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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

Text

Canary, Part 6

First

Tim had been watching her out of the corner of his eyes for a long time. It wasn’t that he was trying to be creepy or anything, he just… didn’t know why she was there. It didn’t make sense. She was relatively low on funds according to what he and Oracle had dredged up, and even Tim in all his billionaire-ness recognized that this place was more expensive than average…

So, why had she come? It wasn’t even close to the motel she was staying at.

The vaguely paranoid -- cautious, he was cautious -- part of him worried that she had somehow known he was there, but there was no way she should have been able to know that. Hell, he hadn’t known he was going to this particular cafe until he’d gotten to work and realized that there were now cameras in the breakroom and his office to make sure he didn’t drink too much.

But, really, it seemed like she was just using the free wifi that the cafe provided to write up a resume.

He relaxed and sunk back in his chair with his laptop while he did his work.

… he didn’t get to work for long.

He picked up on the slight gravel of someone putting on a voice with ease. It was high and sweet, a voice he commonly heard from customer service workers. He chanced a look back at the barista and frowned when he saw her on her phone. Not her, then.

He looked around the tiny coffee shop and cringed a little when he realized what was going on. Shady guy approaches a woman who’s drinking coffee alone? Yeah, that’s never a good thing.

He pushed his laptop into his bag quickly, slung it over his shoulders, put the cap back on his coffee cup so the guy wouldn’t be able to tell that Tim had been there for a while, and rushed over.

He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Hey, bud, she said no.”

Tim watched both of them tense and their gazes were pulled to him in an instant.

Marinette glanced him up and down once. He watched her eyes lock onto his coffee cup for a second and he carefully turned his hand a little so she could see the name.

She smiled. “You’re late, Timmy. Don’t tell me you got caught up in another meeting?”

He shrugged innocently. “You know how it is.” Then, he split into a grin. “Maybe I should be the one that’s upset, though. Can’t believe you didn’t save me a spot.”

“I tried!” She whined. “He insisted!”

The man chuckled awkwardly. “I see. I’m sorry, I thought you were alone.”

She rolled her eyes. “I told you I wasn’t. Can you move, though?”

“Actually,” Tim said, because he didn’t want to sit in the window where Duke might happen to see him while on patrols. “There’s a free table back this way.”

Marinette tipped her head to the side a little before nodding. “Sure.”

She closed her laptop with a snap, gathered her things into her bag, and followed him back to his table.

That should have been the end of it. Unfortunately, the guy was still watching them. It looked like they weren’t going to be able to do work for a while if they wanted to keep up the pretense that they were friends.

She seemed to know it, too, because she sighed and rested her head on her hand with a small frown. “Guess we have to talk.”

He huffed. “Don’t have to sound so upset about it.”

“Alright. Fine.”

“Not sounding much more excited.”

She rolled her eyes and then brought a bright smile to her face. “Sure, Timmy, sounds great! Can’t wait to have a super fun conversation with you!”

“... nevermind. That’s weird. Why did that almost convince me? I knew it was fake.”

She let herself lean back in her chair, her face falling back to a slightly smug grin. “I’m Parisian,” she said simply.

Yeah. That made sense. Every Parisian Tim had had the (dis?)pleasure of meeting had had an almost unnerving amount of control over the way they presented their emotions.

He snickered. “Why the hell would you move here, then?”

She rolled her eyes. “Our psychopath was so boring. Like, dude, we get it, your wife died or whatever, that sounds like a you problem. Now, a guy deciding to become a jewel thief purely for the gimmick? Way more interesting.”

“Moral grayness is so twenty years ago,” Tim joked.

“Exactly! Give me dumbasses who are evil purely to be evil and good to be good!”

He grinned. “I can see why you like Harry Potter.”

She blinked.

He motioned to her cup. Scrawled across it in the barista’s messy handwriting was ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’.

She relaxed a little, grinning. “I just finished the books so I’m a bit obsessed. Also, every time I tell them that my name is Marinette they misspell it.”

“Don’t feel too bad, baristas are just like that. Heck, they’ve misspelled my name before.”

“... your name is Tim.”

“They spelled it with a y.”

“... why?”

“Yes. Exactly. A y.”

She giggled a little. “No, I mean why would they do that?”

“Oh. No clue. I hope they were just messing with me.”

The barista was wiping down the tables. It was nearing closing time and Marinette was feeling more and more sorry for the poor workers the longer they stayed. She knew that, when she had used to work at the bakery, she had always especially hated customers that were there around closing time.

Only two tables remained occupied.

She sighed when she glanced over and saw the guy was still there.

Oh well.

She looked over at Tim. “Care to walk me a few blocks in a random direction to see if we can get rid of him?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“‘Certainly’? I may not be super great with American customs yet but even I know that’s weird,” she teased.

He huffed a little. “Listen.”

“I’m listening.”

His nose scrunched. “No, wait, you weren’t supposed to call me out on the fact that I didn’t have an excuse.”

“Oh. Okay, we can try again.”

“Alright.” He cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said again, this time in a tone that mocked the one he’d said it in the first time.

Convenient. She was intent on mocking him, too: “I’m listening.”

“You’re the worst,” he complained.

She laughed. “I am so not. Joker exists.”

“You’re worse than him,” he said in his most serious voice.

She laughed harder. “No one is worse than him.”

He grinned. “I thought you liked people that were evil purely for being evil.”

