Work Text:
Bernards' grip on the edge of the countertop tightened, clenched hand hidden behind the kiosk safely out of sight of the dude fluttering around the refrigerator. His eye twitched in annoyance, he was just about ready to tear his stupid apron off and vault the counter to get out of there if he had to. It was 10:57pm on a miserably dreary night and the hour-long countdown until closing was about to begin. The exhaustion of working yet another split open-close shift with a full day of college lectures in between may be getting to him, if the dull ache throbbing behind his eyes and dragging at his mood was anything to go by.
Working retail, he was pretty damn sure, was a horribly mundane yet excruciatingly effective form of torture. Working retail in Gotham? It was hell. Interesting as all get out though, his fellow Gothamites were an eclectic bunch of freaks and weirdos, even if at least half of them were literally the worst. If it came out tomorrow that retail work was actually a psyop organized to keep the population in line, he would not only not be surprised, but had already theorized as much at least a dozen times over. He was pretty sure he'd written a paper on it back in high school.
He had no idea what it was that meant that all common decency and higher brain function went out the window the moment a person stepped foot in store, but he was pretty sure there must be some cosmic force that turned an otherwise respectable member of society into a mindless vessel designed specifically to annoy him in new and inventive ways each and every day. As he had to regularly remind himself to keep some semblance of sanity; customers weren't all bad. There were a few regulars who were nice enough, like the elderly half blind lady who came in every Tuesday and Friday morning who's service dog was just the sweetest thing, or the young mother with the triplets who always had a nice word to spare for him. They were few and far between though.
The creepy little cutie clad in a red graphic tee over a long sleeved black shirt and artfully ripped jeans in front of him was close to reaching nemesis status in Bernards rankings. An absolute gremlin of a guy who had the gall to be unfairly, infuriatingly pretty. If Bernard didn't have bills to pay, he'd have quit out of frustration by the third time this beautiful, terrible specimen of humanity at its peak had bounced his happy ass into this shithole of a no name corner store on the edge of the narrows. As it stood, they were well into the double digits on the visitation counter at this point and Bernard Dowd may be many things, but he sure wasn't a quitter. Also bills. Turns out flying solo with no support was expensive.
If it stung at all that his parents were living it up in blissful middle class mediocrity on the back of a hefty settlement payment that'd been meant for him for his traumatic experience while he worked his ass off in misery and borderline poverty at the tender age of twenty? Well, that was between him and the pillow he liked to scream into at night. The nights he wasn't being sucked into overnight shifts working the backstock and trying to scrape the perpetual layer of grime out from all the nooks and crannies around the store that is.
Bernard resigned himself to just having to live with frequently bearing witness to a black haired blue eyed idiot with legs and shoulders to die for and a face that'd make a disney princess green with envy wrapped neatly up in a 5'6 package (hah, suck it shorty, bernard's lanky 5'8 self crowed internally). It was one of life's many tragedies, that beautiful people must exist.
"That's $35, would you like me to bag those for you?" He drawled in his best 'done with your shit and letting you know it' monotone. He'd dropped the overly peppy act months ago, somewhere between the third and fifth time he'd been held at gunpoint and never bothered picking it back up. Not like his manager, a one Mr Saxon, asshole extraordinaire, could call him on it when the smarmy fucker only graced this humble establishment with his presence maybe once a quarter. Bastard. He never had to deal with this shit.
"I'm good thanks!" the weirdo chirped happily and with entirely too much energy for the hour. He shot a grin across at Bernard who was trying very, very hard not to get blinded by that megawatt smile or fall too deep into those periwinkle blue eyes of his. The color of those eyes may or may not have taken up permanent residence in his hindbrain and Bernard had decided that he was furious about that, actually. There was something disarming about this nameless stranger, the way it almost seemed like the guy was actually seeing Bernard, not just looking through him, however brief their interactions were. It was more attention than he was used to being on the receiving end of.
The guy, seemingly oblivious to Bernards seething, gave him a bright sunny smile while hastily shoving his shopping in a tote with an air of manic glee and paid with his top of the line WayneTech phone (an as of yet unreleased model, if his eyes doth not deceive him) and happily scuttled out the door with his thirty five mother-fucking dollars worth of butter, giggling to himself like a maniac as he went. Bernard did not even want to know what someone did with $35 of butter. Or the $40 of milk. Or the entire display of eggs. He was holding out hope that the guy was just an avid baker but the hundreds he'd dropped on seemingly random groceries over the span of a week and a half said otherwise.
