Fic: Names and Truths in Photographs; Tim Drake/Michael Holt; NC-17; Part 8/12
Title: Names and Truths in Photographs
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Part: 8/12
Pairing: Tim Drake/Michael Holt
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Violence. Grief. Angst. Smut. Also, I feel compelled to mention, this story also discusses Michael's suicide attempt. It's not a major plot point, but it's there.
Disclaimer: Not mine, everyone's legal.
Word Count: 31,000ish
Author's Notes: Written for scifibigbang. Thanks for darkdanc3r for the beta and to lyanth for the fan art. You guys are awesome. <3
Summary: Elijah Steinmen, a friend of Michael Holt's, has run into some trouble. While trying to help Eli out of a bind, Michael runs into a bit of trouble himself. Trouble by the name of The Dark Hunter. AU, future fic. Slash.
Index Post
Chapter Eight
Michael stared intently down at his cell phone as he lifted his fork to his mouth. As he ate his dinner, a mug of coffee sat cooling by his hand and a sheaf of papers sat just in front of his plate, tormenting him.
He and Drake had gone over the list of recommended companies Waller had given him. They had finally settled on the three best options: Parker Labs, Cruz & Co Industries and Calet Technologies.
Calet, as in Augustus Calet. Michael's friend. The one who had been so concerned about Steinmen. He was clearly worried about himself as well and even more clearly, he had a reason to be so.
Michael was wrestling with his conscience.
He knew that if he told Calet to be careful, to up his security and keep a better eye out on his holdings for the next few days, he and Drake might miss their chance to catch the next Tradesman. He felt he owed the warning to Calet as a friend but, as a cape, he was reluctant to compromise an investigation.
Just as Michael was making his firm mental resolve to keep things to himself, his cell phone rang. He grimaced when he picked it up and looked at the caller ID. Michael hesitated for a split second before he flicked the phone open.
"Hey Vanessa!" he said in his best cheerful voice. "How's Auggie?"
"Oh he's fine. You know how he is, nothing gets him down," she chimed in brightly and Michael fought down a pang of guilt. Losing a multi million dollar government contact would probably get Auggie down.
"I heard you went to one of Jackson's shows," Vanessa continued blithely.
"I did. His London show. Two days ago, actually. It was wonderful," Michael answered.
"Oh good. I gave Eva your information but I wasn't sure she had gotten a hold of you," Vanessa said, relived. "I heard he had a show and I was worried you'd missed it. He doesn't give them very often so you were very lucky."
"Yes I certainly was," Michael agreed.
"Well, I'm glad you got to see his show. Did you pick up any of his prints?" she asked eagerly.
"I did. A set of six," Michael told her. "When I get back to the states I'll have you and Auggie over for dinner and show them off."
"Sounds wonderful!" Vanessa gushed. "I can't wait to see them."
Vanessa wished him goodnight and cut the line. Michael couldn't help but be relieved. Talking with her just made him feel even worse about keeping the whole situation from Augustus.
Michael just wished he and Tim hadn't decided that they needed to let the Tradesman go through with the job. Tim had pointed out that the only way to track the man back to his boss was to let him think he was in the clear and had gotten away with the job. Tim had been absolutely right and Michael had seen the wisdom in it.
He was just reluctant to let anyone else become a victim of the bastard who was at the root of it all.
Two of the three targets he and Tim had ultimately decided on were in an industrial park just outside of San Diego. Drake had two of his people monitoring Calet's place in Chicago. Michael wished he was there rather than here, but it made more sense, statistically, for him to be where the action was more likely to be.
Michael suited up and applied his mask. He had been staying in a hotel just on the outskirts of the business districts. It was just after eight and it took him some time to make it out of the city to the agreed meeting place. Drake was already waiting there when he arrived.
Michael slipped out of his car and walked over to where Tim stood, leaning against his bike.
"Any word from your people in Chicago?" Michael asked and Tim shook his head silently.
"No, I doubt it'll be hit. He wasn't at the top of the list," Tim answered in his Dark Hunter voice. "My money's on V-tech."
Michael nodded. He knew, logically, that Drake was probably right. It didn't mean he wasn't still nervous for Calet.
"Let's go wait in your car," Drake said and pushed off his bike to walk over to Michael's car.
"You didn't bring your own?" Michael teased, following after him.
Drake gave him an arch look. "Do you know how difficult it would be for me to cart a whole car around the world with me?" he asked acidly.
