Archive of Our Own ^beta

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. 

Chapter Text

Tim gasped loud for air. 

Another night, another nightmare. This was his routine; caffeine caffeine caffeine until he dropped into sleep so heavy that it lasted twelve hours before the nightmares would creep in and wake him up. Then he’d stay awake again as long as he could, bolstered by the coffee that he might as well just start injecting into his veins at this point.

He’d become an addict to the stuff way too young, unsupervised enough that he could get away with it, nobody the wiser, nobody telling him that it would stunt his growth, Timothy. It was fine. 

He was fine. His lungs burned and his face was wet, but Tim didn’t remember the nightmare. These days he often didn't, which was the way he preferred it. That was why he operated the way he did. 

Light poured in through the window, golden hour shining on his face. He’d slept through the day. Optimal. That meant that he could patrol tonight. 

But in the meantime, Tim unwound the covers from himself and got up to go to the roof. To stare out into his city, take it all in, breathe the smog and hear the noise and pretend to be above it all. Hold his breath a minute. Catch it. Find stillness in something of his own creation, find peace somewhere. 

Tim was lonely. But he was fine. 

On a whim, he grabbed his camera and brought it with him as he chose to take the stairs up to the roof of his building, listening intently to the sound of his footsteps on the cement. 

When he got up to the roof, Tim brought the camera to his face, and it was almost like old times; just like old times because all that ever mattered was Tim and the camera and holding his breath to click the shutter. The sunset was beautiful over Gotham’s sky and Tim needed exposure to capture it correctly. Something within him sparked at this tried and true, timeless act throughout his life, coal-embers in his chest sparking to light at the feeling that the act of taking pictures brought him, even when he had no subjects in action to frame against the sky. But that was okay. That was fine, when Tim felt alive for some reason, for no good reason other than remembering why he fell in love with Gotham in the first place, why he fell in love with photography. 

“Hey, Tim.” 

Tim stumbled. His picture would be blurry, but he had plenty of other ones that would turn out from the batch he’d just taken. 

He turned around and for a moment thought that he must be hallucinating, because there on his roof was Steph, who he hadn’t seen in a number of months. 

“Hi,” he said. “What’s— not that I’m not glad to see you, because I am, but— why are you here?” 

Her hands were stuffed into her pockets, the picture of nonchalance in everything except that her eyes narrowed as she kept her gaze trained on him. “I haven’t seen you in months, Tim,” she said. “Nobody has.” 

Okay, that was kind of rude. Fair, but also kind of rude, and Tim took offense at the accusation. “I’ve been busy.” 

Steph employed the flattest look in her arsenal at him, which only irked Tim further while also pinging a little ball of guilt back and forth around his brain like a pinball. However, it wasn’t a lie; he had been busy with some online commissions for setting up some database management for a few companies and also aggregating some data and also— okay maybe this last one was more out of boredom— pen testing like five of Babs’s simulations. But she did drop a few thousand bucks in his bank account as compensation, so like. He had been working. 

So, he told that to Steph. “I’ve been working! Just ask Babs.” 

“Babs is the reason I’m here, Tim,” Steph said dryly. “She said you’re relentlessly attacking her cyber shit and it’s getting concerning. So, she told me to come check on you. Though I am pleasantly surprised that you’re actually up taking pictures and not just still sleeping or doing another one of your little nerd projects with five cups of cold coffee next to you or something.” 

Tim deflated a little bit at that. Had he really gotten so predictable? 

“You should come out patrolling with me tonight,” Steph said. 

“I was going to anyway.” 

“Great!” She sauntered over to Tim and linked their arms. “Sounds like a plan, then.” 

Tim knew it was an intervention. He just had to wait for the other shoe to drop. And, lo and behold, they hadn’t gotten more than forty-five minutes into patrol before Steph cracked about it. Her lack of patience disappointed the small, lofty, analytical part of Tim’s brain running in the background that had projected she’d at least get through an hour fifteen.

“Maybe you should come to the Manor for a while. Or to my apartment, the Clocktower, Dick’s place… y’know. Visit or something.” They were taking a breather on a rooftop after chasing away some muggers, Steph and Tim falling back into partnership as easily as riding a bike. As with all of the Bats, there was history between the two of them, but all of the traumas were old wounds that Tim could almost look at fondly, now. 

The suggestion was floated, light, made inconsequential by her tone of voice and the way that she wasn’t looking at Tim when she said it, staring out into the Gotham abyss in all of its bloodthirsty sanctuary.

Tim shifted his eyes to her. Thought about having someone grappling alongside him, a voice over comms, backup next to him that O didn’t have to call in behind his back. He thought of the way he and Steph had quipped back and forth too quickly for the criminals to keep up with, the balance between them keeping the job from becoming the slog it could sometimes feel like. 

It brought Tim back to days long ago: camera nights watching and longing, anxiously running comms with sore limbs, bright Robin colors and Batman’s rare smile and rarer laugh. He’d lived the best and some of the worst times of his life on these rooftops, the breeze in his hair and biting cold wind. Breath held. Mind ready and sharp with alacrity. He’d forgotten how that felt.

Tim knew that a bit ago, he would have said no to Steph’s offer. A few months ago he would have kept going on, kept up his routine and scorned her help. But the truth was that Tim was lonely. He was tired of holding his breath. He just wanted some place in which he could exhale, and he didn’t know when, but his apartment had become suffocating in its white walls and empty coffee cups and takeout bins rotting away. 

He’d wanted distance. Wanted alone, because alone didn’t let anyone close enough to hurt, and Tim had been scorned enough. He’d been beaten enough. Disbelieved, disregarded, disposed of enough.  

He wasn’t enough, he’d thought.

But, even still believing so, Tim was tired. Above Gotham’s noise had put his issues into perspective in the way that it always did, letting Logical Detective Tim take over and showing him the path he was going on, isolated and alone. 

If you do not let a wound breathe, it gets infected. Infection spreads to sepsis. Sepsis leads to death. 

Tim was all wound and no breath. Plus, missing a spleen meant that he was more sensitive to things like sepsis anyway. 

If Tim kept going on like this, it was very possible that he’d die. 

Gotham howled below him. Tim let out a breath, long and slow and controlled until all the stale air in his lungs was pushed out.

“Maybe I should,” he agreed softly. “Maybe I should.” 

But at the end of patrol, when Steph was looking at Tim expectantly to either come with her or go someplace else to see people that, presumably, were waiting for him, Tim turned away. His hands were shaking. He needed another cup of coffee, he thought absently as the dawn was beginning to surface, reflecting off of the water up onto the buildings of the city, casting a glow down dingy streets that almost made Gotham look like an ethereal gothic painting. Tim wanted to capture it in film. He wanted to go to sleep. He needed to stay awake longer, he needed to hold his breath again and let his heart pound in his ears and let calm overtake him and he didn’t want to see any of the other Bats today. 

“Red Robin?” Steph asked, hopeful.

“See you, Batgirl,” Tim said instead of anything else, anything more. 

The chasm between them widened, the old gaps that had disappeared while they were patrolling snapping back into place, pulling up the traumas that had felt so far away before but now felt exposed and raw like scar tissue torn back open. 

“Soon though, right Red?” She asked, still trying to throw Tim a rope he could hold onto. 

Tim didn’t even try to catch it. “Sure. Soon.” And then he was gone, blipping back into his apartment like he’d never left, showering and putting his gear away where it belonged after giving it the maintenance it needed. 

Even though he’d stopped being WE’s CEO a while ago, he logged in to the company servers and fished around with a few interesting files in R&D for a while, then went scanning one of Babs’s projects for bugs, correcting the two he encountered, which were both typos. 

When he was done, Tim stared into his monitor until it went dark, showing his reflection across its surface, all hollow eyes and pale skin and a calculating, sallow expression. A ghost. 

Was this what Tim had wanted? Was this what he had become? He thought that maybe he would have been disgusted with himself not too long ago, but then again Tim felt like he lacked the strength of will to care more than the smarting of cognitive dissonance at the image of himself. 

Tim had always been resilient. He’d shouldered burdens that most people would crumple under like a wet paper bag. He’d been practically self-sufficient since he was twelve years old. He’d run around Gotham at night since he was nine. He’d been Robin and Red Robin. He’d trained under Lady Shiva, Batman, Nightwing, Ra’s al fucking Ghoul. He brought back Bruce from the timestream when everybody but the League of Assassins thought he was crazy, then betrayed them and walked away still breathing. His idol, his first crush had died and then come back to life and beat the shit out of him. He’d faced all the Gotham Rogues at some point or another and walked away to tell the tale. He’d killed. He’d saved. He’d been dosed with fear toxin six separate times. His parents had died. Robin had been taken from him. He’d been forced into being CEO of Wayne Enterprises. He’d led Young Justice. His friends had died. He’d mourned, yelled, screamed— and then he kept on moving on.

None of that had been enough to kick Tim down. But now, here, after all of that— now was the time that Tim had become like this. 

There was something funny there. Something ironic that he wanted so badly to be able to laugh about or cry about or scream about but instead there was nothing. He remembered that, once and only once, when Tim had been training to be Robin, he had woken up in the middle of the night, his mind racing and breath panting and he’d run downstairs to the Batcomputer. Tim had typed and typed until he found where Bruce had put Jason’s grave. It hadn’t been in the Wayne family plot, but he’d buried Jason next to Catherine Todd instead in Gotham’s local cemetery. 

The next day after school, Tim had gone there. Spent his own pocket change on flowers. Walked. And then he’d cried. The cemetery had been empty, isolated, cold. Far away from any sign of life other than Tim himself, who had raged and ranted. He’d broken a tree branch off a tree. Hit Jason’s solid, four-inch-thick marble headstone over and over until the branch broke. Cried until there were no more tears, shouted until there were no more words. And when he’d finished, emerging from the gates feeling like a husk of a person, Alfred had been waiting for him inside the car that normally picked him up from school and there were lingering tears that Tim watched drip down his face through the glass. 

It was the only time Tim ever saw Alfred cry. We carry heavy burdens, Master Timothy, Alfred had said, twenty minutes into the drive. But we cannot let them carry us.  

Tim had known exactly what he meant. 

He thought that, now, his burdens had somehow sprouted legs and picked him up for a run. A part of him, the part that had surfaced atop Gotham’s rooftops, argued for Tim to get up, pick up the phone and talk to someone, to go to sleep instead of forcing his body into deprivation. 

Instead, he picked up his hand and wiggled the mouse to make his monitor start back up. He pulled up the lines to the outside of the Batcomputer’s security system. Then, he inhaled, stopped thinking, and began to try his best to force his way in from the outside.

Days passed. Tim shivered in their weight, blankets around his shoulders doing nothing to coax the heat into staying. He felt himself shouting behind a locked door and ignored it. It was easy to push off when it was words he didn’t want to hear anyway.

He hadn’t gone out or seen anybody since Steph had stopped by. Distantly, Tim thought about how his behavior was worrying, and then dismissed the thought. Rot sat heavy in his lungs, weighty and ensuring that his breaths were never full. 

Today, he was curled up with a carton of noodles and his laptop, editing old pictures he’d taken before picking up the mantle of Robin. It was funny to him, now, the way that he’d framed certain shots; the balance just off center and the lighting less optimal than it could have been. He cropped and flipped images and adjusted exposure, flirting with greyscale and making the pictures more refined, the images of old Bats with costumes from ten-odd years ago filling his gaze and his mind. 

There were so many pictures of Jason. Tim was keeping his mind off of his current bullshit by burying himself in old bullshit, and so he reminisced about Jason’s tenure as Robin, and Tim’s embarrassing, enormous crush on him. 

Tim wasn’t a regular kid. He’d been sniffing around in places no child should be both online and in real life. His socialization had been lacking supremely . 

He’d wanted Dick to be his older brother so badly, stared at that photo of them together at the circus and thought about the bone-crushingly tight hug Dick had given him and the blindingly bright smile he’d flashed at Tim. Dick was larger-than-life, perfection in the air and ground. He was golden, and he was a hero that Tim tried and mostly failed to capture on film. 

Even if it had been overshadowed a little bit by everything else happening back in those bleak days, Tim could remember with startling ease the wonder he’d felt when Dick had been called upon to train him, the first few times they’d had real conversations, and all of the times Dick had taken him train surfing early into his tenure as Robin. He’d always felt a little giddy, a little like he wasn’t cool enough to be hanging out with Dick fucking Grayson, until he got to know the other man a bit better and learned how much of a disaster he was in real life before the hero worship faded into affection. 

But Jason was a different story. Tim got to watch him from day one. If Dick had been the light of Gotham, Jason had been her heart. Tim had watched him go from stumbling landings with his grappler to knocking out perps with one kick. He’d cheered on Jason’s successes and winced when he took a hit. Jason was closer to Earth than Dick Grayson. He was a street kid who just wanted to make sure that nobody went through the same shit he had. He spent a little more time doing community outreach, talking to common folks, checking in with people he’d saved before to ensure they were still doing alright. Tim had plenty of photos of Jason handing out cocoas and scarves to the working girls on cold winter nights. He was endearing. He was so, so cool to Tim, and closer in age to him. 

If Tim had been socialized better, maybe he would have known sooner that it was a crush, but he hadn’t. He’d been starving for attention, affection, anything— and he remembered thinking that it would just be nice to sit on the rooftops with Jason and share some ice cream or something. Just talk, about anything, and Tim would be cool and not spout off fun facts or stupid statistics that his parents always told him were boring and nobody wanted to hear. 

It wasn’t until after Jason died that he’d truly realized what his feelings had been. 

And hadn’t that been fun, realizing that he’d still felt that way about a boy who was dead? He’d felt a little disgusting, like a fraud because he hadn’t even known Jason, not like Bruce or Alfred or Barbara or Dick had, and he didn’t deserve to mourn him. 

But he had. And, in mourning, in memoriam, he’d taken up the role that Jason had left behind and Dick refused to return to. It was the only thing Tim could do to honor him that didn’t feel disingenuous. He knew he’d never be good enough, but he had to try. He had to. 

Fuck everything between now and then, but Tim still somehow felt the same way as he had back then. His weak spot for Jason had never really gone away, and amidst all of those confusing dreams Tim had about him, he figured he’d just be fucked for life over Jason. 

And so here he was. Adjusting the brightness on one of the clearer shots he’d gotten of Robin fighting some of Black Mask’s goons, a wicked grin on his face while he kicked out some kneecaps. There was some kind of muted pang in his chest at the ferocity of Jason’s that shone through in the picture, but Tim didn’t let it hit him. 

From behind the door in his brain, Tim could hear a thought scrambling through. Clean out the wound and stop hiding from yourself and the world! Call someone. You’re going to get sepsis. Call someone! 

Tim flicked to the next picture. He put it in black and white. Jason’s smile was still the most blinding thing he’d ever seen.

Tim was lying in bed unmoving again. There was sunlight drifting down from a window and alighting on his skin; heavy eyes and heavier emotions, a suitcase on his chest full of something he couldn’t quite name. 

His skin, he realized as he stared at it, was unblemished. Unblemished. Unblemished.

He couldn’t recall the last time it didn’t have at least one bruise before now, from any of the miscellaneous things he did whether it be as innocuous as bumping his shin into the coffee table in the morning or sinister as a perp on patrol knocking him good.

It didn’t settle him to see the blue veins run up and down his limbs unobscured by color. It didn’t make his life better not to have a million little hurts scattered across his body because he held them instead in his brain.

Well. That wasn’t entirely true. Tim did have bags under his eyes, purpling and sunken into his face. Bruising not caused by a bump of any sort, but instead the way he was going about life, like some of the pain had dripped down his ocular nerve and out of his eye like tears to gather on his face. But when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, all he could see was something sallow, something wan, something waxy and mannequin-esque about the way he looked— so he’d stopped looking.

There was something about pain, about loneliness, that made him think it was better to be isolated. As if wallowing in his own agony didn’t make things worse but instead wiped the dew off of his eyelashes so he could see; checked out and analytical above it all.

All of the ways he’d hurt people spiraled through his thoughts. He stared at the back of his hand, its boniness and how his translucent skin covered up finger muscle and calloused palms. He felt nothing. He felt nothing.

He felt.

Nothing.

Tim was sleeping too much, and he knew it. He was depressed and he knew it. However, knowing and doing were two different things, and Tim was making no changes to his daily routine. If he was tired, he’d turn over and go back to sleep. If the train of his sins drifted by again, he’d watch it pass clinically and spiral.

Either it would go away or it wouldn’t, and Tim had never been an optimist.

In his bed, curled up underneath a weighted blanket that discouraged him from moving even an inch, a video played in his headphones that he wasn’t listening to. It was an interesting topic, but something about it had caused his brain to beg off of listening.

He would have dozed off again had it not been for the clanging.

Immediately, Tim sat up. The headphones fell out of his ears and he cocked his head like a dog, waiting for any more noise.

It only took him another set of sounds to realize that there was somebody in his apartment, their footsteps echoing and heavy like they didn’t care if Tim was already inside or not. The possible people it could be whittled down to a pissed off Bat, Ivy or Harley on a prank, or an extremely competent and somehow oblivious robber.

Tim almost buried himself back in the blanket. It wasn’t a fucking robber, and Harley and Ivy didn’t bother him without calling these days. It was a Bat. Of course it was. And since it had been Steph last time— a ping of guilt rattled around at the thought of how she’d asked him, fucking asked him so goddamn nicely to come home with her and he hadn’t — this time Tim could almost completely count on the form outside to be Dick.

Damian wouldn’t do it in a million years, and Jason? Yeah right. Fat fucking chance of that happening. Cass’s footsteps were much lighter than Dick’s, and Bruce just wouldn’t have shown up like this without saying something since he did, shockingly, understand the concept of boundaries these days.

Whatever. Tim sighed, gathered the blanket up around his shoulders, and began to shuffle out into the hallway. No need to perform around it, Dick had seen him worse and Tim couldn’t have been bothered. Dick wasn’t going to make any kind of comment about how he looked. He would just heat him up some soup or something he’d carried over from the Manor and fuss over Tim for a bit before leaving. The sooner Tim went out there, the sooner he got it over with, the better.

But when he turned around the hallway corner, there was Red Hood in his kitchen. Tim stopped breathing, suddenly aware of how much he probably looked like shit and deeply, deeply embarrassed about it. Self-consciousness was weird to feel after so many weeks of not giving a fuck, but Tim welcomed the feeling’s brightness against the gaping gray blur even as it burned. 

“The fact that you have a kitchen nicer than most restaurants in the Bowery and refuse to use it is a crime against humanity, Timmy,” he said. 

Tim winced. “I don’t cook,” he said without thinking, his voice rough from lack of use. He was content to eat anything edible, and takeout created much less mess and tasted better than either the shitty ramen he made himself or microwave meals. 

Hood’s helmet was on the counter and his jacket was draped over the back of one of the chairs at the island table. A pot of something was simmering on the stove and a pan was heating up. A brown bag was sitting on Tim’s countertop with gloves thrown next to it, and Hood was wielding one of the knives out of the knife block, cutting an onion into tiny little pieces. 

“If you don’t cook,” Red Hood said, “then why do you have a kitchen this decked out?” 

Tim could barely hear him, hyperventilating a little bit at the smooth motion of the knife in his hands like a callback to his teenage dreams. 

“Like I said: crime against humanity,” he continued. 

Tim felt like a real person for the first time since patrolling with Steph. His ears burned and his stomach was full of shame and there was a hint of heat curling down Tim’s spine at the image of those forearms and hands so deftly working a knife; an image his brain had played out millions of times in a different context. His breath caught in his throat and stayed there. 

And Jason— it wasn’t fair to call him Red Hood when he wasn’t wearing the hood or the jacket or the gloves; it wasn’t fair to call him Red Hood when he was in Tim’s apartment fucking cooking for him — just kept talking as if Tim was a functional human being. 

“That’s not even mentioning the sorry state of your fridge. For all this apartment looks like a place of luxury, you’ve got shit-all food-wise. Thank God I decided to pick up everything I needed on my way here.” 

Tim had been scrambling to get a hold of himself all through this speech, so once Jason was done, he swallowed back all embarrassment and interjected, “Why are you here, anyway?”

Jason employed a look that was both flat and concerned. “Well, Babs said that you were going on a cybersecurity overhaul binge, and then Steph told everyone you promised to drop by sometime after you guys hung out, but then you never came. And you see, Timmers, when you tell someone you’ll visit and then don't? They tend to get a little pissed off and worried and shit. Unfortunately, Alfie said he was too busy to drop by, but I had time, so I’m here.” 

Tim’s mouth still felt full of cotton, but he ignored it, scrambling up a facade of normality. “And Dick?”

Jason took the cutting board to the pan and dumped the onions in, which started sizzling immediately. “Off world,” he replied, and grabbed a head of garlic, beginning to break off a couple of cloves. “So you’re stuck with me, sorry. Figured I was better than the demon brat, at least.” 

Well, Tim supposed that made sense. Jason was a better choice than Damian. Maybe. 

Not really, actually, but Tim wasn’t in the best of shape right now. The theories frantically red-stinging themselves in the back of his brain were ignored. 

Still standing like an idiot in the hallway, Tim realized that he did not want to be here right now; not like this, anyway. He definitely looked like shit. He was surprised and a little thankful that Jason hadn’t mentioned it, actually, since he was literally carrying a blanket around his shoulders like a cape. 

Tim cleared his throat. “Um, do you… need me right now?” 

Jason looked up from smashing the garlic cloves with the side of his knife— Jesus, Tim’s brain was an unholy place with the things he was thinking about Jason and knives and crushing all at the same time— and raised both of his eyebrows. Realizing how that sentence sounded, Tim cringed internally and shuffled his feet. 

“I mean, like, here? You don’t need help, right? Because if you don’t, I’m gonna—” he gestured back down the hallway as a euphemism for get my shit back in order because I’m a fucking wreck and we all know it but I’d appreciate it if we continued not to outwardly acknowledge that fact. 

Jason’s expression softened, and it took everything in Tim not to melt into the ground on the spot. Soft eyes humanized Jason so fucking much, made him look like such a walking contradiction, and Tim wanted Jason to throw him against a wall and then kiss him sweetly; give him a hard order and then tell him he’d done well. 

“Yeah, babybird,” he said, tone warm. “Go ahead, I’ve got this kitchen shit on lock.” And he waved. The fucking knife. Around in the air. Like it was an extension of his fucking arm. Like he knew exactly how to wield it, like he had perfect control with it— and of course he did, Tim had seen him fight with a kriss a million times, but this was different because he wasn’t in the right headspace to file it away in a box and he could actually see Jason’s skin and his eyes and— fuck, Tim needed to get out of here yesterday. 

“Cool, sounds good,” Tim said, only minorly strained, before turning on his heels and marching back into his room with his blanket cape flowing out behind him, all dignity waning by the nanosecond. 

“Soup’ll be ready in an hour!” Jason called, and all Tim could do was stick out one hand in a weak thumbs-up before he completed his retreat. 

Once he’d slammed the door to his room shut, Tim immediately dropped his blanket to the floor and hurried to the ensuite before slamming that door too. He turned around and threw himself against its surface with a groan, letting the back of his head knock against the wood. 

His fingertips felt fuzzy and his cheeks felt hot and his brain was melting. Jason Todd. In his apartment. In his fucking kitchen with rolled up sleeves and exposed forearms wielding a fucking knife and looking at Tim with soft eyes and calling him nicknames and cooking soup for him and being gentle with him? How was this his life? 

