(no subject)
Okay, so, last week was WIP Amnesty week. And this isn't really WIP so much as it is a small part of a larger idea/story that I will probably not finish. 
r_becca has looked at it and made encouraging noises, and I've been poking at it for over a year, but I am still the slowest writer to ever write and I still end up with ideas that are bigger than my ability and/or desire to write them, so I am just going to post this as-is and let it go. Fly, young story! Be free!
What it is:
A gen DCU/SGA crossover starring Tim Drake!
Title: Better Things
Rating: G
Pairing: None!
Warnings: None.
Summary: Tim is taking the long way home.
Author's Note: AU from sometime around/after Battle for the Cowl, give or take; I'm basically using the "Choose-your-own-canon!" method of dealing with the DCU, which means that I'm making most of this up and it's probably all wrong. I'm also pretending Season Five of SGA mostly didn't happen because I haven't watched it yet. Y'all know the deal: DC stuff belongs to DC, SGA stuff belongs to MGM, no profit, etc. etc.
Better Things
Here's wishing you the bluest skies
And hoping something better comes tomorrow.
~ The Kinks
Two weeks after Dick moves back to Gotham, Tim runs away from home.
~*~
He tells the Veteran, "I don't want to join your team," and "I don't want to have to kill anyone," and "I want to be as far away from here as possible."
The Veteran looks him over and doesn't ask any questions, and one month, one nondisclosure agreement, and one eye-opening conversation with an Air Force Colonel later Tim finds himself with an LT commission in the Army and a berth on a spaceship heading to another galaxy.
~*~
Atlantis is kind of mind-blowing. Tim's got no problem with aliens or life on other planets or any of that, obviously, but he's pretty surprised that the military managed to keep this whole operation secret from the likes of Green Lantern or Superman. Or maybe they haven't managed, since it's not like Tim's ever had any success getting into the Watchtower's computers, and there are probably things that they don't tell Batman's teenage sidekick. He's also never heard of the Ancients, but archaeology had always been pretty low on his list of topics to research so maybe that's not a surprise either.
His first day in the city is full of meetings and tours and lectures with the rest of the new arrivals that mostly boil down to, "Don't touch anything.". He meets his CO, Colonel Sheppard, and his XO, Major Lorne, and a whirl of other people whose names go in one ear and out the other - Tim figures he'll have lots of time to learn who everyone is. The group he arrived with gets split off into smaller units and a no-nonsense woman with cocoa skin and cropped hair shows him the mess hall and the armoury, how to work the transporters, how to not get lost, where he'll be working. He's assigned quarters, a small room with huge windows and an endless view of ocean.
The Veteran came through, and Tim is Combat Service Support instead of on the front line. In theory his job is to monitor operations in the Gate room and liaise with the scientific staff there. What this means in practice is that he and Chuck, the 'gate tech, play online poker and head-to-head Free Cell and the home-coded version of Asteroid! that someone in IT uploaded to the network, in between monitoring the 'gate for off-world teams, going over security footage, and looking busy for Woolsey. He's also in charge of a lot of pointless bureaucracy of the sort Woolsey finds most soothing, and of making tea.
There are surprisingly few day-to-day crises, and Tim hasn't had to fight anything since he left Gotham. It's like being on vacation. It's kind of awesome.
He and Chuck get along surprisingly well, for two people with such vastly different backgrounds. Chuck grew up in a tiny town in Saskatchewan; both his parents are still alive, and he's got three older brothers. He joined the Canadian Forces at eighteen because he couldn't afford to go to college, and ended up on Atlantis by being a combination of very smart and pretty damn lucky. He's kind of a freak, but in a way Tim can appreciate, and he never pushes Tim to talk about himself. Tim appreciates that, too.
Spending his days in the Gate room means that Tim has a floor seat for almost every interesting thing that happens on Atlantis. Chuck is gossip central, the Oracle of Atlantis, and sitting with him day in and day out means that Tim's got an inside line on exactly what's happening anywhere on Atlantis at any given time.
