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When Tim turns six, he learns a new word.
Responsible.
It means that he can be trusted; that he is re-lie-a-ble and smart and that he can read the clock and compare it to his schedule and that he knows which bus he has to take to get to school. Most importantly, it means that he can stay at home alone when his parents go away.
Tim doesn’t like the new word much.
But he already learned about grateful and well behaved, and his parents presented the situation like it was really exciting - like he was special, so Tim smiles at them and tries to tell himself that this might be fun.
It isn’t fun.
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
At first, it only sucks because Tim isn’t used to having to think of so many things. Walking into class late is embarrassing, and one Sunday afternoon he feels absolutely awful until he figures out that he didn’t have lunch, and he runs out of clean socks because he forgot to ask Mrs. Mac to wash them for him.
Tim really, really wants to call his parents and ask them to come back. Or at least to hire one of his old nannies again.
But his father looked so proud when he called Tim the man of the house, and his mother was so excited for that dig in Peru, and Tim hates disappointing them.
Disappointing was a word he learned when he was four. It’s one of Tim‘s least favourites.
So he doesn’t call his parents. Instead he puts granola bars on the shopping list so that he can eat breakfast on the bus, which saves him 15 minutes every morning. He gets the big red alarm clock out of the attic and places it on the kitchen counter, set to ring at 1 PM sharp every Saturday and Sunday. He hangs a neon orange post-it on his door that reminds him to put his dirty laundry down by the washing machine every morning.
And he buys an extra pack of socks. Just in case.
The changes do make remembering easier. Tim shows up to class on time, fed and dressed and with everything under control. But things still suck, and this time, Tim has no idea how to fix them.
He doesn’t know how to make the grey veil that seems to lay over everything, dampening colors and sounds and the warmth from the little bit of sun that Gotham gets, go away. He doesn’t know how to fill the deep, gaping pit that feels like it’s caving in his chest but that he can never spot in the bathroom mirror, no matter how long he looks. He doesn’t even know where to start looking for an ex-ter-mi-na-tor (he googled „how to get rid of bugs“ and then had to google that result too but at least he learned a new word and he doesn’t even hate it) for invisible ants that only crawl over his skin after someone touches him.
But he still doesn’t ask his parents to come back. When they call, he tells them about his grades, and what Mrs. Mac made him for dinner, and how there was a change in the bus schedule but he figured it out and was still on time for class, and his father says That’s my little man and his mother says We‘re proud of you, and they both say that they love him before they hang up and and Tim very carefully doesn’t reply with so then why did you leave.
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
He gets the idea from a classmate.
Well, kind of.
Tim skipped two grades already and is in line for skipping a third, and he’s trying to decide between doing that and marking a couple wrong answers on his next test so that he can stay in the grade he is now. The other kids don’t really talk to him, but at least they don’t stare anymore.
On the other hand, disappointing.
The test is next week. Tim still has a bit of time to decide.
But as he’s working through the math problems the teacher handed out and mentally adding up the pros and cons of getting a B+ instead of an A+, he overhears the kids behind him talk.
It’s Melissa who kicks off the conversation. She has really nice curly hair that she keeps pinned back with colorful headbands, and she has a cat, and her parents own the high-end fashion store down in the Diamond district.
She’s whispering with Allyssa, who everyone calls Ally, and Ben, who’s one of the very few boys that still talks with the girls in class. Tim doesn’t really get what that is all about, but he also doesn’t have anyone he can ask.
Melissa is always smiling and excited and not very good at whispering, so Tim has no problem hearing it when she says: „The monster under my bed touched my foot last night!!!“
Ben’s answering gasp is even louder. „You have to be careful! My mommy said it will take you away from home!“
According to Tim‘s mother, Ben‘s mom says „a lot when the day is long“, and based on the face she made when she said that that’s not a good thing. But Tim doesn’t know if that makes her a less cre-di-ble (very good word, he learned that from watching a detective show on late-night TV) source of information.
Meanwhile Melissa is making various panicked noises, apparently just realizing that what had happened to her last night was dangerous, and Ally is joining her with a shout: „That’s so scary!“
Ally is their music teacher's favourite because she has a „strong and carrying voice“, but that also means she is even worse at the whole inside-voice thing than Melissa, and the teacher comes over to shush them.
Tim keeps working on the math problems, but his mind is spinning somewhere else entirely.
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
The second he gets home he rushes (not runs - he’s not allowed to run in the halls, the ar-ti-facts lining them are va-lu-a-ble) up to his bedroom and peeks under his bed.
Nothing. Not even dust. Mrs. Mac is very good at her job.
But the monster under my bed and it will take you away from home won’t leave his head, and that night, when Tim is sitting alone at the big dining room table and eating the chicken soup Mrs. Mac had prepared for him - and he’s still feeling cold and empty despite the soup being filling and warm (not hot - hot soup can burn you, and Tim would rather not go through that again) - he thinks I think I don’t want to stay home.
