Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What do you want?”

Tim tries a smile, but it doesn’t really feel right. Fuck it, nothing felt right anymore.

“Hey, Jason,” he mumbles.

Jason shifts on his feet, looking Tim up and down before sighing.

“You need something,” he says, sounding exasperated. “What is it.”

He doesn’t ask. And he’s right.

Tim hasn’t seen much of Jason Todd for about five years. The Wayne family had pretty much dissolved after an explosive argument that had lasted four hours and dredged up about every slight and issue the five men had with each other in the past decade, give or take. Tim was pretty sure Damian kept in touch with Dick at least, if Dick’s Instagram birthday posts were anything to go by.

Tim hadn’t spoken to a single member of his family for three years. Bruce sent him a birthday card once, and Tim had run into Jason at the grocery store a couple months after the argument (Tim had turned and speed walked out of the store, cart full of groceries abandoned). Dick texted him a couple times in the first year, but Tim never responded and by the two-year anniversary of the fight, he hadn’t made contact for six months.

Seeing Jason was a bit of a shock, to be honest. He looked older. He had stubble now, but not the way Tim had stubble. Tim had stubble because he hadn’t slept for eight hours straight in two years. Jason had stubble because it made him look roguish and handsome.

His sense of style looks to be about the same. He's wearing a ratty Jason X shirt--rather on the nose, Tim feels--and dark blue sweatpants with white socks. He looks like any other dude, dealing with a stranger at the door to his apartment a little late at night: sleepy and irritated.

Tim raked a hand through his greasy hair. “Look, I–I’m fucken’ sorry, man, I really am. I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t come here if I had anywhere else to go.”

“Fucking fantastic sales pitch, asshole,” Jason snarked, leaning against the doorframe. He's lost some of the rock-solid muscle that he'd been strapped with when Tim last saw him. Probably because he doesn't have a teenager to beat up.

“I–I’m sorry. I just–I need a bit of help, I’m…I’m in a bit of trouble.”

“No, no, no,” Jason laughed, “No, fuck that, you are not forcing your bullshit tornado back into my life. Fuck right off.”

“Jason, please. All I need is a safe place to crash for tonight, and I’ll be gone by morning. I’ll–I’ll make you breakfast, even.”

“Breakfast,” Jason said disbelievingly.

Tim nodded. “One night and breakfast.”

Jason gave him a long, withering look before sighing and pushing himself off the doorframe.

“Fine. Fine, fuck you, fine. Follow me and don’t steal anything.”

Tim opened his mouth to argue, to defend himself. He wasn’t going to steal anything. How lowly did his brother–-former brother?--think of him?

He knew he looked scruffy. He hadn't gotten a good shave in a while, nor a haircut, and his clothes weren't in as good a condition as he'd like them to be, but he wasn't a criminal.

But then he walked in, and he realized that maybe he was absolutely going to steal something if Jason hadn’t said anything.

The floors were hardwood and slightly scuffed, with fancy-looking wallpaper and guitars hung up on the entry room halls. There were two or three pairs of shoes strewn across the entry mat. Tim paused by the doorway.

“Uh, do I take my shoes–”

“Yes.” Jason crossed his arms as Tim sat down to untie his sneakers.

He took the time to study the entry hall more. There were some paintings on the other wall that looked like something Damian might paint at the height of his Tim-murdering spree.

“Who–Who, uh, did that?” Tim asked, motioning to a painting of a bear with a bear trap for teeth.

“I did.”

“Oh, really? It’s, um, it’s very good.”

“Thanks,” Jason said, continuing into the living room as Tim set his shoes down and hurried after him.

The living room was nice, with a couch and a chair situated around a natural wood Nordic coffee table. The walls were a soft shade of robin’s egg, which Tim thought was pretty. The apartment in general looked pretty clean, but still showed the worn signs of being lived in. There was a plate on the coffee table that might have been pizza and an open box on the kitchen counter.

“Sit,” Jason ordered, pointing to the gray couch. Tim hesitantly complied, sinking into the comfortable fabric the moment he touched it. Jason took his seat across from him in an original Herman Miller Eames chair that Tim recognized from Bruce’s office. Bruce had probably given it to him and just bought another. It wasn’t like those chairs were over nine thousand dollars on average. 

Tim had gotten really into Architectural Digest for a bit. The previous tenant at the apartment he'd been in right after the fight never cancelled their subscription, so, starved for anything interesting to read about that didn't require a metro card to get to, he'd read every single issue cover to cover for about a year.

Jason stared at him expectantly. “Well?”

“What?”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Tim looks down, feeling heat rise to his face. Why he was here was an awfully long and painful story that he knew Jason would probably want a summary of. Tim had barely managed to convince him to let him stay the night. Going on about his years-long sob story was pushing it.

He knew he had issues that he needed to fix, and he was fine saying that to himself (over and over until they became a part of him, until he was the problem and everyone suffered from him) but saying it to Jason was different.

He desperately wanted Jason to like him. He wanted him to respect him. And he knew that if he told Jason about it all–-about how many bad decisions he’d made, about all the terrible things he’d done and said, all the problems he had that couldn’t be fixed by a hug and some attention–- Jason would never see him the same way again. He certainly wouldn’t want to be anywhere near him.

“I…I fucked my life up,” he says.

Jason raises an eyebrow. “How so?”

Where to start?

“Um…well, I…”

Start with the big things first. The root cause.

“When you, uh…When you–the whole Titans Tower thing…”

Jason’s gaze flicks away for a moment, but returns to him with a sigh.

“Spit it out, Tim.” Right. Don’t waste his time.

“I got addicted to painkillers when I was recovering,” Tim mumbles, his eyes trained on the coffee table.

“Oh,” Jason says after a long beat. Tim risks a glance up at him.

He’s leaned back in the chair, his arms crossed and his face twitching. Tim recognizes the look; he's trying very hard to look unconcerned. If anything, it just makes him look more tense, and if Tim hadn’t been nervous before, he was certainly nervous now.

But he wants to get it all out. He hasn’t breathed a word of his addiction to anyone for six years, and who else to dump his trauma on than the man who had arguably set it in motion, however indirectly?

“I got put on oxycodone after you, uh, almost beat me to death,” Tim laughs breathily. Jason does not. “And I couldn’t get them once I healed up, so I got a dealer.”

“Yvette Porter,” Jason says. Tim looks up sharply. “That prescription drug dealer on fifth avenue that we could never grab.”

“Yeah, her. Um, anyways, I got really heavily addicted and it kind of fucked me up in a few ways.”

Jason is quiet, but he seems to be listening. Tim continues.

“A couple days before the big fight, some dudes broke into my apartment and stole my painkillers, which I think was why the argument got so bad, ‘cause I hadn’t had them in a few days and I was feeling really shitty. But anyways, uh, yeah, the painkillers kept getting more expensive, and I had less and less money because Bruce cut me off–”

“Bruce cut you off?”

Tim stares at him. “He didn’t cut you off?”

Jason shakes his head, and Tim files that away in the corner of his mind that he only looks at when he’s coming down from the oxy.

“Um…Yeah, so I had to take some odd jobs, I guess, and it was never enough and I never had enough money, and I couldn’t go to college or get a real job because I put most of my money into painkillers and I couldn’t function without them. And things just kept getting worse and worse. And–”

He stops himself, tears pricking his eyes. He still couldn’t quite believe what he’d done. He couldn’t bring himself to fully accept it.

“Yvette and I had gotten pretty close, and one day she and I were hanging out and she told me she wasn’t going to sell to me anymore because she was leaving Gotham. She got a new job and it was good and she didn’t want to sell drugs anymore, and I–I got so fucking scared and angry, and I just–I–I shot her.”

“You…shot your drug dealer?”

Tim nods, tears dropping into his lap. He shoves his palms into his eyes, shoulders shaking.

“I–I can’t fucking believe I did it, she–she was so nice to me and–and she was just about to turn herself around and I was so selfish, I just–I couldn’t let her–”

Tim dissolves into sobs, and Jason still doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t care. Of course he doesn’t. Fucking Tim, getting emotional and wasting his brother’s time–no, not his brother, his–fuck, what even was Jason?

It feels like a massive chasm has opened up between him and his…associate, and all he would have to do was reach out and grab Jason’s arm and try to pull him close and maybe that would help, but his arms feel like lead every time he even thought about lifting them.

Jason doesn’t reach out either, and it’s too late.

It’s a while before Tim manages to calm himself down, the sobs quieting to hiccups and finally giving way to deep, slightly shuddery breaths.

Eventually he builds the courage to speak again, though he’s not really sure why.

“I’m going to be better,” Tim vows, voice soft and fragile but maybe not about to break, and he tries to carve it into his heart.

Jason looks at him like he's heard it before. “But what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t think he can be okay again. Honestly, he doesn’t really remember what okay felt like. All he can think of is the constant cycle of drugged, hazy contentment and the crushing depths of withdrawal.

But he can remember two years ago, when he’d gotten clean for six months. He can remember how stable he had felt. How good it felt to not be shackled to a bottle of pills.

“But I’m–I’m not going to let this happen to me again.”

Jason sounds tired when he speaks again, the kind of tired that you don’t think you can ever sleep off. Tim is very familiar with it. “I don’t know if I can help you with this, Tim.”

“I know.” It rips Tim to shreds. But he knows.

“...How do you feel?”

Tim can’t say he was expecting the question, nor can he really answer that off the top of his head. It was hard to describe what he felt. It was like trying to feel your bones in your

body. Still, he closes his eyes for a moment and tries to listen to his body.

“I–I feel like…like I’m here. Here, too much. Like I can feel every breath and every blink and every hair on my body. I can’t think or feel any emotion but I can feel my body. And I want to get out of my skin and not have to feel anything anymore.”

“...Like, dead?”

Death wasn’t a novel concept to Jason. “Did you feel anything when you were dead?”

“No,” Jason says after a beat, soft and hesitant. He knows where Tim’s mind is going. He knows he’s building the tracks for the train to ride on. And yet he doesn’t stop.

“Then yes. I wish I was dead.”

Jason stares at the floor, then drags his gaze up to Tim with eyes that don’t really say anything. Tim has never been good at reading Jason, but he likes to imagine there’s something like regret twisting his lips downward and his eyebrows toward each other.

Finally, he speaks.

“What, um…what happened to your hand?”

Tim looks down at his right hand. “You don’t remember?”

“Why would I remember?” Jason asks, looking confused. Tim feels the low thrum of bitterness rise beneath his skin.

