Work Text:
Tim peeked at his phone and sighed in relief. He’d been high for four, nearly five, hours, and was getting unreasonably irritated with the ineffectiveness of his insulin and water intake.
Unfortunately, he could tell that his sugars were coming down. Dropping from 350 to anything near “normal” made him feel sick, it always did. As such, his stomach was cramping and his head was pounding, but he’d popped some Tylenol and hoped that would take care of it.
To Tim’s annoyance, Dick had arrived to check up on him. In all fairness, Dick’s phone had also been beeping incessantly, as it had been programmed to to if Tim’s sugars ever peaked over 300 for more than an hour.
“So, how’re you doing?” Dick asked, leaning against Tim’s desk and attempting to sound casual. Attempting, and failing, Tim might add.
“Fine. Haven’t gotten much work done.” Tim admitted. His brain was a muddled, mushy mess. There was no working around the brain fog that high sugars produced, though Tim was able to work on some spreadsheets as the computer program did the math for him.
“Maybe you should skip the meeting and go for a walk or something,” Dick started, hesitantly, “it’s not like your brain’s going to be cooperative for it, I mean.” He tried to sound like he was joking, but both boys knew that he was serious, and, more annoyingly, that he was right.
“I can’t just bail on a meeting because I was high and now I’m fine.” Tim said, not at all feeling ‘fine’.
“Besides, I’m finally coming down” he continued, flipping his phone over so Dick could see his graph. He was right- 207 with a downward arrow...but still, Dick knew he always felt like crap after he had leveled off, not while his blood sugar was actually high.
“Tim, your health comes first. These people know this, when are you going to accept that sometimes you’ll need to take a break and take care of yourself?” Dick could tell he’d hit a nerve as soon as the words came out of his mouth, but there was no taking them back.
“When am I going to accept it?” Tim asked, suddenly enraged, “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing these past few months? You think I’m in denial of how fucked-up my life is now? Of how I’ll always be the one slowing everyone else down?”
Tears started to appear in the corners of his eyes. Dick’s heart broke at the sight, but Tim continued, seeming to have a need to get all this off his chest, “You think I’m unaware of how I now have to plan every minute detail of my life, just so I don’t die?” He finished, breathing hard, swallowing tears, and looking utterly dejected.
Dick didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. All he did was walk over and embrace Tim, softly guiding his head into his shoulder.
The smaller boy immediately erupted into gasping sobs, gripping Dick’s shirt sleeves and holding on, as if they were his only anchor to reality.