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It was just Tim’s luck that when he got there, Dick was in the shower.
It had been a long ride to Bludhaven after a long lecture in the Cave after a long patrol after an already very long day, and something about coming through the front door and realizing that Dick was still out of reach made Tim want to melt into a little puddle on the floor. And maybe cry, except he didn’t think he had the energy left even for that.
He dropped his bag down at his feet, pushing the door closed behind him and leaning back against it. His head was throbbing in time to some phantom rhythm, like there was a kickdrum built into the base of his skull that was tuned to some otherworldly frequency. Crazier things had happened to him, so he wasn’t ruling it out. He had, however, decided on the bus over, where the bass line had been amplified, that he’d be willing to see if Tylenol could block the multiuniversal connection. But while Dick definitely had Tylenol in here somewhere, it was never in the same place; Tim had found it on top of the fridge, buried in a stack of towels, under an upside-down popcorn bowl, pretty much everywhere but the medicine cabinet. Dick didn’t think of it as being misplaced, because somehow he always knew exactly where it was, but again: Dick was out of reach. And so the Tylenol was out of reach. Because, well. Of course.
After a full minute of standing there feeling sorry for himself, Tim moved, locking the door behind him and kicking off his shoes, but leaving his bag at the door. He wandered down the hall to Dick’s room. Like the rest of the apartment, it was always messy, although Dick claimed it was “organized chaos” - a line Tim was absolutely sure had never worked on Alfred, based on his own experiences living in the Manor, but had apparently still stuck with Dick to adulthood. Tim shuffled three hoodies, a pair of sweats, and a small bundle of shirts and boxers off the bed and onto various surrounding surfaces, then pulled back the covers and collapsed face-first onto one of Dick’s pillows. Dick’s mattress was shit, his pillow was lumpy, and the light was still on, but Tim had slept in much worse circumstances. He yanked the duvet up and over his head and let the darkness - and the very faint sound of Dick’s off-key singing in the bathroom one wall over - soothe him to sleep.
He woke up some unknown amount of time later to Dick tickling the underside of his foot. He kicked out with the other foot - hard, because Dick was being an asshole, and his patience had not been restored by his nap - and was gratified when he managed to catch something solid. Dick made a faint oof sound, but the tone was wrong for it to be sincere, and he knew Dick had been shimmying away anyway.
“Hey, is that any way to greet your big brother?” Dick asked, tugging on the blanket.
Tim, having foreseen the retaliatory move, managed to fend him off and keep the blanket pulled up over his head. “You missed your chance for that,” he said. He was still too tired, and his head still too achy, for him to try to filter the petulance out of his voice.
Dick sounded amused. “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”
"You should have known.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My latent psychic abilities haven’t kicked in yet,” Dick said. Then, as if the possibility was just occurring to him: “You told someone you were coming, right?”
Tim made a noise, vague enough for Dick to interpret however he wanted.
“Hey,” the next tug on the blanket was sharper, as was Dick’s voice. When he got the blanket down enough to see Tim’s face, he raised an eyebrow, repeating, “You told someone you were coming, right?”
Tim gave Dick a rueful look, and then squeezed his eyes shut. “He won’t notice.”
“He’s going to notice.”
“He won’t.”
“Tim. He’s Batman. He’s going to notice,” Dick sighed and shifted, and Tim knew even before he cracked an eye open again what he was doing. “Fine. Since I’m such a good and kindhearted brother, I’ll - hey whoa!” Tim was quick, but he had also just woken up, and Dick was, well, Dick, a Flying Grayson and Nightwing and the first Robin, and so Dick was off the bed and halfway across the room before Tim could successfully snatch the phone out of his hand. “The hell, man?”
“Don’t call him,” Tim pleaded.
“What am I, sixty-five? I’m just going to text him.”
The attempt at humor fell flat. Tim sank back down to sit on his heels, mortified to realize that his eyes were stinging. Apparently the brief nap had, at least, given him enough energy to cry. That would track. “Dick.”
Dick’s expression shifted rapidly: alarm, analysis, concern. There was still something surreal about it, being able to follow Dick’s train of thought just from the look on his face. Seeing it, the moment Dick relented, even before he put up both hands in surrender, dropped the phone onto the dresser, and came back over to the bed. He flapped a hand until Tim scooted back enough to give him room, then sat down on the mattress next to him.
“Even if I don’t tell him, kiddo, he’ll just track your phone. I know you know that.”
