Chapter Text
When Tim’s 13th birthday rolled around, he wasn’t just Tim Drake anymore. He was Robin. Being Robin changed everything, and yet nothing at all.
If you asked 8-year-old Tim where he saw himself in a few years, being Robin most certainly wouldn’t have been his answer. Batman and Robin were his idols – people he could follow along from afar, but never touch. Even when Tim realised that the infamous vigilante duo (or was it trio, if you included both Robins?) were his neighbours, he still struggled to see them as something within his reach. Yet there he was, Batman’s new crime-fighting partner and the next boy to take on the name Robin.
While being Robin was never something Tim thought he’d one day become, now that the mantle was his, he found that he loved it. Loved that he could make a difference in the city he grew up in. Loved that he could bring hope to the people of Gotham. And above all, he loved the wind in his hair as he flew between buildings, free as the bird he was named after.
If he could, Tim would be Robin all the time and only go back to being Timothy Drake when his parents were home, which, these days, was not very often or for very long. Since Tim started High School, his parents no longer saw the need for Tim to have a nanny. He spent half of the day at school anyway, and he was old enough to heat his own dinners and wash his own laundry without supervision. Instead, the Drakes hired a housekeeper, Miss Mac, who only came by the house on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to do some cleaning and to cook Tim’s food for the week. While Tim enjoyed the added freedom he got from not having a nanny around, something that greatly helped him when sneaking out to go be Robin each night, he could admit to himself that weekends could get rather…lonely. He was fine during the week, when he at least got to talk to his friends and teachers, but Saturdays and Sundays left him completely alone in a house way too big for a single teenage boy. Being all alone also made him miss his parents far more than usual, which made it really suck when they kept extending their trips.
His parents were once more unable to make it home for his birthday, despite his dad having promised that he’d be there when Tim “Finally became a teenager”. By this point, though, despite how much Tim missed them recently, he only felt the smallest ember of remorse over them missing his 13th birthday. Birthdays no longer meant spending time with his parents. Where in the past it involved seeing how long it took his dad to realise the date and eating the birthday dish his mom made him, now birthdays meant a cupcake and a candle, followed by a night spent running through the streets of Gotham. And that year, Tim would be able to run around as Robin.
Tim had to do his cupcake ritual a bit earlier than in previous years to make it to Wayne Manor in time for patrol. Tim also decided to try a cupcake flavour he’s never had before. You only live once, right? With careful hands, Tim stuck the candle into the cinnamon swirl cupcake. He heard from Alfred that Jason used to love everything cinnamon.
The butler was restocking the spice rack in the manor’s kitchen while Tim sat at the island finishing up his homework. Tim had come over to train as usual, but Bruce was busy with a conference call in one of the upstairs studies. While he maybe could have gone down to the cave and started on some warm-ups, Tim still didn’t feel comfortable being in the Batcave without Bruce down there as well. Tim was, in essence, still little more than a stubborn boy who threatened to leak Batman’s secret identity to the entire Justice League if he didn’t make Tim Robin. Tim wouldn’t have done it, of course, but he needed Bruce to understand that Batman needs a Robin, and if Dick couldn’t bring himself to carry that name again, then Tim would.
Even though Bruce caved, allowing Tim to be Robin, it felt like the man still didn’t really accept Tim. While Tim could ignore those sentiments in the field, stubbornly refusing to let Batman go around without his Robin, it was different when they were in civilian clothes, walking around Wayne Manor. Tim was an unwanted entity walking in Bruce’s home, his safe space. So, to prevent overstepping too much of Bruce’s boundaries, Tim kept himself out of the manor, as well as the cave, unless Bruce was there too. The one space Tim had no problem being in, though, was the kitchen. Wayne Manor’s kitchen was Alfred’s domain, not Bruce’s, and Alfred regularly asked Tim to join him there.
As he was waiting for Bruce to finish up, Tim settled himself at the kitchen island, poring over the math assignment due the next day. Luckily, he had gone straight to Wayne Manor after school instead of stopping by his house first, and had all his books with him. With his head bent over the assignment and all his focus taken up by math equations, Tim startled when Alfred suddenly spoke up.
“Do you enjoy cinnamon, Master Tim?” Alfred held a bottle of spice in his hands, attention locked on it even as he addressed Tim.
“I, uh…”
Tim wasn’t sure how to answer. He had never really eaten anything with cinnamon in it. His dad wasn’t a big fan of it, so they never stocked it at home.
“I guess?” He finally settled on. Alfred merely hummed in acknowledgement, eyes never leaving the bottle of cinnamon in his hands. Silence hung in the air. Tim didn’t really know how to talk to Alfred all that well. The older man was professional to his core, but he was also really kind. Alfred was the only person at first who saw Tim Drake, and not just Robin. He would ask him if he had eaten yet, ask him how his day was, and even chided him for his lack of sleep when dark circles had started to form under Tim's eyes during his first big case.
Alfred worried about the boy beneath the mask long before Dick started coming around and talking with Tim about things other than training. And when Dick wasn’t in Gotham, and it was just Tim, Alfred and Bruce. And with Bruce, well…
Batman needed a Robin, not a Tim. Tim understood that. If Bruce had it his way, Tim wouldn’t have been there at all. The only person Batman wanted in the Robin suit was one of his sons, not some random high society kid. And what Bruce really wanted was his youngest son back.