His fourteen-year-old self would be freaking the fuck out if he could see Tim right now. Fuck, so would seventeen-year-old Tim, and probably for very different reasons. 

Tim hated when people treated him like he was fragile, but for some reason, the way Jason had done it didn’t seem like pity, didn’t rub him the wrong way or leave him feeling ready to drop kick someone. Then again, Tim’s soft spot for Jason could have also eased the way some. Tim had forgiven the whole Jason almost killing him thing a bit fast.

It didn’t help that there were at least ten fantasies of Tim’s that started out just like this: Jason butting into Tim’s life, wanting to help, wanting to connect, wanting to apologize or get to know him or whatever bullshit excuse Tim’s brain cooked up that time. And then they’d tentatively edge their way into a relationship or let the tension build up until it broke and they fucked or they’d just get straight to it because Tim was allowed to have fantasies with no substantiation in the real world. 

He sighed, long and slow. This wasn’t the time for that. There was never really a good time for his inconvenient feelings, anyway, and he’d prefer it if he was able to look Jason in the eye when he emerged. 

Deciding to stop procrastinating and get to it, Tim shucked off his clothes and stepped into the shower, bypassing the mirror without a single look. He didn’t want to know how awful he looked, how unappealing he must be right now, how disgusting. 

The thought seemed to make time stretch into taffy, long and slow, turning the saturation quotient down on the picture of his eyesight. Tim’s hand reaching for the dial of the shower extended in slow-motion. The bright, sharp, acidic feelings sitting in his brain and stomach lost their poignancy and dulled. 

That was right. Tim wasn’t doing well. 

Exhaustion hit him like a knock to the head. Why had he let this happen? What was he doing?

His hand finally hit the dial, and the world sped up just a little bit; enough for Tim to mechanically make his way through the shower without any nonsense occurring, just functions. He felt a little like a robot, actually. Just a program. Just code. A rules engine running its little checks and balances through a system, keeping everything in its place. 

He stepped out of the other side, clean, patting himself down with a towel impersonally. He didn’t wipe the steam coming off of the mirror as he brushed his hair, looking straight into the water droplets and their beady, cloudy white; nonreflective fog. 

Tiredly, Tim thought there was a metaphor there. 

He turned away from the mirror and got dressed. 

When Tim returned to the kitchen, his hair wet and clothes clean, he was not prepared for what awaited him. Somehow, despite knowing exactly what he would find, it was still surprising to see Jason in his apartment. 

The perhaps only piece of furniture in the entire apartment that wasn’t luxurious was the oak table that Tim had bought from a thrift shop on a whim when he was seventeen for reasons he still didn’t understand. It had sat in storage, unused for years, until Tim had bought this place and summarily the database of his brain popped out the fact that, yes , he did already have a dining table, meaning that it would be a waste to buy another one. 

And there the table was, but instead of its usual one lonely plate it was set up like people actually lived here and not just existed within its space. Jason had fished out place mats from who only knew where and put down two steaming bowls of soup, complete with cutlery and paper towels serving as napkins. 

And there was Jason himself, looking at home in Tim’s place, already hand washing one of the pans he’d been using earlier, his back to Tim. He was highlighted by the window around the top half of his figure, his broad back blocking out enough light that Tim could only dryly swallow at the sight. 

He simultaneously wished he could stay in that moment forever and be immolated where he stood, and so lingered only another beautiful, torturous second before he announced his presence.

“Hey.” 

Jason turned his head over his shoulder. “Hey!” He called, “Go ahead and sit down, I’ll be there as soon as I finish rinsing this pan.” 

Feeling impossibly jazzed up and sedated, like a dream that was in the middle of changing to a nightmare, Tim drifted to the table and took a seat, looking down to see a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Homemade from scratch. By Jason. 

When the chair across from him pulled out, Tim watched Jason as he lowered himself into the chair. Jason’s shoulders were lax and there was water beading on his forearm, sleeves still rolled up above his elbows. His face was pensive as he looked right back at Tim, and when their eyes caught, Tim didn’t look away. 

After a moment, Jason raised an eyebrow. “I made soup,” he said. “You gonna eat it?” 

Tim closed his eyes and sighed before opening them again. “Yes,” he said tightly, and then picked up his spoon and took a bite. 

Flavor spread across his tongue. The broth was rich, but not enough to make him feel like he was choking on it. There was a blend of herbiness and gentle spice, the vegetables and chicken and noodles soft but not disintegrating. It was leagues better than anything Tim had eaten in weeks. 

He couldn’t help the pleased sound that escaped him. Embarrassed, Tim tried to save himself. “It’s really good.” 

“I know,” Jason said. “But thanks. It’s Alfie’s recipe.” 

Ah, that did make sense. Alfred was an exceptional cook, and it had been too long since Tim had eaten any of his dishes. He dragged his spoon through the liquid and frowned, heartache bubbling up to the surface. He hadn’t seen Alfred in a long time, actually, now that he was thinking about it. 

Tim didn’t think that the Manor had ever been home for him, but that was because he hadn’t allowed for it to be. He’d created distance for himself there, remembered thinking painfully that he shouldn’t intrude on the Waynes just because he’d forced himself into their lives. He wasn’t family. 

But Alfred had made that decision hard for him, continually. He’d invited Tim to stay for meals, for the night, to get his injuries looked over and just to talk. Tim had turned him down so many times… but he’d also said yes. 

The pile of guilt that had been stacking up in Tim’s brain got bigger, his hand heavier, his face more set into despondence. 

“Hey, you good over there?” Jason asked.

Tim bristled. He didn’t ask for Jason to show up like this. He didn’t ask for Jason to watch him, to be observant, to drag him away from his little routine even if it had probably been for the best in the long run, Tim still hadn’t fucking asked. And the timing just had to work out so that it was Jason here of all people, Jaon who was trying to be nice and who was being kind and who was acting in a way that was fucking with Tim’s head. 

Tim clenched his jaw. He didn’t want Jason to notice when he was spiraling. He wanted to be by himself again. He wanted cup of fucking coffee.

Instead, Tim took a very pointed sip of his water. “I’m fine,” he replied, and ate another spoonful of his soup. 

There was a clinking from Jason’s side of the table, and curiously, Tim looked up to find that he’d set down his silverware and was staring at Tim contemplatively. 

Having that much attention on him— the full, careful weighted gaze of Jason Todd hovering in the air— made Tim flush, pushing away his anger and making his breath catch in the back of his throat. 

“See, the thing is,” Jason said, every word sounding intentional, “I don’t believe that.” 

Tim waited, his whole being shocked into stillness except his heart thrumming in his ears. 

Jason closed his eyes and inhaled, releasing the air in a sigh that Tim watched, unable to look away, before opening his eyes and refocusing on Tim, leaning across the table, propping his elbows on it but leaving his hands draped off the edge behind his soup bowl. 

“I think you’re scared. I think you’re isolating yourself because you don’t want to bother anybody with your problems and you have a terminal allergy to asking for help. I think, slowly, you’re wasting away, Tim.” 

Tim’s lungs and throat tightened, caving in on themselves, pressing a burst of air out of Tim’s lungs, driving him to curl in on himself, tightening his grip around the spoon in his right hand. 

“I know we’re not friends, not really, and yet you didn’t even protest me showing up out of the blue. You didn’t ask how I got in when I don’t have a key to this place. You’ve been awfully noncombative too— no snark, no eyerolls, no poking me with the sharpest fucking stick you can find— and for you and me? That just doesn’t track. So bullshit you’re fine. Bullshit.”   

It should have been at least a little surprising that Jason had clocked him so well, but it wasn’t. Tim had always seen clean through to the heart of Jason, so it made sense that he could do the same for Tim. His barbs had always been too pointed not to, his gaze too sharp whenever he used to look at Tim for more than a second that had morphed into kindness that had come through in helpful intel and carefully muttered jokes over the comms and an enemy shot right before Tim was about to get hit. 

The back of Tim’s mind was starting to clear, his heart’s thrumming growing louder. And— with the stillness, the silence, the suspension, the deprivation of breath that Tim was forcing on himself again— with it came clarity. The kind of clarity he’d been avoiding, the kind that made the door he’d been keeping locked up tight click open. 

Tim inhaled deeply, and his whole body shivered, his chest trembling and weight settling behind his eyes. Sepsis, sepsis, sepsis. His problems in the driver’s seat. All wound and no breath. 

He needed to make a decision that he’d stick to.

He looked Jason Todd in the eyes, saw nothing but openness there, and felt his insides twist. He never could have made any different choice: Tim tore off the bandage and began to scoop the rot out of himself. 

“Okay, fine, I’m doing horrible. I’m wrecking my sleep schedule and having non stop nightmares. I’ve been experiencing all the regular depression symptoms, I don’t eat much, I don’t feel like seeing anybody and I haven’t left my apartment since Steph came by. I listen to the comms sometimes when I’m bored but never go out. I work myself just not to think and I can’t even look myself in the fucking mirror.” 

Cleaning out wounds stung, Tim knew, and he had to blink back tears. He was bloody. Raw. Vulnerable, open, and head tilted back and throat on display. Unable to stand on his own, self-sufficiency failing him yet again.

Tim cut himself off with a harsh laugh. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” he lied. He knew why, he was just ashamed of it, of himself for falling into fantasy. For letting the feeble strength of the minimalistic care overtake him, for Tim to be making something out of nothing again. 

“Does it matter that it was me?” Jason said.

Oh, it mattered. Tim knew it mattered, but— he looked up again, back at Jason and his stupid hair flopping onto his forehead, the way he was making himself look smaller, the hesitance that had his fingers skittering across the surface of Tim’s oak table that he realized right then he fucking hated. 

“It does,” Tim confessed, the words having to force their way up his throat, coated too thickly in sentiment. “Of course it does.” 

Jason deflated. 

“No— I mean— I didn’t think you’d want to hear it. I didn’t think you would have come over; I wasn’t expecting this. You. Dinner. It’s been… Things have been hard. And it’s been stupid, because there’s no reason for it to be hard right now. Things are— things are the easiest they’ve been in a long time. The world isn’t about to end. I’m on light duties or off of everything. And yet, I’m—” Tim huffed, shrugging. He looked away. “I’m just here.” 

The moment lingered, the silence not uncomfortable but heavy between them from Tim’s words; the ones he was saying but also the ones he was still holding inside. There was still soup in Tim’s bowl, its speckled oil surface somehow making him want to cry, to run away, to be known, to crawl back into isolation. He was just about to dart away, make himself an excuse and leave, when—

“I get it,” Jason murmured. 

Tim’s gaze snapped up, all intentions of leaving gone. Jason was shifting around uncomfortably, but he kept talking. “No, really, I do. A bit after I started working with the Bats again, do you remember how I disappeared for like four months? And word probably came through the grapevine that I was on an overseas mission?” 

Tim nodded, his brain whirring. He hadn’t thought anything of it when it had happened— in fact, he’d been grateful, because he hadn’t known how to handle Jason trying to be nice to him and it had given him time to prepare himself for Jason’s return— but if it had been a comparable time of his life to what Tim was going through now, then…  

“I just broke,” he said. “Barely was able to get up, some days. You know. And I didn’t understand it. Like, why was it so hard to live in peace when it was what I’d been fighting to have for so long? So I didn’t talk to anybody. Ignored my friends. Just did what I had to… to get by.

“But the Outlaws, they kinda just showed up one day. Kori damn near busted my door down, actually. And they helped themselves to helping me. I was such an asshole to them, but they didn’t leave. And while they were whipping me into shape, Roy said this thing to me that stuck. I’ll never forget it. He said: You can’t process anything when you’re in survival mode, man. But this? You breaking down? You’re doing it because you’re finally safe. ” 

He looked at Tim. “There’s nothing on your plate. You have no responsibilities. You’re not fighting for your life. And so now? Everything that you’ve been pushing down is hitting you all at once. And if my hunch is right about you, babybird, you’ve been handling and repressing shit for a very long time.”

Handling and repressing. That sounded like the story of Tim’s goddamn life. 

“Yeah,” Tim said faintly. “Yeah, I— yes. I have been doing all of that.”

Jason looked a little sad at the confirmation, even though he tried to hide it. Tim could tell. 

“Do you think you want to stop? You ready to face it?” Jason asked, gently.

Tim hesitated. In theory, he’d love to be expressive and free, but he had ideas about what the depths of his mind contained. They weren’t pretty to look at, which is why he’d stopped looking in the first place. Nobody wanted to look at an ugly thing, an ugly person. 

How could Tim face his brain when he couldn’t even look himself in the mirror? 

Noticing his reticence to answer, Jason flashed Tim an awkward smile. “I mean, just so you know, it’s not a crime to ask for help. If that’s what’s got you all hesitant. You don’t have to do it on your own.” 

“I don’t,” Tim said, but it sounded a bit like a question. 

Jason nodded. “You don’t. And it doesn’t have to be me.” 

Tim didn’t want to explain that he wanted it to be Jason, but something in him screamed loudly that if he stayed silent that this would be the last time he’d ever have this, the last chance to get something he’d wanted for so long. The old daydream of his eleven-year-old self returned, the innocence of wanting a rooftop ice cream and chat with his Robin smothering all of his other emotions. 

“But it could be,” Tim said, almost desperate. “It could be you.” To be honest, his other options weren't very appealing, anyway: Bruce, who was never the best at handling emotions; Dick, who was off-world; Cass, who preferred not to speak; Steph, who was still his ex; Alfred, who Tim respected too much to ever come to with undue burdens; Damian, who he'd never come to in a million years; Jason, who he'd wished would take the time to listen to and care about him for more than half his life. Of course he wanted it to be Jason. And, for the first time, it really could plausibly happen.

Jason looked surprised at the outburst. “You’d trust me to?” 

Brightness dripped down from the ceiling and splattered on Tim’s head, lighting up his nerves, his veins, his heart. “Yes,” he confessed. “If you can. If you would —” 

“Yes. I can— I can come back. Again. We can do this again?” Jason’s fingers twitched. 

Nodding, Tim felt a small smile slip onto his face and ducked his head shyly, dunking his spoon in his soup for another bite. 

It was still warm. 

After that, Jason kept coming over. 

Tim kept letting him. 

Their promise that day, though it hadn’t formally been one, felt like something sacred. Tim knew it was a dangerous game he was playing, but he couldn’t stop himself. It lit something in his veins that made it too worthwhile, too addicting to stop. 

There was a lot of cooking and a lot of talking and a lot of tension. Some days, the looming knowledge that Jason would be at his place was the only thing that got Tim out of bed. Other days, Tim rose with the sun and took pictures with his film camera on the Gotham sidewalks. Other days yet, Tim made a phone call he’d been avoiding or forced himself to go on a walk or do something. And, still, some days he drank coffee until he couldn’t see straight, worked on solving problems that nobody had asked him to take on, fell asleep and then woke up screaming. 

He was starting to remember his nightmares, and remembered why he’d started avoiding them. 

When Jason asked him about it the next time he came over, Tim surprised both of them by talking about it. Jason surprised both of them back by giving good advice. 

Their dynamic was changing. It was a subtle thing, but Tim watched it with the trained eyes of a Bat and the obsessive compulsion of a stalker. They were being nice to each other, bantering back and forth over meals and sharing stories. Relating over their childhoods, even, and for the first time, comparing notes over what they’d experienced as Robin. 

It was freeing. It felt like a dream. 

And— speaking of dreams— though it was probably just Tim’s stupid fucking imagination and his damned wishful thinking, it felt like there was something growing between them.

When Jason cooked, Tim’s eyes tracked his movements and his knifework and Jason noticed. Of course he did. But instead of saying anything, he just looked at Tim languidly for a minute and then went back to it. They never talked about it, but Tim felt it like a physical weight. 

And with the tension, and Tim’s current attempts to not kill himself through wasting away, he began to feel things more. Disgust at himself, as always; guilt, as always. But having Jason in his space continually began to fill Tim’s head with scenarios— fantasies — that only became more accurate with the more data Tim collected on him. 

Jason was kind. He had complete mastery of his person, and held a grace in his movement that came with all of the combat training that he’d had. He had a rough side, an ugly side and a temper that could be quick to surface, but Tim could tell he was making a concerted effort to stay calm. He could cut Tim to the bone, but he chose not to. Instead, he cooked for Tim and they’d talk. Tim was gratified to know that Jason still loved Austen and hated Hemingway. 

Tim wanted to know more impossible things than that, but instead used the new information he had to extrapolate what he thought Jason might be like if Tim could have him.

Frantically, Tim would press his hands to his neck, deprive himself of air, run the sleek handle of a sheathed blade against his thigh. He would hear Jason’s voice whispering in his ear, encouraging, disparaging, playful and sharp as it needed to be, changing on a dime. He thought Jaosn could probably do it all. 

But Tim was rough with himself. He didn’t know any other way to be. Guiltily, he imagined that Jason might be soft, and melted at the thought. He wanted to be manhandled, pushed up against something and taken advantage of, but then Jason would smile at him and Tim’s stomach would flutter, causing much more dangerous and domestic dreams to dribble out.

It was frustrating. Tim swung back and forth between being a depressed piece of shit and a horny piece of shit, which, although not being new to him, was more infuriating than it ever had been. 

And when Tim was done surrendering himself to his guilty pleasures and his delusions, his conscience would strike again. He’d avoid Jason’s eyes if he could. Continue to dodge his own reflection and another in-depth conversation with Jason, instead talking books and movies and, on one desperate occasion, the weather. 

But Tim couldn’t stop himself and couldn’t stop Jason from coming back. In fact, he didn’t want to; he enjoyed the delicious burn of shame that would overtake him, the hidden knowledge of what he would do sometimes only minutes after Jason left his place.

The perpetuity meant that Tim was panting and left winded all of the time— at how Jason looked, at how Jason looked at him, at his continuing exhaustion with himself, at the nightmares when his face was wet with tears upon waking, at his bad habits he was falling into and then breaking and then falling into again— and Tim only hoped that soon, one way or another, he’d finally be able to catch his breath.

Chapter Text

Jason was breathtaking. 

It didn’t matter how many times the thought flitted across Tim’s brain; it was true ten-odd years ago and it was still true now. Jason Todd was so beautiful that it hurt Tim, made the air in his lungs catch on something invisible but real in his throat. It was embarrassing, but Tim had a full-body reaction just to Jason existing, but especially to Jason existing in his space, relaxed and pliant on his couch with a bowl of popcorn resting on his thighs, cozied up in a blanket, eyes heavy-lidded with sleep as he fought to stay awake and watch the movie they’d put on an hour and a half ago. 

Tim was sitting altogether too far away from him, tucked into the opposite corner of the couch that had originally been for his sanity but now was only causing the situation to be even more maddening. 

It had been four heart-rendering months. Four gut-wrenching months. Four months of dancing around Jason, battling with himself, falling in and out of depressive episodes, and getting lost in the actuality of Jason, which was fifty times better than any dream Tim had ever had. 

He was doing better these days. Not fully well, but better. There was more space in between the bad days than before, at least; the nightmares coming with less frequency and Tim’s caffeine intake and sleep schedule a little more normalized. 

And there was this fragile peace and unflinching want that warred inside Tim, winding itself around his bones and squeezing whenever Jason was near, just out of Tim’s reach like he was now. 

The credits were scrolling. Tim glanced over to see that Jason had surrendered to sleep’s embrace. Tim’s chest was a fragile thing at the sight; Jason had never actually spent the night at Tim’s place before, despite all their odd little dinners and stakeouts and lunches and light sparring. He didn’t want Jason to leave. Too terrified to move lest the shift in the couch cushions were to wake him, Tim looked instead. 

Jason’s sharpness was dulled in sleep. He was a blade softly covered in a gilded sheath, hiding beneath the veneer of long eyelashes and soft blankets and warm lighting. His mouth was parted just slightly, hair falling over his face, violet light from the TV screen alighting on his body. 

And suddenly Tim’s hands felt empty; for a camera, for Jason’s body underneath them. He thought about brushing back the hair flopping over Jason’s forehead, letting his hand drift and linger on his cheek; waking him with kisses anywhere. 

He squeezed his eyes shut in shame. This wasn’t the time for that; not even close, not that there was a good or right time for it either. So his brain shifted back to his first instinct. If he could not hold Jason in this moment, he’d capture him in it instead so Tim could live in the memory at a later date. 

His eye turned critical, his brain shifting gears from a wanting, yearning, grasping thing into an artist in the instant of a camera’s flash. Jason was laying well, he thought. His face was half-visible, the blanket draped over one arm and under another, his legs and the popcorn bowl adding visual appeal. Tim’s angle was all wrong, though. 

His fear from before not forgotten, Tim began the process of shifting his weight off of the couch, taking his time, thinking about which camera he was going to grab and what else he wanted in this photo. 

He didn’t want something refined. Maybe one or two photos with clarity just so his brain wouldn’t forget a single detail, but Tim knew what kind of shot he wanted; something intimate and fuzzy and full of warm, low light like that of candles, offset by the TV’s glow. He wanted vulnerability, softness, something almost boudoir. 

Slipping, Tim’s brain superimposed himself into the mental photograph he’d conjured; the intimacy of his lips on Jason’s neck— or, no, even better: Jason’s lips on his neck, open and tracing over the scar he’d put there like an apology, a recognition of Tim’s strength. Their bodies huddled and familiar, Tim’s form curled half over Jason’s, protective and possessive, a hand on Tim’s waist, a breath exhaled into his ear—

Tim finished standing up. He shivered, letting the thoughts drop for the second time, and walked as quietly as any Bat to get the camera he’d been thinking about. 

He picked up his camera and cradled it gently, pulled the lever in the next room to roll the film, muffling the sound as much as he could before returning to Jason’s prone form. He stood in the doorway for a moment, enchanted by his own shadow and the way it fell over the scene, painting him as a voyeur. He leaned into the wall, watching as his shadow melted into something softer, to the side. Tilted his head to give the shadow character, instill caring into its lines and they way they lay on the floor, Jason in the upper third of the photo. 

Tim’s breath caught as the image lined up in his eyes. He hadn’t planned it like this, with him as a part of the picture, but here it was and it was perfect. It was art. It was genuine to the moment with him so far away even being close, his feelings looming over the scene, the separation and adoration inherent in the image. 

Tim maneuvered his camera so that his shadow still was doing what he wanted it to, sent up a quick hope to the universe that the quiet click of the camera wouldn’t wake Jason, and felt his heart hammering in his chest, pounding against his sternum, lungs still. 

Click. 

Tim’s breath wooshed out, the loudest noise in the room. He stepped closer, his original vision taking shape in front of him as he pulled the lever to wind the film for the next shot, slowly, the tick of the gears inside making Tim’s eyes train on Jason for any chance, any hint of movement. 

There was none. Something in Tim ached as he lined up the next shot, again stilling his entire being except the immutable run of blood through his veins led by his traitorous heart. 

Click. 

And oh. Tim knew what that feeling was. The crawling, ugly whisper telling him that his pictures were stolen things, that he was sneaking and hiding and scrimping like he was a rooftop-weaned child again, but it was worse this time; instead of just an innocent want to capture his heroes, this was a betrayal of trust. Because he knew Jason now, and he knew that Jason would probably never allow Tim to be taking these photos if he knew of them.

But here he was: taking advantage of Jason’s vulnerability anyway. Regardless. 