The woman next in line grunted irritably, bringing his mind plummeting back down to earth, shoving her basket roughly over the counter and avoiding eye contact until she'd paid for her shopping, only speaking to gravel out a request for some smokes. Now that? That was standard behavior. Grumpy, barely verbal and efficient.
Once she'd trundled out the store was empty for the minute. Mercifully giving him time to dive into the storeroom fridge and replenish the butter supplies, because heaven forbid the weird, probably rich as sin bane of his working life buy bulk online or at an actual grocery store. Nooo, it had to be from the grotty little general store where Bernard had the misfortune to spend the majority of his waking hours when college wasn't kicking his ass.
He'd mentioned The Guy and his weirdness to the only other full time employee at shift change as a form of worker solidarity the day before and she'd looked at him like he'd grown a new head and popped the old one like a pimple. Stacy tended to look at him like that a lot ever since the time he'd tiredly rambled to her about how he was pretty sure Penguin and Riddler were exes and might maybe still have an on off thing. He stood by that theory though, he knew a friend of a friend who'd done a little goonery for Riddler who swore up and down that it was true. There were forum boards dedicated to them too. Stacy had remained unimpressed, even though she totally started the conversation by bringing it up that both rogues were warned to be on the loose. It was better than the time he'd been convinced for a month that the hat man was real and coming for him. Or that other time he'd been a hairs breadth from saying fuck it all and spontaneously driving to West Virginia in search of the Mothman.
Man, the mothman trip still sounded like a vibe. If he hadn't already sunk so much time and money into higher education he'd likely be gone in a heartbeat. Chasing that forbidden mothussy.
He was very aware that his mind was prone to wandering away from things sometimes, his old therapist called it a type of passive disassociation or some junk. So maybe he got a little lost in thought for a minute or ten when the mothman trail of thought spiraled until he was daydreaming about all the places he wanted to visit in search of cryptids and lost treasures, sue him. He was only idly neatening up the shelves to lessen the load before lockup anyway.
He should probably work on that situational awareness thing though, seeing as what jolted him out of his daydream was the grease stained barrel of a gun waving in front of his face.
Shit.
Before him stood a shorter, stocky man in threadbare clothes that'd clearly seen better days and a wild look in his eyes that screamed trouble almost as loud as the weapon in his hand. His face was mostly hidden behind a graying filth encrusted balaclava, thankfully.
"Alright kid, you know the drill here." The man on the other end of the gun spat out before tossing something vaguely bag shaped on the counter. Huh, he was pretty sure he knew this dude from somewhere. The ratty gray jacket and balaclava combo plus stink of cheap booze and bad hygiene choices seemed familiar. Maybe he'd been robbed by him before.
Bernard, like a good little underpaid and overworked employee 45 minutes before closing, dutifully got back behind the kiosk and emptied the till into the mans duffel bag, all three hundred or so dollars of it.
"Have a good night." He said without thinking as he slid back the now slightly fuller but still mostly empty bag, immediately kicking himself for saying anything at all as his heart kicked up a gear and dropped straight down to his stomach.
Rule number whatever of being robbed; don't say anything unless you have to.
God he was such an idiot.
Bernard barely had time to cringe back and throw his hands up in surrender before the gun was back up and pointed square between his eyes, raw drunken fury practically rolling off the crook in waves, mouth twisting into a snarl. "Think you're a fucking funny guy, asshole?" Spittle flew like rain from his mouth and Bernard barely held himself back from flinching as a million possibilities flashed through his mind.
For a single crazy moment he imagined himself somehow playing the hero, wrestling the gun away and knocking the guy out with a single punch. The image was just as quickly replaced with the memory of pooling blood and fear and sightless eyes, all thoughts of action melting away as quickly as they appeared. He hated guns so much.
