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porcelana-r0ta · 1 year

Text

The Curse of Sight

Summary: When Wes Weston meets Time Drake-Wayne, the dots start connecting. And those dots form a Bat.

Word Count: 2690

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44788813

[Part 2]

When Wes Weston's parents divorced, they decided that he should stay with his dad in Amity Park. After all, small town Amity is much safer than big city Gotham, where his mother was moving in order to accept a promotion with Wayne Enterprises. Wes, in order to still see his mom, would visit her in Gotham every summer and every other holiday.

Of course, Amity soon became more dangerous than Gotham could even dream of thanks to the hell portal in the Fenton's basement that killed and bore Phantom, but whatever. No one ever listened to Wes anyway, and he learned to shut his mouth when Sam Manson shoved him against the lockers and asked him what he thought would happen to Danny Fenton if the Ghost Investigation Ward ever believed his “crazy as shit imagination.”

She was still playing the "Wes is crazy" game, even when defending her boyfriend.

Still, she was right. Danny was safer without him trying to convince Amity's negligent populace that Danny was Phantom. (Even if it absolutely drove him mad that no one but him was capable of making the connection between Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom.) So he shut up. He deleted his conspiracy theory blog and even asked Tucker Foley to wipe all remnants of its existence from the internet, a request which his classmate happily obliged. He even said, "I'm glad you're moving on from this whole Fenton-Phantom obsession, Wes."

Professional gaslighters, the lot of them.

So yes, Wes had thoroughly given up on the superhero ID evidence schemes by the time he left to visit his mom after his freshman year of high school. He had made peace with it and settled back into reading mystery novels or movies and solving the case before the protagonists in place of proving Phantom’s ID.

When he came to Gotham, he had to get a new library card so he could keep up with his mystery novel hyperfixation. He happens to take just a little too long in the library, so by the time he has a nice stack of books to check out, it's dark outside.

Great, walking back to my mother's apartment in the dark in Gotham. Seems super safe.

Well, Gotham is no Amity, right?

So he marches on and tries not to be too resigned when he's inevitably yanked into an alleyway even though the apartment is only three blocks from the library.

Classic.

It's just a man with a gun, his face obscured with a hood and a red bandana. He's literally nothing compared to Pariah Dark or Undergrowth or Dr. Spectra or even the fucking Box Ghost.

"Let me guess," he says. "You want any cash I have, right?"

"Kid, shut the hell up and fork over your money," says the man, and Wes sighs. The mugger didn't even wave around his gun or give an impassioned speech about stealing someone's pelt.

"Original," Wes intones. "But I'm fifteen. And everyone knows young people don't carry cash anymore. I guess I could give you my mom's emergency credit card that she gave me, but she did say it was for emergencies only, so."

The man just stares at him. Wes shuffles uncomfortably.

"Oh! And I could just cancel the card before you use it," Wes adds into the silence.

"You don't consider being held at gunpoint an emergency?" the mugger finally asks, looking uncertain.

"Should I?" Wes wonders aloud. Sam had been much scarier when she threatened him.

"You said you're fifteen? And you don't have a Gothamite accent?" the man offers his reasoning, as if it's any kind of logical. He'd fit in well in Amity for that trait alone.

"Gothamites always think they're so superior." He has to roll his eyes. "Guns aren't that scary. You know what is scary? Your whole town being dragged into the dimension of death for three days. This is nothing. This city is nothing." You are nothing. He knows better than to say that last part, though;

"Christ, kid, you're crazy." The man shook his head and pulled the hammer of his gun back. "Just-- give me the watch you're wearing."

Wes sighs again, "Whatever, I'm not fighting for it." It was literally just a cheap Walmart watch. But just as he goes to unlatch the watch from his wrist, a caped vigilante swings down from the rooftops and kicks the mugger straight into the pavement.

The mugger doesn't get back up.

"Thanks, Red Robin," Wes dutifully says, even though he's pretty sure the man was A) not really that much of a threat, and B) going to have serious brain trauma now.

"It's no problem," the vigilante says. "You're a little young to be out this late, though."

Well, that's rude. It's only 7:00 pm. The only reason it's dark at all is thanks to Gotham's pollution problem. (Maybe they should let Poison Ivy just go fucking feral, like Sam suggests.)

Wes doesn't say that. Instead he says: "Didn't you start crime fighting when you were, like, twelve?"

Red Robin sputters, but Wes continues, "And the first Robin couldn't have been more than nine. I have never picked a fight with hardened criminals." Do ghosts count as criminals? Surely not. What right does Wes have to dictate the morals of being from a completely different dimension? "So I think I'm doing better than you in the safety department, no offense."

Well, doing better in Gotham. But the Justice League doesn't need to know about Amity Park, so he'll leave that part out.

