Chapter Text
Chapter One: How (Not) To Ask Someone Out On A Fake Date
Alternatively: Tim wants to hide under his bed and never come out again
Thinking back about how the situation came to this, and the current state of his pride, Tim is absolutely sure: this whole mess is not his fault. Family dinner was Dick’s idea. He’s the one to blame. Sure, maybe Tim shouldn’t have lied about Kon, and maybe he shouldn’t have also told that fake story involving the coffee shop a few blocks away from his house, and‒ okay, yeah maybe it’s partially his fault, whatever, but. Family. Dinner. What kind of person makes his little brother go through the embarrassment and hell of introducing their — absolutely fake, invented, non-existent — date to the family? Tim’s always known that under that cheerfulness and sympathy of his, Dick only ever wanted to sit and watch the whole world burn. That pretty face of his doesn’t hide anything.
Though, his older brother doesn’t know that there’s no real boyfriend — otherwise, Tim’s sure he wouldn’t have suggested anything; Dick may like to mess with his little brothers from time to time, but he’s not that cruel (or maybe he is, in fact, a sadistic little shit. Tim doesn’t really want to know).
A sigh escapes his mouth. What was the whole problem about telling the truth, anyway? He knows his family wouldn’t judge him. He knows. And at the same… Damn. Damn him and his liar tendencies. Tim isn’t quite ready to face another relationship, that much he can admit to himself. Not yet, not so soon. Not when he still sees Kon every other day in college and… Yeah. Maybe he just wanted to let his family at ease with him, make them stop worrying. Maybe he just wanted…
His phone makes a low chirp and vibrates somewhere near his left hand. Tim fumbles through the blankets, refusing to properly lift his head from the pillow and squinting at the brightness of the screen when he finally catches the thing.
[from: Dick, 06:35 a.m.] don’t get mad at me — is the first one… That makes no sense at all until the second message arrives.
[from: Dick, 06:35 a.m.] I may or not may have told Cass about tonight. They’re all coming.
Tim groans. Dear God. It’s too early for this shit. Way too early. If he really wants to find a way and deal with this — he’ll need coffee. A lot of coffee.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, don’t do this to me!”
Unaware of his panicked pleas, the coffee machine just makes another so-not-okay noise, and then. Just. Stops working.
Tim holds back his sudden urge to scream. How has his life suddenly become this succession of bad jokes and messed up things with a heartbreak stuck somewhere between his last appointment and college stuff? Goddamnit. Part of him knows he should deal with this like any reasonable twenty year old man, but Tim’s just been denied his daily dose of coffee. He doesn’t want to be reasonable. And maybe that’s what drives him to take his keys from over the counter and, reasonableness be damned, go out, determined to reach the coffee shop from a few blocks away — the very same cafeteria from where he placed most of his fake dates on the fake love story about his fake boyfriend. Go figure why he didn’t talk about a fake coffee shop too.
He has no excuse for his Superman pajama pants, though. Or the fact that he merely brushed his teeth after getting up from bed, and his hair is still a mess. When the guy who lives on second floor enters the elevator with Tim and stares at him for what must be a whole fifteen seconds, he muses over going back home and changing his clothes.
But then. Coffee. A person’s gotta have their priorities, right? It’s not like Tim cares that much about what others might think of him, anyway.
(Except that he does. Sometimes. When he’s feeling extremely self-conscious, what might or not might be triggered by hours musing over his crazy family dynamics. Or his only romantic relationship, that failed spectacularly for a boy who likes thinking he can somehow avoid his problems if he predicts them. Both of which he’s been doing a lot lately. And it doesn’t mean he’s being self-conscious. Not at all.)
Thankfully, his walk doesn’t take too long. Tim’s greeted with the amazing smell of recently brewed coffee — that sometimes manages to be ever better than the taste of the drink itself —, and his body is quick on reacting to it, guiding him to the counter where a redheaded employee he’s never seen yawns and stretches his arms.
“Good morning.” the guy says, and, staring at his sleepy eyes, Tim can’t help but to empathize with the emotion in them, because, yeah. Waking up this early kinda sucks.
“Morning.” he mutters back, and glances briefly at the menu. “Uh… I would like a… Long macchiato… 20 oz.” Tim squints briefly. “And no cocoa. Please.”
To his credit, the employee doesn’t even blink. He probably thinks Tim is one of those college students with weird sleeping patterns and whose caffeine addiction stops him from functioning properly before midday — which is not that far from the truth. While waiting for his order, Tim takes his time to look around the shop, noticing that except for two girls, one blonde and the other brunette, sitting on the far corner next to the exit, there’s pretty much no one around.
“It’s $7.” the employee’s voice brings him looking back to the counter. The redhead is with his coffee in hands.
“Here.” Tim gives him the money, retrieving his drink. “Thank you… Uh…” and squints briefly. The name on the ID is “Harper, R.”, but that doesn’t help him at all.
“Roy.” the guy offers.
“Roy.” Tim repeats, and then nods at him before turning his back to the counter. He may want to remember this name later. Roy seems a nice guy — or at least a very professional employee (the last one wouldn’t stop staring at Tim whenever he showed up in slippers. It was a bit unnerving.)
Well. Anyway. Tim stops in the middle of the shop for a moment, to rub his eyes and take a sip of the cup in his hands. Then he sighs for none reason that not caffeine — the warmness from the drink spreads down his body, his shoulders instantly relaxing, his problems forgotten if for only a second. Tim blinks, feeling the restlessness going away just as fast as the remaining sleepiness of his brain. He looks around again, to the nearly empty coffee shop, and tells himself: why not?, before settling down at the nearest table.
(Later that night he’ll remember it as being one of the bad decisions that lead him falling down the spiral of Most Embarassing Things To Ever Happen In Your Life — the first bad decision being deciding to leave his apartment)
It’s not the guy’s fault. Not really… Well. No. Actually, it kind of is. He’s the one to enter the shop running, after all. He’s the one to get his foot stuck in one of the the foot of the table, and send Tim’s newly bought cup of coffee — the second one of the day — flying to his chest. Maybe Tim shouldn’t have screamed, nor stood the way he did, but you don’t get a boiling cup of coffee on your chest everyday. It hurt, thank you very much, and he wasn’t happy. Seven dollars and his drink, absolutely wasted.
None of his very much annoyed talk ever came to be said, though — because when he lifts his face, Tim locks his gaze with the most beautiful blue eyes he’s ever seen, and it renders him speechless. It would be funny, even, the way his calculated words never became, in fact, words, if not for the fact that the guy looks at him in what must be horror and a bit of embarrassment, and the only thing Tim does is stare back like a dead fish.
“Ow, shi‒ sorry, man!”
He seems to be sorry. He does. His hand even does a weird brief motion, like he’s going to get some napkins or whatever and try and clean off the mess off of the table and off of Tim’s chest — or it could be just light effect, no one knows. The thing is: it’s okay. The slight annoyance that rose from being hit by his own boiling drink was plummeted the moment Tim looked to the very red, thin lips of the perpetrator of the crime. And he could’ve said about something cool, or simply shrugged off the incident and told the guy to chill out, but instead of his carefully considered responses, what comes out is a very stupid, not even barely pondered over, “We should totally go out on a date.”
(And, damn it. Tim’s so not prepared for this.)