"No sir, sorry," he practically squeaked, "just habit." fuck fuck fuck he was so fucked-
The gunman's eyes narrowed and raked over Bernard, clearly finding him pathetic enough to live another day as he spat a few more insults and a fair amount of saliva his way before turning tail and sprinting out the door. Just like that the guy was gone. And Bernard, shaking like a leaf, was left to be the one to call the cops, who inevitably wouldn't show up until tomorrow at best and worse, call Mr Saxon and explain that they'd been robbed again and no he hadn't pressed the panic button because it still wasn't wired in and no he wasn't going to keep the store open after being held at gunpoint actually-
Two very stressful phone calls and a worsening headache later Bernard, at 11:30pm on a brisk Autumn Thursday, was finishing up locking the store when his friendly neighborhood butter boy menace appeared nearly silently and without warning next to him, eyes wide and concerned, tote full of butter still slung over one shoulder.
"Are you okay Bernard?" He asked, like he hadn't just made Bernard jump three feet in the air.
He whirled round to face him, squinting suspiciously and wondering why the hell the guy was still hanging around half an hour after leaving the store. "How'd you know my name?" He was met with a blank stare, those gorgeous eyes briefly flicking down to his chest before it clicked. Duh, that stupid name tag he had to wear on his work apron, like anything good could come from complete strangers knowing his name. He wasn't wearing it right that moment but it stood to reason that the guy might have remembered his name after seeing it a few dozen times. The thought made heat flood his cheeks.
"Really though, are you okay? You're locking up early and uh. Some shady guy ran past in a hurry a minute ago."
"I'm fine, store just got robbed and I'm not supposed to serve customers in an active crime scene, you know how it is." Bernard had been aiming for calm and casual, but the effect was slightly ruined by the slight tremor in his voice. Something that apparently didn't go unnoticed if the skeptical eyebrow of judgement being aimed his way was enough of a hint.
It was strange seeing the guy without all that energy, every time Bernard had seen him so far he'd been practically vibrating with seemingly boundless zest for life. Looking at him now, illuminated together by the glow of the streetlights, he could see deep set eyebags that rivaled his own marring that unnaturally pale skin. He'd never seen the other man so still and Bernard had the passing thought that this calm stillness might be the norm and the manic energy he was used to was the outlier. He wanted to see more of it.
As quickly as he had the thought, it was gone. Instead he found himself blindsided as a warm hand grasped his own and the guy, whos name he did not know, visibly perked up, wicked sharp smile sliding back onto his face like it'd been there all along.
"Wanna see something cool?"
Bernard actually wanted to be asleep about 6 hours ago, but between the warm hand holding his and those bright eyes, he thought he might do just about anything the guy asked of him. Bernard was suddenly very aware of how close they were standing, huddled together in the chill of the night. Neither of them was wearing a coat. That must be why he found himself swaying gently closer to the warm body beside him. No other reason. He wasn't completely gone on a pretty boy with a dangerous smile and weird spending habits, not even a little bit.
Still, he wasn't a total idiot, despite nearly getting himself killed in the most miserable place on Earth a few minutes earlier. "Going to a secondary location with a guy who's name I don't even know? pff, what do you take me for?"
Nameless Enigma wilted for a second before the teasing tone registered and Bernard nearly found himself blinded by his aura alone when his little enigma perked right back up again.
"Hi, I'm Tim, now can I lure you to that secondary location?"
And you know what? Screw it, Bernard found himself thinking. He didn't have much going for him, no real friends, no partner, a job that was barely worth the stress. If he was about to get killed by a beautiful stranger who may or may not be a little insane it wasn't like the world would be losing much of value. He shushed the scolding mental voice that sounded a lot like his old therapist that tried to say otherwise.
"Sure thing Timmy." He replied with a smile and eyebrow waggle, even as Tims face screwed up adorably, pink tongue even poking out in a caricature of disgust.
"Blegh, don't call me Timmy. Ew." The genuine disdain in Tims voice startled a laugh out of Bernard, it was more an inelegant snort that'd probably keep him awake on his most anxious nights to come. If he wasn't about to get murdered. Those laser focused eyes snapped their attention back to him and flooded him with a strange giddy warmth.
"Never call me Bernie and we'll have a deal." He managed to get out, surprisingly smoothly considering the emotional whiplash he'd found himself experiencing in the last hour. He'd gone from simmering annoyance to mortal terror and slingshotted to tripping over himself like a kid with a schoolyard crush.
