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There is no part of him that does not ache.
Jason’s been pulled in a million directions for ages, running on little sleep and even littler patience, and this is his first night off in weeks. He’s got a bottle of wine and two slices of chocolate cake with his name on them after he finishes up a quick meeting with some of his men, and he’s home and in his pajamas before nine.
The Joker has, once again, broken free from Arkham, and he’d been dangerously close to entering Jason’s territory. His entire crew had been on high alert, but there was news now that he’d moved to the other end of Gotham entirely, and once Jason has confirmed that to be true, he allows himself to take one much needed night of rest.
He’s just uncorked his wine when his personal phone begins to ring, and Jason throws his head back and yells at the ceiling. He doesn’t bother checking the caller ID, because he already knows that it’s going to be one of his men, and he really, really doesn’t want to have to talk about the Joker again tonight.
“What the hell do you want now?”
“Jason?”
Jason blinks, because that’s Tim on the other line. He wonders how the hell the kid got his hands on this number, then remembers that he’d given it to him after the little idiot had gotten himself hit with Fear Toxin.
“Tim? What’s happened?”
“Um, I, uh…I don’t know where I am?” It sounds like he’s trying desperately not to cry, and Jason tosses the bottle of wine aside and shoves his feet back into his boots. “I was, um, trying to come to you? But, I can’t remember where your apartment is, and I think I’m lost. Can you…can you please come and get me?”
“I’m coming, I’m coming, Tim, just hang on. Do you know where you are? Can you see any street signs?”
“There’s a corner store. Murray’s?”
He’s less than three blocks away, and Jason forgoes his bike entirely and breaks into a sprint. “Stay on the line,” he barks. “Don’t you dare hang up.”
“I won’t.”
It takes him barely any time at all before Jason rounds the corner by Murray’s and begins to look for Tim. He’s expecting to see the boy curled up on the floor in his Robin suit, and pauses when he sees Tim fidgeting under a street light dressed in civvies.
“Hood,” the kid breathes in relief. Tear tracks shine on his cheeks, and he’s absolutely soaked from head to toe, but he doesn’t look injured.
“Jesus, kid, how long have you been out here?” What must have started off as a grey sweater has been stained to near-black with rain, and his bangs drip water into his eyes.
“Um, I walked from the Manor?”
“You walked?” That’s a two hour trek at least. Alarm bells are ringing in Jason’s head, and he strips out of his jacket and wraps it around Tim’s too-narrow shoulders. “Okay, come on. It’s not far. You almost found it.”
Tim huddles close to Jason as they walk back to the apartment, and Jason forces himself to calm down even as his mind races. Has the kid somehow gotten himself dosed with Fear Toxin again? It’s been months since Jason found him that night, but who knows if they were able to get all of Crane’s supply off the streets. Or perhaps it's some of Ivy’s pollen, or a new strain of Joker Venom, or maybe it’s something else entirely.
By the time they make it back, Jason feels as though he’s one wrong step away from a full blown panic attack, and he ushers the kid onto the sofa before either one of them falls over.
“Where are you hit, kid?” Jason runs his hands over Tim’s hair, hunting for a head wound, but the kid shies away from the touch.
“I’m not hurt.”
“...what?”
“I’m not hurt?” Tim looks up at him through his still soaking bangs. “Um, well, I guess I’m a little cold from the rain, but I’m fine.”
Jason’s vision flashes green so violently that he almost vomits.
“One rule,” he hisses, thinking of his evening plans that have now been well and truly destroyed by the selfish little prick now shivering in his living room. “I gave you one fucking rule about calling me. Tell me, Replacement, are you bleeding out right now?”
Tim ducks his head, and Jason barely resists the urge to throttle him.
“Do you have any idea how busy I am? How much shit I’ve had to deal with now that the Joker’s running around? Do you even care that he’s out there, or are you too busy wasting my time to bother putting on that suit that you stole? I thought you were actually hurt! But no, you’re completely fine, you attention-seeking little-”
“Did Bruce ever hit you?”
Jason stops dead in his tracks.
The sheer absurdity of those words steals the breath from his lungs, and his mouth falls open as he stares at Tim. The boy doesn’t lift his head, and raindrops fall from his hair and onto the carpet by his feet.
“Tim,” Jason croaks. “Did he touch you?”
It’s absurd. The idea of it is laughable, and Jason can’t wrap his head around the fact that Tim is here asking him if Bruce had ever hurt him.
