Chapter Text
The first time Tim Drake calls Bruce Wayne ‘dad’, he is six years old.
The Drakes are attending the annual Martha Wayne Foundation Charity Auction. Jack and Janet made the executive decision that this was going to be the event they’d use to introduce their little Timothy to the wonderful world of networking.
Jack had said that he would ‘accept nothing less than total professionalism of his only son’, so Tim is dressed up in a darling baby blue tuxedo that is just a touch too big for him; accompanied by a matching bowtie (a sight that Janet can’t stop cooing over) making him the picture of a perfect bite-sized gentleman. His hair, which falls in a blunt bowl cut, is combed straight and shiny to match the sparkle of his small dress shoes.
His parents can’t stop fawning over him the entire drive to the venue. From the passenger seat, Janet reaches back a hand to pinch Tim’s cheek, which causes the boy to giggle and squirm in his car seat.
“You’re going to be good, right, Tim?” She asks him, very ridiculously serious in a way only an adult trying to reason with a child can be, “There’s going to be a lot of important people there that Mommy and Daddy want to impress.”
“The good-est!” Tim promises, fiddling with his seatbelt. He’s going to be so good—his parents will have no choice but to bring him along everywhere.
“The best, son.” Jack corrects, fondly.
“The best-est!” Tim exclaims, puffing out his chest (like a man). His parents just laugh.
‘Being good’, Tim soon learns, is not all it’s chalked up to be.
It largely means keeping his mouth shut (besides for when his mom nudges him forward to introduce himself to people he doesn’t know and shake their sweaty hands) and hanging onto either Janet or Jack as they talk and talk and talk. It’s boring. He’s bored.
The talking feels like it goes on forever, because Tim is six and not used to being out of the center of attention, and also because apparently charity auctions are really long.
The actual auction doesn’t even start until eight pm (a fact Tim learns after insistently tugging on his mother’s dress and asking when they can leave). Tim isn’t sure what time it is now, but he remembers seeing their digital clock read 4:16 before they left the house—which can’t be good for his dwindling patience. He’s already picked at his nails, pulled on his cuff links, counted every floor tile (a white lie, he gave up around three hundred forty-five), and made up elaborate backstories for six of the gala guests (they’re all black mailing each other for increasingly absurd shenanigans they participated in on one of the men’s wild fortieth birthday party).
There are fancy tables set all around the perimeter of the ballroom. They all sport fragile and expensive objects (and an odd amount of framed photos) with little pieces of papers and Wayne branded pens placed expertly in front of them. Tim has seen his parents leisurely walk up to some and write down their names, but when he asks if now they’re done, they always shake their heads and say ‘no, Tim, just a little while longer’.
In Tim’s opinion, it’s been long enough.
His parents are currently wrapped up in a conversation with a suspiciously bald man. Tim had joined them, at first, but the suspicious bald man glared at him with a curled lip so much that his mother politely excused them and asked if Tim could act like a mature seven year old for a minute and sit quietly by himself. Tim, over the moon for a chance to sit, hastily agreed.
Sitting was nice, for a bit. He drew pictures in the tablecloth and watched his legs kick back and forth as they hung over the edge of the seat.
But his parents just kept talking. Seriously, how do they not get tired of it? Tim is exhausted and all he’s said is ‘Hi! I’m Timothy’ fifteen times.
Tim bided his time, trying to get over his antsiness and the uncomfortable way his suit collar rubbed against his neck. He sipped at some colorful drink a rich lady left near him, stuck out his tongue at the taste, and started another attempt at calculating the amount of tiles in the floor until he remembered that he. Didn’t have to stay here.
Tim had legs, he had free will. He could just…leave.
His mom and dad had wanted him to ‘be good’, and Tim hates to disappoint them, but he thinks if he spends one more second at this auction that is 99% talking and 1% auction, he’s going to go as crazy as the green-haired clown the news anchors are always talking about in hushed mutters on the TV.
So Tim slips out of his chair, and with one quick glance back at his bargaining parents, seamlessly disappears into the crowd of the tipsy and opulent that make up Gotham’s elite.
Tim just needs to find the doors, then he can go home.