He leaves the soup on the dining table and goes upstairs.
His father keeps white envelopes out of creamy, heavy paper in one of the bottom drawers of his desk, but the writing paper that goes in the envelopes is somewhere else and Tim doesn’t know where. He hopes a torn out page from his notebook will do.
When he sits down at his desk, his pencil hovers over the page. It feels like once he makes the first mark, he will never be able to take it back.
Tim thinks of grateful and well behaved, and then he thinks of grey and cold and ants on my skin and about how when its of one of his classmates’ birthday they come to school smiling with cupcakes for everyone and how his parents called him three days after his own birthday with a vague excuse of not having any reception the last couple of days.
Tim starts writing.
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
Dear Mr. Bedmonster
I heard you take kids away… Can you take me too?
… please?
My parents say that I'm well-behaved, and responsible, so I promise I won’t make any trouble for you.
I’d just like it if I don’t have to eat dinner alone anymore, if that’s okay.
Kind regards,
Tim Drake
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
Tim saw his mother end a letter like that once, so he’s hoping he did that right. Then he remembers that a monster that lives under beds might not speak (or read) english, and rips out a second page of his notebook to draw a picture of himself and the bedmonster, hand in hand to show that he’s not scared of it.
Tim sticks both pages into the envelope, seals it shut with one of the Cars stickers he still has left, and walks back over to his bed.
Now at nighttime, the gap under it somehow doesn’t look empty anymore. But that’s fine. Tim is hoping that it won't be empty.
He crawls under the bed, pushing the envelope as far into the darkness as he can. Under the bed is quiet and not as cold as he thought it would be. Tim’s bedroom carpet is soft under his cheek.
According to Tim’s schedule, he’s supposed to get ready for bed now. Tim doesn’t think being under the bed counts as already being in bed, but he gives himself five more minutes.
His last thought before falling asleep, letter still clutched in hand, is that he really won’t have any complaints if he has to live under the bed from now on.
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
When Tim wakes up, he’s not under the bed anymore. He’s not sure where he is, but under the bed doesn’t have gravel and AC-units and sirens in the distance.
It also doesn’t have the huge, dark figure crouching in front of him, clawed hands stretched out halfway towards him. Tim tries to scramble backwards, only to get hopelessly tangled in … whatever it is he’s wearing.
Tim frowns down at the gloves swamping his hands. Those are not his pyjamas.
A finger very gently taps one of his own. When Tim looks back up, the figure has its head tilted ever so slightly. “Tim? Tim, can you understand me?”
Oh, Tim thinks. I’m still under the bed after all.
And then he promptly bursts into tears.
The way the monster under his bed starts scrambling would be very funny if Tim was in any shape to appreciate it.
“Are you hurt anywhere? It’s okay, I’m here to help, with whatever it is. Are you scared? Did - did I scare you? Do you want me to give you some space?”
That last question is so silly, Tim has to fix this miss-under-stan-ding right now. Even if he’s kind of still crying too hard to talk.
So he just reaches both arms out towards the monster and lets himself flop forward against its chest.
For a single moment, Tim’s own choked breathing is all he can hear. The monster is stiff as a board against him. Then, all at once, it melts around Tim, wrapping him in its arms and wings and so much warmth.
“Oh, honey,” it says, voice soft and rumbly like the tigers at Gotham zoo, and it takes everything in Tim not to start crying harder. He promised in his letter that he wouldn’t make trouble, after all.
He also said he was well-behaved, and now he’s here, completely forgetting his manners. Tim pushes himself away from the monster’s chest just enough to look it in the face - its arms slide apart to let Tim move without the slightest bit of resistance - and takes a deep breath, hoping his voice won’t sound too wobbly to understand.
“Thank you,” he says, and it only comes out slightly croaky.
The monster frowns. Tim can only tell because its bright white eyes pinch a bit at the top - the eyebrows are the same color as the rest of the skin on the forehead. “For what, sweetheart?”
Tim blinks. “For taking me away from home,” he says slowly. “Did you not get my letter?” He looks around, but the letter seems to have vanished together with the rest of his bedroom. “I swear, I just had it, I can show you - “
Tim isn’t sure what he would have shown the monster. His now-empty hand? But he doesn't have to figure it out, because in the next moment, he’s all wrapped up and warm again. “It’s okay,” the monster says, and it sounds a little funny. Hoarse, like when Tim had the flu last year. “I got you now.”
Tim’s throat closes back up, so he just shoves his head under the monster's chin, face pressed up against its throat, and holds on as tight as he can. He doesn’t even look up when the monster gets up. When it starts to fly the smooth up and down motion combines with Tim’s exhaustion and soothes him back to sleep.
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
“Oh my god.”
“I know.”
“Oh my god!”
“Yes, Grayson, we’ve all heard you.”
