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All he wanted to do was crawl in a hole and die. Currently, he was at Titan’s Tower for the weekend hanging out with Cassie, Bart, and Kon. And he was starting to think it was a mistake. Because all the songs they played on their playlist, that weren’t added by him, were all his boyfriend’s band’s music.
“Why don’t you listen to I/V-ES, Tim?” Bart asks him, upside down on the couch holding his Uno cards. “I do listen to them, I’m just not crazy about them and only listen to them like you guys.” He lies. Sort of. He does listen to other artists. But he is crazy about I/V-ES. Mainly because his boyfriend is the lead singer, super hot, and the band is named after him and most of their songs are written and/or co-produced by him- Tim- and the band.
“Do you even know what I/V-ES stands for?” Tim rolls his eys, placing his red 2 and allowing Kon to place his +4, blue, directed at Cassie who squawks at him. “I for Ives the lead singer and sub-guitarist, V for Vince the main guitarist, E for Eddie the drummer, and S for Sylas the bass.” He states as if it was the obvious.
“Okay, okay. Fine. I believe you.” Kon says, tossing him a look of some sort. He rolls his eyes in return, continuing on the game. The game which slowly devolves into chaos the longer they play.
“Uno! Uno out!” Tim calls, placing his skip everyone and his +4, red, card down, knowing Bart was next and he didn’t have any reds. The three scream at him, only for him to laugh and fall onto the couch behind him, spreading out across the whole thing. “Continue on, I’ll just be on my phone.” He waved them off, pulling his phone out to see texts from the I/V-ES groupchat.
IV
Tim, babe, when or if I introduce you do I do it as a guy or gal?
Vinny
Yea, do we address you as his girlfriend or boyfriend or partner in public?
Syl
I say partner
Yk
Cus they’re trans
EdGRR
Tim’s gendergluid, dumbass
*fluid
But yea
Partner seems like a better introductory reg term for the pendeja
TIMoTHEA
Im not a pendeja
I just dont want to go public
I already have a lot as Red Robin
Plus WE
Imagine what ppl would say if they find out Im dating world renowned popstar Ives from I/V-ES
IV
So what?
Im ready to go public because everyone should know just how amazing of a person you are
And that Im dating someone
And not just ANYONE too
Syl
Yeah
You’re leaving him dry, T
You need credit
You wont even let us put you as a credit co-producer or lyricist
TIMoTHEA
Because I dont need anymore fame
Im already trying to figure out how to get out of the public spotlight
I hate it
I miss when I could go out without being recognized
Or bombarded by paparazzi
Or reporters
Or a kidnapper
EdGRR
You live in Gotham
Vinny
Not the point
But yeah I understand, T
That’s why I’m not even main back up vocalist
IV
Yeah
Yeah
Okay
No spotlight now
But someday? 🥺🙏
TIMoTHEA
Maybe
Ig…
If I care enough to let anyone know I know you guys
But I dont
They already pretty much listen to only you guys
Smart Fever is playing RIGHT NOW
As we text
The only non-us songs are the ones I put on the team playlist
Which sucks
Vinny
Wow..
IV
Go off babe
But you said US songs
TIMoTHEA
Wtv
Im logging off
Dont bother me
I need a break of socializing
See yall Monday
He ignored their messages of goodbye and instead turns to tiktok. Where he doomscrolls for probably hours. Even after they end the game. Even when it was dark outside.
It was whatever though. Because the weekend was almost over anyways. Just one more day where they planned to do nothing but game all day and respond to any emergencies.
Oh yeah. FYI, the band does know he’s Red Robin. Because apparently they were at his house. Pulling an all nighter planning music release dates without him knowing. That was the day they found out, a good year and a half ago, because he was tired, so thrown off by the quiet but no-so-quiet patrol that he came in through his window, took off his mask and most his armor, before crashing on the couch. He didn’t see them in the kitchen and had to talk to them and explain everything in the morning.
Safe to say, they’ve grown really close as a team and friends. Mainly because they now knew he was Red Robin and they all kept his secrets. They were all best friends pretty much.
Anyways. Back to the now. The now was him pretty much asleep on the couch with the buzz of Bart zipping around the living room, Kon munching on snacks, and Cassie watching some 2000s movie.
--
Monday came quicker. Not that he didn’t like it. Because here he was, kicking the others around, literally and metaphorically. “Not like that!” Tim kicked Vince in the back of the knees, sending him tumbling forward. “Strum like this!” Tim strummed his own guitar in hand.
