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The thing about caving in and asking for help is usually it comes back to bite you in the ass. Tim wants to hope this time will be the exception, but the more minutes pass in silence the more he's ready to resign himself to failure. Leslie's clinic is freezing cold in the middle of summer and he feels like he could shake out of his skin, though he reckons that at least fifty percent of that could be written off as a result of whatever messed him up enough to land him here at this late hour.
Which brings him to the issue at hand: Tim sitting on an uncomfortable hospital chair as he tells Leslie the particularities of what his body has been doing, and she keeps frowning down at what he assumes is his medical file, in a way that doesn't do much to ease his worry that something is terribly wrong.
“Do you have problems with anxiety?” she asks and Tim just barely stops himself from snorting.
'Course he does. He's been jumping from rooftops and punching people twice his size since he was 13. “You know what our jobs are, right?”
Leslie is not impressed by his response. Her eyes seem cold where she's looking at him, though Tim knows it's not out of malice. She's been working with them for long enough to be warranted some—a lot, to be fair—annoyance at their avoidant behaviors that make her job harder on the regular.
“Aside from the normal levels of anxiety fitting for your lifestyle,” she says, pointedly pronouncing each word while holding firm eye contact, “Do you have irregular amounts of anxiety in your day-to-day life?”
“My anxiety levels are very regular.” He'd prefer it if they were a bit less regular, actually.
Leslie sighs and writes down something—Tim leans over to try to look but she doesn't let him. “I can't help you if you won't cooperate.”
“I don't need help. Just tell me if I'm dying or not?”
Evidently he's not, or she would be moving a bit more urgently, he hopes. And he feels fine now. Fine enough that he's beginning to really regret coming down here in panic because of some minor heart palpitations.
“You're not dying,” Tim nods and Leslie shakes her head and continues. “Your bloodwork is normal, you're not poisoned or sick and have no visible injuries that would explain this.” She pauses and Tim knows that's not good. Whenever someone is giving you news and needs to take a long moment before finishing a sentence—bad sign. Dangerous.
Leslie says, careful in a way that makes Tim feel sort of condescended to, “What you described sounds like an anxiety attack.”
“Right,” he mutters under his breath. He doesn't need this. Okay, so he panicked over nothing and then that led him to panic over a result of his panicking—it hasn't been his best night.
Leslie isn't as ready to let this go. “Does this happen often?”
“No.”
He doesn't even have to be looking at her to know she doesn't buy that. It's not even a complete lie; he's had occasional heart palpitations for a while now but they'd come and go rather quickly, rarely lasting for longer than a minute. Then they got longer, up to a few minutes, until he couldn't quite ignore it as easily and pretend it's just another stupid human body thing. It did, he had to admit, make breathing harder, too. Then today, they lasted for hours. And sue him, it freaked him out.
“Do me a favor,” Leslie says in a tone of voice that tells him she is not in fact nicely asking for a favor, but letting him know that if he doesn't do what she asks of him, she'll go to Bruce about this. “Take a calendar. Or a notebook, or anything to write in. Mark me each day you feel stressed or have symptoms like today,” Tim grimaces openly at the word symptoms and Leslie gives him another one of those looks, ones that mean she's not up for dealing with more evasive bullshit, “and bring this to me next time in a month. Deal? Great.”
Tim wants to protest. This is the exact opposite of what he wanted; a quick fix that would let him return to his night, put all this behind. Getting rid of a headache with a painkiller (which doesn't actually work that often) but instead he's been served adult homework. Another thing to worry about.
But Leslie keeps giving him that same look, and Tim might think she's full of shit but Bruce would absolutely listen to her over him. He can't risk that. So he mutters a vague affirmation that makes her face fold into a familiar frown, and leaves before she can ask more questions.
It's nearly two in the morning when he feels himself settle and start breathing fully again. Damian has been sending him updates on a case they've been tackling together, which mostly consists of the two of them tackling each other, and he doesn't have the energy to question why the kid is texting him while out on a late patrol and he welcomes the distraction. Bruce must not be paying attention. Or he's not out tonight. Tim's been having a hard time following all the various changes in the scheduling lately.
gremlin (01:44 am)
Dont be dense
No one hides drugs in Crime Alley anymore thats where everyone goes to look. Its too obvious
But I will check it out after patrol
Dont tell father
Tim suspects the insistence is less about the drugs problem and more about encroaching on Red Hood's territory and pissing him off, but it's none of his business if Damian wants to go poking around. Except it will be if he sticks his hand in a wasps nest because it'll be Tim's balcony that Jason will come to scream at.
Cross that bridge when they come to it, etcetera.
Tim (01:44 am)
Yea alright
gremlin (01:45 am)
And stop being awake
Brown says you have a secret meeting tomorrow
That explains it. Stephanie would let Damian be on his phone to get some peace and quiet.
Tim (01:46 am)
Stephanie is a liar and a traitor. Dont tell b
Damian stops texting him then, and as he's closing all his tabs for the night he realizes his heartbeat has stopped fluttering and he feels a bit less like a slight wind might knock him over. Instead a bone deep exhaustion has climbed into his bones—at 01:55 in the morning. Normal. Regular. Must mean he's fine after all.
***
Waking up to a hand running through his hair is not the worst way to wake up but Tim would still rather not be woken up in the first place. “Piss off, Bart.”
“What?” laughs a voice that is not Bart.
