Wednesday, 16 December ~* Us *~

"We're getting closer," Slade told Robin over breakfast the next morning. Nothing more had happened between them. Robin had been sleeping in his own bed too, but they were touching more and more, and the foot rub last night had left the teen moaning. The teen blushed.

"Yes, well… I wouldn't mind if we-" he started but then realized that Bruce and Alfred were in the room. "Wait… with the case?"

Slade seemingly swallowed a piece of toast the wrong way.

"Yes," Bruce answered in his stead. "We've been able to hack more of their systems. Their electronic security is one of the tightest I've seen, but we're trying to find out more about their physical security.

"Good." Robin took a sip of his black, rhubarb- and strawberry tea and pretended that nothing had happened. It tasted a bit of summer. Slade kept giving him very amused looks for the rest of the meal.

The thing was that Robin was… itchy. The warmth he had started to feel again for the man had more and more changed into lust. He had woken up several times from wet dreams, and he very much wanted to do something about it. At the same time, Slade, of course, needed to be focused on getting well and working on the case, and Robin didn't want to take away from that, even though he knew the man wouldn't mind one bit. Work always came first. Maybe it would have been different if they had been staying in his apartment, but this whole house was like a reminder of duty, seriousness and responsibility.

Damn it, he wanted to jump that man so badly.

He found that he couldn't focus on the paper he was writing if he was sitting on his own, so he took his work down into the cave with him. Bruce was busy up in his office with actual business, but Slade was working tirelessly, peeling away layer after layer of security, discovering hidden servers, local networks and passwords. The employees consisted of a 'board' of sorts, who were the people Slade deemed needed to pay, but also a small staff of security, administrative and maintenance personnel. They electronic way into the building were through them. Once they were allowed to log in from home, from private phones or computers, the system was vulnerable. It was much easier to get into a civilian's computer, and they usually had the passwords necessary stored. Tracking them down took time, of course, but it was worth it.

He got a lot of work done, which was great, because after Slade swore quite loudly, he knew something important had been discovered.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A… complication."

"Tell me."

Slade hesitated, which made Robin irritated.

"Come on! We agreed I was getting involved! We've been training like crazy! Stop treating me like a has-been!" the teen growled.

"It's not that. It's that I just thought of a solution. Involving you. And you're not going to like it."

"Try me."

"We need to completely destroy two areas," Slade explained and pointed to 3D blueprint of the building on one of the screens. "The samples, located here," he said, indicating the fourth floor, "And the server room, located here," he added, pointing to the top floor. "Both floors are extra heavily guarded, as we saw the other night, with loads of electronic security. We can blast our way in, well, I can, the Bat will be pretty useless, but we need to work with the servers in two ways. We need to activate a virus that will corrupt all the data on anything the servers are in contact with, and then we need to blow them up to be absolutely sure. So, we need to get into the server room and work through them, and that will take a while. There is, however, one possible way in. This ventilation shaft. We didn't count on it, because it's much too small. For Bruce and me."

"I don't like it," Robin groaned.

"Said you wouldn't."

Robin enlarged the blueprint and studied the ventilation.

"I'm not sure it's even possible!"

"Well, we'll find out. Is it Alfred I should ask about building materials?"

"Building materials?" Robin asked.

"To make sure it's possible."

The teen still had no idea what the man was on about, but nodded.

Late that evening there was full activity in the Batcave, the screech of metal being cut, the flashes of soldering. They were all helping, but the teen had taken the role as assistant, as he couldn't quite wrap his head around Slade's vision.

At eleven PM it was finally done. A replica of the ventilation shaft Robin would have to get through. It seemed impossibly narrow.

"I don't even know how to do this," Robin admitted nervously.

"Don't worry, I've called in an expert." Slade said. "Just as soon as they get their test results, they will be here."

"You've… what?" Bruce exclaimed. "You have invited someone here?"

"Oh, don't worry," Slade smirked. "You won't mind."

To be Continued…