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Day 5 - Body Swap | Virginity
Tim, by complete and utter fault of his own, gets turned into a duck.
Lesson learned: Do not tease a magician about their wardrobe. They can not only make fun of your outfit right back, but they can also make their comments about “looking like a duck” come true.
He’s surprisingly zen about it. Maybe it’s the wings. Tim can fly back home, figure out a way to communicate what happened to the family, and all should be fine. He’ll just live his feathery existence in peace for a day or two while he waits for Constantine or someone else to come fix it.
That’s the plan. It’s a good plan, really. And it wasn’t even hard to learn how to fly—the animal instincts kicked right in.
The issue with the plan is that when Tim came a quacking, Damian was the one who answered, opening a window curiously. And, well, you see… Damian gave him those eyes.
He’d never, ever seen those eyes before. Tim melted right under them. They were warm like honey and just as sweet, and as soon as Damian tried to beckon him closer, Tim waddled right on over.
It’s strange. Any other day, he’d be worried about letting his guard down around Damian, but he’s also seen how well taken care of Damian’s pets are. He should’ve known that would extend to wild animals as well. In the end, it’s not hard at all to let Damian sit him in his lap and stroke his feathers. It’s quite nice actually.
And before he can stop himself, he finds himself dozing, lulled by the hands softly caressing him. All thoughts of figuring out how to communicate “I’m Tim” fly out the door.
—
He wakes up somewhere else, and is only momentarily panicked before he realizes what’s happening.
Tim is very much still a duck, and he seems to have been placed in a makeshift duck bed? It’s not much, just a thin layer of straw contained within a shallow cardboard box. Quite comfy, when he thinks of it.
He’s also in Damian’s room, which is another thing that would’ve been, well, not a great idea just a day ago. Damian never lets Tim in there, and Tim has taken to keeping his own room at the Manor locked since Damian moved in. This is very much a forbidden zone for him.
There’s two bowls set on the ground nearby, one with water and the other with a mix of peas and corn. He realizes he hasn’t eaten since he got turned, and he should probably take care of that sooner rather than later, so he stands up, ruffling his feathers out a bit as he stretches his wings, then waddles over to eat and drink.
Damian, who Tim somehow didn’t notice in his animal-daze, turns at the sound of him moving.
“Hi, there,” he says, approaching slowly before sitting on his knees. He extends a finger to rub against the side of Tim’s face and then under his beak, and Tim can’t help but relish in it, nuzzling back.
“What a nice boy you are. So friendly. Are you from one of the parks?”
Tim can’t really answer, so he just lets Damian scoop him up again, stroking through his feathers and underbelly.
“Father says I can’t keep you, but you seem very domesticated already. Maybe you’d like it here. There’s a pond not too far in the woods, and we have gardens and fountains here. You could play and swim and eat all the time.”
Tim looks up at Damian, who seems so soft hearted now compared to his usually bristly self. He wonders if Damian will be disappointed when his duck friend leaves him. Maybe Tim could secretly buy him a new duck, and then he’d never have to know.
Still. He’d miss this. He thinks anyone else in the family would’ve shooed his duck form away, not let it inside and risk Alfred chewing them out. Tim thought he’d just have to move tiny rocks outside to spell out his identity, then endure many, many duck jokes before getting fixed. Not this.
Damian suddenly sighs. “It’s okay. I’m sure you have a family to get back to. I’ll let you go.”
He holds Tim steady in his arms, not letting him go as he carries him downstairs. Damian opens the set of doors that lead to the back side garden and sets him down gently outside.
“There you go. You were a very nice duck to meet.”
Tim turns back to look at him. This is a strange crossroads to find himself at. He can’t just shake his head, that would be far too human a response. And he definitely isn’t going to fly away.
Now would be the time to come clean, really. Tim can only imagine Damian’s ire though. He wouldn’t understand that it was just a misunderstanding, he’d think that Tim had tricked him on purpose, trying to find a weakness in him or vulnerability or maybe to snoop around in his room and try to get him in trouble for something in there.
Tim doesn’t want that. He just… It would be nice to get a couple more head pats and snuggles is all. He can’t remember the last time he got snuggles from anyone. Maybe Steph, when they were dating, but it’s been a while. And Damian had felt so warm.
So, Tim lets out one single honk and walks back inside. He’ll buy a duck for Damian, okay. It’ll be fine. He’ll never have to find out, Tim will just let someone else know soon to change him back. Soonish. After another nap maybe.
