#alpha!tim

Jason Todd almost runs right inta his back when Dickie-boy stops inna middle of the fucking sidewalk. They’re in the daytime usual, hanging out ‘cause they both need ta visit some Omega stores here onna nice side a’ the business district. 

Dickie’s been whining fer some new nesting supplies, and Jason has a preference when it comes ta scents, ‘specially when he starts ta go down.

(He ain’t gonna never admit the musk he finds smells close ta their big ole’ Pack Alpha, what still has problems comin’ back sometimes. Seems like Timmy knows why Jay’s heat safe house smells th’ way it do.)

So’s both a’ ‘em went ‘round ta a few stores and came out with some nice supplements for their upcoming lay-ins.

“Oi, Goldie,” it’s impossible to tell if Jay is irritable because they had to deal with some assholes onna way or if it’s just pre-Heat startin’ ta set in. Either way, he grips the older Robin by the elbow to get a lil’ get ta steppin’ motion.

“You’re really serious about this?” Is all Jay catches as Dickie gets with the fucking program an’ starts walking again, but the scent suddenly rollin’ offa him is a whole buncha angry. Seems like any asshole Alphas what think they might wanna piece’ll probably think twice.

“Oh, I’m going to handle it. Just as soon as I get back, I’m going to make a plan,” and the edge of growl, out here inna open makes it allll seem just a lil’ more important ta Jay’s immediate attention. “He’s not up for anyone. He’s ours, Gar. Do me a favor and get the word out. I’m going to make sure it’s extremely clear, but some notice will probably make it less scandalous.”

A pause an’ the Rolls they took from B is almost in view.

“This from you? You can’t even buy some shame, Beasty, so don’t lecture me on model behavior here. Apparently, some things need to be made absolutely clear in the community.”

Jay hits the clicker and the trunk rises, listening with half an ear as he tosses his bags in and Dick’s spine is rod straight as he does the same. Five minutes ago, ya couldn’t pry the new blankets from ‘im with a crowbar.

Jay takes a second to lean against the Rolls, lights a cigarette to smoke before they get in (only ‘case Alfie don’t like the smell a’ smoke onna leather, an’ yeah, yeah Jay can’t tell ‘im fuck that). His eyes, flecked with green, scan over his Pack Omega, nearly vibratin’ outta his skin with whatever’s comin’ from Titan’s Tower.

“Anyway, I appreciate the heads-up. We’ll handle it, Gar.” And Dick abruptly ends the call, eyes all narrow n’ lookin’ like he’s ready ta fight the whole lotta Rogue Gallery fuck-nuts.

Sue ‘im. Dickie looks hot when he’s all pissy. Just is what it is.

“Sounds like we godda problem in paradise, yeah?” He maneuvers around Dick ta get t’ the driver’s side first. He don’t want an angry Dickie trying ta drive ‘em back ta the Manor – no thanks.

“We do, but I’m going to pull a Pack O on this one, Jay Bird. Once we’ve had a discussion, I’m going to bring him back in time for our Heats. After that, we’re all going to have a nice understanding, don’t worry.”

And oh no, he ain’t worried no how. Might be a tad hopeful Dickie can finally talk some sense inta their reluctant Alpha. It’s ‘bout time he came back ta Gotham fer good.

**

When Red Robin gets the alert Nightwing is out of the city (this close to his Heat??), his entire brain pan process immediately shuts down.

He’s already in the re-made BatWing, flying stealth back to a temporary Perch he made in Gotham –

(not that he plans to keep it long-term, it’s more a landing pad for when the Bats called for him, which has been more frequent in the last three months than the last three years)

– when one of his always-running algorithms pinged with someone in the Haven live streaming a pretty righteous fight.

Between Nightwing and Deathstroke of all people.

Every instinct he has as an Alpha, even the new, more powerful instincts he attributes to being a stand-in Pack Alpha helping Omegas through their potentially fatal Heats, seems to come to the fore. The vigilante known as Red Robin takes a back seat to the Alpha male immediately changing course, twenty minutes out from the fight, and fixing his attention on the footage he managed to capture before the live went off the air.

He watches every move Deathstroke makes close to Nightwing, looks intensely at the back-and-forth banter, checks his own utility belt absently to make sure he is absolutely stocked.

In the twenty minutes it takes for the plane to hit the right airspace, he’s watched the footage no less than twenty times, paced the length of the Wing, and is ready to rip out Slade’s throat with his teeth.

It takes less than a few minutes for the vigilante brain to come up with a plan, and the Alpha male jumps from the open door just as nightfall hits.

**

“Oh, now Dick,” Slade is pacing his way around a span of garage doors in a small storage facility, “you forgot your suppressants, didn’t you?” He uses the tip of his sword to drag across the tin, absolutely giving himself away.