In some ways Atlantis takes a lot of getting used to. Tim is used to being part of a team, but he's never been part of a team this big, and he's used to living in a city with its own identity, but Gotham isn't this small. There are over 200 people on Atlantis, all of whom share the same goals, the same mission. There's a lot of sharing, from meal times to work times, to the list of clubs and meetings posted outside the mess. It's sort of like being at summer camp, or what Tim imagines summer camp is like, if there had ever existed a summer camp made up of adults with IQs over 130 being overseen by US Marines. Even information is a lot more freely available than Tim is used to. He'd started creating a private list of ATA gene users when he'd arrived, until he found a spreadsheet in one of the Atlantis network shared drives listing names and titles, whether their gene was natural or artificial, and sorted based on strength of expression. Once he starts really poking around, he finds shared files for absolutely everything, up to and including a folder entitled "Dr. M. R. McKay's Brilliant Nobel-Winning Theories - Hands Off You Back-Stabbing Cretins". (Hilariously, most of the files in there are owned by Dr. Zelenka.)
~*~
Tim and Ronon become friends almost by accident. Tim had noticed him right away, of course, since Ronon is pretty hard to miss, with the height and the hair and the way he's easily the most powerful guy in Atlantis, the one who'd be hardest to take in a fight. Ronon's not a meta or anything - no one on Atlantis is, near as Tim can tell - he's just really, impressively big. Tim's taken up running to keep himself in shape, and one evening Ronon just falls in step with him on his circuit. He peels away after Tim's done, with a hand-wave and a grunt, leaving Tim nonplussed in his wake. The next day, Ronon's waiting for him, greets Tim with a rough, "Hey," and falls into step beside him.
After that, it becomes a regular thing. Ronon also runs with Sheppard first thing in the morning, but there's fitness and then there's masochism, and going jogging with your military commander and Ronon Dex at o-dark-thirty every day strikes Tim as the latter. Besides, it's nice to run after supper, when the outreaches are quiet and the sun is setting. Ronon isn't a big talker, but Tim doesn't mind, and they'll often go an entire hour without saying a word, the only sound the rush of the wind and their footfalls echoing off the walls of Atlantis. It reminds him of training with Dick - the companionship, the stretch of his limits that comes with working with someone with different experience - except that Ronon is nothing at all like Dick. (For one thing, Tim doesn't think Dick could shut up for longer than 10 minutes, never mind an hour.)
Today is no different: they come out onto the balcony that loops around the tallest tower on the southwest pier, the setting sun warm and copper at their backs, a salt-tinged breeze blowing, just enough to cool the sweat on Tim's back, not enough to make him uncomfortable. Tim's already realized that Ronon plans their evening runs so that they're never at a disadvantage should it come to a fight - no sun in their eyes, no dangerous cross-winds at the upper levels, no wet metal on the lower. Days it rains, they run inside. The Bat part of him approves of this. The part that's struggling to leave the Bat behind finds the approval sort of disturbing.
Ronon slows down and comes to a stop at the pier's rail, bracing his hands and leaning into a full body stretch. Tim follows suit, then slides down to sit on the cool metal, catching his breath a bit, swigging water from his bottle. He offers it to Ronon, who takes it and drinks.
"Thanks," he says, handing it back. Tim nods, and for a moment they just sit and breathe.
"You should train hand-to-hand with me," Ronon says after a while. "Need to know how to fight out here. I could teach you."
"Only thing I fight is paper, man," Tim says. He tilts his head back, admiring the sunset. It's pink and gold and tinged with a weird greenish-yellow that the science team has dubbed "octarine".
Ronon shrugs at this, and looks at him seriously. "You never know when it'll come in handy. I never thought I'd need to know how to kill Wraith before they attacked Sateda. Better to be prepared. I can teach you how."
Tim is silent for a long moment. "Thanks for the offer," he says finally. "But I know how to fight already. I just...don't."
Ronon laughs softly. "All you Earthers say that." He stands up and shakes his dreads back off his shoulders, towering over Tim. "I know your training. I've been beating the crap out of Marines since I got here. What you know about fighting wouldn't help against a Wraith."
The sad thing is, that's probably true of the rest of Atlantis's military, when they arrive. Tim is pretty sure it isn't true of himself. But he shrugs, deflecting. "I'll think about it."
Ronon snorts and turns away. "Yeah. Do that."
~*~
Tim debates with himself all evening and most of the next day. This isn't Gotham. He's not Robin. He has nothing to prove to Ronon or anyone else, and no reason to fight anyone. Atlantis has plenty of Marines, the only physical requirements for his job are the ability to lift boxes and fill out paperwork, and Tim is perfectly happy about it. He's the only guy in two galaxies who joined the army so he could have a desk job, and he likes that. He doesn't have anything to prove. Not to Ronon, not to the Marines, not to himself.