He strummed down, up, down three times, then up again. Repeat. “Jeez! Okay!” Vinny tried again. He nodded and moved on to show Ives what to strum, Eddie what the drum line was like, and Sylas how the bass strum went.
“Ives control your boo thing. He’s hitting.” Eddie said. Tim shot him a glare, tempted to go over and hit him. “Can’t do a thing. He’s Red Robin, remember? What hope do I have even getting to touch him.” Tim scoffed again and rolled his eyes.
“Focus. Let’s get this song over with, we still have to practice the dance. And then we can go. You have the World Tour finale next week, remember?” Tim reminds. He sees them all make the ‘typical Tim’ face and rolls his eyes. But they listen. They get through the rest of the songs before practicing the dance for one of their music videos, the one and only dance they’ll ever do, before calling it quits for the day.
Vince, Eddie, and Sylas all head out for the day, but Ives and Tim stay behind. Tim stood in front of the mirror, tying his hair up into a loose bun, up and out of his face. He planned to write more music, as usual, with Ives.
He looked at Ives in the mirror. He was strumming something on the guitar at the computers, a cord connecting his guitar to the system. He could see the computer picking up the guitar. The change in pitch shown when the white line would jump and fill the bar before falling back down.
He walked over, silent on his socks, and waited until Ives replayed the sound on the system. He continued to stay silent, listening to Ives add more instruments and sounds while Tim sat and worked in his notebook on lyrics, subconsciously writing to the sound of the instrumental Ives was producing.
“A duet.” He spoke quietly after maybe 20 minutes. Tim looked up at him and hummed in confusion. Ives turned to him, a somewhat hopeful look in his eyes when he looked at Tim. “A duet. Between you and me.” Tim sighed and shook his head.
“Please? Just for us?” Tim looked at Ives and fell for it. His puppy eyes. He gave in with a sigh. “Fine. I wrote lyrics for it already.” Good thing he wrote a love song. It was giving love song anyways. Ives looked them over intently. He plucked the pen out of Tim’s grasp when he was handed it, making marks and words here and there, before showing Tim.
“All you did was assign us parts.” Tim said. He nodded. “You’ll sing the chorus first, then I’ll sing the first verse, we’ll duet the chorus, then you’ll do a verse, then we’ll both do the bridge and chorus for the rest of the song.
He agreed, hopping into the sound booth. “How do you want me to sing this?” Tim put the headphones on, placing the lyric book on the stand. “Ermm.. How about..” He hummed the chorus melody and Tim practiced it on his tongue. Following the lyrics, repeating several times before deciding it was good to record.
They went back and forth for hours. Repeating recordings, splicing them, editing, revising, re-recording, until the song was to their liking. It felt nice. Having made an actual song he was apart of and not one he was just co-producing. He almost thought about letting Ives post it. Almost.
“You can put it in the unreleased album.” Tim said. Ives frowned and looked at him. “No spotlight.” Tim reminded, getting up and putting his shoes on, grabbing his bag. “See you when your tour is done.” Ives side, standing up and heading over the Tim.
“Fine, fine. No posting. But think about the launch, please? I wanna be able to go out with you.” Tim sighed, turning to look up at eyes. Him and his stupid height. Tim was 5’6, curse his genes, and Ives was 5’11.
“Fine. I’ll think about it.” He replies, his eyes softening when Ives’s do. Ives brings his hand up to cup TIm’s face, drawing him in by the waist. “Thank you.” Tim only hums in return, leaning in to plant a kiss upon his lips. Ives returns it, of course. They were still doing sweet things, nothing overly sexual or even crossing the line of making out full on. Just quick kisses, like teenagers in deep love. Tim loved it, and all their pictures they took.
--
It was the day of the final concert. Tim had gotten his team tickets to this concert as a “team bonding” thing, and totally not because he texted Ives late last night, or technically morning, and said he could hard launch their relationship.
He didn’t exactly know if he read the text because he was asleep at that time and also pretty much off his phone for the whole day leading up to the concert just practicing. So his nerves were haywire, but he kept cool calm and collected because he was with his friends. Probably about to tell or show them he was dating their favorite band’s lead singer.
“Dude thanks so much, Tim! You even got us front row railings!” Bart jumped up. Cassie and Kon followed with their own various versions of thanks. It wasn’t 2 seconds later that the concert actually started.
