Fic: Names and Truths in Photographs; Tim Drake/Michael Holt; NC-17; Part 11/12
Title: Names and Truths in Photographs
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Part: 11/12
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 Eleven
Tim eyed Phil Kenmore, money launderer extraordinaire, with a nervousness he didn't even have to feign. The man was clearly upset and very on edge. He had pulled his gun out of his jacket the minute they had stepped through his door. He had it in his hand as he checked his alarm system.
"It says there was a power outage," Kenmore said skeptically and flipped the lid on the control panel of his alarm system shut.
"So you accuse me of setting you up, threaten me with a gun, drag me all the way here and it turns out that it was just a power outage?" Tim replied caustically, hoping his annoyance came across as genuine.
Kenmore just glared at him. "Stay here," he ordered.
Kenmore walked the rooms of the house, splitting his attention between the room and Tim. He still had his gun in hand and he kept it aimed in Tim's general direction the entire time.
Tim very much disliked having guns aimed at him. Especially by nervous people. He could only hope to god that Kenmore didn't have a cat that would jump out and startle him.
That would be an exceptionally ignominious death.
Plus, he would look bad in front of Mr. Terrific. That was unacceptable.
"Upstairs!" Kenmore barked at him and gestured towards the staircase with his gun in hand.
Tim pursed his lips and considered not moving but the panicked look in Kenmore's eyes made him reconsider. Calculating people can be tested and their limits established. Unfortunately, it was impossible to do the same with panicked people. Panicked people were unpredictable people and unpredictable people were dangerous.
It was probably best to humor Kenmore for the moment.
Tim made his way over to the stair case and walked up it, Kenmore two steps behind him with his gun pointed at Tim's back. They walked into a study and when Kenmore looked it over he nodded to himself and gestured to Tim to walk out the door. They moved down the hallway then and into a bedroom. Kenmore pushed past him and walked in.
The room was sparse and there was almost no furniture. The bed was just a unmade mattress on the floor. The sheets looked like they hadn't been washed in weeks and Tim fought back a grimace of disgust.
He was distracted by those dirty sheets for a critical few seconds, so he missed everything but the blur of Kenmore's swiftly twisting body. Tim didn't have time to figure out how to react before the gun took him on the side of the head and he went down.
Tim hit the floor hard but he didn't even feel the impact. The numb, icy sensation that always followed a bad shot to the head washed over him. For a few precious moments Tim could neither hear nor see. The blankness dissipated in a matter of seconds but it took longer for his vision to come back into focus.
His hearing took even longer. After the quiet bled into a low buzzing Tim could hear Kenmore screaming at him. He couldn't quite make out the words but the look in the man's eyes and the way he was waving around the gun, one side of it wet with some of Tim's blood, made Tim think it was way past time to retreat.
Whether or not Michael had gotten the paper was moot. The situation was too dangerous for Tim to linger.
When Kenmore stepped in close, Tim kicked out and hooked him around the leg. Tim took out Kenmore's knee and Kenmore fell to the floor with a loud thump that Tim couldn't hear but he could feel. The gun clattered as it fell with Kenmore and Tim immediately reached out and knocked it further away. Tim kicked out with his other leg and landed a blow on Kenmore's face.
Tim came up on one knee, twining their legs together. He used his leg to bend Kenmore's knee to a ninety degree angle. Then he twisted his hips and snapped his leg at the knee.
Kenmore screamed loud and long. It made the buzzing in Tim's ears seem even louder and he winced.
Tim took to his feet, staggered for a minute while he regained his balance. Then he took off out of the room and down the stairs. He burst out of the house and before he could even work up the breath to call for Michael, he was scooped up from out of nowhere.
Michael took off towards his car and they both piled in.
Tim was panting, more from nerves and adrenaline than from exertion and a cold sweat had broken out across his skin. He shivered as it dried and winced as the movement made his head ache sharply.
"Tell me you have the documents because, even if my cover hadn't been completely blown, I just broke that dude's leg to hell. There is no way he is ever doing business with me again," Tim said and his voice didn't sound even remotely even.
"I got the documents," Michael assured him and looked at Tim with concern. "Are you bleeding."
"He pistol whipped me, the jerk," Tim complained, suddenly feeling very furious with Kenmore.
