Fic: Peek Not Through a Keyhole (a Robin story, staring Bernard)

[iesika]

Title: Peek Not Through a Keyhole
Author: iesika  
Summary: Five Times Bernard Dowd Did Not Eavesdrop on Tim Drake. Sort of.
Continuity/Spoilers: After Robin: Unmasked, through War Games. Dick’s presence is handwavy, because apparently he has the superpower of being in three places at once. If the writers can do it, so can I.
Warnings: Kon is a potty mouth. Bernard has a dirty mind.
Length: 3,000 words

In which Tim is uncharacteristically unobservant. Blame it on stress. Poor woobie. This started as a silly little five things fic about innuendo and Bernard’s dirty little mind, but then it decided to get serious on me. Title comes from Salem's Lot. This gets the new Wire Cage Monkeys icon, because Tim is a Wire Cage Monkey.

 

Peek Not Through a Keyhole

He wasn’t, in fact, eavesdropping. It might have looked that way to the casual observer, but really, eavesdropping was uncouth and invasive and just plain rude, and it was, as such, far beneath Bernard’s standards of acceptable behavior (even if it might, theoretically, be an excellent source of gossip). So if he were lingering against the wall of the school while his dear enigmatic friend Timmy had a potentially private conversation just around the corner, it was because he was waiting for the conversation to be over so that he could talk to Tim about – something. He hadn’t gotten that far yet. Anyway, if the conversation were private, they wouldn’t be having it outside of a high school, right?

So when a boy – a good looking, clean-cut, jock-type boy in glasses, who Bernard was quite confident he’d never seen before, showed up out of nowhere and all but dragged Tim back behind the school to where the stoners hung out (and said stoners were apparently evicted to wander muttering toward the front of the school), Bernard hadn’t so much followed as wandered quickly into hearing range. Entirely by coincidence.

And oh God was he ever glad he had.

“Well, I didn’t think you’d want your dad catching some guy in your bedroom, so yeah, I went out the window.”

He couldn’t leave now if he’d wanted to. Strange boys in Timmy’s bedroom, leaping out windows to escape wrathful parents? Oh my my my.

“I’d have found a way around it,” Tim said, “you’re dressing more subtly these days. You could have been a friend from school.”

Which confirmed that the boy didn’t go to Grieve, but Bernard had known that. He would have remembered those shoulders. God, Tim didn’t do anything by halves, did he?”

“Dude, I was wearing the shirt.”

“As opposed to the spandex and leather you were wearing when I met you.”

Spandex and leather? Bernard had to dig his fingers in between the bricks, because – Spandex and leather? It sounded like an absolute nightmare, or it should have, except Bernard had seen those shoulders. Oh, wow. Oh, Timmy, holding out on your dear friend Bernard!

“Okay, point,” the boy conceded, “should I ring the doorbell, next time?”

“There can’t be a next time.”

“Because you’re grounded? Seriously, dude, I’ll ring the bell and play normal boy and everything. I’m getting good at it. He won’t suspect a thing. “Hi, Mr. Drake, I’m Conner Ke-“

“Stop,” Tim said, and Bernard had never heard his voice like that, deeper by an octave and hard around the edges. “Don’t. You can’t come to my house again, and if you do meet my father, somehow, do not tell him that name. No matter what.”

“Why? I mean, he’s your dad. Don’t you trust him?”

There was silence for a few seconds, and then Tim said, in that cold voice again, “when he found out how I’d been spending my nights, he went over to you-know-who’s with a gun –“

Bernard jerked upright.

“Jesus,” the boy, Conner, said, “he’s still alive?”

“He’s blackmailing him. “

“So that’s why you – Jesus, Tim!”

‘Jesus, Tim’ sounded about right. No wonder Tim had been so out of sorts lately – so, well, normal boy.

“That’s why you have to stay away. I really appreciate you coming to find me, but –“

“Man, you stood me up! You wouldn’t answer anybody’s calls and I didn’t know if you were hurt or, or dead, or just being an asshole. I should kick your fucking ass!”

“Please don’t,” Tim said. He sounded human again, finally, and amused. “I might have some difficulty explaining the bruises.”

There was a pause, then. A long one, in which Bernard had time to wonder if they were kissing, or maybe just staring at each other.