It was logical enough, except, “I don’t have it,” he muttered, drawing his legs up to his chest so he could drop his face into his knees. He knew exactly what Dick would think of that admission and all the other unspoken admissions that went along with it - that he’d left the Manor and gotten on a bus and made the hour-long trek to Bludhaven in the middle of the night without a phone and without anyone knowing where he was going or even that he was going - and he’d had enough disappointed looks for the night. Lectures, too, although he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get out of that one.
A full minute passed before, “You don’t have it,” Dick repeated, a hint of incredulity in his voice. “Where is it?”
“He took it,” Tim said, into his knees.
“He who? Bruce?” Dick asked. When Tim nodded, Dick made a strange, almost-strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Tim. Are you grounded? Did you run away from home because Bruce grounded you?”
Tim raised his head in indignation, as it registered that the sound Dick had been trying to keep back was laughter. “Dick!” He protested. “It’s not funny!”
Dick made a solid effort to school the humor out of his expression, but Tim could still see it twinkling in his eyes. “Sorry, Timmy,” Dick said. “It’s not funny, it's just… unexpected. You and Bruce don't usually fight.”
Tim knew that was Dick's roundabout way of saying this is ammunition that I'm storing up for the next time you want to lecture me about fighting with Bruce and it shouldn't have helped, but it was just so ridiculous that it did lighten something deep down in Tim's gut, something that had been twisted and tangled and maybe even a little bit afraid. He still put a foot on Dick's leg and applied reproving pressure, though. “Why do you think we had a fight?”
Dick gave him a look that was half-knowing and half-exasperated, like Tim had heard his conclusions on a case and, instead of applauding his genius, said prove it. “I know you had a fight,” he corrected. “Because I know you, and I know Bruce. You wouldn't be here trying to steal my bed if you thought you deserved to be grounded, but Bruce wouldn't have grounded you if he didn't think you deserved to be grounded. And being grounded from your phone is a Tim thing, not a Robin thing.” He plucked at the toe of Tim’s sock, where it rested against his knee. “God knows he’s not always rational about the Robin stuff. But he’s a lot less strict about Tim stuff. So that means he thinks he’s right, and you think you’re right. My guess is that maybe you could have lived with letting him think he was right, even if you didn’t think he was, but then he said something he shouldn’t have, and it hurt you, and then you had to get out of there before your head exploded. How am I doing?”
“It's like you've lived it,” Tim replied wryly.
Dick smiled. It wasn’t an uncomplicated smile, but it was a sincere one. “And I didn't even have an awesome big brother to run off too, either,” he said, sliding his hand back down to tickle the bottom of Tim's foot again. Tim pulled it away with a huff, but before he could think about his response, Dick asked him, suddenly serious, “What happened?”
Hearing that question was like having the ground suddenly disappear under his feet. Which was something that had actually happened to him, for the record, so he knew it was an apt analogy. But, “I failed a math test,” he said.
One of Dick's eyebrows went up. “You?”
Tim could feel himself turning pink, but he admitted in a mumble, “I kinda fell asleep during the testing period.” He'd looked at the sheet, and the numbers had started swimming, and he'd thought - what was fifteen minutes, just to make sure his head was clear? But then he'd woken up to the bell going off, and a wide-eyed sympathetic look from Ives, seated across the room, and all of three problems completed on the sheet.
Dick's other eyebrow joined the first.
“It’s - look,” Tim defended. “Riddler was out that week, and it was a whole thing. The longer he’s in there, the worse he is when he gets out. They should give him, like, compassionate release once a month, so we can just solve some shitty riddles instead.”
“I don’t think that’s what compassionate release is,” Dick said, lips twitching.
“Whatever,” Tim said. “The point is, I was tired. It’s not like it happens all the time.” It did happen more than he’d care to admit, to the point that he’d catalogued the best places to fall asleep for short periods of time in the school, but discretion was the better part of valor, and Dick really didn’t need to know about it. “And it won’t tank my grade anyway. Even if it was going to tank the grade, Mr. Harris likes me, and he’d let me do extra credit to make it up. But the school has this stupid policy about having a parent or guardian sign any tests you fail, so.”
“Bruce grounded you over a failed test?” Dick asked, but in a tone that suggested he knew that wasn’t what had happened.
Tim gave him a dry look. “I forged his signature, okay?” he said. “So what? I forged my dad’s signature for years on stuff like that, and back then he would have said it was taking good initiative and being smart.”
The levity in Dick’s eyes died a quick death at the mention of Tim’s dad - or, possibly, at the bitterness that Tim had heard creeping into his own voice. But he only asked, carefully, “Did he say that?”
“No,” Tim groused. He hadn’t really been in the business of telling Bruce about all of the things he’d done to cover his tracks with his dad regarding Robin. It wouldn’t have been good business. “But he would have, if he’d known.”