If there’s anything Slade Wilson enjoys, it’s a challenge.

“It’s understandable, you know,” he calls conversationally, “with how close you are, maybe you need an Alpha? That’s why you picked a fight me tonight, isn’t it?”

The soft sound of reinforced boots skims over metal and Slade smiles behind the mask.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” and his voice drops, lowers to an Alpha croon. “You don’t have to do all this to get my attention. I would be happy to take care of you.”

A swish on his right side.

“Of course, I know how much O’s love the chase. I do, too. But…you aren’t fooling anyone. I can smell you. You know that, don’t you?”

Something closer to the ground, a zaaf moving closer. And oh, this is going to be much easier than he thought.

“I have a place in the city, perfect for you. We can play as much as you want, hm? My knot can be all yours. Come out, and let Alpha help you.”

The night turns in his favor when Nightwing appears over the top of the storage building, already red in the face under his mask, sweat starting to slide down his neck.

“That’s a good Omega. You know what a good Alpha smells like, don’t you?” Slade’s mask tilts up to look at him, a stunning specimen in that skin-tight suit, smelling like sin and sex, and something wild, almost feral.

 “I do,” Nightwing purrs from his perch over Slade’s head. “I know what a really good Alpha smells like.” Nightwing jerks his chin over, “when he’s not on suppressants, it smells like him.”

And when Slade turns, Red Robin is there to bring out every fighting style he’s ever learned in a brutal hand-to-hand brawl.

It takes him no time to disarm Slade with barely a flick of his wrist to send the belt of ammunition flying and the sword blocked by the bo, spinning it to lift the hilt right out of Slade’s hand. The furious lotus palm from Shiva, knuckle-break from Clyde, full leg extensions and speed from fighting King Snake, all of it puts Slade down to a knee.

The laugh is really a nail in his coffin. Slade just doesn’t know it yet.

“Really, kid? Ra’s players don’t hold a candle to me.” With all his enhancements, Slade rises to full height, cracks his neck and folds his arms over his chest. “I don’t play by Bat rules. I will kill you without losing a wink of sleep, little bird.”

“Only one crazy assassin gets to call me that,” Red Robin comes back, bo over both shoulders, hands hanging from it lazily.

“Aw, give Shiva my love next time you see her. Well, if you ever see her again.”

“She’s got more important assholes to worry about.”

“This is cute. You fight crime with your little team like this? Banter away and hope it’s distracting enough to get a few good punches in?”

“Hate to say it,” Red Robin closes one hand and opens it again, this time with a small remote control, “but it worked on you.”

The button activates and the loose lasso he’d tied around Slade during the fast and furious hand-to-hand, tightens immediately. The legendary assassin doesn’t even have a second to yell before he’s violently yanked through the air and slammed into several buildings by the speeding BatWing above.

Eminent threat handled, Red turns to the sweating vigilante still lounging overhead, and even through the quick-time suppressants he’d swallowed the minute he watched the footage couldn’t keep his scent from spiking.

He catches Nightwing visibly react to his Alpha aura, his scent, especially now that the deep growl that exists so far down comes further and further to the surface, the growl that tells him mine, mine, mine. No one else can have them, my Pack, my Omegas, my ma–

That is never going to happen, his less feral side cuts into that thought, forces him to back down, his hackles to slowly lower.

“T-Timmy,” N slumps over on the roof and Red Robin is leaping up before he thinks twice. He already has one arm over his shoulder, ready to lift the Omega.

“We need to get you out of here. I’ll come back for Slade–”

When N pulls a surprise on him and throws Red down, straddling his hips, a snarl as he leans down to put them face-to-face.

“Oh, we’re going to get out of here, but not until you tell me exactly what you said to the Power Company, Timmy.” “Wh-what? What I said to who now?”

And N has no problem shoving his hips down over the reinforced cup to grind right against the Alpha, make sure his scent is close to Timmy’s face.

“Didn’t you tell them you’re just a Service Alpha? Just helping out?” And N’s voice gets low, dangerous, his grip on Red’s wrist just this side of painful. “Like we don’t mean anything to you?”

“Dick–”

“That’s all we are? Not your Pack? Everything you’ve done with us, to us, was just being a good Alpha? Helping out Omegas in need?”

“I…Dick, B asked me to take care of you, no one ever said…Years, Dick, I spent years–”

“Do you even know how long we were waiting for you?” N is right in his face, snarling and angry, his scent spiking with hurt and betrayal. “Every year, Tim. Every year until you were old enough to come back and be our Alpha. Do you even know what Jay and I went through without an Alpha for our Heats unless we had to? What Cass and Alfred went through as our Betas? How hard B tried to let you make your own decisions but year after year he just kept hoping?”