He shows up at the sparring room the following morning anyway.
There are several groups in today; Marines doing martial arts, Teyla Emmagen and another Athosian going at it with what look like long escrima sticks, a handful of female scientists doing Aikido.
Ronon grins his most feral grin once he spots Tim hovering at the edge of the mats where he's holding court. There's a crowd of Marines gathered around; watching Ronon beat the crap out of people is what passes for fun amongst the military contingent. (Tim also knows that the room is wired for security, and that there is a hopping black market for recordings of Ronon kicking ass among both scientists and soldiers. Tim's even seen a montage of Ronon beating people up set to music. One of the downsides of Tim's job is that he knows way too much about the downloading habits of about three quarters of the base.) (Which is not to say he didn't watch it. Twice.)
Suarez is the first of the Marines to notice him, and shoves his way over to Tim's side. "Hey Butterbar, whatcha doin'?"
Tim shrugs uncomfortably. "Ronon invited me to come."
Suarez is one of the Marines who came over with Tim on the Daedalus, and is the sort of good-natured that comes of being twice as big as everyone he's ever met. He towers over Tim - hell, he towers over Ronon - and he treats Tim like a kid brother. Or at least, that's what Tim assumes he thinks he's doing; it feels a lot like cheerful bullying from his end. Now Suarez places a huge hand on Tim's shoulder with bruising force. "He gonna put you through your paces?"
"I guess so."
Before Suarez can make another crack, Ronon takes down the guy he'd been fighting. Leaving the poor bastard on the mat, he crosses over and smirks down at Tim. "You came," he says.
"Yeah," Tim says uncomfortably, aware of all the eyes on him. God, he really doesn't want to do this in front of the Marines. Ronon can tell, but he's not about to make it any easier, and Tim knows it. He sighs and rolls his shoulders. "When you're ready, I guess."
They step onto the mat to murmurs and laughter from the gathered crowd, a low hum of bets being placed - because these guys will bet on anything - and speculation. Tim is fully aware that everyone in the room is looking forward to watching him get his ass kicked.
Ronon was a trained soldier even before he spent seven years being hunted by the Wraith. He's a lot taller than Tim, and he hasn't been jockeying a desk for six months. But Tim was trained by Batman, and spent seven years fighting crooks and mobsters and metas on the streets of Gotham. He figures they're about evenly matched.
The first few seconds are just posturing, testing out a feint here, a jab there, circling. Ronon's got a faint smirk on his face, a look that says, I'm going to make paste out of you. Tim meets it as blankly as he can; he can almost feel the Robin mask pressed across the bridge of his nose.
"C'mon, Lieutenant, go down quick and earn me some cash!" Suarez shouts. "I wanna show Melanie a good time tonight!"
Tim turns his head, angling his body away from Ronon as if distracted. "I hate to ruin your love life," he says, and the flicker of movement on the edge of his vision shows the bait has been taken. Tim ducks, turns, and drives a fist into Ronon's solar plexus, and dances out of reach as Ronon drops to one knee, winded. He gives Tim an evil look from under his dreads and surges to his feet, baring his teeth. Tim doesn't look away this time, but his next remark is still aimed in Suarez's direction. "But I kinda hate to lose more."
As witty banter goes it kind of sucks, but Tim's out of practice and too busy keeping out of reach of Ronon's much longer arms to worry about it. The guy is fast, and Tim already knows he's got endurance and strength. He breathes in deep and lets it out slow, tuning out the noise of the gym as he does it, focusing. They trade a couple more blows before Ronon steps back a step, hands up and body loose, looking at Tim in a newly assessing manner.
"Not bad," he says, and charges.
Tim ducks and twists, doing a side-leg-sweep that takes Ronon's legs out from under him, dropping him heavily to the mat. Tim scrambles up and away again, trying not to wince at the pull in his thighs. He definitely should have stretched more. Then Ronon is up and coming at him again and Tim forgets to worry, forgets to think beyond the next few moments, lost in the familiar push and pull of a fight. He dodges a blow aimed at his chest, and another at his legs, darts in to try and land one on Ronon and misses, catches a punch with his hand that staggers him back and makes his palm sting. Every time Tim backs up, dodges away, Ronon looks a little more frustrated; Tim already knows from the recordings that while Ronon is fast and strong and scary-good at hand-to-hand, he also has a temper, and if pushed to a certain point he forgets about strategy and goes straight for the full-on frontal attack, trusting to his physical power to carry him through. That's what Tim is banking on; that, and that he still has the endurance to get to that point.