Dick didn’t call him on it, although Tim could see from his expression that he disagreed. Like Bruce wasn’t the number one advocate of not having a real personal life of any sort. “How did he find out?”
The heart of the unfairness: “He went to parent-teacher night,” Tim exclaimed, bitterly. “Can you believe that?”
“Well, he always went to mine,” Dick said. “And Jason’s, too. So it’s not that far-fetched.”
“He made you come to the last one,” Tim pointed out. Parent-teacher night maybe wasn’t the best way to describe the meeting Red Tornado had insisted on having with a gaggle of his charges’ parents or mentors acting in loco parentis, but actually Tim figured there wasn’t a best way of describing that at all. He’d just be happy if it didn’t happen again.
“He didn’t make me,” Dick corrected. “I volunteered. It seemed like the safer move, with so many civilians in attendance, and Batman technically an urban legend.” He reached over and nudged Tim’s shoulder. “What, I wasn’t good enough for you?”
Tim rolled his eyes and didn’t answer the question, because that was ground he’d never get back if he gave it up now. “The point is, if he didn’t come to that one, then he definitely didn’t need to go to this one. But he did, and Mr. Harris mentioned it - just so he would know I was going to be fine, by the way - and then he waited until we were on the way back to the Cave after patrol to bring it up, after he’d had all night to stew on it and get pissed about it.”
Actually, Bruce had used lulls in patrol to ask Tim about other things going on at his school: a photography contest he’d reluctantly entered, the occasional study-hour tutoring he did for younger kids, the Sherlock Holmes book club he’d been attending on-and-off, the skate park on school grounds where Tim spent a significant amount of his free time. It had been surprising, and maybe a little embarrassing, but also… nice. Tim liked to talk to Bruce about the things he liked to do, especially because a lot of the things he liked to do were also things Bruce liked to do, and even when Bruce didn’t do much talking, he was always attentive when he listened.
But that had just made it all the more surprising when they’d gotten back to the Cave and Bruce had pushed back the cowl and told him somberly that they needed to talk. And Tim, thrown off-guard and cycling back through the events of the night to see where he’d messed up on patrol, hadn’t even had time to prep himself before Bruce was confronting him with the forged signature on the big screen of the Batcomputer and asking what had made Tim think it was appropriate to deceive him like this.
“He said it was like lying,” Tim said, aware that Dick was still studying his face. “And I said, okay, well, I’ve been lying to adults for years for Robin stuff, what’s the big deal? And he said I’m not just any other adult and I said neither was my dad but I lied to him all the time when he…” Tim’s breath hitched. He’d had anger then that he didn’t have now, and the absence of it made it impossible for him to say the words again. “When I had to. Then he said - he said - well, I’m not Jack and then I, uh. I screamed at him.” Yeah, fucking obviously! He didn’t think he’d ever seen Bruce look so off-kilter, or at least not since the day he’d shown up in the Robin uniform for the first time; he could count on one hand the number of times he’d sworn in front of him. He looked down, plucking at Dick’s comforter. “And. Maybe. I also threw some things.” His gauntlets, his domino. “And then he told me I was grounded and to leave my phone and go to my room.”
“And instead you went and got on a bus?” Dick asked.
Tim flushed. “I was in my room for a while.” Long enough to throw some stuff into a bag, anyway. Truthfully, he wasn’t even really sure what he’d packed.
“Yeah,” Dick snorted. “Well, tip for the future: when Bruce sends you to your room, he’s planning to come up to talk to you again. It’s supposed to be like a cooling-off period. You know, so you don’t actually kill each other.”
Tim blinked once, absorbing this information, and then collapsed backwards against the mattress with a groan. “My dad always meant it like, see you tomorrow, after you fix that shitty attitude.” Dick’s certainty that Bruce would notice he was missing made a lot more sense now.
“So,” Dick said. “You got on a bus. No phone. No comm?”
“I have my team comm,” Tim grumbled, studying Dick’s cracked ceiling. The apartment he lived in was practically falling to pieces around him, but Dick had a philosophy about how if you didn’t acknowledge certain things, they didn’t have the power to get worse. “Also, a teammate with superhearing?”
“You were going to call for Conner if someone pulled a knife on you on the bus?”
“No,” Tim deadpanned. “I was going to let myself get stabbed.” Dick rapped his knuckles against Tim’s knee, so Tim corrected, “I wouldn’t have to yell for him or anything. He listens for me. You know, like Clark does for you and B.”
