Work Text:
It was a normal day, or well it was supposed to be.
Tim was in the middle of double-checking the financial report for the past quarter when his phone dinged. Usually it was set to silent, lest it goes off when he has a meeting and every boring old person in there gives him the stink eye.
However, he preset it to make some sort of noise whenever he got important notifications. Right now though he sees Mark Lee had posted something.
Tim opened his Instagram, well, his private/stan account to be specific, to check Mark's new post. It was a letter written in Hangeul, so he swiped a bit to the end if it had an English version, he may be ethically Korean but he does not even speak a word of it, sue him. What he saw made him grip the phone with both hands.
Mark was leaving NCT in a few days, when his contract expires.
Tim felt his world crashing down, he felt tears prick at his eyes, even though rationally, he knew it was just the parasocial side of his brain speaking.
He had no connections whatsoever to Mark Lee or anyone in Korea and yet he was fully crying in his desk at work at WE.
— ⋆˚꩜｡—
allie #CertifiedGirlKisser @homotron0825
pausing my mark-induced crying session to open instagram just to see wayne enterprises' ceo, tim wayne ALSO crashing out over mark leaving nct
chuu is my god @orbitdeeznuts
never thought tim "super serious ceo, super playboy offwork" wayne would be a hardcore czennie
theoloise endgame mfs @openurasscrack
and if i said finding out tim wayne is a kpop fan AND is a dreamie stan actually cheered me up a bit, what then you weird ahh stans???
–
On Tim Wayne's official (blue checkmarked an all) Instagram page, there is a story uploaded about 23 minutes ago.
The video starts by Tim setting his phone down, probably leaning it on a cup of cold coffee, wailing as he tries twice to place the phone.
"Oh my God, Mark just left NCT," Video-Tim whimpers, his bottom lip sticking out, an attempt to control his tears, which inevitably he failed at, "Mark Lee left the dreamies and 127!"
"I can't believe this! This has to be a joke, a delayed April Fools maybe?" He sniffs in defiance, "He can't do that, can he?"
"Oh my God, Mark Lee!" Tim buries his head in his hands, scrubbing his face of tears, "What if I just jump from here then? It's a 30-floor building but I think it'll hurt less,"
Tim sniffs again and then reaches out to the phone to presumably end the video.
–
37 minutes later, Tim's WE account uploaded another story, he was noticeably more calm and just wiping his eyes.
"Okay, I've just been informed by Tam that my breakdown was not in fact uploaded on my other account, but on the super serious work account, damn,"
"I won't take it down now, it has almost 15k views now so it'll be pretty useless to do so," Tim shrugs and then waves weakly to the camera, "Anyways, enjoy my mental breakdown, you rats,"
-
hi gay! @trixieunhhhie
do yall think tim wayne was crying this hard when mark left the first time?
jaemin's left nostril @jollyhollzybee
wait he said other account...? he has a stan acc???? is tim wayne oomf?
ilya's baby mama @shutuphudcon
tim wayne is so real for crying over mark btw ijk he was kyuu-ing it up in them board meetings
"i'm losing p'q again, right?" @gigigibbybby
guys the real question is, does tim wayne ship mahae?
— ⋆˚꩜｡—
"Hey Tim, how are you holding up?" Kon strides to his bedside, holding a takeout bag and a pint of rocky road ice cream.
Tim wails even harder, throwing a pillow in his general direction.
"Oookay I guess you aren't doing well at all,"
"Shut up, Kon!"
— ⋆˚꩜｡—
Tim was laying on his stomach on the training mats down on the cave, his head shoved into Damian's lap, with the latter running a hand over his older brother's hair.
A soft K-pop song plays faintly in the BatComputer.
"Bring my family back together!" Tim yells, "SM, you motherfucker!"
"So he's crying...because of a guy who left his favourite band?" Jason asks, confusion and judgement colliding in his voice.
"You don't get it!" Tim yells, "It's like I lost a brother!"
"You literally have three brothers Tim," Bruce points out as he walks over to sit near his younger sons, a hand petting down Tim's back.