“Your dad doesn’t know you at all, does he?”

“No,” Tim said, “he honestly never paid that much attention to me until recently, but I’ve been lying to him pretty much constantly for – well, you were there for most of it.”

“Christ, I didn’t know your name for most of it, and I still know you better than that asshole! What kind of crappy parent was he? Where the hell did he think you were all the time? When we were playing baseball with Doiby, or getting our asses handed to us by Granny fucking Goodness…Christ! I never even wondered what you told him. You were like thirteen when I met you! And you knew what you were doing way better than I did. You were so good you were really kind of scary.”

Tim chuckled, then. It wasn’t a very pleasant laugh.

“A lot scary, okay?”

“And you were a jerk,” Tim said, with warmth and fondness in his tone. Nostalgia, maybe. For the good old days of anonymous underage sex and baseball, apparently.

“Well,” Conner said, “yeah. I guess. A little.”

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

Tim said that like – like ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘nobody likes brussel sprouts’. Like a basic, immutable fact of the universe.

“And I’m never going to see you again, am I?”

Tim was silent. Bernard heard feet shuffle on concrete, and then-

The sound was like gunfire, or a small explosion. The wall shook against Bernard’s back. He jerked away and looked around the corner.

Tim was alone, leaning against the back of the school like the building was the only thing keeping him upright. He had his eyes squeezed shut and his hands balled into fists so tight that his knuckles were white.

There was a crater the size of a hubcap in the masonry near Tim’s head. Bernard had somehow never noticed it before.

 

He didn’t eavesdrop, again, a few days later in Tweedle-Dee’s, because eavesdropping, of course, implied a lack of knowledge and consent on the part of the subject. So it wasn’t eavesdropping, not at all, when Bernard came back from the john and found a totally hot guy sitting in his seat, talking to Tim. It wasn’t eavesdropping because, while Bernard stood there contemplating just sitting on dear Timmy’s lap to teach him a lesson about saving people’s seats, the totally hot guy met his eyes over Tim’s bowed head, and his face said ‘wait,’ and maybe ‘listen,’ and it was a little like catching a peeping-tom and asking him to please hold this camera for you.

“I’d wanted to let you have your space,” said the totally hot guy (with longish black hair and clear blue eyes and where was Timmy meeting all these boys with the bodies?) “But I miss you, a lot, and Conner was so freaked out after he talked to you that he actually went to Clark, who came to me-“

Conner. That was the boy from before. So who was this Clark? Was he, or maybe this guy, the ‘you-know-who’ who’d been threatened at gunpoint to keep his mitts off of daddy Drake’s baby boy?”

“I’m fine," Tim said, but his head stayed bowed. “You shouldn’t be here, Dick. If Dad finds out I’ve been talking to you-“

“You know I’m better than that.”

“I thought I was better than that.”

“Anyway, I had to come, because there’s something going on you should know about. I only found out the hard way, when I swung by this morning and caught her in the shower. Stephanie’s been-“

Bernard had to tear his way through the ‘yes, Bernard, there is a Stephanie,’ moment, because Tim looked like he’d been punched. His head whipped up and then down again so fast it probably caused whiplash, and he sort of – shrunk – into his seat, hunching his shoulders. “I know,” he interrupted. “I know, okay. Bruce didn’t waste any time, but she’ll be good for him.”

Oh, ouch.

“Tim.”

“I’m really okay about it.” Except he totally wasn’t, and Bernard wanted to rush right in there and hug him until maybe he was. Or at least until he could admit he wasn’t.

“Tim, he replaced you with your ex-girlfriend. You’ve lost your partner and your confidant and you’ve cut off all contact with your friends. Don’t tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m not mad at Steph,” Tim insisted. “Bruce doesn’t do well alone, remember? He needs somebody there with him. I watched you leave him and Jason die, and I know exactly what he’s like when he’s alone. She’ll be good for him.”

Dick (was that really his name?) reached across the table and cupped Tim’s shoulder in one broad hand. “You’ve been good for him. Better than I could have imagined. The best partner he could have hoped for.”

“Not as good as you.”

“Better than me.”

“No.”

“Yes. You stopped him from self-destructing. I didn’t think anything could. Things got tough with him and I left. I gave up. We were so far out of each other’s lives he didn’t even tell me about Jason. I worshiped him, Tim. He was everything to me.”