For Tim’s first month as Robin, Bruce kept accidentally calling him Jason, a soft “Remember to shower before you head to bed, Jaylad” or variants thereof sent over his shoulder after patrol. Then the man, realising that his son was not there, would freeze. Turn around to take in Tim standing in the cave, not Jason, and his face would crumble. Tim could see in Bruce’s fractured eyes when the realisation hit once more that it would never again be Jason, his son, standing in the Batcave with him, but rather an interloper acting as a crutch. Tim always made sure to leave Bruce’s sight as soon as possible every time that happened.
Bruce later simply referred to Tim as Robin from the second he set foot in the cave till he went back home at the end of each night. It was easier for Bruce to compartmentalise “Jason” and “Robin” as two separate entities, Tim guessed. It did make Tim feel slightly invisible, he wasn’t going to lie. It felt as though he was just a nameless, faceless tool at Batman's disposal. Considering Tim bullied and blackmailed his way into the Robin suit precisely to act as a tool to keep Batman from crumbling, Tim guessed he couldn’t really complain. He knew what he was signing up for, after all.
So, yes, for Bruce, Tim was Robin, his vigilante partner, not Tim Drake, the 13-year-old boy who lived next door. For Dick, he was the next boy to take on his old mantle, the next Robin to protect Gotham, and as he got to know him, Dick started to acknowledge the boy he was underneath the mask. But for Alfred, he was always Tim first and Robin second.
Despite the fact that Alfred was the first to see him, Tim felt like Alfred didn’t really know how to talk to him. Sure, he asked a few questions here and there, and he always listened paitiently when Tim spoke, but Alfred never really had full-on discussions with him. Or maybe Tim didn’t really know how to have a discussion with Alfred, or any adult who really paid attention to him. Or, more likely, both of their rigorous training in proper etiquette and high-society nonsense prevented them from being more than shallowly polite to each other when speaking.
After a few more minutes, which left Tim slightly squirming, Alfred finally spoke again.
“Master Jason was quite fond of cinnamon. He told me it was the one spice, other than common salt, that he and his mother could afford. So the taste reminded him of home, I suppose. The poor boy begged for cinnamon into any dish he could get away with, much to my own dismay.”
Alfred's lips quirked up slightly as he talked, but Tim could tell it was more out of remembering a happy yet painful memory than out of any sort of true amusement.
“I very quickly had to learn how to incorporate this insufferable spice into dishes that by no means require it. But learn I did. And at the end of the day, I even managed to stumble across a truly delicious cinnamon swirl cake recipe. Suffice it to say, master Jason almost ate the entire cake by himself.”
Alfred let out an amused huff, and Tim couldn’t help but smile as well. He could almost imagine it: Jason, with his curly dark hair, stuffing cake into his mouth to the horror of poor Alfred. Bruce, and even Dick, would probably be there as well, laughing at the boy's antics.
Finally, Alfred set the spice bottle into its place in the rack. Even with his back turned to him, Tim could tell that the older man was swallowing hard to keep his emotions at bay.
“Now, however, there is no one left who enjoys it”, he tells Tim softly, mournfully.
Despite his impeccable posture, Alfred’s shoulders were the barest bit slumped as he talked about the second Robin, and Tim could see how heavily the memory of Jason weighed him. Losing a loved one is never easy, Tim has heard, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine how much pain the Wayne family was in after losing Jason. But Tim was there to help.
He had become Robin to save Batman from his grief, flitting around at his side to remind the man of his humanity. He scolded and nagged Batman after every patrol, making sure the man took care of his wounds and didn’t spend the whole night in front of the Batcomputer. It was the only way Tim knew how to help him.
He made sure to interrupt Dick with questions about gymnastics whenever he was around to make sure he and Bruce wouldn’t start arguing. He even played dumb and innocent during training just so Dick could have someone to mentor, to gently coach, to keep him out of his own grief.
If what Alfred needed to help with his grief was someone to make cinnamon-filled dishes for, Tim would be that someone.
Which is how Tim ended up with a cinnamon swirl cupcake for his birthday, courtesy of Alfred. Not that Tim told him that it was his birthday or what the cupcake was for. There was no need to bring up his birthday with the Waynes. It wouldn’t change anything.
It’s not like Tim needed to take off from patrol for the night to celebrate, so there was no reason to share this information with them. The Waynes weren’t his friends or his family. Tim just worked with them, bugrudginly in the case of Bruce, so why would they want to know that it was his birthday?
Bruce was both his boss and his colleague, Dick was like someone who worked for the same company as him, but at a different branch, and Alfred… Well, Tim didn’t really know what role to give Alfred. Their secretary? Bruce’s personal assistant? Either way, they all had a professional relationship with each other – no need to muddle it with personal life stuff like birthdays. Sure, Tim knew when Bruce, Dick and even Jason’s birthdays were, but that was more attested to Tim’s past fanboy tendencies than anything regarding the relationship he had with his new coworkers.
Tim shook his head to clear it of all these unnecessary thoughts, lit his candle, blew it out, and got to eating the cupcake. Tim had to give it to Alfred, the cupcake was actually really good. He understood why Jason had loved it so much. 10/10, would eat alone on his birthday again.
With one last bite and the taste of cinnamon still strong on his tongue, Tim left his house and made the trek over to Wayne Manor. It was time for the second part of his birthday tradition, and Gotham was waiting.