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Bernard’s eleven when he first gets behind the wheel of a car.
His uncle’s beatup sedan is so old the windows have a handcrank, which makes it, in preteen Bernard’s mind, the oldest possible car in existence. He’s too short to see over the wheel and reach the pedals at the same time, but his uncle slides the seat back so he can stand, and just tells him to not mash on the brakes too hard.
“You gotta start young,” he says, cranking the window down to let in the caustic air. “You’ll grow into the seat, anyway.”
His uncle is a large man with a paunch and a worn out leather jacket, and he always has a switchblade in his shoe and cigarettes in his pocket. His hair had been blonde at one point in time, but has mostly faded to gray. His name is Barney, and Bernard’s not supposed to talk to him.
He’s a henchman. He also does some menial labor and landscaping work, when he can get it, but apparently what sticks in Dad’s mind is the hench work. It’s not even like he works for Two-Face or anyone important. He mostly bounces from gang to gang, and the only time he got involved in supervillainy was a stint with Calender Man, who barely counts. Besides, everyone in Gotham has a cousin or uncle or in-law that’s involved in something. It’s why none of the teachers ever assign “What do your parents do for work?” projects, even though that’s supposed to be a staple of public education. No one wants to hear their students talk about their dad pouring Joker toxin into the city water system.
Barney isn’t even that kind of henchman, anyway. He has the coolest possible job a henchman can have: getaway driver.
“Hands at three and nine,” Uncle Barney says, and Bernard grudgingly moves his hands. “That’s basics, little man. Basics or get busted.”
“Yeah, ‘cause when you’re in a car chase you’re thinking so much about your hands,” Bernard mutters. Barney smacks the back of his head.
“Slow on the gas,” he says. “Don’t rev the engine. You know who revs engines? Horny teenagers and cops. You want to be quiet. Don’t draw attention.”
Bernard obediently eases on the gas. They’re in an empty parking lot, so there’s not a lot to drive around, except maybe the light pole on one end. “Is that what you were thinking when you jumped the bridge last night?”
His uncle scowls at him, the kind of expression Dad gets right before he starts yelling. Barney doesn’t yell, though.
“Where’d you see that?” he demands instead.
“The news, duh,” Bernard says. He swerves the car in a meandering line, trying to practice feints.
“Hm.” Barney frowns in thought. He doesn’t expand on what he’s thinking though, instead reaches out to correct the wheel as Bernard tries to feint left and dart right. Even at three miles an hour, he somehow makes the turn smoother. “Turn around the lightpost up here. If you crash I’ll beat your ass.”
“I’m not gonna crash at three miles an hour,” Bernard whines. He makes the turn and doesn’t even bump the light pole. Uncle Barney’s just being a dick. “When are you gonna teach me something cool? Like popping a wheelie?”
“When your feet reach the pedals,” Barney replies instantly. “You don’t want to do wheelies in a car, little man. That’s a good way to break something.”
“Maybe I wanna break something,” Bernard mutters.
Uncle Barney just flicks his elbow. “Tell you what, if you can parallel park I’ll show you how to hotwire the engine.”
Bernard lights up, because he’s a baby with no concept of how difficult parallel parking is. “Are we gonna steal a car?”
“No, you little maniac,” his uncle says, but under the annoyance he sounds fond. Bernard beams. He stopped being young enough for his parents to find his shit cute a while ago, but Barney hasn’t been exposed to him as much. He’s got a higher tolerance for Bernard. “Where’d you even hide a car from your parents? Huh?”
“Park across the street,” Bernard replies, earnestly. “The neighbors have their cars in front of the house all the time.”
“Yeah? And how long ‘til someone sees your dumb ass trying to drive it places?” His mouth crooks up at the corner when Bernard sulks, and he ruffles his hair. “Don’t be down, kiddo. Now, let’s talk parallel parking…”
---
By the time Bernard’s fourteen, he can weave in and out of downtown traffic, pop wheelies (mostly without damaging the car, even) switch smoothly between drive and reverse at fifty miles an hour, execute a ninety degree turn almost on a dime, and avoid being seen by traffic cams. He can also hotwire an engine. Barney refused to show him how to use a slim jim, but he did show him how to use a coat hanger to unlock the door, so theoretically, Bernard has all the skills he needs to steal a car.