Because, he realized, he did care. But it was not enough to make him stop. 

Jason looked too beautiful through the viewfinder. Tim adjusted the focus, letting the lines blur this time. The image would have almost a fuzzy quality to it if he did this right, making it more cozy and a little imperfect. 

Tim’s breath was loud as he inhaled and then stilled.

Click.  

He closed his eyes, letting the thudding of his heart take over, adrenaline high and pink rising in his cheeks. He could have been a surgeon with how steady his hands were, he thought almost hysterically, and breathed out an almost-silent laugh.

He let the camera fall, its strap around the back of his neck keeping the instrument from falling to the floor. He looked down at his empty hands. They still ached for Jason. 

He couldn’t help himself from wanting, wanting, wanting so much he was going to burst with it like a volcano, lava destructive and hot and melting everything in its way. 

Tim had dreams. He wanted to crawl back on the couch and pretend that he fell asleep there too, to wake up cuddled into Jason like the way his brain had whispered so enticingly before. But he couldn’t; he couldn’t, he couldn’t. 

All he could hope for was that Jason was still here in the morning when Tim woke up. That this small step wasn’t too much for him, didn’t break the careful balance of what they’d made over the last few months which felt like bedrock and sandstone somehow simultaneously. 

Tim looked until his eyes watered, for what reason he didn’t care to know. Then he shut off the TV, turned on his heel, and stalked out of the room.

It was a night of dreams. Not nightmares, as were Tim’s custom, but ones syrupy sweet and slow that the back of his mind had hungered for. 

The sensation of calloused fingers sliding in Tim’s mouth. A rough hand grasping his jaw. Breath on his neck, rough stubble scraping down his chest with hands smoothing the sensation away. No sight, only darkness. Feelings. Sensations. And a voice.

God, baby. Watching you like this could bring a man to his knees. 

The parting of his thighs. The cool flash of metal against his neck. The headrush of air being taken from him, forcibly controlling the flow of breath to his lungs causing the slowing of his heartbeat and forcing him to be present in the moment, neck moving against the blade that bit into his skin just a little, blood beading there he could feel and his mind firing on all cylinders, trying to take it in and preserve it. His hands tied together. Silk. No room to move, knots brooking no argument. 

Wait for it, sweetheart. You’re so desperate already, I know. But you can hold out longer than this. 

Friction against his cock that felt exquisite but wasn’t enough, sliding against him, making his brain spark with pleasure and his lungs punch out precious air in the facsimile of a sob. A chuckle. More pressure on his throat, ratcheting up the deprivation and making blood thrum inside. 

That’s it. Such a slut for me like this. Gorgeous.

Hips moving. Limbs quaking. The flat of a knife kissing the crease of his neck and collarbone, its handle pressing into the hollow of his throat. The thrum of a fan in the distance, hair prickling on the back of his neck, fingertips gray and buzzing and fuzzy— 

Finally , a hand on his dick, wet and pressure and tight and hot; exquisite, the only thing he could feel, every errant thought gone into blankness so there was only the feeling of this, consuming him. Ravishing him. Ruining him. 

Baby, fuck. C’mon. Come for me, just like this.

And then Tim was gasping awake, coming hard and fast with no room to question, all alone in his bed. A flush worked its way across his lax limbs as he panted and gasped, lying supine as  satisfaction and shame smoldered in his gut. 

Though he wanted to, Tim couldn’t hide forever. After the illicit pictures and the intimate dream, Tim felt like the worst kind of person. Although last night he’d ached for Jason to stay, this morning Tim was half-hoping he’d be gone. 

But he could hear rustling outside his door. Tim wasn’t alone. A small part of him rejoiced at that, as if Jason would now be spending every night over at his place or something stupid. But he didn’t kill the feeling anyway. 

Instead, he took a deep breath, exhaling a harsh sigh, and launched himself out of his bedroom and down the hall. His apartment, of course, had excellent sightlines, so he saw Jason almost immediately. An odd sense of déjà vu swept over him at the scene: Jason in his kitchen, blurring between this morning and when Jason had come to make soup for him, that first time. 

Except this time, it was worse. Well, Tim was better, but Jason was worse. That was to say, Tim’s mental state was better now than it had been that first time, but he was now more than ever close to tipping over the edge with Jason. It terrified Tim, how much he could feel thrumming through his veins even as he tried to stymie every nerve ending. But there wasn’t any way to put off facing at least the music of the events from last night, though Jason wasn’t aware that either had occurred. 

Jason was caught up in whisking a bowl of some kind of batter, but he looked up to Tim as soon as he’d crossed the threshold of the kitchen. 

“Mornin’,” Jason said, and gestured to the already running coffee pot behind him. “I started up your machine, hope that’s alright.” 

Tim had no problem delaying his response by pouring himself a mug of coffee and taking a wonderfully rich and bitter sip before saying, “Good morning. And it’s fine, thank you,” before turning back to Jason.

And that was when he froze again, his brain needing a moment to process— now that he’d kicked a dribble of caffeine in it— that Jason was still here in his kitchen and wearing a comfortable, loose white t-shirt and gray sweats. Tim’s mouth practically watered while it felt like the cogs spinning uselessly in his brain weren’t connected to each other at all.

And then saw the fruit out on the counter and realized that Jason was making strawberry banana pancakes. Tim glitched even further at the sight. He’d mentioned that he’d liked those what, like two months ago at some diner they’d met up for brunch at? How the hell did Jason fucking remember that? 

He took another gulp of coffee, pointedly telling himself to not panic in his head, and another until his cup was empty. Then he refilled it and walked out of the kitchen and around it to sit at the counter.

He pulled out his phone for a distraction and began checking his work email for anything pressing. He’d started working at WE again awhile back, after he decided that he actually did miss it, and that the projects he’d set in motion weren’t progressing as he’d wanted and expected them to. So, Tim stepped back in— much to the delight of Lucius and the stalwart approval of Bruce via email— and it had mostly been good. As per usual on Tim’s email, though, there was nothing truly threatening to WE to account for, but Tim had a meeting with the board in a few weeks he wanted to begin preparing for, and a tough meeting this week on Wednesday with a potential business partner in Japan that he really needed to nail. But Tim was mostly prepared for it already, so he wasn’t going to stress out about it now. 

He scrolled down to read the revisions one of the PMs had made to the user story on Tim’s pet project prosthetic arm for gymnasts, but was interrupted by the sound of a knife on a cutting board and went a little wooden. 

He didn’t have time for this. 

Clenching his jaw a little bit, Tim went back to reading his email, trying to block out the sound of the knife. He managed to get to the bottom of the edits before realizing he hadn’t retained a single piece of information in the email.

Guiltily, Tim stole a glance to watch Jason’s deft knife work with the strawberries, needing to stop himself from swaying forward at the sight. 

It had gotten easier in the past few months for Tim to pretend that it didn’t affect him, to see Jason in casual clothing looking so disarmed and domestic and so sure of himself in Tim’s kitchen. But it did still affect him, even if the effects themselves were easier to dampen down on. 

He only realized that his “glance” had, in fact, turned into more of a “stare” when Jason commented, tone carefully neutral, “You always pay so much attention when I’m doing this.” 

“What?” Tim squeezed out. Fuck . Jason was not supposed to notice that. 

“When I’m doing prep,” Jason clarified, even though Tim knew he was aware of what he was referring to. 

There was only one route Tim could take here: obfuscate, conceal, and redirect. Not lie, because Jason might pick up on that, but lead him elsewhere, far enough away that Tim wouldn’t be so cornered. 

So, Tim said, “I can’t cook.” It wasn’t an explanation, but it read like one in this context. He only hoped that Jason would take the bait.

Thankfully, Jason laughed at the statement, and Tim’s shoulders relaxed minutely. His “explanation” had been taken at face value.

“I know, birdie,” Jason said affectionately, and Tim’s shoulders tightened back up. “I could teach you though, you know? Instead of you watching me like a hawk.”

“That’s not it,” Tim blurted, then cursed himself. 

“Oh?” Jason inquired. 

Tim needed to take evasive action right now . “I’d be horrible.” Tim blinked owlishly and took a sip of coffee. “At cooking,” he clarified, letting a bit of lazy sleepiness back into his voice. “I mean, If Alfred couldn’t teach me? Sorry Jay, I don’t think you’d be able to.” 

Jason snorted. “Listen, Timbo,” he said, lifting the knife to point it at Tim, closing eye and looking down one edge like it was a gun and he was aiming it at Tim, causing Tim to stop breathing altogether. Oh, he was listening alright. 

“Alf’s a good enough cook to work at a Michelin star restaurant. He has the patience of a saint, but he’d give you too much leeway.” Jason tsked, jerking his head to the side before lowering the knife back to the cutting board, but not looking away from Tim just yet.

“What do you mean?” Tim asked breathlessly, his heart caught in his throat.

“He’d give you too much credit, I think,” Jason mused. “Whereas I’d know that I couldn’t take my eyes off you for even a second.” 

What the fuck, Tim thought. He felt his cheeks heating up. 

Jason smiled, a slow, crawling thing that oozed confidence, before giving the barest hint of a shrug that was more eyebrows than anything else. With the shift of Jason’s attention, the moment snapped and Tim felt like he could breathe again— until Jason went back to chopping. “Otherwise, the meal would burn or you’d cut yourself or something stupid.” 

Indignant, Tim latched onto the teasing for all he was worth. “Shut the fuck up, I’m more competent than that.”

Jason gave a real shrug, this time. “At basically anything else, yeah. But at cooking?” He glanced up and shot Tim a knowing look.

Though Tim wished he could retaliate, Jason was kind of right. Tim had tried to cook many times, and while he could make edible food, it often got burnt on at least one side or was underdone enough that he had to put it back on the heat a couple times. He somehow always cooked pasta unevenly. He could assemble things like salads, sandwiches, microwaved items, or other easy non-stove-heat items, but cooking as an art form was outside of his scope. 

Maybe if he had more in-depth directions than just “add a pinch of oregano and simmer on low heat for three minutes or until translucent” then he’d be able to do it. Because really, how subjective was that? How much was a pinch? For three minutes or until translucent - how was he supposed to tell which was correct? “Low heat” could mean anything from a barely-there flame to a moderate-sized one. And, really, onions didn’t get translucent, did they? How could you even tell what full translucence even looked like in an onion? 

Recipes sucked.

“C’mon Tim, I know you’re trying to work out some arguments over there, but you should just give it up. Last time you tried to make something we almost had the fire department called on us.” 

Tim huffed out a sigh, recalling the travesty that his attempt at baking had been. “Fine, you win. But why teach me then, if I’m so fucking useless?”

With his back to Tim, Jason said, flippantly, “Do I need a reason?” 

Tim’s eyes widened fractionally. Most people, in Tim’s experience, had needed a reason to do anything for anyone; especially him. And it’s not like Jason went out of his way for Tim on the regular. He’d first only come over as a favor to the family because nobody else had been available and he only kept coming back out of what Tim assumed was some lingering feelings of guilt for how he’d treated Tim before mixed with penance.

When Jason turned back around, his face did something complicated before softening. “Because, Tim. That’s the reason: because I can, and I want to.”

And Jason had stolen his air yet again, as was his wont, as was his will. Tim was so struck that he almost wanted to sob in the impersonal lines of his apartment under the cheery mid morning sun. 

Jason gave him a little smile, sincere and crooked, then turned around back to the stove. 

He just… couldn’t comprehend that Jason wanted to do the hard work of teaching Tim something that he was so bad at. The only other time somebody had done something like that was when Tim had been learning the very basics of fighting under the careful, tired gaze of Dick Grayson, whose hands trembled when he corrected Tim’s form like he was a second away from collapsing, like it was repentance. 

He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take it; and so Tim stood sharply, the stool underneath him screeching as he pushed it back.

“I’m going to go get dressed,” Tim said hastily, “be back in a minute.” He made his escape without looking back, knowing that if he did, he would be even more doomed than he already was.

Tim looked at himself in the mirror of his bathroom uncomfortably. He could look now, which was an improvement, and his reflection looked alive instead of like silicone rubber covered in special effects makeup, but the sight was still off putting.

He grimaced at himself, sleep-mussed hair falling over his forehead. Here he was again. Running away, again. Tim could stand his ground when it mattered, couldn’t he? Where had that version of him gone? Had it regressed into the recesses of his brain, minimized and tired? Or did he no longer exist at all? 

Rolling his eyes, Tim turned away from his reflection to get dressed. He needed to stop being so fucking maudlin. 

A couple minutes later, Tim reemerged with a neutral expression firmly fixed on his face, casual clothes, and his hair styled quickly. 

“Good timing,” Jason called out over his shoulder. “I’m on the second batch of pancakes.” 

Tim felt like he’d had a dream like this before: Jason making him some breakfast thing he adored in a sleepy, cozy scene. In the dream, he would have kissed Jason in thank you. In reality, Tim gave him a nod of thanks and got out two plates, setting them on the counter right next to the platter with three lightly golden brown pancakes that Jason had already made. 

“Second batch is always the best,” Tim said, and Jason put those three on his plate when they were done. 

Tim got out the butter and slathered all the pancakes as they came out, then topping them with the leftover strawberries and banana that hadn’t gone into the batter. The soft, sweet scent of vanilla rose in the air as the cakes continued to cook, joined by syrup after Tim shoved a small pitcher of the stuff into the microwave to heat up. 

When Jason was done cooking, they took their plates to the dining room and began to dig in. 

“Mh,” Tim groaned. “These are fucking amazing.” 

Jason grinned over his fork. “Thanks, babybird. I threw it together on the fly.” 

“Unfair,” Tim said around another bite. “You know I’d’ve burned the shit out of these if I tried to do that.”

“And mixed the ratios up,” Jason added, his voice light and teasing. He still hadn’t fixed his hair, and it hung low over his face. Tim wanted to brush it back and kiss his forehead, or something equally insane.

They ate a few more bites until Tim couldn’t hold back the question that was eating at him. “How’d you remember I liked these, anyway?”

“How could I forget?” He said easily. 

God. What a thing to fucking say. Tim felt like somebody had placed a stone in between his heart and his breastbone. 

A smile slipped onto his face, his expression surely giving something away. “Oh,” he breathed.

“Yeah. By the way,” Jason continued a moment later, as if he hadn’t said anything of value before, “you never finished your thought earlier.”

“What?” Tim asked dumbly, still struck; not thinking on his feet. The protégé of the world's greatest detective, his ass.

“You said,” Jason said patiently, “you didn’t watch me to learn how to cook. So why, then?”

Fuck. The stone in his chest grew even more painful, turning cold and seeping down into his stomach. He had gotten out of things too easily earlier. Of course Jason would ask again after Tim let his guard down. 

He felt his face distort and his cheeks heat up from both embarrassment and shame and lust all in one. He couldn’t very well say that Jason was hot with knives right to his face. He couldn’t say that Jason looking simultaneously relaxed and dangerous pulled at the knot of attraction and fear and excitement tangled up inside of him. He couldn’t tell Jason that he’d dreamed and gotten off to— for years— the sight and the feeling of a blade wielded against him by the other man; a threat with only a little bit of harm as follow through, if any. 

And though Tim said nothing, Jason said “No,” as if in realization. A cloud drew itself across his face, twisting Jason’s features into something ugly and self-incriminating; his hand clenching around his fork. “Is it because I’m armed?” 

His eyes darted up to meet Tim’s, guilt spread out over his shadowed face, pocketing itself into his flesh like it had a home there. Stunned, Tim couldn’t bring himself to answer, because yes, it was because Jason was armed. Fuck.

“Fuck,” Jason breathed, echoing Tim unknowingly. “Tim, does that make you feel unsafe?” 

“No!” Tim blurted, horror bursting coldly in his chest, shaped like fear. “No, that’s not it at all.” He hadn’t meant for Jason to think that. He didn’t ever want Jason to mire himself in things that didn’t matter to Tim, that hadn’t mattered to him in years barring the odd nightmare his subconscious recycled. 

Jason’s mouth became drawn, pulling to one side slowly as he watched Tim, categorizing him. Tim leaned forward, raising both brows questioningly before it hit him: Jason was trying to read him. It was a skill Bruce had taken pains to teach them; spotting a lie in the field could be the difference between life and death. 

Tim bristled at the intrusion. His reasons were private, after all. He didn’t have to tell anyone, and certainly not when telling Jason would serve no purpose. “It’s not important, Jason. Don’t worry about it.” 

Jason continued to stare at Tim. He wasn’t eating anymore, his silverware discarded dispassionately as he began to simmer in whatever he thought Tim wasn’t telling him. Unfortunately, he seemed to be able to tell that there was something Tim was hiding, although he wouldn’t know what it was.

Tim was not about to budge or divulge his shame. If there was any chance that Jason might want him, Tim didn’t want to ruin it with his perverse inclinations. He cut himself another bite and chewed methodically, not looking at Jason. 

When Tim had finished the rest of his breakfast, he was about to push back his chair when Jason finally conceded. 

“Okay,” he said, but Tim knew he was deeply unsatisfied with the state of things between them. “Fine.” 

 “Fine,” Tim echoed, and stood to place his dishes in the kitchen. 

Jason didn’t stick around long after. The air between them had soured, Tim’s shame and Jason’s guilt weighing in every interaction to the point of snuffing their meager attempts at conversation out: a book Jason read, a case Tim was beginning to work on, a food truck Jason had tried. When Tim walked him to the door, they made no plans to meet again. 

Tim was a mature adult. So, when he still felt funky that afternoon about the events of that morning, he elected to phone a friend. 

Kon was excited to hear from Tim, since the last time they’d chatted in real time was a few weeks ago when Bart had gotten them all online at the same time to play video games. They hadn’t gotten too much time to talk then, and though Tim felt bad about calling up Kon only because he was feeling off, he figured his friend’s happiness to talk to him would help break it up anyway. 

Tim asked Kon how he was doing, and then listened with a growing smile on his face while Kon rambled about his life the last few weeks, talking about going shopping with Bart, one of the minor issues that Young Justice sans Tim and Cassie had been called up to solve, and how Clark was being slightly annoying. 

Getting perspective into a life not his own somehow made Tim feel like his problems were lesser, and he made sympathetic noises where applicable and asked relevant questions to get more details on the stories that Kon told him, laughing uproariously through the story of he and Bart trying on ugly clothes at the mall and the subsequent pictures that followed. 

“But enough about me,” Kon said after almost an hour. “I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing! When you texted me a bit ago you said work was picking up with some Japanese business partner? And, of course, I expect an update on whatever the fuck courting rituals you and Mr. Murder are going through so I can make sure he hasn’t done anything untoward.” 

Tim groaned. “Kon, please — how many times have I told you to lay off Jason? It’s been years since he’s even tried to maim me. He would never do anything bad. And we’re not courting . Fuck off.”

“Hm,” Kon said, sounding skeptical. “I’ll believe it when I see it, dude. You and I both know that if he asked you to jump you wouldn’t even bother asking how high because you’d already know just the height he’d prefer based on all the data you’ve got on him.” 

“Conner Kon-El Kent. This is a hate crime. I will send you a cease and desist letter; you will be hearing from my lawyers—”

“Fine, fine. I’ll leave it be for now, but only because I know he’s the reason you started returning my calls four months ago.” Kon paused, and then his voice got serious. “You really scared me back then Tim, y’know? When you go silent like that, I know something is wrong. I was probably a few days away from calling up your entire family and then storming your apartment myself if I didn’t hear from you.” 

Tim tightened his grip around his phone, squeezing his eyes shut so tightly that static buzzed behind his eyelids. “I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry.” 

“No, don’t apologize! I’m not saying that to make you feel bad. I’m just glad you’re doing better now, that’s all.” 

Tim knew that Kon really meant that, but it was hard to hear regardless, because it did make him feel bad. Tim had been so self-isolated, pitying himself and too depressed to function and it had all been his fault for letting it get that bad. He’d worried everybody, and even now they still looked at him askance, like he’d go back to that behavior in a heartbeat.

“But hey,” Kon continued, “if what it took was your mega crush on Jason Todd to be revived for the fifth time, then I’m grateful you’re such a long-term simp.” 

All of Tim’s guilt bled away for indignance; a scoff escaping his mouth before he realized it, Conner chuckling in response before he made a noise of realization. “Oh! Actually, speaking of Robins, I got an update from the Watchtower about that space mission Dick and Cassie were on, and it sounds like they’re almost back. Figured you’d want to know.” 

“Yeah, thanks, I appreciate it,” Tim said earnestly, already maneuvering his phone to go to the Bats groupchat to let them know of the news. “Let’s hope it’s not a false alarm again.” 

“No problem, and same. They’ve been out there for ages. I can’t wait ‘til Cassie is home too; we’ll have to get the original YJ together again when everyone’s back. Now, stop putting it off and tell me all about your petty work drama!” 

Smiling, Tim allowed himself to launch into an overview of what he’d been up to. When he hung up almost two hours later, after not only his work update but a meandering conversation about the size of Gotham sewer rats, the effects of corn on the food industry, and institutionalized homophobia, Tim felt much better. 

On his way down the hall, he made a face at himself in the mirror. Who said he didn’t have healthy coping mechanisms?

“Ooooooh my god, remind me to never ever subject myself to space missions again,” Dick moaned for the fifth time, laying spread across the couch in the library, his head in Tim’s lap and feet in Steph’s. “I swear, they go on for so long I almost forgot all of your faces out there!” As he spoke, Dick reached up and let the back of his hand trail down the side of Tim’s face as he looked up at Tim and fluttered his eyelashes dramatically. 

Tim turned his head down, raising both eyebrows. “Yes, we know,” he said. “There are always complications—” 

“—And they always last at least three times longer than you’d planned them to, as you’ve said four other times tonight. You may cease your pathetic whining or come up with some new material.” Damian jumped in, rolling his eyes from the armchair across the room, a sketchbook in his lap and pencil in hand.

“You guys are no fun,” Dick pouted. 

There was a pause; a beat of a moment in which Tim knew Jason would’ve made some snide comment to Dick that he would’ve pounced on, spiraling into another ten minutes of banter. 

Except Jason wasn’t there. And though he’d made his excuses perfectly fine in the Bats groupchat, Tim was almost entirely sure that he’d stepped out of this meeting because of Tim and the way they’d left things; how Tim— for the first time since their little meetings had begun— kept something from him that was about Jason himself, and Tim’s supposed “fear” of him, or rather lack thereof. 

It was annoying, how preoccupied Tim had been about it the last few days, but he didn’t want to apologize. He was allowed to have boundaries, and Jason didn’t need to know everything about him. 

The conversation slipped on, then, with Steph making some quip about something unrelated, but Tim wasn’t listening. He spiraled down the drain of his mental gymnastics over why he should and shouldn’t be the first one to text Jason, ruminating over the possibilities for far too long until Dick poked his thigh, snapping Tim out of it. 

“Hey Timmy,” Dick said, quietly enough that everyone else chattering on around them couldn’t hear. “What’s that big brain of yours thinking about, hm?” 

Tim pasted a smile on his face. “Oh, nothing really. Just something I’m working on.”

“Tell me about it?” Dick asked, his eyes lighting up. His head was still in Tim’s lap, but Tim didn’t really mind. It was better than a full-body octopus hug, and Tim had already received several of those today. He also knew that Dick’s primary love language was physical touch, and had, quite frankly, been a little flattered that he’d wanted to sit by Tim and not Damian. “I missed you while I was away. I wanna hear more about your life!” 