“He is so small???”
“Oh great, it got Brown too.”
“Come on, Dami, you gotta admit that Timantha is pretty damn cute like this.”
“Cute? Cute? Jay, I think I’m about to have a diabetes-induced heart attack from how sweet this all is. Cute is not enough here.”
“Dick’s right, this is criminally adorable. Cass, tell Tim he can’t be this small. It’s illegal.”
“Itty bitty brother … give.”
“You’re gonna wake him up,” the chest under Tim’s ear rumbles. Tim’s response is a small grumble that’s supposed to mean “hy-po-cri-te”; a word that Tim thinks is very interesting but that people don’t really like to hear, so maybe he shouldn’t have said that.
It doesn’t really matter, since apparently no one actually understood him anyway. At least that’s what Tim thinks, because he only gets another round of oh my gods and a very high pitched squeal in response.
When he carefully peeks an eye open, he’s greeted with a half-circle of faces, all staring at him.
Nope! Tim thinks, and shoves his face back into the chest he’s still lying on.
An arm wraps around his back, and the chest starts rumbling again. “Give him some space,” it gently directs, and when Tim works up the courage for another glance the faces are in fact a bit further away.
In fact, they are far enough away that Tim can see that the faces come with bodies. Human ones.
Tim waves at them, mostly to see what happens.
The shortest figure huffs but raises a hand. The one in purple squeals - apparently the noises came from her - and whacks the one in yellow on the shoulder. The two tall ones act like Tim shot them, clutching at their chests and leaning on each other, which is alarming but Tim lives in Gotham, he’s seen weirder shit.
The one dressed in all black waves back.
The chest under him hitches and rumbles with silent laughter.
Oh, Tim thinks for the second time that night. Out loud, he asks: “Are you the others?”
Purple frowns - she has normal eyebrows, so Tim can tell much easier. “The others?”
“The other children the monster took.”
Purple’s eyes get very wide. “The … monster? You got taken by a monster?”
Tim turns back to the monster, just to make sure that it's still there. It is, which is good, because otherwise Tim would have had no idea whose chest he had been lying on this entire time. He looks back at Purple. “Can you … not see it?”
The tall blue one speaks up this time. “You mean B?”
Tim nods and mentally tells himself off for not asking the monster for its name. Or not even thinking that monsters can have names in the first place. He’s probably being very rude right now.
Big Blue takes a step towards Tim before crouching down, and Tim presses closer to the monster’s - to B’s chest. “Why do you call him a monster, Timmy?”
“Sorry, is that mean? I don’t know the rules for this.”
Apparently that doesn’t answer Big Blue’s question at all, so Tim tries to explain better. “You know, for when you get taken away from home by the monster under your bed. I thought you were the other kids he took? Or are you the monsters under other people’s beds? Does everyone get their own?”
Big Blue is about to say something when Black suddenly has a hand over his mouth. “Yes,” she says, “took us too. Right?” She turns to the tall red one.
Big Red is on the floor, facedown, wheezing. But he does hold up a shaking thumbs-up. The short one - he’s wearing too many colors for Tim to name him after just one - pokes him in the ribs with a boot. Yellow is burying his face in his hands, but nods.
Black turns back to Tim, and he returns the beaming smile she has on her face. “So we can all have dinner together?”
“Anything you want, Tim,” B rumbles.
—🧸-🦇-🧸—
Tim falls asleep that night - morning, whatever, time is weird under the bed - warm and full and in a world full of colors. And when he wakes up several hours, and one spell reversal later, it is still like that.
He silently pads out of his bedroom, easing the door shut in order not to wake up the siblings that insisted on bunking with mini-Tim. Then, he makes his way to the study.
As he thought, Bruce is sitting behind his desk doing paperwork, already pushing it aside when Tim walks in after knocking. “Tim, honey, how are you feeling?”
Tim just smiles at his dad and hands him the envelope.
The paper lost some of that pristine whiteness with age, and the corners are a little creased, but it’s just as smooth and the Cars sticker is still going strong. Seeing Bruce open it feels like the fulfillment of a destiny over 10 years in the making.
It barely takes a minute for Bruce to read it. Tim can tell the exact second that he’s done, because Tim immediately gets crushed against Bruce’s wide chest. It’s much more comfortable without the body armor, but it rumbles in the same way.
“You - how - “
Tim hugs his dad back. “Dunno. Magic? But I woke up back under my bed.”
Tim huffs a laugh. “Gotta say, I was a little crushed when the bedmonster never came back for me.”
Tim doesn’t say I slept under my bed for two full months, and Bruce doesn’t apologize for something completely out of his control - which is good, that means Dinah is finally getting through his thick skull - but the hug turns just a fraction tighter. Bruce takes a deep breath and kisses Tim on the forehead as if he was still six (again).
“You found your way home,” he says, pressing the words into Tim’s hairline. “That’s all that matters.”