"Ah, point taken," Michael answered and pressed the button to unlock his car.
They both slipped inside, Michael behind the steering wheel and Drake in the passenger's seat. Drake pulled his communicator out of a pouch on his belt.
"I connected all the alarms and security systems we set up to my communicator. We'll get notice if anything goes off on any of the three buildings," Tim informed him. "Oracle is keeping an eye out on the systems of the rest of the names on the list that Waller gave us. I'd say we're about as covered as we're going to be."
Michael nodded. The two of them had returned to the states two days ago. During that time, Tim had set up sensors and tapped into the alarm systems in the two buildings in San Diego and Michael had taken care of Calet's building in Chicago.
"I'm going to input the code to send the data over to your T-spheres so you get it when Oracle and I do," Tim told him and Michael nodded. There was a pause and the the data flashed across Michael's eyepieces. "Annnnd done," Tim informed him.
Michael nodded and went through the data as Tim sighed, closed his eyes and slumped back into his seat. He rubbed at his eyes with gloved fingers before he blinked twice and opened them again. He seemed very quiet all the sudden. The intensity that Michael had grown accustomed to and the quick wit seemed to have deserted Drake.
"You've been in my presence for almost fifteen minutes and you have neither insulted me nor made a disparaging implication about my masculinity? Losing your touch?" Michael asked him, only half teasing.
Drake smiled tiredly. "I'm sorry. Clearly, I'm off my game. Shall I start speculating about the Freudian implications of your habit of keeping hovering balls around your head? Or should I just go with the classics and tell you your hair looks stupid?"
"My hair looks stupid?" Michael asked automatically defensive and then mentally cursed himself when he realized that was exactly what Drake was going for.
Drake smiled again. "No, but I have three brothers and I've gotten awfully good at pretending things like that are true. I convinced Damian that his nose was completely crooked once."
Michael smiled back at Drake and shook his head.
"Freudian implications of hovering balls, huh? You can really run with that?" Michael asked, both amused and impressed.
Drake let out a short laugh and that made Michael smile even wider. "I went to boarding school. I can bullshit anyone about anything."
"That's a course at boarding school?" Michael teased.
"Sure is. They call it Etiquette Class," Drake told him in confidential tones.
Michael laughed again but Drake's smile was interrupted by a yawn.
"I thought the Dark Hunter never rested and never tired when he was in pursuit of his prey," Michael intoned dramatically.
"It's been a long few days and, in case you haven't noticed, criminals tend to exaggerate. A cowardly and superstitious lot, you know..." Drake informed him airily. "Besides, I never spread those rumors around."
"You didn't?" Michael asked, curiously.
"No," Drake told him, "I didn't even pick the name."
"How did you end up the Dark Hunter then?" Michael asked him curiously.
"It's sort of complicated," Drake prevaricated and glanced out his window, not meeting Michael's eyes.
"We've got all week to watch this place. Plus, if we get all quiet again you might fall asleep on me," Michael said in his best persuasive tones.
Drake groaned. "I absolutely do not want to be here all week. If this guy makes us wait for more than a day or two, I will find him and I will feed him his foot."
"Don't change the subject," Michael scolded and Drake gave him a dirty look. Michael just lifted an eyebrow pointedly and Drake sighed.
"It started almost two years ago," Tim began tiredly, "back before I found Bruce. Back before I even had a halfway decent lead and all I was working with was hope and wild speculation. I ran into R'as Al Ghul. He had been dogging me for years at that point, trying to manipulate and use me."
"Use you for what?" Michael asked, interestedly.
Tim shrugged. "The guy is crazy. I think he had a plan but I wasn't interested in finding out what it was. I was tired of him popping up into my life at exceptionally inconvenient times. I was even more tired of how cavalierly he treated human lives. I lost my patience and decided to go after him. Him and the Council of Spiders."
Michael let out a long, low whistle. Now that he had his suspicions about what had happened to the League and the Council, Michael was impressed. The League of Assassins had been in operation for more than a hundred years. It was well organized, well lead and very dangerous. While the Council of Spiders hadn't been around nearly as long, it had gained a reputation for being deadly.
For Drake to go in and take them both out without back up had taken bravery and, Michael was forced to wryly concede, balls. He must have been like a force of nature.
