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It’s only when he can’t sleep does Tim reflect on his teammates like this. Teammate, he should say. The girls, obviously, get their own tent and Superboy had turned down sharing with him and Bart because he didn’t want to keep them up by still talking. He thinks Tim can’t hear him; out there mumbling to himself about growing older and taller. Clearly that little dig must’ve gotten to him if he’s whisper-singing.
It’s him and Bart alone. The thought is as terrifying as it is electric.
Tim can feel the excitement and anxiety mix induced nausea in his veins. He can feel Bart’s breathing, so slow and so fast at once, on his arms with how cramped it is. It makes his hair stand up on end, skin prickling as Bart’s eyelashes (so long, how the hell are they longer than Cissie’s?) flutter in the depths of his R.E.M. stages of sleep. Is that sped up? Impulse, as he is, experiences the world at twenty times the speed Tim does. Tim can’t curve a bullet, he can’t save twenty people with only his hands in the span of a single blink. As it is, Bart is the best on the team along with Superboy and Cassie. Him and Cissie are exceedingly ordinary. Even Cissie can do things with her faster reflexes.
Maybe Tim’s the odd one out. Would the others really want to be on the same team as him if they found out he was just some kid from Gotham, picked up by Batman because he begged hard enough? He wanted to be special and he got the opportunity to experience his dream first-hand, not just from fan-club polls. He got to decide the shit the polls were about now. He had everything he never had with his father. Never had when he was just Tim Drake. He knows Bart doesn’t see the world, their world, that way. He sees himself as the baseline and everyone else as differing drastically from what he expects but he was raised in such a way that Tim wonders if he could’ve turned out any other way.
He wouldn’t change that about Bart, though. Bart isn’t perfect. He’s named Impulse, for chrissakes. Bart doesn’t listen when Tim says to stop or to fall back when a plan changes. He doesn’t hear the very real fear Tim has of him suddenly, improbably, dying in front of the team (in front of him) and being left to pick up the pieces.
Bart’s eyes are suddenly open and Tim stiffens. He knows that he can’t see past the domino, see his eyes remaining open even so late into the night, but instincts from Bruce have trained him to freeze up at any and all vulnerability. His skin and blood are peaked for more sickening reasons than the usual Bart related thoughts now. Tim wishes he could rip his face right off and let Bart see so far down below he wouldn’t just know his name and his blood and his DNA, he’d know Tim better than anybody living and dead. Tim wishes Bart would stop looking at him. Tim wishes Bart would never have to blink.
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Bart can hear Tim’s 110 BPM roaring in his ears like it’s his own. He’d like to think that it’s because he went on a run or found something to blush about but considering the fact that his breathing is extremely stable (up, wait seven seconds, down, up…) he doubts it. Tim’s breath aside, he’s been staring for a while if he had to put a time on it. During the game earlier, he was dared to stay quiet for five minutes. Sure, the team made fun of him for not being able to do even that, but now he really feels the lack of words in his throat. Tim’s just staring, breath controlled and heartbeat fast like a trapped animal that Uncle Max would sometimes show Bart just for the hell of it.
Like Bart’s keeping him there.
His stomach churns and Bart can feel bile rush into his throat. The idea of keeping Tim is hideous enough, nobody should be kept, but of himself doing it? Worse. So much worse. Why does that sound so bad? The girls talk about love and relationships all the time; about being somebody’s. Bart likes the idea of being someone’s in a roundabout way, but he can’t imagine it like he can with Wally and Iris. Is it something you grow out of? Are you only mine and yours when you’re a teenager and then become truly together when you’re older than old, like Wally and Barry? It doesn’t make sense. None of this does. Cassie made fun of him before, at the bonfire, for saying he was normal. But he is! Bart is normal, nobody else… thinks like him. How can he be the weird one if everyone else is so different? Why does he always have to be the odd one out?
Bart wishes, deep and heavy like it’s crushing his bones, for Tim to understand everything he suddenly cannot say. He can’t explain to Tim, here and now, that he wants to hold and be held while maintaining the comfortability they usually have. His eyes sting and he wishes he could move fast enough that Tim wouldn’t even notice him move. Which is worse: crying or wiping your eyes as quickly as you can without your friend noticing? His breath is speeding up, heartbeat thumping faster, faster than Tim's. 123, 126, 129. He wishes patterns helped him like they help Tim or Tim’s family. He feels so sick.
Why can’t Tim take off his mask? See eye to eye physically? Bart wonders as he hyperventilates. He wonders why Tim isn’t doing anything, if he doesn’t hear Bart’s heartbeat and lungs pumping so fast it would kill a normal person. Normal. Maybe Tim doesn’t care. Maybe Tim thinks Bart is a nuisance like everybody else. Stupid Impulse, Stupid Bart, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid! That’s all it ever is!
He sees more than he feels Tim’s gloved hand in his. And Bart doesn’t even have to pretend that this is enough.
For once, it’s all he’s ever wanted.