"Deal." And so, deal with the devil made, Bernard quickly found himself being led through the streets in the wrong direction to head back to his sad little cupboard of an apartment. Tims hand was rough and calloused and fit around his perfectly.
Where they were headed was a mystery, but Bernard found himself perfectly happy to be towed along by the hand through strange and familiar streets, not entirely convinced he hadn't hallucinated the last half hour and wasn't actually bleeding out over three hundred dollars and one stupid comment.
(Maybe if he'd been able to look away from Tims back, he might have seen the tied up and unconscious figure of a man in a ratty gray jumper as they passed an alleyway barely a minutes walk from the store)
"So I've been wondering… why'd you need so much butter and all that other stuff?" Bernard asked as he was towed along, not expecting Tims ears to pink up as if he were embarrassed or for him to speed up just a little.
"I'll show you, we're nearly there." Cryptic. Two minutes later and they were standing outside of a run down building that Bernard was at least forty percent sure was where some mad scientist type got into a dramatic yet fruitless showdown with the bats a fortnight ago. Huh, okay. He wasn't sure where exactly this was going but the building would make an excellent murder shack at least, what with the peeling paint that might have been white once and boarded up windows that presumably held glass panes at some point in history.
Bernard had to bite back the sad little noise that threatened to leave his throat when Tim let go of his hand to shift the boards from one of the ground floor windows and shimmy through, disappearing into inky black darkness momentarily before he popped back into Bernard's line of sight to wave him through after him.
He wondered faintly if Tim might be some sort of reverse vampire where he could only suck your blood if he managed to lure you into his lair and quickly decided that he wouldn't actually care all that much if he was. Even vampires gotta eat after all.
Somehow Bernard managed to follow Tim in through the window without embarrassing himself, though he doubted he was anywhere near as elegant as Tim had been, fumbling the landing a little. He was mostly just happy he'd avoided getting any splinters from the old cracked wooden frame and not fallen right onto his ass in front of a cute guy. Not that it'd be the first time Bernard did something mortifying in front of someone he was trying to impress, highschool was a gauntlet that Bernard had less run and more staggered his way through. He tried not to think about it.
He felt oddly lost as he stood there, brushing invisible dust off his work slacks in the dark of the building, flexing his hand and straightening up, trying vainly not to sneeze as a layer of dust kicked up in a cloud around him. He lost the fight after a valiant struggle, sneezing three times in quick succession.
"Oh my god you sneeze like a kitten."
"Shut up, it's dusty in here" He couldn't so much see Tim's smug smile as he could feel it, Bernard flipped the bird in the vague direction he thought Tim was in just to get the point across.
Tim had apparently come equipped with a handheld flashlight and flicked it on, startling Bernard with how close Tim had managed to creep towards him in the dark. Damn that boy was quiet when he wanted to be. The vampire theory tried to rear its fanged head again until Bernard forcefully choke slammed it back into its box to be inspected and picked apart later.
Together they carefully wound their way deeper into the building, avoiding mystery hunks of machinery hidden under tarps and stray ropes of wire and other debris that littered the floor, Tims hand finding its way round Bernard's wrist when Bernard stumbled over a loose floor tile. He didn't let go even after Bernard stood back up with a sheepish smile.
"Okay, just through here." Tim waved the flashlight towards a doorway, whose door had tragically been reduced to smithereens against the far wall, the doorway was instead blocked off with what looked like an old bedsheet, which Tim threw aside with a flourish. "Tadaa." he said, complete with jazz hands. Bernard shuffled closer until he could see… a hole in the floor.
He leaned forwards, curious as to what exactly he was seeing even as the hair on the back of his neck started to rise and his skin startled to prickle in warning.
The hole was about a meter in diameter, tucked in what used to be a small, musty cupboard. It was perfectly circular and pitch black, like ink against the shadows. This close, the hole was audibly humming with pulsating energy, something that tasted of static crackling in the air around the void. You could almost pretend that the thing as breathing.
"Um. What in the fresh hell am I looking at here?" and what the hell did it have to do with the groceries? He didn't ask out loud, but thought it loudly enough that he was pretty sure the question came across pretty clearly anyway.
"No idea, but it's cool, right?"
