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The day at the office runs long. By the end of it, Dick feels completely out of it, his body no longer under his own control. He thinks it’s been years since he was this jittery, vibrating out of his own skin.
It’s why he asks Peter to let him walk home that night. He argues that he has the anklet on anyway, and that the team would be altered should he leave the premises he’s allowed to be in. Peter agrees after an hour of ferocious debating, perhaps noticing the exhaustion that Dick stopped trying to hide hours ago.
Dick is walking to his apartment, when he spots Tim three blocks from the FBI offices. His brother is standing in an alley, weight leaned on the wall behind him, eyes closed. He’s dressed in casual clothes, dark enough to conceal him in the night. Dick recognises the sweater hanging off of him, an old hand-me-down Jason had stolen from him before Tim had gotten his hands on it.
Dick doesn’t know what the Baby Bird is doing here. Bruce doesn’t let the kids leave Gotham on their own, paranoid after what went down with Jason. Tim must have gotten someone to cover for him, or convinced Alfred this was something worth leaving for. Dick hopes he at least informed his family he was leaving before showing up in a different state.
Tim looks almost relaxed, his shoulders loose enough to pass. Fortunately, Dick knows him well enough that the small crinkles in his posture, the slight lean of his body give away his permanent exhaustion and something akin to anticipation. Tim is waiting for him, it seems. He wouldn’t show up here with no purpose, and the only worthwhile thing in this city is Dick.
Dick stops across the street from the narrow alley. Tim doesn’t even budge. Dick reasons that the matter isn’t urgent if the boy isn't hunting him down. Tim has a reason, definitely, he wouldn’t be here otherwise. From the looks of it, it’s not an emergency. Those would have been reported to Dick through the burner phone he always keeps on him.
Honestly, Dick doesn’t really feel like talking to Tim. He doesn’t particularly want to talk to any of his family members, even if his heart aches with their absence. The wound is too raw, still sluggishly bleeding. Dick is aware he’s ruining himself by refusing to let it heal—constantly scratching and probing it, like an agitated cat attacking a piece of threadable furniture.
It’s hard to stay away from home, but Dick has a point to prove and a promise to keep. It’s easier to do that if they're not near, their gravitational pull doing its best to drag him into the Bat’s orbit when he’s with them.
It doesn’t matter if every day is getting harder and longer. It doesn’t matter, if he feels like the world is collapsing, when he’s lying in bed, trying to sleep. The insomnia is harrowing.
Dick starts the trek towards Tim, knowing he has no other choice. It’s not worth the effort to walk off and ignore the boy— this confrontation is happening one way or another, and Dick figures it might as well be on his own terms.
The alley Tim chose to settle in is damp, the rain from the day before giving it a musky, dirty smell reminiscent of Gotham streets. Like this, hiding in the narrows of a darkened city, Dick can almost believe he’s back home. Part of him is sure that the choice was intentional, on his brother’s end.
Tim doesn’t look up when Dick settles in next to him. His posture gives him away, though, the minute relaxation that comes with no longer being alone. Dick doesn’t question how his brother knows it’s him. He doesn’t question how Tim knew he would be walking home tonight, or predict the precise rough he ended up taking to his apartment. Dick doesn't question why the boy is here.
The air is clean in New York, and it becomes far too obvious when Dick stops for long enough to focus on it. To distract himself, Dick reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out the box of cigarettes he’d bought in the morning. Then he pulls out an electric lighter from the hollow in his boot, a pair specially designed to hide weapons. Dick never thought he'd be using it for something so vain.
He flicks the switch on the lighter, and for the first time since spotting him, Dick can see Tim clearly. The dancing flames set their faces alight. They consume the air between them, charging it with a tension they can’t just be shaken off.
Dick can’t help noticing the dark cavities beneath Tim’s eyes. His brother looks worse for wear than usual, his skin a sickly pale. His frame is skinnier than it was, despite the fact that he’s had close to no fat on him even before Dick left.
In the silence of the night, Dick stares at Tim, while Tim stares at the flaming butt of his brother’s cigarette. Blinking out of his stupor, the seventeen-year-old holds out his hand, then mumbles, “Share?”
The question is empty, weightless. Tim doesn’t plead, he doesn’t act like this is rebellion. Jason must have been sharing with him then, Dick realises. He doesn’t feel half as upset as he wishes he did.
Begrudgingly, Dick takes a final puff from the cigarette between his lips, then hands it over to the Baby Bird. It's more of an effort to argue than it is to give in, anyway. It would be too hypocritical, and Dick doesn’t think he can handle the screaming match that’ll cause.
