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Jason doesn't spend much time at Tim's place. For starters, it's a disaster. Nearly teenage boy levels of disaster. And Jason would know, having, at least for a little while, been a teenage boy.
He plucks a coffee cup down from a bookshelf Tim shouldn't even be able to reach without a step ladder and grimaces at the contents. He holds it as far away from his face as possible on its walk of shame to the garbage can instead of the dishwasher.
"I liked that cup," Tim says from the couch and underneath the arm he has thrown over his face.
"Then you shouldn't have left it up there to congeal."
"Don't be dramatic. It's just dried up coffee sludge."
Call him fussy, but in Jason's world dried up coffee sludge isn't 'just' anything other than disgusting. "It was coffee slime, Tim. Sentient coffee slime. It was growing its own friends."
"Drama queen." Tim's voice is muffled. "And why are you still here judging my living standards?"
"Fascination and horror," Jason says. "Possibly some blackmail material."
"I'm in your security feeds, Todd."
That's news to Jason, actually. "What."
All he can see is Tim's grin below his arm. "Sweet dance moves. Very Risky Business." He lifts his arm enough that Jason can see his eyes glittering. "I can ruin you, Hood."
"Jesus christ, you are still one creepy little fuck when you want to be."
Tim lifts a hand, rolling it at the wrist as if he's making a bow. "I'm told it runs in the family."
"Excuse you, I am not creepy."
That gets Tim to lift his arm, and his eyebrows, entirely. "Did you, or did you not, engineer a memorably disturbing game of cat and mouse in Titans Tower, just to say hello?"
Jason exhales, rubbing a hand through his hair. "Yeah, okay, I did do that. But I did it on purpose. While under the influence. I don't just exist in a state of creepiness."
"Given your formerly dead status, I think that's debatable."
"I feel like I'm experiencing some form of discriminatory harassment." Jason examines each mug he pulls down, hooking each over the fingers of his left hand if it has a prayer of giving up the funk and embracing future life as less than a biohazard.
The rest are consigned to the garbage without a trial.
It might save him real time if he just brought the trash can over here instead of retreating to the kitchen every time a mug is beyond salvation.
Jason is beginning to realize that Tim's home is Dante's Inferno of crockery. "How are you so organized everywhere else, but you live like this?"
"Do you go target shooting for funsies?"
"What?" Jason can feel his nose wrinkling. "Why would I do that?"
"Exactly," Tim says, dropping his arm against his face again. "I am an infamously type A personality everywhere I go, Jason. Home is my place to be blissfully C-minus."
Jason snorts. "Your scale only goes down to C-minus, huh?"
"It's graded on a curve, Jason," Tim says solemnly, "And I have been to Roy's apartment."
"Get ready for a shocking new report card, Timothy." Jason stretches until his shoulder strains to coax a mug closer to the edge with his fingertips. How even? "Since Roy and Dick embraced abrupt and unanticipated fatherhood, you could eat off of their floor."
Lian does eat off of the floor.
As often as she can get away with.
It was hilarious the first time, watching Roy's mad run to scoop her up, grab the stray condiment packet of indeterminate age, and stick her hands under the nearest faucet before she could get them to her mouth. It was a pretty close race. And Dick, of all people, had had to remind him to use soap.
Once the the horror of potentially poisoning the baby within days of accepting delivery had sunk in some time in the middle of the night, Roy made the kind of ridiculously-after-hours phone call that only gets picked up by BFFs and lawyers.
Jason had been summoned, still wearing the clothes he slept in, and a new regime was implemented.
How Red Hood became Gotham's own Hints from Heloise, Jason doesn't fucking know. But here he is. Again.
"So you are now officially the second biggest slob I know."
"Whoo," Tim says, absolutely deadpan. "Silver medalist baby. Maintaining the mediocrity like a second place champ. Who's got top honors?"
"Matches Malone."
That gets Tim to sit up. "What the fuck?"
"It's a method acting thing." Jason shrugs a shoulder, making the mugs clink together. "That house is a master class in getting into character."
"He's not even real," Tim says, proving once again that he's competitive enough to actively work against his own interests. "You can't expect me to compete against someone who's entirely fictitious, Jason."
"So you're saying you want bottom billing in the disgusting home olympics."
"If this house doesn't scream bottom billing, Jay, I don't know what does."
"That's why you spend so much time at the Manor, isn't it?"
Tim gestures grandly around them. "Wouldn't you?"
Jason can't, in good conscience, deny it. "Would getting you a baby help?"
The look of helpless appall on Tim's face is golden, and Jason wishes he'd gotten a picture of it. "Please don't."
Jason snickers and gets back to collecting mugs. "Do you even have room in your cabinets for this many mugs?" And that's after the Mugs of Ignominy have met their ends.
"I don't know," Tim admits. "They've never been in the cabinets."
