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There’s a vicious yanking and Dick’s vision goes black.
When he blinks his eyes open, he’s in a weird warehouse. There’s a techy-looking thing on the table in front of him, glowing an ominous purple before it stops, powering down.
O…kay then?
He looks down at what he’s wearing. It’s the Red Robin suit. What even?
There’s a comm unit in his ear. He taps it.
“I— uh,” he jolts when his voice is so much different. Like Tim’s. “I need back-up.” Is he seriously in Red Robin’s body?
“What’s wrong?” Batman’s response is instant.
“I lost my gloves,” he admits and gets a Stephanie-snort of amusement in response. “And there’s a strange device here that I probably shouldn’t pick up. Or leave alone.”
“I’m closest,” Spoiler says. “I’m on my way. Hood, take over for me.” There’s a small argument between the two, which Dick ignores in favor of trying to figure out how Red Robin’s gauntlet works. There’s a message icon when he switches it on, blissfully simple, and he scrolls until he finds his own name. Civilian name, that is.
‘Tim wtf’, he sends.
The reply comes back pretty quickly. ‘Don’t touch the glowing device. Also, sorry ‘twas but a mistake and now looks like we swapped bodies.’
He snorts, rubbing his forehead with a frown. He can guess that much. ‘What next?’
‘End patrol. I’m omw to GC.’
He tunes back into the conversation. “-ed Robin, Timothyyy,” he makes a noise of acknowledgement. “I’ve had O switch you to a private channel with the other two, since you weren’t responding,” Spoiler says dryly.
His gauntlet pings. ‘Please don’t tell anyone’, it reads, and if Dick trusted Tim any less and wasn’t half-way in love with him, he’d tell him no.
‘Okay’, he sends back. ‘I promise’.
What would Tim say? “Whoops.” Dick shrugs. “How far out are you?”
To his far right, a window shatters open to a blur of purple.
“Right here, ex-Boyfriend Wonder,” she grins. “So, what’s up? Did your rampant alcohol consumption last night catch up to you?”
“I’d also be so thirsty with all the mooning over N’s ass and crying over Tim’s massive crush on Dick Grayson,” Signal quips. It’s about the time he’d be heading out for his patrols, and when the rest of the Bats would be ending theirs.
Also, what? Tim’s what-on-what?
He needs a year to properly comprehend that piece of information, because Tim thinks of Dick? Romantically?
“Oh, yes, I’m just dying of dehydration,” he says, trying to draw on his inner-Timmy, and Jason huffs a laugh. At least that answers the question who else is on this channel. “Nightwing’s going to meet me at the Nest. Something about a case.”
“What happened to your spiel yesterday?” Steph arches an eyebrow, and takes on this ridiculous high-pitched voice to say: “Oh, I’m so in love with Dick Grayson—Steph, I can’t breathe when I’m near him, you need to keep me away from him!”
Dick winces. He needs to shut down her teasing ASAP before she spills something a little even more incriminating. “I changed my mind?”
A cacophony of boo’s erupts over the comms, and she shakes her head in beat to this two-man orchestra of Jason and Duke. “You, Bread Wonder, are an idiot sandwich.”
“An idiot sandwich,” the other two chorus solemnly.
“So I’m discovering,” he mutters. “Also, this is actually for a case. Not like, y’know, everything else.”
“Uh-huh, and where have I heard that before? Oh, that’s right, last week.”
He bristles. “I’m—” he wants to say twenty-nine, which definitely isn’t right, and so suspicious. “I’m an adult, Spoiler,” he settles on, “I can keep my shit together.”
“Buddy, I dunno how to tell you this, but you have never had your shit together with him,” she scoffs. “But, fine, whatever, you got this. As long as you can keep it professional.”
“Bring the device back to the Cav– actually, the Nest,” Dick says instead. “And don’t touch it without gloves.”
“Great advice, Red. Maybe you should take it yourself.” She looks pointedly at Dick’s—or rather, Tim’s— bare hands.
“Yeah, and it zapped me, so y’know, deal with it. I’m ending my patrol.”