He consoles himself with the fact that he wasn’t the first to introduce Tim to the lung poison. He tries not to be too torn up about the fact that he was definitely an enforcer, if nothing else.
None of it feels relevant enough to linger on, in the stifling darkness surrounding them, with family finally by his side. Dick lights another cigarette when the silence becomes an uncomfortable level of oppressing, the walls closing in around them.
He ignores his shaking fingers, proof that the careful control he’s worked all his life on is slipping. He carefully avoids thinking about Alfred's disappointment, or Jason's laughing murmur of “Another addict in the family.” He definitely doesn’t think of what Bruce might say, should he see his eldest son reduced to this mess.
It takes a little while, before either of them speak up. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing to say, in the abundance of everything. Maybe there’s no good way to bring up all the things that have earned themselves the title of wrong, or sick, or ailing. Maybe Dick is just a coward, willing to let the silence consume him if it means he can remain stagnant.
Tim is halfway through his cigarette when the hand he’s holding it in drops from his mouth, hanging limply by the leg he’s perched on the wall. He doesn’t seem to care enough to snuff it out. Breathing out, he closes his eyes, as though preparing to say something he knows he shouldn’t be voicing.
Dully, Dick is aware there is no possible situation in which this goes well. There is no way they can avoid everything, unless they never speak again. Despite his lingering reluctance, Dick knows it would be far crueler a fate for him to stay away forever than to suffer now. He takes a deep breath and pretends, for just a moment, that he can stay in this balancing act between real-life and home for a little longer.
Tim is the one who tips the scales. “You should come back,” he says, phrasing it like a demand instead of a question.
Dick supposes that it might work better, for Tim to demand instead of beg. Or maybe it’s just the insufferable stubbornness—an inability to back down—that they all inherited from Bruce, that doesn’t allow him or any of his siblings to ask something of him. Not something this large, something they want this badly. Not something that’s killing all of them, no matter that everyone has been claiming that there are no breaks in their relationships.
Dick hasn’t seen Damian in months. He hasn’t seen Jason for longer. The ache of absence burns, the flames flickering in tandem with the burning cigarettes between them. Dick pulls the smoke from his mouth when the pain becomes so all consuming that he feels as though he’s about to catch aflame.
Dick braces himself for the oncoming conversation. He sighs before answering, his shoulders hanging, head resting against the wall behind him, face tilted to the sky. “We both know I can’t do that, Timmy,” he whispers, tension rolling off of him in waves.
Dick knows he doesn’t sound overly convincing, if at all. He doesn’t find it in himself to care, when the world has been dull for months, when his only motivation has been this mantra, this goal for which he’s allowing his soul to be consumed.
Tim takes another puff of his cigarette, still refusing to look Dick in the face. “Your hands are shaking,” he notes, instead of saying something about Dick’s refusal. Dick doesn’t answer. He knows it’s true, he can’t ignore it when they were all raised to be observant enough for a detail like it to seem crucial.
Tim finally looks towards Dick, gesturing with his head to the cigarette box by his brother’s feet. “How many do you go through in a day, huh?” he scowls, eyes narrowed and eyebrows pinched.
Dick goes to defend himself, but Tim’s eyes snap up to him before he can. “One?” he tilts his head to the side, then chuckles hollowly when he sees the guilt on Dick’s face. “More? Jesus, Dick,” he runs his left hand down his face, the right still holding onto the burning butt of his smoke.
“‘S not like you’re any better, Baby Bird,” Dick refutes, because Tim isn’t, not from the way he inhales nicotine like it’s going to save him from inherent tragedy. “Have ya been sharin’ with Jay?”
Tim exhales, and it almost sounds amused. “Who else?” he asks. Shoulders shuddering in relief, Dick hangs his head low, training his eyes on the beaten pavement under them. At least this means that none of their other siblings have succumbed to the horrifying ordeal of borderline addiction. Dick hasn’t failed them that badly, not yet.
While better acquainting himself with the ground, Dick goes to try and change things anyway. Futilely, his words echo off the walls, “He shouldn't do that.” Tim takes another deep drag of his cigarette before facing Dick. The smoke exiting his lips acts like the first rebuttal before a real argument.
Tim looks determined when he speaks, his eyes glittering with something close to hope, “Come back and you can stop him,” he says, “Just come back and both of us will stop, I promise Dick— I promise.”
