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Tim swings his legs thoughtfully, looking out the window to watch the urban scenery pass by. It’s been nice, going out to see the lions and tigers and bears. But he liked seeing other animals as well. Like the otters, swimming around and pawing at the rubber ball. He also liked when some of them held on to each other when they slept and floated on top of the water peacefully.
But his fun had been ruined by Damian leading both him and Bruce to the elephants right after, and stated proudly that he wanted to ride one, leading into an argument of at what age was it alright for a kid to ride an elephant, which was resolved with the promise of soft serve ice cream paid by Bruce, of course.
But Tim be damned. He may be six, but he knows that three-year-olds shouldn’t be able to ride on elephants by themselves -which Damian insisted- cause they’ll fall off. And even though he doesn’t like Damian, well…not as much as he likes Dick, he still doesn’t want Damian to fall from that height. It’s dangerous.
With the thought of his brother, he looks over, noticing immediately that Damian was tuckered out. His limbs slack over Bruce’s lap, one arm almost reaching for Tim with short fingers that had dirt under their fingernails. His baby brother’s chubby face is slack, cheek smushed against Bruce’s arm which is doing a bad job of keeping him up. He looks almost ready to fall off.
Tim looks up to see why -ignoring the murmurs and giggles from the other passengers- and finds that Bruce is napping as well. Rather strangely too. The man’s head resting on the train handrail with his mouth slightly open with a weird noise coming from it. As Tim strains his ears, he figures out that it’s light snoring.
The six-year-old purses his lips in concentration, climbing up onto the seat to be level with Bruce’s head. He reaches a small hand up to poke his father’s cheek, and snatches his hand back when Bruce snorts, cutting off mid-snore, and shifts his head to rest on the backrest. The boy does his best not to giggle along with the other riders, knowing it’s rude to wake Bruce up when he sleeps.
Well, Tim can’t exactly blame him, having to deal with Damian for a whole day is a full time job.
Movement directs his attention to a slowly sinking Damian, the younger boy’s hand lifting and brushing Tim’s face as he continues to slide down.
Tim gets off the seat quickly, scrambling to keep Damian from going lower any further. He huffs, arms straining as he tries to push him up by his armpits, tip-toeing to get him even higher. To his relief, Bruce’s arms tighten instinctively, helping to hoist Damian up even higher and more securely. He tries his best, but he can’t see much of Bruce’s head, which probably meant he was still asleep.
The young boy lets go and fixes Bruce so that one hand was grasping the opposite wrist. He nods, before climbing back onto his seat to his knees again so that he can get Damian’s arms in a more comfortable spot.
Tim grabs the closest hand to him and folds it, tucking it under Damian’s cheek so that he is cradled by his arm, and nods in approval. Then he reaches around Bruce’s wide shoulders, stretching till he can grip Damian’s tiny fingers and pull it around so that his younger brother is clutching the back of Bruce’s neck.
Satisfied, he sits properly in his seat, smiling when Damian sighs and rubs his cheek on his hand, muttering something Tim can’t hear. He smiles shyly at the man with the glasses sitting across from him, who had looked up from his newspaper with a grin on his face. The moment breaks when the man looks down again and starts reading.
Tim leans against Bruce and stares ahead as he fights back a yawn, thinking that he needs to stay awake so that they get off at the right stop, where Alfred, Dick, and Jason promised they’d be waiting to pick them up.
And he does…until the next thing he knows he is being coaxed out of sleep with Bruce shaking him gently before the train comes to a complete stop at their station.