His parents will find him later. Maybe they’ll even be proud of how grown up he was; knowing his limits and acting on them properly without disturbing them. His dad will clap him on shoulder and tussle his hair and his mom will plant a kiss on his forehead and then laugh about how she smudged her brown rose lipstick on him…
Yeah, this is a great idea. The best-est, as his dad would say.
Mind made up, Tim bucks up his chin and saunters through the lavish mob like he knows where he’s going. He maneuvers and weaves through women with too-high heels and men Tim can smell have been dabbling in stuff more intense than the fruity drinks the waiters have been carrying around on their circular silver trays. He makes it pretty far before he’s stopped in his tracks by running into the back of a girl wearing a lace dress so sheer Tim can see her underwear. Tim wants to point this out to her—he’d hate if someone just let him walk around with his underpants showing—but he never gets the chance. A calloused hand grabs onto his sleeve and jerks him away.
Tim gasps, whirling around in his captor’s grip to come face to face with the suspicious bald man his parents were talking with.
“Sorry?” Tim squeaks out, trying in vain to yank his arm free.
“You’re the Drakes’ kid, right?” The man asks, an odd grin unfolding on his face as he continues to not let Tim go.
Now, Tim knows all about Stranger Danger. His parents even reviewed it before they left for the night.
“Don’t talk to anyone we don’t introduce you to, don’t talk to anyone more than we ask you to, and don’t, under any circumstances, go with someone we don’t explicitly tell you to go with.”
Tim knows all about Stranger Danger, and this stranger is tripping every single alarm in Tim’s head that screams ’danger! danger!’.
The problem is, none of Tim’s trusted adults are in sight, and everyone else in his immediate vicinity seems a little too inebriated and a lot too inattentive to care if Tim knows this man or not.
But Tim doesn’t want to cause a scene—that will ruin his whole plan of proving himself to be a mature adult who can handle himself. And yelling ‘fire!’ or ‘this man’s a pervert!!’ at the top of his lungs like his mother directed him to do in situations such as this is the most scene-causing thing Tim can imagine.
So, when the man tightens his hold on Tim’s arm and says, “Come on, I’ll get you back to your parents,” with an evil smile, Tim panics. He does the only thing he can think of:
He lunges and sinks his teeth into the guy’s hand.
“Did—Did you just bite me?” The man shrieks, shaking Tim off before wrenching his arm backwards and cradling it to his chest. “Oh, you little guttersnipe—“ but Tim is already bolting away, leaving the bald man gaping in a sea of people giving him disgusted looks with a row of perfectly spaced teeth indents in the back of his left hand.
(Tim won’t realize this for many more years, but he just made his first enemy in the form of Metropolis’ resident billionaire mastermind)
Tim dashes through the mass of partygoers without a care for bumping into them anymore. The time for being pleasant and unobtrusive is over, Tim needs out now. He almost died back there! Maybe. Probably. Stranger Danger didn't like to get into the gritty details of what happened if you did end up talking to strangers, but it was most likely Not Good.
The plan is still totally in motion. He can do this. He will get out of the ballroom—safely—go home, and patiently wait for his parents in the comfort of his own bed, which will be unequivocal proof of how responsible and sagacious he is. His parents will recognize his greatness, and shower him in all the praise such a dependable six year old deserves. It’ll be awesome.
Tim, once he’s sure he’s put enough distance between him and the creepy bald man (yeah, after that performance, the man’s been upgraded from suspicious to just plain creepy) he stops to take a breath. Whew. What a thrill. No wonder his classmates like to race each other so much. That was kind of exhilarating. As well as terrifying but, eh, semantics.
Some of the guests he just (alright, maybe rudely) elbowed through shoot him disgruntled glances, but they don’t try and grab him like the bald man did, so Tim figures he’s okay.
In his haste to get away, Tim lost sight of the doors. No biggie, he’ll just have to find them again.
…
Hm. Okay, he could’ve sworn the last time he looked the doors were easy to spot. To be fair, last he looked was when he was propped up on a high top barstool, but still. They’re these grand, ornate things, which are about seven times Tim’s meager height, give or take. He should be able to see them whether his eye line caps at four feet or not.
So why can’t he?
Tim’s breathing, without his permission, quickens.