"I-- just--" Red Robin struggles for a second, and then clears his throat. "Why don't I escort you home?"

"I'm two blocks away, but thanks. And thanks again for the---" he waves to the unconscious mugger. Definitely brain damaged.

"Yeah, no problem." And then he grapples away.

Phantom's much cooler. Not that he'll ever say that in front of Danny, Sam, or Tucker. Or anyone from Amity.

He makes it safely home, even if he does pretend to not notice the Bat stalking him from above. And of course, once he recounts his tale to his mother, she freaks out that he'd been nearly mugged, and tries to ban him from doing anything in Gotham at all.

"Mom, I can't just stay inside the house all day. I refuse to spend my whole summer on Netflix." He wants to at least go sightseeing.

Her mouth goes into a thin line and her eyes are as fiery as her red hair.

"Fine," she says. "Then you can get a job."

His stomach drops, "What?"

"A job. My floor needs a new intern, and I found just the perfect person."

"No, Mom, you can't," he pleads. "A Wayne Enterprises job? I'll be known as a nepo-baby for life!"

"Well, too bad. You should have thought of that before being mugged."

"Almost mugged, Mom! Almost! Red Robin was there!" When he sees that this point is getting him nowhere, he switches tactics, "Mom, the Waynes are held hostage, like, every other week! Do you really want me in closer proximity to them?"

She lifts her chin and sniffs, "I'll be there to watch out for you. And an intern won't have any reason to be next to a Wayne, anyway."

He groans, "Mom, please. It's my summer vacation!"

"And you're my son. Discussion over. You start in two days."

He groans again, "Do I at least get paid? Or is Brucie Wayne like every other rich white dude out there?"

"Wes, sweetie, you're white--"

"But not rich," he grumbles.

"But yes, you'll be paid. Every position with Wayne Enterprises is paid."

He crosses his arms, "At least there's that, I guess."

His mom walks to him to hug him and kiss his forehead.

"I'll handle the paperwork tomorrow. Don't worry, you'll love it there!"

Well, spoiler alert: he doesn't.

He's basically a go-fer, fetching paper or ink or photos or files and most usually, lunch from across the street or donuts or coffee. Especially coffee. And his mom's coworkers kinda suck because hey, the Wayne's executive PR manager just hired her own kid for a coveted Wayne internship. No one likes the idea of someone being here who doesn't deserve it. So he is really sent on the most stupid, tedious errands possible for an intern.

He called it: he's the resident nepo-baby, beaten only by Brucie Wayne's very own brood of nepo-babies.

Suddenly, just letting that mugger fill him with hot lead doesn't look so bad. Maybe he would have become a ghost! Haunting Danny would have been fun. Or Ember and the others of her nature make it look fun, anyway.

The Fenton thermos part would probably be uncomfortable, though.

"This sucks," Wes mutters to himself, balancing three carrying cartons of Batbucks (Gotham's stupid parody of Starbucks since they have to be special and not like other girls in every aspect possible) coffee with just two arms, staring helplessly at the elevator call button in front of him.

"Need an assist?" calls a familiar voice, though Wes can't place from where.

"Yes, please!" Wes says gratefully, looking up at a face with blue eyes, black hair, and a familiar jawline.

Wait a second.

"Here, I'll get that for you," says the man, who is really more like a teenager, since it's goddamn Timothy Drake-Wayne, co-CEO of Wayne Enterprises at just seventeen years old. "Going up, I assume?" he gives a charming laugh as he presses the up button, the kind one practices to perfection to ace media interviews and entertain the wealthy elite at galas.

"Yes, thank you, sir," Wes says, and takes the time to really study Drake-Wayne's eyes. And sure enough, he can recognize makeup covering up purple eyebags, just like he could on Fenton.

No. Please, Lord, I'll go back to church. Just don't let it be true.

"Yeah, no problem!" Drake-Wayne says, which really just seals the deal. Wes quietly dies inside, and also curses God. "I'm glad to be of service! Interns doing coffee runs really are doing God's work. And there's no need to call me sir. Tim will do just fine."

"Right... Tim," Wes says uncertainly. He kind of wants the elevator doors to open up and reveal a pitch black hole to drop into, but when the bell rings and the doors slide open, it's just the same ol' regular elevator it's always been. Damn.

So. The boss of this whole entire company is Red Robin. Makes sense, seems legit. He figured out that Plasmius was the mayor of Amity, too, didn't he? So why shouldn't all billionaires be playing dress up and fight crime or be the crime? What's stopping them all, really, when wealth is a superpower all on its own?

Wait, fuck. So. If Tim started out as a Robin when he was twelve-ish. And apparently billionaires are playing dress up. Then doesn't that mean...?