“He still is.”

“Yeah. But that meant I couldn’t handle it when he wasn’t perfect.”

“You still can’t.”

Dick looked angry for a moment, then shrugged and looked resigned. “I still can’t. You’re better at handling him than I ever was. You challenge him, make him better. You’re exactly what he needed. He misses you.”

“He’s got Steph.”

Dick stared at Tim in silence. After a while, he reached out and stole Tim’s coffee, which he drained. “Bruce told me once,” he said, “that he only ever took Jason home because he missed me.”

Tim unfolded from his hunch. Bernard really wished he could see his face. “Fuck,” he whispered. It was the first time Bernard had heard him curse.

“She has Cass and Babs looking out for her, and she’s not nearly as reckless, or as angry as he was.”

“Fuck,” Tim said again.

“It won’t be the same.”

“No,” Tim said. “It will. She’s going to get herself killed.”

Killed? Dick looked up at Bernard, and Bernard knew his shock had to be obvious on his face. Tim made a small little sound and fumbled with his empty cup and looked about as helpless as Bernard had ever seen him.

“I’ve got to go,” Dick said, “your friend just came back. But remember what I said. We’re all looking out for her. She’s not new to the game. She knows about the risks. And Bruce would never, ever, let that happen again.”

And then Dick was gone, and Bernard was left with Tim, who…who looked absolutely, perfectly, one hundred percent normal by the time he turned around to look at him.

 

A few weeks later, they were at the mall, maybe thinking of going to the arcade later, when a pretty blonde girl ran up and grabbed Tim’s arm. It wasn’t eavesdropping, this time, because the conversation was happening right in front of him, but Bernard still felt like he was being sneaky, somehow, because if he hadn’t been, well, not eavesdropping, before, the exchange would have seemed entirely innocent.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” The girl shouted.

“I’ve been grounded.”

“You’ve been ignoring my calls!”

“You were ignoring mine.”

“I was busy!”

“I know.”

In the face of Tim’s unflappable calm, the girl stopped tugging his arm and put her hands on her hips. “You’re mad at me,” she accused.

“I’m worried about you. I don’t think,” he glanced at Bernard, who did his very best nonchalant. “I don’t think he has your best interests at heart.”

“Yeah, well, he chucked me, so you don’t have to worry about that anymore.” The girl’s posture and voice radiated casualness in a way that put Bernard’s best nonchalant to shame. None of them said anything for a few seconds, and then Tim was putting his arm around the girl in a consoling way.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Bernard honestly believed him.

“No you’re not,” the girl said, but she leaned into him anyway.

“I am. But he didn’t deserve you anyway.”

The girl smiled. “You’re sweet. Who’s your friend?”

“Oh,” Tim said, like he’d only just noticed Bernard was there. “This is Bernard. Bernard, this is Stephanie. I may have mentioned her.”

“May have!” Bernard exclaimed. He stepped forward and took her hand. “Darling, I’m so glad to finally meet you! I really was beginning to suspect he’d made you up!”

 

The next time he didn’t eavesdrop it was because he couldn’t. Hear. Anything. It was killing him. Bernard had been lurking in the door of the nurse’s office, watching Tim stalk down the darkened hall looking fully prepared to take on the whole world with a bloody baseball bat, and had seen Tim vanish between one blink and the next. He’d emerged from the shadows a moment later, but he wasn’t alone. He was talking quietly to a man in a skintight body-suit and-

And a mask. Jesus.

Tim didn’t seem scared. It was hard to tell, because Tim had been like a different person from the moment the first shots had been fired (and Bernard hadn’t been out front to see Tim singlehandedly take on an army of mafia gunmen, but he’d heard about it from at least a dozen people, one of whom swore that Tim had stopped a car by kicking it). Bernard couldn’t hear a thing, and he couldn’t see their faces very well, but he watched Tim trade the man a notebook for an armload of what he was pretty sure was weaponry. And then they’d split up. The guy in the mask just melted into the shadows he’d come from. Tim took a few steps, crossed the hall, and then he vanished, too.

And then the whole world changed. Because Darla was dead and the Batman was real and the man in the mask was one of his. Everyone had seen them outside of the school – the Batman, a woman in a matching suit, and the guy in the mask from the hallway.

