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“You’ll be fine, you’re like an onion,” Dick says when he hears about the mission, slapping Tim on the back. It’s an older brother slap—just shy of too hard, but not enough to make anyone give him dirty looks for being ‘too rough’ with his little brother.
Tim is twenty-one years old, and no longer the youngest in this family, but he is still short. Shorter than Dick, even. Noooo, he’s not annoyed by that at all. But of course his height makes it easy for Dick to treat him like a child still, especially when Dick is light years ahead of him in many ways—has his own place, his own motorcycle, a steady job, a partner or two or three. He and Bruce have even not been butting heads as much lately.
Tim can’t relate; even his bike is technically Bruce’s. (Mostly because it’s not his bike, it’s Red Robin’s.)
“I’m not an onion,” he replies sharply, scowling down at the case files in front of him. His temples are throbbing. He hates onions.
“No but you are like one.” Dick leans against the desk, his domino not yet put into place. He’s in Gotham for a reason, Tim’s sure, but mostly it seems like he’s here to be annoying. “Like Shrek.”
“You know what? Thank you so much for your help, but I’ve got this covered, so you can go anytime. Seriously.”
Some of the others who are milling around, waiting for Duke to come back or call in for some late-shift help, snicker at them. Tim is in no mood to acknowledge this and keeps his back to most of the room, determined to focus on this file if it kills him.
“I’m just saying—”
“You can just say anywhere but here, okay!”
“Tim, you seem tense,” Dick says, all faux-concern.
“I’m not tense,” he denies at once.
“Really? Your shoulders are in your ears, are you sure about that?”
“Dick. I’m serious—”
“Is this because I called you an onion?”
Tim slaps the papers down. Bruce rouses slightly at one of the other desks and turns their way, but Tim ignores his heavy gaze as he turns to Dick fully and says, “ I hate onions and I hate you .”
Steph laughs. Jason snorts. Damian makes an affronted cat noise. Cass and Bruce are around too, but if they react, Tim doesn’t see it.
Dick grins at him. It’s casual, amused—too much, so stupidly frustrating, and he doesn’t even mean anything by it because he’s not the one in a bad mood here—
Tim gets to his feet and hurries past his siblings to one of the many rooms around with a lockable door. It slams shut behind him and he flings himself into a chair conveniently near the doorway, dropping his head into his hands.
Of course, he didn’t mean that. Okay, he doesn’t really like onions, but whatever. Dick does this pretty often and usually Tim can deal with it, understanding it’s just what older brothers do—he has some experience now doing this with Duke and Damian.
(As much as either of them let him anyway, being only a few years older than Duke, and his relationship with Damian being what it is.)
The problem is that this is just, not the night to fuck around with Tim. Not that he ever wants to admit Dick is right, but okay fine just this once—yes, Tim is tense. He’s so tense he’s had a headache for hours and his muscles are tight and aching and he wants, for once, to actually sleep. In a real bed and everything.
At least then he wouldn’t be dealing with this, right?
For one thing, it’s weird to be in not just civilian clothes but entirely under dressed while his siblings are fully geared up around him. Threadbare pajama pants and a Gotham Knights t-shirt that could’ve belonged to any number of people here before it reached his closet are a lot less secure feeling than the kevlar and padding of the Red Robin suit.
But… He sighs deeply to himself. That’s not the real problem and he knows it.
It doesn’t help that they all know why he isn’t going out at the same time as them and surely all have their own opinions about it.
They all have their strong suits when it comes to missions, and Tim’s happens to be the art of disguises. Every time they need to go deeply undercover and it’s not something that calls for Matches Malone, Tim is asked to help out. By now, he’s got a plethora of alter egos—Alvin Draper, Caroline Hill, Kai Johnson, and Stampy Malone, just to name a few.
Usually, this is fine. Tim doesn’t mind going undercover. He likes knowing that everything is fine, that no one is catching on to the ruse, and how better can he achieve that than by being right there in the thick of things?
The real problem is that, well.
Last time Tim went undercover, he kind of… came home and embarrassed himself.
It’s not that he’s shy about being seen in disguise, okay? They can all tease him all they want but it doesn’t bother him. He has way more blackmail on his siblings than they do him, so whatever.
It’s just… Caroline Hill is a different story.
He’s always been a little bit uncomfortable going undercover as her. And for a time, he chalked that up to some kind of internalized misogyny. (Even just thinking about how bad he used to be when he was younger makes him groan in embarrassment. If only selective amnesia was a thing. He would lose a lot of time from the ages of ten to fifteen, seriously.)
But lately, he’s been thinking… maybe that’s not it. He doesn’t care that Caroline is a med student or that it’s in her story to enjoy going to clubs. It’s not the makeup either, because he does that for his other disguises too.
Last time, he’d had all of these thoughts on his mind too and his hands were a little unsteady with nerves as he applied the mascara and lipstick and all that. He’s not a genius at makeup in the sense most people wear it, but he’s good at shaping his face to look different—thinning the bridge of his nose, making his jaw look softer.