“Well, you–you did it, Jason,” Tim says, a little bit of that caustic anger bleeding into his voice. He raises his hand to show the mangled appendage off better.

His hand wasn’t destroyed in Titans Tower, thankfully, but it’s a near thing. Half of his ring finger is gone, and the skin all around it is patchy and discolored. When he flexes his fingers, they tremble and it takes a lot more work than it should. 

Jason had stomped on his hand, ground his foot into the delicate bones and ligaments like he was stubbing out a cigarette. It had hurt like hell and even now, six years later, he was still feeling the effects. It had taken two years for his handwriting to be even somewhat legible again.

Jason nods, lips thin and eyes anywhere but meeting Tim’s. 

“There’s, um…a guest bedroom, down the hall. Bathroom. Bathroom is there too.”

Tim has been dismissed many times in his life. He’s gotten pretty good at recognizing when he is no longer needed.

With a tight nod, he stands up and walks to the guest bedroom.

Chapter Text

Jason does not know what the hell to do.

He has a feeling that it's not unreasonable, though. This sure as hell had never happened to Dick.

Groaning, he leaned forward in his chair and dragged his hands over his face. Why him? Why Tim? 

He and Tim were never very close, what with all the attempted murder and things such as. Their personalities didn’t really mesh. Jason hadn’t had a civil conversation with him.

There wasn’t even a ‘since x ’. Jason had never really talked to the guy outside of clipped, one-sentence conversations over comms or patrols. He'd kind of introduced himself by bashing Tim's face in, which didn't make for a great foundation of a lasting friendship.

He wondered what his personality was like. Did he even have a sense of humor?
Well, going off of Tim saying he’d been hooked on oxy for the past six years, he might just have lost all sense of personality in general.

Or maybe he hadn’t. Jason wasn’t super familiar with long-term oxy addiction specifically. Heroin, cocaine, Adderall, all the common street drugs he knew the effects of. But oxy?
There wasn’t really enough money in Gotham for common citizens to get hooked on an expensive painkiller that was usually prescribed after surgeries and such. Most Gothamites barely had enough money for a doctor’s appointment.

Anyways, he didn’t have a lot of experience in oxy addiction. That wasn’t a huge problem. Addiction, in the end, was all the same: an addiction. The drug itself didn’t really matter that much. 

It was Tim that threw him so off balance. Tim, the guy who he almost beat to death. The smart kid (but not psycho, that was Damian). His replacement .

He hadn’t seen him for–what was it, five years now?--and he wasn’t the only one. None of the Waynes had heard from Tim since their big fight, though everyone else had made up about three weeks later.

Jason was surprised when Tim didn’t show up to his own birthday party that Bruce had held at the manor. He’d figured Tim would grow the hell up and make amends after a full year. But Tim had never showed, and according to Dick he never even read his texts, and Jason figured that the bridge had been effectively burned. 

Now he was…still unsure. Tim had made it clear that he was only here because he had nowhere else to go, so Jason was obviously not his first choice. He didn’t blame the kid, given their shared history.

Should he tell the rest of the family that Tim had come back? He knew Dick would be over the moon to have his ‘lil bro’ back, and Bruce might even get a little misty-eyed at the prospect of seeing his long-lost son. Damian had been getting a lot better at not being a psychopath, so maybe they would even get along.

Jason pulled out his phone, ready to text the family about the new development, when he stopped.

He hadn’t been Tim’s first choice, but Tim had still come to him. He seemed to trust him, at least a little bit.

If Tim had wanted to tell the Wayne family that he was ready to come back, he would’ve done it at the manor or the Batcave or something. He wouldn’t have come crawling to Jason of all people at nine o’clock on a Thursday.

If he blabbed to Bruce and Dick, they’d absolutely flip the fuck out. Bruce had caught Jason with a joint once, back when he was fourteen, and he’d been absolutely sure Bruce was going to set him on fire. 

Jason could only imagine what could happen if Bruce found out his son had been abusing opiates for six years straight.

Dick could genuinely die. Jason had watched Up with him. It was a very real possibility that his older brother could have a full-on heart attack.

He couldn’t help but wonder how the hell the kid had managed to hide a drug addiction from the supposed ‘greatest detective in the world’. That was when Tim had stopped hanging out with them, and Jason does clearly remember thinking that he seemed happier that way.

He wondered why Tim had come to him at all. Was he coming in hopes of getting help with his addiction?

Jason had dealt with people close to him battling addictions, but it felt different when he wasn’t ten years old and begging his mom to put down the needle. He was twenty-six now, and Tim was–what, twenty? No, twenty-two. 

He looked a lot older now, which made sense. There was a huge difference between a seventeen-year old and a twenty-two year old. His face was sharper now, his nose more defined and little wrinkles between his eyebrows where he pressed them together.

Tim could drink now. That was a strange thought. 

Probably not the best idea to turn his younger brother into an alcoholic, though. He clearly had enough going on already.

Either way, Tim was only staying tonight. One night and Jason would never have to worry about him again.

Which he’d already been doing for about five years.

Jason leaned his head back and groaned.
There was no way he could let his little brother walk out on him again. Clearly, that hadn’t gone well the last time.

But what could he even do? What in the world could Jason, who hadn’t spoken to Tim in five fucking years, do to stop him from an addiction he’d maintained for longer than that?
Weren’t teenage years the ‘formative’ years? He was pretty sure he remembered reading that the habits made when you were fifteen or sixteen were most likely to stick with you for the rest of your life.

Jason couldn’t just snap his fingers and cure a years-long addiction, as much as he would like to. That would make things a whole lot fucking easier.

He could make the drugs go away, though. 

Oh holy fuck what was he doing? Stealing oxycodone from his addict little brother? What had his life come to?
Did he even have the right to interfere? Tim hadn’t really said he wanted Jason’s help, but maybe it was just implied when he spilled his guts about it, and Tim hadn't wanted to say it outright.

But if Tim didn’t want Jason’s help and Jason still tried to give it to him, that could backfire badly. And helping someone through addiction was fucking hard. This wasn’t something Jason could just put a band-aid on and cure overnight. Helping Tim with such a serious addiction would mean a long road with a lot of pain and anger on both parts. 

But this was also kind of Jason’s fault. Tim had said he’d gotten on oxy after the Titans Tower incident, and Jason couldn’t really deny responsibility for that whole shitstorm.

Jason was objectively the best person to help Tim, as far as he knew. He was apparently the only person in his support system with a secure house, and if he helped Tim it would probably absolve a lot of underlying trauma they both had. 

Look at him, thinking this all the way through.

Chapter Text

Tim woke up at six the next morning to his favorite song.

Well, he had a weird sort of dread-jolt-feeling whenever he heard the first five seconds or so. Muscle memory from years of waking up to it. But the rest of the song he liked.

He opened his eyes and, for a brief but terrifying moment, had no idea where he was.

Tim propped himself up onto his elbows to look around the room. It was just barely light, the early morning sun peeking through the blinds on the pastel yellow wall. There was a desk that Tim could barely make out in the corner, piled with papers and notebooks. Beside him was a nightstand with a John Deere truck lamp. The bedsheets were awfully soft and red-white striped. The comforter was blue.

Was he in a child's bedroom? Who decorated like this?

Jason, his mind snapped. Tim flopped back down onto the bed. It was okay. He was...well, he wouldn't say he was in a familiar place, but he was in a house with locked doors. Not that he'd locked the guest bedroom. He wasn't that terrible of a guest. He'd just checked (and double checked) that they could lock.

After a couple minutes of staring at the ceiling and weakly grasping at the thoughts that floated through his head, he got out of bed, which had been incredibly comfortable, but he wasn’t sure whether Jason got up early or not and he had promised to make breakfast.

What would he make? Did Jason like eggs? Tim wasn’t a very talented cook, but he could make decent eggs.

His head hurt, though. First, meds.

Instinctively he reached for the bottle of pills on the nightstand, groping around in the dark for them.

He didn’t feel them. He didn’t hear them knock over, either.

Had they fallen on the ground?

He brushed his feet over the (extremely ugly) carpet on the floor. Nothing.

Maybe he’d missed them somehow. He fumbled around the stupid John Deere lamp for a moment before finally figuring out how to turn it on, wincing at the bright light.

A cold pit of dread settled in his stomach. 

His pills were gone.

Immediately he went into panic mode. He knew he’d set them on the nightstand last night. He specifically remembered doing so.

He looked up, and in the dim light of the lamp, he saw his door cracked open.

Tim had closed it last night. He hadn't locked it, but he had closed it.

Someone had stolen his meds. Again.

Jason.

Tim practically threw himself into action, stumbling straight into the wall and the door. He swore as the door handle managed to jab him in the exact spot he had a bruise,  and tore out of the bedroom.

It was still dark outside, so Tim had to slow down a bit and feel along the walls. He didn’t really remember the layout that well.

Fucking hell, he thought to himself. Can’t you do anything right?

Of course Jason had taken his pills. Why had he even tried to trust him? Jason had no reason to let him in and yet here he was. And he’d been an easy target, hadn’t he? Fuck, he should’ve just slept on the streets. At least out there he’d sleep lightly.
Thankfully, Jason’s apartment wasn’t that big, so he found the other bedroom pretty quickly and banged on the door.

He didn’t care if he woke Jason up. That was kind of the point. Honestly, he didn’t care if he broke the damn door.

Tim needed those pills. Jason could not just take them from him. He needed them.

“What? What?” Jason groaned, throwing the door open. He’d turned the light in his room on.

“What the fuck did you do with them,” Tim snarled, standing inches from Jason. He was almost as tall as him now. It made him feel a lot less intimidated.

He needed those meds. His chest sparked with terror at the prospect of going cold turkey. 

He was going to get clean. That was the intention. But not this morning. And not this way.

Jason–who the fuck did Jason think he was? 

No, Tim had come to him for help. Still, he was really fucking angry and he needed those meds.

“What?” Jason repeated for the fifth fucking time. 

“My meds!” Tim shouted, feeling a wave of nausea run over him. He should’ve had some water when he got out of bed. He was pretty used to the nausea, though, and pushed through.

“You–your meds?” 

Tim could literally see the shift in Jason’s face, the way his voice got a little higher and he forced his body language into something more casual. Jason had stolen his fucking meds and was lying about it.

“You fucking bastard,” Tim screeched, “I–I can’t believe you. I came to you for one night and I’ll be gone, but you had to go and steal my pills.”