The rest of the day goes accordingly:
Damian brushing through his feathers. Damian taking him out to the fountain to let him swim around and wash up. Damian having to do his homework so Tim curls up on his lap and gets some more shut-eye. Damian feeding him some more vegetables and some seeds, then taking him out to explore the gardens. (And yes, he ate some of the bugs in the garden, sue him. A duck has to follow his instincts, okay.)
There’s a brief interruption where Dick calls Damian and asks when he last saw Tim, which sort of makes Tim feel bad. He won’t stretch it out too much longer. It’s almost like a vacation though—his duck brain isn’t overly worried about cases or classwork or trying to impress Bruce. It’s like he can just breathe and rest and get scritches under his beak as often as he wants. Just one more day.
When the day gets late and Damian retires to bed, Tim takes one look at his little cardboard box, and flaps his way up onto the bed with Damian. The other pets have been kept away temporarily, just while Damian gets everything ready to start animal introductions and prevent any mishaps that might include trying to eat one another, so Tim has the bed and Damian all to himself.
He snuggles closer, laying down right against Damian’s chest, and Damian lets out a happy little sigh. And how could anyone blame Tim for wanting to enjoy this?
Damian mumbles something about how he better not poop on the bed, which Tim wasn’t planning on anyways, and then promptly falls asleep, arms tucking Tim in against him.
—
Tim wakes up, and he is very, very naked.
And Damian is very, very mad.
He’s now laying on top of Damian, spread out with his weight pressing the boy into the mattress, and he gets maybe two seconds of awareness before he is shoved onto the floor and lands on his now human butt.
“Ow,” he says, almost as a consolation prize. He pulls down on the edge of a bedsheet to cover himself.
Damian springs up. “What the hell is this!?”
“I- um. It’s not what it looks like?”
Damian throws a pillow at him, quite hard actually. It hits him square in the face. “You dirty pervert! Get out of my room, NOW!”
“Oh, fuck, um. Damian, no, I was-”
“You were what?!”
And Tim is suddenly all too aware that Damian could very well stomp on his bare genitals right now, and that he looks mad enough to do it.
“I was the duck.”
Damian stops short. He looks around, realizing now that his recently acquired pet duck is nowhere to be found.
“No, I…”
Tim isn’t sure how to fix this. “I can buy you another one?” he asks, cringing at how lame he sounds. It also might be illegal in Gotham, now that he thinks about it with a human mind.
Damian is very quiet, fists balled at his sides and glaring at the ground. “Leave.”
Well, that’s his answer, he supposes.
Taking the bedsheet with him, Tim walks out.
—
Damian isn’t talking to him, which isn’t much worse than the usual anyways. They never hung out before. Not until he was a duck.
At the behest of Dick and his own guilt though, Tim decides to do something about it.
He knocks on Damian’s door. “Can I come in?”
“No!” is yelled through the solid oak of the door.
Tim sighs. “Okay. What if I said there were some pet baby chickens in it for you?”
A beat passes. Then the door creaks open slightly, barely revealing an inch of Damian’s face. “This is a trick.”
“No, but there is a catch.” He lifts up the chicken wire in his hands. “The rest of the materials are outside. Bruce said if we wanted more pets we had to prove how bad we wanted them, so we’re gonna go build them a coop.”
Now, the thing about Tim is, he’s actually a big fat liar. Bruce hadn’t said much more than a passing grunt, and Alfred had given his approval, saying it’d be easier than buying eggs all the time. But Tim needed a chance to talk to Damian, and Dick told him that just using money or talking at him wouldn’t work. Bonding activity it is, with an extra incentive thrown in to ensure it’s work.
It gets Damian to follow him out to the grounds though, and Tim has everything ready with the plans all laid out.
“Honestly, between the two of us, it shouldn’t take too long. We could finish it by tonight, then go pick out the chickens tomorrow.”
Damian nods his assent, and they get to work.
Tim doesn’t want to push it, so he’s patient. He waits, letting them get a good amount of work done before he approaches the topic at hand.
“I hope you know it was an accident.”
“You accidentally pretended to be a bird for two days?”
“Well. I kind of was. But you know what I mean. The duck part of me thought you were a really good caretaker.”
Damian pauses. “It did?”
“Of course. The best animal caretaker a duck could ever ask for. And I know it’s not quite the same, but I think a couple of hens would agree with me.”
“Yes, that would be adequate compensation for your transgressions.”
Tim smiles, inwardly rolling his eyes just a bit at the wording. “Good. And maybe a human part of me didn’t absolutely hate being around you either, if that counts for anything.”
“Very little.”
“Righhhtt.”
He bumps a shoulder against Damian’s, and they spend the evening arguing about chicken coop assembly. Life as a human isn’t too bad afterall.