Not to say that Dick wasn’t usually this exuberant when he got home from a long mission away, but Tim had a sneaking suspicion that either Dick read something in his expression that he hadn’t meant to let slip, or one of the others had dropped a hint that he hadn’t been doing so hot in some of the months while Dick was away. If that was the case, he was betting on Steph telling Cass and Cass strategically letting something slip to Dick. 

Regardless, though, Tim’s heart warmed a little bit. It was nice to have Dick here, his attention solely focused on Tim, being the cause of his smile. He wanted to give Dick something to chew on, and so instead of divulging the weird energy that encompassed him and Jason, he decided to tell Dick about one of the cases he was working on as Red Robin, which had also been percolating in his brain.

“Well,” Tim mused, “I’ve been trying to work out this case. See, in Cherry Hill there’s this bakery that had some tax records that got flagged by my systems. It looks to me like either the business is a front for something or someone is skimming serious money off of the place, but it’s been really hard to track down something solid.” 

“And so you’ve looked into the employees, I’d assume,” asked Dick, moving to sit up and turning his body to fully face Tim, crossing his legs and expression intent. 

“Yeah,” Tim agreed. “But I'm having trouble figuring out anything concrete. The owner and his employees all seem pretty regular and normal, criminal records are just the usual parking and speeding tickets with one who did community service for shoplifting as a teenager. Even surveillance has come up clean; regular— for a given definition of regular— social media presences, cameras around the bakery were clear, normal cell phone and credit card usage from what I was able to track down… I’m missing something, but I don’t know what yet.” 

“Hm,” Dick mused. “Sounds like a little bit of a dilemma. Not that you need it, but do you want any help? I mean, since I just got back, I’m not on anything and I’d love something a little less high stakes than fighting aliens in space.” 

Tim looked at him, gauging the offer for a moment. He could see how much Dick wanted to help him, even when he was trying not to be overly invasive of Tim’s boundaries. And, though he hated to acknowledge it, the fact that Dick had said he knew Tim didn’t need his help but offered it anyway in case he wanted it was nice. Really nice. 

He caved. “Yeah, okay Dick. You can help, I’ll send you the files later and you can send me your thoughts. Then, I was planning on running down there for a stakeout tomorrow night. You can come with me and we’ll see if we can get any leads.” 

“Sounds great!” Dick smiled, sunny and bright in that way of his that made Tim’s chest bubble in happiness just being around him. For all that he and Dick had been through, Tim still loved him and wanted the best for him. And if anyone saw the full force of Dick’s smile aimed at them and had no reaction, then they were either heartless, dead inside, or insane. 

Just when Tim was about to launch into the backstory of the case to better prepare Dick, the room turned silent all of the sudden. Tim and Dick both looked up to see Alfred standing in the doorway with a slight smile on his face. 

“If you all would like to join Master Bruce in the dining room, dinner is almost ready.” 

Everybody immediately got up and began to head out the door, following in Alfred’s footsteps, but Steph tugged on Tim’s sleeve and motioned for him to linger an extra second. 

When everyone had made their way out of the room, Steph grinned at him and knocked her shoulder into his. “Hey, how’re you doing? We haven’t had a chance to talk recently, so I just wanted to check in.” 

Tim sighed. “I’ve been fine, Steph. I’m doing way better than I was a few months ago, you know that.” 

“Yeah, of course I know.” She shrugged lightly as they made their way through the doorway, barely able to see the flash of Cass turning the corner ahead of them. “But you know I worry about you, Tim.” 

“That’s not your job,” Tim bit back without thinking, then cringed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Your worry is valid and appreciated and I know it means you care.” 

Steph looked at him, her expression gentle. “Tim,” she coaxed, “I know it’s been a long time since we dated, but I will never stop caring about you.” She punched his shoulder lightly. “But you don’t have to be so fucking tightly wound, you know? And even if it’s not me, you do have to let somebody in.” 

“I have plenty of friends,” Tim said blandly. “I talked to Kon just the other day, remember? I told you he updated me on Dick’s mission status.” 

“But did you actually talk to him, or just chat about random shit?” 

Tim drew in his shoulders and huffed. “Yes I actually talked to him. Holy shit Steph, why the third degree? I’ve been patrolling, I’ve been working but not too much, I’ve been seeing people and talking to people and taking pictures and I have been trading out coffee for Zesti like 60% of the time which is pretty fucking good for me. You don’t have to babysit me. I’m good, like actually for real good, not bullshit good.” 

She nodded. “Okay. I trust you to know yourself, Tim. But you’ve been weird today; all distant and spacey. I promise that’s the only reason I’m riding your ass about this.”

Knowing they were almost to the kitchen, Tim wrapped up their conversation quickly. “I’m fine, just tired. A few late nights on this case that I’m roping Dick into. Nothing I can’t handle.” 

She smiled brightly as they turned the corner, relaxing into Tim’s words. “Alright then! Sounds good, as long as you don’t go all radio silent again. Depression is not an excuse to ignore your favorite ex, Timmers.” 

He groaned and rolled his eyes as he collapsed onto one of the few open seats left. “Please let that joke and my episode from literally half a year ago die happily together.”

“What, like I did?” Steph said flippantly, causing the rest of the table to groan in echo of Tim.

Bruce, taking off his reading glasses to set by an already-off tablet at his side, cleared his throat. “Do I need to go over the rules about speaking about our experiences and-slash-or brushes with death at the table again?” 

“No, Father. Brown will behave herself, you need not trouble yourself with giving an unnecessary lecture,” Damian placated, giving Steph a pointed glare. 

“Yeah, we’ll be civil, B!” Dick said, sitting at Bruce’s left. “It’s my welcome back dinner, we don’t want to ruin it. Right guys?” 

“Obviously,” Tim huffed.

“Right,” Cass affirmed. “Just dinner, no lecture.” 

“Yeah, that’s fine. I mean, I still think the rule infringes on some of the best jokes in my arsenal, but whatever.” Steph sighed dramatically. 

Tim’s mind, unbidden, stupid and obsessed, flitted to Jason. The other man had made jokes about his death all the time, but they’d always made Tim flinch a little bit. He hadn’t noticed until a few weeks after Jason had stopped; but he was almost entirely sure the reason had been him. 

Jason was so fucking considerate of Tim. It almost made him feel a little bad about being so stubborn about this whole thing between them. He should have come up with a believable lie or even just texted Jason to meet up again and act like it never happened to let it slide past them. But a part of Tim knew if he did that, eventually Jason would come looking for answers— only because he wouldn’t want Tim to be sitting around in fear of him every time they talked. Which would be valid, except for the fact that that wasn’t the issue. 

Ugh. Tim shook his head subtly and re-engaged at the table as he was handed the bread basket, turning to Cass to pass it on to her and ask about how things had been going for her recently after her return from Hong Kong.

The rest of the dinner went well, but Tim still looked in every shadowed corner he knew was unoccupied, just in case Jason decided by some miracle to replace his ghost with a presence a little more corporeal. 

Tim should've known better than to invoke Jason’s presence beyond his ghost, because it only took three hours into his stakeout with Nightwing the next night for the thud of Red Hood’s boots to sound across the rooftop, causing both him and Nightwing to jerk into fighting stances. 

“What are you doing here?” Red Robin hissed immediately, his shoulders slumping as he relaxed his arms. He and Nightwing were all the way laterally across Gotham from Crime Alley. Hood must have come looking for them. 

Hood put away his grappler and said, a little stiltedly, “Well, you told me last week you were working on this case and I thought you might want a hand… Didn’t know you’d already enlisted Nightwing, of course.” 

Jason had definitely come here to talk to Tim, fuck. Stakeouts were good for that kind of thing; it was easier, in Tim’s opinion, to spill his thoughts when he had the easy out of putting most of his attention elsewhere, of not having to look the other person in the eyes as confessions tore out of his mouth.

He just wasn’t sure if Jason was here to corner him and demand answers or apologize, and he wasn’t too keen on figuring out which.

Wincing, Red Robin looked over to Nightwing, who’d been looking back and forth between them with a thoughtful expression. Tim really hoped that Dick wasn’t going to intervene.

“That’s fine, Hood,” Nightwing said brightly only a moment later, and Tim cursed internally. He should’ve known. “You can join us if you want! There hasn’t been much movement tonight, we can get you up to speed. And I’d love a chance to catch up a little more personally, too.”

Hood shifted from foot to foot, clearing his throat. Though Red Robin couldn’t see his eyes from behind his helmet, he felt the weight of Hood’s eyes on him, heavy and questioning and insistent. It was hard to keep playing at indifference, but he didn’t really want Hood to join them. Tim already felt awkward in his own skin, limbs floppy instead of ready for action. He could tell it was only going to get worse if Hood stayed, especially with Nightwing observing everything. Unfortunately though, Red Robin couldn’t really say no either, at least not without raising some red flags.

“That’d be nice,” Hood said, and thank goodness for his voice modulator, because without it Red Robin was almost entirely sure that nice would have sounded insincere. “But I have something else I should be working on if I’m not needed here.” 

Red Robin breathed a sigh of relief, but Nightwing moved at his side. “We’re kinda far from your territory, though. You might as well stay more than two minutes; make it worth the commute.”

Hood took his grappler back out and shook his head. “No, really, it’s fine, I was—”

“I didn’t do anything to piss you off, did I? Or miss anything important while I was gone?” The again was silent, and with Nightwing’s despondent tone Red Robin immediately felt like shit. Now Nightwing was going to be worried he’d been a bad brother to Jason, so situationally reminiscent of Jason’s fucking death, for something that didn’t even involve him.  

“No, of course you didn’t,” Hood replied immediately, tucking his grappler away and walking closer to them. “We’re still on for breakfast at Lou’s Diner this weekend, N, don’t worry. I just have other shit to do since you’ve got this handled.” 

Nightwing began to smile then, though it still looked a little tremulous. “Well, okay then Hood. If you say so.” 

Red Robin needed to do damage control, and fast. Desperately, he glanced over his shoulder down into the street and saw the bakery’s door propped open with a dolly. 

“Wait a minute. Something’s happening down there,” Red Robin said, disregarding everything happening on the rooftop to focus on what might be a break in his case. 

Immediately, Red Hood and Nightwing shut up and turned to look with him, all of them getting closer to the edge of the rooftop and crouching to minimize their chances of getting caught. Red Robin began analyzing the scene, taking in the facts as they appeared to him so far. 

It was almost 5:00 am. Dawn was beginning to break its way into Gotham and the light rebounded off the water nearby weakly, the streetlights beginning to dim. The bakery’s side door was large, made of heavy, thick metal and was wider than a regular door; propped open by the aforementioned dolly. It only took another moment before an employee— Tim recognized her face and oh that was odd, Ms. Trinity Marrows was not scheduled to be working today— turned around the corner with a man following behind her, pulling a pallet stacked with crates. 

Trinity gestured for the delivery man to go inside, and he did with her hot on his heels. She looked a bit harried, and though nothing stood out to Red Robin as particularly unusual, there was something about this situation that was making him take pause. 

Once Trinity had disappeared from view, Red Robin turned to look at Nightwing. “We need to know what that delivery is.” 

Nightwing nodded. “I’ll go down and check it out, see if I can get a look at the delivery truck while the guy is inside. I’ll leave my comm on and when he comes back out, let me know.” 

“Will do,” Red Robin confirmed. Nightwing leapt over the side of the building; all finesse and purpose, no flashy moves in sight. Red Robin tracked his progress as he slipped around the corner and out of view before turning his eyes to the doorway and beginning to think about the possibilities. 

It could just be a routine drop off. Through surveillance, Red had noted deliveries consistently around this time that— on record— contained everything that a bakery needed to function. But the fact that Trinity Marrows was here was tripping Tim up. Where was the owner, Ryan Flemmings? He usually took the earliest morning shifts to, presumably, handle the deliveries and bake a large portion of the items they sold in store. Could Trinity be the one skimming off the business?

“So uh… what are we watching for?” Red Hood asked, interrupting Red Robin’s train of thought. 

“For the delivery man to come back out,” Red said, leaving the obviously off in words if not in tone. 

Hood shuffled next to him. “Yeah, I got that, babybird,” he said with a cadence that read annoyed right back at Red Robin. “I mean that you’re staring like the puzzle pieces are starting to line up. What’s your brain saying?” 

“Trinity Marrows is working today. This is not her shift, and she doesn’t handle deliveries normally. Ryan Flemmings, the owner, isn’t here. Could be nothing, just like the delivery could be nothing, but I have a feeling that’s not the case.” 

“You and your feelings,” Hood muttered, and Tim froze for a second. What was Jason implying with that comment? 

“My feelings ?” Tim turned away from the doorway to stare into the lenses on Jason’s helmet, daring him to explain himself.

“Yeah,” Jason said back, and even the voice modulator couldn’t hold back the testy tone in his voice. He leaned forward into Tim as he elaborated, “Your feelings. Sometimes, I’ve noticed that your brain makes calculations so fast on so many disparate data points that you don’t get why it’s telling you something until all of the pieces click together, like a puzzle.” 

Tim reared back minutely, thrown off balance. What the fuck? That had not been the answer he’d been expecting. 

“So I trust you,” Jason said, and then turned away to look back down at the bakery. “Even if you think your feelings might be wrong, I know that you’ll eventually prove yourself right. That’s what you’ve always done before.” 

Tim clenched his jaw and looked back down too, mad at himself for getting thrown off track. Of course Jason wasn’t just talking about the case, but about their disagreement too. Tim wasn’t fucking scared of him! That’s not what the data points in his brain were joining up to realize. 

When Tim saw Jason with a knife or a gun in his hand, his first thought wasn’t that he was dangerous. It was that he was hot. It was Tim’s brain extrapolating from seeing the callouses on Jason’s hands to making the fantasy of Jason jerking him off more accurate. It was seeing a flash of his thighs when his shorts rolled up and having a clearer picture of the backdrop to what hickies there might look like. 

And maybe he wanted Jason to be a little dangerous and threaten him. Maybe he wanted Jason to pretend Tim was just a thing there to sate his own pleasure. Maybe he wanted the blade against his throat and the air taken away from his lungs and he wanted their fucking to be a fight for control, crazed and hungry and real. Them poking at each other with the biggest fucking sticks they could find, cutting clean to the bone and seeing each others’ truth. Bloodletting in the form of violence tempered with sex so they could come out of the other side pliant and relaxed and a little less fractured than when they had gone in. 

His feelings didn't say Jason would hurt him. They said he’d heal him; break him apart and put him back together. Tim would be putty in his goddamn hands. He’d do anything, become anyone just for a taste.

And that was why he needed to pull back. That was why he needed—

“Any update on the delivery man?” Nightwing’s voice came through the comm, and Red Robin snapped back to reality.

He tapped his comm to activate it, replying, “Nothing yet. He’s probably helping unload; the sacks of flour this place orders are 40 pounds and Trinity would probably have a hard time sorting a whole pallet by herself.” 

“Checks out with the truck so far,” Nightwing confirmed. “I haven’t looked in all the crates yet, of course, but it seems legit. I’ll keep looking. Update me when you see him, N out.” 

Red Robin nodded even though he knew Nightwing couldn’t see him, and tapped his comm mic off again. He flicked his eyes over to Red Hood, but there was no way to tell what the other man was thinking. 

The air was cold on the roof. The light had brightened, even in just the last fifteen minutes, making the street below glow like there was a gas lamp illuminating it, glinting off the clean metal of the dolly but not the grimy door, still propped open. 

There was no movement, only the sounds of the city; harsh wind pushing down the streets off the water and the docks not too far from here, the sounds of cars honking and an ambulance not too far away, voices from a few streets over, the whirring of a heating unit on top of the building Tim and Jason were squatting on. 

Tim’s fingertips ached with the cold under his gloves, and when he sighed, his breath steamed in front of him like a dragon. 

“You know,” Tim said, “I’ve been wrong.” 

Jason huffed out a breath, the dying cousin of a laugh. “Yeah? And how often’s that.” 

Tim grimaced. “Enough.” 

Tim might have been smart, but being smart wasn’t everything. It didn’t matter how intelligent he was, there were some things in life that nobody could predict. Tim hadn’t been able to save either of his parents in the end, for example. He’d gone off the deep end, practically, trying to clone Kon before he’d been revived in the future and come back. And Tim still remembers the weight of the spider web fine silk traps that Ra’s al Ghul had weaved around him in the hopes of binding Tim forever. 

He still had nightmares about all of those things; his mother reduced from the calculating businesswoman she was to a sobbing, bloody mess; his father rendered into a coma; himself wandering among tanks and tanks of failed experiments trying to remake his friend; waking up with a freshly stitched wound, no spleen and dressed in finery to serve the Demon’s Head. 

But Tim wasn’t fucking weak. He’d fought back as best he could every one of those times. He’d tricked and lied when he’d had to, but he’d gotten out and gotten out alive. 

Tim straightened his shoulders and bit out, “But don’t you realize that I wouldn’t have let you get this close, not only to me but to everyone else if I thought you were dangerous?” 

This time, Jaosn really did laugh, short and acrid. “Of course I’m fucking dangerous. You’d be stupid to think I’m just some fucking harmless kitten—”

“I know you’re not a harmless kitten,” Tim cut off, and turned to stare into the nothingness of Hood’s helmet again. He wanted to take a hammer to the thing and crush it so he could see Jason’s face, hear his real fucking voice. “But you’re not dangerous to us. And not to me. Not anymore and not for a long time.” 

Jason’s head swiveled to face him, and he pointed aggressively. “You don’t know what battles I fight in my own goddamn head every fuckin’ day, babybird. You don’t know how close I get, how tenuous my grasp on my control can be. Don’t you get it? I’m—” 

“No, you’re the one who doesn’t get it,” Tim interrupted again, seething. Jason was always trying to be the fucking pity party martyr. “When was the last time you slipped? Tell me, please, because I would just love for you to prove—”

There was a clang down in the alley. 

Red Robin tapped his comm, looking down. “Delivery guy incoming in 20, Nightwing.” 

“Got it,” Nightwing replied. 

Stonily, Red Robin and Red Hood sat and watched as the delivery guy walked around the corner and then listened for the rumble of the engine of his truck starting before it turned the corner and drove away. 

The door remained propped open, and a black and blue shadow flipped his way back up to the roof almost soundlessly. 

“Well that was kind of a bust,” Nightwing said upon landing right in between Red Robin and Red Hood. 

Neither one of them replied, Red Robin rolling his eyes behind his mask and Red Hood looking pointedly away from Nightwing and Red Robin altogether.  

“Did I miss something?” Nightwing asked.

“No.” 

There was a pause. “...Ooooh- kay . So, uh, what do you think about the case, Red Robin?” 

Red Robin put aside the cocktail of emotions he was brimming with for logic. The case was what was important, not his stupid interpersonal drama. “We’re still missing something. There’s another shoe, a clue or something somewhere.” 

“You’ll get it, I’m sure,” Red Hood said, the consonants on his words sounding much more clipped and harsh than usual. “I’m just gonna—”

Nightwing reached out and grabbed onto Hood’s arm. “Can you stop trying to leave in the middle of this case? If you’ve been here this long then you can stay and help us theorize what to look into next and actually be helpful.” 

That was his team-leader-I’m-Batman tone. Red Robin winced, and he wasn’t even on the receiving end.

Red Hood jerked his arm out of Nightwing’s grasp, but stayed in place. “Fine. Then somebody please fill me in? I just know about the tax documents getting flagged, since that’s all RR told me last time he mentioned this place.” 

Nightwing turned his gaze on Red Robin and put his hands on his hips. “You didn’t go over the background while I was investigating the truck? What the hell did you do up here, sit on your asses in silence?” 

“Hood wanted to ask me about something else,” Tim said tightly, refusing to elaborate. “That being said, yes the tax documents got flagged by my systems. I was coming up dry in all my usual preliminary lines of investigating, so Nightwing agreed to join me on a more hands-on stakeout to observe—”

A scream cut through the air. Red Robin, Red Hood and Nightwing launched themselves at the ground before they could speak, falling into line to file through the door to see poor Trinity Marrows looking horrified with an open, full crate of guns sitting in front of her.

Well. There was the other shoe. 

“And there’s your feeling come to collect again, Red,” Hood said. 

Sometimes Tim hated being right.

As soon as Nightwing had called the GCPD after the three of them worked to calm down Trinity from hysterics, Red Hood had made himself scarce. It was to be expected, since he and the police did not and never had mixed, but his abrupt departure left a bad taste in Red Robin’s mouth. 

It didn't help that Nightwing was suspiciously quiet on the way back to Red Robin’s nest, his fingers tapping in a rhythmic way that Red Robin just knew meant that Nightwing was thinking about something. 

Expecting it from miles away, Tim wasn’t surprised when a freshly showered and sweatpants-clad Dick Grayson walked into Tim’s living room and stared him down with an extremely unimpressed look.

“Tim. I don’t want to be overly dramatic but can you please explain to me what is going on between you and Jason? Because truly, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: what the fuck was that?”

Tim, from where he sat on the couch, in the same corner he had during that ill-fated movie night with Jason, winced. No matter he’d predicted this would happen, that didn’t mean it would be pleasant.

With Tim reticent, Dick raised his eyebrow even higher and continued, “That behavior was not normal. At all. Is he antagonizing you again? Did you guys fight?” 

“No, Dick,” Tim moaned, and leaned his head onto his arms folded up on the arm of his couch, letting his voice become a bit muffled. If Dick had to get closerto hear, it’s not like it was Tim’s problem. “Seriously, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” 

“You’re sure.” Why did Dick have to sound so skeptical about it? Before this, Dick had reliably been one of the few people that was on his side about Jason, especially earlier in Jason’s reintegration with the Bats.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Tim said, and picked up his head to glare at Dick for the betrayal. “You don’t have to protect me from him, or whatever. You of all people know he’s not like that anymore.”

Dick relaxed a bit and threw his arms up, rocking back onto his heels. “Yeah, I know. But you guys were barely talking before I left, what even happened with you?”

Tim rubbed his eyes with his fingers. Fuck, this was going to be a long story that he didn’t want to tell. But he was almost entirely sure that somebody had debriefed Dick on his little depressive spiral, and if nobody had then it would be better for Dick to hear it from him than somebody else. 

He felt an impact on the couch next to him, and took his hands away to see Dick’s face staring into his own, eyes soulful and open, just waiting for Tim to acquiesce.

Tim was bad at saying no to Dick, and caved almost immediately yet again. “Well. Okay, I’m only going to tell you this because I think someone else already did, so you might as well hear it from me. But when you were gone I wasn’t doing too well for a bit. Jason actually volunteered to check in on me and make sure I was doing okay, and we got talking. Since then, we’ve been hanging out more.” 

Dick placed a hand on Tim’s knee and squeezed. “That’s really nice, Timmy. I’m glad you guys were getting a chance to bond finally. But I have a question for you, if that’s okay?” 

“Sure, what?”

Flicking his eyes away and down for a moment, it struck Tim that Dick didn’t really want to be asking Tim whatever this question was. However, Dick pulled himself together visibly and said, lightly, “Have you ever talked about the past?” 

“A little,” Tim answered slowly, not sure why the question had warranted such a big reaction from Dick. “I think we both know none of that matters to either of us any more.” 

Dick grimaced. “Are you sure? Because that was some real awkward air on that roof, Tim.” 