Jason dropped the facade immediately. “You’ve been addicted to them for six years, Tim, and I haven’t even seen you for five of them! Of course I’m gonna do something!”

“Well, I didn’t ask you to do anything! Especially steal my goddamn oxy!”

Jason scoffed. “Right, so I’m just supposed to let you walk out of my house with your precious fucken' drugs and ruin your life even more? Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Yes!”

“Well, too fucken’ bad, Tim! You willingly came back into my life and I’m not going to let you weigh down on my conscience for another half decade before you decide to make a surprise appearance! What if I find you face-down in a ditch in two weeks ‘cause you got so fucken’ high you did some shit and got yourself killed, huh? Am I supposed to just let that happen?”

“It’s my fucking life, Jason!” Tim’s voice cracked. “It’s my goddamn life and I didn’t ask you to care!”

“You don’t ask someone to care, Tim! That’s not how any of this works! You’re either going to let me fucking help you or you are going to die!”

“I haven’t died yet, have I?!” 

“That is a bullshit fucking argument and you know it.”

Tim paused, struggling to think of another counterargument. Clearly, Jason was not going to give him his meds back, and however taller he may be now, he wasn’t eager to fight him.

That hadn’t gone well last time. 

Well, maybe if he did end up with the shit beaten out of him again, he could get some easy oxy out of it.

“Tim,” Jason said quietly, “I know we aren’t very close, but I still don’t want to see you–you dead. You’re a good kid.”

Tim doesn’t have a response to that. At least, that he hasn’t already said.

He’s sweating now. Fuck, this always happens when he doesn’t take them. It’s just going to get worse.

“Jason, please just give them back,” Tim tries the begging angle. Maybe Jason is softer than he thinks.

And for a moment, it looks like Jason is reconsidering. Tim feels lighter.

But he shakes his head and scowls. “Tim, no. We’re going to go back to sleep and when we wake up we are going to have a normal, adult conversation about treating your addiction at a reasonable goddamn hour.”

He closes the door in his face, and Tim doesn’t know what to do.

Fuck, he’s scared.

He’s never just quit. When he’d gotten clean, it had been a slow process over the course of three weeks where he took less and less and replaced the oxy with Advil until he could mostly function without either.

Cold turkey was all wrong. He couldn’t do this. Not right now. He needed to numb it.

No. No, try to sleep it off. He could sleep it off, right? Just sleep and wait until–until it was better.

He could sleep forever. 

No. Fuck. No, that wasn’t a good thought. Bad thought.

He staggered back to the stupid fucking guest bedroom, feeling lightheaded and sweaty. Just get into bed and sleep it off. The withdrawal couldn’t last that long, could it?
He couldn’t really remember how it had felt last time. He’d always had Advil to rely on if he needed it.

Tim crawled into bed and bundled himself into the cold sheets and closed his eyes tightly, grimacing as a shiver wracked him.

He didn't have any specific feeling, really. But every cell in his body felt heavy and cold and miserable.

Tim didn't remember crying, but his cheeks are wet.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, Tim did not react positively to Jason taking his meds. 

Jason wasn’t really surprised, but it still wasn’t very pleasant to wake up to someone trying to bust his door off its hinges at six in the morning. There were better ways to start the day for sure. 

After getting screamed at, Jason was less than eager to have to deal with Tim in  a couple hours, even if he was getting a free, home-cooked breakfast out of it. Was Tim even a good cook? Jason had-–Jason had never eaten with him, actually. Hopefully he was a decent cook, otherwise they’d have to go out for breakfast. Jason liked to eat in the mornings. It was the most important meal, after all.

He'd told Tim that they'd have breakfast at a reasonable hour. When even was a reasonable hour? Eight? Ten? To Tim, it was apparently six in the morning, but Jason usually slept in until eleven on a good day.

Jason prided himself on having good personal health habits. He was probably one of the few Wayne men that actually maintained a stable sleep schedule and diet.

That was kind of a lie. Jason slept when he got tired, which was ten on some nights and three on others. And he ate whenever he felt like it. That occasionally meant only eating dinner, but it usually meant he had a couple snacks over the course of the day.

He had a feeling he wouldn’t be getting back to sleep, so he decided he'd get up at eight thirty and took out his laptop.

Right. First things first, he punched how to help with an addiction into Google, and clicked on an article for “7 Tips for Helping Someone with an Addiction”.

He scanned through most of the tips, but his gaze lingered on one in particular.

Don’t Enable.

He was doing a pretty good job of that, right? There wasn’t much more he could do to disable him, other than locking Tim in a room…

Jason shook his head to nobody in particular. That was extreme.

Was it?

Hesitantly, he typed is it illegal to lock someone in a room.

Apparently, ‘false imprisonment’ was a crime. And also a fire hazard. The more you know.

But Jason really did need to make a game plan. Which he hadn’t done last night. Maybe he should’ve thought a little bit further than just taking the pills. 

How would he stop Tim from just getting more? Taking all his money?
No, that would piss him off. It might even scare the guy off for good, which, while solving the whole ‘having to deal with all this’ issue, would not help the ‘my little brother has a serious addiction that I partially caused’ problem.

Man, they needed therapy.

Therapy was also another tip that a lot of sites seemed to have. Maybe Jason should scour around Gotham and see if there was a quality shrink. 

Wasn’t that Roy Harper guy a former addict? Maybe he could help.

Jason took out his phone to send him a text, but was quickly distracted by another text from Bruce that he’d gotten fifteen minutes ago. God damn, did every Wayne man but Jason wake up at asscrack o’clock in the morning?

Hey son, Dick is making his monster mac n’ cheese tonight! You are welcome to stop by.

Oh boy. 

Bringing Tim was out of the question. Right? Was it?
Maybe it would be good to try and reintroduce them. After all, it probably wasn’t a great idea for Tim to have just one person in his support system. Not to mention that Dick was probably way better at dealing with Tim than Jason. Jason was many things, but equipped properly for this situation was not one of them.

He’d ask when Tim made breakfast. Casually, of course. He didn’t want to make Tim feel pressured.

And if Tim didn’t want to go, then…could Jason leave him alone for an hour or two? Was that acceptable? Because Jason really enjoyed catching up with his brothers and father, and Dick’s mac n’ cheese was killer. Maybe he could bring some back for Tim. 

Wait. Slow down , Jason chided himself. Tim said he was only staying the night and making breakfast. Dinner was never part of the conversation.

Which was why he had to bring it up. Honestly, Jason didn’t really have a whole lot going on, outside of Jason doubted that Tim was able to think of some other plan overnight. It wasn’t like he could stay in a hotel.

Wait, Tim could stay in a hotel. Couldn’t he?

Was he a wanted criminal for shooting Yvette Porter? Is that why Tim had come to Jason? Is Jason willingly harboring a criminal?

Well, Jason was technically a criminal too. That was probably why Tim hadn’t stayed at a hotel. If Jason tried to rat him out, Tim would have more than enough evidence to bring him down too.

Like the Titans Tower incident.

Sometimes, Jason forgets that he should really be in jail.

He trips out on that for a bit, but he eventually gets bored of trying to mentally list every single crime he’s ever committed (it’s a very long list). When he looks at the clock, it’s eight twenty.

Close enough. Jason’s tired of sitting in bed by now, so he hauls himself out and walks out to the kitchen.

Jason’s kitchen is a pretty nice little place, with black and white vinyl tile and wooden cabinets. It’s not very unique, and probably looks exactly like every other kitchen in the apartment complex, but Jason likes to hang out there sometimes and cook something. He’s a ‘surprisingly good cook’, according to Dick. Jason has yet to wrangle exactly what the hell that means out of him, though.

Tim, for some reason, is already there, leaning up against the refrigerator with his eyes closed. Jason comes closer, making sure to keep his footsteps quiet, and sure enough Tim is snoring softly.

Wow. Not only had Tim fallen asleep standing up, he’d also fallen asleep in a goddamn kitchen with all the lights on.

Jason, for the umpteenth time in the past twenty-four hours, does not know what to do.

Chapter Text

Tim is tired a lot.

As far as he knows, that’s not actually a side effect of the oxy. He probably just doesn’t get enough sleep. He was working on it before he came to Jason’s, but the whole Yvette situation didn’t really help him get a good night’s rest for several reasons.

Waking up for him is always abrupt and a little scary, because every single time, without fail, he wakes up feeling like he’s falling.

Last night–or technically this morning, after Tim had somehow managed to fall back asleep for a little–Tim had one of the worst nightmares he’d had in a while. Oxy didn’t interfere with his dreams, but Tim had always had vivid night terrors, and his brain loved to indulge in his past when coming up with things to scare him awake.

The dream was fuzzy in some parts, but there were two parts Tim remembered.

The first was about Yvette, who had become a recurring figure in his dreams.

Tim was in her apartment. He recognized the cheery yellow paint, the scuffed coffee table, and the beat-up couch with claw marks from the cat. It was a room he’d been in many times over the years, but he could tell by the arrangement of the pillows and the setting sun in the window that this was a very specific time.

“Yvette,” he called out, “I’m hungry for more!”

Tim turned and Yvette was splayed out on the floor, in the exact position Tim had left her when he’d shot her. She was crying.

Cody, her boyfriend, was there too, running to Yvette the same way he had that night.

  “You killed her!” He sobbed, “You killed my girl!”

“I’m hungry for more!” Tim repeated. Cody cried harder before pulling out a gun–Tim’s gun, he realized–and shooting him in the chest. Tim fell backwards, and when he blinked and squinted the room had become the Titans Tower.

When he looked down his limbs were twisted and bloody but the gunshot in his chest was gone, and when he looked up Jason was standing above him. It wasn’t even Red Hood like it had been in reality. It was Jason, with the handsome stubble and the comfortable sweats.

And toxic green eyes.,

“You were meant to be exactly who you are in this moment,” Jason snapped, his voice sounding like he was underwater. “And you are a worthless failure.”

He’s holding Tim’s bo staff, and he raises it and cracks it against Tim’s body a few times. Tim screams, but it’s not a scream, it’s all just nonsense words.

 When Tim tries to crane his head to see his body again, he’s fine. His legs are where they’re supposed to be, and his arms are the same color they usually are.

Tim has never been very religious, but for some reason he starts to pray. Jason snarls like a cat and stabs Tim through the chest with his own staff.

“You are praying to a god that does not love you,” Jason hisses.

Tim falls through the floor, watching the bo staff slide out of his chest, and wakes up.