Oh, God. Couldn't he go one season without figuring out some superpowered person's secret identity? Is that too much to ask?

And of course, after figuring Tim and goddamn Brucie Wayne out, it's not so hard to see the correlations between the introduction of every other Wayne brat to the debut of each Robin.

He shakily steps into the elevator, "And how do you normally take your coffee?"

"With the maximum amount of espresso the barista can legally give me," is Tim's immediate answer.

Just like Danny.

And even worse, Tim steps into the elevator after him.

"What floor?" he asks, and Wes feels stupid. Obviously he was going to come in: why offer help at all if he wasn't going to push the floor button for Wes?"

"Uh, 73," Wes says.

Tim nods and presses the according number, and then takes one of the cartons from Wes as the doors closed.

Hopefully, any nerves that Wes is showing can be played off as the nerves an intern would get when they somehow get stuck with the Actual Big Boss™ , and then said Boss™ tries to take the shit they're carrying.

"Uh, you don't have to do that," Wes says nervously. "I can carry them all, really!"

"Don't be silly," the literal co-CEO of his workplace says, as if Wes is in some fucked up Wattpad fic. "Again, where would any of us be without the ones who bring us coffee?"

"In bed?" Wes offers nervously. "Sleeping?"

Tim laughs, but his smile looks more like a smirk, "I guess you're right!"

"But seriously, I can carry the coffee. It's my job. And it'll look weird to everyone if they see the CEO helping me do my job."

"It's no trouble!" Tim insists, and then emphasizes his point by stealing the second carton in Wes's hands. "See? And my employees will be glad to see that I value every employee and am always willing to help out!"

Haha yeah, thought Wes. Too bad they'll never know just how much you help out, right?

Finally, the elevator dings, and Wes is released from one prison to another.

Thanks to the normal chaos of working at Wayne Enterprises, no one immediately notices that the co-CEO is carrying the bulk of the load. Instead, they all hone in on the scent of coffee, and they lunge.

"Thanks, Weston!" the few who are clear-minded enough to remember manners manage to say, even as most of them take their orders from a black haired wunderkind instead of a redheaded conspiracy theorist with the curse of Cassandra.

"Of course," Wes says nervously, and then finally some recognition starts sparking in the coffee-hungry eyes of exhausted PR employees who are always trying to handle some wacky Wayne hijinks.

"You're Weston," says his mom's assistant, Jade, pointing at Wes, and then slowly pointing to Tim, "and you're.... Oh, Mr. Drake-Wayne! Here, let me get that for you!" She yanks the empty cartons out of Tim's hands and shoved them into Wes's. Luckily, his carrying carton had been emptied, too, so he doesn’t get coffee spilled all over him and the floor. "Here, Weston, go dispose of these! Why were you making Mr. Drake-Wayne carry them? It's your job to get coffee, not our CEO's! He has better things to do. In fact, he probably needs to speak to Ms. Rolland."

Ms. Rolland as in his mother, who went back to her maiden name after the divorce.

"Now hold on," says Tim, his eyes alight with anger. "I offered to help Weston out, and I have no need to speak with Penny. I was just helping out one of my employees."

"Oh," says Jade, taking a step back. "Of- of course, sir! Weston, here, I'll take these cartons back. And sir, it's very kind of you to help out."

"I try," Tim says dryly. Wes notices he doesn't tell Jade to not call him sir. "You should probably get back to work."

"Of course, sir." And with the cartons in her hands, she scurries off in the direction of his mom's office, where she'll probably complain about how her kid made Jade look like a fool in front of the Actual Big Boss™.

"Uh, thanks," he tells Tim. "But you really didn't have to help me. It is my job, after all." Unwilling or not.

"It's no problem!" Tim repeats, and Wes wants to bang his head into a wall. "And hey, next time you do a coffee run, forget the others and just grab my order." His words are accompanied by a wink, and Wes is pretty sure it's supposed to be weird rich people humor, so he laughs, and pretends his heart isn’t beating into his ears.

"As much espresso as possible," he plays along, and Tim grins, pressing the call button for the elevator. It hasn't been summoned to another floor, so it opens right back up.

"Have a good day, Weston."

"It's just Wes, really," he corrects, and Tim smiles again.

"Wes," he says, and the elevator doors slide shut.

Cool cool cool. So now he just has to survive two months in Gotham while knowing the entire Batclan’s secret identities.

Cool cool cool cool cool cool....

#idk what this is it just spawned out of me #dp x dc #dc x dp crossover #dc x dp fic #danny phantom x dc #danny phantom #dc #batman #red robin dc #tim drake #wes weston #wesley weston #is this wes weston x tim drake?#you decide!#one shot

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