"You let him get the jump on you?" Michael asked reproachfully.
Tim glared at him. "I could ask you the same question. Why did you turn off the system? Why didn't you just use the T-spheres to slip past?"
"It would have taken longer and you seemed to think I should hurry," Michael shot back and Tim grimaced.
"Just drive," he said plaintively and closed his eyes.
The drive back to Michael's hotel room seem to take no time at all. Tim cleaned the blood from his head and hair the best he could so he wouldn't look conspicuous walking through the lobby. They made it upstairs without incident and Tim could only be grateful.
"Do you mind if I take a quick shower?" Tim asked as they walked through the door to Michael's room. "I just want to clean the wound quick."
"I can handle a little decoding by myself for a bit," Michael assured him and Tim smiled a thanks.
Tim wanted to linger in the shower. He was exhausted and freezing cold. The sudden adrenaline dump in his system had dissipated and left him feeling drained and chilled to his very core. He knew it wasn't fair to leave Michael with all the decoding work so he hurried though the shower, taking his time only while cleaning the small gash in his head.
He used one of Michael's complimentary toothbrushes and checked to make sure his pupils were the same size.
His clothes had some blood on them and smelled strongly of smoke from Kenmore's nicotine habit. Tim did not want to wear them. Ever again preferably.
Tim peeked his head out of the bathroom only to find Michael talking animatedly on the telephone. Tim shrugged and slipped into Michael's bedroom. Michael hadn't seemed leery about sharing clothes the night before. Tim located his suitcase and raided it for clean clothes.
He slipped into a pair of Michael's boxers and the sweat shirt from the night before. They smelled clean, fresh and a little like Michael. Tim smiled and walked back out of the room and into the living area where Michael was pacing around, still on the telephone.
Tim settled himself on the couch and watched Michael as he moved. He sighed lightly and leaned back on the comfortable couch cushions. He could tell from the brief snatches of conversation that Michael had made a break in the case and was working to confirm a theory.
There were no computer print outs or written document scattered around the table in front of the sofa and Tim assumed that Michael had just gone through the information in his T-spheres. He wished that there was something laying on the table that could give him some indication of that Michael had found but the table was completely bare. Michael's end of the telephone conversation was cryptic at best and Tim could garner no information from it at all.
Tim would probably be a bit more annoyed about being left in the dark if he hadn't just taken a blow to the head. Either that or if he hadn't been so damn tired. Or both, really.
Tim caught Michael's eye as he made a pass across the living area again. Michael pursed his lips and gave Tim a serious look that did nothing to enlighten him.
Michael seemed awfully upset about whatever it was he was discussing over the other end of the line. This probably should worry Tim but he couldn't seem to work up the energy.
Michael finally hung up the phone. He walked over to Tim and sat down on the couch next to him. He looked grim.
"Crack the case Watson?" Tim asked lightly.
"Yeah, I think so," Michael answered but he didn't sound happy.
"Would you like to share your revelation?" Tim replied leadingly.
"It was an inside job," Michael said dully.
"Inside job?" Tim asked. "I don't follow."
"One of the men who was bidding on the contract was trying to take out the rest of the competition. The contract had to do with the security systems in the White House. When the security of the companies that were supposed to revamp the systems were compromised, they were immediately rejected," Michael explained.
"How do you know they were rejected?" Tim asked curiously.
"I'm friends with two of the people on the list. Most of them know each other, they all work in the same field. They're not supposed to talk, but they do. I heard from Steinmen, he was the second target, said that all the people he knows who got hit lost their bids," Michael told him and Tim nodded.
"I'd guessed as much," Tim said grimly. "So how did you track our guy down?"
Michael's lips pursed again and he looked away from Tim. His face was a bit on the impassive side, but Tim could see the small indications of tension. His eyes were unfocused and the muscles around his eyes were tight.
"I recognized a name," Michael said shortly.
"You recognized a name?" Tim asked and Michael sighed.
"A friend of mine, Augustus Calet. I found Vanessa, his wife's, name on the list when I decoded it. I checked up on it. There's a shell account in her name. Your launderer made transactions out of that account shortly after our seven hits," Michael explained.
Tim whistled softly.
"Do you think it was him or the wife?" Tim asked.