And Dick hadn’t even been there when they were actually fighting. Tim brought up his legs, hugging his knees to his chest and dislodging Dick’s hand on his knee in the process. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it, can we be done now please.” 

Thankfully, for whatever reason, Dick decided to have mercy on him and let it go with a short sigh. “Okay, okay fine. Do you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”

Tim was pretty sure the only thing left in his fridge was some recently-defrosted tomato soup that Jason had made him three weeks ago— awkward . Well, maybe Dick wouldn’t notice if Tim just avoided the issue.

“...I have some leftovers,” Tim said and stood. “We can eat while we debrief— but only about the case.” 

“I am a man of my word, Sir Timothy,” Dick said with flair. “Case questions only, I promise.” 

And so Tim left him behind on the couch to heat up the soup and make a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches in the George Foreman that Jason had dug out of one of his cupboards months ago, still in the box. 

Babybird you’re fucking killing me! Copper pots, shiny new eight-burner stove, and damascus knives on day one and it’s only gotten worse from there. What the fuck is this Breville toaster and this George Foreman grill doing still in their goddamn boxes? How fuckin’ long have you lived here again? 

That had been a nice day, full of them teasing the shit out of each other, making the still life magazine photo that Tim’s apartment was feel lived in in a span of hours. They’d broken the green vase he’d taken from his parents’ house, but Tim had never really cared for it anyway.

Stop making fun of meeee! When I was CEO of Wayne Enterprises, do you really think I had time to unpack boxes in my kitchen cupboards? No! If I was here, I was asleep or getting ready for patrol and that’s it. Jason, what are you— Jason! Oh, you little… I’m gonna get you—!

The grill’s light turned green, and Tim pulled out the sandwiches, pouring the soup into two bowls and bringing them both back over to the couch, where Dick looked almost half asleep. 

“Food?” He questioned, and Dick perked up immediately. 

“Mm, yes. That smells delicious, Tim, thanks.” 

Both of them practically inhaled their soup, needing the nourishment after such a long night. Tim was glad he had good blackout curtains, because he was going to sleep as soon as they finished debriefing and Dick left his apartment. 

“Damn,” Dick said, "these leftovers are really good. Where did you say you got the soup from again? I’d love to go out to eat there.” 

Fuck. Tim’s avoidance of an issue always came back to bite him in the ass. He should’ve known after what happened with Jason.

“Tim? Hello, are you that tired?” 

Feeling his cheeks start to heat up, Tim took a breath and decided to bite the bullet, mumbling, “Jason made it.”  

Dick laughed. “Sorry, what did you say?” 

Tim shot him a glare. “You heard me. Jason made it, alright?”

A full look passed over Dick’s face, and he set down his dishes. “Tim. I’m sorry, but I must reiterate: what the fuck .” 

Tim put down his own bowl and glared right back at Dick. “If you press me on this, I will throw you out the window and lock it so you have to climb all the way down the fire escape in your bare feet and hope the doorman takes pity on you to let you in through the public lobby and all the way up to my floor through the public elevator, where you’ll have to knock on my door and hope I have the strength of character to let you back in.” 

“Fine! I get it! No questions. But can you please tell Jason he needs to make this for me? It really is that good.” 

Tim rolled his eyes, but agreed. And with that, they officially moved on to case business only. When Dick left two hours later, Tim fell into a slumber and woke up into a slog like his life was back on its tracks. On and on the train of it went, with Tim taking the bullet.

Tim was despondent. Jason’s absence grated like a phantom limb even though it was Tim’s fault that he was gone, but Tim’s stupid pride hadn’t allowed him to beg Jason to come back.

He’d dreamt of him again last night after making his excuses; dream-Jason coming to him with understanding eyes and softly fucking him in Tim’s own bed, pressing kisses to the back of his neck. The tenderness of the dream had thrown Tim off kilter. It wasn’t often that his dreams were so sweet, but it had made him want to cry when he’d awoken; so desperate and guilty and turned on that he had finished himself in a few strokes before letting his emotions overtake him. 

So, Tim went to his darkroom. He took comfort in the ritual of developing film, bathed in monochrome red light that kept him in line. The task was almost a moving meditation the way Tim slipped into it, not letting his thoughts go anywhere but to the task at hand, rinsing each paper one final time before clipping it up to dry over and over again. 

When he slipped out of the room hours later, he felt disjointed from reality stepping into the late afternoon sun’s golden rays laying across the floor of his apartment. 

One step out of his head mentally, Tim made himself a bowl of ramen and ate it, thinking of nothing and being nothing. He cleaned his kitchen. Did dishes. Threw in a load of laundry. Then, when a couple hours had flown by, Tim went back into his darkroom to grab the pictures he’d developed. 

It was dusk when he reemerged with the photos, half-formed shapes jumping into stark clarity when Tim crossed the threshold of the doorway into the natural light, causing Tim to choke on his own breath in his lungs as horror froze him into stillness.

The pictures he’d taken of Jason were perfect. 

His hands trembling furiously, Tim walked to the oak table and laid out the three photos. He was a fool. A goddamn fucking fool. Impudent, delusional, naïve, and reckless.

Jason was beautiful in the pictures. A temptation, a dream. The focus was just right, the edges fuzzy just how Tim had hoped they’d be and Jason’s sleeping form looked vulnerable and unguarded and real.

Tim could see how cleanly he’d shown his own hand in them: even an outsider would be able to tell that the man in the photos was precious to the photographer.

And of course he was, he was Jason Todd. Tim’s long time crush, his friend, his would-be murderer. His Robin, the shadow he’d tried so hard to live up to. Red Hood, the nightmare lurking under Tim’s subconscious, his sexual awakening. Tim had pinned his hopes and dreams on Jason Todd for years and years and years, yet somehow the truth had eluded him until this very moment.

He’d been willfully ignorant. He must have been. There was no other explanation for it. Tim could see his soul in the pictures, so clearly taken with the utmost care and devotion and desperation. The pining was visible from miles away.

Tim Drake was in love with Jason Todd. 

In love.  

He didn’t just want Jason. This wasn’t a whim or a passing fancy or a long-standing little crush that Tim could keep suppressing until it went away. He should have known. Almost half of Tim’s life had been dedicated to Jason, in one fashion or another. He was part of Tim; of what shaped him and drove him. There was no getting rid of the other man, so deep under Tim’s skin he was, how entrenched in Tim’s heart he was. 

Tim gasped and only then realized he was sobbing. Grieving, preemptively, like he had when he’d realized his crush on Jason when the other boy had been thought dead. 

Unworthy. Tim was unworthy. Stupid. 

The pictures blurred in his vision, and Tim swept them into a pile roughly. The one where his shadow loomed in the frame so near and yet far from Jason was on top, mocking him. Tim snarled at it before picking them up, almost wishing they’d burn in his hands, burn him; mark him outwardly as much as he had been marked internally. 

Tim wanted to display the photos on his living room wall. He wanted to lock them away where nobody could see them. He wanted to scream until his lungs gave out, drive a Ducati until he reached the limits of its engine, let go of a grappler mid-swing and let the freefall take him. 

He put the photos down and wiped his face, choking back any sounds before picking the pictures up again and taking them back to his darkroom, sealing them in an envelope and putting them in the back of a filing cabinet he kept there. Nobody would look here. Tim’s heart, bloody and raw, would be safe and held captive. 

He trembled once more, then ruthlessly sliced the realization off his mind and shoved it down. There was nothing for him to do but keep moving.

It was funny how insidious depression was. It snuck back into Tim’s life like a lover; like a cockroach; like a debt’s interest gaining on him to reap its grim reward. 

Except, this time, Tim spiraled into its depths more quietly than before, convincing himself that he was fine. Red Robin continued to go out on the streets, and when he wasn’t in costume, Tim worked until he couldn’t anymore and took short naps. His nightmares returned with a vengeance, and after seeing Jason with the Pit Rage in his eyes mock his feelings before stabbing him— literally— through the heart, Tim was disinclined to sleep. 

His coffee consumption ratcheted back up. He neglected to initiate or return texts. His comfort was shoved off to the side for increased training. But Tim was careful to keep everything segmented so that nobody could really tell how many hours he was putting in, unwilling to have another intervention pulled on him. 

He cycled between his case with Dick, a few other open cases he was keeping an eye on, patrolling, WE business problems, WE R&D solutions, pulling together side projects for Babs, two freelance jobs, and upgrading some tech for Steph with the finesse of a true Bat in survival mode. It left very little time for Tim to think about anything and very little time for sleep, which was how he preferred it.

And with that, Tim began to avoid looking in mirrors again. His eating habits flew back into disarray; vague nausea eating at his stomach more than half the times he even looked at food. He missed Jason, but every time he thought about reaching out, guilt and shame and fear twisted up in his stomach. 

He was ignoring the problem, ignoring Jason, ignoring his feelings and what they meant and what they could become. He couldn’t hide behind all of the pretenses he had been before. 

Tim knew he was hard to love. His parents hadn’t; his dad not before his accident and definitely not after. Bruce tolerated him because Tim had shoved his way into Bruce’s life and overstayed his welcome. Dick loved everyone in the family; he had a big heart and Tim had also been his second chance at a little brother. Cass knew how flawed he was and accepted him anyway, but she was the best of them so that made sense. Steph, of course, was Steph; no explanation there needed, but she of all people knew how hard it could be to love Tim. And Tim didn’t delude himself about Damian; the demon brat respected him these days, but Tim didn’t think Damian loved him.

He knew that his feelings would fuck everything up. He and Jason were friends with tension, a possibility on the horizon that Tim had been content to ignore as much as possible for the sake of his own sanity. But if he loved Jason, and the other man merely wanted him, it would destroy Tim. He wouldn’t know how to pack the feelings away.

So he worked and ignored and deflected and pretended that everything was fine.

Chapter Text

As Tim wavered, the back of his mind was blaring like a siren. It was annoying in a vague sort of way; something constant that he was trying to ignore but couldn’t quite forget. 

At this particular moment, the siren was loud as ever, even as Dick’s staticky speakerphone voice rang out into the air of Tim’s apartment.

“—sooooo dry. I mean, the store manager, Tahira? Yeah, she came in for that second interview we were talking about, and guess what? She had absolutely nothing helpful to add. Back to square one, again.”

Tim let his head fall to the side, cheek impacting into the couch cushion with an ineffectual thump. “We need a lead,” he said. “I know.”

“Well, there isn’t one,” Dick bemoaned, and proceeded to recount everything they’d learned in the past three weeks, which really didn’t help anyone, but Tim didn’t feel like cutting him off. It would just be more effort than it was worth. 

“We know Trinity didn’t know anything about the crate of guns, Ryan Flemmings is MIA but that Tahira lady made it sound like that was normal, and the only things that’ve happened since are that their college-age employee that works register has called out sick twice, the employees are— understandably— whispering to each other during their breaks, and their last month’s accounting looks so squeaky clean that even you couldn’t find anything wrong with it.”

Tim grunted. The tiredness in his limbs dragged his attention away from Dick’s voice and made his eyes heavy-lidded. He’d been awake for how many hours at this point? Forty-seven? 

“So I just don’t know where to go from here.” Dick sounded exasperated, and it made Tim wonder why he didn’t really care much at all. “I mean, we’re obviously keeping an eye out for Flemmings, but if we haven’t seen him thus far I have no clue when he’ll pop back up. He does seem like our best shot, though.” 

“For sure,” Tim said. He hoped that the words sounded less hollow than they felt. 

Thankfully, Dick didn’t seem to notice. “I wish Babs was back from her mission with the Birds of Prey. She’d be able to help us find a solid lead, I know it.”

Tim blinked a year in a second, the afterimage of his eyelids vibrating bright purple until he dragged them open again. “Yeah,” he said, and stared at the drywall mud on the wall across from his couch. 

“She’s been gone for ages; I haven’t seen her in like almost seventy-five percent of this year. Three quarters of the year, Tim! That’s way too long.” 

“Totally.” Idly, Tim thought that Dick could probably hold a conversation with a brick wall— not that Tim was giving him much more than a wall would, currently. 

And, speaking of walls, there was a shape in the mud that kind of looked like a giraffe. A little. If Tim tilted his head a little bit and was generous in his approximation, anyway.

Dick sighed, bursting static into the phone that made Tim jolt a bit, kicking his brain momentarily back into processing a bit faster than it had been. 

“Speaking of help,” Dick went on blithely, “we should ask Jason if he’s had any more thoughts.” 

The alarm started ringing louder in Tim’s brain, overtaking the rest of his mental processes. He did not want to talk about Jason right now. No way.

“I mean, I would have already,” Dick said, countering himself, oblivious to Tim’s silent aching on the other side of the line. “But I haven’t seen him since we had breakfast together after the stakeout night. Have you seen him recently?” 

Tim swallowed and picked up the phone, holding it close to his face. “No,” he said. 

Dick tsked. “He’s so damn flighty sometimes. It’s like he lives to be contrary.” 

Already, there were scenarios playing out in front of Tim’s mind’s eye. Jason was isolating himself. Jason was hurt. Jason went on a trip out of the city. Jason was on an undercover mission that he’d told nobody about. He was catching up on a new old book. He was doing some work in his own crime organization and not hitting the streets. 

His brain kept on spitting out scenarios, but it stuck on one: Jason is upset because of me. Tim’s jaw tightened up, his hand clenching around his phone. 

The idea of being the cause of Jason pulling away from everyone tore at Tim’s heart before it sparked a flicker of anger. He wasn’t Jason’s keeper. He shouldn’t care about this, not when it was better for the both of them in the long run for Tim to stay away until he could figure out a way to surgically remove the tumor of emotions in his chest.

“You should check on him,” Dick said. 

Oh hell no. Dick’s unknowing audacity in demanding that of him almost made Tim let out a bitter laugh, but he mitigated it to a sharp exhale. “Absolutely not.” 

Dick paused for the first time perhaps their entire conversation. “...You shouldn’t?” 

The innocuous tone to the question was all it took to bring Tim back to Earth, draining out his sharp anger and dulling him so that he could sink down into the couch cushions. No knife-edges, only a round, blank sadness that made him want to cry, except the emotion couldn’t get up past his lungs. Instead, from the top down, he let the weight of his eyelids drag themselves shut once more. 

“No. I shouldn’t.” Tim knew that if he saw Jason now, it would only bring him more trouble and pain. It would render his heart into a cracked object, letting all his secrets pour out of it like water. 

It would be ugly. He should stay far, far away. 

Tim opened his eyes. He couldn’t stay on the phone a moment longer. “I need to go, Dick. Bye.” 

He hung up without another word and rolled over, returning to staring at the ceiling, right where he was when their conversation had started. 

Guilt seeped in underneath everything, making the blaring of his internal siren even more resonant. God. He was such a piece of shit. 

Tim breathed and did not move and breathed and tried not to cry and breathed and did not move. His stomach growled, but he just closed his eyes so as to not stare at the aching blankness anymore. 

The blaring was so loud. Tim should— he needed to move. 

He didn’t. 

Somehow, some time, he let sleep overtake him.

Tim woke up to knocking at the door and groaned, immediately wishing that it would stop. He didn’t know how long he’d been brained out on the couch, but it hadn’t been long enough to counterbalance his sleep debt. 

A voice followed the knocking a moment later, low enough that Tim’s soundproofing muffled any discernible qualities to it. However, Tim didn’t really care who was at the door. He turned his face into the pillow and shut his eyes, wanting to get back to unconsciousness. 

Peace, unfortunately, was not obtained as the knocking resumed momentarily, this time harsher and less polite while the person on the other side said something else that Tim still couldn’t hear. 

He knew that whoever it was probably wouldn’t give up, then. Sighing, he dragged his body into an upright position and shuffled over to the door, thunking his head against the solid wood to gather himself until the person on the other side spoke again.

“Tim. Please open the door.” 

What the fuck. Tim was jolted into himself abruptly at the words, horror flowing down his body in waves. He had to be mistaken. Bruce was not here right now. Fuck. He needed to fix this— fix himself— but he had no time.

“If you do not open the door, I will be forced to enter.” 

Tim grimaced. He opened the door. 

Tim hadn’t registered it before, but Bruce looked old. He was old now: wrinkles in his face and hair graying at the temples and the look behind his eyes humanizing him, taking him from Bruce Fucking Wayne into just another man. Tim knew that Bruce wasn’t a picture-perfect still better than anyone, but now he looked it; fragile in a way that he wasn’t when he had flitted before Tim's camera lens with the first two Robins. 

However, the weight behind his gaze now was not the grief that kept him down when he was mourning for Jason. It was instead the weight of knowing, of seeing and of tender hope being battened down one too many times. Bruce looked like a father. Like a parent. 

“Can you let me inside, Tim?” He asked, and Tim felt removed from his own person as he stepped, precisely one two, out of the doorway. 

Bruce entered. He looked around, tilting his head this way and that, and Tim recalled that Bruce had never been here before. He’d never had reason to— Tim had never invited him to come here, to his apartment. It was a hollow realization, shifting the air to that of a surrealist dream instead of the reality of the situation. 

Tim’s hair was still mussed from sleeping on the couch. He moved to pat it down into some semblance of fixed, but that happened to be precisely the moment that Bruce turned to look at him. He dropped his hand like it’d been burned.

“Tim.” He was standing there, in a turtleneck sweater and slacks, his hands empty and at his sides, unguarded; his shoulders sloped and heavy with the weight of something. It seemed wrong. Tim wanted to wake up, now. He didn’t like this dream. 

“Bruce,” Tim returned, his voice strained. He cleared his throat and smeared a smile on his face that felt like wax. “I wasn’t expecting you.” 

“No, you weren’t,” Bruce agreed. He walked across Tim’s living room and sat in an armchair before gesturing to the couch across from it. “Come sit with me, please.” He said it delicately, like he was talking to a victim as Batman. 

Tim trembled as he shut the front door and mechanically walked over, stopping in front of the couch. “Do you want anything to drink? Eat?” Upon not knowing what the fuck was up, Tim fell back on the good host instincts that his parents had drilled into him.

Bruce shook his head. “No, kiddo, I’m fine. Please, join me.” 

All of Tim’s muscles seized up. He felt like a person poured into a plastic mold. 

“Something’s wrong.” There were words coming from a person that wasn’t him but was using his mouth. “For you to be here— something must be happening. What is it? What’s going on?”

The creases in Bruce’s forehead threw pity at Tim. “I am…” he sighed. “I’m here because I’m concerned. About you.” 

Tim’s jaw began to tremble as he fell back into himself. What the fuck. What the fuck. He exhaled, low and measured, while tilting his chin up, his blood beginning to run hot through his veins. “You,” he said. “Are here. To tell me that you’re concerned. About me. ” 

It seemed like a mockery of how Tim had joined the Bats himself. Worried that Batman was going to kill a man, except instead Bruce was worried that he’d kill himself. How apt.

Bruce closed his eyes like he was in pain. “I am always concerned about your well being. Yours, Dick’s, Jason’s. Steph’s and Cass’s and Damian’s. Alfred’s. Jim’s. Barbara’s.” He quirked the left side of his mouth and tilted his head with the motion. “Is that really so hard to believe?” 

It shouldn’t be. Tim felt like he should know this already. But somehow, the words still hit his chest like a blow, forcing him to expel all the air in his body. 

Bruce's face looked pinched again at Tim's lack of answer. “You are my child.” It was a whisper, pained and declarative. 

His name was technically Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. There was even paperwork to prove it. But, sometimes it was like his brain had deleted the information, like the soldering in his hard drive had corrupted in that very section. 

“That was a formality,” Tim countered. 

“That was a choice.” Bruce’s hands clenched and then relaxed, slowly, as a force of will as he spoke with conviction. “One that I made, that I agonized over, that I never regretted for a single moment. You’ve taken my legacy and upheld it and made me proud. You are better than I ever could have been, but Tim I am worried about you right now.” 

Blow by blow by blow. Tim collapsed, sitting hard into his couch’s plush cushions. 

But Bruce wasn’t done. He leaned forward, earnest as he continued, “I see myself in you, and it scares me because I know myself better than most people do. I have met and pushed almost every single one of my limits. I know precisely what I have done, who I am, and the man I have become, over the years.” His eyes weren’t moving. They bore right into Tim like they were looking at his soul; like Tim was a fly caught in Bruce’s spider web.

“I know my good habits and my bad ones: the way I can spin myself into unhealthy spirals, how obsessive I can become, how closed off, how stubborn. My righteous anger. The ways I have to keep myself in check, meticulously, so that I can function. I see you, sometimes, and I think I don’t want that for Tim. I don’t want that for my son. ” 

Bruce’s voice shuddered with emotion, open wide, showing Tim all of his cards. When was the last time Tim had seen Bruce like this, communicative and raw?

He wasn’t sure he had woken up, after all.

“But then I look again, and I see all the ways in which you’ve surpassed me. You are kinder. You work better with people. You deal with emotions better than I do; you reach out more than me. Your detective skills are on par with mine. Your hacking, your fighting style, the way you operate at Wayne Enterprises. Your laughter. Your big heart. You’ve made me proud, Tim.” 

He gentled. “But then I see you acting like this. Like me at twenty-three with no teammates and only my anger and my pain wrapped around me like a cloak, taking on too many things so that I don’t have time in the day left to think. Left to sit in my own head.” 

Tim didn’t like where this was going, and moved to counter, clumsy as his eight-year-old self trying to learn freerunning in the middle of Gotham proper with no prior training, unsupervised. “No, I didn’t—” 

Bruce cut him off. “Don’t lie. You can only hide the evidence so well, and only if the pieces stay unconnected. But I asked around and I see the amount of work you’re doing right now. It isn’t healthy.”

Doom wrapped itself around Tim’s neck like a noose, impending and telling in Bruce’s tone. “No Bruce.” Tim stood. “No. You can’t.” 

“Can’t do what?” 

Tim fought back tears. Fuck. He was supposed to be strong right now. Stop. Stop crying. He was proving Bruce’s fucking point by acting like this. “You can’t take my work away from me,” he pleaded. “You can’t.”

Bruce stared up at him placidly, but there was something steely behind his eyes. “I won’t let you become like me.” 

Tim sunk back down onto the couch. Oh. He closed his eyes, bracing for impact.

“And so I’m taking a few things off your plate. Not everything,” Bruce said, and the impact wasn’t as great as Tim thought it would be. “But you can’t work yourself like this.” 

Like this. Such pretty words for what he really meant: to the death. Yeah, Tim knew. He bit his lip, his head still tilted down, eyes squeezed shut to stop the tears from coming out regardless.

Bruce sighed. “I know there is something going on with you right now. You’re not processing it.” 

Yeah. Tim knew that, too.

“Tim? Look at me?” Tim rubbed his eyes and looked up, breath hitching at Bruce’s cracked open face and glazed over eyes, like he was about to cry along with him. “I’m sorry. But you have to process it.” 

Tim looked harder and saw two ghosts standing behind Bruce, their hands on his shoulders like a mockery of the old Wayne family portrait in the family wing of the Manor. He saw the clock-entrance in Bruce’s study to the Batcave being wound to the time of death of his parents with careful hands. He saw the wooden box in Bruce’s desk that contained a fistful’s worth of loose pearl beads. He saw Bruce Wayne, dedicating himself to a cause so thoroughly that it drove every factor of his life, every day that he lived it; the shortcomings of that choice and its strengths. He understood. 