“But he’s not,” she argued. “The man just decided one day that he liked the weird guy who dressed like a bat and figured that the best way to get that guy’s attention was to murder people.”

“Gotta admit, it works,” said Tim.

She shrugged, grinning. “Yeah, it does. Makes me wonder what would happen if the Big Bad Bat didn’t come, though.”

He tipped his head to the side slightly and then shrugged. “I don’t know, actually. He usually stops it in time.”

“I think he’d freak out.”

“Absolutely.”

She grinned and stretched lazily, head tipping back.

“He’s still following us, isn’t he?” Asked Tim.

“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’.

He groaned a little. “Great. Looks like we’re heading to the library.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You go to libraries? You could probably buy every ebook in existence and have a few billion left over.”

“One of my sisters works there, I can ask her to get rid of the guy,” he explained. “But I like libraries. There’s something quaint about them.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s nice to see how the common folk live sometimes.”

He returned her eye roll. “Not like that. I spend a lot of time staring at screens, I have a special appreciation for regular old books.”

“That’s nice. I wish I had time to sit down with a physical copy like that.”

“You see, I have this genius strategy for making time: not taking care of myself.”

“Go on, this is intriguing.”

“Well, eating and sleeping, right? Everyone thinks they’re totally necessary things otherwise you’d die or whatever. But, listen, that’s just a hoax made up by the government to perpetuate capitalism.”

She nodded eagerly. “Totally totally totally. What’s your solution?”

“Coffee communism.”

“Yes, you should use your rich boy money to lobby Congress.”

He grinned. “I totally should. But I can’t run it by my family.”

“No way! You never know who's capitalist anymore, they could be plants placed by the sleep industry to ensure that you don’t go through with it.”

He gasped. “No! You think? My own family?!”

She nodded grimly. “It’s always the ones closest to you that betray you.”

And then he broke character, snickering behind his hand. She beamed.

They reached the library and he smiled as he held the door open for her. He asked her to wait while he talked to his sister and she waved him off casually, telling him to take his time.

She pulled out her phone and pressed her lips together thinly as she made a note to head over later that night to give the man -- Henry -- his money. She’d give him a little tip because, for a moment there, she’d almost forgotten that they were just acting. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to purposely trigger herself for the sake of believability but, hey, if she was going to try and dupe one of the smartest businessmen alive into talking to her, she needed to go all out.

Speaking of Tim, she updated the file of Tim’s favorite cafes plus the probabilities of him visiting each one. It was for his oldest brother, Richie Wayne. She didn’t know why Richie was the one to ask for it seeing as he spent most of his time in Bludhaven and therefore likely wouldn’t find much use in it, but no one ever really knew why Richie Wayne did anything. The man famously had almost as much cotton between his ears as his father.

But, Richie Wayne was also just as rich as his father, so… she’d give him his file later that night after checking her math with her favorite graphing calculator.

A redhead in a wheelchair rolled past Marinette and she absently held the door open for her, only to be surprised when she cursed out Henry.

She watched as Henry held his hands up and started backing away from the woman in the wheelchair, and then he ran down the nearest alley.

(… she’d give Henry a bigger tip. The man had just wanted a tiny side job to help pay for his wife and kids that wasn’t being a henchman, he didn’t deserve this.)

She opened the door for the woman on her way back inside and mumbled her thanks. The woman nodded once and continued on her way.

Marinette leaned back against the wall again and scrolled through Twitter as she waited for Tim to reappear. Apparently, Poison Ivy was already back in Arkham. Something about an intern at the botanical gardens watering plants wrong. Wild.

Marinette felt someone sidle up beside her and, after a quick glance confirmed that it was Tim, pocketed her phone.

He smiled at her, a tote bag over his shoulder.

“Did you go grocery shopping while I wasn’t looking, somehow?”

He hesitated before holding it out to her. “It’s the French dubs of the Harry Potter movies.”

She blinked as the bag was thrust into her hands and looked down at it. Yep, that was Harry Potter in French. She also, vaguely, noted the tiny slip of paper his phone number scrawled across it.

She slung the bag over her shoulder.

“I’m never going to return these. You’re going to rack up so much debt.”

~~~

NightwingsAss9384: does anyone know why nightwing and canary hate each other?

ScareCrane: She stabbed Batman once on accident and somehow got away with blaming it on him

Daylightwing: She refuses to let B adopt her.

RiddleMeThis: They think it’s funny when their stans fight.

SignalOfficial: They said ‘I’m the only flippy bitch allowed in New Jersey’ and have been fighting ever since

Yummmmmm: He has to or else Robin will get jealous because he’s the only stabby sibling allowed

Oracle: They’re fighting over who gets to change their name to ‘The Dodo’ first.

DeadHood: Nightwing is jealous that Canary was the first one of us to think to have a full-on bird mask.

TheBetterCanary: every time i go into the batfam tag to try and avoid them all i see is his fancams

SpoilerAlert: they’re both convinced that they’re the hottest bachelor/bachelorette in gotham

NightwingsAss9384: im beginning to think no ones going to tell me.

BlackBat: :)

~~~~~

Perma taglist: @nathleigh @peachmuses

Canary taglist: @jayjayspixiepop @unoriginalmess @miraculousfanfic127 @probably-a-hologram @iloontjeboontje

#if i did a kofi would anyone donate #probably not #canary #maribat #timmari #timari #timinette #shutterbug #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #tim drake #red robin

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