"Do you actually buy new mugs instead of sticking them in the dishwasher?"
"Yes? It's not like my parents were around to teach me how to keep house." Tim looks into the middle distance. "It's not like they would have been able to teach me to keep house if they had been around. We had Mrs. Mac for that."
Jason curbs the impulse to give Tim shit about growing up in the lap of luxury. It's not like either of them had any choice in the matter. "You do make enough to hire a housekeeper of your own."
"Sure. I'll just ask them to leave everything where it is if it has a Top Secret or Classified stamp on it."
"There's probably housekeepers with security clearance. There'd have to be." Jason rests the hand with the mugs on one hip and realizes Tim's classified files are sifted thoroughly into the mixture of everything from junk mail to computer parts that he'd have to hire a housekeeper with security clearance.
If it's not already a thing, it'll need to be before Tim is living like an actual human being.
"I don't need another business to run. If you want housekeepers with security clearance and, I don't know, ninja skills or something, you open an agency."
Jason looks into the gunk at the bottom of the cups he's holding and back to Tim. "Even you couldn't afford my rates." He makes another trip to the garbage can and back. A worrying smell of coffee and mystery must is really starting to spread at this point.
"You might be surprised. I can afford a lot."
Jason feels like this is the kind of statement that requires things like eye contact and facial expressions. His is obviously saying 'You live in a two bedroom pigsty. Granted, it is a luxury building, but Tim, even Dick and Roy are living in Better Homes and Gardens compared to this.'
What Jason says out loud is: "I am judging you."
Tim has laid back down and pulled a throw pillow over his face. "Knock yourself out."
"This really doesn't bother you at all, does it?" Jason spreads his arms, because the mess is a 360 degree experience.
Tim wraps his arms around the pillow over his face, muffling his words enough that Jason's not completely sure he says: "When it's full, I'll just buy a new one."
"I'm not gonna pretend the thought alone isn't making my inner child cry actual tears." Jason stares at an unmoving Tim until it seems likely Tim doesn't have more to reply except for a very muffled snicker.
Jason takes another trip to the trash where he makes the executive decision that this bag needs to be out of an enclosed space more than it needs to be full and ties it off. "How have you kept all of us from discovering you're a secret slob?"
"It's just a mess, Jay! It's not like I have rotting food all over the place. I don't even have dirty laundry."
"You have a laundry service."
"And I'd have a housekeeping service too if my home wasn't full of highly confidential documents."
"Which I'll bet you can't find."
"I will take that bet," Tim says with concerning confidence. "What's on the table? At least make it worth my my while for getting off this couch."
Jason snorts, going to pick up another mug and then redirecting to a book. "Why have you taken to your fainting couch anyway?"
"The usual reason," Tim says from under the arm he's decided to throw over his eyes again. "I live a cursed life."
Jason considers the state of Tim's hair and the open, almost empty, bottle of vodka on the counter. "Bad hook up?"
"Disastrous," Tim says, enunciating every syllable. "Never hook up after last call, Jason. Don' do it."
"Little late for that," Jason says under his breath, looking anywhere but at Tim.
"Wait," Tim says, sitting up again, against all probability and, with any luck, forgetting every word Jason just said. "Why are you here right now? Why are you here judging my choices and throwing away my disgusting mugs and taking advantage of my impairment to pump me for information?"
"I have not yet begun to pump," Jason says with a straight face.
He puts the book back and resumes collecting mugs. After mugs, he'll start in on the fast food bags. Because while Tim might be correct that he doesn't have rotting food all over (fucking thank you), the collection of bags, straw wrappers, napkins, and unopened condiment packets is enough to stock a moderately popular food truck for an evening.
It's a lot. "How do you live like this?"
"Practice," Tim says, too serious for banter. "And an entitled yet neglectful upbringing."
Jason watches him and waits for any forthcoming elaboration. "Are you genuinely telling me that you've never learned to so much as pick up after yourself? How?"
Tim shrugs a shoulder. "You don't have to pick up if you put everything right back where you found it."
Jason looks pointedly around the apartment. "Fire your interior designer."
"Very funny. You try running a Fortune 500 company by day and alternating between Robin and Red Robin at night while at least attempting to maintain something vaguely resembling a sex life, never mind a love life, and then we'll talk about my housekeeping skills."
Well, that was blunt.
"Weren't you supposed to wait for me to start pumping?"
Tim snickers and flops over, face down into the throw pillows. Jason's original plan for the day had begun with dropping off a stack of original case files and jetting, but every time he plans to take off, Tim just gets more pathetic.
Jason is, unfortunately, a pushover for pathetic. Also Tim. And he'll maybe take that to his grave.
"A leaky faucet needs no pump." Tim's words come out muffled.