Everywhere Tim looks is blocked by people who tower over him in intimidating silhouettes. He twists and he turns but all he’s met with is overwhelming cologne and suffocating perfumes that threaten to smother out the little air he is barely managing to get down as is.
Where are the doors?
A better question barges to the front of his mind:
Where are his parents?
Tim’s heart drops to somewhere between his stomach and his feet.
Tim, he realizes, is scared. Really scared.
He can’t go home, but he can’t go back to his mom and dad, either. He’s trapped in a mob of faceless strangers in a suit that doesn’t fit him right and shoes that are starting to cramp his toes and everything is just becoming a lot? Just, way too much. The lights that weren’t bothering him before are now far too bright, just how everything around him is now far too loud. It’s like he can hear every rustle of fabric or clink of glass, and the conversations his brain mindlessly tuned out before now abruptly fill his ears.
”—I understand, but that doesn’t give her any right—”
“—hear about that lawsuit? Lord, what a mess—”
“—that body? I’m thinking of committing tax fraud just so he can tie me up—”
Tim’s eyes squeeze shut and his small hands come up to clamp over the sides of his head, but it does little to block out the inexorable noise and building pressure in his skull.
He wants his mom. He wants his dad. He wants to be out of this stupid gala and this stupid suit and tucked in his racecar bed with its polka dot patterned sheets, wearing his Minecraft pajamas.
He doesn’t even want to be ‘good’ anymore. He just wants his parents.
Tim doesn’t cry—because he’s a very grown up six year old who can tell that no one likes it when he cries, but also because he’s breathing so fast now that he just physically doesn’t have the breath to.
Tim risks a peek through his squinted eyelids, and immediately gets so overwhelmed that he instantly retreats behind them once more.
Come on, Tim, He thinks sternly, trying to regain some semblance of control over himself, don’t be a baby.
This line of personal-scolding usually works, except right now, Tim is very much feeling like a baby, rather than the mature six and three-quarters year old he is.
He has two clear options here:
(A. He keeps up his impromptu terror tantrum and lets himself melt into a shivering and sniffling puddle on the ballroom floor.
Or.
(B. He mans up and faces the music. There can only be so many adults here, and only so many of them can be weird perverts. Tim has to track down his parents sooner than later.
Eventually, like it always does, cold logic wins out.
Carefully, Tim removes his hands from his ears, and slowly, oh so very slowly, he opens his eyes, too.
The room is just as dizzying and scary as when he hid from it in the first place, but this time, Tim doesn’t shy away from it. He steels himself, sucks in a shaky inhale, and starts off again.
The doors are a lost cause, Tim knows that now. Sure, staying made him so bored he was afraid his brain would turn into the gray mush they serve to Arkham prisoners—but at least if he stays, he has his parents. Parents who protected him from people like the creepy bald man. Parents who would pick him up and let him rest his head on their chests for a little bit in between conversations. Parents who he needs to be back in the arms of within the next fifteen minutes, or else he won’t even try to stave off his rapidly approaching meltdown.
Tim sets his head on a swivel as he once again pushes through rows of human legs and ignores their irked exclamations. He’s gotten quite good at it, by now.
He knows that his mother is wearing a strapless red dress that flows down to her mid-calf, and that his father is wearing a suit so blue it looks almost black, so he keeps his eyes peeled for those colors in particular. He has a few close calls—he almost bowls over some poor woman in a red ballgown because he got so excited he completely forgot that his mother’s dress is a fitted cut.
Tim’s fifteen minutes are ticking down; he can feel it in his bones. He’s so exhausted he just wants to curl up under one of the tables and lie there forever. Tim has to bite his lip to keep from outright whimpering the longer he goes without seeing his parents. With every passing second, he loses more and more of his ability to retain object permanence. What if he never finds his parents? What if they left without him—assuming Tim lived up to be that ‘good’ son he tried to convince them he was? What if Tim’s forced to spend eternity forever stumbling through this overwhelming ballroom? What if—
That’s when Tim sees him: a tall man wearing a dark navy suit. The exact shade of his father’s blazer.
His back is to Tim, and he’s lightly laughing at something a woman wearing a peculiar amount of feathers is saying. It’s the same manufactured Gala Laugh his father has been spewing all night.