He doesn’t. Barney promised to beat the shit out of him if he ever tried.
“You got a future,” Barney tells him, blandly. “If you waste it on the mob I’ll kill you.”
Bernard put up a token protest, but gave it up after barely a minute. It’s the same kind of pressure Dad puts on him, to get good grades and not waste his life, but it feels different coming from Barney. Probably because Barney actually works for a gang, and knows what that life is like. It is not disapproval. It is desperation.
Not long after that conversation, Barney crashes on live TV.
He’d been driving for some bank robbery downtown. An off-duty Gotham City officer had tried to ram his car into the pursuit, catching a food truck in the mess, and all three vehicles had hit the concrete guard rail of an overpass and jackknifed over the side. Barney’s body is found in the smoking wreck, along with three accomplices, the foodtruck employees, and the off-duty cop. The police say he died quickly. Bernard sits at the top of the stairs while they talk to Dad, his arms folded over his skinny knees.
Dad sorts through his affairs, his face set in pale rage and resignation. Bernard hides in his room, mostly, but when he comes downstairs he hears snatches of it, Dad muttering about it to Mom. Words like cremation and grave and funeral, and then, once, He left it to Bernie, what was he thinking? He doesn’t even know Bernie!
He sneaks into Dad’s office when he’s out of the house, reading the scattered paperwork to see what Barney left him. It turns out to be his beat-up sedan.
He remembers peering over the wheel, peddling gas and brake, Barney’s rumbling voice, the cigarette smell in the seats. Barney’s laugh. Barney’s rough hand gently smacking the back of his head.
It doesn’t really matter. The car blew up in the crash. Bernard cries anyway.
Four years after that, he ends up in a cult, gets all but disowned by his parents, loses some friends and gains a boyfriend. He moves out to a shitty apartment downtown, goes to college and works nights at the drugstore across the street from the campus, and generally makes a life for himself.
Of course, because it’s downtown Gotham, parking is nonexistent. There’s not really a point in owning a car, especially with the cost of insurance. With the threat of student debt looming overhead like a cloud, Bernard can’t afford to buy a car without help, and there’s no way he’ll ever ask Tim.
So Bernard doesn’t really drive. He’s happy to let his weirdly specific driving skills get swept under the rug, because the thing he has with Tim still feels delicate and new, and he doesn’t want to ruin it by bringing up that his uncle was in a gang and hey, he just happened to teach Bernard how to drive. Bernard wants to avoid any kind of conversation around crime in Gotham, actually. Especially after what happened in high school.
It’s not like he’s ever going to need to drive a getaway car, anyway. As far as Bernard is concerned, it’ll never come up.
---
The third time after he meets Tim’s family, it is because he has been invited to an outing at Le Fils Bâtard, and he’ll be dead in the ground before turning down that opportunity. The first black-owned Louisiana creole restaurant not driven out of the Heights by old money bankers, Le Fils Bâtard has been reviewed favorably by several popular reporters and it is now firmly cemented in the heart of the financial district. The high society outcry and whining is only making it more popular. It serves everything from étouffée to po-boys with equal fanfare, with what local ingredients that can be safely harvested from the Gotham-polluted ground and the rest brought in from the bay, far enough to be safe from Gotham’s toxic runoff but close enough to inspire begrudging loyalty. The owner and head chef, Maria Antoine, spent the last forty years of her life perfecting her art. Bernard is gonna eat hushpuppies until he pukes.
The media attention on the restaurant itself is about to be made much worse by Bruce Wayne dining there. Bernard cautiously thinks that might be the point. It certainly can’t be because the Waynes like dining out.