"What the f-" Jason comes back to the couch to lean his elbows on the back and look straight down into the disaster of Tim's bedhead. "Are you still drunk?"
"I hope so," Tim says with sincerity even two throw pillows can't snuff out. "Because if I'm not, then I'll have to check my messages ."
"You lost me."
"Really? You don't have a rule about texting when you're wasted?"
"Uh," Jason says. "I don't actually get wasted."
"Is this more Lazarus Pit bullshit?"
Jason's never sure entirely how to feel about just how often the phrase "Lazarus Pit bullshit" comes up. At least this time it's not relevant. "No. It's having lived with Roy for five years, and why would I want to get wasted when half of the Gotham underworld wants to shoot me in the face?"
"You're not that special," Tim tells the pillows.
"Which one of us wears a helmet due to the likelihood of getting shot in the face?"
"Neither. You wear it because you think it makes you look badass."
"And because it's a good way not to get shot in the actual face."
"You're really traumatized by the idea of getting shot in the face, aren't you."
"No," Jason corrects. "I'm traumatized by getting beaten to death with a crowbar. Getting shot in the face just doesn't sound like much fun."
Tim lets out the tiniest groan.
It's almost cute.
"As much as I'm enjoying the witty repartee, if you're planning to hold a conversation with me, I'm gonna need that bottle." Tim waves an arm vaguely in the direction of the kitchen.
"You're gonna need about a gallon of water," Jason corrects him, feet moving ahead of his brain. At least he has the sense to pour Tim a measure in highball glass for lack of anything else clean in the kitchen instead of bringing him what's left in the bottle.
"I'm gonna need so much water, it'll kill me. Here lies Tim: He drank water. Don't be like Tim." Tim sits up to accept the glass with a disturbingly steady hand and tosses it back. "You know, vodka is sixty-five percent water."
"Tim, I'm gonna ask this seriously just once, and then drop it forever." Or until the next time there's a good reason to ask. "Do I hafta call Roy over to give the speech?"
"God, no. Leave it." The heavy bottom of the cocktail glass makes a thunk on the wood side table when Tim lets go of it. "This isn't alcoholism. This is wallowing in my misery. I've gotta be at WE in two hours, and you're wasting my wallowing time."
"Is that what I'm doing?" Jason takes the glass back to the kitchen with him, rinses it, and sets it aside. No point in dirtying another glass. "I thought I was judging you."
"You're judging me while wasting my wallowing time."
Jason brings a new trash bag with him when he comes back to the living room and he can see the barest edge of a smile on Tim's face when he kneels down to start picking up fast food detritus. "Made you laugh."
"If I laugh right now, I'm going to throw up," Tim admits. "Why didn't you say no when I asked for more?"
Jason sits back on his heels and takes a closer look at Tim. "That'd probably take extensive Jungian psychoanalysis for me to fully answer."
"Jung was a quack," Tim says, once again choosing to address his opinions to the throw pillows.
Jason sits cross-legged on the floor and rests his elbows on his knees. "Maybe I'm judging you for not standing up to Bruce a little more in the over-scheduling department."
"I thought it was my housekeeping skills."
"Those too, but they're a distant second at this point. And who even knows what the manor would look like without Alfred."
"Maybe we'd have to burn it down around Bruce after he dies, funeral pyre-style," Tim says after considering for a moment.
Jason has to consider that for a while himself. "That was morbid. I think I'm rubbing off on you."
Tim makes a vaguely Damian-ish sound of dismissal. "I've always been morbid. You're an outlier who should not have been counted. You threw us all off when you came back from the literal dead. The data set is hopelessly contaminated now."
"Can't compete, huh?"
"Not for drama, anyway."
"You're not much like your public image, are you."
That gets Tim to lift his torso off the couch like a lizard, though he looks like he regrets it already. "You're only just figuring that out?"
"I'd had an inkling," Jason admits, though privately, he also admits that he clearly hasn't put enough thought what that might mean in terms of self-care. "But seeing as I'm not a creepy voyeur with cameras in every family member's home..."
"You're never going to let that go, are you?"
"Not until I've found every single camera, Tim."
"So," Tim concludes, lying back down with the kind of extreme caution most people reserve for life-threatening injuries. "Never going to let that go." It's unfair for anyone to sound that smug while this pathetic.
"Try me, Drake." He could always blow up the place and let WE pick up the tab.
"It's on, helmet boy."
Jason is momentarily too overwhelmed by the need to judge Tim to answer. And then: "helmet boy?"
Tim scoffs into the pillow. "What part of C- adulting wasn't clear?"
"I am actively unfucking your habitat, Timothy, and I think I at least deserve more witty repartee in return. Helmet boy is beneath you."
"I'm sorry, you have reached drunk Tim. Drunk Tim entertainment package doesn't come with th' standard Tim warranty."
