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Bruce nearly walked straight past the blue room before catching movement in the corner of his eye.
He glanced into the room to find Tim watching something intently on a tablet. The scene wouldn’t have been out of place had it not been four in the morning.
After a few seconds of Tim not seeming to notice him, Bruce tapped a knuckle against the doorway.
Tim slowly looked up at him. His eyes were bloodshot, and the bags beneath were more prominent than usual.
Nightmares, then.
That ball of regret that lived in his chest over his children’s involvement in his crusade gave a little pang, but he pushed it aside in favor of taking care of his son in the moment.
Bruce raised an eyebrow in question.
Tim beckoned him over.
Bruce crossed the room and sat next to him on the sofa, close, but not touching, given Tim’s occasional touch aversion.
Tim leaned slightly against him, which was generally Tim-speak for “I want cuddles”, so Bruce wrapped an arm around his shoulders and began scratching at his scalp, causing Tim to melt the way it always did.
The video playing on the screen was of a young man using improvised tools to build a shelter that he was digging into the ground. It was mesmerizing to watch the man slowly carve out what became a beautiful structure.
After a few minutes of enjoying the video, Tim’s head thunked against his arm. Bruce smiled. He tugged slightly at the tablet, which fell easily from Tim’s fingers. He really was out of it, then.
Bruce glanced around for a moment and found a hoodie that Tim must have been wearing earlier. It took a second, but he was able to fashion a makeshift bag to carry the tablet, then he picked up his son and carried him to bed.
(And if he spent the rest of the night watching more of those videos, well, that was nobody’s business.)
——————
Dick Grayson did not often wake up to his baby brother’s piercing blue eyes staring him directly in the soul, but it had happened often enough over the years that his reaction was only startled instead of violent.
The loud string of curses in a mixture of Russian and German were enough to get Tim to back off a little and give him some space.
Once his fight or flight response had settled down some, Dick laid back against the pillows.
“Do you need something, Timmy?” He asked, knowing that attempting to get Tim to stop was futile, since Tim only did this at the height of sleep deprivation.
“Can I pierce your ears?” Tim asked, not moving.
Dick thought about it for a minute. He had been considering getting his ears pierced for a while—B’s rules be damned—and this was Tim. There was zero chance that he hadn’t already done ridiculous amounts of research on the topic, although the weight of the bags beneath his eyes made him a bit skeptical.
Eventually, he scooted over on the bed and patted the space next to him. Tim crawled in without complaint, curling into a little ball, still staring him down with that single-minded focus he usually hid so well.
“You can pierce my ears after you’ve had eight hours of sleep.” Dick told him, slowly resting a hand on his shoulder to see if Tim was in a cuddling mood today. The tensing of muscles in reaction said probably not, but when he moved to pull away, Tim reached up and grabbed his hand to hold it, then scooted close enough that his forehead was pressed against his bicep.
“Mmkay,” Tim agreed, and pretty soon, he was fast asleep.
That same warm feeling filled his chest that always did when one of his siblings trusted him enough to do things like this, and Dick smiled to himself as he fell back asleep.
——————
Jason had no idea how long Tim had been sitting in his kitchen before he noticed the little weirdo. He wasn’t really moving, but he had an earbud in, so he was probably listening to some true crime podcast on double-speed, like Jason had caught him doing a few times before.
It had taken a solid few years before Tim felt comfortable zoning out like this around him. The fact that they’d ever gotten there was a miracle, really, and he was evermore increasingly grateful for all the chances Tim had given him.
Jason continued through to the refrigerator and went about heating up some leftovers for breakfast, preparing one more plate than usual.
Tim barely acknowledged his presence until a plate of food was slid under his nose, then he blinked up at him, eyes wide and bleary. God only knew how long he’d been awake.
“Eat, Timbers, then there’s a couch with your name on it.”
He didn’t respond with words, but finished everything on the plate and let himself be lead to the couch and swaddled into a blanket burrito, so Jason took it as a win.
——————
Cass found her brother curled up tightly in a pile of sheets in the linen closet nearest B’s room at the manor. He ended up there more often than she would like.
The rest of the family saw it as a funny little quirk of his, but she saw it for what it was. The ever-present hesitation to call himself family, to just crawl into bed and tuck himself up against their father like the rest of them did when the nightmares became too much. It had been nearly a decade since he became family, became Robin, and even Steph and Barbara saw themselves as family in a way that Tim just didn’t.
Except her.
He had always called Cass his sister, had accepted her so wholly that she sometimes forgot he couldn’t believe the rest of them saw him the same way.
At least, until she found him in the linen closet again.
Decades worth of hard-earned muscle was packed against her bones, and one of the reasons she could never regret her upbringing was that it made her able to carry her brother easily to safety, to bear the weight of his larger frame for as long as she needed to.
To protect him. To bring him home.
A reoccurring nightmare of hers was being late to save him, that time in Paris and many others when she had been the only thing standing between Tim and something that she knew in her bones would break him. It was one of the reasons she had moved back to Gotham once the bulk of her mission in Hong Kong could be settled on the shoulders of others who had been willing and able to take it on, so that on nights like these, she could hold her little brother against her and settle their long-parted souls.
Keep him safe. Keep her brother safe, for as long as she was able.