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It was mid-winter in Gotham and only growing colder by the day. Tim was perched on one of the three old warehouses circling the Southside Docks. His intel indicated that there would be a gun shipment arriving sometime in the dead of night. Well, there would be, sometime that week. Possibly? His sources were a little shaky. As far as he knew, the bad weather had delayed the ship’s progress and now things were uncertain.
For a perfectionist like Tim, he’d feel embarrassed about his less than stellar information, but truth be told, it was low on his list of issues.
Red Robin was fresh from production, as it were. He’d only been wearing that particular mask for just over a month now. And though the outfit he wore was designed to be stab and bullet resistant, it certainly wasn’t insulated. Not yet anyway.
He sat in a snowdrift, crouched in a pile of snow that was growing larger distressingly fast. The new suit was thick enough to block the icy ocean winds that buffeted him, but the combination of inactivity and the actual act of sitting in snow made for one frozen hero.
During the first week of December, Nightwing had ‘discovered’ him on the top of a building in the city limit of Gotham and had given him a thermos of hot chocolate. It came with a carabineer so it could easily be clipped to the utility belt, a little trick of the trade for carrying foodstuffs with them during missions. For his part, Tim was cool towards him. He excelled at the art of cold-shouldering.
Tim wasn’t a shouter or a naturally explosive person. He didn’t throw tantrums like Damian, or become dangerously irate like Jason. No, Tim became cold. He became efficient, compartmentalizing the fact that he needed to continue working alongside the rest of the Bats, and therefore he’d have to behave accordingly. Inside, however, he was equal parts furious and devastated.
He was back to square one.
It took him years to prove to himself and Batman and the rest of their costumed family that he was good enough to be Robin, to be among them and fight side by side with them. Then he had to shoulder his way into the Teen Titans, in the shadow of his oldest brother, and prove to them that he had what it took to be one of them too. And then Dick took the mantel away and handed it right to Damian. Damian, who could have literally become anyone else. Damian who scorned him and spat in his face and told him in no uncertain terms that he. Wasn’t. Good. Enough.
So Tim started over again.
And when Dick approached him that night on the roof and offered him something warm to drink, Tim accepted politely and lapsed into silence. Dick stood a moment, awkward and pained, before telling Tim to please take care of himself. Tim turned from him without a word, so when Dick left, he wasn’t aware of it.
He was in his own apartment now, but his motivations were skewed. He had heaps of boxes lying in the corners of every room, but he’d only really focused on setting up his computer and hanging his dress clothes up in the closet. That pretty much encapsulated everything that he deemed important at that moment. Tim drifted between establishing his new hero persona and working more hours than was socially acceptable at Wayne Enterprise.
He aggressively approached crime-fighting to the extent that he’d made a record-breaking amount of arrests, and at the rate he was going, he’d have to start slapping handcuffs on jaywalkers. At least that’s what he mused to himself before setting off after the next conquest.
Tim was, in a word, driven. He was so single-minded about his work that he was very quickly running himself into the ground. The only time he deigned to eat was when Tam sat a doughnut and coffee at his desk. Or sometimes he’d run into the corner convenience store on his way home and grab an instant ramen just to stop the gnawing hunger. The less said about how poorly he was sleeping, the better.
Currently, he was on day three of dock-watching. No boats came through at night, and certainly, no one was irresponsible enough to try and sail on the ill-tempered choppy winter waters. If they didn’t arrive within the next few days… Tim hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. He would have to come up with a plan. He wasn’t about to admit to himself that the only reason why he threw himself at this job was because he had nothing else important going on in his life right then. He certainly wasn’t going to make the effort to find anything else either.
He lifted his binoculars with numb fingers and gazed out into the dark water from time to time, determined to see this through.
Given that he’d been out there for hours, it was only fair that the hand warmers he’d shoved in his boots before coming had long ago stopped being useful. He hadn’t been able to feel his toes in a longer amount of time he than he was comfortable admitting. Tim was shivering, his breath pluming out in front of his face as he peered through half-mast eyelids. At some point he gave his straining ankles a break and sat down, dangling his legs over the side of the building and unintentionally exposing himself to more of the frozen roof. It couldn’t be helped if he expected to be in for the long haul. He was terribly sleepy though.
The sound of something hefty landing on the roof with him stirred him awake a little, but he couldn’t move. It could have been Batman himself, back from the grave, and he wouldn’t have been able to summon the energy to even turn and look.
“Hey, kid,” a gravelly voice met his ears when the boots stopped crunching through the snow behind him.