During his first few weeks in the Manor, Bruce hadn’t come within five feet of Jason. He’d be so kind, careful to make himself small when he entered a room as he kept a safe distance. Jason had been terrified of him, of this strange man who had whisked him away to a house that looked like something from a fairytale, and he’d been paralyzed by fear as he’d waited for the other shoe to drop.
“I won’t ever hurt you,” Bruce had said to him over and over again. “I promise you, Jason, I will never hurt you.”
And Jason had believed him, because over the years, Bruce had kept his word. Sure, he’d yelled and slammed a door or two, but not once had Jason ever thought that that man would raise a hand to him.
But that was a long time ago, and Tim is not Jason.
“Tim, I need you to answer me. Did he touch you?”
“I thought he was going to.” Tim wraps his arms around himself and makes himself impossibly smaller. “I wanted to go out on patrol, but he kept saying no, and then he just started screaming. He…he threw some stuff around, and then he kept on yelling, and I…I thought he was going to and…I just…he scared me.”
Tim doesn’t make a sound as he begins to cry. He just buries his face in his hands and shakes, and Jason’s mouth goes dry.
Jason knows little about Tim’s parents, but he knows enough about Gotham’s elite to fill in the gaps. Bruce had been an anomaly among the upper class, an exception the rules that Dick had taught Jason to navigate, and Jason wonders what the fuck has been happening behind the doors of Drake Manor.
“Bruce never hit me,” Jason says. “But, Tim, kid, do your parents-”
“Hit me?” Tim laughs, a short, broken thing that makes Jason flinch. “You know, sometimes I wish that they would. It’d mean they actually cared.”
Quiet tears start to build into an almost unrecognizable anger, and Jason can do nothing but watch as Tim’s cheeks begin to flush red.
“You know, I was hoping that you would say yes. That you’d tell me he used to beat the crap out of you and Dick, and that that was what it meant to be Robin, but now you’re telling me that it’s just me? That I’m the problem, even after everything I’ve done? Do you know how many times I’ve let him take out his anger on me? How many times I’ve let him call me Jason just so he’ll stop looking like he’s going to throw himself off a building?” Tim laughs that cold laugh again. “I didn’t even do anything wrong! The Joker is out there, and I know that that terrifies him, but all I wanted to do was help. All I’ve ever wanted to do is help, and he threw a fucking toolbox at me.”
Tim gets up abruptly, and Jason goes to steady him as he stumbles, but Tim flinches back.
“You’re right,” he mutters. “You’re right, this isn’t an emergency. I shouldn’t have come here. I just didn’t want to go home, but you’re right, Jason, I’m sorry. I won’t call you again.”
“Sit the fuck down,” Jason snaps. He hadn’t meant to yell, and he forces himself to take a deep breath. “Just…just sit down, okay? Why didn’t you want to go home?”
“I didn’t want to be by myself.” When Tim sits, Jason does so too, and Jason’s pants grow damp where their thighs brush together. He hadn’t been out in the rain long enough for his clothes to soak through like Tim’s, and he pulls a blanket from the back of the couch and tosses it over both of them. “I panicked, and I didn’t know where else to go, and by the time I realized what I was doing, I was already halfway here.”
“And your parents? Won’t they be worried?”
“They aren’t here. Work trip in Morocco.”
Jason is at a loss for words. He comes to the startling realization that he knows very little about this kid outside of his identity as Robin. There’s a vague memory of meeting the Drakes at a gala once somewhere in the back of his mind, but the image is hazy. Most of his memories from before are like that, almost like he’s looking at them through a pane of frosted glass, and Jason can’t even remember if he’d met Tim at all or just the boy’s parents.
He has no clue how to comfort Tim, not when the image he’d had of Bruce Wayne is very quickly falling to pieces. How could the man who had raised him cause such distress in this boy? Robins were precious, and Jason had known that no matter how viciously he and Bruce had used to argue, Bruce would never have laid a hand on him. The idea of Bruce even throwing something at him was downright absurd.
“I just want him to like me.” Tim’s voice is quiet, so quiet that Jason almost doesn’t hear him.
“Tim, why wouldn’t he like you?”
“Oh, because I’m not you, Jason,” Tim shouts. “I’m just the neighbor’s kid who forced his way into something he had no right to get involved with in the first place! I’m a second-rate replacement in a stolen suit, and I know that every single time he looks at me, he wishes that it was you under my mask. I’m not his kid, Jason, I’m barely even his Robin, and I knew that it was only a matter of time before he finally got sick and tired of me.”