So that was a great way to start the day.

After the yelling match with Jason, Tim had gone back to bed and laid awake for a while until he’d actually managed to fall asleep. Of course, the half-hour power nap he’d managed to squeeze in was a full-blown nightmare that left him staring up at the white ceiling and hyperventilating.

Leave it to his subconscious to come up with banger lines about theology to haunt his conscious. And it wasn’t like he could argue with it either, because it really did seem like every time he looked up at the sky and thought, if there’s a god up there, please help me, the exact opposite of what he needed happened. 

Tim's thoughts drifted to the oxy, as they tended to do, and the thought of dumping the entire bottle down his throat the moment he got them back lazily slipped across his mind like a tube down a calm river.

One thing Tim had realized over the course of his twenty-two year run was that dying was easy, and staying alive was a lot harder.

There were so many ways to kill himself. He could throw himself out of Jason’s window right now. Suffocate himself with his pillow. Walk into the kitchen and slit his wrists.

The possibilities were endless and, at times, hard to resist. Especially for an addict.

But Tim was never very brave, and he could never follow through. What was more terrifying than not existing?

Continuing to exist, Tim’s mind whispered. Tim frowned at the thought reflexively, but it lingered for a second more than he knew it should.

The thought of staying alive long enough to have a future was always hard for him. He knew all that bullshit about “it’s never too late to start over!” and whatnot, but in reality it…it just didn’t work like that. There was so much that Tim had to do to get his life back on track. 

He’d never actually graduated high school. Tim Drake, former heir to both Wayne Enterprises and Drake Industries, did not have a high school diploma. 

After that, he would probably go to college for four years, and if he survived, then he’d get a job somewhere and do that for however long he decided to work. Maybe he’d even get a wife and have kids.

He knew there was always the chance of getting out of this hole he was stuck in and carving out a normal life for himself. He knew he might get a girlfriend someday and get married. He knew he could retire at a good age and live out the tail end of his life on cruise ships and Christmas with grandkids.

But what if he took his chances and it didn’t work out? He forces himself to quit the only constant thing that gives him even a sliver of joy in his life, drags himself through college for four years, and gets stuck in a job he hates? Maybe he finds someone who brings back a little bit of happiness into his life for a while, but one day he slips back into addiction and she leaves him?
Or maybe he won’t even find anyone who’s willing to settle for him. Tim knows he’s a burden to everyone around him, even without the oxy. He would be lucky to make a friend who puts up with him. Lovers are a distant possibility.

Whatever. He’s awake now and his breathing has slowed down enough to be somewhat calm. He checks the little clock on the nightstand. It’s eight fifteen.

With a low groan, he throws off the blanket and gets out of bed. His feet are really, really cold, because his socks had slipped off sometime in the night and Jason’s hardwood floors are not at all insulated.

His muscles hurt, a dull ache in his legs and shoulders. He must’ve slept wrong, he sometimes gets all sore when he sleeps in a new bed.

 And he’s nauseous. Usually Tim would chalk that up to being hungry, but combined with the rest of his misery he’s suspicious it’s something more.

Maybe he’s gotten the flu. Or the past couple weeks are catching up to him and his body is shutting down. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He scowls at nothing. Maybe if he had his goddamn Advil…

Tim walked out of the guest bedroom and through the living room to the kitchen, opening up the refrigerator and taking a peek inside.

Well, Jason had…food, that was for sure.

His fridge was stocked with a half-empty carton eggs, two gallons of milk, an entire drawer of cheese, three boxes of takeout from different places around town, half a white onion, a quarter of a mushroom pizza on a plate, a full shelf of various jars, four bell peppers, and a lone tupperware full of salmon.

He could…work with this, maybe. 

Yeah. Salmon, eggs, bell pepper, onion. A hearty omelet in the making.

His skin ached as he took the ingredients from the refrigerator and put them all on the counter before closing the refrigerator.

Fuck , I’m tired , he thought as he leaned against the fridge for just a moment. Do I really have the energy to cook all of this?

He had to. He’d made a deal. It was just an omelet.

Tim just had to chop up the bell pepper and onion, and sauteé the salmon with some garlic and the vegetables, and beat the eggs with some milk, and butter up the pans…

His eyelids were heavy. Tim closed them, just for a moment.

Just for a moment.

Chapter Text

“Yo. Timbo, you good?”

Jason shakes his younger brother’s shoulder, and the guy jumps like he’s been electrocuted. Right. Jason forgot how overactive Tim’s reflexes were.

Even back at the Manor (in the few and far between instances where they were in the same place together) it had been a running joke that Tim was ridiculously jumpy. Dick loved to tell a story about how he almost scared Tim off the side of a building because his phone rang.

“S–Sorry,” Tim gasps, a sheen of sweat on his brow and a hand over his heart like he’s about to go into cardiac arrest.

Wait, was that a possibility? Could oxy do that?

Jason goes to put a hand on his shoulder, but Tim slaps it away.

They both stare at each other for a long moment before Jason silently puts his hand down.

If that was how it was going to be, then whatever. Jason could deal with that. 

He glanced over at the counter, where an assortment of random foods was stacked on the counter. 

“What, um…what are you making?”

Tim straightens. “Omelet.”

“Do you need more eggs? Carton’s half full, but if you’re making two–”

“I’m making one,” Tim says, moving forward to open the carton. Jason’s sentence sputters into silence.

“...and we’re sharing?”

Tim looks up at Jason through his eyebrows, his eyes looking a lot more gray than blue. It’s a clear answer, however nonverbal.

Tim looks dull these days, Jason noticed as he sat down at a stool on the other side of the counter. His skin is pale and splotchy, his dark hair is greasy and has grown past the nape of his neck in an awkward way that indicated it had grown out from a shorter hairstyle and was never trimmed, his wrists are veiny and his nails are jagged from being torn rather than clipped, and his teeth were a lot darker than they used to be. He probably hadn’t brushed them in a while.

As casually as he can manage, Jason says, “I can get you a toothbrush if you need one.”

Tim glances at him. "...Why?"

"You look like you need one." Jason blurted without thinking.

Some color flushed into Tim’s face, at least. His hand flew up to his mouth. Jason carefully looks away from the mangled hand.

“...um…okay,” he mumbled from behind his palm. Jason wanted to smack himself. Way to be subtle.

He watched as Tim opened every drawer in his kitchen, clearly looking for something. He was just about to ask him what he needed when Tim pulled out his small stainless skillet.

“Butter’s in the fridge,” he offered as Tim cracked the eggs into a little bowl. Tim glanced up and immediately dropped the eggshells, turning to the fridge.

Jason sat down on the stool on the other side of the counter, quietly grabbed the bowl, and fished the eggshells out as Tim cut a tablespoon of butter and tossed it into the skillet before putting it on high heat.

The sound of crackling butter filled the room, soon accompanied by the sharp chops of a knife against a cutting board. For what it was worth, Tim was surprisingly efficient in cooking.

Minced garlic joined the butter in the skillet, and a few seconds later the bell pepper and onion followed. Tim opened up the sealed bag of lox.

“Is this salmon from Roker’s?” Tim asked, not looking up from the lox he was cutting. Jason allowed a small smile. Finally, a conversation he didn’t have to initiate.

“Lox, and no. I have a lox guy who catches it fresh in Idaho and ships it to me.”

“Salmon and lox are the same thing, aren’t they?”

Jason shook his head. “Salmon is, like, smoked and cured, and lox is just cured and way saltier.”

“Oh. Wait, you have a lox guy?”

“‘Course I do. Dan Finkelman. He’s a really nice guy. He sends me the lox blessing on a little card and everything.”

“Is he Jewish?”

Jason laughed. “Probably the only Jewish guy in Idaho.”

Tim grunted in amusement, slipping the chunks of lox into the skillet. Jason wasn’t sure how that was going to turn out, but it sure smelled good.

“So, um…you play any video games?” Jason asked, over the sizzling food. Tim looked up from the skillet.

“Not really. I used to have a Switch though.”

“What did you play on it?” Jason had a Switch that he never used. Maybe he could give that to Tim as a sign of goodwill.

“Um…Animal Crossing.”

“Dude, I love Animal Crossing. I gotta show you my island, hold on.”

Jason leapt over the couch and grabbed the remote and his JoyCons. He’d hooked up the Switch to the TV six months ago and had never taken it out. Hell, he hadn’t played Animal Crossing in forever either. He was really more of a Doom guy.

For Tim though, he could hide his murderous and psychopathic vices.

Jason could feel Tim’s eyes as he opened up Animal Crossing. Just as the theme music began to play, Tim suddenly shouted. Jason’s head whipped around to the kitchen.

Tim was holding the back of his hand to his mouth, muttering curses. Had he burned himself?

Jason pressed the button and got up. “You good, little man?”

Tim nodded. “Burned myself. Stupid.”

“Is the pan stupid or are you stupid?”

He’d meant it to be a joke, but clearly it hadn’t sounded that way from how quickly Tim’s head snapped up. Jason immediately backtracked. 

“I didn’t mean like that, I–I meant, like, are you calling the pan stupid or yourself stupid, I know you aren’t stupid–”

“It’s fine,” Tim mumbled.

Jason swallowed. They weren’t at that stage yet. “Well, um…I can take over, if you want. I’m really particular about my eggs, so you can…you can go play Animal Crossing.”

Tim nodded after a moment, shaking his hand and wandering over to the couch. Jason picked up the spatula and probed the cooking ingredients.

It smelled really good. He wondered what spices and herbs Tim had used. 

Jason poured the eggs into the pan and let it sit for a moment before scraping them all onto one side with a spatula. He could hear Tim running around in the game and smiled.

At least they had something in common.

As he let the eggs cook, he pulled out his phone to mindlessly scroll Instagram for a bit, but he had a message from Dick.

Shit, he had to ask Tim about dinner. He’d almost forgotten.

Ar you comig to dinner tonight?? Cant want to see you!

Dick Grayson genuinely could not spell. At all. It was kind of funny, but Jason had a hypothesis about people who are insanely good at math always being shit at spelling, so it wasn’t really a burn. Plus, Jason wasn’t an asshole like that, he wouldn’t make fun of someone’s spelling ability.

Hesitantly, he looked up at Tim, who was sitting on the couch and staring intensely at the screen, his little character fishing for a shark.

Jason waited until he’d caught the suckerfish to speak.

“Hey, um, Chalamet–”

“What?”

