A/N - Have you got Daddy Issues? I've got em too! Come bask in the glory of our problems, cuz I've got the kind of fic to indulge them...

BUT, a friendly word of warning to anyone in their low 20's and below that fictional situations like this one are fictional for a reason. In real life, if a mentor you had as a teen/young-20-something tries to initiate a sexual or romantic relationship, RUN LIKE HELL. Real men are NOT BATMAN, and what is presented as romantic, equal, healthy, and positive in this FICTIONAL FIC would be extremely ABUSIVE in real life.

Any older guys, and especially those who've mentored you in some way, are seeking someone young to MANIPULATE and ABUSE if they try to initiate a romance with you and you're 22-23 and younger. Be aware that abusers often love bomb at first, acting amazing and wonderful and all the things you and your daddy issues yearn for... and then once you're reeled in, the nightmare begins. Being at a significantly different life stage than your potential partner, if you're younger and inexperienced (meaning hasn't lived on your own, held a job, paid your own bills, finished school/career training, possibly lacks sexual/romantic experience, and/or lacks social experience and confidence) sets you up for abuse because of the inherent power differential. No matter how great they seem, that power differential exists with a significant age gap when you're so young. Don't be deceived.

Get therapy or self help books for your daddy issues and use fanfic to safely indulge that little hole in your heart that will always be there, longing for a strong, protective older guy to sweep you off your feet. Fanfic daddies are safe! Real live ones aren't when you're at an inexperienced life stage compared to them. Learn to give yourself what your heart longs for and then go out and find an equal partner with your healed heart and soul. Love you guys, stay safe out there!

TW - lemons ahead! Read at your own risk. OBVIOUSLY some mild Daddy kink but it's treated playfully. No romance or attraction starts AT ALL until Steph is an adult. She's 19 in the first chapter but even so the romance doesn't start until she's 21.

The whole fic is finished, I'll post a chapter a night. Don't at me about timelines or canon, I do what I want XD

Friendship Catching Fire (A 5+1 Fic)

5 Steps to Building a Fire + Fanning the Flames

Step 1 - Kindling

Steph wasn't sure if her codes for the Batcave would still work. Did Batman bother invalidating a dead Robin's security access?

Apparently not.

Sentiment? Guilt? Grief? She couldn't say why he had left her codes active, but they were, and she was past the gate and riding her bike - her actual, old school, had to pump the pedals herself bicycle, into the BatCave.

Dead girls' moms had bills to pay and carrying the insurance on a motorized scooter that had no daughter left to ride it hadn't been worth it. But Steph's old bike had still been out in the shed, crammed in with Christmas decorations that hadn't been put up in two years, and a broken weed whacker, and old paint cans, and faded rolls of wallpaper that had been there since Steph was a kid.

He was at the Batcomputer as she walked up, her bike left just beyond the gated entrance to the Batcave. Steph knew that Tim had told him that she was alive; she would have been more nervous coming to see him if he hadn't. But she still couldn't bring herself to have Tim tell him when, exactly, she was coming over. Steph hadn't been sure that she wouldn't chicken out halfway here.

B's head swiveled when he heard her footsteps approach. Tim was currently at Titans Tower, Dick was in Bludhaven, Cass was on patrol and had promised her privacy, and Jason? The idea was laughable.

His blue eyes locked on hers from across the cave, and she wasn't so far away that she couldn't see how suddenly wet they were. She froze.

Memories began flooding her - the final moments that she and B had spent together, when they'd both been convinced that she was dying. Dr. Thompkins had said she was, after all, and who were they to doubt his childhood doc? She had certainly felt like she was dying, after having been butchered for three days straight by Black Mask.

B had held her hand as she lay on Leslie's clinic table and he'd promised that her baby's adoptive family would be taken care of, that her daughter would have everything she needed. It had meant a lot to Steph that he hadn't forgotten that Spoiler had been a mom. Was a mom. Was still sort of a mom. Was a birth mom whose baby would never be able to grow up and come looking for her, except in a cemetery. So they'd thought.

"Was I ever really Robin?" Steph had asked Batman as she lay supposedly dying, doubts plaguing her that it had all been a sham, a ploy to get Tim back into the suit.

"Of course you were," he'd said, sounding shocked that she'd had to ask the question - shocked and maybe a little bit guilty, too.

