Chapter Text
Honestly, Jason isn’t even thinking about anything when it happens. They’re in the Cave so he’s on edge to begin with — Bruce is behind him, a looming shadow to his left — and he’s had a shit week and he’s tired and pissed-off and he just wants to get out of there. So when Tim gets to, like, part 6 of his presentation about these shitty out-of-town traffickers who have set up shop in Crime Alley and are targeting Alley kids, and there’s still no actual conclusion, he can’t help himself. He interrupts.
“How is all this shit relevant, Replacement?” he demands. “I don’t need to know this guy’s fucking horoscope to put a bullet in his skull.” Dick coughs. Jason grits his teeth. “Not that I’m going to,” he grinds out reluctantly and feels Bruce’s gaze hot on the back of his neck. “But why the fuck do we need all this detail?”
“Because,” Tim says, in his cold pedantic voice, “the fact that he’s extremely superstitious is relevant to the timing of the operation. He won’t start anything new on the night of a lunar eclipse.”
“Fine,” Jason grinds out. “So you’re very smart and you’ve figured out when the goddamn lunar eclipse isn’t. Why can’t you just tell us the date? We don’t need to see all the math.”
“Drake is always showing off,” Damian pipes up in his prissy little voice. “He does it for attention.”
“Damian,” Dick says wearily and doesn’t say anything more. Jason feels a corner of his mouth twitch. His amusement is more at Dick’s resigned-dad tone than anything else but he has to admit he also thinks the brat has a bit of a point. The Replacement does love to prove how smart he is.
“There are other astrological variables,” Tim says, a little more stiffly now. He’s not looking at anyone, staring distantly at a point somewhere over Dick’s shoulder. “You should be aware —”
“This is nonsense,” Damian interrupts again. “You are wasting our time on trivialities.”
“I’m trying to make sure we don’t waste our time by planning a stake-out on a night that doesn’t work,” Tim snaps back in a slightly more human voice. He’s still not looking at anyone as he speaks. “There are more than thirty astrological factors we need to be aware of to predict Dennison’s next move.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jason says under his breath. Finally, Tim deigns to look him in the eye. He’s not wearing his stupid cowl or his domino but his face is still a perfect mask, perfectly expressionless.
“I’m sorry this is boring you,” he says tightly. “But unfortunately I don’t have a more efficient way of presenting you with the information that you need. There are six possible candidate dates in the next five months and —”
“So give me the fucking candidate dates!” Jason explodes. “I don’t. Need. To see. The math.”
“Jason,” Bruce says and that’s all it takes. His rage flips from a ten to a hundred in the span of a second.
“Shut up,” he says savagely. “These are real kids this fucker is taking off my streets, okay? Real —” He draws a breath. Glares at Tim because he’s not ready to turn his head and glare at Bruce. “They’re real. They’re not some little logic exercise for you to practice your genius deduction skills on, okay? They’re real kids, with real families who love them, not little robots like —” He stops short. He’s not sure why. Nothing obvious in Tim’s expression has changed but there was something, a blink, a breath, a flicker of an eyelash, that stopped him. He’s still breathing hard, still angry, but there’s a queasy dip in his gut at the look on the kid’s face and he doesn’t know why.
“I apologize,” Tim says neutrally, after a brief moment of silence that feels longer than it actually is. “I do understand the stakes, Hood. I can try and condense some of the detail.”
“Okay,” Jason says curtly. He still feels weirdly off-balance, like he missed a step somewhere. That feeling at the pit of his stomach hasn’t gone away and it doesn’t go away for the rest of the briefing, even as Tim brings up maps and draws neat lines showing the route of the trucks and highlights dates and brings up photos of Dennison’s six deputies and thirty-seven gangmasters. It’s good, useful intel. The Replacement is ridiculously good at what he does. He has to admit that, now that his irritation has eased a little, replaced by that odd cold creeping feeling in his gut. He just. He keeps noticing things about Tim, now that he’s started actually focusing on him for once. There are purple shadows under his eyes. His knuckles are cracked and bleeding and he seems not to have noticed at all. There’s a thinness to the set of his mouth that Jason doesn’t remember seeing there before, back in the day, when the kid was Robin and used to — laugh more. God. When was the last time he saw Tim even smile?