“Yeah. Yeah. I know.” 

Bruce smiled. It was full of pain. He didn’t ask Tim what he was going through, or to begin processing it with him. He seemed to understand that Tim wouldn’t appreciate a push right now, and just that act of humanity from Bruce made a rush of affection run through Tim’s body. The two of them sat for a minute, and Tim felt the weight in the room alleviate in its stretched out glory.

Bruce patted his thighs, and it was almost as if they’d had an additional conversation in that silence. “Good.” He stood. “I told Cass to come over this weekend. I hope that will help, in some way.” 

Tim could read Bruce like a fucking book. He knew Bruce couldn't say I wasn't there. He couldn't say This is my fault . But Tim saw it in him anyway. He knew that this was Bruce trying— trying harder than Tim had seen him try in a very long time. 

Categorizing every minute movement, Tim watched in amazement as Bruce squared his shoulders like he was preparing to take a blow, and then said, quiet but resolute, “I love you, Tim. Take the time you need. Process this. Don’t worry about your duties.” He smiled, slightly, like he was about to make an unfunny joke. “I’ll send you an email with the details.” 

Tim wanted to be angry, but he wasn't. That— that email thing; it’d been part of a bit the two of them used to do when talking about cases. Right around Tim’s adoption era. When Tim had gotten everyone to pretend that their nighttime activities were a corporate job, stemming from a shadow he’d done at Wayne Enterprises.

So, instead, Tim’s heart swelled full of painfully bittersweet nostalgia. His lips bled with the words he’d held onto but hadn’t said in a long, long time. He said them now. “I love you too. I— yeah. Me too.” And he had. He had. Batman had meant hope to him for a long time. Somehow, he still did. After everything. Despite it, because of it. It didn't really matter. 

And Tim found himself rising from his seat again, not knowing what he wanted until he had his arms wrapped around Bruce’s middle, squeezing tight. Bruce returned the hug, his arms linking Tim’s belief and love to something solid. 

And his walls were crumbling. His breath staggered in and out like a stab wound victim and he shook, tears soaking into Bruce’s turtleneck. He wasn’t too unaware, however, not to feel the droplets in his hair. Maybe he didn’t need to be strong; not always. Maybe, even though Bruce thought Tim wasn’t going to be processing with anyone else present, he was wrong. 

Because to Tim? This felt like catharsis.

He didn’t count how long they stood there, but eventually, Bruce ushered him back into his room, and Tim— utterly exhausted from crying and the emotional outpouring they’d had and still not caught up on his sleep debt— crashed into unconsciousness once more.

Tim woke up feeling heavy and bloated, his eyes crusted over and hair greasy, but closer to the surface. More awake. More real. 

He stumbled out of bed and down the hallway, rubbing his eyes and yawning, cold flooring under his feet a shock with every step. There was a note on the counter from Bruce, telling him to take it easy and noting that he’d had the fridge restocked; reiterating that he’d told Cass to stop by on the weekend and he’d told Barbara that Tim wouldn’t be working on any more side projects anytime soon. 

Take the time. Rest. Take care of yourself and allow yourself to be safe in where you are. Process, Tim. Talk to someone. 

Tim swallowed and discarded the note dispassionately. So yesterday hadn’t been a fever dream. Okay. 

He grabbed a protein bar and a new tangerine— Bruce had gotten him a whole bag, apparently— and climbed out onto his fire escape to sit and eat. Tim looked out and wondered, praising the skyline as beautiful in his own mind, but he didn’t want to take a picture. He just stared and sat and let the wind whip at him through his thin PJs.

The orange was bright in his mouth, and the bar a crumbly, dry follow up. 

Tim swallowed around the last bite and closed his eyes. 

What was he doing? 

Fuck. 

Grief ate at him like a mold, like a cancer. A rot from the inside. A faulty line of code rendering the entire program useless. He was useless, practically. And Bruce had been the one to render him that way. 

But no, that wasn’t fair. Bruce didn’t kick him out of the family or take away his suit. He’d told Tim to fucking recover. To— to not fall into the same traps as he had. 

Tim opened his eyes and smiled bitterly. Bruce must have been going to therapy. It was about fucking time, but holy shit. Not a fever dream, indeed. He traced a hand on the metal grate holding him up and its clean edges; the steps going down that were fully up to code and not rusted, sending a chill through his fingertips. 

In fact, there were goosebumps on Tim’s arms from the cold. He sighed and looked back out over Gotham for a moment, leaning his head against the railing to listen to the city’s heartbeat a moment longer before getting up and climbing back through the window, depositing the peel of the tangerine in the kitchen trash, which was empty. Bruce must have taken the trash out, too.

God. Even Tim’s brain was getting stuck on metaphors now. 

He shook his head and kept walking, pacing the living room back and forth and back again. He didn’t really know what to think or how to feel. He was just… empty. Cavernous. 

He was grieving. 

What the fuck was he grieving? 

No. He was processing. Processing… processing grief. He… it was— it was old. The grief, it wasn’t new because there was nothing new that had happened. It had been there, within Tim, shoved in little boxes shut away in little rooms with locked doors and forgotten keys in his mind. 

Tim pulled a hand through his hair, snagging on tangles and a film of grease coating his fingers when he pulled it away. His face screwed up; distaste and fear mingling in his throat, manifesting in a swallow. 

The doors were open, now. Spring cleaning, bitch, Tim thought uncharitably. 

It was like Jason had said. About being afraid all the time. About repression and fear and guilt and scrimping and pleasing everyone else and being on the verge of death the whole time— or feeling like it. Almost dying. Almost dying again. Rejection after rejection after rejection, only overcome by small pockets of acceptance before, inevitably and invariably, rejection would come again. 

But Tim felt safe now. So the doors were open and— spring cleaning, bitch. 

He felt safe now. What a fucking joke. He felt safe so he was depressed now? Was that how this shit worked? Was that really how all this was going to shake down, after fucking everything? All it took for Timothy Drake to finally give up was to feel safe? 

His fists clenched and then forcibly relaxed. 

He was processing. Grief. Anger. Fear. Trauma. Spring cleaning, bitch. That meant going through old shit and deciding what to keep and what to give away. 

There was so much shit that Tim needed to give away and get rid of. 

He sunk down onto the couch, heavy and weighted, head in his hands. Okay. Okay, so. Okay. He could do this. Right? He could do this. 

Shifting his hands to steeple under his chin, Tim breathed. He didn’t know where to start. It all felt so fucking big. There was so much and he was still tired and he still didn’t know what Bruce had taken him off of and what he’d left him on and he didn’t know how Babs was taking him being off those projects and he didn’t know if he’d be able to log in to his WE account and he didn’t know how to solve the case he and Dick were working on and he didn’t know what the fuck to do about Jason and he didn’t know if he was off patrolling and he didn’t know how to talk to his friends that he’d been ignoring for two weeks and he didn’t know if he might just throw back up the breakfast he’d eaten because he was sick, he was sick, he was sick—

Tim got up and ran to the bathroom and glanced at himself in the mirror before grimacing and looking away. He didn’t want to see the broken mess that he was right now. Fuck. 

Tim stood there, looking at the countertop, and breathed again. In and hold and out. Control. He was in control. He was—

He was in the fucking bathroom having a panic attack because of his shitty mental health. Yeah fucking right he was in control. Squeezing his eyes shut hard enough to burst static behind his eyelids, Tim found himself wishing that Jason was here. What he wouldn’t give, just for a hug right now. For some banter, for the kind and hard truth Jason brought with him that somehow always gave Tim what he needed to hear. 

Tim wondered what he might say, were he here and not mad at Tim and not under the delusion that Tim was scared of him. Something more about recovery processes, maybe? Something about how Tim was too hard on himself? 

He felt his throat tighten and wetness on his face, his breathing pattern deteriorating into dust. He thought about Jason and himself and the inevitable. He thought about Bruce and himself and trauma and patterns. He thought about Bruce and Selina and put their figures up next to himself and Jason in his mind and almost convinced himself that his sob was a laugh.

Oh, he thought. To be in love. To be the one who loved, when love was all you had. To be the one looking at those you loved and only seeing a mirror and aching for them, because you knew what was going to happen and you wanted to stop it but you didn’t think it could be stopped, because no one could stop you. 

Doomed to make the same mistakes, over and over again. Trying so hard to disrupt the cycle, and for what? 

He was choking on the air he breathed. Over and over again. He’d never had a unique experience in his life. 

Tim ripped away the bandaid and looked at himself straight on as he cried. Didn’t shy away from the red eyes, the rat’s nest that was his hair, the snot dripping down his nose, the way his face seized up with each gasping inhalation. 

He forced himself to look into his own eyes— shiny wet and the eyelashes clumped together with tears— and watch. 

This was who he had become. Who he needed to unmake and reshape like clay and fire again into something solid.

He let himself cry because of that, because of the choices that he’d made that had led him to this moment, and he let himself languish in his lowest yet again. Then he let himself turn the tears into relief, for what he hadn’t done, for the choices he hadn’t made that allowed him to be here, and he let himself languish in the sensations of his body showing himself, loudly, that he was alive through every painful, heartsick moment.

When his tears had finally run dry, Tim splashed his face with cold water, took a scorching shower, brushed his hair and sat down to make a to-do list. 

When he resurfaced, this was what he had written down:

1. Get right with myself.
2. Get right with my friends.
3. Get right with Jason.
4. Fucking talk to somebody— Spring cleaning, bitch.
5. Figure out what I’m on and what I’m off.
6. Solve the Flemmings case. 

None of those things were going to be easy; he was aware that there were a lot of emotions to be handled and conversations to be had. But he had to start somewhere, so Tim took out his phone to reach out to his friends. 

Two days later and halfway across Gotham from his apartment, Tim held and released his breath in the facsimile of a meditative effort, a camera in front of his face and Cass at his side. 

He was mildly aware of her kicking her feet over the edge of the building they were on, her sitting on the ledge and Tim resting his elbows on it. 

The very picture of stillness, Tim clicked the shutter, adjusted his lens, and rolled the film before taking another just moments later. His mind was blank: an empty canvas for the lens and his eyes to fill. 

Relishing in the euphoria of a good shot, Tim pulled his camera away from him and exhaled, long and slow. The wind buffeted against his face, causing the close of his eyes and coaxing a small smile into the corners of his lips. 

Cass hummed next to him, but Tim didn’t move. 

He was okay, right here on this rooftop. He was all flesh and bones and breath in his lungs and blood in his body. He wasn’t fixed, not by a long shot, but he was okay. And that was progress. 

“You are more settled,” Cass said, interrupting Tim’s thoughts. 

He looked over at her, meeting her gaze. “Yeah?” He said. She had that face on, like she was studying him.

“Lately, you’ve been stressed. Worried. Sad. But now, you’re more calm. Like a still pond. It’s good.” 

Tim let out a huff and looked back out at the skyline. The last two days had not been a fucking cakewalk, that was certain. Talking with his friends had been a necessity during which he’d cried more than once, and he’d had been so desperate to catch up on sleep afterwards that he’d taken two sleeping pills and then passed out for thirteen hours. The next morning, when he read the email from Bruce, he found out that he’d been taken off all the work he was doing for Babs, his contracting work had been doled out for other people to finish up and send out, and he was on a mandatory vacation at WE for two weeks. Bruce had been nice enough to keep Red Robin in the patrol rotation, but had downed his hours to three nights a week. 

He had so much free time, even with waking up at one pm, that Tim’s hands had practically shook with his need to do something to slow the whirring thoughts in his brain since his battery had almost completely recharged. 

He knew, even now, that he hadn’t fully processed everything he’d needed to, but he didn’t want to go pulling out his childhood traumas. There was a reason why he’d packed all that shit away. The boxes were open, and he could smell their rot stinking up the room, but he hadn’t moved to throw them out yet. Mental spring cleaning had taken a backseat to physical spring cleaning instead, bubblegum pop blasting in his headphones as Tim had spent all day cleaning his apartment. 

So, today, he was with Cass, just like Bruce had intended. She was the best choice, given the circumstances— he had to give Bruce that much. Cass was a good listener, unobtrusive, and was willing to strongarm anyone into taking better care of themselves by any means necessary, though usually a look was enough to get Tim to acquiesce. 

He’d been trying to cultivate stillness, though. He was glad that it had been working. 

Sighing, Tim replied, “Well. That’s good, but there’s still a lot of movement underneath the surface of this pond.” 

Cass hummed sympathetically. “Change is always hard.” 

“Yeah.” 

Tim didn’t want to look at her any longer, and turned his face away. He felt too seen to keep up with it. 

Gotham was there beneath him. He wished the city would rise up and swallow him whole; that he could forget himself in her depths and winding streets. He would walk, he would run, he would ride his bike or grapple or drive. He’d do anything if it meant forgetting himself even just momentarily. 

Tim didn’t want to run from his problems, but sometimes a guy needed a fucking break. Especially if, despite his wants, he was running from his problems after all.

Cass broke through his thoughts. “You don’t have to be ashamed. You know that?” 

She always saw what Tim wanted to hide.

“What do you mean?” He asked anyway, just to see what she’d say.

“You feel things. I feel things. We all feel things, whether we want to or not. You and I, we have had hard lives. It is easy to say that we are strong because we have lived through many hard things. But, it is not easy to say we are struggling. Because we do not often struggle. But change is hard and struggle is hard and we all need help sometimes. Even me.” 

“Even you?” Tim teased, but his voice was wobbly.

“Yes. Even me. I had to ask Steph to help me move my couch last week,” Cass said primly, but then sobered. “Some days, I still cannot talk. Do you think I am weak for that?” 

“No!” Tim said, vehement in his strength. “Of course not, Cass.” He switched to sign to say, “We have multiple ways to talk to you. It doesn’t matter which one we use.” 

“Thank you,” Cass signed back as she continued to speak. “The past does not go away just because time has passed. You bring the past with you. Everywhere. It informs the person you are today, but it does not decide. You decide.” 

Cass was right. It was just like he had already realized for himself, that day after Bruce had come barreling down his door. Every day and every choice that Tim made were his own to wear. He had always gone about things the hard way, that wasn’t going to change. 

“Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “I’m going to keep making the hard, right choice Cass.” 

She scooted closer and leaned into him, resting her head against his arm. Somehow, she made him feel like he was supported, fully, just within that action. “Good,” she said. “I am always a call away too.” 

“Thank you.” Relief and genuine care spilled over into Tim’s voice.  

They sat there for a while longer, sharing their warmth. Nothing else needed to be said, just the sound of the wind ruffling their hair and the occasional shutter click of Tim raising his camera was enough. 

Cass spent the rest of the day with Tim, eating out at a new restaurant Tim had never been to before and walking through a few little shops of trinkets. For a while, they both let Tim pretend that he had no worries and he was just another twenty-something trying to figure out his life. Part of the crowd. One of the many souls in this place. 

When Tim hugged Cass at his doorstep and watched her walk away from him, the illusion fell apart. His camera felt weighty in his hands as he lifted the strap up from around his neck. Like a man possessed, Tim walked over to his darkroom, setting the camera down on a shelf before the magnet’s pull brought him over to his filing cabinet. 

The drawer squeaked out like prey. Tim grabbed the folder containing the pictures he’d taken of Jason that fateful movie night, and he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to look at them, but there was still so much shame in him that he choked with one finger under the tab. 

Disgusted with himself, Tim threw the pictures back into the drawer and left the darkroom, slamming the door behind himself. What the fuck was he doing. 

Tim’s emotions were tangled up in his chest. It felt like love, but it was wrapped with paper packages of shame and bubblewrap of guilt and packing peanuts of lust and packing tape of grief all so deep that Tim didn’t know how to go about unraveling it. 

But he couldn’t hide in the dark. He couldn’t run from his problems forever. Fuck it.

His lips formed the words silently, just to test the waters. He felt stupid for the cowardice without an audience, but Tim needed the warm-up, and it was just him. He was alone. He could be fucking stupid if he wanted to be.

Tim took a deep breath in preparation. Then, he said it.

“I am in love with Jason Todd.” Somehow, this time he felt stupider than the last. This was stupid. Maybe he should have just found a different thing to process today and like, fucking do some journaling about his parents instead. God. 

But no. He had to at least try to cut down to the core of this emotion. 

“I am in love with Jason Todd,” he tried again, his voice sticky around the words. Shame knocked over him, a familiar sensation. 

Instead of riding out its wave, though, Tim took his logical brain and applied it to the feeling, analyzing it. He already knew he felt this way. He already knew where it came from. 

Love wasn’t something that had ever been plentiful in Tim’s life. Sure, he’d had a decent amount of it to give away, but what was offered back to him was pitiful in comparison. A collection of moments from his parents. Bruce, in his kinder moments. Alfred, when he managed to get out from behind his butler-y decorum. Memories with Dick and Steph and Cass. His friends. 

So why was he ashamed of loving Jason? They had a fucked up past, but that was Tim with practically any hero on Earth he knew beyond acquaintanceship. They both were Bats, but it wasn’t like Tim considered him family or anything. 

And Tim wasn’t covetous. Or, okay, maybe he was, but he wouldn’t force anything to happen that Jason didn’t want already. Even his fucked-up fantasies. If Jason somehow fell into bed with him, it wasn’t like Tim was going to shove all his gory wants right at him. He’d have vanilla sex with Jason Todd for the rest of his life if it came to that, and it would be the best sex of his life every time just by virtue of it being Jason. He could practically come just by Jason looking at him, and that was when the other man wasn’t even trying. 

But that wasn’t all he wanted. Tim wanted mornings waking up next to him, breakfasts where Jason tried to teach Tim how to cook, debates about who was nerdier, philosophizing about the morality of vigilantism, talking about cases over late dinners, annoying Dick together, cleaning weaponry and sharpening blades after patrol, stitching each other’s wounds, washing dishes together. 

It wasn’t just carnal. It was fucking domestic. Grocery shopping. Lives and hands intertwined, Lifetime movie bullshit. 

And Tim knew that Jason was complicated. He was complicated too, after all. Both of them had unspeakable amounts of trauma. Tim wasn’t trying to idealize the situation. 

But he just wanted it too much. 

There. That was it. Tim was afraid. If he had this— one of the few things he’d ever wanted with this much ferocity— and broke it, then what would he do? 

Hands trembling, Tim forced his fingers through his hair. Tim knew rejection. He knew how it stung and how it burned. He tried to console himself: if he and Jason get together and then things went bad, it’s not like it would be the first time Jason hated him. 

But it would be entirely different. He’d be hating Tim because he knew him instead of from a base assumption and false information. Tim would bare his soul. He would have tried anything to make Jason stay. And if Tim did that, if he laid himself bare at Jason’s feet and then still was rejected? 

Then it would be worse than any other rejection he’d ever faced. 

Nausea knocked into his throat and a full shiver ran through his body at the thought. That was enough of that for tonight. Tim had no further wishes of going down that particular spiral. 

He put on some more music and picked up his cleaning where he’d left off with it, letting the scrubbing and the beat occupy his mind for a while, until he was exhausted enough to sleep without dreams.

After multiple days of just cleaning and a way-too-quiet patrol last night, Tim was done. If he didn’t do some real goddamn work , he was liable to explode. Light duties didn’t have to mean no duties, right? He was still on to help solve the Flemmings case, and there hadn’t been any news from Dick, which meant there was no news at all. That was unacceptable. 

Tim booted up his laptop and grabbed himself two cans of Zesti before sitting down and turning his monitor on. It was time to dig.  

It was easy to get lost in the methodical nature of going over every piece of evidence again, along with Dick’s new, updated notes from the last few days, including interview notes from two other store employees named Edna and Cam with extremely unhelpful results, as evidenced by the frowny face in Dick’s comments. Tim looked at social media again. He reviewed bank statements. He pulled up text messages and combed through city records. Then, he pulled up security cams and began to watch footage. 

Midway through, he paused the screens and grabbed a snack, bringing it back to eat in front of his monitor. His eyes focused on the screen as the days played out, the employees going about their business and customers flowing in and out. Unfortunately, there weren’t any cameras in the delivery space, which Tim noted was an oversight— and one that was probably intentional— as he watched. 

Ryan Flemmings really hadn’t been in the store since going MIA. It was weird, since Tim had started with the footage before Flemmings had gone missing, and the guy was normally there all the time . He watched for any suspicious behavior, and didn’t see any beyond the employees looking harried and distressed after the guns had been found on Trinity’s morning shift. The older woman, Edna, had started pulling aside the manager, Tahira, as well as the secondary baker, Benji, and having talks with them every so often. And there was the fact that the cashier, Angie, was conspicuously missing since that news had gone out, but Tim knew she’d called in sick for her shifts. 

He noted to check in on what the hell she was doing, just in case, and then continued watching. 

Everything was business as usual— because being a victim of a crime in Gotham was just business as usual, unfortunately— until Benji pulled Edna aside and had a quick conversation with her in the kitchen, away from everyone else, and then he left work in a hurry right after that, several hours before his shift was supposed to end. 

Tim checked the date on the cameras, and his eyes widened. This happened yesterday. It could be the fresh lead they were looking for. Quickly, Tim logged onto Oracle’s network and brought up city surveillance, tracing the feeds back to the exact time that Benji left and began, slowly, to trace his path through the city.

There were a few stumbling blocks when Tim wasn’t sure where he had gone, but he was so determined to chase down this lead that he tracked Benji all the way into Crime Alley, where Benji ducked into a little alley unceremoniously. 

Tim’s heart sunk. Fuck, Jason would actually want in on this case now, if Benji was fucking around in his territory. 

Unenthusiastically, Tim pulled up the feed of the alley in all its grainy glory. The cams sucked ass in Crime Alley— if they even existed at all— because of how often they got dismantled and broken. Tim was lucky this one was still there, and sent up a silent thank you to the universe.

Benji paced by a dumpster before somebody else in a hoodie pulled down low walked into the alley. Tim immediately changed the speed to normal and watched the two of them talk, Benji’s body language defensive and frustrated while the other person played it cool, hands in pockets. The angle was horrible, but there was a definitive moment where Benji stepped forward, like he was threatening the other person, but then he took several steps backwards a minute later. They only chatted for another few, short moments before the hoodie-person left, only for Benji to have a breakdown in the alley before leaving. Tim traced him all the way back to his apartment before sighing. 

This was a great lead. But now Jason was definitely going to have to be involved, and Tim needed to call Dick to let him know. 

Tim went for his phone only to blink sheepishly at the time. How the hell was it three forty-seven am? Well, whatever. He’d just catch some sleep and tell Dick in the morning. 

…Or. Tim wiggled his mouse and pulled up the patrol rota to see Dick’s name on it helpfully. Perfect. He rigged up his phone to route through his computer, entering in several passwords as he went, and then sent a ping through to Dick’s comm.

“Hello! You have reached Nightwing,” Dick said smoothly. Tim could hear the rush of air around him and recognized the sound from years of talking over comms as the sound of Nightwing grappling. 

“Red Robin here,” Tim told him. “You have a moment to talk?” 

There was a thunk across the line as Nightwing landed somewhere. “Yeah, it hasn’t been a very exciting night. Hit me, tell me what you need— since I know you’re not supposed to be working tonight.”

Tim grinned, unseen. “Busted,” he said unapologetically. “But I thought it might be of interest to you that I found a lead in the Flemmings case.”

“How? I mean, don’t answer that, you’re literally a genius is how, but like actually how?” 

