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2022-08-28
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2024-04-01
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losing myself (but then i hear you calling)

Summary:

Tim was always holding his breath. Waiting. Filled with anticipation.

He'd spent most of his childhood that way, alone in Drake Manor hoping his parents would come home soon, crouched behind air conditioning units on top of buildings for the bats to fly by, sitting at a school desk watching the clock more sharply than paying attention to a teacher, clipping film to clothesline to dry and hoping he'd gotten a good shot. So Tim had made a game of it. He'd try to hold his breath for as long as he could while completing a task, just to see how far he could get.

It was easy for simple things, like doing dishes or math problems. It was much, much harder for others. But some things? Some things it made exquisite.

Notes:

y'all, it is a crime how little people have written about *waves hands at my tags* all of that in the same place at the same time.

i am fixing the problem <3

Chapter 1: the suspense

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Tim was always holding his breath. Waiting. Filled with anticipation. 

He'd spent most of his childhood that way, alone in Drake Manor hoping his parents would come home soon, crouched behind air conditioning units on top of buildings for the bats to fly by, sitting at a school desk watching the clock more sharply than paying attention to a teacher, clipping film to clothesline to dry and hoping he'd gotten a good shot. So Tim had made a game of it. He'd try to hold his breath for as long as he could while completing a task, just to see how far he could get. 

It was easy for simple things, like doing dishes or math problems. It was much, much harder for others. But some things? Some things it made exquisite. 

Tim held his breath while he took pictures. He needed perfect stillness to get it right, his heartbeat a metronome keeping the clicking of his finger on the camera button in time. All of his best shots came when Tim held his breath; he knew them from the others the moment they were dry. 

Even when he didn't have his camera in front of his face, Tim would hold his breath while watching Robin, almost on reflex. It was as if Tim holding his breath, waiting for Robin to finish his trick, to land a punch, to make a snarky comment, was the thing that made the moment happen. Tim liked holding his breath for Robin, eliminating distractions, narrowing his focus the same way he did for picture taking but without the lens between them like Tim was even a part of it. 

When Jason died, Tim held his breath while visiting Robin's grave. He held his breath when Batman was about to kick a man who was already unconscious. He held his breath waiting for 911 to pick up the phone so he could prevent Batman from becoming a killer. He held his breath while knocking on Dick Grayson's door, hoping he would return to Robin for Bruce. He held his breath before rushing into saving Nightwing and Batman when there was no other option. He held his breath when Batman finally said he could be Robin. He held his breath when he put on the suit for the first time, looking himself the mirror before he finally let it out, breath shuddery on the exhale with the amount of compressed emotion inherent in the action. 

He'd always dreamed about becoming a hero, but not like this. 

He held his breath, and told himself that he'd do his best to live up to Jason's legacy.

So Tim held his breath while training. He knew he needed to work more on his stamina. He took on running, biking, even completed a short stint in swimming; and through his practice, Tim would limit his breaths. Hold them as long as he could, deprive himself of air until he truly needed it. He counted in the pool, once, only to find he could go three minutes without air, just peacefully sitting the bottom of the pool while his lungs screamed. 

It occurred to him that it probably wasn't a thing that normal people did. But the rush of adrenaline that Tim got from holding his breath, from moderating it in fights— it was joy down his spine and life blazing in his eyes. And it didn't hurt that it made Tim more efficient, too. He knew how to ration air, how to make the most of his lung capacity. He could stretch out an entire run-on sentence from one inhale, could run for longer across the rooftops than he had any right to before he'd begin panting. 

When Tim was holding his breath... there was no way to explain it. His head went quiet. His moves became efficient. He felt, he saw logic, he was more in tune with his body and mind and soul. He was levelheaded and calm, almost like he was meditating or in a trance, but in a way that made him feel like he was burning too hot and close to the sun, like he could explode from how present in himself he was. 

There was no reason to stop. And so he didn't.