Before Tim can overthink it, he’s making a dive for the man’s legs.
“Dad!” He sobs into the pressed fabric of his father’s trousers, relief flooding his senses. The coiled up knot that’s been rotting in Tim’s gut finally loosens.
A calloused hand cautiously comes to rest on Tim’s head, and it just makes Tim cry harder.
He thought he was never going to see his dad again.
“Son?” A deep, gravely voice says from above him, and Tim freezes.
That’s…not what his dad sounds like.
Tim recoils away from the man with a violent lurch, as though the pants he was once clinging to were suddenly blisteringly hot. He cranes his neck up, up, up, and meets the gaze of an unfamiliar man who just might just have the darkest eyes Tim has ever seen.
“You’re…not my dad.” Tim says, voice wobbling precariously.
“No, I am not.” The man easily agrees, then he crouches down to Tim’s level. His knees click, and Tim immediately feels bad. His real dad is always complaining of his aging joints. “I’m Bruce Wayne.”
A couple of gala guests who the man must’ve been talking to before Tim rudely pounced on him chuckle; like this a funny inside joke. Tim only vaguely knows who Bruce Wayne is from his parents off-handedly mentioning him on important phone calls, so whatever joke it is, he doesn’t get it.
“Okay.” Tim sniffles, wiping his nose with his sleeve before holding out his right hand like he’s done a million times tonight. Because at the end of the day Tim is still a Drake, and Drakes are, above anything else, polite, “I’m Timothy Drake.”
The man—Bruce Wayne, apparently—extends his own hand, which has more scars than Tim is expecting, and gently shakes Tim’s. “Well, Timothy, I might not be your father, but I can help you find him, if you’d like?” He asks, using a soothing tone that is like pouring cool water over a burn.
“You’re not gonna grab me, are you?” Tim says warily, because though Bruce seems nice, the bald man is proof one can never be too sure.
Bruce looks temporarily startled, but his expression shutters so fast Tim can nearly believe he’s imagined it.
“I promise you, I will not.” He says, so seriously Tim can’t help but trust him.
“Okay.” Tim repeats, because, once again, he is but six and three-quarters years old, and he is so tired.
Bruce slowly stands up (Tim hears his knees click again, but still wisely doesn’t bring it up) and holds out his hand again. Tim grabs it, not for a handshake this time, but just to hold.
“I think I saw them by security, let’s go look, hm?”
Tim bobs his head in a nod. All his fearful adrenaline has drained out of him in a rush, now that he has the comforting warmth of Bruce’s hand around his.
Something subconscious in him must have determined that Bruce is safe, and Tim is helpless to argue with it.
Tim tries to keep up with Bruce’s long strides, he does, but his legs are very short, and he’s mentally lagging behind as is. Bruce takes notice of this (because Tim is really off his game currently) and offers out his arms in a wordless offer. Tim’s quiet tears increase tenfold at the gesture.
Bruce immediately backs off, remorse written over his features as he misinterprets Tim’s crying, and that’s not what Tim wants at all.
Tim’s hands fling out to reach for him and make a childish grabbing motion, and thankfully Bruce picks up his meaning before Tim can get too embarrassed about it.
Strong arms wrap around him as they lift him up, and they remind him so much of his father’s Tim can’t help but sob again.
“I want my dad.” He hiccups into Bruce’s collar. And it’s humiliating, but he doesn’t care.
A hand comes up to rub comfortingly at his back. “I know, bud.” Bruce’s low baritone mutters, “We’re almost there.”
Tim curls into himself, and lets out an indiscernible mumble. His eyes fall close, and time thaws into meaningless drivel.
When Tim wakes up, it will be in his mother’s arms instead of Bruce’s. Her cool, shaking fingers will be gliding through his snarly hair as she coos whispered endearments to him. He will make out a blurry image of his frazzled father fiercely shaking hands with a sympathetic Bruce Wayne, who will send him a wink once he notices that Tim is looking. His mother will tell him they’re so sorry, and that maybe they’ll wait until he’s a little older before taking him to another gala. Tim will grin, and his mother will pinch his cheek and say that they’re so proud that he found his way back to them.
But that will all come later. Right now, Tim is cradled in Bruce Wayne’s arms, and he is safe.