At a loss, his brain pan torn between Tim Drake, Red Robin, and Alpha desperate to be Pack Alpha. He draws in a breath of Dick’s scent and just croons. The deep noise reverberates in his chest, something he can never remember making before tonight.

The sound hits Nightwing in the right place to weaken his grip and the lock of his elbows, arms no longer straining. It gives Red Robin the opportunity to shift his grip and lurch up to catch Dick around the mid-back, hold him close while the noise, the croon, makes every tense muscle in the Omega simply relax.

An Alpha’s croon is meant to mean safety and warmth and love and Pack, to mean, come to me, I’ll take care of you.

And it’s one of his Omegas that lies limply in his arms, hot face buried in his neck. Red reaches up quickly to pull off the scent-block patch so Dick can nuzzle close to his scent gland.

Another click of the remote and the plane heads back to them, an unconscious, dangling assassin hanging from the rope. A flick of the wrist and a whirlybird cuts through the rope holding Slade in the air, the sadly short drop accentuated with a whump. The sound of sirens signals it’s time for them to get ghost–

–and try to get back to the heat-safe room in Gotham before Dick goes fully under.

He pulls Dick’s power thighs around his hips and stands with his Omega clinging to him, fires a grapple up at the BatWing. The line reels them in quickly, up through the floor and into the cockpit.

Red manages to get the seat back far enough he doesn’t have to relinquish his hold, just keeps up the croon and strokes a hand down Dick’s back. He takes a wrist and wrestles off gloves and gauntlets, pulls at the sleeve until the scent glad in Dick’s wrist is bare. He lifts the wrist to the other side of his neck and rubs their scent glands together, chest vibrating with the combination of their scents.

“There,” breathed in his Omega’s ear, “this means I’m your Alpha, doesn’t it?”

Blearily, Dick manages to raise his head just enough to stare into the whiteouts. “Not yet,” he slurs out, completely lax with the powerful croon, “but we’ll work on it. Whole Pack…gonna make you ours.”

Tim hums and adjusts Dick on his lap to be able to fire the secondary set of thrusters, “I will absolutely look forward to it. For now, Alpha is going to find Jay and take care of you both. Luckily I brought you new nesting blankets.”

That was how Tim found himself on a bus headed to a small town far enough from Gotham for no one to recognize him on sight. It helped that when he was deciding whether to give in to his family's demands of sleep or go out of the state, a faded-out poster of a minor, unknown coffee festival was blown by the wind towards him by chance. He was about to dodge the incoming paper, but the smell emanating from the poster made him snatch it instinctively. Coffee. The paper smelled of the heavenly drink, but somehow it was different. He didn't know how to describe it, but it just was. It was more than coffee. It was Coffee. It energized him like never before as if it was charging up his very soul. He was pumped up as if he had slept for a week straight. Tim absolutely had to get his hands on this beverage, ban be damned. If the scent alone did this, the drink had to be pure magic in his veins. If he can bring some of it home, maybe he can stay awake for a month on one cup.

On the bus, Tim blazed through his work for the next week in under an hour. It was when he was working on the next quarter's research budget for Wayne Technologies that he smelled it again - the heavenly coffee. It was only now that he realized that the hint he smelled on the poster was a mere fraction of the wonder that is its scent. Underneath the bold smell of coffee, there were hints of caramel and nuts and sugar and spice and cinnamon and apples. It was divine. There were even undertones that Tim couldn't describe as anything but liquid warmth and joy wrapped in a bow. It was the perfect scent, his perfect scent - his ambrosia. He had no other way to express it. It pulled him in like nothing ever before. One whiff and he was enslaved.

As the vehicle drew nearer to its final destination, the scent of his ambrosia only grew stronger. Once he stepped down at the bus stop, almost subconsciously, Tim made a beeline for the source of the smell, a stall with an insanely long line.

Tim kept fidgeting as he waited for the line to move, absorbed in the scent and longing to come nearer, but despite that, he couldn't ignore the obvious glances the locals threw his way. It wasn't surprising. He was a stranger in a small town. An alpha stranger and one without a pheromone isolator in a crowd at that. Nearly all alphas always had one on them, as their heightened senses can make a packed environment overwhelming to them. People's pheromones, especially, would shove themselves in their face, making them dizzy from the sensory overload. It was easier for alphas to go about their day with an isolator, but it was not unheard of for some to opt not to. Those types were usually either insane or genius. Neither was good news. Tim was part of a separate category, however. He was selectively anosmic, specifically towards secondary characteristic pheromones. It was rare but not unheard of in betas, especially. Alphas were a different story. He'd gotten pitying glances throughout his life - the poor alpha who couldn't smell pheromones, the one in a billion. Out of spite, he read all about the world of scents, saw the advertisements targetting alpha-omega pairs, and asked everyone he knew how they felt about the sense, but he could not come to a conclusion other than it was overrated and romanticized. How could you fall so hard for only a scent? How could it be so overwhelmingly divine? If anything, Tim was grateful he couldn't smell pheromones. He never had to suffer the discomfort of smelling an omega's heat scent or a fellow alpha's aggressive pheromone attack. He rarely fell prey to his more primitive instincts. His life was complete even without pheromones. He could never imagine what pheromones would smell like, but from how hyped up everyone made it out to be, maybe it would be a close second to the heavenly coffee ambrosia. That was the only way to explain everyone's fascination with it.