"It was him," Michael said grimly. "She's not into the business end of things. He put it in her maiden name. Then he used it to make a few others and create different accounts."
"How well do you know this guy?"
Michael laughed bitterly. "Not nearly as well as I thought I did. I knew that he was a serious business man but I didn't expect--" Michael trailed off in disgust.
"This..." Tim finished for him knowingly and Michael nodded.
They sat in silence for a few long moments before Michael shook himself.
"There's no point in holding off on calling Waller. I'll have to tell her anyway and delaying the inevitable will get me no where," Michael said with resignation.
Tim nodded and when Michael hesitated, phone in hand, Tim gestured towards Michael's bedroom.
"I'm going to take a quick power nap while you call," Tim said and Michael nodded with relief.
"Feel free," he said and, as Tim made his way to the bedroom, Michael was already dialing the phone.
He pulled his own communicator from his dirty clothes and punched in Beryl's number. Beryl picked up the phone before the first ring finished.
"Of all the nerve. You never call. You never write. What's a girl to think?" she teased with faux indignation and Tim felt himself smile tiredly.
He climbed into Michael's bed and crawled under the covers. They were warm and smelled clean. Tim's limbs were still aching from the fight and the bed felt soft and perfect as he lay down. He propped himself back against Michael's pillows and relaxed for the first time in weeks.
He felt bad that Michael's friend was apparently a backstabbing jerk but he was also relieved to have the case solved. Corrupt cooperate types were a dime a dozen. Tim had found, over the years, the saying 'there's no honor among theives' to be inaccurate. Some theives had a great deal of honor. Some of them stole to feed families or par for medicine for their sick kids. CEOs, however, never stole money from people to pay for a dying child's cancer treatment.
A more accurate aphorism would be 'there's no honor among Cooperate America."
"I've got this boss," he said to Beryl plaintively, trying to put Michael's obvious upset out of his mind. "She works me to the bone."
"Oh? And have you got any news for that boss of yours?" Beryl asked him leadingly.
"We solved it," Tim told her shortly and then went on to explain how Endders firm tied into the whole thing.
"Do you think you'll be able to recover Alan's equipment?" Beryl asked after he had finished.
"With a little leg work, yeah. The US Government's mixed up in it though, so who knows how long it'll take before he can get his stuff back," Tim said with a yawn.
"How upset do you think Mr. Terrific is about this?" Beryl asked him seriously.
"He seemed more disappointed than anything," Tim informed her. "I don't think they were best friends but I think he's beating himself up for not seeing it."
"Clearly, you need to comfort him," Beryl told Tim and he could hear the suggestive smile in her voice.
"Clearly," Tim agreed with a smile of his own.
"Where are the two of you now, anyway?" Beryl asked him suddenly.
"San Diego, in Mr. Terrific's hotel room," Tim intoned suggestively and Beryl broke out into excited laughter.
"You're kidding," she said delightedly.
"I am not. In fact, I'm in his bed," Tim went on, grinning at Beryl's reaction.
"Are you naked?" she asked confidentially.
"Not entirely, no. In fact, I'm wearing his underwear," Tim informed her slyly and Beryl started laughing again.
"Oh, this is too good. You have to tell me how he is in the sack. You think he lives up to his name?" she asked him giddily.
Tim sat up from where he was reclining on Michael's soft hotel pillows. "You think I should sleep with him?" he asked.
"Um, let's think about this for a minute. The man's hot. He's smart. He worked a case with you without either getting you killed or actively killing you himself. Oh and his name is Mr. Terrific. You have to do it. If only for the bragging rights," Beryl informed him.
"He's fifteen years older than me. Plus, I think he sleeps with supermodels. What if he doesn't really go for me? What if it really is just flirting?" Tim asked, suddenly feeling very self conscious at the prospect of actually making a move on Michael, not just flirting.
"Tim, darling, you're been flirting with each other for days. You're currently in his bed. And, if your account of the situation isn't massively exaggerated, you're wearing his underpants. All systems are go," Beryl assured him.
Tim grinned.
"You think so?" he asked again.
"Absolutely," Beryl confirmed. "If you don't have sex with this man I will disown you."
Tim laughed. "Noted."
Beryl disconnected the phone after a few more minutes of ribald teasing and Tim quieted his communicator and fell asleep in the comfortable bed with a smile on his face.