“I still do not see why a donation will not suffice,” Damian grumbles. He is Tim’s youngest brother and, the way Tim talks about him, possibly a devil bent on total destruction of his prosperity and happiness. This sounds like a typical sibling relationship.
“Because dining there personally is more effective publicity,” Tim says. Damian gives him a skeptical look.
“Because Alfred deserves a break,” Dick says, cheerfully. This seems more acceptable, as Damian hums in acquiescence. Tim looks put upon but not surprised. Damian really looks like just a normal, slightly grumpy fourteen-year-old. The amount of animosity Tim holds for him borders on cartoonishly stupid, but Bernard would never deny Tim his ability to make his own decisions. His own dumb decisions.
Damian had grabbed the window seat in Dick’s old van and shot Tim a smug look, and Tim had looked like he was contemplating murder. Maybe that was worth holding a grudge. Bernard, blissfully a single child, has no clue.
“I can take the middle,” Bernard offers, but Tim is already crawling inside and scuffling briefly with his brother.
“Naw, I can actually see over Tim’s head,” Dick says cheerfully. Tim kicks the back of his seat and Damian immediately elbows Tim in the ribs, presumably to protect Dick’s honor. Cass is already in the back, cheerfully pressed up against Bruce, who has been bullied into the back seat by his children and now hunches grumpily while his head knocks against the ceiling.
“I’m not making you sit in the middle,” Tim murmurs as Bernard slides into place beside him. “I’m not a monster.”
“Of course not, babe,” Bernard kisses the side of Tim’s head. Tim softens minutely and shoots him a smile. Duke, in the front, makes obligatory puking noises.
“This is juvenile,” Damian grumbles.
“Oh, come on, Dami,” Dick says from the front. “It’ll be fun! The restaurant won’t let the paps bother us while we’re eating.”
“Probably,” Duke says at the same time as Tim says, “Maybe,” and Damian says, “Knock on wood, Grayson.”
The paps don’t bother them while they eat. The masked gunmen, bursting in from the kitchen and intent on kidnapping the entire Wayne family during their very public outing, didn’t get the memo.
“It doesn’t even make any sense!” Tim snaps, as they all bolt out the front door. Bernard wheezes with panicked laughter at the righteous indignation on his boyfriend’s face. He’s still processing what the fuck is happening, because halfway through the hushpuppy appetizers that Bernard was trying to suss out the recipe for from taste and texture alone six men in ski masks appeared and started waving guns around. Then halfway through the leader’s insane monologue, Cass kicked his feet out from under him and Tim snatched Bernard’s hands and yanked him full force out of his chair to hurtle away with the rest of his family as the goons scrambled. Bernard’s brain is still stuck on finding the type of bread used for the fried breadcrumb coating. “Who would pay the ransom??”
“Alfred?” Duke suggests, then ducks wildly as a bullet pings off the metal handrail by the stairs. He’s not even out of breath. Bernard is kind of jealous.
“Pennyworth would shoot them himself,” Damian puffs. “The man is a war veteran, which these fools would know if they did their research-”
“Less talking, more running,” Bruce grunts.
They hurtle around the corner to the parking lot. It is a miracle none of them have been shot yet. Or maybe they just all have bad aim.
“Trained in Stormtroopers’ School of Shooting,” Bernard gasps out. Tim snorts, which, score! Ten points to Bernard. He is going to get a good grade in being a boyfriend, something that is normal to want and possible to achieve.
“What do stormtroopers have to do with anything?” Damian asks, bewildered.
Duke replies, “You’d know if you watched movies with me dude-”
“You like Star Trek! I know the stormtroopers belong to Star Wars-”
Ahead of them, Dick is pulling out his keys and aiming them in the general direction of his car. It beeps. “Everyone in!”
Somehow, Bernard ends up in the front seat. The Waynes pile into the back in an enormous conflagration of bodies and elbows and arguing, as Dick turns the keys in the ignition. Bernard’s glad he’s not back there, until Dick suddenly grabs him by the back of the neck and shoves him down so he’s bent in half, a millisecond before the front windshield explodes in a rain of glass.