The line moved fairly quickly, and soon, Tim was at the front. There, the scent was the strongest it ever was. He could see a tall and slender blonde manning the register while a petite woman was at the back working the espresso machine.

"Hi, there! What size and caffeine level can I get you?" he gave a blinding beam.

"I'd like the largest cup of the strongest coffee you serve."

That made the cashier pause. "...You want the dare-spresso? An epic one at that? Are you sure?"

Tim looked him straight in the eye, "Absolutely."

"Alphas. Guess we need another ambulance," he muttered under his breath before turning to the bluenette behind him. "One epic dare-spresso, Mari!"

She groaned before looking at which idiot ordered it again. Tim was floored. Her eyes were like a wave that threatened to pull him under. There was this unexplainable magnetism pulling him to the girl, and all Tim wanted to do was surrender to the urge.

"Looks like we have another one, huh," Tim heard from behind him.

"Here's some advice, kid," an older gentleman spoke from beside the stall. "There are easier ways to impress a girl than dying of a coffee overdose."

"I'm really just here for the coffee," Tim tried to explain but the blush spreading on his cheeks and the way he had just stared at the barista made his statement doubtful.

"Sure, and I still have both arms," another man with a visible prosthetic said.

"There's nothing to be embarrassed about, everyone loves Mari. Though, hopefully, you won't pass out like the last challenger," said a woman with a stylish afro.

"Challenger?"

"You didn't know? It was on the festival poster. If you can gulp the drink down straight in under five minutes and keep your heart rate in check, you get a date with the barista."

"Oh?" Tim was definitely interested now. "Can I get another cup to-go then?"

"Oh, god, there's two of them," the cashier groaned. "Mari, make it two for loverboy here."

The bluenette in the back sputtered, "A-Adrien!"

"What?" the man looked back innocently. "If he's that confident, maybe he really can sweep you off your feet."

The girl glared at him while handing over an oversized cup, but it was hardly effective with how flustered she was.

"Bottoms up," the cashier passed over the cup.

Tim smelled the coffee, but it wasn't the scent he was looking for. It was great, better than any cup he had before, but the ambrosia he longed for wasn't coming from the drink. There was a hint of it, but Tim could tell it was from an indirect scenting.

He could think about that later. First, he had a date to win over.

He started gulping the hot coffee, but his tongue was well used to the burn. It tasted just as wonderful as Tim had imagined on the way there. It was like liquid fire in his veins and tasted like a godsend. It was perfect for him. It had all the right flavors, and although the aroma couldn't hold a candle to the scent of ambrosia, it was worlds apart from anything else he had smelled before.

In under three minutes, Tim had finished the gigantic coffee, and he had never felt more alive since he was six. From the outside, however, he looked the same - composed and unaffected.

"Looks like this one has a shot, huh," another passerby commented.

The cashier clipped a pulse oximeter to his finger, and the crowd that Tim hadn’t noticed gathered around him waited with bated breath.

"Seventy!" the blonde announced.

"What a legend," someone whispered.

"Guess Mari isn't the only one who can stomach the stuff," a second voice said.

The cashier pushed the bluenette toward Tim, causing her to stumble straight into his arms, "Adrien!"

Tim knew he should be helping her up, but he relished in the warmth of the girl against his chest.

"Sorry about that," she said, looking away from him. "I'm Marinette."

"Tim," he replied. He only now noticed that the heavenly coffee scent was stronger than ever, and it was coming straight from the girl still within his arms.

"You have a coffee-scented cologne?" The scent smelled too natural for a perfume, but Tim couldn't think of any other reason for the scent if it wasn't from the coffee beans.

"N-No, those are my pheromones," she squeaked, burying her face in Tim's chest and causing his heart to skip a beat.

"Pheromones? But I can't smell those," he said, bewildered.

"Maybe it's fate, huh, bug?" the cashier grinned wildly at the two. "How lucky."

Marinette burrowed further into Tim's chest at the comment, ears turning a brighter red.