"So I took them both down from the inside," Drake continued. "The members scattered after the initial attack but I knew that if I left them all alone, they'd just regroup somehow. So, as I went around looking for clues about Bruce, I tracked down the ones who got away. I've found all but three, so far. R'as being one of those three."
"R'as is the one who named you?" Michael asked.
"Yes," Drake nodded. "I felt like Red Robin was too rough for me and I dropped it, hoping that it would make it easier for me to move around without the somewhat exaggerated reputation I had earned. But after I abandoned that name, R'as gave me a new one. He calls Bruce 'The Detective' and he calls me 'The Hunter'. His 'Dark Hunter'. He says I'm the only person he has ever seen so consumed with the occupation of hunting down human beings. He says my ruthlessness puts his assassins to shame."
Drake didn't seem happy about that. He actually seemed quite bothered by it.
"He respects you," Michael said, more a statement than a question. "It says a lot when the guys you're up against have respect for you."
"He does but I don't particularly want the respect of a nigh immortal megalomaniacal nut job bent on world domination," Drake replied caustically.
"I don't know about that. I'd say that gaining a megalomaniac's respect is actually pretty impressive," Michael said and Drake snorted a soft laugh through his nose.
"Good point," he conceded. "Yet it still makes me feel uncomfortable," Tim's voice was light but there was a serious undertone to it.
"So, why don't you change your name? Come up with a new one. If you build up your reputation as someone else, then maybe everyone will forgot about the Dark Hunter," Michael suggested.
"Change it to what? I'm not Robin any more. I don't think I was ever really Red Robin. I'll never be Batman so who should I be?" Drake asked him, sounding more than a little exasperated. It was clearly a subject he had given much thought to and hadn't found a satisfactory answer.
"Who do you want to be?" Michael asked him.
"I don't want to be anyone, though I suppose if my little stint with anonymity has taught me anything it's that it's impossible to be no one," Drake sighed.
"What's wrong with being who you are? I like the Dark Hunter. I like working with him and talking with him and thinking with him," Michael said and he meant it a lot more than he had expected to.
"There are... implications," Tim explained hesitantly.
"You think that because R'as named you he has some hold over you or something?" Michael asked.
"Not exactly. It's just, as long as I use the name he gave me, it's like there's a part of him in my life. I don't like that. I took him down because I wanted him out of my life," Tim sounded somewhat forlorn. "It's the sort of thing that sticks with you, you know?"
Michael nodded, unsure what to say. He understood Tim's point of view. A name was an important thing. It meant something to the person it belonged to and the people who used it. It helped shape who a person became.
"Even when I was Robin it was always in the back of my mind," Tim went on, breaking though Michael's thoughts. "I wasn't the first. These weren't really my colors and this wasn't really my name. I was just borrowing it for a while. I feel the same way now. It's not my name, it's the name R'as Al Ghul gave me. I'm hate it."
"I think maybe, as time goes on, the name won't be so much what R'as Al Ghul calls you. It'll be what everyone calls you. The negative connotation will be inundated by the common usage and eventually just wear off. It'll just be your name," Michael assured him.
Tim glanced over at Michael and gave him a speculative look. "You think so?"
"Yes, I think so," Michael confirmed.
"I tell people not to use it. That name, I mean," Tim told him confidentially.
"The plan won't work if you keep doing it," Michael pointed out.
"No, it won't," Tim replied contemplatively. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do need to embrace what I've made of myself."
"You didn't do such a bad job," Michael pointed out blithely and Tim smiled at him.
"Why Mr. Holt, you'll make me blush," Tim teased in formal tones and Michael grinned at him. "Are you going to tell me I have pretty eyes, next?"
He did have pretty eyes. Michael couldn't deny that. He liked Tim's eyes. He liked a lot of things about Tim. He liked it when Tim teased him and he liked it when Tim was serious. He liked it when he and Tim worked through problems together and he liked it when Tim confided in him.
Michael very much wanted to tell Tim he had pretty eyes. Then he wanted to lean over the console between them and--
Just then, Tim's communicator beeped and Michael's T-sphere's alerted him to the fact that one of their alarms had been tripped. Tim fumbled for his communicator and flicked it open.
"I was right. It's V-tech," Tim said, clearly relieved. "I'm so glad they didn't wait another few days,"
"So am I. I really didn't want to watch you make someone eat their foot," Michael teased and Tim laughed as he hopped out of the car and ran towards his bike. He straddled it and gave Michael a wave before gunning the engine and heading for the main exit of the Industrial Park.