Chapter Tweleve
Author: Aravis Tarkheena
Part: 11/12
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 Eleven
Tim eyed Phil Kenmore, money launderer extraordinaire, with a nervousness he didn't even have to feign. The man was clearly upset and very on edge. He had pulled his gun out of his jacket the minute they had stepped through his door. He had it in his hand as he checked his alarm system.
"It says there was a power outage," Kenmore said skeptically and flipped the lid on the control panel of his alarm system shut.
"So you accuse me of setting you up, threaten me with a gun, drag me all the way here and it turns out that it was just a power outage?" Tim replied caustically, hoping his annoyance came across as genuine.
Kenmore just glared at him. "Stay here," he ordered.
Kenmore walked the rooms of the house, splitting his attention between the room and Tim. He still had his gun in hand and he kept it aimed in Tim's general direction the entire time.
Tim very much disliked having guns aimed at him. Especially by nervous people. He could only hope to god that Kenmore didn't have a cat that would jump out and startle him.
That would be an exceptionally ignominious death.
Plus, he would look bad in front of Mr. Terrific. That was unacceptable.
"Upstairs!" Kenmore barked at him and gestured towards the staircase with his gun in hand.
Tim pursed his lips and considered not moving but the panicked look in Kenmore's eyes made him reconsider. Calculating people can be tested and their limits established. Unfortunately, it was impossible to do the same with panicked people. Panicked people were unpredictable people and unpredictable people were dangerous.
It was probably best to humor Kenmore for the moment.
Tim made his way over to the stair case and walked up it, Kenmore two steps behind him with his gun pointed at Tim's back. They walked into a study and when Kenmore looked it over he nodded to himself and gestured to Tim to walk out the door. They moved down the hallway then and into a bedroom. Kenmore pushed past him and walked in.
The room was sparse and there was almost no furniture. The bed was just a unmade mattress on the floor. The sheets looked like they hadn't been washed in weeks and Tim fought back a grimace of disgust.
He was distracted by those dirty sheets for a critical few seconds, so he missed everything but the blur of Kenmore's swiftly twisting body. Tim didn't have time to figure out how to react before the gun took him on the side of the head and he went down.
Tim hit the floor hard but he didn't even feel the impact. The numb, icy sensation that always followed a bad shot to the head washed over him. For a few precious moments Tim could neither hear nor see. The blankness dissipated in a matter of seconds but it took longer for his vision to come back into focus.
His hearing took even longer. After the quiet bled into a low buzzing Tim could hear Kenmore screaming at him. He couldn't quite make out the words but the look in the man's eyes and the way he was waving around the gun, one side of it wet with some of Tim's blood, made Tim think it was way past time to retreat.
Whether or not Michael had gotten the paper was moot. The situation was too dangerous for Tim to linger.
When Kenmore stepped in close, Tim kicked out and hooked him around the leg. Tim took out Kenmore's knee and Kenmore fell to the floor with a loud thump that Tim couldn't hear but he could feel. The gun clattered as it fell with Kenmore and Tim immediately reached out and knocked it further away. Tim kicked out with his other leg and landed a blow on Kenmore's face.
Tim came up on one knee, twining their legs together. He used his leg to bend Kenmore's knee to a ninety degree angle. Then he twisted his hips and snapped his leg at the knee.
Kenmore screamed loud and long. It made the buzzing in Tim's ears seem even louder and he winced.
Tim took to his feet, staggered for a minute while he regained his balance. Then he took off out of the room and down the stairs. He burst out of the house and before he could even work up the breath to call for Michael, he was scooped up from out of nowhere.
Michael took off towards his car and they both piled in.
Tim was panting, more from nerves and adrenaline than from exertion and a cold sweat had broken out across his skin. He shivered as it dried and winced as the movement made his head ache sharply.
"Tell me you have the documents because, even if my cover hadn't been completely blown, I just broke that dude's leg to hell. There is no way he is ever doing business with me again," Tim said and his voice didn't sound even remotely even.
"I got the documents," Michael assured him and looked at Tim with concern. "Are you bleeding."
"He pistol whipped me, the jerk," Tim complained, suddenly feeling very furious with Kenmore.
"You let him get the jump on you?" Michael asked reproachfully.