Finally, the briefing is over and the world’s worst party breaks up. Dick puts his hand on Tim’s shoulder and Jason is still watching, still trying to figure out what that wrong feeling that’s eating at him is, and so he sees how tentative Dick’s touch is and how quickly and quietly Tim shies out from under it.
“Good job,” Dick says and hesitates. Jason remembers listening to Nightwing and Robin banter over comms, back in the day, burning with rage and — he can admit it now — jealousy. Where did all that go? When did all this hesitating start? “Sticking around for dinner?”
“Sorry I can’t,” Tim says politely, as if he’s turning down an invite to a business dinner. “Another time.”
“Are you sure?” Bruce asks. “You’d be very welcome.”
There’s a little pause and then Tim does smile. It’s not much of a smile, now that Jason sees him do it. It’s thin and lopsided and there’s no warmth to it, just a kind of tired irony. He sees the kid’s eyes flicker briefly over to where Robin is standing and watching him, alert and hostile as a leashed dog waiting for another dog to get the fuck out of its territory, and then flicker back to Bruce.
“Thanks,” he says and his voice is still flawlessly polite — business-polite — but there’s an edge of irony to it that’s sharp enough to cut. “I appreciate it. But I can’t make it tonight.”
Bruce doesn’t fight him on it. He just nods and then Jason hears him suck in a careful breath and he knows at once what’s coming.
“Jason?”
“What?” Jason demands. “Am I staying to dinner?”
He sees Bruce carefully not-flinch at the tone of his voice. There’s that awful longing in Bruce’s face that Jason is always trying not to look at. Tim turns and begins to walk away, towards where his bike is parked.
“You have to eat,” Bruce says. “And it’s late.”
“Fuck off,” Jason says and tells himself he doesn’t give a shit as Bruce controls another not-flinch and just nods sombrely like Jason has given him an instruction he intends to take very seriously. He turns away and slams his helmet back on.
Red Robin is already all cowled up and ready to go by the time Jason makes it to his own bike. He revs up the engine without looking at Jason and then Jason, for some reason, for no reason he wants to think about, stops him.
“Hey.”
The engine stops abruptly. The cowl turns towards him.
“Yeah.” A little pause. “What do you need?”
“Nothing,” Jason says and feels his face heat under the helmet. Fuck, this is awkward. “Just. You did a good job, okay? I’m — you did a good job. Thanks.”
There’s a long silence. Tim just stares at him blankly until he feels that he’s gone literally tomato-red with embarrassment. This was such a bad idea.
“Are you,” Tim says cautiously. “Jason. Did you get exposed to something?”
“Fuck off,” Jason snaps, grateful to have a reason to be annoyed again. “I don’t have to be compromised to say thank you, okay? I have manners.”
“Could have fooled me,” Tim says, just under his breath and then winces. “Sorry. Um. No problem. It was nothing?”
“It didn’t look like nothing,” Jason says, as off-hand as he can. “It looked like a fuck-ton of work. Months of work.”
“I guess,” Tim says. He still sounds bewildered, like he can’t understand what Jason’s getting at in this conversation. “That’s the job, right?”
“Right,” Jason says, though he’s fairly sure that it’s not what he wants to say. He has no idea what he wants to say and then it’s too late. Tim gives him another beat of silence, waiting for Jason to tell him what he actually wants, and then nods and revs his engine again.
“See you,” he says and then he’s gone. Jason heads out a minute later, still trying to ignore the twisting sensation in his gut. He’s got a bad feeling about what that is. They’re real kids with real families who love them, he said, and Tim looked at him — just for a second — exactly as he would have if Jason had reached out and smacked him across the face. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. And he doesn’t even know where the kid lives.