Chapter Nine
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Part: 8/12
Pairing: Tim Drake/Michael Holt
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Violence. Grief. Angst. Smut. Also, I feel compelled to mention, this story also discusses Michael's suicide attempt. It's not a major plot point, but it's there.
Disclaimer: Not mine, everyone's legal.
Word Count: 31,000ish
Author's Notes: Written for scifibigbang. Thanks for darkdanc3r for the beta and to lyanth for the fan art. You guys are awesome. <3
Summary: Elijah Steinmen, a friend of Michael Holt's, has run into some trouble. While trying to help Eli out of a bind, Michael runs into a bit of trouble himself. Trouble by the name of The Dark Hunter. AU, future fic. Slash.
Index Post
Chapter Eight
Michael stared intently down at his cell phone as he lifted his fork to his mouth. As he ate his dinner, a mug of coffee sat cooling by his hand and a sheaf of papers sat just in front of his plate, tormenting him.
He and Drake had gone over the list of recommended companies Waller had given him. They had finally settled on the three best options: Parker Labs, Cruz & Co Industries and Calet Technologies.
Calet, as in Augustus Calet. Michael's friend. The one who had been so concerned about Steinmen. He was clearly worried about himself as well and even more clearly, he had a reason to be so.
Michael was wrestling with his conscience.
He knew that if he told Calet to be careful, to up his security and keep a better eye out on his holdings for the next few days, he and Drake might miss their chance to catch the next Tradesman. He felt he owed the warning to Calet as a friend but, as a cape, he was reluctant to compromise an investigation.
Just as Michael was making his firm mental resolve to keep things to himself, his cell phone rang. He grimaced when he picked it up and looked at the caller ID. Michael hesitated for a split second before he flicked the phone open.
"Hey Vanessa!" he said in his best cheerful voice. "How's Auggie?"
"Oh he's fine. You know how he is, nothing gets him down," she chimed in brightly and Michael fought down a pang of guilt. Losing a multi million dollar government contact would probably get Auggie down.
"I heard you went to one of Jackson's shows," Vanessa continued blithely.
"I did. His London show. Two days ago, actually. It was wonderful," Michael answered.
"Oh good. I gave Eva your information but I wasn't sure she had gotten a hold of you," Vanessa said, relived. "I heard he had a show and I was worried you'd missed it. He doesn't give them very often so you were very lucky."
"Yes I certainly was," Michael agreed.
"Well, I'm glad you got to see his show. Did you pick up any of his prints?" she asked eagerly.
"I did. A set of six," Michael told her. "When I get back to the states I'll have you and Auggie over for dinner and show them off."
"Sounds wonderful!" Vanessa gushed. "I can't wait to see them."
Vanessa wished him goodnight and cut the line. Michael couldn't help but be relieved. Talking with her just made him feel even worse about keeping the whole situation from Augustus.
Michael just wished he and Tim hadn't decided that they needed to let the Tradesman go through with the job. Tim had pointed out that the only way to track the man back to his boss was to let him think he was in the clear and had gotten away with the job. Tim had been absolutely right and Michael had seen the wisdom in it.
He was just reluctant to let anyone else become a victim of the bastard who was at the root of it all.
Two of the three targets he and Tim had ultimately decided on were in an industrial park just outside of San Diego. Drake had two of his people monitoring Calet's place in Chicago. Michael wished he was there rather than here, but it made more sense, statistically, for him to be where the action was more likely to be.
Michael suited up and applied his mask. He had been staying in a hotel just on the outskirts of the business districts. It was just after eight and it took him some time to make it out of the city to the agreed meeting place. Drake was already waiting there when he arrived.
Michael slipped out of his car and walked over to where Tim stood, leaning against his bike.
"Any word from your people in Chicago?" Michael asked and Tim shook his head silently.
"No, I doubt it'll be hit. He wasn't at the top of the list," Tim answered in his Dark Hunter voice. "My money's on V-tech."
Michael nodded. He knew, logically, that Drake was probably right. It didn't mean he wasn't still nervous for Calet.
"Let's go wait in your car," Drake said and pushed off his bike to walk over to Michael's car.
"You didn't bring your own?" Michael teased, following after him.
Drake gave him an arch look. "Do you know how difficult it would be for me to cart a whole car around the world with me?" he asked acidly.
