be awful.”
“Probably.”
“I’m also going to be awful.”
“Already knew that.”
Tim smiled despite himself.
Jason looked at his mouth.
The air changed.
Tim’s heart started beating harder.
Jason saw that too, because of course he did, because every version of Jason saw too much once he decided to look.
“Tim,” Jason said, voice low.
Tim swallowed. “Yeah?”
Jason reached out, then stopped with his hand halfway between them.
Tim thought of older Jason telling him to try harder. Telling his younger self not to wait.
Tim closed the distance.
He took Jason’s hand and placed it on his waist.
Jason’s breath caught.
Current Jason’s hand was different. Less scarred. Less careful in the way older Jason had been careful. More uncertain, maybe, because this Jason did not have twenty years of grief clarifying the shape of his want. He had only the present, and whatever courage he could scrape together with both hands.
Tim looked up at him.
Jason’s voice came out rough. “I wanted to come by.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t know if seeing him would make me want to shoot myself or shoot Bruce.”
“Understandable.”
“And then I knew you were with him.”
Tim’s throat tightened. “Jason.”
“Yeah.” Jason’s fingers flexed against his waist. “Hated that.”
“I know.”
Jason leaned closer. “You keep saying that.”
Tim’s voice softened. “Because I do.”
Jason looked at him like that hurt.
Then he kissed him.
It was nothing like older Jason.
It was worse.
Younger Jason kissed like a man stepping off a roof without checking the grapple line. Fierce, unpracticed at softness, one hand on Tim’s waist and the other coming up to his jaw like he had meant to hold back and failed immediately. Tim grabbed his jacket and kissed him back so hard Jason made a sound into his mouth.
The sound went through Tim like a live wire.
Jason pulled back first, breathing hard.
His eyes dropped to Tim’s throat.
To the marks older Jason had left.
Something sharp crossed his face.
Tim touched his cheek.
“Not like that,” Tim said.
Jason’s eyes flicked up.
Tim said, “Don’t make it a competition with him.”
Jason’s laugh was rough. “He’s me.”
“He’s grief.”
Jason went still.
Tim’s hand trembled against his face, but he kept it there.
“You’re here,” Tim said.
Jason’s mouth worked once.
Then he nodded.
Barely.
Tim leaned in and kissed him again, slower this time.
Jason tried.
Tim felt it. The effort. The restraint. The way his hand at Tim’s waist stayed firm without dragging him closer. The way he breathed against Tim’s mouth like he was learning the shape of a future he had not ruined yet.
When they separated, Jason pressed his forehead against Tim’s.
“You need to talk to Bernard,” he said.
Tim closed his eyes. “I know.”
“And I need to not be a dick about it.”
Tim’s mouth twitched. “Ambitious.”
Jason huffed, and the sound was warm against his lips.
Below them, Gotham kept moving.
Snow over rooftops. Sirens in the distance. The red wound in the sky gone like it had never been there.
Tim was cold. Sore. Exhausted. Wearing the wrong Jason’s hoodie while the right Jason held his waist with one shaking hand.
It was awful.
It was honest.
It was a start.
Jason looked at him. “You need a ride home?”
Tim smiled faintly. “My bike’s at the Cave.”
“Didn’t ask about your bike.”
Tim’s heart did that stupid thing again.
He let it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I need a ride.”
Jason’s hand tightened on his waist, just once.
Then he let go, picked up the red helmet from where he had set it on the roof, and handed Tim the spare.
Tim took it.
The helmet was familiar in his hands.
This Jason’s.
Tim put it on.
Jason watched him for a second too long, eyes dark and scared and wanting.
Then he looked away, muttering, “Come on, Timmy.”
Tim followed him into the snow.