Jason snorts, and a mustard packet bounces off of Tim's forehead. "I didn't get the standard Tim warranty in the first place. I got fucking feral Tim's warranty."
The lopsided twist to Tim's grin is making an unholy alliance of feral, unhinged, and plastered. "No refunds," Tim enunciates.
"How even would you refund free labor out of the goodness of my heart?"
"Shoulda thought of that before getting me drunk."
A ballistic ketchup packet smacks Tim in the ear.
"How much was in that bottle? I gave you two fingers of vodka. Two. That's barely enough to get Kermit the Frog blotto." Jason says to Tim's one middle finger and folds his arms over his chest from the middle of his neat piles of keep, donate, give, throw, classified, and incinerate. Throw and incinerate are ahead by a mile.
He waits out the silence.
"Why Kermit the Frog?"
"I don't know." Jason shrugs, dropping another handful of sauce packets into the throw pile. He'd put them in keep and move them to the kitchen, but he's starting to suspect Tim hasn't opened his own refrigerator for more than a bottle of wine since he moved in. "Drunk Kermit's kinda funny, I guess? Cheap shot. But that's...about the extent of the joke."
"Not a Tim-is-lightweight joke. Because 'm not a lightweight. 'm just motivated. And had a head start. A big one."
"Of course." Jason could do much better with a small Tim joke. And the empty vodka bottle kind of attests to the motivation and head start.
"Because I am not a lightweight," Tim says again, for emphasis. "An' it was a lousy hookup. Half a hookup. Oughtta be ashamed of himself." Tim says with as much dignity as can be mustered while horizontal with one hand dragging on the rug. "And I am not green."
"But you are drunk."
"So very."
"Am I going to be carrying you into the WE meeting?"
Tim drops his head to the side to regard Jason. "Anti-kidnapping might be a neat change of pace."
"I can wear the full Hood getup."
"You're gonna get tased."
"What if I bridal carry you?"
"Gimme half an hour."
"I think that's a little over optimistic."
"Never doubt the Timness of Tim," Tim says solemnly. "To the Tim Closet."
Jason bites down on an actual giggle. "You are so trashed. It's adorable."
"F'ck you. Now pick me up."
"Drunk Tim is a sweet talker." Jason lifts Tim into a bridal carry and picks his way through the disaster.
"Drunk Tim is kind of an asshole," Tim admits, dropping his head to rest against Jason's shoulder. Apparently, he's an affectionate asshole.
Or his world is spinning.
It could always be both.
"Are you a suggestible asshole?" Jason asks, shoving the bedroom door open wider with his hip
Tim squints and lets his head loll on his neck to stare up at Jason. "Depends. What's the suggest?"
"Think you could put out a reward for your own rescue? Kinda short on liquid funds here." Jason sets Tim on his feet, keeping an arm around him. The arm is, clearly, the only thing holding Tim upright.
"Pff. I can do that in my sleep."
"Sure, but can you do it on most of a bottle of Svedka?"
Tim lists dangerously to the side with a unfocused eyes and a savage grin. "Bet."
...
.......
....
..
.
(Picked up by the security system for Tim to review later: )
Tim: An' we should stop for chili dogs on the way.
Jason: You sure food's a good idea right now? You don't look so hot.
Tim (who sounds, in fact, not so hot): 'S not food. It's ammo. Blake's gonna be there. We don' like Blake. Or his stupid shoes. Gonna chili dogs all over his shoes.
Jason: Chili dogs though, man. That's not dislike. That's a declaration of war.
Tim: Go big or stay home an' drink more, I always say.
Jason: Looking back on today...I'm not sure if I should cut you off.
Tim: On the alcohol or the hookups?
Jason: Honestly, probably both.
Tim: But mostly the hookups. Wouldn' need the vodka without the hookups. I need stability an' respect an' love an' railing on the reg'lr.
Jason: Um.
Tim: Wha'?
Jason: I....can't believe I'm picking right now to say this, but I could do that.
Tim: Wha'?
Jason: Why don't we just put that aside for later.
Tim: ...I'm good with now.
Jason: Later. Okay. Up. Let's pour you into the car.
Tim: You like me?
Jason: Maybe. Let's see if we make it back without chili in my upholstery.
Tim: Nah. I'm savin' up all the chili for Blake.
Jason: We hate Blake.
Tim: Blake's a fink.
Jason: With stupid shoes.
Tim: Stupidest.
(Tim does, indeed, get bridal carried into the building, snoring. Jason leaves him asleep on the couch in his office, and that's how the Wayne Enterprises Board of Directors find themselves sitting through a meeting helmed by emergency interim Wayne Enterprises CEO Red Hood. There are pictures. And it turns out that Tim is very generous with the zeroes when drunk-writing a reward for his own safe return.
Even if it takes longer than expected, Jason successfully unfucks Tim's habitat. But only the habitat.)