Five minutes later, Tim is breathing hard and not so sure he's going to make it. He notices with detachment that the other groups who were using the mats have stopped and joined the watching crowd, and the room has gone quiet as everyone begins to realize they're seeing something unusual. It's both easier and harder to focus without the background noise; he's not used to sparring for an audience. Ronon's panting for breath too, which makes Tim feel a little better, and he's glaring fiercely at Tim, jaw tight.
Tim ducks, though not quickly enough to avoid a hard blow to the ribcage. He grabs Ronon's arm and slides under it, hooks his ankle over Ronon's and yanks as hard as he can. They both go down, and Tim rolls away, lunging to his feet. Ronon stays down, face-first on the mat in a half-push up and gasping for breath. Tim hovers just out of reach, gasping himself, his whole body humming, waiting for Ronon to get up again. When he finally does, shoving himself off the mat easy and loose and laughing, he reaches out with one long arm, grabs Tim by the scruff of the neck and shakes him, leans down and presses their foreheads together the way Teyla does, panting breath hot against Tim's mouth as he laughs and laughs. The next thing Tim knows, he's being swept off his feet in a rib-cracking hug.
"Oh my god, let go of me, you huge freak," he says into Ronon's hair, but he's smiling as he says it.
Ronon lets him go finally, drops him back to the mat and ruffles Tim's hair with one huge hand. "Guess you weren't lying," he says, still laughing. "Not bad."
Tim shrugs, and grins a little harder. "Yeah, well, I'm out of practice," he says, and ducks the cuff Ronon aims at the back of his head.
~*~
The Veteran appears in Robin #143-145, trying to recruit Robin into the Army. He's a military superhero/legend with his own top-secret team of soldiers, and in the comics it's implied that he tried to recruit Nightwing when he was Robin as well. Tim turns him down.
"Butterbar" is a slang term for a Lieutenant in the US Armed forces
Octarine is the colour of Magic on the Discworld.
r_becca has looked at it and made encouraging noises, and I've been poking at it for over a year, but I am still the slowest writer to ever write and I still end up with ideas that are bigger than my ability and/or desire to write them, so I am just going to post this as-is and let it go. Fly, young story! Be free!
What it is:
A gen DCU/SGA crossover starring Tim Drake!
Title: Better Things
Rating: G
Pairing: None!
Warnings: None.
Summary: Tim is taking the long way home.
Author's Note: AU from sometime around/after Battle for the Cowl, give or take; I'm basically using the "Choose-your-own-canon!" method of dealing with the DCU, which means that I'm making most of this up and it's probably all wrong. I'm also pretending Season Five of SGA mostly didn't happen because I haven't watched it yet. Y'all know the deal: DC stuff belongs to DC, SGA stuff belongs to MGM, no profit, etc. etc.
Better Things
Here's wishing you the bluest skies
And hoping something better comes tomorrow.
~ The Kinks
Two weeks after Dick moves back to Gotham, Tim runs away from home.
~*~
He tells the Veteran, "I don't want to join your team," and "I don't want to have to kill anyone," and "I want to be as far away from here as possible."
The Veteran looks him over and doesn't ask any questions, and one month, one nondisclosure agreement, and one eye-opening conversation with an Air Force Colonel later Tim finds himself with an LT commission in the Army and a berth on a spaceship heading to another galaxy.
~*~
Atlantis is kind of mind-blowing. Tim's got no problem with aliens or life on other planets or any of that, obviously, but he's pretty surprised that the military managed to keep this whole operation secret from the likes of Green Lantern or Superman. Or maybe they haven't managed, since it's not like Tim's ever had any success getting into the Watchtower's computers, and there are probably things that they don't tell Batman's teenage sidekick. He's also never heard of the Ancients, but archaeology had always been pretty low on his list of topics to research so maybe that's not a surprise either.