In response, Dick, ever the coward, goes to deflect. “You could never stop Jay, Timmy.” Tim shakes his head. The commitment is astounding, truly. His trust is baffling, but Dick has the decency to hope the boy is right. He himself would give anything to be able to wane Jason off the poison. He would kill the Joker, if that’s what it took.
“I would, I— I’d do it, whatever it took,” Tim ends up voicing, matching Dick’s internal monologue exactly. Dick hates that he can’t doubt his younger brother.
“I know,” he agrees, meaning it fully. Tim needs to understand that, even if all they do for the next decade is dance around life changing arguments. Dick would never question him on this, and Tim needs to know it.
Tim’s eyes screw shut in the wake of the simple agreement. He doesn’t open them when he says, “Then let me. Please, let me help.”
Dick shakes his head, stern. “No,” he says, and it’s as final as if Bruce had said it.
After a tense moment of complete silence, Tim laughs at him. It sounds bitter, like it’s getting produced around a rock jammed in his throat—with great difficulty and none of the usual ease that comes from laughter. “Fuck you,” he spits, “And your fuckin’— superiority complex, or whatever.”
Dick doesn’t refute him. It wouldn’t change anything, not when those labels always come up when someone wants to hurt him. Their family is good at resorting to the same insults, attacking the same weak points. They were all taught it’s most effective to hit someone where you know they're wounded.
“Jay was right, you really are the Golden Boy,” Tim murmurs around another breath of smoke, and Dick is finds it difficult to listen to him at all. That nickname brings back too much, it burns in a way that can’t be rectified.
“Don’t go there, Tim—please don’t,” Dick tries, having an easier time speaking up than taking the verbal equivalent of a beating. He can’t do this tonight, with shaking hands and a barely functioning body, unable to hide behind the image of a perfect son.
Tim doesn’t continue, thankfully. Dick goes back to smoking, lighting another cigarette when the one between his fingers finally becomes too small to keep using. It’s almost cathartic, to focus on breathing in nicotine fumes instead of Tim’s steady presence next to him.
Dick doesn’t think about much of anything for a while. He tries to focus on the feeling of smoke in his lungs, an artificial warmth that he needs to keep going. He doesn’t think about his brothers. He doesn’t think about his father, or Alfie, or his sisters and teammates—he doesn’t think about any of them.
He relishes in the silence, for however long it lasts. His cigarette has turned halfway to ashes before the conversation starts back up. Tim looks like he’s trying to find more ammunition, his eyes steely and charged with something disgustingly vile, an urge to hurt where it makes the biggest difference.
All the while, Tim continues working at his own cigarette, a perfect reflection of Dick. Even when it’s slowly nearing its end, he doesn’t ask for another. The boy remains leaned back onto the alley’s grimy wall, propping his boot against it and balancing on one leg. He would look serene, in another setting. He has the calm features and the frail body for it, yet he couldn’t appear farther from the calm and relaxed, with the cigarette between his fingers, the rough look of his face.
Dick prepares for another accusation. The conversation isn’t over, not if Tim and Dick are both still in this alley, engaging in a game of cat and mouse. Dick is almost scared of what underhanded tactic Tim will choose to employ next. He gets his answer after he’s successfully smoked through a third of his own cigarette.
The silence is shattered by a smirk overtaking Tim’s expression. His face is vicious with it, yet he still doesn’t look at Dick. He pulls the almost dead cigarette back to his lips, laughing out, “You’re gonna die a paranoid bastard, ya know that?” The slight drawl, picked up from too many hours on Jason’s ratty couch, talking until their pasts seemed irrelevant, slips through Tim’s teeth like he’s always had it. Dick wishes he could pinpoint when Tim’s anger started sounding exactly like Jason’s.
And God, does his brother manage to strike right to where it hurts most. “Tim just—just leave it, please,” he asks, trying to do anything in his power to convince Tim not to continue. Dick can’t talk about this, he can’t find it in himself to confront the reality of his upbringing.
Tim huffs at him, smoke blowing out his nose. “You can’t change yourself, for God’s sake,” he scowls, “You’re goin’ to die paranoid, Dick, or you’re goin’ to die young and fightin’.”
Dick tries to deny him now, instead of avoiding the topic. He knows it isn’t the best strategy, that it will most likely backfire in the long run, but denial has always been easier than acceptance. “No. Tim, I’m not I—I swear.”
Tim snaps at him like a rubber band cut loose. “Your hands are fucking shaking!” he yells, voice pitching up an octave. Dick has half a mind to worry that someone on the main street will overhear them.
“Look at yourself,” the boy continues, “You’re on your third cigarette, and you can’t stop shaking!” His breath hitches as he finishes, panting with his anger.
