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Tim understands that he’s immunocompromised. He gets that not having your spleen is bad for a normal person, much less a vigilante. The fact that he is the only one who got sick after seven of them had to assist in evacuating a hospital is bullshit though. Even worse, it’s Covid, as if Tim’s life isn’t hard enough.
He can deal with the flu just fine. Strep? No problem. He’s even come up with new schematics for W.E. while suffering from pneumonia before. Covid or a sinus infection though? Those fuck with his head and make him feel like his face is full of magma even before all the meds.
Tim feels like he’s barely on the planet, and worst of all he isn’t even alone in his misery because it started hitting him hard in the Cave of all places. So now he’s quarantined in his room at the manor with Alfred and Dick — with N95s firmly in place — mother henning over him, and wishing he were anywhere but here.
He wants to be home at the penthouse where he can pile up his blankets and pillows around him and wait for his baby to come and wrap him in big warm arms that take the fever pain away. He wants his smart tv with all the streaming services already logged in so he can listen to the other man review anime or coo over the baby animals in documentaries. He wants his diffuser with his essential oils because then he can put the one his lover practically uses as cologne in to breathe in during the rare moments he can actually breathe.
“Can we get you anything?” Dick asks, already fluffing up Tim’s pillows again while Alfred fixes him another dreaded mug of hot tea.
Tim feels as if his throat is sandpaper no matter how much water he drinks, and the thought of a large, henna decorated hand wrapped around it with the thumb rubbing over the scarring there makes Tim want to cry and beg. His hips hurt and if someone were in the bed next to him he could turn over without the fear of suffocating himself. He knows he’s too gross to kiss right now but maybe he can convince the other man to just use him a little so he can actually sleep instead of miserably glaring at the ceiling while his body attacks itself.
“My husband,” Tim mumbles, voice gummy and gross.
Big blue eyes blink down at him in surprise and Alfred pauses in lifting the strainer from his large tea cup to look over at the sick man with raised brows. “Pardon, Master Tim? My hearing is not what it used to be.”
“My husband,” Tim repeats irritably. “I want… ‘ana bihaja Habibi.”
“Is that Arabic?” Dick mumbles, looking back at Alfred. “I keep meaning to add it to my repertoire but with Jay and Dames around I’ve been a little lazy.”
“I do believe that Master Damian is in the house. Shall I get him?” Alfred asks Dick.
“Yes!” Tim answers, the word stressed and intensified like Alfred has solved one of life’s greatest mysteries.
Dick lets out a curious noise behind his mask. “You want us to bring Damian in here?”
“Habibi,” Tim mumbles before breaking off into a particularly nasty coughing fit that has him wanting to cry real tears from the way it jostles the cracked rib Two-Face gave him a week ago. “Gozi. ‘Ana bihaja Damian.”
Dick gestures Alfred quickly towards the door. “Does Damian know who your husband is?”
Tim cracks his eyes open to glare at Dick, swatting the table next to his bed until he encounters the box of tissues that will allow him to expel some of the gunk he’s just coughed up. Once he’s done so, crumpling up the tissue to discard it in the newly emptied trash bin next to the bed, Tim lets out a wheezed, raspy: “He fucking better.”
Dick’s gaze only grows more concerned over the edges of the mask. “Little wing, I feel compelled to remind you that last I checked you weren’t even in a relationship, much less married.”
That’s right, a tiny voice that sounds a lot like his usual self reminds him in the back of his overstuffed mind, it’s a secret. No one knows he’s with anyone. He can’t remember why though, not with his head feeling like someone has poured wet cement right into his sinuses.
“If you aren’t going to bring me my husband leave me to suffer in peace,” Tim snaps, wincing when it puts too much strain on his throat.
The door swings open and with it comes Alfred’s disapproving voice. “— shouldn’t go in without a mask, Master Damian.”
“Worry not, Pennyworth. A mask will do little for me once Timothy gets his hands on his husband,” there’s an amused, smug tone in Damian’s voice as he paces his way over to stand next to Dick, henna covered fingers landing on their older brother’s shoulder as he looks down at Tim. His green eyes are lit with that same smug amusement and it seems he can’t help the tug of his lips upwards as he meets Tim’s groggy eyes. “Isn’t that right, habibi?”
Dick’s breathing hitches.
Alfred makes that little noise that usually means ‘I suspected this’.
Tim reaches out towards Damian with a pitiful noise. “I want to go home. Take me home. I want my diffuser and our bed and you.”
Damian catches Tim’s fingers in his, leaning down to press a kiss to the back of Tim’s hand. “After patrol, habibi, I need to deal with the fallout of this revelation now that you’ve differed from your silly five year plan.”
“You like my plan,” Tim remembers, turning his face into his shoulder to expel a weak cough. His throat is already gunned up all over again. “You said it was a good plan.”
“It was a good plan, you did very well with your plan,” Damian tells him gently, fingers dragging through his sweaty hair.
“Can’t take attention from your graduation,” he mumbles tiredly, thinking of how proud he is of Damian for completing medical school so fast. “Can’t put stress on you during your residency.”
Damian makes an mhm sound, fingers working their way through Tim’s greasy hair until it’s braided back from his face and the younger man has produced a hairband from his pocket to tie it. “Yes, beloved, you thought of everything.”
“I did.” What did he think of again? Ugh his hair is so gross. “Can we take a bath when we get home?”
“Of course,” Damian assures, pressing a kiss to Tim’s feverish forehead before pulling back entirely. “For now though, how about you take Pennyworth’s tea and cough syrup, hmm? A small nap before the drive home.”
“Okay,” Tim breathes. A nap does sound like a good idea, it can help with some of his pain if he’s too asleep to feel it. “You have good ideas sometimes.”
Damian is accepting the little cup of cough syrup from Alfred but his distraction doesn’t stop him from clicking his tongue softly. “I have great ideas all the time. Chief among them, you.”
“Me,” Tim breathes happily, warmth not from his awful illness filling his chest even as Damian leans close to tilt the awful medicine down his throat. “Bleh.”
“I know, it will be over soon,” Damian says, exchanging the medicine for the tea. It’s better, but not by much.
“We will not be telling father about this until Timothy is better,” he hears Damian murmur seriously to Alfred and Dick, or maybe he’s speaking in his normal tone and Tim is just that stuffed up. “He’s going to be devastated that he messed up his own plan.”
“He called you his husband,” Dick whispers furiously.
“Codeine always makes him a little sappy and out of it,” Damian says. “I assure you, we aren’t wed yet.”
Yet.
Tim drifts into a cold medicine induced sleep to that word. He likes it. Yet. Like one day Damian’s henna will dance around a metal band when he’s not at work and Tim can wear a pretty green gem on his finger. Zircon maybe, he’s seen ones that are almost the shade of Damian’s eyes.