Dick still looked like he wanted to say something: a reprimand, maybe, or at least something about the importance of following safety protocols. Something in Tim’s face must have talked him out of it, though, because he sighed and dropped backward on the bed so he was also staring up at the ceiling. “Hey, I’m sorry he said that to you. About your dad,” he said, after a few quiet seconds. “That was shitty.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. His eyes were starting to sting again, so he dropped his arm over his face. This hoodie - light blue, with the Nightwing logo stretching across its center down the sleeves like Dick’s suit - was soft, brushing lightly against his skin. “And - like. I know it’s stupid. It’s… I used to have - have these dreams sometimes, of my dad finding out I was Robin and wanting to make rules and a schedule and everything? Like helping me figure out a balance. And - and I even wanted it to be like that, sometimes.” It never was; when his dad had found out about Robin, he’d whiplashed between pressuring Tim to quit and quietly accepting that he had no control over that area of Tim’s life, and Tim had never actually figured out which extreme was worse. “But now… Bruce…”
It was hard to put it into words. The push-pull of wanting Bruce to be more than he was, and feeling like he was betraying his dad by finding that something more in someone else. By… having found that something more in someone else, maybe, but now having to put it into words. Having to actually face it.
Dick shifted closer to him, contorting until they were laying side-by-side. “Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”
And the thing about it was, Dick really did.
Tim didn’t want to cry, but he figured it only half-counted as long as he kept his face hidden and the sound muted. Dick’s presence was solid and steady next to him, and it was easy enough to follow his breathing pattern to calm himself down, after. When Dick noticed he was trying to, he breathed a little louder, so it was easier to catch.
“You could have just called me, you know,” he said eventually, when Tim had pulled his arm down and mopped up his face on his own sleeve.
“Bruce took my phone,” Tim reminded him soggily.
“You could have commed me, then. Smartass,” Dick corrected, with enough emphasis that Tim could hear the eyeroll in his voice. Then, in a softer voice, he added, “I know B can be an asshole, Tim. But you know he didn’t mean it like that.” His elbow nudged at Tim’s side. “You’re the one who's always telling me.”
“That’s different,” Tim said, although he knew the minute he said it that he’d just given up ground he wasn’t going to be able to get back. Dick and Bruce had just been so good together when they’d been Batman and Robin, though. Sometimes he thought Dick forgot that too easily. “He doesn’t want to fight with you. Not really.”
“He doesn’t want to fight with you either, Timmy,” Dick said, taking the surrendered ground with such intentional gentleness that Tim didn’t feel quite as bad about giving it up. He reached over and brushed a hand over Tim’s hair. “But I really have to call him now, or he’ll be fighting with both of us when he gets here. Which is going to be soon. You know he can track those Young Justice comms too.”
Tim heaved a sigh, reaching behind him to grab a pillow to pull over his face. “Why don’t you just save him the trouble and kill me now?” he asked fatalistically.
Dick sat up, then patted his knee conciliatorily. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “You know Batman doesn’t kill.”
Tim lashed out with the pillow, catching Dick’s thigh as his brother pushed to his feet.
Dick looked down at him, eyes glinting with the amused promise of retaliation. “But I make no such promises when it comes to annoying little birds,” he added, ominously. “I’ll be right back.”
Tim knew Dick was doing him a favor by calling Bruce out of the room, but when he’d left, collecting his phone from the dresser, throwing Tim a tissue, and pulling the door shut behind him, Tim flopped forward onto the bed and cracked it back open an inch anyway. Just - to know. He needed to know.
Which turned out to be a smart move, really, because Dick wasn’t calling. He went to the front door, turned the lock, and pulled it open.
There was no preamble; there never was, with Bruce. Dick cut to the point: “He’s fine.”
“Where is he?” Low; low enough that if Tim didn’t have the door open, he wouldn’t have heard.
“Here,” Dick said, unhelpfully. “And he’s going to stay here tonight.”
“He’s grounded,” Bruce said, voice flat.
“So I’ll bring him home tomorrow,” Dick offered. This was met with stony silence, so Dick continued, “Look. His phone’s not here. I won’t let him play any video games or watch television. He’s already patrolled, I’ve already patrolled. Hell, I’ve already showered, and he didn't bring the uniform. It’s late. We’ll eat a little junk food, talk a little shit, and go to sleep.” More silence. Dick’s voice took on an exasperated edge. “For god’s sake, Bruce, you don't have to die on top of every single hill you climb.”
Tim flinched at the words. But they worked: Bruce finally spoke, his voice measured. “Will you at least tell me if he’s really okay?”