“Shit,” Bernard gasps into his knees, as Dick slams the reverse and the entire car jerks backwards.
“Bernard!” Tim’s face wedges into the space between the two front seats, scanning him with the intense, deadly focus he gets sometimes. “How’s your head?”
“Okay,” Bernard wheezes, even though it is throbbing a little from where it has been bashed against the dashboard.
“Good- stay down-”
Bernard is already peeking out the shattered window like a nosy little bastard with no self-preservation. This is how he sees the light flash briefly off the dark car, moving slowly, but with no headlights on. Sneaking. Barney talked about this, how if you kept your headlights off while your target got themselves situated, you got a better chance of jumping them before the real chase even started.
“They have a car,” he says. Tim swears, although whether it is at him or the situation, Bernard has no idea.
“Huh,” Dick says eloquently, and then whips the car around and starts gunning it out of the parking lot. The wind pours through the broken windshield and howls into the contained space until someone opens the other windows.
“Seatbelts?” Bruce says.
“Father, this is hardly the time-”
“I can’t get to mine.”
“Yes,” Cass says, unperturbed by this entire fiasco. If anything, she is turned around looking out the back at their pursuers with interest.
“Here, Duke- Damian, put on your seatbelt.”
“Take the service road, it’ll drop us off at Main street-”
“I can’t, there are trucks there, it’s all blocked-”
“Take Broadway towards downtown, we can lose them in the Narrows-”
“You want me to drive us through the Narrows? In our nice clothes? With a bashed in windshield?”
“Maybe we can lose them on the Interstate.”
“Tch, no one is losing anyone on the Interstate-”
“Gun,” Cass says cheerfully, and ducks. Dick swears and swerves clumsily, so the bullet pings off the side of their car and dings the metal door instead of blasting through the back windshield. The turn takes them up onto the sidewalk, as the other cars honk their horns and wealthy pedestrians of the Diamond district scatter and shout threats to call the cops. Bernard sort of wishes they would call the cops, actually. Gotham PD is notoriously corrupt, but the Waynes are so ridiculously wealthy that it would probably shake out in their favor.
Bernard is going to have a heart attack. This is so far beyond his purview it’s not even funny. The cult had never had car chases. Granted, that’s because it had gratuitous self-inflicted violence, but still. They had never roared along a city street at fifty miles an hour, swerving around traffic and riding up sidewalks.
The weird part is it is not even that fast. He’d done similar stuff with Barney, but that had been ages ago, and Barney had always been there. Someone who could help if Bernard fucked up. Now he’s in the passenger seat watching Dick swerve haphazardly around evening traffic, careening down the road with the car chasing them howling at their heels.
Was this what it was like for Barney? Crashing through city roads, the wind roaring in their ears, the people shouting and contradicting each other in the back? This fucking sucks.
No, what sucks is that Bernard is in the passenger seat. His hands itch. There’s a turn up ahead that Dick could take, but it’s too fast to communicate it, and they bowl past, and oh he could cross that light if he just dipped a little behind that car but no, the light’s red, so they dart across four lanes to pour into a right turn, and Dick’s just a normal guy. Granted, a normal guy who used to work as a cop until he spilled a rotten tangled root-ball of corruption to a Metropolis newspaper just days before Lex Luthor was set to close a very public deal with Bludhaven police department, but still. Bernard doesn’t think he drove the cop car. Actually, he’s sure Dick did not drive the cop car. Or if he did, he did it badly.
The back windshield shatters. Dick swerves in surprise, the car fills with noise, people shouting and yelping. Bernard has had it.
“Sorry,” he tells Dick, because he’s about to get extremely personal with him, and unbuckles his seatbelt.