When Tim was fifteen and in Titans Tower, there was a breach of security. Tim had been doing some shit on his laptop, finally taking a break from digging through the files on Red Hood again and coffee gone cold beside him when the alarms sounded and the lights flicked to half capacity.

He didn't have much time to prepare, barely able to grab his bo staff before Red Hood himself was there in front of Tim. 

Immediately, Tim inhaled. Then, he readied his staff and held his breath, anticipation shuddering up his bones. He was waiting again. 

And then Red Hood rushed him, spewing hatred, knocking Tim around like he was no more than a paperweight. Tim was frantic, scared, terrified. He felt himself bruising, felt his bones take hits in the way that he could tell brokenness would come soon. 

He was backed into a corner in no time at all, Red Hood bearing over him in his enormity. 

"Your irreverence, your fucking audacity to take on the mantle of a dead boy," Red Hood was saying. "Bet Batman took the first fucking kid he saw. Bet you don't even know what being Robin means—" 

And there was so much wrong with that statement that Tim opened his mouth to argue, but then Red Hood took a knife and placed it at Time's throat. 

Tim inhaled. And then he held his breath. 

"Well, Daddy Bats is gonna get what's coming to him. He's going to see that Robins only end up dead. He's going to know that pain is his only future as long as the Joker stays breathing." 

Tim's brain eased back. It was connecting dots like little pinging pinballs in his head, yarn pulling itself between two pins on a cork board.

"I have so many plans for dear old Brucie."

The knife dug into Tim's throat. He could feel the edge bite into his skin, a slight dullness to the blade bringing pain with it, but Tim did not gasp. He didn't breathe at all, and his lungs were beginning to protest, but it hadn't even been close to Tim's record of three minutes and forty-two seconds yet. Something wet ran down and pooled in the divot of his collarbone: blood. 

"You'll be the first blow, Replacement."

The algorithm in Tim's brain finished running. He was certain he was right, calmness and lucidity snapping with the realization as he inhaled sharply, causing the knife to push in painfully as his throat moved. 

"Jason," Tim said. 

Red Hood stepped back, pulling the knife away as he laughed. "Oh, so you finally realized," he taunted, and then reached up and twisted off his helmet to reveal a face that Tim knew better than his own, he'd spent so long staring at its image, only he was older now, lines sharper and his eyes blazing with green fire. He's beautiful, Tim thought distantly, even as he took in Jason's ugly snarl of anger. The realization was soft: He's going to kill me.

But the thought wasn't the loudest thing in Tim's head. He'd never seen Jason Todd's face so close before now other than in a camera's zoom, and he studied the white streak in Jason's hair with incredulity at how pretty it was. It felt surreal, Tim drawing in a breath to hold it there again like a safety blanket, sticky hot blood still leaking from his throat and soaking into his collar.  

"At least one of you bats has a singular working braincell," Jason bit out. He leaned in, put the knife back against Tim's throat. "Too bad you won't get to use it for much longer." And then the knife drew across Tim's throat.

When Jason left, Tim couldn't have held his breath if he wanted to. He'd passed out choking on his own blood. 

Maybe that should have been Tim's worst memory. Maybe he should have been traumatized. But, like it or not, that had been the first time he'd been touched by the boy he idolized, the fist boy he'd had a crush on, the boy he'd grown up with and watched and admired from afar, the boy he'd tried to emulate every day he put on the Robin costume. 

And Tim was a dreamer. Not in the figurative sense, but literally. Tim's dreams were vivid and real and jarring; his nightmares made him act up the next day and his good dreams made him wistful when they left, too sweet for real life. It started being really confusing when Tim started dreaming, then, of Jason— first in his nightmares, ones he would wake up screaming to, thankful for the emptiness of his house with his parents gone. 

But it wasn't just that. He'd dream of him and Jason both being Robin, soaring over the rooftops together— a dream he'd infrequently had before this debacle— that would twist into Jason suddenly pressing him against a wall and holding a knife to his throat. Or, worse yet, Jason in the dream would kiss him. 