“Chalamet. Timotheé Chalamet. Your names are both Timothy, so it's like--”

“No, I--I got that, but why are you pronouncing it chah-lam-mit?”

Jason stared at him. “Isn’t that how you say it?”

“ Sha-luh-may . He’s French.”

“Why do you know that?”

“I watched–-never mind. I’m just cultured.”

Jason rolled his eyes. Of course Tim knew how to pronounce Timotheé Chalamet’s name, but didn’t know what lox was.

“Anyways, um, Dick is making dinner tonight at the Manor, and…do you want to come?”

Tim was quiet.

Of course he wouldn’t. Why would Tim want to go to the Manor? He hadn’t spoken to anyone in five years, why the hell would he decide to show up at the Wayne Manor for a meal and some chit chat?

Jason scowled as he flipped his eggs over. He’d burned them a little.

“What’s he making?” Tim asked, his voice tight.

“Mac and cheese.”

Tim seemed to consider this for a while, before sighing. “What time?”

“Um…Six?”

“Alright.”

Jason almost dropped the plate he was holding.

“You–You want to go?”

“Sure. Dick makes good mac and cheese.”

Tim used to be a normal guy. As far as Jason knew, he didn’t go to parties, he focused on his schoolwork and being Robin, and he was polite and respectful to Bruce and everyone around him.

Now, he was showing up to his estranged brother’s apartment at nine o’clock on a Thursday after five years of radio silence, addicted to oxy, and going over to Wayne Manor for mac and cheese.

Maybe oxy had made him braver. Maybe it had fucked with his head so much he just didn’t give a shit anymore. 

Or maybe Tim had changed and that’s just the way things were.

Chapter Text

“You look nice,” Jason said, leaning up against the doorframe in the guest bedroom. “Very elegant. Like old money.”

Tim didn’t say anything, his head stuck in the turtleneck he was trying to wrangle his head into.

 If Jason wanted to be an ass and make fun of him for trying to clean himself up appearance-wise, then he could go right ahead. Tim had better problems to ignore.

Even if he wanted to, Tim wouldn’t sass him. It was Jason’s turtleneck after all. Tim…did not have any clothes. 

Jason had been kind enough to lend him some slacks and a nice shirt and put Tim’s clothes in the wash. Tim had slipped a $20 into his jacket, which was hanging on the coat rack in the mudroom.

He had no idea how much he should pay Jason. He couldn’t just jam himself back into Jason’s life out of the blue and sleep in his house for free. Tim may not have been raised in a manor, but he sure wasn’t raised in a barn.

But it wasn’t like he had much money either way. His landlord, the asshole that he was, had waited until he’d scraped up just enough money to pay his rent to boot him out because he was ‘doing crack, and he wasn’t a fucken’ crackhouse’. 

Hence the jamming back into Jason’s life. Tim had been homeless for a little while before and he would do anything to not have to repeat that experience.

Maybe he could convince Bruce to give him a slick five hundred, and Tim would be on his way. There were plenty of places in Gotham that would let Tim stay a couple nights. That was all he needed. Just a few nights away from Jason and his landlord and everything to get back on his feet.

He could move. Move across the country. Maybe Dan Finkelman would let him take on an apprenticeship fishing for salmon. 

That wasn’t a bad idea, really. There couldn’t be that many ways to get oxy in the middle of Idaho. Maybe that was what Tim needed to finally get off of it.

Jason had given him a single tablet of oxy to get him through the night, once Tim had explained to him over breakfast that he could not just go cold turkey on a drug he’d been taking daily for six years. But Jason still had the rest of the bottle locked in a safe, and had refused to bring any with him to the Manor. Tim just hoped it would be enough.

It had felt so fucking good to finally have oxy back in his system. The muscle aches he’d been having made the stupid burn he’d gotten on his hand so much more painful faded within minutes, and the anxious trembling in his hands had stopped the moment the pill was on his tongue. 

Jason had tried to give him some Advil and “Nature’s Bounty Anxiety Relief” after breakfast, but it hadn’t really helped. 

Maybe it had helped, but Tim was such a junkie that he didn’t want it to help so he could just have the goddamn oxy.

God, he was pathetic.

“We’re leaving in ten minutes,” Jason said, tapping his watch. It was a $30 Casio watch that he’d had for the entirety of Tim knowing him. Tim was pretty sure he remembered Jason telling him that it was his dive watch and he’d bought it when he was twelve, and hadn’t taken it off since.

He’d then peeled off the watch to show off his tan, which was so bad Tim swore to himself that he would never wear a watch.

Tim sat down on the bed and pulled his ratty sneakers over the dress socks Jason had lent him. “I’m ready.”

“You sure you don’t want to borrow a pair of my shoes?” Jason asked, eyeing the Nikes. The left one’s sole was kind of coming off, but it was nothing a little duct tape on the inside couldn’t fix.

“No thanks. You have, um…really small feet.”

Jason goes still. “What?”

“Your feet are very small,” Tim says, ducking his head slightly to hide his smile. “in comparison to the rest of your body.”

“My feet are perfectly normal! I have a normal body-to-feet ratio!”

“You’re a size eight and you’re six foot one.”

“That’s normal!”
Tim shook his head, trying his best to manipulate his facial muscles into a level expression. It wasn’t working.

Even if Tim could possibly fit into Jason's shoes, his wardrobe was far from the vibe Tim was going for. Jason owned exactly two styles of clothes: 'cool high school science teacher' and 'drug lord'. Right now, he was wearing a black Bride of Chucky t-shirt, with a picture of two vaguely humanoid things Tim assumed to be Chucky and his bride, faded blue jeans, and formerly white Converse that were now an ugly shade of tan. 

It had taken Tim a while to find a shirt that sort of fit the occasion (it was in the 'drug lord' section of his closet, beside a shirt that strongly resembled the button-down El Chapo was arrested in) and he still wasn't sure it was good enough. But it felt really, really nice to take a shower and change into fresh clothes.

He was feeling so much better now, it was kind of insane. He felt happy.

Usually when he was on oxy, he felt fine. He was rarely happy. He didn’t have a lot of friends to hang out with and he certainly didn’t have a family to spend time with, so the oxy just made him feel okay.

But right now he was happy.

He stood up and walked towards the door as Jason groaned about how long he had taken and how late they were going to be. Tim rolled his eyes.

The ride to the Manor was uneventful. Apparently Jason had bought a car three years ago because he missed listening to music while driving, and he got tired of being shit on by car drivers.

Tim honestly hated Jason’s bike anyways. He was fine with driving his own motorcycle, but it was really awkward to be either nestled into someone’s chest or holding on to their waist for dear life for a solid twenty minutes. Motorcycles shouldn’t be two-person vehicles, in his opinion.

Jason blasted Creedence Clearwater Revival the entire drive, and gave him a very long and thorough summary of the name change in 1968, Tom Fogerty’s reason for departure, and their failure to reunite.

It was pretty interesting, all things considered. It was better than silence.

Tim actually quite liked CCR. He liked thinking of the songwriters sitting on a porch in the summertime, strumming their guitars and talking about their days. They’d have all sorts of crazy stories about wrestling a three-foot steelhead salmon out of the river, and they’d complain about all the damn mosquitos they could never escape.

Maybe Tim had a rosy look of the mountains, because his favorite movie was A River Runs Through It. 

He’d always wanted to visit Montana and learn how to fly fish. It sounded so peaceful.

“We’re here, Timbo,” Jason said as he parked. Tim blinked.

“Cool,” he mumbled as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

The Wayne Manor looked imposing as always, and it was a little funny to see Jason’s 2015 Prius parked out front. 

Tim took a deep breath. This was it. The Waynes were inside and he was going to have to face them for the first time in five years.

He was going to have to face Bruce.
Oh god, he couldn’t do this.

“Tim, you good?” Jason asked, poking his head through the window. Tim took a deep, shuddery breath.

“I–I can’t do this, Jason, I can’t–”

“Whoah, whoah,” he said, opening the car door. “Tim, let’s slow down. It’s just dinner. I talked to everyone, they’re really excited to see you.”

“But wh–what if they don’t–I can’t–”

“It’s going to be okay. I made Damian promise not to try and kill you. You’re going to be okay.”

Tim laughs wetly at that, and forces another deep breath into his lungs.

You’re going to be okay.

You’re going to be okay.

You’re going to be better.

He’s going to be better.

“You alright now?” Jason asks, offering a hand to help him up. Tim gives him a look and brushes it off.

“I’m not elderly,” Tim snarks as he gets out. "I don't need help getting out of a car.

“Yeah, but you were, like, on the verge of tears five seconds ago.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Whatever. I’m just–I’m just going in for mac and cheese and that’s it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jason scoffs, “Like that’s going to happen.”

Tim elbows him in the stomach and dodges the right hook Jason sends in retaliation, scampering up the steps of the entrance to evade him. Jason follows in hot pursuit, but Tim schools his face into something passive, and knocks on the door.

Chapter Text

“Dude, what are you doing?” Jason asked, pushing the door open. Tim blinked at him.

“What? Are we just supposed to walk in?”

Jason rolled his eyes. For such a smart kid, Tim could be dumb as hell.

“Yeah, man, they’re our family. They’re expecting us.”

Tim shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Right, yeah. ‘Course.”

Jason gives him a strange look, but he decides against saying anything. It was probably best to avoid antagonizing him that much until the dinner was over. He was already stressed out enough.

“Don’t worry so much.” Jason clapped a hand on Tim’s shoulder. This time, he didn’t brush it off. “They’ve all been waiting to see you again. They’re really excited.”

It felt like he’d said that five times and was having the same conversation over and over, but he supposed that was what it was like when dealing with someone like Tim. Sometimes you just have to get it in their head.

Tim followed timidly as Jason pushed the door open and stepped into Wayne Manor.

It always felt like a breath of fresh air to be back in the manor. Jason could always appreciate a clean, fancy house, especially after the grimy streets of Gotham. Most Gotham houses didn’t come anywhere close to a fraction of this kind of opulence. His apartment wasn’t shabby, but it certainly wasn’t Bruce Wayne’s manor.

His and Tim’s sneakers slap against the marble floor as they make their way upstairs to the dining room, and Jason gets the distinct feeling that Tim doesn’t really know where they’re going. 

He keeps looking around the hallway with wide eyes, like he’d forgotten what it had all looked like. It had been five years since he’d last been here, so maybe he had.

“Is that Jason?” Dick’s voice floats down the stairwell, and Jason picks up speed. 