“N asked me to check on you. Looks like it was a good call. What the hell are you doing here?”
Tim didn’t say anything for a moment. He could have said something about Dick’s unwelcome mother-henning, that he didn’t need a babysitter, but his mind was running sluggishly.
“ ‘m watching for guns,” he mumbled incomprehensively. Jason ‘hm’ed behind him, hands on his hips as he, too, looked out over the water.
“Let’s pretend that made sense, huh?”
Jason crouched beside him and gave him a proper once over. He frowned at what he saw.
“You’re not looking so hot,” he observed. “Been out here long?”
“Just a… a while.”
It sounded like a question, the way he said it like he was completely oblivious to the passage of time.
“Listen, kid, time to pack it in. You look like you’re frozen to the roof. Sit there any longer and you’ll be buried in the snow. N wouldn’t let me hear the end of it,” he moved while he spoke, sliding his hands under Tim’s armpits. A weak sound of protest escaped Tim, but his legs were unresponsive and heavy.
“ ‘A while’ my ass… You’re a goddamn ice cube,” Jason grumbled, bundling the teen onto his back. Tim just rested his already numb cheek against the cold leather of Jason’s shoulder and allowed himself to be carried away.
_
Tim drifted off, not having the sense to be afraid that the other, estranged ex-Robin, was taking him somewhere without his full knowledge or verbal consent. They may not have been at each other’s throats anymore (or rather, Jason wasn’t gunning for Tim’s blood), but they’d only just settled into a mutual respect. Tentatively. Tim wasn’t sure if needing to be rescued from himself counted as rocking the relationship boat, as it were.
He was jostled awake several times because of a hard landing, or an awkward, heavy step, but he didn’t become fully aware of his surroundings until Jason stepped inside what appeared to be an apartment building. It was definitely warmer inside than out and Tim roused a little. He could immediately tell that it wasn’t his own place of residence, however.
“Where’re we?” he asked groggily.
“My place,” was the short reply.
Jason continued to piggyback him onto the elevator, jamming his finger into the number of his supposed floor. The plastic cover to half the buttons were cracked and weathered, and after a glance around, Tim noted that there weren’t any cameras. It may not have been a high end living arrangement, but Jason appeared to trust it just fine. It seemed like the kind of place where the neighbors minded their own business and the leaser wouldn’t ask many questions.
Between the family members, Jason rivaled Bruce in paranoia. Sure, Tim’s contingencies had contingencies, but he considered himself as someone being practical-plus. But Jason liked to be family-proof while also being ‘in the wind,’ so he had multiple bolt holes all over Gotham to bunker down in. He wouldn’t choose them if they weren’t safe.
Jason carried him down a hall that had yellowed wallpaper that didn’t look as if it had been updated since the 70’s. He came to a stop at a nondescript door and fiddled with the handle and lock mechanism. Tim assumed he’d set up his own, more secure lock to keep out unwanted guests.
A few seconds later and Jason was toeing the door open with his boot, only pausing to kick it closed behind them. The apartment was dark, but Jason managed to navigate them to a broken-down couch in the main room. He allowed Tim to slide off his back until he was seated on a squashy cushion. Tim thumped down with no resistance, watching as Jason moved into the attached kitchen.
Jason flipped on the light and stood for a moment, in thought, before he disengaged his helmet and tugged it free. He placed it on the counter, opening side up, and busied his hands by filling a mug (seemingly his only one) with water and placing it in the microwave. He seemed distracted, like he was trying to make up his mind about something.
While the appliance hummed away, he idly picked at the adhesive of his domino. When it finally pulled free, he dropped it in his helmet and fished the burner phone from his pocket.
He only then focused on Tim long enough to hand him the steaming mug of hot water, ordering him to drink. Tim nodded, gratefully wrapping his hands around the heat of the mug while Jason turned back to the kitchen. He dialed a number he seemed to have memorized and when the person on the other end picked up, Jason spoke in low tones so he couldn’t be overheard.
“Slowly!” Jason barked when Tim sputtered and coughed on his first gulp. He sipped more carefully after that, while Jason paced around his kitchen, making jerky, annoyed motions. His large, muscular arm waving around would have been comical if Tim were of the right mind to appreciate the absurdity of the situation. At last, he hung up and dropped the phone into his helmet as well.
Jason walked past him without sparing a glance his way. He disappeared into a room somewhere behind Tim. The younger of the two dutifully drained the mug, but craned his neck when he heard the creak of water suddenly rushing through ancient plumbing in the direction Jason had stalked off in. Tim couldn’t see anything much in the shadowy apartment, so he opted to lean towards the single side table in the room to set down the empty mug.