"Ah, point taken," Michael answered and pressed the button to unlock his car.
They both slipped inside, Michael behind the steering wheel and Drake in the passenger's seat. Drake pulled his communicator out of a pouch on his belt.
"I connected all the alarms and security systems we set up to my communicator. We'll get notice if anything goes off on any of the three buildings," Tim informed him. "Oracle is keeping an eye out on the systems of the rest of the names on the list that Waller gave us. I'd say we're about as covered as we're going to be."
Michael nodded. The two of them had returned to the states two days ago. During that time, Tim had set up sensors and tapped into the alarm systems in the two buildings in San Diego and Michael had taken care of Calet's building in Chicago.
"I'm going to input the code to send the data over to your T-spheres so you get it when Oracle and I do," Tim told him and Michael nodded. There was a pause and the the data flashed across Michael's eyepieces. "Annnnd done," Tim informed him.
Michael nodded and went through the data as Tim sighed, closed his eyes and slumped back into his seat. He rubbed at his eyes with gloved fingers before he blinked twice and opened them again. He seemed very quiet all the sudden. The intensity that Michael had grown accustomed to and the quick wit seemed to have deserted Drake.
"You've been in my presence for almost fifteen minutes and you have neither insulted me nor made a disparaging implication about my masculinity? Losing your touch?" Michael asked him, only half teasing.
Drake smiled tiredly. "I'm sorry. Clearly, I'm off my game. Shall I start speculating about the Freudian implications of your habit of keeping hovering balls around your head? Or should I just go with the classics and tell you your hair looks stupid?"
"My hair looks stupid?" Michael asked automatically defensive and then mentally cursed himself when he realized that was exactly what Drake was going for.
Drake smiled again. "No, but I have three brothers and I've gotten awfully good at pretending things like that are true. I convinced Damian that his nose was completely crooked once."
Michael smiled back at Drake and shook his head.
"Freudian implications of hovering balls, huh? You can really run with that?" Michael asked, both amused and impressed.
Drake let out a short laugh and that made Michael smile even wider. "I went to boarding school. I can bullshit anyone about anything."
"That's a course at boarding school?" Michael teased.
"Sure is. They call it Etiquette Class," Drake told him in confidential tones.
Michael laughed again but Drake's smile was interrupted by a yawn.
"I thought the Dark Hunter never rested and never tired when he was in pursuit of his prey," Michael intoned dramatically.
"It's been a long few days and, in case you haven't noticed, criminals tend to exaggerate. A cowardly and superstitious lot, you know..." Drake informed him airily. "Besides, I never spread those rumors around."
"You didn't?" Michael asked, curiously.
"No," Drake told him, "I didn't even pick the name."
"How did you end up the Dark Hunter then?" Michael asked him curiously.
"It's sort of complicated," Drake prevaricated and glanced out his window, not meeting Michael's eyes.
"We've got all week to watch this place. Plus, if we get all quiet again you might fall asleep on me," Michael said in his best persuasive tones.
Drake groaned. "I absolutely do not want to be here all week. If this guy makes us wait for more than a day or two, I will find him and I will feed him his foot."
"Don't change the subject," Michael scolded and Drake gave him a dirty look. Michael just lifted an eyebrow pointedly and Drake sighed.
"It started almost two years ago," Tim began tiredly, "back before I found Bruce. Back before I even had a halfway decent lead and all I was working with was hope and wild speculation. I ran into R'as Al Ghul. He had been dogging me for years at that point, trying to manipulate and use me."
"Use you for what?" Michael asked, interestedly.
Tim shrugged. "The guy is crazy. I think he had a plan but I wasn't interested in finding out what it was. I was tired of him popping up into my life at exceptionally inconvenient times. I was even more tired of how cavalierly he treated human lives. I lost my patience and decided to go after him. Him and the Council of Spiders."
Michael let out a long, low whistle. Now that he had his suspicions about what had happened to the League and the Council, Michael was impressed. The League of Assassins had been in operation for more than a hundred years. It was well organized, well lead and very dangerous. While the Council of Spiders hadn't been around nearly as long, it had gained a reputation for being deadly.
For Drake to go in and take them both out without back up had taken bravery and, Michael was forced to wryly concede, balls. He must have been like a force of nature.
"So I took them both down from the inside," Drake continued. "The members scattered after the initial attack but I knew that if I left them all alone, they'd just regroup somehow. So, as I went around looking for clues about Bruce, I tracked down the ones who got away. I've found all but three, so far. R'as being one of those three."
