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Percy grunted, pulling himself up and over the last rung of the ladder. The concrete-asphalt of the roof beneath him dug into his back uncomfortably, but he was just glad that he didn’t have to climb anymore. A light drizzle had begun to fall during his climb, making everything the tiniest bit slippery, but Percy didn’t mind. He liked the rain. It was calming and peaceful and if he was delusional enough, he could pretend it was the ocean. With gentle waves crashing ashore over and over again.
He sat up, eyes trailing over the various shades of white and yellow from the apartments and offices of the buildings around him. With one hand, he traced the imaginary lines that connected them to each other like constellations. One cluster looked like the Pleiades, another a wonky Corvus, there were quite a few rams, and if he squinted and tilted his head almost all the way upside down there was an Orion. But that wasn’t what he was there for.
Lying on their stomach on the other side of the roof was a boy his age. A large hoodie dwarfed his body and the hood was pulled up to hide his head, but the kid size eight Robin inspired sketchers was what gave him away. Percy knew the kid. He was in fourth grade class, but he didn’t really talk to the others. Preferring to stick by himself and fiddle with the camera he took with him everywhere.
“Hey Tim, what’cha doing?” Percy laid next to him, peering around his hand to see what was on his camera.
“Ah!” Tim yelped and tucked the device close to his chest. “Percy? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing, you know,” He retaliated. “What were you taking pictures of?”
“Batman and Robin.” Tim brought the camera closer to Percy, showing off the amateur shots. They were pretty good if Percy had to say so himself. Some were a bit blurry, but the best one was of Jason sitting next to his favorite gargoyle. Mouth open in a smile as if he was laughing with the stone statue. Another one had Jason with his arms wrapped around Bruce’s neck, little green booties barely touching the ground beneath him.
Percy knew his dad was Batman and that his brother was Robin. Hell, the first time they met Bruce (technically) was when Jason was stealing the tires off the Batmobile. But Percy wasn’t really interested in being a Robin like his brother or like Dick. It just didn’t call to him the same way it did for Jason. And besides, Jason had to worry about Percy ever since Catherine died, he didn’t want his big brother to worry about him jumping around Gotham with a target on his back. And Jason was happy being Robin, Percy didn’t want to take that from him.
That doesn’t mean Percy wasn’t down in the cave with them though. He had a spot next to Alfred on comms and was a pretty good stitch when needed. He trained with Jason when he wanted and helped with cases as best he could—he wasn’t the best detective—and Bruce didn’t seem to mind when Percy put on his cowl and pretend to be him.
“Can you print this one for me?” Percy pointed to the camera. “It looks cool.” It was a simple portrait shot of the dynamic duo. Their backs faced the camera but Jason had turned to face Bruce, a wide smile and his hands in the air, as if he was talking animatedly about something. Bruce was giving him a smile, listening intently at his middle child.
“You sure?” Tim asked hesitantly.
“Yeah! I think it’s cool, do you have more?” Percy smiled and tucked his arms further under him. “How many do you have, I’ve seen you mess with your camera, like, all year, so you gotta have a whole bunch, right?” Tim nodded his head. “Neat! You wanna come over after school? You can bring your pictures over and tell me how you got them because , dude, if you’re climbing buildings every night to get them, you gotta be like, hella ripped.”
“You want me to come over?”
“Heck yeah! You’re a cool dude,” Percy said. “And you seem like you need friends. I don’t have any because no one wants to be with a street rat, they’re all too stuck up and snobby.”
“Especially Marie,” Tim chuckled.
“Don’t even get me started on Marie!” Percy groaned and dragged his hand over his face dramatically, smiling when Tim laughed.
Their conversation flowed naturally after that. Their laughter echoing in the alley below and making the lights of Gotham seem a little brighter. They talked about anything and everything that came to mind, and Tim was the first person besides Jason, Alfred, or Bruce who listened to his marine rants. He seemed genuinely interested with what Percy had to say, which was a relief, and in exchange Percy listened to Tim babble about the various heroes around the world.
They had to say goodbye to each other when the moon was beginning its decent, but they picked up their conversation in the morning as if they hadn’t stopped. It hadn’t seem to stop either, as the days go on, the two seemed joint at the hip. They played some amalgamation of Batman and Robin or Batman and Joker during recess, Percy would show Tim how to skateboard in the long drive way of Wayne Manor, Tim would teach Percy photography.
It wasn’t a rare sight to see them at the manor after school either, or following Jason like ducklings during galas. The few times Dick had been there, he tried to ignore Jason and Percy, but Tim was adamant about seeing him. And Percy knew why. Tim had been there the night the Graysons fell, sure, he was like three, but he was there! He saw them do the quadruple somersault in person before their untimely demise and he really wanted to talk to him about something.
“He doesn’t like us, Tim,” Percy said one gala night. He tugged at the collar of his suit, hating the feeling of it around his throat, but Alfred would get mad if he loosened his tie. Because if Percy did it, then Jason would think it’s okay. And then Bruce would do it too because both his sons were doing it, and he didn’t want to be the odd man out. (Dick wasn’t wearing a tie this time, a way to rebel against Bruce.)”I told you that.”
“I know but I gotta talk to him,” Tim wiped his hands on the napkin. They had a good little pile of hor dourves between them and had been snacking while their parents – Percy’s dad more like since Tim’s parents were still in Barbados – mingled. “It’s important.”
“If it’s important you can tell me,’ Percy turned in his seat. “I can try to tell him after the gala when we go back to the manor.”
Tim seemed to think about this for a second, this eyes darting back and forth between the crowd and Percy. “Okay,” He lent to Percy’s ear, hands cupped to prevent someone from reading his lips and he whispered. “I know Dick is Nightwing.”
Percy pulled back, eyes wide as he stared back at his best friend. He didn’t know exactly when Tim pieced it together that Dick was Nightwing, and he was absolutely positive he hadn’t spilled anything. But Percy knew Tim was a smart kid, one of the smartest in the school, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. But if Tim knew that Dick was Nightwing, did he also know that Bruce was Batman? Or that Jason is Robin?
“H-huh? Wh-what? What do you mean?” Percy stuttered. He was going to be in so much trouble. Bruce was going to think Percy spilled the beans – even though he didn’t – and he was going to be punished – thirty burpees and washing all the vehicles in the vehicle bay for a month – and he was probably not going to be allowed in the cave after that again. “How-how did you figure that?”
“The Graysons are the only ones that can do a perfect quadruple somersault,” Tim stated as if that was a fact, and it was unfortunately. “There’s a video of you-know-who doing one, so it wasn’t hard to connect the dots after that.”
“So you know?” Percy confirmed.
“Did you know?”
“Of course I knew!”
“But you…don’t go with them, how did you know?”
“I live with them, it’d be pretty awkward if I didn’t.”
“Ah, yeah, that makes sense.”
“And besides,” Percy shoved a cracker in his mouth. “The first time Jason and I met him, Bruce was you-know-who.”
“Really?! Wow,” Tim sighed wistfully. “Was it scary?”
“The first time yeah, the second he was just a big softy and took us home.”
“Huh.”