Dick answered him immediately, but Tim couldn’t hear what he said over the sudden roaring in his ears. His stomach turned over as realization shot through him. Shit. He should have thought. A kid disappearing, nowhere to be found, after an argument? He didn’t have to wonder what had been going through Bruce’s head for the last couple hours. God, Jason. How had he not thought? Why had he not thought?
He fumbled to his feet, tossed open the door, and stepped out into the hallway. Even from that vantage point, Bruce could see him; he hadn’t made it much past the front door, which had a clean view straight down the hall. And Tim could see him, in turn: hair ruffled, long coat draped over slacks and a button-up, a tightness to his expression that melted away almost instantly when he saw Tim. Bruce, not Batman. Even though it would have been easier for Bruce, Tim knew, to come as Batman, both for the journey and for this conversation, so he could maintain distance from what had the potential to hurt him.
Dick looked over his shoulder at Tim, then quietly stepped to the side. His whole expression was warm, and Tim knew what he meant by that look: whatever you decide, I’m here to support you.
In the end, as was typical, Bruce was the one who made the decision. “Tim.” Just his name, but said with such emotion that Tim wanted to flinch. Bruce took about half a step forward, paused, and then said, in a much more restrained voice, “Dick says you'd like to stay the night with him. In the future, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know beforehand. Or,” the lines around his eyes tightened briefly, as if the next concession pained him to make, “If that's untenable, at least let Alfred know. Please.”
Tim had to work very hard not to let his mouth fall open. “Um,” he said, eyes flicking to Dick, then back to Bruce. “Sure.” He crept a few steps closer, remembering Bruce's words, the ones that had driven him out of the relative safety of Dick's room to begin with. “I'm okay. Really.”
Bruce's eyes flicked over him, scanning him from head-to-toe, an assessment so quick that it was probably more instinct than choice. Then his gaze was back on Tim’s face again, and he said: “I'm very glad.”
“And also a little mad?” Tim guessed.
Dick took a sudden interest in the far wall, which didn't actually help his poker face very much; but then, Bruce's lips were also twitching. “Maybe just a little,” he said, because he could be a lot of things, but he didn’t ever lie to them. Which, Tim thought ruefully, was probably a point in Bruce's favor in this particular argument. “But it's nothing that can't wait until tomorrow, when you're home. We'll talk then and we'll sort it all out.”
Tim had a feeling that that particular promise, the promise of talking tomorrow, should have made him feel a lot more apprehensive than he did. But his mind was kind of catching on the whole home idea. He swallowed, nodded, crept half a step forward. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Bruce echoed, and then paused. His attention was on Tim's face again, and Tim knew he was for sure cataloguing the puffiness of his eyes and the redness of his cheeks. It was embarrassing enough that Tim's palms itched to scrub at his face; but Bruce was a detective, and Tim had just been crying. There was no hiding it, and Bruce was speaking again already anyway.
“I want to apologize,” he said, and then paused. His eyes flicked minutely in Dick’s direction before refocusing on Tim. “You don’t have to say anything right now. Like I said, we can talk tomorrow. I just want you to know, I’m sorry I upset you. It was not my intention, but the - the intention does not excuse the result.”
“Oh,” Tim said, blinking. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, exactly, but Bruce apologizing hadn’t quite made the list. “Okay. Thank you.”
Bruce nodded once, and straightened. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m very glad you’re okay.”
He had already started to turn back towards the door when Tim managed to squeak out, “Um, Bruce?”
Bruce paused, looking back at him.
“I’m - sorry too,” Tim said, because it felt important to say. “That I just took off without telling you. I didn’t mean to worry you, but… um…” Tim also found himself looking briefly at Dick, whose eyes rolled slightly upward, before managing, “Um, what you said. About intention.”
The corners of Bruce’s lips twitched again. “Okay,” he said, echoing Tim’s response to his apology. “Thank you.”
To anyone else, the exchange probably would have been awkward; but Tim could see the look in Bruce’s eyes, the one that said we’re going to be okay, and - well - he was Robin enough, even when he was Tim, to believe it. He smiled back.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Bruce said, heading back to the door. He opened it and stepped back out into the hall, then stopped. “One more thing: Dick,” Bruce said, looking at Dick pointedly. “Don’t think I don't know there's a spare suit here. I expect you'll both stay in tonight.”
Dick's answering grin was so quick and so bright that Tim knew the thought that Bruce didn’t know had never even entered his mind. “You got it, boss,” he said, with a cheerful salute.
Then he pushed the door shut and turned to Tim. “Now,” he said, that amused glint from earlier back in his eyes. “I think I was saying something about annoying little birds?”
Tim was already dashing down the hall to safety - and a lumpy, pillow-shaped weapon - before Dick had even finished speaking, laughing as he went.