The action caused him to list to the side and he stayed there, eyes fluttering closed. He was completely wiped out. Tim didn’t even perk up when Jason returned, grumbling under his breath.
“You owe me big time,” he groused, crouching in front of Tim. He started by tugging off Tim’s gauntlets, piling them beside him on the couch. If Tim was puzzled, he didn’t let on, just breathed softly while Jason manipulated his lifeless body.
“Dick is going to – do you have this booby-trapped?” he paused, Tim’s cape halfway unhooked. Tim listlessly shook his head, eyes still closed, and Jason resumed. He pressed Tim forward so that his forehead rested on Jason’s broad shoulder while he went about the business of unclasping the small hooks down his back that kept his torso armor together.
“Well, Dick’s going to owe me big time, too.”
Jason wrapped an arm around Tim’s narrow waist and lifted him a little so he could shimmy his pants down his legs. Even though he was literally manhandling Tim’s mostly limp form, he wasn’t unnecessarily rough. This surprised Tim. He was used to every physical encounter with the Red Hood ending in bruises, even when Jason wasn’t explicitly out to get him.
“Jesus Christ, kid, do you ever see the sun?”
Jason flipped the latches on his boots and wiggled them off his feet. They thumped to the floor and Tim wanted to comment on how Jason was just as pale as he was, but all that came out were garbled words that sounded a lot more defensive than they made sense. Jason smirked, easily grasping the sentiment behind it.
The larger man pulled Tim to his feet and they stood in place until he was sure Tim could remain upright. He was unsteady like a foal, and the change in altitude left him dizzy, but he blinked himself awake again. Maybe Jason would take him somewhere he could sleep?
Instead, Tim was shuffled into the bathroom where water was slowly filling the bathtub. Jason slapped a hand on the handle and the water stopped.
“Can you manage?”
“Yeah,” Tim nodded.
His head swam, but he was steady enough. Jason left the room (pointedly leaving a foot wide gap in the mostly closed door), and Tim shakily kicked out of his boxer briefs. He hissed when he dipped his toes in the water. It wasn’t hot, was barely steaming, but it burned his ice cold skin as he slid inside.
Once he was folded as far down as possible, submerged up to his chin (despite the water level being purposely low so he wouldn’t drown if he drifted off), Tim sighed. He adjusted quickly to the sting as his body thawed out. Taking inventory of the room, he noted the old fashioned light fixture placed above the cloudy mirror. The room was clean enough, if aged and worm. He idly picked at the crumbling grout around the edge of the tub.
He could hear Jason walking outside the room, moving around in his apartment and although he heard talking, he assumed the man was muttering to himself. He sounded irritated, but Tim couldn’t make out what he was saying.
His eyes slid closed again and he was fully willing to allow himself to fall asleep right there, the water making him feel like he was floating.
“Look, you said ‘get him warm.’ You didn’t say how!” Jason insisted peevishly and Tim wondered if he was on the phone again. That is until the door was shoved open and Dick spilled into the room. Tim jerked awake, his stomach doing an unpleasant flip at being startled.
Dick was frowning, concern naked on his expressive face, but Tim was only concerned with covering himself from view.
“H-hey!” he protested weakly, moving his leg to surreptitiously cover himself.
“Timmy,” Dick said, his voice injected with an inhuman amount of worry. From anyone else, it would have sounded fake, exaggerated, but this was pure, unfiltered Dick Grayson.
“Oh, look at you. You need to get dry, Babybird,” he said, pulling the singular towel off the rack beside the tub. “This is the worst thing for hypothermia, honestly…”
“Be more specific next time!” Jason growled from the other room.
“C’mon, up,” Dick held the towel out expectantly. Tim was still a little shocked. Ever since stripping Tim of Robin, Dick had made himself mostly scarce. They had seen each other less than a handful of times since the event and none of those times were Tim’s doing.
After a moment’s hesitation, he struggled up from the bath, one hand still attempting to preserve his modesty. He was immediately enveloped in the scratchy, threadbare towel, and Dick brusquely rubbed the water from his shoulders. He seemed to give up the ghost when he realized the shitty towel wasn’t actually going to absorb anything and was just pushing water droplets around on Tim’s skin.
Instead, he focused on pulling Tim along with him out of the room. Tim might’ve protested all the shoving around he’d been put through that evening, but he didn’t want to start an argument. He felt as though his bones were hollowed out, his head heavy on his shoulders, and he allowed himself to be pushed into a seated position on what he could only guess was Jason’s bed.