Tim thought it was eccentric, having smoke machines producing smoke with red stage lights while they were lifted up on stage. Even more eccentric than their lack of… outfits. They seemed more casual than their normal stage wear. He didn’t actually know much about their stage wear, truth be told, but he didn’t know why he didn’t expect this.
All of them were wearing jeans, some t-shirt, a blazer or not, and maybe a bandana somewhere on them. Ives had his around one of his belt loops.
He prepared himself for the screaming, but he didn’t expect just how loud they were going to scream. Truth be told, again, he had never actually gone to their concerts nor done anything other than hang out with them and produce music with them behind the scenes. He also only listened to their music, not even watch the music videos.
“Good evening, Gotham CIty!” Ives called out from the stage. A chorus of loud cheers echoed from the clouds. “As you probably know, we plan to go on hiatus for a while to catch up and regroup, so this will be our biggest concert yet, because we’re launching some new things with some very big news.”
Those words made Tim’s stomach drop and maybe do a few loops on the way down. ‘Launch’ and ‘very big news’ in the same sentence coming from Ives’s mouth didn’t sound good. But oh well. He was already here, front row, in front of a gate that could open, staring up at the stage where the band was, wishing them luck and to not embarrass him, or her, any further.
But everything seemed to go fine. He sang along to some of the songs, faking semi-excitement when his friends turned to him and dragged him into their own excitement. Whatever that meant.
He brushed off the feelings of anxiousness at what they might do and fully focused on the concert. When it got to a lull in the concert, towards the end, when they regrouped for the last set, that’s when stuff started changing.
“As some of you might already know, we released a new album today.” Tim’s eyebrows raised. He hadn’t heard of a new album or song release today. Probably because his phone was off, but still. “It’s not like our typical genre of music, but it’s not just for everyone. It’s for someone.” Tim’s heart dropped at that. That someone was probably him. No. Definitely him.
“So this album is for my muse, my partner, the love of my life, Tim Drake.” Tim’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. The whole audience roared with screams of both excitement and confusion, his friends looked at him with such a shocked and maybe betrayed face. But he didn’t really know. He couldn’t see. All he could do was look and listen as the instrumental started. And then Ives started singing. And then all Tim could do was not melt in the floor as the songs played on.
Love songs. About him. This was their hard launch. Ives did see the message and he was going all out and being eccentric about it. But Tim had a few questions. Like where did these songs come from? When did they have the time to produce them? Tim has read over and helped produce all their songs, most all, but he’s never heard any of these.
“Now for this song is a change in pace from the others, but I still wrote it with every intent of loving you till the day I die, Tim.” Ives looked directly at him when he said it. He felt his friends grab his shoulders and shake him. He could only stare up at Ives.
The song started, already you could tell it was gonna be sad. And it was. It was sad. He knew it was about that rough patch in their relationship when they broke up. When Tim lost everything and everyone and went galavanting around the world. Ives probably wrote it then. Because he sang just like he felt during that time.
They had gotten over it, sure. They made up, and got back together after everything. They don’t fight just as bad as they did back then. During their nasty break up. They’ve learned to communicate their feelings, but wow. Tim’s own eyes had tears in them at hearing them.
When the instrumental started to fade out, Ives took off his guitar and started walking down the steps, right in front of Tim, the gate the only thing between them. He opened it, pulling Tim throught before shutting it behind him. He hadn’t expected him to pull him through, so he stumbled into his chest.
His arms came up and wrapped around him, instrumental still playing in the background. He brought his forehead to Tim’s and made eye contact with him. He brought the mic back up to his lips, and he could see the cameras on them from the corner of his eyes.
“I know we went through a rough patch back then, but I want you to know just how much I love you. I want to go out with you without having to worry about anyone coming to us or stalking us or anything. I want us. Just us. I love you, Tim, I have since middle school.” Ives gave a small smile. Tim could only blink, fists still resting on his chest.
“You’ve helped me and the band so much, over these past few years. All of our music was pretty much written and produced by you and only you. We can only get partial credit for actually singing and playing the instruments.” Tim gave out a small laugh, it picked up on the mic ever so slightly.
“You’ve done pretty much everything, and I wanted to do something for you in return. Like spend time with you, go on dates with you, give you everything you deserve, you want, right now and in the future, and this.” Ives pulled back and took his hand, dragging him up to the stage.
They stood in the middle and Tim only looked at Ives. “I have one final song. And I made something to go with it, so just watch the screens.” Ives said once more.
