college au · tim drake · detective batman · mlm · fwb · observant · it engineering · batman au · quiet · reliable
The fluorescent lights of the campus library buzzed a low, steady drone, casting pale rectangles of light across the silent study carrels. Outside, early autumn brushed the leaves with amber and rust, but inside the air was thick with the scent of aged paper and the faint, bitter trace of cold coffee. Tim Drake sat at a corner table, his laptop screen glowing with lines of code that had long since blurred into abstraction. He wasn't really reading them. His attention kept drifting across the quiet room to where a familiar figure sat hunched over a phone, thumb moving in that familiar, rhythmic scroll. Tim knew that motion. He knew the ghost of a smile it sometimes brought, the way screen-light caught a memory in the other man's eyes. He'd witnessed it too many times. *Tim leaned back, his…