“You’re so crabby,” she groans. “And you’re acting weird as shit.”
“Maybe he’s still hungover,” Duke suggests.
Jason’s more than thrilled to butt in. “Is the wittle baby bird hungower?” he cooes mockingly. “Does he want his big brother Jaybird to sing him a lullaby?”
Duke launches into a very trashy rendition of Dream A Little Dream Of Me, and Jason joins in with a pitiful harmony, one that actually grates against Dick’s eardrums and wracks up the already-looming headache, and Dick fumbles with Red Robin’s gauntlets to figure out a way to turn off the comms. It’s especially infuriating considering Duke and Jason are actually really good singers, just also unfortunately assholes.
Steph cackles and reaches over to tap a random button, and it’s blissfully silent. “Oh, you are so out of it,” she chortles and teases: “Don’t worry, babygirl, mommy’s right behind you.”
Dick just sighs. “See you back at base.”
——————
‘Thirty minutes out’, Tim replies just when Dick has crawled into the Nest’s bathroom window.
Dick winces. He doesn’t want to know how many traffic laws Tim is breaking on his way here, or how many tickets Dick Grayson is going to find in his mail.
He lets Tim know where he is, and instantly beelines to the medicine cabinet. Two Advils and a glass of water later, Dick finds himself sprawled on Tim’s lumpy couch with a growing migraine. He doesn’t change out of the suit, though, or do anything other than pull the cowl off.
It feels like an infringement of privacy to just be in Tim’s body—hearing Tim’s secrets, sharing Tim’s relationships with their family—and he’s not going to make this worse for either of them. He doesn’t doubt that it’s just as jarring for Tim in Dick’s own body, with the added flexibility and height, and thanks God that he’d already changed into civies before they’d swapped. Tim and his morality issues would be having a conniption if he had to get out of the Nightwing suit.
Spoiler slips in through one of the main windows a second later. “‘Sup?” she grins.
Dick is on his feet instantly, moving to Tim’s dining table and shifting a couple WE files aside to make space for the thing that started this nightmare of a night. It’s rolled in some canvas, lazily tied probably by Spoiler herself.
“Oh, thank God, that thing was killing my back,” she groans. “Did you take anything?”
“A couple Advils,” he tells her, unwrapping the package from the cloth. “I think the headache isn’t from the hangover, though.”
“About that— are you sure Dick needs to be here?” she asks, tugging off her hood and slipping the mask off. The way she places it against the table feels like an alarm bell. “I know you know you were drunk last night, Tim, but it was so much worse than that. I’m actually worried about you, and not just in the permanently-concerned-for-my-disaster-best-friend way.” She shudders. “You were actually heartbroken and it’s not fun to tease someone about their inopportune boners when they’re genuinely miserable.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” he says as much false bravado as he can muster up, and he just prays that Steph is going to stop talking about this. “And you can’t blame drunk-Tim for anything he said.”
“I’m worried about stone-cold-sober-Tim, you idiot,” she scolds. “I don’t know what set you off, but it was rough. Like worse than normal, and—”
He tenses. “Steph, enough, please.”
“You can’t keep running away from this conversation, Tim. It’s been nine years of you pining after that guy and unconsciously sabotaging your relationships because of him—”
“Steph, stop!” Dick’s heart leaps to his throat. Nine years? Tim’d lov— He— “For nine years?” he whispers to his feet.
Steph frowns at him and flicks his forehead sharply. “Okay, seriously, what’s up with you?”
“I–” he hesitates, then shoots up a small, mental apology to Tim. “I’m not Tim.”
She stills. “What?” The word is as brutal as a homicide.
“I’m Dick, stuck in Tim’s body,” He explains after a beat of fear. “The device— it switched our bodies, or something of that sort, and I’ve been in Tim’s body since fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh,” Steph says and then, a little horrified whisper of: “Oh. Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” Dick grimaces. “This has been a horrible way to find out about Tim’s secretly reciprocated attraction, and I’d like to discuss it with him first before anyone else spills more of his secrets.”