Tim rolled his eyes, but felt fond of Dick’s overflowing praise. “I did a manual security footage watch, that’s how.” 

Nightwing made a retching noise on the other line. “Gross. Thanks for doing that, though. That kind of shitty task is something I don’t miss about my short police officer stint.”

Tim snorted and picked up the Sashibo folding cube on his desk, flipping the triangles out and in. “Yeah, I get why. So no snarky comments on me being up so late; I practically napped in front of my monitor for like five hours until I got to the interesting stuff. Anyway, the quality is shit but I tracked Benji Andrews— one of the bakers?— making a run to Crime Alley and having a really shady back alley conversation.” 

“Ooh, tea,” Nightwing commented, just to rile Tim up. It worked, but Tim didn’t say anything, not wanting Dick to know that Tim had hated everything about that.

“Sent you the footage to review later,” Tim said as he dragged the files into a secure transfer and clicked send with one hand, tossing the cube up and catching it with the other. “This happened yesterday— or, I guess, two days ago now. So pretty fresh still. The person in the alley didn’t show their face, but I’ll see if I can get a partial to run through facial recognition.” 

Nightwing huffed. “I wouldn’t hold my breath.” 

“We can always hope for a hit,” Tim protested, but he knew the chances were extremely low and almost guaranteed to be inaccurate even if they did pull up a “match.” 

“Mhm,” Nightwing agreed insincerely. “By the way, did I hear you say Crime Alley?” 

Great. Now came Tim’s least favorite part. “Yes,” he sighed, “you did.” 

The line was silent for a moment. Tim felt like he was in an old Western, just waiting for the first person to shoot and adamant that it wasn’t going to be him. 

Dick, of course, caved first. “So… am I the first person you’ve told about this?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Tim said. “You’re the one I’m working the case with.” 

“Oh, we never worked with anyone else on this one?” Dick asked, his voice falsely innocent.  “Not even somebody who came to our stakeout and like, owns Crime Alley and might be able to help us with ID’ing this shady alley person?”

Tim grit his teeth, putting his fiddle cube down. He didn’t want to say anything to Dick about bringing Jason in on this. Sure, he was in love with the guy, but that wasn’t something he wanted to go screaming out on the rooftops. And he was still a bit pissed at Jason anyway, because what had that rooftop stakeout conversation even been anyway? Why did Jason even believe that Tim would be content to be scared around him like Jason’s very existence was some kind of fucked up exposure therapy? Fuck him very much for thinking that Tim would put up with that bullshit. 

Apparently, Dick wasn’t in the mood to wait for Tim to answer him, because he barreled on, but this time his voice was calm, leaning towards caring. “I know that there’s something going on with you two and I know you don’t want to talk to me about it, but it has to be something big because I can’t remember the last time you only patrolled three times a week without being coerced into it. You must want to avoid him really badly.” 

Well at least he didn’t know about Bruce’s visit. That really would have sent Tim into a spiral. Trying to avoid mentioning that he actually had downed his patrol shifts due to an intervention, Tim said, “Well, yeah. He and I are in the middle of this stupid misunderstanding that he apparently thinks I’m still scared of him and have only been spending time with him out of obligation or pity or something, I don’t know exactly where his brain is at.” 

Immediately after he stopped talking, Tim wanted to slap himself. He’d managed to skirt around telling Dick about this before at his apartment, but now… Fuck Dick and his leading statements. And fuck them even more for working.

“Tim. What?” The incredulity in Dick’s voice was actually quite validating. 

Well, he’d already spilled the beans. He might as well elaborate and then Dick could tell him how he should get Jason to stop believing that was true. 

“Yeah, I know,” Tim started. “It was this whole thing, because— well, you know how Jason has cooked some stuff for me? That has kind of become a thing, like we’d get together and he’d make something and we’d talk about stuff and we started collaborating on a few cases and I even got him to come to some of the major family events that he likes to pull out of and skip last minute. But, anyway, so he was over cooking and I was tired and thinking about five million other things and he like.” 

Okay, how was Tim not supposed to make this sound incriminating? Oh well. Too late. He’d just try his best. 

“He thought I reacted badly to him throwing around some knives, but I didn’t. It was unrelated, like the wrong thing happening at the wrong time. And I tried to tell him that, but he thought I was lying even though I wasn’t and he refused to let it go. So everything got really awkward and he left and then we didn’t talk until basically that rooftop stakeout thing, where he tried to give me some bullshit line about how my feelings are usually right even when I can’t prove them because of how fast my brain works or something? But it was just such bullshit and he got so fixated on it, and then he tried to talk about me but um. I’ve been really busy and um.” 

Tim felt himself waver. He was bad at saying no to Dick, he knew that, but it wasn’t like Dick hadn’t seen him at his lowest. If he was going to be telling this much, he might as well include some more of the truth too, lest he get called out for lying and get another intervention or in another argument.

Over the line, he’d taken enough of a pause that Dick made an encouraging noise. “You can tell me.” 

Tim sighed. He knew he could. In his mind, he saw the list he’d written for himself and all the people he’d wanted to get right with. Dick hadn’t been explicitly put on the list, but he knew that their relationship did have some room to improve. This show of trust would be an olive branch he could extend, and Tim knew that Dick would recognize it as such. 

So he soldiered on. “I told you about how I’ve been dealing with some mental health stuff recently, yeah? And Jason’s been helping?”

Dick made a noise of agreement, voice soft. “Yeah, you mentioned that.” 

“Mhm.” Tim’s palms felt clammy. God, telling people shit sucked. “Well, he’s been a big part of my support system, and having this fight with him really threw things off for me so I might have spiraled a bit? And then, when he reached out to try and get in touch with me, I might have also buried myself in work and blown him off?” Tim winced at his own words, feeling ready to curl up in a ball and hide. 

“Oh, Tim.” Dick’s voice dripped sympathy.

“Yeah. So now I don’t really know what to do and everything’s fucked.” 

Dick cleared his throat. “Um. Well, that’s a little defeatist, don’t you think?” 

Tim got up from his desk chair and began to pace in front of it, not moving too far since his phone was still hooked up into his computer to get access to the comms. “Sure,” he allowed, “but none of us are great at communicating. We all know that. I’m just scared that I won’t be able to make him see sense. And now, he’s probably also mad about me blowing him off, which— in his mind— probably lends even more credence to the fact that I’m scared of him!”  

“Okay. I see what you’re saying, because he totally would think that.” Dick’s tone was so exasperated that TIm could practically see his eyeroll. He took a beat and then continued, tone wiped clean and neutral. “Would you like my advice? Or would you like me to sympathize?” 

Tim hadn’t come this far just for Dick to start blowing smoke up his ass. He wanted to fix things. “Evidently I have zero idea what the fuck to do, so please. By all means, tell me what you think.” 

“Sure, can do!” Dick said, sunny-bright, then let out a huff. “I hate to offer the obvious solution, but have you thought about apologizing?” 

“Of course I’ve thought about apologizing, Dick,” Tim hissed, throwing his hands up and putting derision on Dick’s name so it leaned more towards an insult. “I went into a depressive spiral over this!” 

“I understand that. But have you actually done it yet?” 

Tim stopped pacing. “No,” he admitted. 

“That’s my advice, then.” Dick at least had the decency to not sound like an asshole, keeping his words and tone encouraging. “Tell him that you’re sorry about blowing him off and you’re ready to talk. Let him in. And, honestly, you know that whole thing I said before about how you two have a heavy past that you should maybe get some closure on? Yeah. I’d talk to him about that stuff too, so that you can avoid situations like him seeing you having an adverse reaction to something he does and blaming it on that old stuff.” 

That made way too much sense for Tim to have thought of it, unfortunately. To be fair, removing Tim’s romantic feelings did make the situation a bit less complicated though. Rubbing his forehead, Tim sat back down in his desk chair. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I know you’re right. I just…” 

“You just needed a kick in the ass?” Dick offered. 

Tim nodded glumly, even though he knew Dick couldn’t see him. “I just needed a kick in the ass.” 

“Happy to provide,” Dick said, lightly joking enough to make Tim roll his eyes fondly. “And don’t take too long, because once you’ve talked about this, we need him on the case. So I’d shoot for tomorrow if I were you, because as soon as I hang up, you better go straight to sleep.” 

Tim was starting to feel a little bit tired. He glanced at the time on his monitor only to see 4:32 blinking back at him. Shit. This was definitely going to fuck up his sleeping schedule— and right when he’d gotten it back on track. 

“Tomorrow works,” he agreed. Then, a thought struck him. It would be hypocritical of him to sit here and have this conversation with Dick about Jason and working through issues if he didn’t even bring up the awkward air that sometimes sat between the two of them. 

“And, Dick?” He asked, tentative. 

“Yeah, Tim, what's it?”

“Maybe we should talk sometime too,” He offered, and then realized how that sounded, quickly clarifying, “Not that there’s been anything bad! But just to catch up and, y’know. Shore things up and all that.” 

Dick’s grin was evident in his voice. “I’d like that a lot. I’ll text you tomorrow, okay? I’m still technically on patrol, so I need to get swinging, but if you’re going through anything like this please know you can talk to me. Anytime.” 

Tim smiled too. “Yeah, I know. And I will. Don’t forget to text me, and I’ll let you know how talking to Jason goes.” 

They finished up the call shortly thereafter, and when Tim shut off his monitor and closed his laptop at 4:41, he felt that everything might be okay after all. Setting an alarm for ten the next morning, Tim crawled into bed and told himself to hold onto the hope with both hands.

He was going to do whatever he needed to do to make things right.

Tim breathed in. Steadily, he let himself feel the expansion in his lungs until they could hold no more air. The sun was shining on his face. He had just finished cleaning his already-spotless apartment again, and his delivery food had just arrived, set out on the table in lieu of a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth. An offering. 

When there was a knock on the door, he walked over with purpose and opened it. No hesitation. 

Jason stood there, face placid and hands trembling; eyes looking troubled in a different way than they had when he was a teenager finding his footing in Bruce’s household, but searching for answers nonetheless. 

Nervously, Tim licked his lips. They were chapped. He needed to drink more water.

“Hi. Come in, please.” 

Jason ducked his head, mouth drawing tight. “Hey, yeah. Sure.” 

Tim’s limbs felt like they weren’t his with the way that they moved, jerky and offbeat. He swung out an arm, gesturing towards the food, a wrong, farce of a grin on his face. “The food’s out here,” he said.

Jason nodded. He still seemed pissed off and Tim didn’t know how to fix it or where to start. Neither of them moved to the table, both standing there, just looking at each other in the open space. 

He looked good. Jason was wearing dark jeans and a t-shirt with his brown leather jacket thrown over top, hands stuffed into his pockets and hair fluffy. Even the scowl on his face and his beat-up shoes were attractive, though the latter made Tim want to take Jason shopping. 

Aching, Tim knew he had to say something to start this reconciliation, to break the awful tension simmering around them no matter how his skin felt like it would bruise from just one wrong word. 

“I was going to wait, but I can’t.” Tim said. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. In person, where you could see me meaning it. It’s not an excuse, but I was going through some mental health stuff and I didn’t want you to see me like that, even though I know it’d be nothing new for you. I don’t know. It’s stupid and I shouldn't have ignored you anyway.” 

Jason shook his hands out of his pockets. “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie Timmy, you blowing me off definitely felt like shit. I appreciate the apology.” 

The appreciation, but not acceptance, of the apology stung; Tim could already feel the bruise right on his heart. He hadn’t expected things to be easy, but this start wasn’t promising for the night’s direction.

Well, at least they were talking to each other and nobody was bleeding out. 

Tim gestured to the food again, still off balance. “Okay. We should probably eat this before it gets cold.” 

Finally, the blankness on Jason’s face shifted into something a little more open as his eyes landed on the containers Tim had set on the table. “Oh thank fuck, you did get Delhi Rose.”

Relief resounded through Tim’s body at just the right frequency. He walked over and dragged out a chair to sit down on, Jason following suit and divesting himself of his jacket to drape over the back of his chair. 

“Yeah, well,” Tim said, regaining his balance, “it can never be said that I don’t have taste. I mean, it was my idea to add pants to the Robin suit, after all.” 

The quip did its job in releasing the room’s tension— at least for now. Jason rolled his eyes and looked for the container of samosas, grabbing the mint chutney. “Listen, the job came with the suit and I wasn’t about to go making modifications back then.” 

Tim pulled over the container of biryani he’d gotten for himself, the steady leech of tension out of his shoulders continuing to make him feel like he could work with this. “I know. You looked so happy in the suit that I bet you hardly even thought about it.” 

Jason paused, a samosa with sauce halfway to his mouth. “What?” 

Oh fuck. Tim wanted to pound his head against the table at his own stupidity. He’d made vague, offhand mentions before of his old Batstalking days, but never anything too concrete because he’d been too embarrassed to admit to Jason’s face that he owned at least two filing cabinets full of photos from Jason’s tenure as Robin and a digital library as well with scans that he’d edited. 

This was, officially, the worst time to have brought this up. However, if Tim tried to divert or lie, Jason would see it in an instant and he’d leave. So, Tim sighed and tried to sound as unaffected as possible as he explained, “Yeah, you know how I took those photos of Robin when I was a kid? Of course I noticed when you started. And let me tell you, you were very enthusiastic about the whole thing. It was cute.” 

“Huh,” Jason said, and then remembered that he was still holding onto his samosa and took a big bite, eyes wandering away from Tim and unfocusing for a moment in thought. 

Tim let him have his moment to digest that, and decided to start eating too. At the first forkful of food, Tim realized how hungry he was— which made sense, he hadn’t eaten yet all day because of how nervous he’d been— and ate more with gusto.

“Y’know, you never really talk about those days,” Jason said a minute later, now on his third  samosa. The words were a little caustic, but not malicious. “What was it like?” 

It had been everything to Tim but had substantially given him almost nothing. There had been loneliness burning inside of him but a fierce independence as well. He’d learned how to take risks, how to chase after what he wanted with brutal efficiency, how to solve crimes from detective work and how to take the best, clearest shots of Batman and Robin without being noticed. He’d taught himself how to be still even when Gotham’s winter pierced through his coat like a knife and he’d learned how to make himself invisible winding around Gotham’s underbelly with a little drawstring bag for his camera, cheap enough so it wouldn’t make him a target. 

Those nights had shaped Tim, given him something to hold onto, showed him bodily what he would always and forever aspire to be. Who he wanted to— and had— become. 

But he couldn’t say any of that. So, instead.

“It was really cool and really frustrating,” Tim answered. “You know how paranoid Bruce is and how patrol rotations change constantly? I had to figure out the pattern on my own based on timed sightings and my own observations by pinning them to a map.” 

Jason shook his head. “Jeez. You’ve always been one hell of a sleuth, but that’s pretty impressive.” He made a face. “Robin really did mean a lot to you, huh.” 

Tim looked away and poked at a piece of chicken with his fork idly. “I mean, yeah. I’ve told you what my parents were like.” 

“Fuck,” Jason muttered, and Tim looked back up at him inquisitively. 

He was grimacing as he pulled over a container of lamb vindaloo and the foil-wrapped naan. Noticing that Tim had heard him, Jason sighed. “I know we’re not here to drag up old shit, and I know I’ve said it before, but I am sorry I almost killed you.” 

Honestly, Tim didn’t really want to talk about this one either, so he waved his hand with the fork in it and said, “I understand, but I forgive you and I promise I’m extremely over it. I mean, as far as almost-deaths go, it’s probably in my top five.” 

Jason let out a strangled laugh. “What the fuck, Timbourine?” 

Realizing how that sounded, Tim hurried to explain himself. Jason would be the kind of person to understand this, he thought. “It’s like… come on, you can’t tell me that you’ve never ranked the ways people have tried to kill you. I’ve got, like, this tier list based on how bad of a way to die something is? And so, I don’t know, let’s say—” 

“No need to explain,” Jason interrupted, grabbing some sauce with his naan. “I get it. Crowbar is obviously F tier.” 

“Yeah!” Tim agreed. Thank goodness he’d been right about Jason getting it; he knew that if he’d tried to talk to Dick about this kind of thing he’d just get another talk about trying to find a therapist. Wanting Jason to not feel alone in ranking his trauma, Tim offered up, “Similarly, vaulting out of one of Ra’s al Ghoul’s windows not knowing if anyone was going to catch me was also F tier. Fuck that guy. Dying in his place is so not the move.” 

Jason pretended to throw up. “Definitely not. Fuck that guy. Drug overdose is D tier because it means that someone subdued me enough to pump me full of something, and that’s just embarrassing.” 

Tim felt like there was more to unpack in that one, considering Catherine Todd, but he decided to not go there considering how much the atmosphere had improved since Jason’s arrival. “Right. And getting punched around and then you slitting my throat and me passing out after less than a minute is pretty ideal all things considered. B tier.” 

It had also just been Jason doing it, which definitely shouldn’t have made it better, but definitely had. Robin had been Jason’s anyway. 

Jason huffed. “This is definitely fucked up behavior. But like, who’s going to argue that getting shot in the head isn’t S tier murder tactics? It’s practically instant! No unnecessary suffering.” 

Nodding along, Tim picked up the thread. “Yeah! Like being unexpectedly crushed to death.” 

Jaosn pointed a considering finger at Tim. “Ooh, yeah. Nice one, and unexpected too so there’s no time to sit around being scared. I like.” 

Tim caught his eyes, smiling, feeling a balloon expanding in his chest. The corner of Jason’s mouth twitched, expression spasming at the edges. Tim’s smile widened accordingly, and he dug his teeth into his bottom lip, trying to fight the sensation. 

It only took a few more seconds before they both cracked, hysterical laughter bursting out of both of them. This was ridiculous. They were ridiculous, and Tim was happy to admit that bantering with Jason Todd about anything was one of the most joyful acts of his life.

“We,” Jason said, in between laughs as they petered off, “are so fucked in the head, Timmy.” 

“Of course we are,” Tim answered, still consumed by the hysteria. “We both volunteered to be Robin! Who does that?” 

“Crazy people,” Jason affirmed, and Tim noticed that he had some sauce on his cheek. “Fuckin’ deranged ass children, that’s who. Dickie, me, you. The demon brat. Steph, holy shit, never forget Steph. We’re all insane.” 

Tim definitely felt like he was insane. This was what he’d missed when they’d been fighting and avoiding each other: the comfort that Jason’s presence brought, the way that they’d developed trust in each other to be able to let loose like this, the airing of trauma in a way that was both informative and fun, the way that they could make anything fun just by virtue of doing it together. 

This was what Tim wanted, what he’d strived for. This dynamic, unnamed thing between them that made Tim feel like he was soaring through the air between the release and reshoot of the grappler, suspended and cradled by his momentum. With one wrong move, he could go down.

It would be the best fall of his life if he did.

Tim brushed his hair out of his face with one hand and Jason sobered. Stilling immediately, the fluttering in his body ceasing, Tim cautiously asked, “What?” 

“It’s funny. I ended up being the most insane of all of us.” The comment sucked all remaining air out of the room. 

Tim was grateful that he could go six minutes without air if he needed to. He carefully discarded his fork and blinked placidly before replying, “You’re not. And even if you were, I’m not actually scared of you, you know? You misinterpreted me that day.” 

Jason searched Tim intently, but Tim was determined to kill this issue here and now. He left himself open and vulnerable, wearing all of his emotions on his face, palms up on the table. The thickness of the air between them wavered like a polygraph. 

Sensing that this hadn’t quite been enough, Tim continued, “It’s true. I got over my fear for you a long time ago.” 

The wash of the silence shifted, second by second as Jason’s eyes pored over his face.

When he looked away, he scowled. “I believe you.” It was begrudging. Reluctant. Jason traced a finger on the table along the wood grain contemplatively, drawing away from himself before pulling back, again and again. 

He lost a piece of confidence with each push and pull until he’d been rendered into a shaken thing. “I might have been projecting onto you with that whole you’re still scared of me thing, actually. I— Well. You remember how you said that thing on the rooftop to me about how the last time I lost control was a long time ago?” 

“Yeah.” Tim winced at the reminder. He didn’t regret how harsh he’d been that night, but he didn’t want to sour the path this conversation had taken. 

“What I was trying to tell you that night,” Jason elaborated, still focused on the grain of the oak, “was that the Pit doesn’t really go away. It’s still there. And it might seem like I have a handle on things, but that’s mostly because I obturate its every breath. But plugging up the holes just means the gas builds. And sometimes, the rage just blows out of me and I can’t stop it. I’m destructive.”

Pushing aside the containers of food in his way, Tim reached across the table and placed a hand on Jason’s arm. “When was the last time?” 

Jason scowled at him, but didn’t throw off Tim’s hand. Seeing through the bluster, Tim just waited for him to answer. He was prepared to sit as long as it took. 

“I was with Kory,” He muttered. “I got so mean and she was just trying to help me. I’m such a piece of shit.” 

That was a familiar sentiment. “Repression will do that to you, Jay,” Tim said dryly. “You know you can’t keep going like this unless you want that kind of shit to keep happening, right?”

Now Jason did shake Tim’s hand off. “What do you expect me to do? Let that shit unearth itself? Let the Pit control me again? It’s an infectious disease, Tim. If I don’t fight it every minute, I’ll—”

Tim cut him off. “You always do this. Do you ever think about how many times Ra’s has bathed in that stupid neon glowy pool and he doesn’t have the same problems as you? Not that I’m saying he’s any kind of example, but there has to be a better way than what you’re doing right now.” 

Abruptly, Jason pushed his chair back and rose from the table, fury darkening his eyes and tensing his jaw. “Then by all means, enlighten me.” 

Tim rose slowly to match him and leaned forward onto the table with his palms. “Fine. Take me for example, then. These last few weeks, I’ve been dredging through my trauma. I’ve cried seventeen times and had six panic attacks. I’ve had an intervention from Bruce of all people, a mental health day with Cass— sponsored by Bruce— and a long talk about emotions with Dick of my own free will with a promise for round two. I told my friends about all of my problems in great detail and didn’t ask any of them a single question about themselves after ignoring them for two weeks. I’ve dragged up shit that I haven’t touched in years in my mind and it’s been really hard and painful. And you want to know what?”

Disbelief warred with Jason’s anger in the slow rise of his eyebrows. He looked like he was about to reply, but Tim didn’t let him open his mouth before continuing.

“I do feel better now. Not fixed, but better. You told me before, once, that recovery has to be your choice. Do you feel like you’re choosing the best version of you right now? Do you even want to be?”

That kicked Jason’s anger back into gear, just like Tim though it would. “What kind of an accusation is that? Of course I’m fucking trying! Do you really think, after everything—?”

After everything. Tim knew what he meant. There was so much of Jason that had been spilled here, in this very apartment. Gentle confessions and frantic conversations and shared meals and moments. Pressed-book memories of Jason’s recovery journey and the way he’d helped Tim with his own. The way both of them had felt the air between them rising and rising, the way that Tim’s blood sang with every heartbeat in the olive branches passed back and forth. The progress both of them had made, only to trip and fall right back to where they were now. Arguing again, but this time with sharper sticks than ever before because they knew where all the soft bits were.

“No,” Tim said, gentling. “I know you’re trying. But maybe what worked for you before isn’t serving you well anymore. Maybe you need to change things up to keep progressing. I did.” 

There was a twist in Jason’s face; another realization sweeping him away that Tim knew he didn't want to have. The agony looked beautiful on him; though Tim would have thought that any emotion he wore fit him like a fine-tailored suit. He had photographs from ten years ago to prove it.