This time, when Tim cries, great heaving sobs wrack his chest, and he hunches in on himself as he wails. Jason wastes no time before he pulls the kid into his lap and squeezes. The kid is cold and wet and he gets snot all over Jason’s shirt, but Jason just holds him tighter.
“I’m sorry.” Jason really doesn’t know what else to say. “You’re not a replacement. God, I never should have called you that. I’m sorry, Tim.”
Tim keeps on crying, so Jason just rests his chin on the boy’s hair and holds him close. He thinks of the Bruce he had known and thinks that maybe that man might have died right along with Jason. It’s clear that he’s changed, that he’s older and angrier and far less kind to little boys in pixie boots, and Jason remembers how Tim had been calling for Bruce under the influence of Fear Toxin.
Please, Bruce, I’ll be better.
Jason knows what Scarecrow’s Toxin does to the mind, knows how it clings to the deepest and darkest things that your mind fears, and Jason had been so preoccupied with trying to get Tim to safety that he hadn’t even realized the kid had been afraid of Bruce.
When Tim’s tears slow, Jason heaves a sigh and loosens his hold ever so slightly.
“You’re gonna catch a cold if you stay in these wet clothes any longer.” Jason helps the kid off his lap, then goes to fetch a towel and some pajamas. “Bedroom’s first door on the right. Bathroom’s right in front of it if you wanna shower, but I feel like you already got a pretty good rinsing.”
That makes Tim laugh. He doesn’t go and shower, but the second Jason hears the bedroom door click shut, he drops his head into his hands and lets himself fall apart.
He’s hurt this kid before. He’d broken bones, cut through flesh, left pale skin littered with bruises, and even after all of that, Tim has come here looking for comfort. Jason wonders how lonely Tim must be if he has no one else to turn to.
When Tim comes out, Jason rubs his eyes and gets to his feet.
“Right,” he says and claps his hands. “I have chocolate cake and a rerun of Glee to get through. You got school tomorrow?”
Tim tilts his head. It’s a mannerism they all share, something inherited from Dick’s time as Robin. “It’s Saturday, Jason.”
“Right. I knew that.”
He tries to remember how Dick had taken care of him when he had slept over in Bludhaven as a kid. Dick’s apartment had been a shithole, but Jason had still found it impossibly cool. He doubts that Tim thinks he’s as cool as Dick, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try and emulate whatever Dick had done to make him feel welcome.
“So, sleepover?”
“You don’t have to be nice to me.” Tim twists the hem of Jason’s massive shirt between his fingers. “I’m okay now.”
Jason wants to say so much more, but the words catch in his throat. He doesn’t know this boy, and there is no way that he can fix the damage that Bruce has caused in one night. Still, he has to try.
“Look, kid, I know I said that you’re only allowed to call me in an emergency, but I’m taking that back. Since Dick is obviously doing a horrible job, I’m-”
“Dick isn’t doing a horrible job!”
“Kid, this is the second time I’ve had to save your sorry ass.” Jason crosses his arms to hide the shaking of his hands. “Someone’s gotta teach you to be Robin. Not all the fighting and the proper way to write a report, but the real shit. This job’s not easy. Dick helped me, and now it’s time for me to help you. And if you say no, you’re kind of robbing me of the opportunity to properly pass on my mantle, which would be a real dick move.”
Tim seems unimpressed, and he raises one dark brow. “You can’t honestly expect me to fall for that, Jason. You tried to kill me less than a year ago.”
“And yet here you are.” Jason holds out one of his hands to shake. “So, next time you’re upset because Bruce is being an ass, you call me, okay? Doesn’t have to be an emergency. Just…I’m here if you need me. Does that sound okay?”
Tim stares at his outstretched hand with an unreadable expression on his face. For a moment, Jason thinks he’s going to decline, going to curl back in on himself and hide, but then he surges forward and wraps his arms around Jason’s neck. Jason grunts in surprise before he hugs Tim back.
“That sounds okay,” Tim says, voice muffled where his face is pressed into Jason’s neck.
Tomorrow, Jason will wake up and dial a number he hasn’t in years. Alfred will pick up the phone, and they will have a long, hard talk about the man that Bruce Wayne has become. Jason will call Dick, too, and they will talk for even longer as they examine their childhoods with this new understanding of the man that had raised them.
But for now, Tim and Jason sit on the couch with chocolate staining their teeth as they hum along to Glee, and Jason still doesn’t quite know what to do with this boy and his too-sharp wit and his too-sad eyes, but he makes a promise to himself to try.
Birds of a feather and all that, he thinks as Tim’s head comes to rest on his shoulder.