Chapter Text
“Tim.”
There was a hand at his shoulder, jostling slightly. Tim groaned, turning his face and wincing as polished wood pressed into his nose. The corner of something cool and sharp was digging into his cheek, and there was a crinkling sound as he shifted, but Tim disregarded all of this in favor of keeping his eyes firmly shut. He was still in that sleepy haze that came with being almost awake, but too tired to actually be coherent, and he would like to stay there, goddamnit. Just a few more moments, please…
The hand on his shoulder became more insistent, shaking so his head lolled out from between his arms. “Tim, this is untenable.”
That voice, there was something familiar about that voice. It was deep and stern, with an edge to it that snagged at Tim’s mind, picking through the cobwebs clouding his consciousness, bringing him up, up, up until he registered who was talking. He would recognize that tone anywhere. Strict, formal, professional, almost. Someone who was used to being listened to and obeyed. Quickly.
Tim jerked his head up so fast he almost got whiplash, his neck twinging from being bent at an odd angle. “Dad?”
He didn’t even remember falling asleep. What had he been doing? Tim furiously scrubbed a hand over his eyes, willing the fog clinging to his senses to dissipate. Focus, Robin. What are the facts? Looking down, Tim saw that he was seated at a hardwood desk, papers strewn about, some crumpled with the clear indentation of an arm, a nose. Various pens lay uncapped across the wood, and a laptop sat facing him, the screen long darkened. In its reflection, a dark figure loomed behind him, face cut off by the edge of the screen.
“I’m sorry, Dad, I was just–” Tim turned, and promptly cut himself off. Oh, he thought, not Dad.
Bruce was standing behind him, arms folded across his chest, with an expression Tim had come to recognize as his I don’t know how to react to this face. He played it off well, ever the businessman, but Tim could see the hesitancy in the crease of his eyes, the way his lips pressed together to form a thin line. He had been seeing this face less and less as he slowly acclimated to life at Wayne Manor, but now it had returned in full force. Bruce was looking at him like he was a line of dominos, contemplating how to best move him without everything falling apart.
“Sorry,” Tim said, ears flushing. “I thought you were… someone else.”
Bruce studied him with those Batman-eyes, searching for clues on how to respond. He eventually settled with, “It’s time for bed, Tim. You’ve been up too late.”
Tim glanced at Bruce before quickly looking away, twisting his fingers in his lap. Half of his mind was still in that almost-dream state, stuck a yard away in another lifetime, small under parental scrutiny. He didn’t want to see Bruce’s disappointed face.
“I’ll go to bed.” His voice came out meeker than he would have liked.
A moment passed without either man moving. Tim could feel Bruce’s gaze on him like a weight, pushing down on every part of him as he was appraised. In his mind’s eye, Tim saw his mother’s hand drifting through rows of fabric, inspecting the quality of each fiber through feel alone before discarding those that had fallen short. Deemed worthless.
Tim felt more than saw Bruce shifting to stand alongside him, peering down at the desk. Tim swiveled in his chair so he was facing the desk, too, keeping his eyes trained on the edge of a piece of paper. He had worried off a hangnail before Bruce spoke again.
“What were you working on?”
Tim glanced over the papers, stalling for time. He felt adrift, caught between a moment and a memory, and suddenly he was in a smaller body, a different kitchen, the padding of a barstool cushioning his legs…
—
Tim’s fingers cramped where they gripped the pencil, smudging graphite onto lined paper. The kitchen lighting was harsh on his eyes, and his back ached from hunching over the countertop for so long, but he remained firmly glued in place, fixing his eyes again on the math problem in front of him. You can go to bed once you’ve finished your schoolwork, he told himself, rallying his remaining strength to finish the problem. Or, problems, rather. Tim almost gave up right there at the thought of the remaining questions on the backside of the sheet, his eyes burning with the need for sleep. Maybe he could do them in the morning, get up early to complete his homework before he had to walk to the bus stop to make it to school. They were bound to go quicker when he was rested…
No, Tim thought firmly, his father’s voice mixing with his own. You’re a Drake, aren’t you? And Drakes always finish what they’ve started.
Tim turned back to the problems with a renewed fervor, intent on completing his homework before the night was up. A glance at the microwave clock told him it was already 11:58, but a man’s workday ended when the work was done, and the work was not yet done. He would have to keep going, It was the proper thing to do.
…Or not. At 1:32, with still over half of the problems remaining, Tim felt his resolve starting to wane. Why did fifth-grade math have to be so hard? He was only in third grade, but his teacher agreed to let him start doing fifth-grade level math at his parents’ behest. And he was usually good at math, but they had started doing long division, and Tim had been sick the day it had first been introduced, and now the numbers were nothing but a meaningless jumble in his head, bouncing around and rearranging themselves without actually ever getting solved.
“Stupid math,” Tim said to no one, tears pricking his eyes. He wiped them away angrily but to no avail. The tears kept coming, the pages blurring in front of him, and Tim had to set his pencil down to rub his eyes on his sleeve before the drops could get on his homework, staining it with his frustration and failure.