Tim didn't know how to feel. He'd idolized Jason Todd, perhaps even more than he'd idolized Dick. Jason's Robin was his Robin, the one he'd learned while taking all those pictures at night to get to see his kindness and his rough edges, the boy he'd watched from afar at the few galas they'd both been dragged to, the one whose death changed and devastated Tim. And then Jason had come back. Jason had tried to kill him. Jason was calling himself the Red Hood and murdering people and getting involved with a lot of sketchy shit in Crime Alley and he tried to force Bruce into killing the Joker and—

Here Tim was. Having dreams about him that flipped between nightmares and wet dreams. Sometimes, the knife would even make an appearance while he dreamed of himself and Jason getting it on, and it wasn't far from then that Tim accepted that there were maybe things he was into that he didn't want to acknowledge. 

It had been hard enough to look Jason in the eyes before, but now there was a thin enough line in Tim's mind between fear and arousal when it came to the man that he wasn't willing to risk it at all.

And yet, Tim's dreams were relentless enough that Tim, one day, finally gave in to trying holding his breath while getting off. It was stupid. The whole thing was fucking stupid, but he was seventeen and struggling and Jason had gotten a bit better now and last night Tim had seen him take down five guys without killing anyone and sure it had been kinda hot and Tim had held his breath while watching, anticipatory and almost depraved with want.

He was frustrated with himself. With the world. With his family, both his father and the Bats, and he needed to let go and maybe if he tried this, Tim would feel better. He'd get some release.

He held his breath and began.

Tim normally wasn't a person who blushed, but it only took thirty seconds before his cheeks felt hot. He felt the temptation of his dreams lurking below the surface, a voice in the back of his head saying Hold your breath for me, baby. He only flushed deeper before pushing the thoughts away. Another handful of seconds and his mind began to float, the pleasure ratcheting up faster than it ever had before. 

Hand furiously jerking his cock, Tim let himself have a fourth of an exhale and inhale before stopping himself again, trying to get the feeling to intensify at the continued deprivation. It felt so fucking good, his thighs quivering and the hotness of his cheeks spreading down his chest. He wanted to make noise, but knew that would lead to him sucking in the air he desperately needed and so stayed quiet instead, gripping himself harder, stroking again and adding a twist. 

The echoes returned with a vengeance, but Tim was powerless to stop them, needy and literally breathless. Good boy. You only breathe when I say you can. 

He wished for the blade against his throat. Wished for a hand there, wished for anything to give himself a reminder, to help him further down this road because it felt so fucking good and he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold his breath if he was feeling like this.

He let himself have a tiny bit more air; he would have measured it but didn't have the brain capacity to. He squirmed, not being able to hold himself still from feeling and because the deprivation was getting to him, his lungs burning, the movement wasting precious oxygen in his body. His head started to pound, that delicate underwater feeling settling over him deeper like it did every time he deprived himself of air for this long. He closed his eyes, knowing it wouldn't help to keep them open, and was struck by the electric feeling that sparked deep in his gut and up his spine.

That's it baby. Only a little more. 

He couldn't help the small whine he let out, the quick gulps of air that followed, all control melting away embarrassingly fast. 

It only took two more strokes until Tim was coming, breathing down air frantically in an almost unconscious manner for a few moments, stunned. 

He'd never come that fast before, nor that hard. Fuck.

It wasn't long before shame hit him like a backhand. Tim wasn't somebody who lied to himself, and that voice he'd been imagining... There was no denying it had been Jason's voice. Tim had, thus far in his life, successfully not jerked off to Jason before despite the illicit dreams, and now that he had even somewhat, it made himself feel like he was invading the other man's privacy. 

But there was no denying that Tim had been into it. The deprivation, the way it made him ache and need, the intensity of it all had been incredible. And he couldn't lie, the things he'd imagined Jason saying to him had only made the experience better. 