Before he headed out for his mission, he’d stood there and stared at himself in the mirror. He always gives himself a pep talk, but it was difficult that night. His throat was tight and he didn’t understand why at all.
Looking at himself, he saw… a girl. Himself in a way, though he looked quite different, but as a girl.
There were extensions in his hair. Blue shimmer eye shadow glittered in the low light. His cheeks were pink and his lips looked full and pouty, his eyelashes long and attention-catching. Bedazzled hoops swung from his ears, simple enough for Caroline’s budget but still flashy enough to make it seem like they were a splurge.
“You are Caroline Hill,” he’d told himself, changing his voice to something a little higher.
Caroline Hill was a medical student who liked to wear pretty dresses and get drunk in clubs in her free time. She loved the colors blue and gray, and she had sweet brown eyes, and her purse was a slightly-battered knockoff that swung at her hip and held a switchblade strong enough to pierce bone and bear mace. Her voice was always a little sultry, intriguing—everyone wanted to see her, speak with her, tell her everything they knew.
And Tim was Caroline Hill.
Going out as her was fine. The bouncer barely blinked at his fake ID. The creeps in the club flocked to her, allowing his target to swoop in and ‘save’ her just as they’d planned for him to do. He spent the night plastered to the side of a sleazy mobster, sipping whatever alcohol he supplied him, playing the role of Caroline.
The mobster’s hand laid on his thigh most of the night, heavy and not exactly welcome but an expected outcome. He’d gotten out of the situation with a well-placed panicked call from Oracle, pretending to be his roommate who’d ‘had the worst night of my entire fucking life, Care, will you please come home and help me?’
He’d been fine in the taxi ride to the building Caroline supposedly lived in, and even in the Batmobile on the way back to the Cave after Bruce picked him up. There were mirrors in the car but Tim didn’t look at them. He kicked off his heels and that was a relief; he pulled on his converse shoes but it was still hard to relax.
When they got back to the Cave, Tim was feeling really weird. His head was kind of light and his chest was strained, and there were pin pricks all over his palms and in his fingertips.
Bruce made him sit down at one of the medical tables. “Wait here,” he said gruffly, going to find one of their many kits that test for date rape drugs.
So Tim sat, and finally relaxed a little bit. The prickles in his fingers eased but his body still didn’t feel right, too big inside and too little outside.
Needing to distract himself, he found his phone in the purse and looked at himself again—his hair was messy and his makeup was unfortunately smeared in a few spots. He would have to take it off, and then the dress too, and then go back to being Tim again.
Tim likes being Tim. Most of the time. But what he means is that he’s never thought about actually being anyone but himself before that night.
Staring into his own eyes (the different color hardly threw him off anymore), his mind wandered without permission. Was it so bad being a girl? No, he thought—he liked the dresses and the way they swished around his bare, shaved legs; he found himself enjoying having a purse at his side throughout the night; he even enjoyed the way people looked at him, like he was something sweet and honeyed and desirable.
None of that was exclusive to being a girl. But Tim liked being a girl while he felt those things. He liked that people looked at him and thought nothing deeper about who he was—he liked, he realized slowly, that he passed.
And then he’d had the thought, the final nail in this coffin: What would it be like to be a girl more than just when he was on a mission?
Once that door was opened, it was impossible to close it all the way. A tide of feelings rushed at him, too overwhelming to pick out individual thoughts. It was joy and misery and fear and confusion and belonging and acceptance all at once.
Slumped in the middle of the Cave, halfway between Caroline and Tim, himself but not, he’d found himself terribly choked up.
When Bruce returned, tears were slipping down Tim’s cheeks silently and dripping onto his pretty dress. He hadn’t even noticed.
“Tim?” Bruce demanded at once, stomping closer. Though face was bare, his voice was just as gruff as it was when he was fully suited up.
His Batman suit was far from intimidating to Tim but he still flinched and tried to hide his face, one hand coming up to touch his eyes before remembering the eye shadow and mascara.
“What happened? Did Costello hurt you? Did he drug you? Tell me.”
But Tim could barely speak around the lump in his throat so he said nothing.
The longer he went without saying anything, the more agitated Bruce got. He sighed sharply and began speaking to Oracle, demanding to know if she had seen anything go on—she was supposed to be watching him, why didn’t she tell him if something had happened?
While he was distracted, Tim got on shaky feet and fled to a bathroom. There were makeup wipes in the cabinets and he grabbed them roughly, the package slipping into the sink as he tried to grab one. The second there was a wipe in his hand, he swiped harshly at his face, erasing every bit of Caroline he could see until he was scrubbing his skin raw.
It did nothing to erase the thoughts he’d been having.
Now, he gets to go out as Caroline again. Cupping his elbows, he shuts his eyes and tries to brace himself.
It’ll be fine, he repeats strongly. Even just thinking about going out as Caroline again fills him with equal parts dread and excitement, which only makes his nerves even worse. His shoulders are so tense they hurt. He tries to speak over all of that, tries to convince himself: You aren’t really Caroline. You’re Tim. You’ll be fine.
Even in the safety of his own mind, the words still ring hollow.