But no Robin, female or otherwise. No Robin.

Tim had been the only one of them not in shock when Batman had walked into the nurse’s office. Tim had spoken to him like he was a normal person – like maybe a cop had come to rescue them, or someone from the National Guard, and not the world’s scariest urban legend.

Tim had been pleased to see him, Bernard was pretty sure. Not terrified. Not even surprised.

Tim was on speaking terms with Bat People.

And when Batman told his people to scatter, Bernard had turned around and Tim had been gone.

 

That night, while Gotham was burning, Bernard saw Robin for the very first time. He was on television, with the Batman and the woman and the guy from the hallway, fighting a thousand angry men with guns in the middle of Robinson Park.

Robin wasn’t a girl. Robin was a teenage boy with short black hair and a great body and…

Tim didn’t answer his phone, all night.

 

He didn’t see Tim again until the night before the memorial service for those caught in the crossfire. The cathedral had been open all day for visitation, but Bernard hadn’t been able to bring himself to actually cross the threshold until nearly midnight.

The church was nearly empty, with just a few mourners and bums in the pews. Darla’s photograph was surrounded by flowers. Bernard felt like a jerk for not having brought any.

He must have spaced out, because when he looked up, Tim was standing beside him. He wasn’t wearing a suit – just a pair of baggy jeans and a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. When Bernard caught his eye, he swept the hood back onto his neck.

Tim looked horrible. Exhausted and pale, with dark circles under his eyes. There was an ugly purple bruise across his cheekbone, and his lip was split, but he gave Bernard a weak smile and touched his arm, just lightly. Bernard could barely feel the pressure of his fingertips through his jacket sleeve. He looked down. Tim’s knuckles were bruised, right across the back of his hand.

Bernard didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. He tried to return the smile, but his face didn’t seem to be working. When staring at Tim’s bruises became awkward, Bernard turned back to Darla’s picture.

“I’m sorry,” Tim said, as he laid a long stemmed rose on top of the pile of flowers.

Bernard frowned. “She was your friend, too.”

“Not really. She was nice, but I wouldn’t say we were friends.”

She kissed you, you idiot, Bernard didn’t say.

“Anyway, that wasn’t a platitude. I was apologizing. To Darla. I was right there, when it happened. I could have saved her.”

“You tried,” Bernard said, “Tyrone said you wouldn’t stop breathing for her. You tried, Tim, but there was nothing you could have done.”

“I could have gotten her out of the way. I could have shielded her with my body.”

Bernard’s world went white hot with rage in an instant. He grabbed Tim by the arm and drew back for a punch, but froze when he realized Tim seemed ready to just take it. He squeezed Tim’s shoulder, instead. He was wearing something stiff and heavy under the sweatshirt. “You saved a lot of people,” Bernard said, “Darla was a great person, Tim, but she couldn’t have done what you did, if your positions had been reversed. And I’d still be here mourning.”

Tim’s face remained hard, impassive, but his mouth tightened.

“You,” Bernard started, before he realized he didn’t actually know what he’d been planning to say. He’d never felt so inarticulate in his life. Tim turned and looked at him with one brow up. “We should. Get some coffee, or something. I need,” to ask you a thousand questions. “We should. Talk.”

Tim’s face fell into something cool and neutral. “Not tonight, Bernard.” He started to turn away, but not before Bernard noticed something.

“Oh," he said. “Who’s. Who’s the other flower for?”

Tim made a fist around the stem in a way that probably hurt. “You remember Steph?”

Bernard remembered the tabloid article, and something stupid he’d said about the life expectancy of Robins.

“Yeah,” he said. “She seemed. Really great.”

And Tim’s cool face sort of…crumpled. Before he could stop himself, or even think about what he was doing, Bernard had yanked Tim into a full-on bear hug. But Tim just stood there stiffly, which made Bernard want to cry, so he closed his eyes and squeezed as hard as he could so that Tim would feel it under whatever the hell he was wearing.

“I really,” Tim said softly, “don’t have much time here, and I’d like to say goodbye to Steph.”

Bernard squeezed him one more time and reluctantly let him go.

The photograph Tim stopped at wasn’t very far away, so Bernard closed his eyes and his ears and headed toward the door.

Anything Tim wanted Bernard to know, he would tell Bernard himself.

 

END