Despite knowing it was a bad idea, Tim knew he'd do it again. He knew, he could just fucking tell, that he was going to become addicted to it, to the feelings inside of him intensifying and ratcheting to the nth degree, the way he could feel his heartbeat in his ears, and especially the inevitable loss of control over himself he'd get when he became too close. Then there was the fantasizing of somebody helping him with that control, taking over when he couldn't stop himself from breathing, continuing the deprivation and the pleasure until Tim finally came, then telling him he'd done well, that he'd been perfect for them.

It was definitely a bad idea.

Tim did it again. And after a while, he stopped trying to imagine he was alone.

Nothing happened. 

Well, that was a lie. Plenty of things happened, but Tim didn't want to think about them. Now, at twenty-one, Tim had gained some much needed perspective. About himself, the world, his parents, Bruce... Jason Todd... 

Tim didn't think much about Jason almost killing him, anymore. He'd gotten over it a long time ago, in fact. 

Besides, Tim had been through much worse incidents. Plenty of them were from his shitty childhood and the other half were tied to being kicked out of his position as Robin due to Damian "needing it more," which although true, had really fucking hurt Tim at the time. After all, what else did he have back then? What kind of stability had that offered him when Bruce was fucking gone and there was a child in Wayne Manor trying to kill him and hurling abuse his way that then usurped his reason for being?

Sure, Tim had known before he was replaceable, but that really took the cake. Not that he was bitter or anything.

But anyway, Jason's attempt on his life? Yeah; not even in his top ten worst moments. It wasn't even the worst or most traumatic murder attempt against his person. At least when Jason tried to kill him, he'd just slit Tim's throat. Tim had no extra time to panic, hadn't even choked on his blood for more than thirty seconds before he'd passed out, and it was all blurry now anyway. That had been rather merciful of Red Hood, all things considered. 

And, to be honest, Tim could understand it, looking back. Not like he was happy for the scar across his throat, but he didn't blame Jason, mad off the Pit and being fed misinformation, for coming after him. He'd been replaced. There was another Robin after the last one had been brutally murdered. Bruce hadn't learned his lesson. And, Tim was— from an outsider's perspective— a typical rich kid, much more "acceptable" to the upper class society that Bruce hung around than a street kid like Jason Todd. With an al Ghul whispering in one ear and the Pit in the other, the logic all lined up. So no. Tim wasn't mad. 

It would have been preferable for it not to happen, but it had. There was no changing it.

And Jason was better now. Bruce dying and then not being dead did something to the dynamic between the Bats, and had the nice payoff of Jason becoming much less of a murderous douche, and in some cases, almost docile. Well, kind of. He was still annoying, but he only murdered people who actually deserved it, like rapists and dirty drug dealers and abusers; the kind of people who had gotten second chances and then third chances and yet had not changed. And he actually worked with the Bats, coming to planning meetings, being on comms with them, and occasionally doing patrol with one of them on a slow night.

Basically, Tim wouldn't have trusted himself with the power of a gun, but he understood where Jason was coming from. He'd had to do things he wasn't proud of when Bruce had been lost in the time stream in order to get him back. The less that he thought of the tests Ra's had put him through, the better.

So, all of that shit between him and Jason was in the past. He could even look Jason in the eyes, now. 

But still nothing happened. Tim was twenty-one and he lived in an apartment in the middle of Gotham. He had friends but didn't talk much to anybody. He was lonely. And Tim still held his breath all of the time; waiting, waiting, waiting for something. He wasn't quite sure what, anymore. But he waited all the same, and hoped. 

Notes:

i promise jason will actually be in chapter two but i hope that you enjoyed this so far! i am... still a novice in the smut department, to say the least (this is fic #2). if you couldn't tell, i am used to writing fleshed-out stories that have way too much exposition (and no porn).

if you have a moment, please share with me your thoughts!! i am down with emojis and one word comments if you don't want to write a whole ass paragraph <3