---
Tim is prepared for a lot of things to go wrong at family dinner night. It’s family dinner night. He has sixteen different petty arguments locked and loaded to share with Damian that will helpfully steer them clear of anything involving their secret identities- not that either of them can’t keep their cover, but it would be nice for both of them not to worry so hard about it for a night- he made Dick wear his glittery button-up (like it was hard) so he can serve to draw attention off of Tim’s civilian boyfriend, and he vetted the restaurant Bruce picked to make sure there were 1. Shrimp-free dishes (Bruce would never pick a place where Tim couldn’t eat anything, but still, he has to check, an allergic reaction would be extremely embarrassing), 2. Had an interesting chef to distract Bernard from his anxieties about being liked by Tim’s family (which is dumb, everyone likes Bernard), 3. Has vegetarian dishes for Damian (he knows Bruce would never pick a place where Damian couldn’t eat either, but he still has to check), and 4. Has a room with dimmer lights so Duke’s sensitive eyes don’t give him hell . He’s always steering Bernard and Duke subtly into the protective bubble in the middle of their little crowd, away from the immediate flash of cameras. Cass is here in case anyone gets any ideas. It is going to be fine.
What he had not prepared for, and maybe should have, was a car chase with his civilian boyfriend in the car.
The worst part is Dick can’t drive like he has regularly been behind the wheel of the Batmobile in case Bernard gets ideas. So they’re stuck with Regular-Old-Civilian Dick, and not even cop car chase Dick, because apparently it’s too obvious. This is really, incredibly stupid. Bernard probably already has an idea of who they are. He’s come really, really close with some of his conspiracy theories, enough that Jason has actually stopped trying not to laugh and started paying attention when Bernard starts rambling. Bruce seems to think this is reason for more caution. Tim thinks the robin has flown the coop and Bruce is deluding himself.
They could have lost the idiots chasing them ten minutes ago if Dick could just do his thing. Now, they’re eleven minutes into a car chase, all the windows are down or broken, the freezing, caustic night air of Gotham is shrieking through the car, and he is jostled on all sides by elbows, knees, and skulls as his siblings fight about where and how to lose their tail.
“If you get them by Harris way, I can shoot them,” Jason’s voice filters through their small, hidden comms. They all have one, except Bernard, because Bruce is so deeply paranoid that even family dinner nights are accompanied by a variety of WayneTech gadgets. Tim, Dick, and Cass have theirs set in an earring. Bruce opted for a small, flesh colored earplug, because he hates jewelry and fun; Duke and Damian have a similar arrangement because Duke is still unsure if he wants to pierce his ears and Damian is still trying to take after his father.
Jason had the right idea, ditching them for a solo patrol. At least he has all his equipment.
“Try Harris way,” Damian demands imperiously, mostly to have an excuse for Dick to head that direction, at the same time as Bruce, opposed to violence as always, says, “Do not try Harris way-”
Dick is already sliding into the turn lane towards Harris, as done with this as Tim is. Tim leans into Bruce to manage his paranoia by hand signaling about how Jay would just shoot the tires, probably-
“Sorry,” Bernard says, his voice tight with panic, and Tim looks up just in time to watch him climb into Dick’s lap.
Dick yelps, Tim is already lunging forward to grab his completely insane boyfriend because what the fuck, Bernard, Duke says, “Your seatbelt!!” because he’s panicking and Damian says, “Dowd, what are you-”
Bernard stands on the gas pedal.
The turn of speed is unexpectedly sharp. Tim is pushed into Bruce, who is pushed into Damian, who squawks indignantly. The air shrieking through the windows increases in pitch, and they’re going dangerously fast now, slipping through traffic like a snake through an oiled corkscrew, Bernard twitching the car right and left around cars, jerky but insanely fast, and even now as Tim watches the turns are getting smoother, practiced.
They hurtle by Harris way, taking a different turn down a narrow road just as congested with traffic. Tim’s heart lurches in his chest, but Bernard twists the wheel casually. The world tilts, the dominos of Damian-Bruce-Tim jerked in the other direction now, and Tim braces against the door as Bernard hops them up the curb, the entire car tilted sideways and running its left wheels off the building wall.
“W-w-what-t the f-f-fuck-k,” Duke says, hysterical.
“Whack,” Cass says cheerfully, unaffected by the car rattling down the sidewalk as people scream and dive out of the way.
