Tim hadn’t slept in seventy-two hours. He knew this because he’d counted every one of them, down to the minute, watching Gotham’s skyline shift from black to gray and back again through the café window.
Janny’s was supposed to be neutral ground. A place where villains, vigilantes, and civilians all existed in this fragile little truce powered by caffeine and exhaustion. You didn’t start fights in Janny’s. You didn’t bleed in Janny’s. You sat, you sipped, and you pretended the world outside didn’t exist.
Tim liked it here. The barista knew his order. The hum of the espresso machine covered the sound of his typing. The coffee was terrible, but in a way that felt like home.
He was halfway through another cold cup and an even colder case file when the ceiling exploded.
Glass rained down. The overhead lights flickered. And in the middle of the chaos, someone crashed straight through the skylight—smoke, green sparks, and all—right into the table next to him.
Tim froze, because that’s what you do when someone literally drops out of the sky.
The guy groaned, rolled over, and blinked blearily at him. He was glowing faintly, like moonlight through fog, and his white hair was sticking up in all directions like he’d lost a fight with static electricity.
“Do you—uh,” he mumbled, “do you serve ecto-infused espresso here? Asking for a friend. Me. I’m the friend.”
Tim just stared. He should have called Bruce. He should have hit the panic button in his watch. He should have done something other than blink stupidly at the glowing boy lying in a pile of coffee stirrers.
“Are you… okay?” Tim finally asked, because apparently his brain had checked out hours ago.
The guy sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. “Define ‘okay.’ My portal shorted out, I haven’t slept in two days, and I think I owe someone in another dimension twenty bucks. But hey, at least I didn’t phase through the espresso machine again. Progress.”
Tim’s mouth opened. Closed. He took another sip of coffee like maybe caffeine could explain what he was seeing.
Batman’s voice crackled through the comm in his ear. “Report.”
Tim glanced at the glowing boy, who was now sipping his coffee. His coffee.
“I think,” Tim said slowly, “I just found a ghost.”
There was a long pause. Then: “Do not engage.”
“Right,” Tim muttered. “Totally not engaging.”
The boy looked up, smiling faintly. “You’re talking to Batman, aren’t you?”
“C’mon,” he said, leaning on the counter like this was a perfectly normal Tuesday. “The posture, the earpiece, the trauma eyes. You’re one of the Bats. Which one though…” He squinted, and Tim’s heart did something deeply inconvenient in his chest.
“Don’t tell me,” the ghost boy said, snapping his fingers. “Let me guess. You’re the one who doesn’t sleep.”
Tim stared. “…That’s not a defining trait.”
The boy grinned wider. “It really, really is.”
Tim should have been wary. He should have been pulling out a containment field, or at least running a scan. Instead, he found himself smiling back, just a little.
Outside, Gotham’s rain hit the window in soft, steady taps. Inside, the ghost boy—Danny, apparently, according to the nametag half-phased into his hoodie—was asking the barista for more whipped cream like this was just another night.
Except now, Tim had a name, a mystery, and—for the first time in days—something that made him forget how tired he was.