Tim glared at him. "I could ask you the same question. Why did you turn off the system? Why didn't you just use the T-spheres to slip past?"
"It would have taken longer and you seemed to think I should hurry," Michael shot back and Tim grimaced.
"Just drive," he said plaintively and closed his eyes.
The drive back to Michael's hotel room seem to take no time at all. Tim cleaned the blood from his head and hair the best he could so he wouldn't look conspicuous walking through the lobby. They made it upstairs without incident and Tim could only be grateful.
"Do you mind if I take a quick shower?" Tim asked as they walked through the door to Michael's room. "I just want to clean the wound quick."
"I can handle a little decoding by myself for a bit," Michael assured him and Tim smiled a thanks.
Tim wanted to linger in the shower. He was exhausted and freezing cold. The sudden adrenaline dump in his system had dissipated and left him feeling drained and chilled to his very core. He knew it wasn't fair to leave Michael with all the decoding work so he hurried though the shower, taking his time only while cleaning the small gash in his head.
He used one of Michael's complimentary toothbrushes and checked to make sure his pupils were the same size.
His clothes had some blood on them and smelled strongly of smoke from Kenmore's nicotine habit. Tim did not want to wear them. Ever again preferably.
Tim peeked his head out of the bathroom only to find Michael talking animatedly on the telephone. Tim shrugged and slipped into Michael's bedroom. Michael hadn't seemed leery about sharing clothes the night before. Tim located his suitcase and raided it for clean clothes.
He slipped into a pair of Michael's boxers and the sweat shirt from the night before. They smelled clean, fresh and a little like Michael. Tim smiled and walked back out of the room and into the living area where Michael was pacing around, still on the telephone.
Tim settled himself on the couch and watched Michael as he moved. He sighed lightly and leaned back on the comfortable couch cushions. He could tell from the brief snatches of conversation that Michael had made a break in the case and was working to confirm a theory.
There were no computer print outs or written document scattered around the table in front of the sofa and Tim assumed that Michael had just gone through the information in his T-spheres. He wished that there was something laying on the table that could give him some indication of that Michael had found but the table was completely bare. Michael's end of the telephone conversation was cryptic at best and Tim could garner no information from it at all.
Tim would probably be a bit more annoyed about being left in the dark if he hadn't just taken a blow to the head. Either that or if he hadn't been so damn tired. Or both, really.
Tim caught Michael's eye as he made a pass across the living area again. Michael pursed his lips and gave Tim a serious look that did nothing to enlighten him.
Michael seemed awfully upset about whatever it was he was discussing over the other end of the line. This probably should worry Tim but he couldn't seem to work up the energy.
Michael finally hung up the phone. He walked over to Tim and sat down on the couch next to him. He looked grim.
"Crack the case Watson?" Tim asked lightly.
"Yeah, I think so," Michael answered but he didn't sound happy.
"Would you like to share your revelation?" Tim replied leadingly.
"It was an inside job," Michael said dully.
"Inside job?" Tim asked. "I don't follow."
"One of the men who was bidding on the contract was trying to take out the rest of the competition. The contract had to do with the security systems in the White House. When the security of the companies that were supposed to revamp the systems were compromised, they were immediately rejected," Michael explained.
"How do you know they were rejected?" Tim asked curiously.
"I'm friends with two of the people on the list. Most of them know each other, they all work in the same field. They're not supposed to talk, but they do. I heard from Steinmen, he was the second target, said that all the people he knows who got hit lost their bids," Michael told him and Tim nodded.
"I'd guessed as much," Tim said grimly. "So how did you track our guy down?"
Michael's lips pursed again and he looked away from Tim. His face was a bit on the impassive side, but Tim could see the small indications of tension. His eyes were unfocused and the muscles around his eyes were tight.
"I recognized a name," Michael said shortly.
"You recognized a name?" Tim asked and Michael sighed.
"A friend of mine, Augustus Calet. I found Vanessa, his wife's, name on the list when I decoded it. I checked up on it. There's a shell account in her name. Your launderer made transactions out of that account shortly after our seven hits," Michael explained.
Tim whistled softly.
"Do you think it was him or the wife?" Tim asked.
"It was him," Michael said grimly. "She's not into the business end of things. He put it in her maiden name. Then he used it to make a few others and create different accounts."