Dick is saying something, muffled but distinctly frantic, squashed against the front seat, but Tim can’t tell what it is over the roaring of blood in his ears. Bruce leans forward, then back again, and Tim sees they’ve gotten to the same conclusion, that disrupting Bernard now would put them all in danger, and that is the only thing keeping Dick from shoving Bernard off his lap.
“Gun!” Cass says behind them and Bernard is a civilian. A civilian who twitches the wheel again and the bark of the gunshots ping harmlessly off the metal car frame, richoting away into the velvety night and neon lights, including the red light with cars blaring through that they are fast approaching-
Bernard cranks the stick shift back, twisting the wheel, turning hard, lurching off the sidewalk. They slam back onto solid ground, rebounding with a crunch that makes Bruce wince. The hard turn somehow gives them just enough leeway to scuttle around a truck crossing the green, slamming hard on the brakes at the sight of them and leaving them to hurtle away while their pursuers deal with the newly congested traffic.
Bernard, Tim realizes, stupidly, slowly, is good at this.
“Holy shit, Bear,” he croaks, in a way that completely fails to hide how disgustingly attractive he finds the whole affair. Bernard’s shoulders relax like they do every time Tim compliments him, reassured and moving into smooth, easy confidence. That’s okay, he can’t trick Tim. His red ears give him away.
“Does anyone want to tell me what is going on?” Jason drawls through the comms.
“Dowd is pulling a Fast and Furious,” Damian says much too confidently for someone who declares often that those movies are stupid. Bruce shoots him a look for answering Jason directly, but honestly, what would Bernard even make of that statement? He is pulling a Fast and Furious. Besides, he is distracted.
“Bernard, where the fuck did you learn to drive?” Duke asks, high-pitched.
“Tim’s boytoy is driving?”
Bernard is reaching down and yanking the lever on the side of the seat so it slides all the way back, leaving room for him to stand. Damian grumbles as his leg room is reduced, but he’s fine. His legs aren’t that long.
“Uh, my uncle,” Bernard says, a little shrill with adrenaline. “Dick, can you climb into the back?”
“Maybe you should-” Bruce tries, but Dick is already clambering awkwardly out from under Bernard, contorting through the crowded seats and sprawling in Bruce’s lap. Tim ducks under Bruce’s wild grab and worms his way into the front passenger seat, because like hell is he going to miss this.
“Does your uncle work for fucking Nascar?” Tim asks, wildly, laughter bright in his throat. Bernard relaxes even more, gives him an equally wild grin.
“Bank robber, actually,” he says, with false bravado, and Tim laughs with delight.
He can sense Bruce in the back carefully factoring this into his freakishly thorough background check of everyone his children hang out with, but he’s not that concerned. There’s no way Bruce didn’t already know if Bernard had any family with a criminal record, and honestly? If his uncle passed down the trade to Bernard, Tim couldn’t care less. If Bruce made any protest Tim would pull up candid photos of Batman making out with Catwoman until he shut up.
“I think your tail has a second car,” Jason says in the comms. “Tell Bernard to avoid Central.”
“I think we have a bit of space,” Bernard is saying, glancing in the rearview, “Where’s Gotham PD?”
“East of here,” Duke volunteers.
“Central’s closed,” Dick says, thoughtfully. Tim glances back and sees him scrolling on his phone, ostensibly reading the news, but Tim can see the reflection of Babs’ contact photo in one of Dick’s shiny buttons. “There’s a car crash?”
“Behind,” Cass says.
Tim glances back; a car is bowling through traffic as other cars honk and try to pull out of the way. Bernard swears and hits the gas.
They hurtle down the rest of the road, turn onto Spinster, and weave through night traffic. Bernard is good. He always seem to find spots to slide through, roads and alleys that are not as packed, and when they run into bumper-to-bumper traffic Bernard just- dodges it. Hops the sidewalk or through a square, scattering people and pigeons. One time he floors it through a park, tearing up grass. Tim makes a mental note to bribe Ivy with something nice. She is usually understanding about turf grass, if only because she wants to tear it up anyway to plant local grasses and wildflowers, but plants are plants and she has an image to uphold.