He nodded to the others and they played a new, much happier, instrumental. Tim looked at the screen and saw a slideshow play-loading. Or a video. It was a video. When Ives started singing, no guitar this time, he only watched Tim.
Tim, who was looking at the screens with an awed look. The editing on the lyric video was amazing. It was a bunch of pictures of Tim and Tim and Ives. It was all of their loving photos. Of them on a cliffside, at the beach, him still sleeping in bed while Ives took a picture of the untouched breakfast in bed he didn’t wake up to, in the studio, the sunset behind them with the silhouette of them kissing on a trail, other pictures the other band members took of them over the years, and even one that looked like photobooth pictures of them from middle school all the way to the one they took in the recording studio just last week.
It was… amazing.
He was nervous the whole day for this moment and it felt stupid. It felt so stupid just to see and hear what Ives wanted to do with him now and in the future and for their whole life. From when they met to now. He was so scared about what the fans might think of them. What the public might think.
But it didn’t matter not. Nothing else did. Not when he turned around at the end of the song and nearly fell backwards on his butt. Not when Ives was on one knee holding a ring in his hand. It was a beautiful obsidian band with silver designs on it. It was the one Tim was eyeing at months ago at the jewlers looking for cufflinks for a gala with Ives.
He didn’t know he had actually bought it.
Tim brought his hands up to cover his mouth, his eyes tearing up and over flowing. He looked at Ives and smiled under his hands. Ives smiled back. “Tim Drake, I know how much you hate the spotlight, but just for this once, will you take my hand, and accept my proposal under the spotlight?” Tim nodded, not trusting his words.
Ives smiled brighter and took his left hand, slipping the ring on his finger before pulling him in for a kiss, wrapping his hands around his waist and Tim’s around his neck. It was deep and passionate and filled with so much emotion.
For once he was glad he was in the spotlight. Because it meant he didn’t have to explain everything because Ives explained it all. He had confirmed it all. He kissed Ives with the force of a thousand suns, and hated how smart he was at making sure this was on live television. Because now all the other heroes would find it or hear about it throught the news and ask him questions.
He didn’t care though. Not when the ring on his finger, his perfect size, meant that Ives and him were moving forward. Past everything. Past the whole heartbreak and break up. They were going to get married. They were engaged.
It was everything to Tim. Everything to Ives. They pulled apart and rested their foreheads together. Distantly, if Tim focused enough, he could hear the cheers and see the remains of confetti falling. But his focus wasn’t on that, it was on Ives.
“How was that for a hard launch?” Ives asked. Tim could only smirk and huff out a laugh as Ives drew his hand up to brush away the tears on his cheeks. “It was worse than I thought.” He joked. Partially. He could’ve gone without the audience. And this big performance. Not like it really was. Not with a ring on his finger, tear marks on his face, and Ives’s kiss on his lips.
“Let’s get out of here.” Tim nodded, letting himself be pulled off of the stage and immediately into Ives’s car outside, behind the stage.
Yea. It was a great hard launch.
--
“You were dating him this whole time!?” he heard pretty much everyone yell as he walked in to the living room at Wayne Manor, where pretty much all the heroes were gathered for a family day.
He smiled and nodded, squeezing Ives’s hand. “Yep. Since freshman year of high school.” He said. Dick stalked up to him and grabbed his shoulders shaking him. “Why didn’t you tell me!? You tell me everything!” He whined. Ives, thankfully, pulled Tim away from him.
“You okay, babe?” Ives cupped his cheek, steadying him. “Yeah, yeah.” He blinked a bit before looking back to them. He had some explaining to do. So he did. He sat down next to Ives, leg on top of his and Ives’s arm across his back and explained everything. With Ives pitching in too. Especially when the hard launch happened.
“He’s good to you?” Bruce asked. He looked at Bruce and smiled. “Very.” He said. Bruce nodded. He looked at Ives, who seemed unbothered by his stare. His Batman stare. “Oh trust me. If anyone’s bad in the relationship it’s Tim.” Tim turned to him with the most offended look and punched him in the stomach, not that hard though, just enough to make him curl over.
“How dare you! I am not the bad one!” He argued, Ives only looked up with a smirk. “You just hit me. Abuse. I think you are.” Tim only spluttered before crossing his arms, turning away with a pout.
He’d have to live with this for the rest of his life. And so did everyone else. But that was okay. Because he was the spotlight for just a few more hours, a few more days, and a few more years of his life. Only a few more spotlights he had to handle. He could handle it with Ives holding his hand.