His first day in the city is full of meetings and tours and lectures with the rest of the new arrivals that mostly boil down to, "Don't touch anything.". He meets his CO, Colonel Sheppard, and his XO, Major Lorne, and a whirl of other people whose names go in one ear and out the other - Tim figures he'll have lots of time to learn who everyone is. The group he arrived with gets split off into smaller units and a no-nonsense woman with cocoa skin and cropped hair shows him the mess hall and the armoury, how to work the transporters, how to not get lost, where he'll be working. He's assigned quarters, a small room with huge windows and an endless view of ocean.
The Veteran came through, and Tim is Combat Service Support instead of on the front line. In theory his job is to monitor operations in the Gate room and liaise with the scientific staff there. What this means in practice is that he and Chuck, the 'gate tech, play online poker and head-to-head Free Cell and the home-coded version of Asteroid! that someone in IT uploaded to the network, in between monitoring the 'gate for off-world teams, going over security footage, and looking busy for Woolsey. He's also in charge of a lot of pointless bureaucracy of the sort Woolsey finds most soothing, and of making tea.
There are surprisingly few day-to-day crises, and Tim hasn't had to fight anything since he left Gotham. It's like being on vacation. It's kind of awesome.
He and Chuck get along surprisingly well, for two people with such vastly different backgrounds. Chuck grew up in a tiny town in Saskatchewan; both his parents are still alive, and he's got three older brothers. He joined the Canadian Forces at eighteen because he couldn't afford to go to college, and ended up on Atlantis by being a combination of very smart and pretty damn lucky. He's kind of a freak, but in a way Tim can appreciate, and he never pushes Tim to talk about himself. Tim appreciates that, too.
Spending his days in the Gate room means that Tim has a floor seat for almost every interesting thing that happens on Atlantis. Chuck is gossip central, the Oracle of Atlantis, and sitting with him day in and day out means that Tim's got an inside line on exactly what's happening anywhere on Atlantis at any given time.
In some ways Atlantis takes a lot of getting used to. Tim is used to being part of a team, but he's never been part of a team this big, and he's used to living in a city with its own identity, but Gotham isn't this small. There are over 200 people on Atlantis, all of whom share the same goals, the same mission. There's a lot of sharing, from meal times to work times, to the list of clubs and meetings posted outside the mess. It's sort of like being at summer camp, or what Tim imagines summer camp is like, if there had ever existed a summer camp made up of adults with IQs over 130 being overseen by US Marines. Even information is a lot more freely available than Tim is used to. He'd started creating a private list of ATA gene users when he'd arrived, until he found a spreadsheet in one of the Atlantis network shared drives listing names and titles, whether their gene was natural or artificial, and sorted based on strength of expression. Once he starts really poking around, he finds shared files for absolutely everything, up to and including a folder entitled "Dr. M. R. McKay's Brilliant Nobel-Winning Theories - Hands Off You Back-Stabbing Cretins". (Hilariously, most of the files in there are owned by Dr. Zelenka.)
~*~
Tim and Ronon become friends almost by accident. Tim had noticed him right away, of course, since Ronon is pretty hard to miss, with the height and the hair and the way he's easily the most powerful guy in Atlantis, the one who'd be hardest to take in a fight. Ronon's not a meta or anything - no one on Atlantis is, near as Tim can tell - he's just really, impressively big. Tim's taken up running to keep himself in shape, and one evening Ronon just falls in step with him on his circuit. He peels away after Tim's done, with a hand-wave and a grunt, leaving Tim nonplussed in his wake. The next day, Ronon's waiting for him, greets Tim with a rough, "Hey," and falls into step beside him.
After that, it becomes a regular thing. Ronon also runs with Sheppard first thing in the morning, but there's fitness and then there's masochism, and going jogging with your military commander and Ronon Dex at o-dark-thirty every day strikes Tim as the latter. Besides, it's nice to run after supper, when the outreaches are quiet and the sun is setting. Ronon isn't a big talker, but Tim doesn't mind, and they'll often go an entire hour without saying a word, the only sound the rush of the wind and their footfalls echoing off the walls of Atlantis. It reminds him of training with Dick - the companionship, the stretch of his limits that comes with working with someone with different experience - except that Ronon is nothing at all like Dick. (For one thing, Tim doesn't think Dick could shut up for longer than 10 minutes, never mind an hour.)