“Dick!” He calls, taking the stairs two at a time. He can hear footsteps above him, and Dick appears at the top of the landing.

“Jason, there–”

He freezes as his eyes land on Tim, who had been lagging behind. Jason slows, glancing between his two brothers. 

Tim looks up at Dick nervously, his face pin, while Dick stares down at Tim like he’s seen a ghost.

In a way, he has.

“Tim?” Dick breathes, and Tim nods with a little anxious smile.

Dick finally moves, and he’s practically falling down the stairs in his haste to get to Tim. Before Tim can back away, Dick has thrown his arms around him and started crying.

Jason would have rolled his eyes if it hadn’t been such a sweet moment. He knew Dick would burst into tears the moment he laid eyes on Tim. It was Up all over again.

“Oh my god! Oh my god, Tim!”

“Dick, did you say Tim?” Bruce has come to the stairs now, and when he sees Dick holding Tim, his mouth falls open. He shoots a questioning look at Jason, who shrugs.

“Tim’s here?” Damian’s voice comes from the dining room, but he doesn’t come to see. 

Does nobody in this house have ears and critical thinking skills? Jason huffs and walks the rest of the way up the stairs, patting Bruce on the bicep taking a left into the dining room.

It’s as extravagant as always, with high ceilings, fancy curtains over massive windows, and in the middle of the room is a six-person dining table set for four.

“Is Tim–” Damian starts, but Jason already knows where he’s going.

“Yep, he’s being smothered by Dick right now.” He takes his place on the right, across from Dick’s chair. “Hey, Alfred, could you please grab us another table setting?”

“It is already done, Master Jason. Might I inquire when you and Tim…reunited?” Jason looks over, and sure enough Alfred is straightening out the fork and nudging the drinking glass into place.

The British gentleman clearly wants to go say hello, if his frequent glances towards the stairwell are anything to go by. Jason chews the inside of his cheek.

He was pretty sure Tim didn’t want him to tell the whole story of exactly how they met up, but he doesn’t want to be vague or lie to Alfred. He’d probably been the most torn up about Tim than anyone.

“He showed up at my apartment last night,” he says, serving himself a bowl of mac and cheese. Alfred nods, looking satisfied. Jason knows he isn’t.

Bruce comes back in and sits down at the head of the table, picking up his fork while placing his napkin back in his lap. Dick and Tim reappear a moment later.

“Um, where should I…” Tim asks, hanging back. Dick leaps to pull out the chair opposite to Damian and next to Jason. 

“Here, here, go on and sit, serve yourself–or do you want me to get you some? Here, I’ll get you some–wait, are you hungry?” Dick pauses, already holding the ladle filled with macaroni. Tim nods after a moment, pushing out his bowl.

“Thank you,” he mumbles as he picks up his fork.

Dick sits down, tucks his napkin under the table, and clears his throat. “So, um, how are you?”

Tim swallows. “I’m okay. You?” 

“Good, good. I'm fine." Dick takes another bite of mac and cheese, chewing just long enough to make Jason think he was done talking. "You, uh, you didn’t call or anything. Quite a surprise to see you here.”

“Sorry, I just…got back into Gotham last night.” Jason looks at him as subtly as he can. Tim avoids his eyes.

“Oh, where were you staying?” 

“Arkham,” Tim says. The entire table freezes.

It’s only when Tim looks up with a small smile does Dick relax and laugh as loudly as he can without sounding like a maniac. He’s doing a really bad job. Tim looks down, his face red.

God, this was awkward. Jason takes another bite of mac and cheese and savors the taste. At least the food is good.

“Hilarious as always,” Damian says as he picks at the green beans. Dick always makes a vegetable alongside the mac that nobody ever ate. It would appear he still hasn’t learned.

At least Tim was trying, holy shit. Poor guy looked like his foot was slowly being chewed off by a lion.

“What have you been doing?” Bruce rumbles, taking a sip of his water. 

Tim shrugs. “Working. Got a few jobs.”

“Doing what?”

“Animal shelter for a while, then food shelter.”

“Very nice,” Bruce says. Tim nods.

Silence settles over the table. Jason can tell Dick is about to burst with his insatiable need to know everything about everyone, and his estranged little brother showing up out of the blue after five years is going to kill him until he knows exactly why Tim left, every moment of his time spent away from them, and why he came back. Dick is many things, but he is never the first to forget.

But he thankfully doesn’t voice any of his questions, and instead makes small talk with Jason about his past week. Jason leaves out most of the major revelations, like Tim being an addict, and instead tells him about the investigation he’s been working on.

Finally, after about a half hour of agonizing tension and delicious food, everyone is full and they start to clear their plates.

As rich as the Wayne family may be, Bruce has had a strict rule of washing the dishes every night after dinner for as long as Jason has eaten dinner with him. He remembers Damian being very resistant to it when he first showed up, but it was all over the moment Bruce pulled the “spoiled child, stop whining about cleaning up after yourself” card.

“Here, I’ll take your plates,” Dick says, swiping Damian and Tim’s dishes. “Jason, take Bruce’s.”

It’s not a suggestion. Jason takes Bruce’s plate and follows Dick out of the room and downstairs to the kitchen. The moment Dick deems them out of earshot, he carefully sets the plates on a nearby console table, turns, and grabs Jason by the shoulders.

“Where the fuck did he come from and what aren’t you telling me?”

Jason groans. He knew Dick wouldn’t be able to control his curiosity for long. He supposes it’s a blessing enough that he waited until they were out of the room.

“I don’t know, man, he just…showed up at my apartment at, like, nine o’clock last night. That’s it.”

“And you didn’t think to tell us?”

“He’s–look, he’s…going through some stuff, okay? I didn’t want to stress him out. I figured that if he’d wanted to see you guys, he would have come to see you, and now he’s come to see you.”

Dick scoffs. “Yeah, but it’s been an entire day!”

“You haven’t seen him for five years, I figured a day wouldn’t kill you.”

“That’s not the fucking point and you know it.”

Jason gently shifts Dick’s hands off of his shoulders. “Look, man, I don’t know what else to tell you. He came here out of his own volition. He’s ready to see you tonight, so maybe just focus on that instead of the past.”

Dick glares at him, but Jason knows he’s taken the higher moral ground, and Dick is a sucker for higher moral grounds. He’s won the fight and quieted the beast, for now.

Dick picks the plates back up and they go to wash them in the kitchen. It takes them about ten minutes to wash everything, and Dick doesn’t say a word.

Chapter Text

Tim watches in pain as Dick and Jason leave the room, taking every ounce of joy with them. The room temperature feels like it’s dropped twenty degrees. Tim rubs his arms self-consciously.

He’s overdressed for sure. Dick is wearing a solid green sweater from Uniqlo or something and black sweats. Damian is wearing a shirt he got from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum gift shop and gym shorts. Bruce is wearing a cheesy Star Wars t-shirt and sweatpants. Hell, even Jason is the best dressed of the four, and he’s wearing a leather jacket with jeans and a Bride of Chucky shirt.

“I have homework to do,” Damian announced, standing up abruptly and turning to the door. He either doesn’t catch or doesn’t care about the pleading look Tim sends him as he walks away.

That leaves him with Bruce for the first time in five years.

The tension is so thick Tim thinks he’s going to choke on it. Never has he wanted to leave a room more. He decides to take a sudden and intense interest in the bowl of merengues Alfred had set out for dessert.

He wondered if Damian had tampered with them. He hadn’t seen anyone else eat one. 

“So, Tim, are you clean now?”

The blood drains from Tim’s face. No beating around the bush then. They were doing this.

“No,” he says honestly, looking up from his plate. There’s no point in lying to him. Judging by the way this dinner is going, he’s never going to see him again. 

“I figured.”

Bruce is quiet for a moment, and when he speaks again his voice is considerably softer. “I’m sorry for the way things…went. I could have handled that with a little more tact.”

Oh, brother.

“Why are you apologizing?” Tim scoffs. “I know you lied to me, Bruce. If you wanted me out of your life, you should have just told me.”

Bruce looks at him, his eyebrows knit together and mouth pursed. “What are you talking about?”

“When did you guys make up? After I left?”

Bruce stares at him before sighing heavily. “Three weeks.”

“Three weeks,” Tim breathes. “Three weeks after I left, you guys came back together like nothing happened.”

“You didn’t reply to any of our messages. You had made it clear you wanted nothing to do with us.”

“I didn’t respond to Dick’s messages. You never contacted me, did you?”

“Well, Dick asked you to come over for your birthday, and you never responded. I didn’t want to pressure you.”

Tim laughs scornfully.

“Why, because you were afraid I’d realize that little thing about cutting all your kids off when they turned eighteen was bull?”

Bruce stills. “Maybe I didn’t want my children being influenced by a drug addict.”

“That drug addict was your son," Tim says venemously.

"I did what I thought was best, Tim," Bruce says, his hand coming up to massage the bridge of his nose. "I had to act in everyone's best interests, not just yours."

"How was abandoning me in my best interests?"

"You needed space to figure things out yourself."

"I needed guidance, Bruce. All you did was leave me to die."

Bruce is quiet. Tim takes a deep breath, forcing himself to loosen his grip on his silverware.

"Why didn't you kick Jason out?" He breathes out, almost scared to ask. "He--He tried to kill me, Bruce, why didn't you kick him out?"

Bruce's face sours. “He was different, Tim, don’t compare yourself to–”

“I will compare myself to him! Because he got to stay and I didn’t! Am I that fucking unlovable?”

“Timothy, you’re making this much more difficult than it needs to be.”

“It needs to be difficult! You cut me off and left me with no money, no family, and an expensive drug addiction when I was eighteen! I’m not going to let you walk away from this!”

“I didn’t walk away from anything,” Bruce snaps. 

A few years ago, he would have tucked his tail between his legs and taken whatever Bruce gave to him. A few years ago, he would have begged for any scrap of attention and affection he could get. Bruce talking to him with even a hint of anger or annoyance would have killed him.

Now, he’s let his bitterness and anger ferment for too long. Bruce has had too much time to reach out and make amends, and now Tim doesn’t want to forgive him.

“I was trying to help you, Tim. But you didn’t want help. And after that fight you left and you never responded to any of our texts.”
“ Texting me is not enough, Bruce, you know that. You could have called me or come over to my house or something. ”

“I didn’t know where you lived, Tim–”

“Oh yeah! You didn’t! Because you cut me off and kicked me out of your life!”