"Tim, you had a torrid love affair with your situationship who died and you tried to clone, you almost went clinically insane bringing back our Dad who was lost in the time stream even though no one believed you, and you had two guys actively trying to kill you, and you didn't tear up once, and yet somehow, this does it?" Dick actually lists down, bewilderment in his tone as he goes.
Tim sighs as he gets up from his hiding place.
"I'm a second-gen Korean immigrant," Tim says, "When Mom first came here, she got extremely ostracized, borderline harassed because of her English accent and looks, because surprise, surprise, America is full of racists,"
"So when she had me, she absolutely did not teach me about anything Korean culture, she wanted me to assimilate more to the posh White kids," Tim looked down, twiddling his thumbs as he explained, "But a few times when I was a kid, she would take me to some hole-in-the-wall Korean place, to be honest I don't even remember what those dishes are, but I still remember what they taste like... I'd like to eat them again,"
"When they started travelling more, I just... looked up some Korean media, just so I could see what they were like, and then I found K-pop and from there it was like a landslide,"
"With NCT, I discovered them when they were just trainees, and then watched as each of them debuted in the group," He looked at the BatComputer, a playlist full of NCT songs queued up, "I love all of their groups, but I will say, NCT Dream is my favourite, just because I grew up alongside them. I don't know... I'm the same age as four of their members, so it felt like I had more friends than I actually had," Tim hugged his legs in an attempt of self-comfort, "I love their music and their behind the scenes shows, and their friendship with each other,"
Of all the things that Tim could say, this was the least of what they expected. Dick was about to say... actually he didn't know what he wanted to say, but he needed to do something to make his little brother feel better.
"Hey Rob, Jisung and Haechan just posted something on Lysn!" Bart suddenly runs over, shoving Tim's own Ipad to him and then dashes out.
Tim taps a few times and reads for a few minutes, before bursting into tears again.
"We lost Mark twice!" He says as he buries his head on Damian's legs again. "I actually can't right now,"
The three older men can only helplessly stare as Tim cried, if Kon couldn't comfort him, who can?
"Are you crying this much because you realized that if Mark can leave then you too can walk away from something you love?"
"Damian!" Tim hissed, "I don't listen to people who destroyed our training dummies when JYP announced Lia's hiatus!"
"At least she came back, will yours?" Damian fires back, you know like a traitor. Tim just smacked his thigh in retaliation.
"Tim?" Bruce gently brushes his fingers to his son's shoulder to catch his attention.
"Tim can't come to the phone right now," His voice is muffled by the fabric of Damian's pants. "Leave a message after the beep!"
"Tim," Bruce presses firmly, "Would you like to take a break?"
"No!" He shoots up and is unceremoniously dragged back by his little brother.
"Nope, try again, Timothy,"
"I can take over WE again, baby, just for a little while so you can rest," Bruce coaxes his son despite the frantic headshakes he receives.
"You've been running on energy drinks and fumes for the past two years, baby bird," Dick pokes at Tim's thigh, "Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin's got Gotham for now, we'll tag Red Robin when we need to, I promise."
"Though I doubt we'll need to, since Red Robin's got an out of world mission with Young Justice, and Tim Wayne taking a long hiatus," Jason says, using little strength to flip Tim on his back so his family can see his face.
"Are you sure? I can step back from WE and focus on our nightlife, or vice versa," Tim suggests, "Or I can sub in with Oracle while I take a 'hiatus'"
"It wouldn't be a true rest then now would it, Timothy?" Damian pinches his cheek like a kid learning how skin works.
Tim mulls it over in his head. He has been running himself a little bit too thin sometimes but hey at least he can save someone and run over to work on important projects that support Gotham citizens in a more formal and civil way.
"What if Richard, Jason, Timothy, and Damian Wayne were to go on a siblings trip to South Korea to watch, hmmm, I don't know, a concert with all the units of a certain large group with an affinity to the color neo pearl champagne?" Damian suggests, and despite having a completely blank face, Tim can see him twitching his lips in amusement.
"Would you really?" Tim snaps up, a tinge of disbelief in his tone, "Can we really?"
"There's nothing I would want more, Tim," Bruce caresses his son's fringe.
— ⋆˚꩜｡—
ooh my bawls itch @mangoslushivape
damn, nct is always at the crime scene huh