Dick runs a hand through his hair in frustration, trying for denial even when he knows it’s fruitless, “It’s different this time: I’m different.”
The silence following his declaration doesn’t last all of two seconds. “We’re all the same!” Tim bursts out. “You’re not—” he takes a deep breath, and Dick avoids his gaze, “You’re the same as us,” he sighs out.
“B ruined us— he fuckin’ took away our ability to—to be normal.” Tim waves his hands around, “You’re never goin’ to be able to be—to do this, Dick!”
It’s almost funny, in a way. Tim is saying something so obvious it’s pathetic. Dick guesses sometimes things need to be said, no matter how clear they may be. Their father taught them that, with all the problems they’d had because he refused to point out what he thought everyone knew. At least one good thing came from it.
Dick laughs at his brother. The boy’s face is so contorted, horribly charged with frustration—Dick finds it almost funny. “You had a choice, Baby Bird,” he breathes out so lightly that his volume is a meek blur in contrast to Tim’s. He isn’t bitter about it anymore, to be honest. Too much time has passed, too many arguments have been had, and Dick learned that it was best for him to just forget.
“Shut the fuck up,” Tim barks, too soft to have any bite to it, “You’d have ended up like this anyway, you idiot.”
Logically, Dick knows the boy is right—it’s not all Bruce’s fault. Dick is who he is because of what happened to his parents, not because a millionaire with a hobby of vigilanting took him in. He'd be worse off, arguably, with what he’d dreamed of doing to his parents’ killers.
For his own sanity, he doesn’t continue that train of thought. Tim doesn’t either, stretching the silence between them for longer.
Dick brings the burning cigarette back to his lips. The ashes he hadn’t bothered to tap off flake onto his jacket, ruining the perfect ironing that he’d had gotten done at the dry cleaners last week. Maybe he’ll go again soon, if he gathers up the motivation.
“How long can you keep this goin’?” Tim’s eyes stay on the sky above them. He must be admiring the stars, which haven’t been visible in Gotham for decades. Dick wishes they’d remained as much of a novelty as they were a year ago.
Dick inhales slowly, breath hitching around his words, “I don’t know.” It’s an admission in all the ways that matter.
He doesn’t expect it when a soft exhale leaves Tim, when he speaks a confession of emotion that every Bat tries to avoid. “I miss you, Dick,” he whispers, like he’ll be reprimanded for it.
Dick’s eyes can’t help watering. It’s nice to hear, even if he’d known it must have been true for Tim to come here all the way from Gotham. He takes another drag of his burning cigarette, trying to distract himself from the blurring brick of the alley.
It doesn’t work, and eventually, Dick is forced to admit, “I miss you too.” His voice cracks in the middle of it, like it isn’t used to making such atrocious statements. “So, so much Tim.”
Tim’s breath hitches around a sob, and before Dick can even make a move to try and comfort him, a heavy weight is crashing into his side. Tim’s head slams into his collar bone, and Dick drops his cigarette to catch the both of them on the wall.
He wraps his arms around his little brother, so tightly that he can convince himself he’ll never need to let go. Tim fits into his hold comfortably, like Dick had never left at all. The boy cries into his shoulder, and Dick can no longer stop the tears from running down his face.
“I love you, Baby Bird,” he cries, suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to make sure Tim knows. His little brother needs to know, he needs to be aware that nothing has changed, no matter how long Dick has been away. Tim sobs harder, and Dick worries that he might have failed him, in the time they haven’t spoken.
He pries Tim’s face away from his shoulder, calloused hands guiding the boy’s head until their foreheads are rested against one another. “Timmy, you mean the world to me —you and our brothers.”
At the statement, Tim surges back into Dick’s arms, his hands wrapping around his older brother’s neck. Dick secures his hold around Tim’s shoulders. “I—I love you too Dick, I love you,” the boy sputters, like it won’t mean anything if he doesn’t say it now.
Dick, who knows all too well that the home Tim grew up in didn’t allow for this to be spoken, can understand the desperation. Tim saw the chance, the opening, and he jumped for it, aching. Dick figures it’s because it’s easier to make sure your loved ones know it, before you part ways for longer periods of time. It’s perfectly clear that Tim doesn’t want them to separate, but the boy has been nothing but a planner from day one, foresight his strongest weapon.
They stay like that, for a while. Slick tears running down both of their faces, hot and warm against the biting night air. Tim sobs while Dick cries silently, face buried in the boy’s hair. Even with all the fear and sadness poisoning the air, Dick feels fulfilled for the first time in a long time.