The traffic is only getting worse, though, and the two cars are catching up to them.
“Try Harris way,” Dick says again.
“Absolutely not,” Bruce snaps, “They could have back-up there, and we’re already too far.”
“Short on trust, old man,” Jason says in their earpieces.
“Bruce, honestly-” Dick snarls, and within thirty seconds the back of the car is an avalanche of noise as they fight about where to go and why.
Bernard is biting his lip. It is the look he gets when he is thinking through something, and he has it while he is dodging around traffic at eighty miles an hour. God, he is driving like a racecar champion and he is thinking while he does it, cool and thoughtful as if he is idling down a parking lot to get close to a grocery store. Fuck, his clever, quick boyfriend, Tim wants to kiss him so fucking badly.
A bullet ricochets off the car’s side. Cass hooks her arm around Duke’s neck in the back and pulls them both down and out of range while he yelps.
“Bruce!” Dick shouts, face dark with anger and disbelief. Bruce’s face wrinkles, but he finally gives the tiniest of nods, acquiescing. Dick instantly leans forward, saying, “Bernard, there’s a turn up ahead after this light, we can double back to Harris-”
“Can’t,” Bernard says. Dick and Bruce both look a little bewildered. They’re so used to being in charge and deciding where and how to handle emergencies that they are both blindsighted by Bernard, a civilian, having his own ideas. “They’ll see us move and just cut us off.”
Tim actually laughs out loud at their faces. Bruce shoots him a warning look, to tell him to not scare his civilian boyfriend, because he still does not see it. How beautiful, how strong, how smart Bernard is. Damian says, “Timothy, really,” and Dick says “What about Bell Avenue?” but Bernard, beautiful, incredible, glorious Bernard knows exactly what Tim is laughing at. His eyes slide over, crinkled up at the corners, his mouth hooked in a toothy grin. Bernard knows that Tim sees him, really sees him.
“Did you guys forget you aren’t in the Batmobile,” Jason asks over the comms. Damian says, “Seriously, Father?” and Duke says, “Can we throw the toolbox at them?” and then Bruce is occupied saying “No,” and then reaching over to the backseat to scrabble at Cass while she starts taking wrenches out of the emergency toolkit anyway.
Then Bernard- beautiful, brilliant, Bernard- says, “Seatbelts on, everybody; we’re gonna jump the bridge.”
The arguing stops. Tim bothers to look at the road for the first time in a minute. Far ahead, one of Gotham’s many, many bridges is starting to flash its lights, warning the oncoming cars that it is about to open up to let cargo through.
“We’re gonna what,” Duke says, shrill, and when Tim glances in the mirror, Cass is grinning so wide it threatens to split her face in half.
“No, we are not!” Bruce bellows, but Bernard grew up with awful parents and is immune to any and all kinds of shouting. Jason is saying something in the comms, lost in the noise. Dick says, “Wait-” like he can stop what is going to happen, but he is already reaching across to tighten Damian’s seatbelt, even as Damian say, “Grayson I can handle myself-”
Bernard ducks around the last car slowing down for the bridge. It honks at him just as another bullet shatters the left hand mirror. The glass shatters, glittering in the light.
Tim looks back at Bernard, and sees, for one glorious second, the shining shards of mirror flying away like stars in the night, Bernard’s hair blowing out of his face, his sunglasses slid down to protect himself from the windchill. His nose is crinkled with concentration, his gaze focused.
Bernard can do it, Tim thinks.
Bernard guns it. Tim is pressed back into the seat, his siblings behind him pressed back into theirs, shouting and cursing. Wild joy bubbles up in Tim’s chest and throat and he shrieks with laughter, his poor, adrenaline addicted heart roaring in his ears. They blast through the fallen bars, past the wide-eyed pedastrians and swearing taxi drivers, the alarm shrieking behind them, and they tilt back, going up and up and up, fighting the rising bridge, like the climb of a roller coaster before the first fall, the van’s poor engine roaring as it climbs, the dark, velvety sky over the lip of the bridge edge.
