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He couldn’t sleep.
Had the boys packed their lunches? Did he remind Damian that there was a parent teacher conference on Thursday and that he needed to stay after school? What about Tim’s AP Bio project that was due on Monday? Had he even started it? Jason was supposed to call him to setup a meeting at WE to go over the mortgage they’d just agreed upon for that little Bungalow he’d bought outside the narrows. He should have called already, unless he was second-guessing a permanent residence in Gotham again?
And Dick said he had something important to talk about. He and Kori had been living together for a long time—an engagement perhaps? A pregnancy? Bruce didn’t think he was ready to be called Grandpa…
“God,” Bruce rolled to his side and growled into his pillows, wondering if he was losing his mind. There was a time, not that long ago, when he’d spent his evenings worrying about Batman’s open cases, what sort of meetings he had at WE and if he wanted a banana or chocolate protein shake for breakfast. The simplicity of such worries had long since passed.
Now, his nights were a chaotic frenzy of arguments about TV shows, who called the table for homework and who claimed the study. There were battles over who got shotgun in the Tumbler and who was forced to ride coach. The mornings were a scramble to leave the house on time and without unexplained stains from breakfast or spilled coffee. The boys were always talking over one another, squabbling about cases with the Bat or recreational activities or friends or girls. Teasing and ribbing and God forbid, grades. There was always something going on and it was rare, so incredibly rare to have a quiet evening in which he could try to catch up on sacred sleep.
He wouldn’t change a thing. Not really.
Tonight, was supposed to be one of those rare nights, but he couldn’t sleep. His mind wouldn’t shut off. He was too busy wondering and worrying and nitpicking about what the boys needed or how they were getting from point A to point B or who they were dating now.
His mind was a fucking wreck.
He needed to get up, walk around the manor a little, maybe have something hot to drink and then try again. It was no use lying in bed for hours, staring at his ceiling praying to God he could fall asleep. It only managed to make him more tense.
Bruce was no stranger to insomnia.
Still, Bruce wished tonight was not one of those nights he found himself anxious and unsettled and wide awake. He wanted to shut his mind down. To close his eyes, for once, and just fall asleep without worrying and dissecting and thinking about everything and everyone.
But it wasn’t going to be one of those nights.
So, he got up.
He went down the hall, tiptoeing past bedrooms where his sons were all sleeping, edging his way over carpeted stairs and skipping the ones that squeaked. He boiled water, found a tea bag in one of the canisters Alfred kept on the counter, then patiently stared out the kitchen windows at the light polluted sky to pass time.
By the time the tea was done steeping, Bruce was already yawning and thankful for it. He could sip a little, let the heat of the brew soothe him, and then go back to bed. Keeping his steps carefully light, Bruce meandered down the halls of the manor, and found himself stopping on the second floor just outside Alfred’s bedroom.
He had no interest in waking the old butler. But as was customary on his nights awake in the manor, Bruce did a circuit that allowed him to just—check in with everyone. Bruce wasn’t sure if it was seeing his loved ones asleep in their beds that helped to calm his racing thoughts, or if it was the walk itself, or the comfort of something habitual and systematic that did it. But checking in on everyone, usually did the trick in helping him finally fall asleep.
Knowing how the door would creak, Bruce braced a hand on the jam and carefully slotted the door open. He only a needed an inch to pause and listen intently for the signature sounds of Alfred’s nasally breaths huffing peacefully into the sooty darkness. Alfred sounded like he was in REM sleep and Bruce hoped his dreams were pleasant. But he didn’t dare linger.
Once he was assured that the man was in fact, perfectly fine and sleeping well, Bruce closed the door and moved on. If he lingered, Alfred would wake up and worry. Alfred would be Alfred. And Bruce didn’t want that.
He moved back up the stairs to the third floor where he and the boys shared a floor and started as he usually did, with Damian’s room at the end of the hall. Damian kept his room impeccably tidy, to the point of absolute obsession so Bruce didn’t have to worry overmuch about tripping or squashing something valuable underfoot. Still, he crept into the shadowed room and found Damian curled on his side in a tight little ball.