And now, as she stood in the entrance to the Batcave remembering, her eyes were suddenly as wet as his. But he wasn't at the computer anymore; he was standing in front of her, pulling her into a hug - a fierce, tight, desperately relieved hug that Steph never wanted to step out of.

And B was sobbing.

He wasn't crying. No, Batman was sobbing, and Steph was, too, into his t-shirt with her arms gripping his chest like she was scared that if she let go she'd lose him like he'd lost her, like they'd both lost each other.

Minutes passed as Batman and Robin helplessly bawled, powerless to halt their tears. Eventually, as sobs reduced to trickles interspersed with sniffles,

one of his hands began stroking the back of her head as he cradled her more gently.

Steph finally managed to choke out, "I'm sorry!"

"No," B snarled, low and deep, pulling his face away from her hair so he could face her. "I'm sorry. You have nothing to apologize for. Nothing," he told her in a tone that warned her not to argue.

But she was Stephanie Brown. Of course she was going to argue with Batman. Who else would dare to? It wouldn't do to have him getting more arrogant than he'd undoubtedly become in the past two years since she'd been presumed dead, with no one around to challenge him like his Girl Wonder used to do.

"I never should have started that gang war," she protested, but he gripped her shoulders so tightly that it hurt.

"I never should have fired you," he said flatly, meeting her eyes with self-recrimination. "Not ever. I will never forgive myself for that."

"You have to forgive yourself," she said firmly. "You have to, B." He scowled in frustration.

"I let my fears control me," he said. "I was too afraid of losing you like I lost Jason, so I fired you. And ended up condemning you to an even worse fate," he said, his face wrenching up miserably with guilt.

Steph didn't know what to say to that, because while being beaten near to death with a crowbar before dying in an explosion sounded awful, she would have picked the Joker's methods over Black Mask's any day.

"I made bad choices," she said, though, because she had, really. She had been an impetuous, stupid kid and she had gotten in way over her head stirring up trouble that she had no business playing with. And she had paid like hell for it.

"I made you feel like you had to prove yourself to me," B countered, staring into her soul with eyes plagued with regret. "None of it was your fault, Steph. None of it," he insisted.

"I will believe that," she said with a gritty determination to her voice, "when you decide to forgive yourself."

Batman and Robin stared each other down in the Batcave, still wrapped up in each other's arms with soggy faces leaking onto the floor. B took a breath and was clearly going to argue more, so Steph cut him off.

"You cannot take the blame for Roman Sionis being a sadist," she said authoritatively, "or for believing the word of the doctor that you and Alfred have both trusted since your childhood." His eyes started overflowing again.

"I should have been more suspicious," he sniffed. "If I had just come to visit Leslie once…" he said.

"She knew you wouldn't. Why would you?" Steph said sharply. "You had no reason to go to Africa. You had no reason to suspect that I hadn't died or that she'd kidnapped me. It wasn't your fault, B," she repeated. "Leslie hit you where she knew you were vulnerable."

"I won't ever forgive her," he growled.

"That, we can agree on," Steph said with a long sigh. B sighed, too, and stepped back, wiping his eyes on his arm before slinging it companionably around her shoulders.

"You've seen your mom?" he asked, as he walked her over towards the Batcomputer. "I know you've seen Tim," he added, looking pleased.

"Yeah," Steph said quietly. "My mom's a mess. Happy, but enraged and devastated, too. If she wasn't always so knocked out on her pain pills, I think she'd maybe try to kill Leslie." B glanced down at her.

"But she won't?" he asked with some concern. She shook her head.

"I don't think so," she said. "Mom's too depressed and drugged up these days to do much of anything. If my dad was still alive, he'd probably find a way to kill Leslie, though." B grunted his agreement with that statement, if not his approval.

Probably for the best that Arthur Brown, the Cluemaster, had died in a Suicide Squad mission, Steph thought to herself, but it was strange to come home to the fact of her dad being long since dead and gone. It felt like she'd been cheated out of the final chapter of her complicated relationship with her sometimes abusive father. One more thing that Leslie had stolen from her, she thought with regret.

"Tim is happy," B said quietly, with a little smile. An answering one lit up Steph's face.

"I am, too," she said, feeling it deep in her heart, all the way down to her bones.

Neither of them needed to acknowledge that Batman was happy. His joy and relief was shimmering in the air all around them.

A/N - This fic is completely written. I'll post a new chapter every day BUT for a bonus here's chapter 2 right away so we can get to the good stuff where the romance starts.

You can follow me on Tumblr as River9Noble