They hurtle into space. For a brief moment they hang in midair, Tim’s stomach dropping with the slow pull of gravity, his heart in his throat.
They hit the half raised bridge on the other side. They all slam forward, Tim’s head nearly clipping the dashboard. Something crunches ominously, the entire van groaning in protest as they rattle forward, half falling down the bridge ramp towards the street.
Holy shit, they made it. Bernard fucking jumped a bridge.
Tim’s laugh is so wild that he hears Bernard’s breath catch, and Tim can’t wait any longer. He lunges across the space between the seats, grabbing Bernard’s chin, and kisses him.
Bernard softens instantly in the kiss. The world is a rush of honking and lights and shouting, and it all feels far away as Tim licks Bernard’s lower lip and he nips Tim’s in return.
“Eyes on the road!” Dick yells.
Bernard swears into Tim’s mouth and pulls away. Tim says, “Fuck you, Dick,” and then, because Damian is making fake puking noises in the back, “Eat shit, Dami.”
“Please don’t kiss the driver,” Duke says from the back. “Please, that has to be distracted driving-”
“Ask him if he wants a job,” Jason says in the comms.
“Fuck you, no,” Tim says immediately, because Bernard is a civilian and does not need more excitement in his life. Luckily it just sounds like he is responding to Duke, so Bruce does not get on his case.
“They won’t be able to follow us any more,” Bruce says, a little awkwardly, and clears his throat. Tim realizes that they have slowed down. “Bernard, could you take us to the Manor?”
Bernard squints in the rearview mirror. “Not to the police, or anything?”
“Gotham PD know where the Manor is,” Bruce says, easily. Then he smiles, and it is not the Brucie smile, which is almost unnerving. “Besides, I think we could all use a quiet evening. The police can ask their questions in the morning.”
Holy shit. Bruce is allowing Bernard to stay the night. He practically invited him. Bruce is fine with Bernard and has told Tim that he is glad Tim found someone who makes him happy, but this is Bruce liking Bernard for himself.
Bernard must catch Tim’s excitement, because his eyes slide over. He looks breathless, a little rattled but hiding it well. Tim wants to kiss him so fucking bad.
Luckily no more cars chase them on the ride home. In the comms, Jason says that the Cave system flagged said the Manor is clear, which seems right. None of the gunmen seemed smart enough to lay in wait at the Manor for an ambush.
They pull into the driveway, Dick’s van practically limping. They all spill out, the knot of siblings immediately descending into argument as they move toward the stairs. Bruce follows behind, trying to keep Damian and Cass from starting an impromptu game of parkour tag.
Tim lingers behind as Bernard lets himself out of the driver’s door. Bernard’s hands are trembling, a tiny bit, but the smile he gives Tim is real and genuine.
“I can’t believe you jumped the bridge,” Tim says, and if his voice is a little breathless, so what?
Bernard laughs. It is a huff of a laugh, not his full-throated cackle he got when something really got to him. When he looks at Tim, he seems a little nervous.
“So,” he says. “No problem having runaway drivers in my family?”
He says it casually, but Tim can read the faint doubt in his eyes. Tim kisses him again.
Bernard melts into the kiss. He is two inches taller than Tim, but when he kisses he slumps over just a little bit, so Tim can tilt his face and lick into his mouth without cramping his neck or standing on his tip-toes. When Tim pulls away, he looks redder but considerably more at ease.
“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” Tim says, voice low, and Bernard relaxes completely, his teeth coming out in a feral grin.
“We’ll do it again without your family in the car,” Bernard says. Then, “Hey, if I’m sleeping over, Bruce might let me into your room without the door open.”
“Oh my god, he is not the boss of whether my door is open or closed," Tim says, and then kisses Bernard if only to stop him laughing.
This is the best family dinner night ever.