Bruce opens his mouth, and for a moment he doesn’t say anything. But then he has to go and ruin it.

“Timothy, we all tried to help you, and I never even told the guys about your addiction! I kept my mouth shut!”

“Oh, such a high bar to hold you to, thanks!” Tim rolls his eyes. “And what do you mean you were trying to help me?! Are you forgetting that you closed my bank accounts?”

“I thought you would have no choice to get clean if you didn’t have any money to fund it!”

Tim laughed. “So you admit you fucking lied to me about cutting me off so I would just figure out how to get clean by myself? You did everything in your power to not have to deal with me?”
“I didn’t mean it in that way–”

“You fucked up, Bruce! I was under your care and you fucked it up! Just admit that you were a terrible father and let me move on!”

Bruce stands up. “I didn’t ask you to come here, Tim. I think we both remember the last thing I said to you.”

He can feel the moment their relationship dies. He can feel the last shred of hope that they could ever reconcile, curl up like a paper lit on fire and disintegrate. 

Don’t come back until you’re clean, Bruce had told Tim five years ago. That was the last thing Bruce had said to him before Tim had gotten into his car and driven away, his bag in the trunk and his hands shaking on the wheel.

Well, Tim was back, and he wasn’t clean. And Bruce didn’t want him.

TIm stares at the man he used to call his father and realizes he doesn’t know who he’s looking at.

“Fuck you, Bruce. Fuck you.”

Bruce looks back at him with the same expression of coldness, absent of recognition or affection.

“Tim, if you want to come into my home, disrupt my evening, and insult me to my face, I would ask that you leave.”

Tim doesn’t know what to do for a terrifyingly long moment. 

Is he really doing this? Is he kicking Tim out for real?

This is it, Tim thinks numbly. This is really it. I’m never going to talk to him again.

Tim doesn’t trust himself to speak as he walks out the door, down the stupidly fancy stairs with the ugly floor, and through the doors of the Wayne Manor.

The Gotham air hits him like a truck, and Tim is overcome with such a strong wave of nausea that he barely has the strength to run to the well-manicured bushes and vomit up all of the mac and cheese he’s just eaten. He only feels bad because he knows Alfred is going to have to clean it up. 

He doesn’t bother calling an Uber. There’s no way he’s waiting for Jason to drive him back. Jason is going to want to try and keep fixing things and it’s just not going to work.

He’s going to go to Montana. He doesn’t care if–if anything happens. He’s booking a flight for Billings and he’s going to Montana. He’s going to leave everything, all of this bullshit and heartache and grief, and he’s going to start somewhere they won’t fucking find him.

His oxy is still at Jason’s. He wonders if he should bother breaking in or not.

No. No, fuck it all. He’ll take some Advil and some fucken’ Nature’s Bounty Anxiety Relief and he’ll deal with the withdrawal on the flight to Montana, and he’ll hole up in some shitty motel for the night and wait it out.

He will not rely on the Wayne family ever again.

He walks out the gate and keeps going.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Damian,” Dick greets as he walks up the stairs. Damian is standing by the entrance to the dining room, looking weirdly uncomfortable.

“I have to go do homework,” he mutters, before brushing past the both of them and going downstairs. “Nice seeing you, Jason.”

“Nice seeing you too, dick!” Jason calls after him, before glancing at Dick. “Not you. Sorry.”

“Rude,” he sniffs. Jason rolls his eyes.

They walk into the dining room together, and find that the only one there is Bruce.

“Tim go to the bathroom?”

Bruce shrugs, sitting back in his chair and looking exhausted. The cogs start turning in Jason’s head and he has a terrible feeling that something really fucked up happened in the twenty minutes he was gone.
“Where is he?” Dick asks, oblivious.

“He left,” Bruce says. He puts his head in his hands. “We had another argument.”

“Where is he?” Jason repeats. 

“Seriously?” Dick asks at the same time.

“He–he went out the door. I’d assume he’s waiting in the car or something.”

Jason pats Dick on the shoulder. “I’d better go deal with him. Bruce, we’re going to have a very long discussion once I figure this shit out.”

“Shouldn’t Bruce go figure it out?” Dick asks, his gaze sliding to Bruce, who looks up.

Jason frowns. “Why?”

“Because this is, like, exactly what happened last time?”

A bolt of dread runs down Jason’s spine.

He’s right. This is almost verbatim for what had happened last time. They’d all come together for dinner, an argument had started, Dick and Jason had left to cool off and do the dishes after three and a half hours of nonstop fighting, and when they’d come back Tim was gone.

At first Dick was convinced he was just at his apartment. But when he came to knock on the door, nobody answered. 

When he didn’t reply to his texts and turned his location off on his phone, they all figured he was either dead or wanted nothing to do with them, and Bruce had said that what was done was done and it was best to just move on.

He knew Tim was just sulking, licking his wounds. Or it had been the final straw, and Bruce was right. Nothing could be done. But Jason knew he wasn’t dead. 

Well, knowing about his addiction now, he really shouldn’t have been so sure.

“No, that’s okay,” Jason says. “He trusts me. Sort of. I’ll go sort him out and we can eat dessert.”

Dick nods and leans over to pop a merengue in his mouth. Jason stares at him in disgust.

“Dude. After.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles around the merengue.

Jason sighs and heads downstairs, pushing open the grand entry doors. 

The cool Gotham wind breaks over his face, and he takes a deep breath. The sky is cloudy, little stars peeking through when they can. It’s a familiar sight. 

When he looks down, he sees a figure leaning up against his car.

“Tim, you doing okay? I heard about your argument, we can go home–”

“Not Tim,” Damian grunts. Jason blinks.

“I thought you had homework.”

“I was lying. Where’s Tim?”

“I thought he was out here, isn’t he?”

Damian shakes his head. Jason groans.

“You’re fucking with me, man, he’s in the car, right?”

“We should split up to look for him,” Damian says, not bothering to respond to Jason. “I’ll take my bike. You go look for him at your apartment.”

“Okay, man,” Jason sighs. “Text me if you find him.”

Damian nods and pushes off the side of the Prius before walking off into the darkness in the direction of the garage. Jason walks up to his car and thumps his head against the window.

Fuck, he was gone for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes out of the room and the entire night blows up in his face.

He slips into the driver’s seat and starts the car as he takes out his phone and dials Tim.

On the fifth ring, he picks up.

“Tim, where–”

“Don’t call me again. I’m leaving.”

He hangs up.

Jason stares at the Call Ended screen and, just for a moment, lets himself break down.

He slams his fist into the steering wheel, screaming at the stupid fucking beep the car makes. He hates his car horn. He fucking hates it.

Fuck, was he seriously going to lose Tim again? In less than twenty-four hours, he’s going to have to find and lose his little brother? 

This isn't permanent. It couldn’t be. Tim had reestablished a connection, right? 

Jason sobbed, his forehead pressed into the steering wheel. 

He was going to lose Tim and there was nothing he could do about it. He lets the thought sink in, wallows in it and soaks it up into his brain like he’s drinking it. For just a moment he indulges in his misery.

It takes Jason three minutes of crying to get himself the fuck together and stop. He takes a deep, shuddery breath, puts his hands on the wheel, and puts his car in drive.

Creedence Clearwater Revival starts up again. Jason has never moved to turn a song off faster.

He drives all the way to his apartment in silence and refuses to think about his family.

When he gets to his apartment, he turns his car off, takes another deep breath, and gets out.

He walks up the stairs, opens his door, and takes his shoes off.

There is not another pair of ratty sneakers tucked under the bench. There is only his own.

He walks into the kitchen, sits down on the couch, and stares at the JoyCons laid on the coffee table.

For some reason, he picks them up.

Maybe he’s hoping Tim has written a secret message for him in Animal Crossing. That he’s somehow predicted this night won’t go well and he’s hiding out in a safehouse, and the coordinates are somehow typed into the game.

He opens the game up and realizes that Tim had gone and made himself a little character of his own, complete with a shitty tent on the beach.

There’s a message in Jason’s mailbox. With trembling fingers, Jason opens it.

It’s from ‘Timbo’ . 

Th ank you for lettin g me stay at you r house. I lo

ve you Jason im sorry

Timbo

Jason puts the controller down and cries.

Chapter Text

“Timothy,” A familiar voice greets from behind. Tim jumps, nearly spilling the half-eaten McDonald’s milkshake into his lap.

He puts his phone down. “Hey, Damian.”

Damian nods in acknowledgement before walking to the curb beside him, and after a moment of apparent hesitation, sits down.

“It was a surprise to see you at dinner tonight,” Damian says. Tim glances at him.

Damian looks older now, which was a given. He’s handsome, like all the Wayne men. His hair is brushed back and well-groomed, his piercing green eyes hidden behind a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses. His skin is perfect too, a nice shade of light caramel that looks good even in the sickly lighting of Gotham streetlamps.

He’s handsome. Even when he was ten, he’d been a handsome kid. Handsome, smart, he was the whole package.

 He’s always been smarter than Tim. No, not just smarter, he’d always been better.

He was a better artist, better athlete, better strategist, better at Tim than anything he could dream of being good at.

Tim wanted to say he wasn’t jealous or resentful, but he was. He was bitter that Damian got all the love and attention he’d always wanted, and that he deserved it and Tim didn’t. Maybe if Damian had been less talented than he was, Tim could feel justified in wishing Bruce would just leave him alone for one day to take him out for bowling and ice cream.

But no. Damian had played three perfect games in a row and Tim had never gotten a strike before. 

Years ago, maybe months, hell, maybe earlier today, Tim would have been cold to Damian. He would have told him to take his perfect ass somewhere else so he could sit in his grimy misery and wait for something to happen, for his life to keep spiraling until it would finally fucking stop. He would have sat and thought about how much he hated the little brat for being everything he wasn’t, and he would hate himself for pushing everyone away.

Tonight, though, he was numb and tired, and he couldn’t bring himself to be mean.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He says, and his voice sounds as exhausted as he is.

Damian hums. “Yes, I’ve gone to therapy. You can probably tell, as I haven’t tried to kill you once this evening.”

“Oh, really? I thought you poisoned the dessert.”

Damn. The merengues had looked really good. Honestly, Tim had been considering eating them anyway.

“No. Dick had several, were you not paying attention?”

“I was a little more focused on, um…other things.”

Damian nods. “Your oxycodone addiction.”

Tim freezes, a spoonful of soupy milkshake halfway to his mouth.