"Sure, if terrors beyond comprehension are your thing." Bernard replied, calmly. There was something distinctly unearthly about whatever it was in front of them, if he didn't know better he'd almost think the thing was… was watching them. The creeping, prickly feeling like spiders on his skin was back with a vengeance "Please say you didn't bring me here to push me in the hole." The hole crackled and snapped in response, like it was laughing at him. Rude. Tim choked out a surprised giggle too, so now he had a cute guy and a possibly eldritch terror laughing at him. This somehow wasn't the low point of his day so far though, so he just politely and not at all nervously waited for the laughter to taper off.
"No no it doesn't like meat, that's why I bought the butter. It seems to like dairy. And eggs." Tim said, like that was either reassuring or a normal thing to say at all. Sure. The Hole likes dairy but not meat, why not.
Tim, who Bernard had now decided was well and truly off his rocker, knelt down, reached into his tote bag and fished out a block of butter before tossing it casually into the hole. For a long second nothing seemed to happen, before the not quite static in the air crackled happily and The Hole rumbled, obviously pleased with the offering of cheap off the shelf butter. Bernard still wasn't convinced he wasn't in a coma or something, even as his mind whirred. Was this an alien hole? Magic? He couldn't smell sulfur so he assumed it wasn't demonic in nature, not that he'd know. Pop culture probably wasn't particularly accurate on matters of the supernatural. Wait, the building had been playing host to a mad scientist until Batman and his hoard of costumed kids cleared it a couple weeks back, maybe it had something to do with that? So this was a science hole? How would that even work?
He didn't realize he was muttering his musings out loud until Tim mouthed the words 'science hole" while looking like he was trying a little too hard not to laugh for it not to smart at Bernard's pride. In his hands was a sleek, professional looking spiral bound notebook with a smear of purple glitter across the cover. Tim appeared to be studiously taking notes on The Hole's reaction to the butter with a very fancy pen that had the letters BW engraved on the side. he had a little divot between his brows when he focused, Bernard was tempted to lean over and poke it.
"I've been taking notes. For science." Tim informed him, entirely straight faced.
"Of course." Bernard said, equally as serious. He felt vaguely like he might be having an out of body experience. "Did you bring me here for science too?" Tim made a face at him.
"It'd be of scientific significance to see if The Hole reacts differently to someone else feeding it." A cool stick of butter was pressed into Bernard's outstretched hand. He hoped his blush wasn't too obvious as Tims rough fingers brushed gently against his. From the way The Hole crackled with not laughter again he thought his hopes may be a little on the pathetically optimistic side. "Plus you seemed to be having a rough day so, you know," he gestured helplessly towards the possibly sentient pit "hole."
Oh. Oh no. Bernard was so beyond gone. Tim all but kidnapped him to show him an otherworldly Hole in the floor to cheer him up after he had a bad day? That was genuinely the sweetest thing anyone had done for him in years. He carefully tossed the butter into The Hole, landing it dead center. It disappeared with another happy rumble, followed by a distinct burping sound. So the hole really liked butter?
Bernard looked over to Tim, only to find that the other boy had snuck up close again, kneeling beside Bernard a safe but polite distance from the allegedly vegetarian but definitely not vegan Hole. He was a far less polite distance from the Bernard, their arms brushing whenever they moved.
"Wow, give it another one? wait no I'll go next." Another stick of butter arced through the air to be met with another satisfied rumble.
And so the two sat, side by side, leisurely feeding The Hole butter sticks and sharing casual observations until, as the final stick landed neatly in the night dark void, the hole gave one last grateful grumble before shrinking by exactly 9% in size. ("Cool!" Tim had said, "That's the biggest size difference yet!" before frantically making notes in his notebook, which Bernard had at some point realized was in fact a repurposed sketchbook with lined paper glued in like an afterthought).
Some couples found their start through dating sites or work or school or any number of sweet little moments. Bernard was reasonably sure upon reflection months later, that they were likely the only pair out there who got their start from feeding globs of congealed dairy to a semi sentient, surprisingly polite void pit. For science. Safely wrapped up in a pair of strong, warm arms with his boyfriends voice rumbling against his ribcage, he found that he didn't mind that at all. They had a mystery tour to plan, and all the time in the world to do it.
Even if he was subjected to several rounds of stern talks about following strange men into empty buildings. It was nice to know people cared, even if he didn't regret following one particular stranger a single bit.