With the boys, Bruce risked a little. It took too much self-control to not touch. To only listen to the delicate wisps of air being jetted out of a slightly button nose. Bruce put his mug of tea down on the nightstand by Damian’s face and knelt to brush a hand over his youngest son’s forehead. Damian stirred a little, but didn’t do much more than huff and mumble something in Arabic. Bruce’s heart did the usual clutch and roll, the one that made him feel too sappy and maybe a tad frightened at how weak his boys made him. But he didn’t pull away right away. Bruce lingered. He listened to a couple more cycles of Damian’s breathing, traced the lines of a face that was still growing and much sweeter in sleep, then finally rose and took his mug of tea to the next room.
With Jason and Dick no longer at home, Bruce’s circuit took much less time. But he still visited their bedrooms. He still opened their doors, stepped inside and let the memories flutter around him to soothe the ache that having them gone caused. In Dick’s old room, Bruce always inspected the array of figurines left on the bookshelves. He straightened them, rearranged and secretly smiled over how it would irritate Dick that someone touched them. In Jason’s old room, Bruce would go and count the spines of books that were left there. He’d trace the hard covers and inhale the scent of wood polish and old secrets.
Tim, Bruce saved for last. And it wasn’t because Tim was more special than the other boys. Or because it meant anything really. It was more that Tim’s room was—terrifying at night. The boy didn’t clean. Ever. And Alfred had long ago let it become scarcely livable in an act of defiance that Bruce well understood.
Navigating through the maze of clothes, books, and discarded junk was difficult in the daytime. In the dark, it required a great deal of finesse and absolute focus. Something Bruce found lacking at three in the morning. Even so, he was determined to finish the ritual. To see that Timothy was just as peacefully sleeping as the rest.
Bruce left the tea on a table outside the room and slipped inside with only the faintest creak. But didn’t need to worry that Tim would wake up. Because when Tim slept, it was with wild abandon. He slept hard and wild and snored louder than any person he’d ever heard. It was fortunate that Tim’s room abutted Dick’s rather than Damian’s or there would have been more bloodshed between the two of them by now.
Smiling, Bruce slugged his way through mounds of clothes, crunched over an empty Coke bottle and winced, then finally made it to Tim’s bedside. He did the same as with Damian and knelt to pet hair and to listen. Tim snuffled noisily into his hand and scratched at his stomach. He rolled onto his back and snored even louder. Bruce almost, almost broke out into fits of giggles watching the kid. But managed to keep it under wraps by biting his tongue till he tasted blood.
When he’d gotten his fill and felt thoroughly ready to consult his own bed, Bruce rose and headed back through in the direction he’d come. He tried to keep to the same path, because it had proven fairly uneventful.
He got midway through the bedroom before he stepped on something sharp enough to make an audible pop as it went through the skin of his arch.
Bruce yelped.
“Fuck—” Bruce hissed, hopping up and down on one foot, seeing red as white-hot pain spidered through his foot and up his ankle, “Holy Mother of God.”
“Bruce?” A shifting on the mattress and then a little yawn. “What are you doing in here?”
Bruce groaned, hobbling over to the end of the bed to sit. Tim was a heavy a sleeper, but not that heavy. “Hey, sorry chum. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’okay,” Tim mumbled, scooting to the edge of the bed to flip on the lamp. Abruptly, the tornado that was Tim’s room came into view and Bruce grimaced at what he’d stepped on. A Batarang. A literal Batarang.
“Uh—You’re bleeding.”
“Yes.”
Tim rubbed his eyes, then scrubbed both hands through his hair, “What did you—” he blinked down at the weapon sitting between a sweatshirt and a pair of dirty jeans and went tomato red. “Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
“I’m sorry, that shouldn’t even be up here, but I was working on improvements with the flight pattern—”
“Tim, stop,” Bruce could feel the blood dripping down his instep onto the floor and was suddenly not interested in knowing why there was Bat related property out of the cave and where anyone could see it. “I don’t want to know. Not right now. I just need you to get me a couple cotton balls and a band-aid.”
Tim’s nose wrinkled, “And alcohol. That wasn’t cleaned first.”
“Of course.” Great.