“How the fuck did you–”

“I heard you and Bruce discussing it quite loudly when I went to eat a merengue.” Damian picks at a nail, looking disinterested. Tim can tell he’s trying very hard to seem that way.

“So I guess everyone has decided to give a shit about my life now, huh?” Tim grumbles, but he doesn’t care as much as he thought he would. If everything worked out all right, he’d be landing in Montana by tomorrow night, and he would never have to worry about the Wayne family again.

“To be fair, you are our brother,” Damian says. Tim scoffs.

“Not according to Bruce.”

Damian hums. “Yes, I heard a bit of your…exchange. Bruce was quite harsh.”

“He’s an asshole.”

“Occasionally.”

Neither man says anything for a moment. Tim wonders if he’s getting too old to have such heated discussions with–with whoever Bruce was now. 

Legally, Tim was his son. But he’d only been his son so Bruce could open up a bank account for him, which he’d later closed. Tim wondered if he’d done anything to the adoption papers. Or whether it mattered anymore.

“You’re leaving,” Damian says. Tim looks at him.

Of course he can read minds. Why wouldn’t he?

“I can’t read your mind. I saw you looking at plane tickets.”

Tim laughs at that. It doesn’t feel right.

Nothing felt right. But that wasn’t new, was it?

“Yeah. I...I have to get out of here, man. Figured there were less ways to get oxy in asscrack-nowhere Montana.”

“And fewer Waynes?”

Tim leans his head onto his hand. “That too.”

Damian is quiet for a moment, and Tim takes the time to look up at the sky.

It’s cloudy, like it always is in Gotham. 

Tim had never seen a starry sky before. Ever. He’d seen stars, sure, little pinpricks of light just barely peeking out from the gloom every so often, but he’d never seen a blue-purple sky scattered with millions of stars like diamonds in a beautiful necklace.    

That was another reason he wanted to leave Gotham for good. He was tired of living in a city that was just as miserable as he was.

Maybe Montana wouldn’t help. Maybe he’d find another drug to get hooked on and he’d really have no support system to get him back up.

Maybe he would die, and that would be it.

Wouldn’t be much of a problem , he thought scornfully. He had no family to mourn him anymore, did he?

But maybe he’d get better in the mountains, away from the dirty streets and suffocating grief of a gray city full of people with nowhere to go.

"He was never there for me," Tim says quietly. "He was never there when I needed him."

Damian doesn't say anything. Tim looks down at the dirty pavement. When he dares to sneak a glance at him, Damian almost looks like he's about to cry.

 “I’m going to miss you,” he says. Tim scoffs.

“You’ll get over it.”

Damian looks over at him, cheeks wet. Tim stares at him.

“Will you call?”

Tim doesn’t breathe for a moment. 

Damian never cries. He’s a psychopath. That was his whole character. He was a hyper-intelligent but socially inept creature that somehow wormed his way into everyone’s hearts. He gets angry, he gets happy sometimes, but he does not get sad. Not for Tim.

He studies Damian’s face and thinks about his new life in Montana and what might happen if he calls him.

Damian already knows pretty much everything. If he wants, he could probably track him down in Montana. Maybe if Tim promises to call, he can also make Damian promise not to tell anyone. 

And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have someone in his corner, even if he’s tried to kill him a couple times in the past and lives in Gotham.

That seemed to be a theme with people who cared about him. Funny, maybe attempted murder was a prerequisite for being a Wayne man.

It doesn’t really matter in the end. Whatever happens will happen.

“Yeah, Damian. I’ll call.”

Chapter Text

“What’s up?” Tim crams the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he fights Bear back. “No, Bear! Calm down!”

The massive Bernese doesn't listen, and instead continues to woof as loudly as he can while valiantly attempting to throw himself at some random woman.

“Is this a bad time?” Damian asks on the other end, amusement thinly veiled in his voice. 

“No, not at– Bear! Calm the hell down!-- it’s fine, Damian, just gimme a moment.”

“Dog giving you trouble?”

Tim huffs, finally pulling the massive animal back against his leg, and gives the young woman an awkward sorry smile as she passes. She probably has a cat at home. Bear goes wild for cats.

“Yeah. Shithead smelled a cat on some woman, but he’s chilled out.”

“Good. How are you doing?”

Tim grins. He takes a deep breath of the fresh Montana air and looks up.

The sky is blue as a bird, with white clouds drifting across the sky. Mountains rise up all around him in the distance, the snow having just barely melted off last month. 

It’s July in Dubois, Wyoming, and Tim has never felt happier.

Montana hadn’t worked out, in the end. He’d met a girl named Julie Whitfield while she was going to college in Bozeman, and he’d followed her back to Wyoming when she graduated.

Now he was engaged, he had a Bernese Mountain dog named Bear, he was going fly fishing with his fiancée tomorrow morning, and he had been clean for three years.

“I’m doing great, Damian.”

Damian is quiet for a moment.

“I’m happy for you, Tim. I really am.”

Tim smiles to himself. 

"Hey, uh, how's your hand doing?" Damian asks suddenly. Tim blinks and looks down.

His hand has healed very nicely, and he's almost regained all motion and flexibility. Of course, there will always be that 15% that Tim will just never regain, having a shattered metacarpal and only half a ring finger. He'd been looking at his hand a lot lately, with ring shopping and all.

"It's almost back to normal, honestly, thanks for asking." Tim looks back down at his dog, sinking his teeth into his lip before closing his eyes. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, um…do you want to come visit?”

“Seriously?” Damian asks after a beat.

“Yeah. I’d like you to meet Julie and Bear, and maybe teach you how to fish. I’m really excited to be better than you at something.”

Damian laughs. He does that a lot more with Tim than he used to.

Tim does it too. He likes how it feels.

“A–Alright, man, sure. When do you want me to come?”

“Whenever you want, man. Probably before October, though, that’s when it starts to get cold.”

Damian is writing something down. Tim can hear the pen scratch.

“How about two weeks from now?”

“Sounds great. I’ll check with Jules though. She really wants to meet you.”

“What about Jason or Dick?”

Tim had thought of that. He’d like to see them again, honestly, and things had been a lot better since Tim had gotten engaged.

He’d sent them a text on a group chat that simply said “I’m engaged and clean.” He hadn’t included Bruce on it.

They had all understood the unspoken message, surprisingly, and Tim hadn’t heard from his former father in four years now. He preferred it that way.

Back when he first moved to Montana, he’d wished something would happen to Bruce. He’d lay awake at night, dreaming of another confrontation where he could just scream at Bruce and make him hurt as much as he’d hurt Tim. He’d wished more than anything that Bruce would suffer for how he’d treated Tim.

But that wasn’t how things worked out. Jason had told him all about the fight they’d had when he and Damian had returned to the manor without Tim, and now Jason rarely spoke to Bruce. Dick still had a good relationship, apparently, and Damian had dinner with them once a week, but it wasn’t what Tim had wanted and he’d almost blocked both of them again.

Now, he was okay with it. His brother’s relationships with Bruce didn’t concern him, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was Tim’s relationships with his brothers.

He’d taken his life into his own hands and stopped waiting for other people to do it for him. He’d gone to a psychiatrist and gotten a prescription for methadone to help withdrawal. He’d started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. He’s gotten a therapist that he went to once every two weeks.

And he was clean now. 

He’d learned over the years that relying on someone wasn’t waiting for them to do it for him. It wasn’t a shameful thing to do. It was okay and he needed it.

He couldn’t fight his addiction alone and that wasn’t a bad thing. He’d gotten the help he’d needed and he maintained his sobriety on his own. He hadn’t had a craving in forever.

Tim was happy now. He had a fiancée that he loved and who loved him, he had three brothers who cared about him, and he lived a life that he wouldn’t change for the world.

“Tim? Is my connection cutting out? I told you Wyoming had terrible cell service–”

Tim laughed. He’d almost forgotten he was on the phone.

“Chill, Damian, I was just thinking.” He took a deep breath and let it out, running a hand through Bear’s thick fur. “Yeah, I’ll invite them. We can have a bachelor party.”

“Do you have enough friends to throw a party?” Damian snarked.

“I do, actually. I’m surprisingly not a hermit like you.”

“I have friends–”

“Within a fifty-mile radius?”

“...Two hundred?”

Tim laughs. He knows Damian has a lot of online friends. He’s a nerdy gamer, of course he did.

“Alright, alright. How are you doing, man?”

“I’m good. Boss gave me a little gold star today.”

“What did you do?”

“Fixed a bug nobody else could figure out. You know how I told you I thought everyone on the team has dyslexia?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s true. Someone misspelled ‘arithmetic’ and nobody caught it. Boss was about to light the server on fire because nobody had Grammarly installed.”

Tim laughs. “You fucken’ coder bros, man, I’ll never get you.”

“I’ll never get us either. We have IQs higher than most skyscrapers but Scrabble is a taboo word in the office.”

Tim and Damian chat a little more, before Damian says he has to go work on more computer programming nerd stuff and they hang up. Tim calls Julie right after.

“Hey, honey, I know you just sent me to the store, but–”

“You forgot what I sent you there for?” Tim can hear her smile through the phone. He smiles too.

“Yeah.”

“Three kinds of chocolate, any brand, popcorn, and a tub of cookies and cream.”

“Okay, thank you. Have you picked out a movie for tonight?”

“Yeah. How do you feel about A River Runs Through It? Cause we’re going fishing tomorrow?”

Tim’s smile turns a little sadder. “Baby, did I ever tell you that movie was the reason I moved to Montana?”

“You have. It’s our movie.”

“I love you. Wait, I asked Damian about coming to visit, and he said he could come in two weeks, is that okay?”

“Uhh, yeah. Yeah, that works. Are we putting him in the guest room?”

"That's what I was thinking, but I also might invite Dick and Jason."

"Oh, really? That's great!" Julie's 'proud mom' voice is coming back. Tim smiles.

"Yeah. I haven't gotten a response yet, but I'm pretty sure they're coming."

"Babe, that's great. I can't wait."

"Yeah. Two months!"

"Tim, I can't wait to marry you."

Tim laughs. “Me neither. I love you.”

"Love you too."

He hangs up and looks back at the Dubois skyline, the Wind River Mountains rising up in the distance, his dog sitting patiently at his feet, and he doesn't think about how far he's come or how much better things are. He doesn't ponder how much pain and heartbreak it took to get to where he is and how wrong things might go in the future.

He just thinks about how amazing life is right now.

And he wouldn’t change it for anything.