“Stupid tears,” he muttered, voice tinny and weak. But no matter how long he stared at his homework and wished it would just die already so he could finally go up to bed, Tim couldn’t make himself move from the seat. He felt rooted to the spot, feet leaden, joints crusting with rust. Vines were trailing up his arms like an old statue, and every time he thought of shutting off the kitchen light and making the race up the stairs to his bedroom, they only wrapped tighter, twisting around him until he was cemented in place and quite unable to move even if he wanted to.
Of course, there could be another reason he hadn’t gone to bed just yet. His homework wasn’t that urgent…
It’s just, it was late, and dark, and his house was big enough and old enough for the shadows to feel like monsters, dogging his every step across creaking floorboards. And even though he knew he was too old to be scared of the boogie man in his closet, he couldn’t stop himself from sleeping with the bedroom light on, willing whatever was under his bed to remain there until the morning.
And it was lonely. The house was cold with it. Tim could feel it seeping into his bones. It’s not like his parents would be here to scare away the monsters when the time came. It’s not like they would have done it anyway even if they were home.
Sometimes, Tim felt like he was living in a graveyard, just drifting between stones, waiting to be noticed.
Sometimes, when the stillness and darkness settled in, and he felt a little too much like a ghost boy, it was just him and his homework against the world.
Tim scrubbed the tears from his eyes with a fierceness born from habit. Then, he picked up his pencil and set to work again.
—
“Tim?”
Tim blinked, hands moving as though on puppet strings to rub at his eyes. Where was he, again? Squinting against the harsh lighting, Tim took in his surroundings once again. Right. Bruce. The desk. Working on… something in the Batcave.
“Tim?” Bruce said again, this time laced with worry. “Are you alright?”
“Hmm? Yeah.” Tim felt unmoored, drifting with the wind, but Bruce’s voice was slowly pulling him back to ground level. “Sorry, I’m just tired, I guess.”
“You should go to bed,” was Bruce’s immediate response, but it seemed more knee-jerk than anything. He was still studying him with that Batman face, but the more Tim looked at him, the less he thought it was the mask of Bruce’s alter ego. Batman was tough, authoritative, commanding respect and instilling fear in the eyes of the criminals he apprehended. This expression was… softer. Fonder. Like he cared.
Fear was a cold spike in Tim’s heart when he imagined going to bed right now, alone and cold between crisp sheets. Some part of him still caught in the dream-memory wanted to beg Bruce not to send him back to Drake manor, that if he had disappointed him, he could still make it better, he didn’t have to send him away, he would do as he said, just one more moment, please, one more moment to drag himself back together, and–
“Will you help me?” came out instead, rushing from between Tim’s teeth before he could stop it. Bruce’s brow twitched, the only sign that he was confused, and Tim felt his cheeks heat. “Sorry,” he stammered, “I didn’t mean that, I just–”
“You just what?” Bruce asked, and it would have sounded like his father, would have sounded like his you just what, Tim? are you fucking mute? just spit it out already except that, like everything else about him as a mentor and as a father, Bruce’s tone was soft, mild. Free from any mocking or scorn. It loosened the noose from Tim’s throat and allowed him to string his words together, halting as they were.
“I just–I don’t want to go to bed yet,” he said slowly, a tremble in his lip forcing him to pause before he could continue. “So will you help me, please? With this?”
A glance at his watch showed him that it was already 3:02. God, it was too late for this, too late for Tim to be whining and crying like a baby over his fucking bedtime. And Bruce had work in the morning, too, it wasn’t fair for Tim to ask this of him.
“Sure, Tim,” Bruce said, easy as pie. He rolled a chair over to the desk and sat beside Tim, folding his arms across the wood as he studied the papers before them. “What are we working on?”
Tim stilled, shock freezing him in place as he stared at Bruce. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his father’s low voice was whispering to him: You should be able to do this, Tim, even if you do have half your mother’s brains. Tim could see his hands holding sheets of lined paper filled with crayon, a signet ring glinting in the kitchen light. You’re not a complete dimwit, are you? The papers dropped to the table. His father walked away.
“Umm.” Tim shook his head, reorienting himself with the papers before him. Police records, eyewitness accounts, newspaper clippings. A toggle of his laptop mouse showed snatches of video recordings from shitty back alley cameras.
“Well, you see, there’s this guy, and I think he might be involved with Scarecrow, so I’ve been trying to…”
And it was all over from there, because even if Tim was tired, Bruce was here to listen and to help, and it would be a cold day in hell before he gave up something that special so easily. They talked well into the early morning, with Bruce making quiet observations and Tim scribbling them into the margins of his overfilled notes, until Alfred could be heard clattering about in the kitchen and they had to abandon the Batcave lest they face his wrath (Though, Tim was pretty sure Alfred already knew they had stayed up well beyond their bedtimes. There was a hot chocolate and a heat pack waiting for him in his bedroom, and they didn’t get there by accident). It was only when he was lying in bed, almost asleep with the sun beginning to peek through the curtains, that Tim realized he felt truly warm inside, grounded and safe under his sheets, and that the biting voice of his father was gone, taking the ache of his loneliness with it.