Chapter Text
Before Robin, Tim was a normal latchkey rich kid—nannies, housekeepers, postcards from his world-travelling parents. He took martial arts with his mother’s bemused approval, but it was all carefully structured, closely supervised katas. Neither of his parents ever imagined he’d need to actually defend himself.
After Robin—well. Bruce very much imagined he’d need to defend himself (ensured it, in fact), but he viciously hated guns. He taught Tim how to handle them safely, but no more than that. There were certainly no lessons on firearms maintenance.
Of course, Bruce never could have guessed what a disadvantage that would leave Tim at, here after the end of the world.
“Wrong,” Jason says without looking up from his own work, and Tim sighs.
“How wrong?”
“Very.”
Tim sighs again, louder, and takes the half-assembled revolver back apart to start over. “I’m not getting better at this.”
“Sure you are,” Jason says. He’s still focused on the gun he’s cleaning—his fifth, while Tim struggles to put his first back together. “You’re only fucking up because you’re rushin’ it. Take your time and you’ll do fine.”
Sounds nice in theory, but—“I need to be fast.”
“Can’t be fast until you’ve got it down,” Jason reminds him, which Tim knows. Of course he does. It’s not just Firearms 101, it’s Anything 101. He didn’t start at disarming bombs in under 15 seconds, he started with hours and worked his way down.
But that was then, back when he was a kid in the safety of the Cave, in danger of nothing more than Batman’s disapproval.
These days, taking too long to do anything—especially weapons maintenance—could get him killed. Or worse, could get Jason killed.
“Freaking out won’t help either,” Jason says.
Somehow, he’s moved on to his sixth gun. His sixth, while Tim is sitting here struggling with his first. He’s got three guns to clean, Jason’s got more than ten, and at this rate, Jason’s going to end up cleaning Tim’s other two while Tim struggles with basic assembly in a way he didn’t even struggle with literal rocket science—
“Hey, hey,” Jason says, and suddenly he’s there, pulling Tim away from the table and sinking to his knees in front of him, brushing Tim’s too-long hair out of his face to kiss him.
It’s sweet. Gentle, soft. There’s no force behind it, but it punches right through Tim’s panic anyway, like a little puncture to let all the anxiety spill out of him. Tim melts into it—into Jason—leaning forward further and further until he ends up sliding out of the chair and into Jason’s lap.
Then they’re both on the floor, a spread of half-cleaned guns on the table above them plus a gun on each of their hips.
“There you go,” Jason murmurs against his mouth. He kisses Tim again once, twice, and then pulls back to look at him. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Tim lies. In reality, he’s embarrassed that he almost worked himself into a panic attack over weapons maintenance—that Jason had to interrupt his own work to calm him down—but embarrassment’s still an improvement over hyperventilation, so…whatever. Close enough.
Jason’s eyes narrow. “Are you lying?”
Tim groans and buries his face in Jason’s neck. Jason, surprisingly, lets him. Instead of dragging Tim up by the hair to face him, he just cups the back of Tim’s neck, one thumb sweeping soothingly over the skin behind Tim’s ear.
“I told you it’s not the end of the world if I have to handle the weapons maintenance,” he says.
“It’s the end of the world anyway,” Tim mutters, and Jason laughs a little.
“Well, yeah,” he admits. “But still. What’s got you so upset about this? You’re not usually this picky about the division of labor.”
Tim laughs humorlessly. Division of labor, right. As if he’s contributed anything at all.
“Hey.” Jason’s hand tightens in his hair, and now he pulls Tim back, forcing eye contact. “What was that? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” Tim echoes. He wants to—to laugh or scream or cry or something. “What’s wrong is that you’ve saved my life a dozen times in the last two weeks and I haven’t been able to do anything for you.”
Jason scowls. “That’s bullshit.”
It’s not. It’s really not.
The world is falling apart and all of Tim’s skills are worthless. He’s worthless.
Three weeks ago, a coordinated strike took out every power grid in North America. Not all at once, no, but ten simultaneous major failures took their toll on connecting systems, causing cascading failures until nothing was left.
They could’ve recovered from that. It wouldn’t have been easy or fast, but it could’ve been done.
Then the virus hit. In Gotham, the hospitals were the first to fall, but far from the last. A wave of zombies—actual fucking zombies, like something out of a movie—swept across the entire city (the entire world, they suspect, but haven’t been able to reach the Justice League to confirm), and hundreds of thousands of people died.
All of Tim’s skills, all of his training—none of it helped. He’s spent his entire career as a vigilante honing himself into a carefully, purposefully nonlethal weapon…and only lethal action works against the zombies.
If not for Jason, he’d have been dead the first day.
If not for Jason, he’d have been dead every day since.
And Tim can’t even pay him back by helping take care of the guns Jason has been using to keep them alive.
Maybe Tim accidentally says it aloud, or maybe Jason can just read him that well by now. Their casual fuck buddies relationship turned serious really fast after the zombies showed up.
Either way, his scowl deepens.
“You think you’re not helping me?” he demands. “You think I’d have gotten half this far without you watching my back?”
“If you didn’t have me to protect—”
“If I didn’t have you to protect I’d be losing my fucking mind,” Jason interrupts. “If I had to do this alone—if I had to actually think about what’s fucking happening here—”
He stops and swallows hard. Tim closes his eyes.
They don’t know what’s happening outside of Gotham. Their phones are charged, but don’t get a signal, and none of their communicators are working. Tim shouted himself hoarse trying to get Kon’s attention with no response.
And inside Gotham—inside Gotham—
Tim wrenches his mind away before it can go back to the Manor and what happened there. Hoping to distract them both, he kisses Jason again.
Jason lets him. Jason kisses him back. Not gentle this time: deep and hard, something filthy that makes Tim’s blood sing.
And when it stops, Jason presses their foreheads together, one hand cupping the back of Tim’s head to hold him in place.
“I don’t give a fuck if you can’t clean the damn guns, baby,” he says. “I don’t need you to help me keep us alive, I need you to keep me fucking sane.”
A sweet sentiment, but—“I need me to help keep us alive.”
Jason takes a deep breath, then another. Then he kisses Tim again and sits back.
“Okay,” he says. “I get that. But you gotta chill, okay? Your shooting’s getting better a lot faster than your maintenance is. Prioritize.”
Well, fair enough.
“Yeah,” Tim says. “Yeah, okay.”
Jason brushes his thumb over Tim’s cheek, then brushes his hair out of his face again, this time tucking it behind Tim’s ear. It’s the kind of tender gesture that always puts Tim’s heart in his throat.
“Ready to try again?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Tim says. “Yeah, I’m ready.”