The emotions on Tim’s tongue tasted bright and sharp and long, the feeling pooling and causing his teeth to crack with their weight. There was so much held inside of him; it felt too expansive for his body to handle. It took everything in Tim not to vomit more words out. Confessions in the midst of reaching out his helping hand.

He closed his eyes for a minute, trying to steady himself, trying to forget the ache in his chest to be helpful like the many times Jason had helped him, but he couldn’t help it. He blurted, “I fucking hate this table.”

Jason started. “Bit of a non-sequitur over there, but okay.” 

Tim kept talking as if he hadn’t said anything, desperate to make Jason understand the feelings bubbling in his chest. “I bought this fucking oak table when I was seventeen, okay? It was like, one of the first things I ever bought with money that I had earned that nobody had told me I needed to buy. I went out myself. Found it at some estate sale at some crappy old house. And then I put it in storage. Storage! For like, four years I had a solid oak table I didn’t even like in storage. And then I bought this place, fixed it up, paid a pretty penny for somebody to design the whole space to perfectly fit Timothy Drake-Wayne, for the person everybody was supposed to see me as, except for this. Except for this stupid fucking table. That I don’t even like! I could have gotten rid of it! But I didn’t. I kept the table and I look at it every day and think it’s ugly but I never get rid of it. Do you understand? Do you get it, Jason?” 

Through his speech, Jason’s eyes had narrowed in contemplation. “Why don’t you get rid of the table?” 

Tim’s smile was sharp. Bitter. “Why don’t I get rid of the table. Well, why don’t you get rid of your guilt complex? Do you want to turn out like Bruce?”

Betrayal hooked itself in the crossing of Jason’s arms and rock back onto his heels. “What the fuck are you talking about?” His stare was as assessing as ever. 

Tim came alive under his dissection, leaning further in, regardless of the table. It could have been twenty feet wide and he’d still feel like he was less than a foot away from Jason. Locked in.

“He said that to me, you know.” Tim kept his voice hushed so that Jason would keep all of his focus right where Tim wanted it. “His whole intervention was about the way I was repressing things and how it would only make me more like him. Seems to me like I’m not the only one of us to fall victim to that emotional trap.”

Tim knew himself. He knew that to be the person he was, with the title of Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, was to be drowning in guilt, in self-loathing, in knowing you could always be better than what you were. To the memory of his parents. To Bruce. To all the other Robins and his teammates and his classmates and the Wayne Enterprises board and anyone he’d ever come across. 

Guilt. Rage. What were the two emotions but cover ups for the aching hollowness that Tim knew lived inside them both? Pretending it didn’t exist hadn’t done them any favors and Tim was tired of ignoring that each other’s presence was one of the few things that lessened that void. That made life worth living. 

Tim had bought this damn table because it’s what he’d thought he should do. He had made a snap decision and stuck by it and carried it around with him even when it no longer served him just because that’s what he was used to. Change was fucking hard. Even now, Tim was dragging his heels.   

“I don’t like this game,” Jason said, breaking Tim’s expectations. Grabbing his jacket off of the chair, he slung it over his shoulder and began to walk away. “You’re playing me and I don’t like it. You’re scared of me, you’re not. You’re in my corner, you’re attacking me. You seek me out, you ignore me for weeks. You lie to my face, you tell the truth earnestly. I don’t know what you want from me, Tim.” 

No. Jason couldn’t leave, not now. Not like this. 

If he did, Tim didn’t know if he’d ever come back.

Tim had already run a million risk assessments. He’d cataloged and calculated the percentages and the possibilities. If x, then y. The odds were never great. 

But the same state of affairs might have had more than one sufficient condition. And Tim was not a computer. He was a human: one as biased as they came. 

“I don’t want anything from you,” Tim said, chasing Jason around the table, reaching into his chest for his heart if it would help. “Nothing. Just as long as you stay.” 

Jason froze. His hunched shoulders didn’t ease as he turned back to Tim. “Are we really doing this right now? Fuck you.” 

Tim spoke with razors in his throat. “I— what are you talking about?” 

“Do not play dumb with me,” Jason snapped. “We both know that we’ve been dancing around whatever this is for a long time but I cannot believe you’d throw it in my face right now. Guess it’s my fault for thinking you had more integrity than that.”

No. That’s not what Tim had been trying to do. Precariously, Tim tried to pick his words, but his brain was all whirring fans like an overheated laptop refusing to run. “I wasn’t saying that to— to manipulate you. I just want you to understand—”

“Oh, I understand perfectly fine. You forgave me for everything because you came up with a way to get back at me. This really is the perfect revenge scheme; humiliating me, getting me to trust you. Making me— fuck. Making me fall—”  

“Shut the fuck up! Shut up. Shut up!” Tim raised his hands to his hair and gripped it, pulling to ground himself in the pain, talking as fast as he could get the words out. “I’ve been in love with you this whole time. Every second of everything. When you didn’t know me I was obsessed with you. You could have killed me back then and I would have forgiven you with my dying breath because I would forgive anything you did. This is not a revenge scheme! I didn't fucking cook up mental health problems just to be more sympathetic to you because that’s insane! I didn’t say anything about what I thought might be going on between us because I didn’t want to ruin things. I didn’t want to ruin you— because everyone I’ve ever loved has either died or hasn’t wanted me in the first place or has rejected me and I wouldn’t be able to lose you if I’d had you. Don’t you get it? The fucking metaphorical table is my guilt. My fear. My goddamn hangups. I don’t want you to leave because I never want you to leave but I can’t have what I want because I never get what I want the way I want it. It always ends up coming back wrong.” 

Warily, Jason threw his jacket onto Tim’s couch. His confession hadn’t sparked joy in Jason’s person, only a distrustful, ill-at-ease cover to his countenance. “I don’t like feeling like Frankenstien’s monster,” he said. “I don’t like being jerked around.” 

“I wasn’t trying to jerk you around,” Tim begged. His guts were on the floor. His hands were slick with his own blood. There was a string between them, taut and thin and fraying. His hands could barely hold on.

Jason held the string in one hand and a knife in the other. He always did wield a blade with efficiency. “Then what were you trying to do?” 

A humorless huff of broken laughter escaped Tim as he fumbled, his eyes’ reservoirs beginning to feel full. “I don’t know. I think I was just trying to live as close to you as I could get— as close as you wanted to get to me.” 

“So this all has been a misunderstanding.” Jason didn’t believe him. The knife began to eat at the string. 

Tim didn’t know how to turn things around. “Yes,” he choked out. He didn’t know how they’d gotten here. “I like you. I wouldn’t fuck with you on purpose.”

The moment tipped back and forth, one way and then another. There was nothing Tim could do. For all of the things he’d thought could happen, this had never been one of the scenarios. 

That was one of the hard parts about life. It was always more messy than the strangest fiction. 

Almost involuntarily, Tim realized that he wasn’t breathing and that he’d closed his eyes. He wanted that water-cavern detachedness to take him over and float him away, wanted to become unreal and turn into the perfect little program he was sure some people saw him as. No longer feel things, just be booted up and run and turned off so that he didn’t have to face the onslaught of emotions as vicious as Jason’s Titan’s Tower attack. 

“Okay,” Jason said, and Tim breathed in like a greedy whore, eyes flying wide open like a poor actress’s first on-screen orgasm to train on the jumping of Jason’s jaw muscle. “Fine. Then I’ll help you get rid of it. Your stupid fucking asinine table.” 

The words were incomprehensible. “Now?” 

“Yeah. Fuck it, let’s start now. You got a hammer?” 

Jason was standing there. Hair fluffy. Shirt and jeans and vulnerable and imperfect in Tim’s space, arguing with him over months of misunderstandings. Tim estimated that Jason, over the course of this time in Tim’s apartment, had gone through at least four epiphanies. And he was staying. 

He was staying. 

Maybe Jason had been right on that rooftop when he’d said that Tim’s feelings were right before he could back them up because his brain hadn’t finished calculating everything yet. Because, with certainly not enough evidence to support any kind of conclusion at all, Tim took a step forward. And then another and another until he was rushing forward, snapping the string between them all by himself to kiss Jason. 

And Jason didn’t pull away. Instead, at Tim’s hands gripping onto his shirt, Jason gripped onto his shoulders and pulled him in, turning the kiss fervent and hungry and demanding. 

They parted and Tim was breathless, looking up and hoping for absolution. 

Jason’s cheeks were flushed and eyes intent on staring straight into Tim like he could see every molecule that made him up, like his gaze alone pinned Tim down. “Emotional sledges work too, I guess. Fuck me.” 

“Do you want this?” Tim asked. “I need to know now.” 

Tim knew Jason’s face better than his own, had pictures of it in every emotion except for this one. Tim had never seen Jason Todd look like this, and a part of him was running the analytics on what it meant while the rest of him screamed.

Jason’s hands squeezed him and then eased up. “This won’t fix everything.” 

Despairing, Tim asked, “What will? I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you want.” And he would. He’d been holding his breath for as long as he’d known how to breathe in the first place just to give himself control over something and sometimes he just wanted somebody else to take over. To do it all for him. To tell him it would be alright if he had something he wanted, just this once.

Tim was tired of running himself ragged trying to become a ghost. All he wanted was to be Jason’s.

He hoped the desperation seeped through his skin enough so that Jason caught it in this mouth and nose, cloying and thick and unmistakable. He turned his head into Jason’s neck and kissed his collarbone, across the length of it while Jason’s breath stuttered. 

“Fuck, Tim, what are you doing to me?” Jason whispered. He still hadn’t pushed Tim away.

“I want to try being with you,” Tim confessed. “I’ve wanted it for so long.” 

“I have too,” Jason conceded, and Tim’s insides lit up. “For months. Fuck, you’re torture. I can’t stand it anymore.” 

Jason’s eyes blazed and then he leaned in and they were kissing again, the rough slide of lips against each other and eyes closed, heightening the acid bright feelings leaking out of Tim’s lungs into his bloodstream and the sounds they were making and the feeling of Jason’s stubble rasping against his face. It was so much and all so good . It made his stomach flutter, and he reached up to tangle his hands in Jason’s hair desperately. 

Jason made a noise and walked Tim backwards until they were against a wall before he started to use his tongue. Tim’s eyelids spasmed; he was grateful for the wall behind him because without it he was liable to fall on the floor. 

One of Jason’s hands went down to his waist, and his hand was so big that Tim couldn’t stop himself from moaning. God, he’d wanted Jason’s hands on him for so long. Tim poured his desire into the kiss, using his nails to rake down the back of Jason’s head lightly before grabbing onto his hair and pulling, eliciting another moan from him. 

Tim lost himself in sensation. When they parted, gasping for air, Tim opened his eyes to the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen: Jason with blown out pupils and kiss-swollen lips, a blush high on his cheeks and breath coming out in pants. He looked like sin. 

Tim wanted to devour him. 

“You’re going to listen to me,” Jason said. “If we do this. When I ask you something, I need a response and I expect you not to lie to me, or else we fucking stop.”

“I can do that.” The words were out in the air before any conscious thought. “Anything you want, I can do.” 

Jason’s hand around his waist tightened, and he pulled back, a glimmer of uncertainty on his face. “That’s a lot of leeway.” 

Tim looked right at him and leaned back against the wall, tilting his chin up. “I think you’ll find that I’m pretty…” he paused to blink twice, batting his lashes, “ flexible, by manner of speaking.” 

“You prurient little bastard,” Jason murmured, and then surged forward like it was a need, this time sliding a leg between Tim’s. 

Tim gasped at the contact, at how good the pressure felt against his dick. Jason took it as another opportunity to lick into his mouth, dedicated and hungry. Kissing him back for all that he was worth, Tim ground down against Jason’s thigh and fell more into Jason’s chest as pleasure surged up his spine.

He needed more than this. He was liable to fucking come in the next thirty seconds, but Tim was not about to have the trigger hair of a teenager when he hadn’t even gotten to see Jason yet. 

With fumbling, desperate hands, Tim let go of Jason’s hair to feel his way down his body, dragging over the material of his shirt, drifting and clutching when Jason sucked on his tongue and used a forearm to push Tim’s back against the wall again. The angle of his cock on Jason’s thigh shifted, and Tim let his head thunk against the wall, panting.

“Yeah?” Jason asked nonsensically, except Tim knew exactly what he was asking.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You know where the fuck my bedroom is. Let’s not waste any more time.” 

“Yeah,” Jason gasped, but antithetically put his lips back on Tim’s in a nanosecond, the kiss between them filthy and raw.  

Tim felt dubached, his body moving against his will. He rutted against Jason’s thigh, noises falling out of his mouth and desperation coursing through his veins until he felt like he was going to explode. 

Panting, he pushed Jason away from him, causing an immediate cease and Jason softly asking, “Tim?” 

Tim’s heartbeat was reverberating in his ears. He turned and ran down the hallway into his bedroom, calling out over his shoulder, “Come on.” 

He didn’t look back. He knew Jason would follow. 

When they both were in Tim’s room, he turned, ready to goad again if necessary, but Jason was there, kissing him again, pressing Tim’s body back against the wall. it was just as intense as before, and Tim melted into it, forgetting all about his plans for a moment. 

But only a moment. Tim liked this making out, but that wasn’t their final destination for tonight. He reached up and grabbed Jason’s hair to pull his head away before slipping out of his hold.

“You know, my bed is right here,” Tim snarked, gesturing. “You could have kissed me there instead of against the wall again.”

Jason pinned him back against the wall. “Shut up. You’re infuriating.” 

“No, I just need more than this,” Tim admitted shamelessly. Wanting to move things along, he used a maneuver he’d learned from Dick to slip out of Jason’s hold and then took off his shirt before laying back on the bed. “You gonna join me or just stand there?” 

Jason’s eyes blinked open wide, helpless, before turning into a look that Tim couldn’t quite read. After a moment, he shook his head, swallowing and said, “Yeah. Fuck, I’m coming Tim.” 

“Well, preferably not until you actually touch— Ohfuck.” A punched-out sob wracked its way through Tim’s body. 

He was trembling. All Jason was doing was smoothing his hands down Tim’s bare chest and Tim was trembling from it. He’d never felt like this before. Every nerve ending felt alight. He was wanton, desperate, barely able to think this wasn’t a dream with the low light and the feeling of Jason’s calloused palms on his hips.

“Can I take these off?” Jason asked, playing with the button and looking at Tim intently. 

“Yes, yes to everything, don’t need to ask, please .” Tim leaned back on his hands and lifted his hips while Jason dragged his pants and underwear off of him in one fell swoop. 

He was too far away for Tim’s liking. Reaching back out, Tim grabbed his shirt and pulled him in to kiss some more, relishing in the slide of their lips against each other, each nerve ending transmitting the feeling to his brain along with euphoria. 

Jason’s hands were steady as they traced down his shoulders and arms, breaking Tim’s hold on his shirt to force his hands onto the mattress, his hands covered by Jason’s. Tim gently tried to break Jason’s grasp, but he was unrelenting. It felt good to be pinned down. He wouldn’t have left anyway, but the extra reassurance that Jason wanted him close made Tim moan into their kiss. 

A moment later, Jason broke it off. Tim’s eyes focused on the curl of his eyelashes; the mix of blue and green flecks in Jason’s irises. He’d never been able to see this close before, and Jason was exquisite. 

“Do you like it when I hold you here?” He asked, panting slightly. 

Tim nodded, still half-dazed. Jason Todd was hovering over him. Jason Todd had just kissed him senseless. 

“Maybe next time I’ll tie you down,” Jason mused, his eyes darkening. “Make it so you’re at my mercy.” 

“Yes,” Tim gasped, blood rushing in his ears hard enough for him to blink stars out of his eyes. A clear picture and a next time, holy fuck. Was Jason sharing his fantasies with Tim? He wasn’t even sure that this right here and now was real. 

But then Jason let go of him and moved off of the bed. Tim’s body chased him halfheartedly, but he didn’t get up, just in case Jason really did want to leave. 

“Just let me get these fucking clothes off and I’ll be right back.” 

Immediately, relief flooded in, quickly replaced by heat when Jason reached for the back of his shirt at the neck and pulled it off his body, revealing so much skin that Tim could die at the sight of it. He wanted to touch, so badly. It’d be so easy to just—

“Stop staring and grab your lube.” 

Tim scrambled for his nightstand, throwing the top drawer open and grabbing his bottle of lube that he hadn’t touched in weeks, but that didn’t matter anymore. There was plenty left for what he hoped was on the agenda.

Thankfully, he was fast enough to watch Jason drag his underwear down his thighs, and even though his dick was right there, Tim was more mesmerized by the sight of the fabric sliding down Jason’s powerful legs. Heat coiled in his gut. He needed those legs around his fucking neck fucking yesterday. His eyes dragged up as Jason stepped out of the fabric, hand moving to his own cock as his eyes passed over Jason’s. 

He took him in; the scars and muscles and soft flesh lit with a soft flush. Tim wanted his camera. He needed to capture this; his memory wasn’t going to be good enough. When his eyes caught Jason’s, he watched the other man tilt his head to the side, his eyes focused and hungry.

“You done looking? Thought you wanted me to touch.” 

Tim’s dick throbbed in his hand, and he squeezed, not able to stave off the temptation. “Could look all day,” he said, too honest. “But I want you more.” It was a concession, and frankly Jason had no idea how big of one it really was— he had no idea of his effect on Tim, who was panting over just this much. If Jason just talked to him, he’d have Tim coming in under a minute. 

Jason was back on him faster than a blink, the snick of the lube loud against the sound of Tim’s panting as Jason pressed kisses and bites into his neck. A moment later, a slick hand closed around his cock, stroking hard. 

Throwing his head back, Tim’s hips bucked forward, chasing the sensation. 

“God,” Jason breathed, voice gravelly and underlit with urgency. His hand kept up the rhythm and Tim could feel Jason’s breath against his skin. “I’ve never seen you look this fucking desperate in my life. You’re killing me. You looking like this, so slutty just for me right now.”

Tim inhaled sharply, feeling heat bloom in his cheeks immediately. 

Flicking his wrist and adding a twist to his rhythm, Jason continued. “Oh, you do like that, don’t you?” Jason sounded cocky and brash above him, all of the power in their situation in Jason’s hands. The realization fueled something in Tim; a dream, a fantasy he’d had before about being used . 

Air escaped Tim, halting his breath as he nodded his assent. “Yes.” He choked out; and suddenly all that experience of jerking off while holding his breath was kicking in, telling him this would be sweeter with some deprivation like a cherry on top. 

“You’re so fucking quiet,” Jason mused. “That’s alright, but don’t hold back on my account, babybird.” 

Tim nodded, feeling a bead of sweat on his forehead. Jason put one hand on his hip, stilling his movements, and Tim sunk further into his air deprivation headspace, things beginning to get floaty and the sensations sharpening. 

Jason’s hand around him felt even better than before, nerve endings alight and the feeling tracing all the way up his spine. This was bliss. Someone else touching him was always better than touching himself, but it had never felt like this before. Tim’s body still hadn’t stopped trembling from the moment Jason started touching his skin. 

Feelings welled up in his chest through his ribs and seeped into his skin, expansive and huge. He stared up at Jason, at Jason’s face so focused and intent on his own, uncaring what his expressions were saying in this moment because he couldn’t hide it even if he tried. If his lungs’d had any air in them at all, it would have been expelled. 

At a particularly good stroke, couldn’t resist an inhale, sobbing with it, his lungs burning. His hips pushed up against Jason’s hand and his eyes slipped closed. “Close,” he choked out. “Fuck, Jason. Close.” 

He tried to stop breathing again, but Tim felt like he was being burned out from the inside with pleasure, his faculties less operational by the nanosecond. He didn’t dare breathe a word of it to Jason not wanting to ask for anything more when everything still felt so precarious and because Tim needed to fucking come. 

“Fucking do it,” Jason urged. “Come for me Tim.” 

And he was crying out, spilling onto Jason’s hand, his head empty of thoughts, his body shaking out the tremble, his heart cementing Jason further inside his bloodstream as if there were any chance of him being expelled, his body heaving to get back all of the air it had missed before. 

All the while, Jason litanied, “You’re so fucking hot, Jesus fucking Christ you look so pretty. So fucking wrecked right now and fuck it’s hot.” 

Fuck, Tim loved this man. 

Tim recovered as fast as he could, reaching for Jason’s neck to pull him into a kiss. Sloppily, Tim licked into his mouth, not giving a shit about finesse but wanting to transfer his pleasure bodily into Jason by any means necessary. 

When Tim’s body demanded air again, he pulled back and pushed Jason to the side, grabbing a pillow and rolling off the side of the bed. 

“Where the fuck are you going?” Jason asked indignantly, but then saw Tim arranging the pillow under his knees and swore again. 

Tim was all blunt force and every single spinning cell in his brain was focused on one thing. “Need you in my mouth so bad Jay, you look like a wet dream.” 

Surprise made Jason splutter a bit, but he moved over to the edge of the bed, swinging his legs over the side and parting them. “Absolutely. Yes. I’m not gonna last for shit though.” 

Tim looked up at him, tilting his chin down. “I don’t give a fuck,” he said, and then dove in. 

He loved the weight of Jason on his tongue, and swallowed him down mercilessly. Tim was no blushing virgin, and reached with a hand to cup Jason’s balls as he bobbed his head. 

“Shit, Tim,” Jason panted. In return, Tim pulled off and tongued his slit before tracing down one side with his tongue and then back up again. He moved to suck on the head and jerked the shaft to Jason’s hitched breathing and muffled cursing, relishing in dismantling Jason’s bravado and control. 

It didn’t take much longer. Tim felt resplendently smug as Jason tugged at his hair in warning with a bitten off cry, and when Tim didn’t pull off, Jason followed it up with another swear. 

Jason’s hips moved, and then he came, letting go of Tim’s head. Tim’s eyes looked up at him, the way he leaned back on one arm and his open mouth and flushed skin. Tim wished his eyelashes were shutters and his eyeballs were made of film. If only to capture him. If only to capture this moment. 

After swallowing down all he could, Tim resurfaced, wiping his mouth and flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“Get up here, holy shit get up here,” Jason said, almost whiny, leaning forward with his hands reaching for Tim. Having no reason not to comply, Tim clambered back onto the bed as Jason hefted his legs up. They crawled up next to each other, lying down to soak in the afterglow. 

Jason reached over and grabbed Tim’s hand, pulling it up to his mouth and kissing the back of it like he was satisfying a compulsion.

“That was incredible,” Jason said, but the tone was unreadable.

“Yeah, it was,” Tim said, but his brain had already rebooted and now was back to catastrophizing; Tim’s tumor-sized love for Jason only metastasizing as each moment passed. This wasn’t going to be it, right? The flicker of uncertainty made Tim’s room feel darker.

Tim’s brain-to-mouth filter wasn’t strong enough to keep his doubt in. “...So, what now?” 

Jason’s hand clenched painfully around his own. “What do you want?” 

Oversensitive and already so full, Tim’s held-back tears resurfaced again. He blinked rapidly to keep them in. “Isn’t it obvious?” He whispered. 

But Jason didn’t say a word, turning his head up to the ceiling and keeping his grip on Tim’s hand while Tim looked at him and looked at him, every age cycling through his eyes until he couldn’t keep them open any longer and slipped into exhaustion’s embrace.