The chill of the air on his wet skin made him shiver, clutching the towel more tightly around his body to block it out. Dick, for his part, was digging through Jason’s dresser drawers.
“I don’t know if he’s got anything that’ll fit,” he said, almost to himself.
A shadow fell over the doorway and Tim glanced up only to see Jason standing there, arms crossed over his chest. He looked incredibly put-upon, his mouth in a severe flat line. Tim felt like an intruder. Here they were, in Jason's personal space, invading the intensely private man’s belongings.
An apology was on the tip of Tim’s tongue when Dick derailed his train of thought with a happy exclamation. He returned to Tim’s side with a pair of sweat pants, a T-shirt, and a red hoodie that looked as if it had been washed over five-hundred times. Dick placed his findings on the bed and squeezed Tim’s shoulder encouragingly.
“Get dressed. I’ll be back in a little bit,” and true to his word, he and Jason left the room, shutting the door behind them.
Tim sat in silence. He could hear the two men conversing quietly somewhere in the apartment, their voices muffled through the door. He was numb, in spite of the conflicting emotions trying to make themselves known, clamoring for space in his head. As soon as he grasped at a feeling (outrage, frustration, hopelessness) it slipped through his fingers like sand and he felt slow and stupid for it.
What Dick had said about him having hypothermia, it was probably true. He knew in a detached, avoidant sort of way that he was in a free fall, his life falling apart under his feet no matter how stubbornly he stood his ground. It had started a while ago, with death after death of his loved ones. Each one making dark marks on his life, like ink splatters on paper.
And every time he turned around, something else (mourning and devastation again and again) piled on top, slowly crushing him under the weight of it all
Finally, Tim’s mind caught up with the present, his body trembling (was it the cold, or his dark thoughts?). He quickly got dressed, not needing Dick to burst in on him again. He had to pull the drawstrings on his sweats tight to keep them from sliding down his thin hips, and the shirt hung loose around his shoulders. When he struggled into the hoodie, it just about reached his knees, but he’d already started to feel better. Tim looked down at his pale little toes poking out from his pant legs.
Now that he had a chance to look around the room, he could see that it had a single window and that snow was still falling outside, soft and silent. He wondered vaguely, while he chewed at the side of his thumb, if he could escape out that window and make it back to his place. He could fall asleep in his own bed and forget everything that’d happened that night.
A gentle knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
He wouldn’t get far on bare feet anyway.
“Hey, kiddo,” Dick said, a tentative smile on his face as he slipped into the room.
Tim had thought that when they were face to face, with no masks between them, that he wouldn’t be able to control the anger that was sure to show on his face. But instead, Tim’s expression could only reflect the exhaustion and emptiness he felt deep in his bones. His anxiety prickled dully at the prospect of facing Dick now.
Dick walked quietly towards him, as if he were afraid Tim would react to his presence unfavorably. As if he was afraid to be turned away. His footsteps barely made a sound on his best days anyway, Tim considered blankly. He carried a steaming thermos with him and Tim could smell the savory broth within as it was handed to him.
“So…” he bit his lip, at a loss for words. It was never like this before. They had disagreements, but nothing had ever made a chasm so deep, so wide between them before. Tim could feel the void stretching, so hollow and hungry, and it hurt deep in his chest.
He wanted everything back the way it was.
Dick sighed, rubbing at his eyes. He was obviously stressed too.
“Drink up. I brought it from home. Won’t be as good as Alfie’s, but it’ll help get you warm. I need to- uh, I need a word with Jay.”
He hooked a thumb out towards the main room and left the way he came, taking all his awkwardness and unspoken words with him.
Tim pulled his legs up from the chilled floor, curling up at the foot of the bed. Just smelling the broth made his stomach ache in its emptiness. He found himself gulping it down after the first couple sips. It was scalding hot on his tongue, but it soothed the nearly constant cramp of hunger he’d been ignoring the last few months. It was a cheap can of soup, something oily and with only a handful of noodles and a small number of sort-of-chicken pieces, but it was the tastiest thing Tim had consumed in a long-ass time.
With his belly pleasantly full, he set the empty thermos on the rickety-looking side table by the head of the bed. Tim was careful not to place it on top of the dog-eared paperback Jason was obviously in the middle of reading. It had seen better days, and could only have been a thrift store purchase judging by the neon green sticker on the back cover.