"How well do you know this guy?"
Michael laughed bitterly. "Not nearly as well as I thought I did. I knew that he was a serious business man but I didn't expect--" Michael trailed off in disgust.
"This..." Tim finished for him knowingly and Michael nodded.
They sat in silence for a few long moments before Michael shook himself.
"There's no point in holding off on calling Waller. I'll have to tell her anyway and delaying the inevitable will get me no where," Michael said with resignation.
Tim nodded and when Michael hesitated, phone in hand, Tim gestured towards Michael's bedroom.
"I'm going to take a quick power nap while you call," Tim said and Michael nodded with relief.
"Feel free," he said and, as Tim made his way to the bedroom, Michael was already dialing the phone.
He pulled his own communicator from his dirty clothes and punched in Beryl's number. Beryl picked up the phone before the first ring finished.
"Of all the nerve. You never call. You never write. What's a girl to think?" she teased with faux indignation and Tim felt himself smile tiredly.
He climbed into Michael's bed and crawled under the covers. They were warm and smelled clean. Tim's limbs were still aching from the fight and the bed felt soft and perfect as he lay down. He propped himself back against Michael's pillows and relaxed for the first time in weeks.
He felt bad that Michael's friend was apparently a backstabbing jerk but he was also relieved to have the case solved. Corrupt cooperate types were a dime a dozen. Tim had found, over the years, the saying 'there's no honor among theives' to be inaccurate. Some theives had a great deal of honor. Some of them stole to feed families or par for medicine for their sick kids. CEOs, however, never stole money from people to pay for a dying child's cancer treatment.
A more accurate aphorism would be 'there's no honor among Cooperate America."
"I've got this boss," he said to Beryl plaintively, trying to put Michael's obvious upset out of his mind. "She works me to the bone."
"Oh? And have you got any news for that boss of yours?" Beryl asked him leadingly.
"We solved it," Tim told her shortly and then went on to explain how Endders firm tied into the whole thing.
"Do you think you'll be able to recover Alan's equipment?" Beryl asked after he had finished.
"With a little leg work, yeah. The US Government's mixed up in it though, so who knows how long it'll take before he can get his stuff back," Tim said with a yawn.
"How upset do you think Mr. Terrific is about this?" Beryl asked him seriously.
"He seemed more disappointed than anything," Tim informed her. "I don't think they were best friends but I think he's beating himself up for not seeing it."
"Clearly, you need to comfort him," Beryl told Tim and he could hear the suggestive smile in her voice.
"Clearly," Tim agreed with a smile of his own.
"Where are the two of you now, anyway?" Beryl asked him suddenly.
"San Diego, in Mr. Terrific's hotel room," Tim intoned suggestively and Beryl broke out into excited laughter.
"You're kidding," she said delightedly.
"I am not. In fact, I'm in his bed," Tim went on, grinning at Beryl's reaction.
"Are you naked?" she asked confidentially.
"Not entirely, no. In fact, I'm wearing his underwear," Tim informed her slyly and Beryl started laughing again.
"Oh, this is too good. You have to tell me how he is in the sack. You think he lives up to his name?" she asked him giddily.
Tim sat up from where he was reclining on Michael's soft hotel pillows. "You think I should sleep with him?" he asked.
"Um, let's think about this for a minute. The man's hot. He's smart. He worked a case with you without either getting you killed or actively killing you himself. Oh and his name is Mr. Terrific. You have to do it. If only for the bragging rights," Beryl informed him.
"He's fifteen years older than me. Plus, I think he sleeps with supermodels. What if he doesn't really go for me? What if it really is just flirting?" Tim asked, suddenly feeling very self conscious at the prospect of actually making a move on Michael, not just flirting.
"Tim, darling, you're been flirting with each other for days. You're currently in his bed. And, if your account of the situation isn't massively exaggerated, you're wearing his underpants. All systems are go," Beryl assured him.
Tim grinned.
"You think so?" he asked again.
"Absolutely," Beryl confirmed. "If you don't have sex with this man I will disown you."
Tim laughed. "Noted."
Beryl disconnected the phone after a few more minutes of ribald teasing and Tim quieted his communicator and fell asleep in the comfortable bed with a smile on his face.
Chapter Tweleve