Tim got the supplies in record time and returned to play doctor dutifully. Bruce let him and said nothing when his son even dabbed the alcohol a bit too liberally. He was sporting a new Band-Aid and a splitting headache, but hell, at least Tim was safe and sound. At least he was ready to fall asleep.
“Hey Bruce?”
“Yeah?” Bruce sighed, shifting on the mattress to risk standing again. With the light on, he was fairly certain he’d make it out unscathed now. Fairly.
“Why were you in here?”
There was a moment where Bruce considered making something up. Because he didn’t always like sharing things that felt too close to the chest. He didn’t like sharing things that felt too personal, even if that personal thing was about his own children. But then he looked at Tim and saw all the things he admired about the kid. He saw the freckles and the half-mashed hair. The frank openness of a teen who wasn’t nearly old enough for the wisdom that hid in his eyes. The inquisitive nature and the drive to understand.
Tim was his son. It shouldn’t be so hard to share himself with others. It was.
“When I can’t sleep—” Bruce swallowed thickly, looking away to the floor to get his bearings, “I walk around the manor a little. And sometimes I come and check on everyone.”
“Check on everyone?”
“Yes,” Bruce answered honestly, giving in to the urge to push hair out of Tim’s eyes. The boy stilled, blinked a few times furiously, then colored a deep red again. Bruce could only smile at that.
“So, you do this often.”
“Not often. But enough,” Bruce sighed, and it sounded loud in the suddenly stifling quiet. He couldn’t tell what Tim was thinking or feeling and that bothered him. “I don’t usually get caught in the act though.”
There was a pause, something that sounded like a smothered snort, then Bruce was looking sharply at Tim and Tim was laughing. And it sounded so welcome it made Bruce’s stomach ache.
“Sorry,” but Tim didn’t look sorry at all and Bruce could only shake his head and smile back. Knots loosened in his chest. Insecurities at possibly being rebuked for his unwelcome hovering dissipated beneath the blanket of Tim’s laughter and Bruce soaked up the sound. He soaked up the way Tim reached for his hand and gripped it hard. He soaked up how the minutes ticked by so easily between them, though the laughter ended, and no one said anything. Bruce wanted to keep the feeling invading his chest and remember every facet of every detail for the rainy days. For the days he felt like nothing was going right and everyone was displeased with something he’d done.
“Bruce?”
“Hm?”
Tim shifted, the bed squeaked, and Bruce blinked fuzzily over to see an expression of uncertainty wrinkling his son’s forehead.
“What is it, Tim?”
“Well, uh—” a flickering blue-green assessment, that danced away quickly, “it’s so late and you’re already here. I mean, my bed is really big. You hurt your foot and you could, you know, just stay. I mean, if you wanted to—but you don’t have to, because I’m sure you actually want your own bed and it’s just down the hall—”
Bruce interrupted Tim without any real thought. Because it was easy to and it just felt natural. Sometimes, it didn’t have to make sense or be over-analyzed or nitpicked. Sometimes, a really big bed was good enough for two. And that was all. “I’m too tired to move actually. Staying would be nice.”
“Yeah?” Tim asked, a half-grin marking him a couple years younger than he was, “I promise to stay on my side of the bed.”
“You can’t promise that. I’ve seen how you sleep,” Bruce shook his head, smiling despite himself, “But I don’t care.”
“OK,” Tim shrugged, scooted back into the middle of the bed then reached for the lamp and plunged everything into darkness. Bruce didn’t complain about having to crawl over his kid to get to the other side of the bed. He already knew Tim had a side he preferred, and he didn’t care. It took all of five minutes laying side by side, before Tim was back to snoring loud enough to wake the dead.
It should have been impossible to fall asleep to that. It should have been ridiculous to even accept the offer to stay, knowing full well that he’d be kicked in the head or smothered before morning came. But it wasn’t. And for the oddest reasons, Bruce felt himself relax. The snoring was like white noise and soothing. The clicking hum of Tim’s alarm clock seemed to slow his breathing and pulse till he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He felt his mind, finally, thank God, let go of everything he was worrying over.
And he slept like the dead. Until about six in the morning when Tim rolled and punched him square in the jaw. After a few choice curse words, Bruce decided it wasn’t that bad of a wake up call.