Tim didn’t think too hard about his next decision. He was simply too tired to be awake any longer, so he curled up in the middle of the bed, pillowing his head on one arm, and closed his eyes.
_
Sometime later Tim felt the mattress dip beside him. He drifted in the space between sleeping and awareness and had difficulty waking enough to figure out what was going on. Cool fingers brushed over his brow and someone leaning above him tut-tutted. The same someone climbed more fully onto the bed and Tim suddenly felt hands carefully maneuvering him.
He made a small sound in protest but couldn't do anything but allow it. His head landed on a pillow, a blanket pulled up over his shoulders.
“Jay,” he heard Dick whisper. “Could you…?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Tim felt the air around him displace with movement. He cracked open his eyes and could see Jason hunched over the old radiator that sat under the window. It hummed to life, the pipes in the walls rattling like everything else seemed to in the old apartment. The sound woke Tim a little more.
“It’ll take a few minutes,” Jason hummed. “Probably best to close the door and keep the heat in.”
“Thanks, Jason,” Dick said, already climbing under the covers beside Tim.
“There’s room for three.”
Jason scoffed and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Dick took it in stride, not expecting him to take the offer anyway. He snaked his arms around Tim, pulling him close and rolling him so that they faced each other. Tim sighed happily, sleep drunk, and rubbed the tip of his cold nose into the heat of Dick’s throat. He still smelled faintly of that morning's shaving creme, the scent painfully familiar to Tim.
“Tim,” Dick said, an edge of seriousness to his soft, quiet voice.
“I know… things haven’t been easy lately. And I know I contributed to it.”
Tim felt his Adam’s apple bob.
“There hasn’t been a day since I… since I gave the title to Damian that I haven’t regretted hurting you.”
Tim was frozen in place. He didn’t imagine this being the position he was in when they had this conversation. He certainly assumed there’d be more personal space, and a lot more icy stares on his part. To be honest, he wasn’t even certain that they were going to talk about it at all. None of the Bats were well-versed in the art of communication.
Fortunately, Dick came the closest to being an emotionally developed member of society, so he had a slight edge on the rest of them.
“There are too many things happening all at once, Babybird, and I’m so overwhelmed,” he whispered into Tim’s hair, his voice a little shaky.
“And I’m trying to do the right thing, I’m trying, but god, do I wish Bruce were here to make the hard decisions for me.”
His arms tightened and Tim found himself instinctively hugging him back. He had been so upset, so focused on his own inner turmoil that he didn’t make room for the consideration of the rest of the family’s feelings. They were all suffering with Bruce gone.
Even Damian, who was so angry, so volatile, had to deal with the incomprehensible position of losing his father. Instead of allowing anyone to sympathize with him, he lashed out first and he lashed out hard. And if it made him too prickly to be around, too ugly to empathize with, then he succeeded.
Tim felt like a really terrible person right then.
He knew, just like most of their family members, what it felt like to lose a loved one, and he should have put himself in their shoes. Even for a moment. Just to understand them. Perhaps, eventually, he would have come to that conclusion on his own, when the sting of his own pain faded to a tolerable level. But like Dick said – so much was happening so quickly that they were all having a tough time bouncing back.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t about me,” Dick said, his voice affected and wet sounding.
“We’re going to have to talk about this later, maybe tomorrow? Do you want me to leave?”
He was stroking Tim’s hair, his fingers trailing down the back of his neck, then back up and in his hair again. It was comforting, and Tim felt the craggy canyon between them become smaller, less painful.
“It’s okay, Dick,” he murmured into the skin of his throat.
If Dick moved away he didn’t think he could bear it. And it really was okay; Dick staying there, Dick’s emotional admission. It wasn’t fixed and they weren’t done dealing with it.
But it was okay.
“Go back to sleep, Timmy.”
_
The next time Tim woke he couldn’t figure out why.
The room was still dark, but it was definitely warm now as the radiator chugged along. He was snuggled up tight against Dick’s long body, the older man’s legs tangled with his and Tim’s face still tucked under his chin. He could feel Dick’s soft breath in his hair as he continued to sleep.
The bedsprings creaked and the mattress dipped again as someone else crawled in behind him. He started to turn his head, a question on his lips, but he was cut off by Jason’s gruff voice.
“Fucking freezing on the couch,” he grumbled, and sure enough, his body was chilly against Tim’s back.
“Go back to sleep. We’re going to need all the energy we can get to deal with Dick tomorrow.”
Tim smiled faintly when a heavy arm was slung over his side.
He fell asleep to the sound of heartbeats surrounding him.