#kid tim

“Y’know, I wouldn’t of done it if he’d give them their fair cut,” Jay frowns. “What he’s doin’ isn’t right. The other kids’ll pick pockets and steal and bribe to get a handful of shiny things or whatever he’s callin’ for and he sends them off with barely half of what it’s worth and they can’t do nothing about it ‘cause he’s the only one in town. Only broker. So I lied ‘bout the tire. Carved in new tread, made it too thin on purpose so it wouldn’t last. Polished over the name, lied about the type. Ripped him off by a couple hundred bucks. He barely gives out hundreds to start, but he thought it was real nice.”

Tim nods.

“And then I threw a bottle bomb in his office. His favourite couch has a hole in it,” Jay finally smirks.

Tim doesn’t even mind. “And of course, I pepper-sprayed him and his buddy.”

“Of course.”

“Twice.”

Jay huffs a laugh. Another moment passes before Tim joins him with a small smile of his own.“Y’know,” he says, finally turning to Tim. “We make a pretty good team.”

“Yeah,” Tim admits shyly, looking down at the muddy toes of his sneakers dangling off the edge of the roof. “I guess we do.”

Tim ultimately decides that the day has been given enough thought and turns his attention to attempting to judge what song is playing based on the beat reverberating through his limbs. He thinks it might be a remix of Mama by David Guetta, not like that song doesn’t have enough remixes, when Jay speaks. Tim almost doesn’t hear him.

“You’re still lookin’ for Bat and brat, right?” he asks innocently. Tim turns to him in surprise.

“I--uh,” he stammers, embarrassed. “Yeah.”

“Cool. Lemme know if you catch ‘em.”

The comment is so absurd that Tim can’t help but hang his head and laugh at it. “I’m not trying to catch them. They’re not Pokemon.”

“They probably were in another life,” Jay shrugs. He’s trying to hide his mirth but Tim can see it in the quirk of his lips. “What are you tryin’ to do, then?”

Tim has to think about that for a moment. “Not sure,” he finally says. “I think I just want to know that I did it. That I figured out who they are. The biggest mystery in modern-day Gotham, solved by the little kid nobody thought anything of. Plus, they’re...kind of my role models. Robin is, anyway.”

A smirk. “You wanna find out who bird brains is so you can ask ‘im out?”

Tim elbows him. Jay winces for a split second, his ribs must be bruised, but he recovers before Tim can apologise. “No. I don’t know. Knowledge is power, I guess.”

Jay nods in understanding. “I get it.”

“You do?” Tim asks. “The people I know don’t. They’re all thinking about...other things. Social status and stuff. What people are posting on Instagram.” He pauses, not sure if Jay wants to hear more, but the boy doesn’t say anything, just looks at him blankly and Tim finds himself talking before he can think about monitoring what comes out. “Like, no one pays attention in my science class, but my teacher loves to talk and he’ll go on about anything, and last week he started talking about what Gotham was like when he was little. He’s really old. And no one was listening, but then he started talking about the abandoned Subway tunnels. So I looked it up, and you wouldn’t believe how big it is. It connects anything and everything and no one remembers it exists. But there’s these pictures on the Newtown construction page. It’s at the very bottom of this 90-something page paper about politics and rules and stuff, but it’s there, and I found it and printed it out and put it in the box under my bed.

“I like to learn more about anything I hear, no matter how useless people think it is, because you never know when you’re going to want it. Sometimes I’ll hear something and my first thought is, ‘That’s useful’, but I don’t know why it’s useful and I don’t know what I’d use it for,” Tim finishes. “But I keep a note of it anyway, just in case.” Jay doesn’t say anything for another moment, just kicks his legs. “It’s not like that here,” he says finally. “I mean, yeah, what’s useful is a bit different, but… If you know these streets, you control these streets.” He looks at Tim, trying to see if Tim understands, and must see that Tim doesn’t because he tries elaborating. “Like Tommy. My broker you pepper-sprayed? He knows the street kids in these parts, and he’s all buddy-buddy with the gangs. He knows where to walk and where to not. He knows who to rip off and who to stay away from, so he can get money in all the right places and no one can stop him because then he puts a stop to them. Gangs don’t bother him because he knows enough secrets that he can hold it over them, make sure they don’t mess with him because he has something in his head they’re afraid of.

“It’s all about the secrets. A street looks like any other street, it’s what’s goin’ on behind the walls that you gotta worry about, that you gotta know, because if you have nothing to take from someone else, someone else is gonna take from you.” Jay nods to himself. “Yeah. Knowing too much is better than knowing nothin’ at all.”

It’s...comforting, hearing Jay say all of that. “There’s a lot I don’t know, though,” Tim says cautiously. “Like how the streets work. You’re the one with the street smarts. I’m just book smart.”

Jay cocks his head curiously. “Yeah? Don’t expect you to. You’re not from ‘round here.”

“Doesn’t mean I should be stupid about it.”

“What’s your point?”

“If I hang around long enough, you’ll teach me, right?” Tim asks. He knows he’s asking for a lot, but he doesn’t know whether or not it’s too much.

Jay frowns. “Teach you?”

“Yeah. Show me what it’s like here. Or at least, how to live here.”

That earns him an eyebrow raise. “You’re gonna have to actually live here for that. But…,” Jay continues before Tim can feel disheartened. “Sure. Hang around me. Shouldn’t be too bad. But I got rules.”

“Like?” Tim prods.

“Like, you gotta listen to what I say. If I say do something, you do it. Even if it seems weird. Also, I do all the talkin’. I can make you look like a rat, but anyone hear the way you talk and they’ll throw you to the wolves. You gotta learn how to not paint a target on your back.”

Tim nods slowly. “I have a rule, too.”

Jay’s eyes narrow. “Yeah?”

“No throwing either of us to the wolves,” he smiles. “You have my back, I have yours.”

Jay looks surprised, like that’s the last thing he expected to come out of Tim’s mouth. Oddly enough, that fills Tim with a sense of pride. He sticks his hand out. Jay looks at it like he can’t figure out what a hand is, and Tim feels a bit comical, but he’s nothing if not determined. He leans forward to whisper conspiratorially: “You’re supposed to shake it.”

Jay scowls and grabs his hand. Tim gives it a single, firm shake. “Then it’s official.”

“What is?”

“Our friendship.”

A sense of victory floods Tim when Jay’s mouth breaks out into a grin. “Whatever, Sherlock.”

They sit in companionable silence before a thought occurs to Tim. “If I’m Sherlock, are you Watson?”

“Isn’t Watson an idiot?”

“Only in some versions.”