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“So,” said Barbara, “I think we need to reconfigure the firewall around the watchtower to head off the security concerns this kind of satellite could pose as it gets smarter. If we line it up right, the whole watchtower would be essentially invisible to this kind of spyware, while also co-opting the spyware for earth’s defense. That’s where you come in, Jason.”
As Barbara spoke, Tim watched her apartment window slide quietly open. He saw the slightly sooty head of Nightwing appear in the window frame and spill over the windowsill onto the hardwood, Barbara’s speech uninterrupted.
Moving slowly and with a deep weariness, Nightwing pulled himself up and trudged towards the desk of the Mighty Oracle, completely oblivious to Tim standing behind her or Jason crosslegged on the floor beside her.
Without pausing her explanation of how Jason was going to steal Luxcorp space tech from space, Babs held one arm out to Nightwing where he waited, hesitant on the rug. He took his cue and climbed into her lap.
Oracle explained the necessity of precise timing on this space mission while Nightwing wrapped himself around her front and buried his face in her shoulder. Babs, undaunted, reacted only by setting her chin on his shoulder so she could see the screen while she went through the details of her plan.
Nightwing clung to her, completely still, except for the slight tremor at the end of each slow exhale.
“Questions?” She said when she was done.
“…cuddle pollen??” said Tim, not thinking of anything else that could compel this alarming behavior from his older brother
“Nah, he’s always like that,” said Jason.
“I have never seen him like this,” said Tim.
“He probably doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” said Jason.
Dick looked up from Barbara’s shoulder. “Am I making people uncomfortable?” he said, but Babs pushed his head back down where it was before he finished.
“You’re fine, Dick,” she said.
“Yeah only Tim, he doesn’t count,” said Jason.
Barbara gave him a side eye and a smirk at the same time.
Jason smiled back. Then, to Tim’s continued surprise, Jason leaned his head on Dick’s thigh in a way that Tim would have thought was fond if anyone else had done it. From there he continued to scroll on Barbara’s laptop in his lap. “Babs how do I get all this synced with the JL computer from space?”
“This is where you come in, Tim,” Babs continued, as though one of the most feared superheroes in the world wasn’t shuddering brokenly on her lap. “I need you in the watchtower to reset the system when Jason pulls the plug on Luxcorp. You’ll have to time it exactly, because Jason will only have seconds, so I’ll need you to already have the new software booted—“
“You can use the emergency hard drive,” said Dick without looking up, his voice a little wet. “It can run the whole OS as long as you keep the core memory time to a minimum, then you don’t have to have the current OS turned off before the transfer happens.”
Babs put a hand in Dick’s hair to scratch his head. “Yes, that is good, you should run the watchtower off the emergency hard drive while you boot up the new OS. I’m sure this one can give you the access codes if you want them.” She nodded towards Dick. “When you have it set up,…”
Tim, still a little concerned for his brother but mollified but Babs’ and Jason’s apparent confidence, rejoined the conversation and helped set the plan up. They worked in Barbara’s dark apartment, lit only by the monitors, until they had a solid plan for using Luthor’s own satellites not only as spyware against him but as host servers for JL security agents to commandeer them in a crisis: Tim behind Barbara, reading over her shoulder, pointing out improvements to her plan, Jason on the floor beside them on one of Barbara’s laptops, probably working, with his head resting against Dick’s thigh, and Barbara working in her chair, fixing code as they schemed, with Dick in her lap wrapped tightly around her.
”May I?” said Tim, and Barbara removed her hands from the keyboard to let Tim explain a rather difficult point by typing it up instead of talking through it. When Tim looked back to explain his reasoning, he found Barbara nodding along seriously, but Tim stumbled over his words when he saw her newly free hand tangled in Jason’s hair and Jason’s eyes closed, leaning into her scritches. Barbara didn’t seem to notice Tim fumbling and carried on the conversation seamlessly.
A few hours in Jason went to make a pot of tea (being as he was not specifically useful on the coding part) and Dick climbed out of Barbara’s lap only to pick her up and put her in his lap so he could see her computer over her shoulder. (Dick really enjoyed coding.) Babs tapped his temple behind her and Dick apparently took this cue to lower the desk chair so she could type at her normal height from his lap. Dick kept his arms around her middle and only let go to point at things, never to touch her keyboard.
When Jason got back with tea he also brought a kitchen chair, which he set in front of Babs’ other keyboard and then sat back down on the floor himself, apparently intending for Tim to sit down and help Babs from the other monitor.
Tim took the chair hesitantly, then sat up better when Jason handed him a cup of tea. (How he did that from his seat on the floor on the other side of Babs without getting up or spilling tea was impressive.)
Tim felt like he was participating in something very old and very comfortable, a strange sort of bond between his older siblings that he’d never been so specifically privy to. Jason and Dick talked easily, Jason still on the floor with his head against Dick and Babs’s lap, no malice behind their words, no sting in their quips, all the disagreements that hung so thickly between them in the Batcave entirely absent here. They included Tim in this normalcy as though he belonged there, even though Tim knew that wouldn’t have been true in the past. Dick, Jason, and Babs had been Bats longer than anyone but Bruce, and there was a weird kind of solidarity in that which superseded any kinds of familial disagreement. Tim wondered if this was what older siblings were like.
When Tim yawned in the middle of Barbara’s explanation of a software issue, Dick declared that it was time for bed.
“Come on, squirt,” said Jason, gently shoving Tim out of his chair. “Help me clean up.”
Tim and Jason rinsed the tea cups, and then Jason took him to the hall closet where they hauled out an air mattress and pump. When they passed the computer again, Dick was talking softly to Barbara, and Tim caught snippets that implied he was helping her think of ways to polish off the scheme and wrap up so that she could put whatever other duties off till morning (or 2 pm.)
Tim pondered a while through the noise of the air mattress pump while Jason searched for sheets.
“What did you mean that Dick was trying not to make me uncomfortable?” Tim asked when Jason deemed the mattress inflated.
Jason shrugged. “He doesn’t want you to know he has problems. He thinks if he shows weakness you’ll be worried about him and he doesn’t think you need that on your plate.” Jason wrapped up the air compressor cord.
“Okay,” Tim said, “that might be true, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t do it.”
“‘S what I keep telling him.” Jason said.
Tim slept on the air mattress and Jason on the couch, and in the morning Jason made soufflé. Barbara ate it without speaking, looking as though she might have to divert her mighty resources towards dimming the sun of his brightness, while Dick entwined his right hand in her left and ate left-handed.
The software transfer was a success in the end, and just in time too; both Jason and Tim in their separate locations ended up having to fistfight aliens before they could get Jason back down from space.