Chapter Text
The first time that Tim meets Robin, he’s not supposed to know he’s Robin.
Jason Todd, after all, is the newest adopted ward of Bruce Wayne, the richest man in Gotham City and all along the Eastern Seaboard. The media heralds him as a modern Cinderella story; the upper class whispers behind fake smiles and glasses of high-end pinot noir wine that he’s a glorified street rat that bit Sir Alan Monroe the last time someone attempted to shake the young cretin’s hand, can you believe it?
Tim thinks that he’s a pretty decent replacement for Nightwing, even if he can’t do all the flashy acrobatics.
And that he’s standing right in front of him with kiddie grape juice (stupid, Tim chides himself, you should’ve gone for something cool like the sophisticated sparkling water, not rich-people Kool-Aid) splashed across his expensive tux because Tim is clearly an utter buffoon that can’t keep his head on straight long enough not to trip while saying hello.
His cheeks feel like they’re on fire. He can see, out of the corners of his eyes, the flashing of cameras, and of course he can hear the ever-present whispering of the so-called elite that need an extravagant charity gala held to donate less than a quarter of their paychecks. Tim is nine years old and has just earned himself a spot on the front cover of a few crappy tabloids thanks to this—not to mention a scolding from his mother.
“I—I am so sorry,” He manages as Jason blinks at him, Tim’s movements to try and get napkins to wipe the staining liquid off of the other boy’s suit frantic, “So, so sorry. I promise it was an accident! You probably really liked this suit, didn’t you, oh my god—you can have mine actually I mean you might have to shrink for it but—”
He’s rambling, he knows, and oh god are the walls closing in? He didn’t know that could happen at times like these. This is the worst possible time for walls to close in. Sweat catches on the collar of his shirt as it drips down his neck, hands trembling as he yaps on and on and someone needs to shut him up because he knows that this isn’t how he should be talking to a potential person to ‘network’, as his mom says.
And then Jason laughs.
Tim is briefly struck by it. And the fact that he should probably learn to laugh differently as Jason than he does as Robin, seeing as they’re exactly the same and just about anyone could record them and make the same conclusion that Tim did around a year ago.
“Kid, don’t sweat it,” The older boy dismisses, gently taking Tim’s frantic hands away from his suit. “Thing’s too big for me anyway. And I don’t even like it, so you don’t gotta worry about getting some dumb stain on it, y’know?”
He crumples up the magenta-stained napkins and tosses them—perfectly—into the small wastebasket a few feet behind them at the right end of one of the banquet tables scattered across the extravagant ballroom. He pumps his fist in the air as victory.
“Score,” Jason grins. Then he looks slightly down at Tim, seeing as the two aren’t that far apart height wise, and asks,
“Hey, where are your parents?”
Tim feels ice travel down his spine. Down, because that’s where he’s going after this: straight to the icy pits of the hell that is his mother’s fury. Janet Drake is quite nice to her son most of the time—except when he doesn’t take things seriously. Galas are supposed to be taken seriously.
Making a mistake is both serious and not serious enough, the sense of the matter being that one can only be caused by Tim being far too unserious and it becomes the bad kind of serious.
Like that time Jack Drake was caught shaking the hand of a man whose brand was discovered to cause genetic defects to puppies and was subsequently bashed in the tabloids for weeks, causing him to have to sleep on the couch and then plan a three-month-long archaeology trip to make up for it in his wife’s eyes.
Not a serious action, but a bad-serious consequence.
“Um,” Tim says, “I think they’re right over—”
Before he can finish his sentence, he feels perfectly manicured nails digging into his shoulder, the smell of Chanel perfume filling his nose. He can picture his mother’s face: a smile that looks sweet, but hides the tilt of her brow that furrows in a Timothy Jackson Drake, what have you done this time kind of look. To others, it’ll look like a mother playfully scolding her nine year old son for spilling a bit of juice. Tim knows what it really is. What it will be, once they’re out of the way of the walls of staring faces. The sharpness of Janet Drake’s words can pierce through the toughest of skin. Tim’s skin was once cut by a blade of grass going the wrong way.
“Timothy,” His mother chides, “Spilling juice on another guest? Dear, we simply must get through this streak of clumsiness. You have big boy hands, and it’s time to use them.”
Tim opens his mouth to respond, cheeks burning at being called a ‘big boy’ in front of Robin, when he feels his dad’s sturdy hand on his other shoulder, no manicured nails but the weight of a watch making his hand just that much more heavy.
“Sport, come on. You know better. Jason, tell Mr. Wayne that we will of course pay for the tailoring and stain removal, will you?”
The manicured hand on his shoulder tightens ever so slightly at that. Great. Mom’s not happy about paying, literally, for a mistake Tim made. He’s looking at the tiled floor of Wayne Manor’s ballroom now in hopes that it will open him up and swallow him whole for the crime of existing.
“Timothy, chin up,” His mother hisses as she pulls him away from Jason and the banquet table with all the drinks and the caviar, making minute wrinkles in his small black Gymboree suit, “And don’t slouch so much. What am I going to do with you, going around spilling things on the Wayne ward?"
He manages to only wave goodbye to a bewildered-looking Jason, the older boy waving back after a moment or two, then looking down at his ruined suit (Jason, personally, wonders why it's such a big deal when these people can buy a new suit three hundred times over and still have more than enough for an entire year of college. If they were at his middle school dance, he would get it, but they have all the money in the world: surely a suit doesn't matter that much to the bourgeoisie.)
Tim’s heart warms at that. Gee. At least he got to meet Robin, even out of the costume—even if it probably won’t ever happen again.
A fan can dream, right?