Today is no different: they come out onto the balcony that loops around the tallest tower on the southwest pier, the setting sun warm and copper at their backs, a salt-tinged breeze blowing, just enough to cool the sweat on Tim's back, not enough to make him uncomfortable. Tim's already realized that Ronon plans their evening runs so that they're never at a disadvantage should it come to a fight - no sun in their eyes, no dangerous cross-winds at the upper levels, no wet metal on the lower. Days it rains, they run inside. The Bat part of him approves of this. The part that's struggling to leave the Bat behind finds the approval sort of disturbing.
Ronon slows down and comes to a stop at the pier's rail, bracing his hands and leaning into a full body stretch. Tim follows suit, then slides down to sit on the cool metal, catching his breath a bit, swigging water from his bottle. He offers it to Ronon, who takes it and drinks.
"Thanks," he says, handing it back. Tim nods, and for a moment they just sit and breathe.
"You should train hand-to-hand with me," Ronon says after a while. "Need to know how to fight out here. I could teach you."
"Only thing I fight is paper, man," Tim says. He tilts his head back, admiring the sunset. It's pink and gold and tinged with a weird greenish-yellow that the science team has dubbed "octarine".
Ronon shrugs at this, and looks at him seriously. "You never know when it'll come in handy. I never thought I'd need to know how to kill Wraith before they attacked Sateda. Better to be prepared. I can teach you how."
Tim is silent for a long moment. "Thanks for the offer," he says finally. "But I know how to fight already. I just...don't."
Ronon laughs softly. "All you Earthers say that." He stands up and shakes his dreads back off his shoulders, towering over Tim. "I know your training. I've been beating the crap out of Marines since I got here. What you know about fighting wouldn't help against a Wraith."
The sad thing is, that's probably true of the rest of Atlantis's military, when they arrive. Tim is pretty sure it isn't true of himself. But he shrugs, deflecting. "I'll think about it."
Ronon snorts and turns away. "Yeah. Do that."
~*~
Tim debates with himself all evening and most of the next day. This isn't Gotham. He's not Robin. He has nothing to prove to Ronon or anyone else, and no reason to fight anyone. Atlantis has plenty of Marines, the only physical requirements for his job are the ability to lift boxes and fill out paperwork, and Tim is perfectly happy about it. He's the only guy in two galaxies who joined the army so he could have a desk job, and he likes that. He doesn't have anything to prove. Not to Ronon, not to the Marines, not to himself.
He shows up at the sparring room the following morning anyway.
There are several groups in today; Marines doing martial arts, Teyla Emmagen and another Athosian going at it with what look like long escrima sticks, a handful of female scientists doing Aikido.
Ronon grins his most feral grin once he spots Tim hovering at the edge of the mats where he's holding court. There's a crowd of Marines gathered around; watching Ronon beat the crap out of people is what passes for fun amongst the military contingent. (Tim also knows that the room is wired for security, and that there is a hopping black market for recordings of Ronon kicking ass among both scientists and soldiers. Tim's even seen a montage of Ronon beating people up set to music. One of the downsides of Tim's job is that he knows way too much about the downloading habits of about three quarters of the base.) (Which is not to say he didn't watch it. Twice.)
Suarez is the first of the Marines to notice him, and shoves his way over to Tim's side. "Hey Butterbar, whatcha doin'?"
Tim shrugs uncomfortably. "Ronon invited me to come."
Suarez is one of the Marines who came over with Tim on the Daedalus, and is the sort of good-natured that comes of being twice as big as everyone he's ever met. He towers over Tim - hell, he towers over Ronon - and he treats Tim like a kid brother. Or at least, that's what Tim assumes he thinks he's doing; it feels a lot like cheerful bullying from his end. Now Suarez places a huge hand on Tim's shoulder with bruising force. "He gonna put you through your paces?"
"I guess so."
Before Suarez can make another crack, Ronon takes down the guy he'd been fighting. Leaving the poor bastard on the mat, he crosses over and smirks down at Tim. "You came," he says.
"Yeah," Tim says uncomfortably, aware of all the eyes on him. God, he really doesn't want to do this in front of the Marines. Ronon can tell, but he's not about to make it any easier, and Tim knows it. He sighs and rolls his shoulders. "When you're ready, I guess."
They step onto the mat to murmurs and laughter from the gathered crowd, a low hum of bets being placed - because these guys will bet on anything - and speculation. Tim is fully aware that everyone in the room is looking forward to watching him get his ass kicked.