This is what he’s meant to be, he realises: a steady shoulder to cry on, a person who has feelings and loves hugs. Not the muted version of him—the mask called Neal Caffrey—cynical and always smug, believing he’s better than others. Dick couldn’t be farther from that, and it’s easy to admit it, with family embracing him.
“Come home,” Tim whispers after a while. His voice is hoarse, quivering around his tears. He sounds like he’s begging, for the first time since the conversation started. Dick doesn’t have the strength to deny him verbally, so he shakes his head instead.
Tim doesn’t give up, of course. He isn’t the type. “Then just for tonight— one night, Dick, just for dinner, so we can catch up.”
Dick shakes his head again. He wants to see their family, he really does, but he can’t face Bruce, not like this. He knows the whites of his eyes are redder than they should be, that he looks so exhausted it can’t be excused anymore. There are packs of cigarettes in the pockets of every jacket he owns, and he can’t— he can’t do that. He doesn’t know what their father will do or say, just that he needs to avoid it at any cost. “I can’t go to the manor, Tim—” his breath catches, “I can’t face B or—or Alfie.”
This time, it’s Tim who pulls away. His cheeks are still covered in tears, eyes red. Under them, Dick can see determination. It takes over Tim’s face, every nook and cranny of his expression, until he looks like someone else entirely.
“We’ll—we’ll go to Jay’s!” he starts, “He’ll make us food, I’m sure, and—and we won’t tell B, you know we won’t!”
Maybe the problem is the fact that Dick does indeed know. Jason has never been too inclined to hand every detail of his life to their father, and Tim has always been the best at keeping secrets. If Dick goes tonight, he won’t lose anything.
He doesn’t agree immediately. As great of an idea as it is, there will be no going back if he leaves. Jason will expect him back, after the first time. It’s how their brother works—he’s willing to play by someone’s boundaries until they tear them down themselves. After that, the ball is in his field, and Jason is unyielding, unwilling to back down.
As luck has it, Tim isn’t any different. Once he spots a weakness, he attacks ruthlessly. Usually, there is close to nothing that can convince him to give up. With his big brother finally in his clutches, it’s clear nothing Dick does will convince him this isn’t worth it.
“I’ll call Jay,” he starts, on the verge of a tangent, “He’ll even bring over the Demon Brat, and we can— we can watch one of those crappy action movies you love so much.”
Tim’s eyes are filled with hope, and Dick can feel his little brother winning. That sounds so nice, finally a night where he can fall asleep comfortable and warm, with family by his side. It sounds intoxicating, and before he knows it, Dick finds himself caving, “Okay.”
Tim, honest to God, whoops in response. He detaches himself from Dick, pumping his fist in the air, a real grin finally overtaking his face. Dick is embarrassed to admit just how endearing he finds it. A small smile takes over his own expression, and it somehow feels realer than anything he’s given the FBI team in the last year.
“Okay, okay, let's go!” Tim shouts, glowing even through the darkness. He looks like a Robin again, with all the freedom and joy of the world possessing him. Dick can’t bear to rip it away, so he follows along when Tim grabs his hand and starts stalking into the night.
They stop abruptly in front of the alley’s mouth, and before Dick can ask what’s happening, Tim turns to him, and says gratefully, “Thank you.”
Dick can’t help smiling wider. He doesn’t remember why he’d argued at all now, the warmth in his chest too comforting to even think of discarding. “Of course.”
Dick ends up in Jason’s apartment that night. By the end of it, he’s stuffed with the best food he’s had in months, his brothers sprawled around him on Jay’s ugly couch. Dick shouldn’t be there, but he is. It’s the start of an avalanche— it’s a waiting game until the scale tips. Dick has a feeling it won’t be in his favor. He isn’t upset.
—
Three weeks after their conversation, Peter Burke pulls up in front of Neal Caffrey’s apartment. This would be no different to any other day, had Neal showed up.
He doesn’t. After twenty minutes of waiting Peter lets himself inside the man’s home. The space looks normal, except it’s completely void of one Neal Caffrey.
That is until a box of cigarettes on the kitchen counter stops Peter dead in his tracks. Neal isn’t supposed to have access to those—not now and not ever. On the box, in barely legible handwriting, a note written in permanent marker reads: No more shaky hands. Peter doesn’t know what it means, so he keeps looking for his CI.
He never finds him. Neal Caffrey is gone, even years later, a cigarette box all he left them. His shadow lingers, but the smoke never dissipates.