“‘Secretly recipro’— hold on, what?”
“Fuck,” he mutters.
“Explain.” She looms in his space, eerily like Batman but twice as intimidating because Batman’s disappointment is expectable, but Steph’s everything is so unpredictable. “Dick Grayson, I swear to God, if you don’t tell me—”
“I realized that I love him, more than appropriate for our bond,” he rushes out, “for about a year now, but—”
“The same nonsense of brotherhood is keeping you from doing anything about it.” She sighs and shakes her head. “You’re both such morons.” She flops down onto the couch, patting the space beside her. “Sit down, my guy, and let’s wait for Tim-Dick to get here.”
“You’re waiting?” he asks.
“Someone has to play emotional buffer or neither of you are going to get your shit together.”
She’s right. Even with knowing, Dick doesn’t know what to do. Tim reciprocates whatever-this-is, but the real concern is whether this should escalate, or both of them just avoid each other forever.
He groans, burying his face in his hands. “This is such a mess.”
Steph just pats his back with a hum and repeats, “Morons.”
—--------------
The next twenty minutes are spent in silence, and Steph dozes off on the couch. He wishes he could grab a nap, but he’s too jittery for it.
There’s a knock.
“I’ll get it!” Dick dashes off the couch before she’s fully awake, yanking the door open and whispering: “Steph knows.”
His body stands on the other side of the threshold. “Oh shit,” Tim blanches. It’s so strange to see such a Tim look of panic cross Dick’s features. Dick nearly forgets to ask why Steph knowing is a bad thing, but Tim just brushes past him and heads straight to the couch. “Dick, give us a second.”
They have a furious argument completely in whispers, never loud enough for Dick to pick up on, but he has a fair idea on what this is about. He respects their need for a conversation though. He sticks to the edges of the room, drifting to the dining table where the device sits.
In the end, Steph is both irritated and victorious.
“Fine,” she scowls, yanking her hood back on and grabbing her mask. The look she gives Dick screams don’t fuck this up, but it doesn’t change when she glances back at Tim. “Good luck, Dick. You’ll need it with this one.”
“Bye,” Dick barely gets it out before she’s leaving through the window. Tim in his body is slightly terrifying when he stalks to the table, inspecting the machine.
He’s angry, maybe a little scared, but largely frustrated. Dick says: “Hey, Tim, I—”
“If I manage to figure out how to switch this on, then it should swap us back if one of us touches it,” Tim cuts him off, scrutinizing hands tilting the problem in question. “I need you to be quiet, Dick. Please.”
“Okay.”
Tim works in silence, and Dick watches his face take on a very Tim-esque, determined-chihuahua expression. It’s so bizarre, to say the least. Dick turns his mind to the other problem at hand.
For the longest time, brother, brother, brother is the play Dick acts out with Tim, but there’s no part of him that actually means it. Well, he does care so, so much about Tim, and he loves him, but there’s been a guilty sort of attraction lingering behind it for a while now.
When Babs jokes about Dick’s thing for redheads, he laughs, and doesn’t think about the defiant mop of black hair in the midst. When Tim breaks into Dick’s apartment in increasingly ridiculous ways to talk about a discrepancy in his cases, Dick listens like the good brother he’s supposed to be, and doesn’t think about how he’d like to shove him up against a wall and kiss him senseless.
And now, Dick is stuck in Tim’s twenty-one year old body and learning that he isn’t the only one who feels the soul-deep remorse of loving someone romantically instead of platonically.
“Okay, it’s done,” Tim mutters, just as the device whirs back to life. He takes in a deep breath. “I’ll swap us.”
“Maybe I should do it,” Dick says, worried. “It was your body that touched it first.”
“No, it–” he grits his teeth, swallowing. “It doesn’t work like that. It swaps the bodies when—” Tim cuts himself off. “It’s linked to the mind of a person rather than the physical presence, and there’s another aspect to it. Trust me, it’s better if I do it.”