"R'as is the one who named you?" Michael asked.
"Yes," Drake nodded. "I felt like Red Robin was too rough for me and I dropped it, hoping that it would make it easier for me to move around without the somewhat exaggerated reputation I had earned. But after I abandoned that name, R'as gave me a new one. He calls Bruce 'The Detective' and he calls me 'The Hunter'. His 'Dark Hunter'. He says I'm the only person he has ever seen so consumed with the occupation of hunting down human beings. He says my ruthlessness puts his assassins to shame."
Drake didn't seem happy about that. He actually seemed quite bothered by it.
"He respects you," Michael said, more a statement than a question. "It says a lot when the guys you're up against have respect for you."
"He does but I don't particularly want the respect of a nigh immortal megalomaniacal nut job bent on world domination," Drake replied caustically.
"I don't know about that. I'd say that gaining a megalomaniac's respect is actually pretty impressive," Michael said and Drake snorted a soft laugh through his nose.
"Good point," he conceded. "Yet it still makes me feel uncomfortable," Tim's voice was light but there was a serious undertone to it.
"So, why don't you change your name? Come up with a new one. If you build up your reputation as someone else, then maybe everyone will forgot about the Dark Hunter," Michael suggested.
"Change it to what? I'm not Robin any more. I don't think I was ever really Red Robin. I'll never be Batman so who should I be?" Drake asked him, sounding more than a little exasperated. It was clearly a subject he had given much thought to and hadn't found a satisfactory answer.
"Who do you want to be?" Michael asked him.
"I don't want to be anyone, though I suppose if my little stint with anonymity has taught me anything it's that it's impossible to be no one," Drake sighed.
"What's wrong with being who you are? I like the Dark Hunter. I like working with him and talking with him and thinking with him," Michael said and he meant it a lot more than he had expected to.
"There are... implications," Tim explained hesitantly.
"You think that because R'as named you he has some hold over you or something?" Michael asked.
"Not exactly. It's just, as long as I use the name he gave me, it's like there's a part of him in my life. I don't like that. I took him down because I wanted him out of my life," Tim sounded somewhat forlorn. "It's the sort of thing that sticks with you, you know?"
Michael nodded, unsure what to say. He understood Tim's point of view. A name was an important thing. It meant something to the person it belonged to and the people who used it. It helped shape who a person became.
"Even when I was Robin it was always in the back of my mind," Tim went on, breaking though Michael's thoughts. "I wasn't the first. These weren't really my colors and this wasn't really my name. I was just borrowing it for a while. I feel the same way now. It's not my name, it's the name R'as Al Ghul gave me. I'm hate it."
"I think maybe, as time goes on, the name won't be so much what R'as Al Ghul calls you. It'll be what everyone calls you. The negative connotation will be inundated by the common usage and eventually just wear off. It'll just be your name," Michael assured him.
Tim glanced over at Michael and gave him a speculative look. "You think so?"
"Yes, I think so," Michael confirmed.
"I tell people not to use it. That name, I mean," Tim told him confidentially.
"The plan won't work if you keep doing it," Michael pointed out.
"No, it won't," Tim replied contemplatively. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I do need to embrace what I've made of myself."
"You didn't do such a bad job," Michael pointed out blithely and Tim smiled at him.
"Why Mr. Holt, you'll make me blush," Tim teased in formal tones and Michael grinned at him. "Are you going to tell me I have pretty eyes, next?"
He did have pretty eyes. Michael couldn't deny that. He liked Tim's eyes. He liked a lot of things about Tim. He liked it when Tim teased him and he liked it when Tim was serious. He liked it when he and Tim worked through problems together and he liked it when Tim confided in him.
Michael very much wanted to tell Tim he had pretty eyes. Then he wanted to lean over the console between them and--
Just then, Tim's communicator beeped and Michael's T-sphere's alerted him to the fact that one of their alarms had been tripped. Tim fumbled for his communicator and flicked it open.
"I was right. It's V-tech," Tim said, clearly relieved. "I'm so glad they didn't wait another few days,"
"So am I. I really didn't want to watch you make someone eat their foot," Michael teased and Tim laughed as he hopped out of the car and ran towards his bike. He straddled it and gave Michael a wave before gunning the engine and heading for the main exit of the Industrial Park.
Chapter Nine