Ronon was a trained soldier even before he spent seven years being hunted by the Wraith. He's a lot taller than Tim, and he hasn't been jockeying a desk for six months. But Tim was trained by Batman, and spent seven years fighting crooks and mobsters and metas on the streets of Gotham. He figures they're about evenly matched.
The first few seconds are just posturing, testing out a feint here, a jab there, circling. Ronon's got a faint smirk on his face, a look that says, I'm going to make paste out of you. Tim meets it as blankly as he can; he can almost feel the Robin mask pressed across the bridge of his nose.
"C'mon, Lieutenant, go down quick and earn me some cash!" Suarez shouts. "I wanna show Melanie a good time tonight!"
Tim turns his head, angling his body away from Ronon as if distracted. "I hate to ruin your love life," he says, and the flicker of movement on the edge of his vision shows the bait has been taken. Tim ducks, turns, and drives a fist into Ronon's solar plexus, and dances out of reach as Ronon drops to one knee, winded. He gives Tim an evil look from under his dreads and surges to his feet, baring his teeth. Tim doesn't look away this time, but his next remark is still aimed in Suarez's direction. "But I kinda hate to lose more."
As witty banter goes it kind of sucks, but Tim's out of practice and too busy keeping out of reach of Ronon's much longer arms to worry about it. The guy is fast, and Tim already knows he's got endurance and strength. He breathes in deep and lets it out slow, tuning out the noise of the gym as he does it, focusing. They trade a couple more blows before Ronon steps back a step, hands up and body loose, looking at Tim in a newly assessing manner.
"Not bad," he says, and charges.
Tim ducks and twists, doing a side-leg-sweep that takes Ronon's legs out from under him, dropping him heavily to the mat. Tim scrambles up and away again, trying not to wince at the pull in his thighs. He definitely should have stretched more. Then Ronon is up and coming at him again and Tim forgets to worry, forgets to think beyond the next few moments, lost in the familiar push and pull of a fight. He dodges a blow aimed at his chest, and another at his legs, darts in to try and land one on Ronon and misses, catches a punch with his hand that staggers him back and makes his palm sting. Every time Tim backs up, dodges away, Ronon looks a little more frustrated; Tim already knows from the recordings that while Ronon is fast and strong and scary-good at hand-to-hand, he also has a temper, and if pushed to a certain point he forgets about strategy and goes straight for the full-on frontal attack, trusting to his physical power to carry him through. That's what Tim is banking on; that, and that he still has the endurance to get to that point.
Five minutes later, Tim is breathing hard and not so sure he's going to make it. He notices with detachment that the other groups who were using the mats have stopped and joined the watching crowd, and the room has gone quiet as everyone begins to realize they're seeing something unusual. It's both easier and harder to focus without the background noise; he's not used to sparring for an audience. Ronon's panting for breath too, which makes Tim feel a little better, and he's glaring fiercely at Tim, jaw tight.
Tim ducks, though not quickly enough to avoid a hard blow to the ribcage. He grabs Ronon's arm and slides under it, hooks his ankle over Ronon's and yanks as hard as he can. They both go down, and Tim rolls away, lunging to his feet. Ronon stays down, face-first on the mat in a half-push up and gasping for breath. Tim hovers just out of reach, gasping himself, his whole body humming, waiting for Ronon to get up again. When he finally does, shoving himself off the mat easy and loose and laughing, he reaches out with one long arm, grabs Tim by the scruff of the neck and shakes him, leans down and presses their foreheads together the way Teyla does, panting breath hot against Tim's mouth as he laughs and laughs. The next thing Tim knows, he's being swept off his feet in a rib-cracking hug.
"Oh my god, let go of me, you huge freak," he says into Ronon's hair, but he's smiling as he says it.
Ronon lets him go finally, drops him back to the mat and ruffles Tim's hair with one huge hand. "Guess you weren't lying," he says, still laughing. "Not bad."
Tim shrugs, and grins a little harder. "Yeah, well, I'm out of practice," he says, and ducks the cuff Ronon aims at the back of his head.
~*~
The Veteran appears in Robin #143-145, trying to recruit Robin into the Army. He's a military superhero/legend with his own top-secret team of soldiers, and in the comics it's implied that he tried to recruit Nightwing when he was Robin as well. Tim turns him down.
"Butterbar" is a slang term for a Lieutenant in the US Armed forces
Octarine is the colour of Magic on the Discworld.