Tim goes to touch the glowing, purple button, and Dick’s hand encircles Tim’s wrist before he can make contact. “What’s the aspect?” he asks sternly.
He rolls his eyes and huffs: “Dick.”
“Tim.”
“Dick, we don’t ha —oh, fine —It switches the bodies of whoever’s on the person’s mind the most, okay?” He explodes, staring right into his eyes for the first time since the whole night. “Now, will you just let me— ”
“No,” Dick says firmly, and places his free hand right on the button, and his vision goes black.
—--------
Dick’s back in his body. It’s a little jarring, but a lot more familiar.
There’s a strangled noise that comes from Tim as he absorbs the fact that they’re back in their own bodies. He’s clearly startled, wide, ice-blue eyes boring back into his. After a long second of silence, he yanks his hand from Dick’s wrist, flushing red and focusing on the device. It turns off on its own. He still doesn’t meet Dick’s eyes again.
“I didn’t tell anyone else,” Dick blurts out. “Just– Steph thought she was talking to you, and she was saying a lot of personal things so–”
“Yeah,” Tim runs his tongue over his teeth and does not look at Dick at all. “Sorry for making you do that.”
“You didn’t make me do anything, Tim. I chose to listen to you, and at the end of the day, I didn’t even keep the promise completely,” he argues, stepping closer to him once. “Can you look at me? Please?”
Tim takes a deep breath, seemingly steeling himself. He look at Dick almost defiantly. “Look, Dick, I don’t know what Steph told you, or—”
“She told me you’ve been in love with me since you were twelve, which is actually incredibly flattering because I was a bit of an asshole back then,” he takes another step forward at Tim’s grimace.
“Please, just…Don’t say anything about it, Dick. I—”
“I’m not angry, or disgusted, or— please, just let me talk?” At Tim’s hesitant nod, Dick just…pauses. Regroups. He’s not sure how to put this into words, and it’s so fucking obvious that he can’t just bulldoze over this. This is nine years of Tim’s feelings that he’s been hiding from Dick, letting the guilt fester with his love and attraction. “I li— hm, no, not that, just—” he huffs out a frustrated sigh, drifting forward a couple steps. “About a year ago, do you remember when I broke into the Nest? You were about three days deep into a cold case, and when I came through the front door with takeout, you were so happy to see me, and while we were eating, you were explaining the nuances and I, just— I realized I liked you. Romantically.” The younger man’s face is eerily blank. But he isn’t telling him to stop, so Dick opens his mouth again and: “I felt terrible— so horribly guilty—- because I’d called you my brother for a decade and you’re eight years younger than me, and here I was–”
“Wanting to sleep with me?” Tim murmurs, only a foot away. “Kiss me? Know that our entire relationship could fall apart and it would all be your fault?” He looks contemplative, sympathetic, because, of course, he knows how Dick feels. How he’s been feeling.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “Basically.”
There’s a slight hesitation, a beat of motionlessness, and Tim breaks the space between them, rocking up on front of his feet, and pulls Dick in by the collar of his shirt.
He stops them when they’re nose-to-nose.
“There are so many ways this can go wrong,” he warns.
“I know.”
“Bruce is going to be such a hurdle.”
“I know.”
“If it doesn’t work out, there’s a lot more than just us suffering.” The spiraling has begun in earnest, Tim’s brain working overdrive to dredge up every single way this could backfire. “And not to mention, there’s this whole shame thing that’s been going on, and I don’t even want to know what’s going to happen if we can’t get over it, and—”
“Tim.” The younger man peters out of his ramble. “I know.” Dick tries to make sure he knows how genuine is about this. How he’s been doing nothing but think about the consequences for as long as he’s realized his feelings. How he knows every single worry that’s run through Tim’s mind because it’s been through Dick’s too. He takes Tim’s face between his hands, twining his fingers in his greasy hair. “But I still want to try.”
His throat bobs as he swallows. The reply is soft. “I do too.”
Hope croons in Dick’s chest. “Yeah?”
Tim smiles like the morning sun. “Yeah.”
And Dick kisses him.