Tim opens his eyes and instead of a head full of red curls he finds Dick looking down at him, dark eyes filled with amusement.
“Morning,” he ruffles his hair a bit harder and Tim swats at him. Misses. Last night comes back to him in flashes and he remembers going from patrol straight to Blüdhaven on a whim. He didn't question how Dick might feel about him crashing on his couch until it was too late. But hey, he successfully did not wake him up, so. “It's past eleven.”
Shit. God, he has places to be.
He sits up and Dick scoots away to let him do so. Someone—Dick, obviously, because Tim doesn't think he had half a mind to do shit last night—covered him with a blanket while he was asleep. It's woolen and heavy, and uncomfortable on top of his suit, underneath which he can feel how sweaty and gross he is.
Dick asks, “Care to explain what you're doing on my couch?”
“I thought you said I'm always welcome.”
“Of course but like, you don't usually take me up on that.”
Tim yawns. Right, well usually, he is not big on the idea of making the Gotham-Blüdhaven trip in a night. Bruce would be upset if he knew, but Bruce is always upset about one thing or the other. It's something they have in common, and often Tim wonders if he got that from Bruce, or if he arrived at the manor front door already messed up. “Just going stir crazy in Gotham.”
Dick raises an eyebrow at him. Tim really doesn't appreciate this sort of questioning so early in the morning; he would expect it from Bruce but he hoped Dick would cut him some slack. “There's always shit to do in Gotham.”
There's too much shit to do in Gotham. He should be glad for it—takes his mind off other things, it usually works—but lately it's been suffocating. Blüdhaven is a different world entirely. No one expects anything of him here, it's sort of a liminal space in his mind. If he moves away from Gotham for a decent number of hours he can almost forget everything that's waiting for him there.
Dick taps the side of his head with a knuckle, awfully gently. “What are you thinking?”
Tim groans. Do they have to keep talking? Tim doesn't want to keep talking. “I'm tired.”
Dick hums, leaning back against the couch and then immediately getting up. He's dressed in jeans and a clean shirt, so Tim assumes he has somewhere to be, but he doesn't act like he's in a hurry, just saunters around to his kitchen. Tim, on the other hand, is still in his Red Robin suit, boots and gloves and all. At least past-Tim thought to pull down the cowl. The discomfort is now catching up to him.
“Aren't you always?” Dick smiles at him and Tim flips him off. “Tell me about it.”
He sighs. Throws an arm over his eyes and says, “I have emails to reply to but I haven't read the documents sent so I have nothing to say.” Dick chuckles, which Tim doesn't appreciate. He's in a crisis. He's in a crisis and his brother is laughing at him. Why is he here again? “Tam is gonna kill me about it.”
Patrol went bad last night too, and Bruce is most likely still unhappy about it, and Tim definitely still feels guilty about it. Cassie and Kon are in space and he hasn't stopped thinking about it since they left a week ago even though he's been told it'll be a month long mission and no, he can't join, there's no need for it, and Bart hasn't been around in a while. He responds to Tim's messages on the regular but it's generally in pictures or quick emoji replies which isn't that weird for him, he's busy and does a lot more on a daily basis than a normal person would even consider (it really makes Tim wish he was a speedster, sometimes), and Tim doesn't know how to ask him to come by because he wakes up every other morning terrified his best friends are dead again without saying it outright. Once you live through it, it really hits you how easily mistakes happen. How hard is it to kill a speedster, really, if they're not on a lookout for it? They're not invulnerable. Anyone could make a kryptonite bullet if they tried hard enough these days, too, and you can never be sure what you'll find it space—
“I thought Bruce fired you,” Dick says and effectively shuts down his spiral.
“He demoted me,” he grimaces. “I mean. I never really worked there.” But since he dropped out and has nothing better to do, Bruce caved in and gave him some boring, basic cybersecurity checks to work on to get him off his back. That aside, not much has changed anyway; majority of his time in WE during Bruce's time travel debacle was spent posing as a face. The press made a much bigger deal out of it than it had been, but that had also been the point, so he can't complain.
“Well,” Dick sighs, shrugs with one shoulder, “It's probably for the best, you know. Who wants to work in corporate?”
Tim doesn't, but he's good at it. Efficient. Even Bruce can't deny it, though it didn't do much to stop him from making Tim step away as soon as the outreach program found its footing and his help was, technically, no longer required. He still helps with it, unofficially, because he managed to talk Tiffany into keeping him updated once she decided that she might as well have some use of him if he's already being an annoyance about it. Bruce knows, and Lucius is turning a blind eye, so all is well. Tiffany doesn't care much for entertaining the public, she's more than happy to let him handle the press when necessary, and Tim isn't interested in deep dives into money anyway.
Dick throws something at him. A damp kitchen rag. Great. With the sweaty suit on and everything Tim does, kind of, feel like a damp kitchen rag. “Are you okay?”
“Sure.”
“You keep not answering my questions. I still don't know why you're here. This isn't just about the emails, is it?”
“No,” Tim shakes his head. He'll have to steal some clothes from Dick to get back. “Just tired.”
“And very high-strung, apparently,” Dick says, audibly chewing. Tim removes the arm over his face to see him devouring a piece of bread. He has a block of cheese in his other hand. No one in this family knows how to eat normally. “Am I getting on your nerves?”
A little bit, but Tim is self-aware enough to know it'd be kind of rude to admit to that as he was the one to break into his brother's apartment in the middle of the night and not the other way around. He's regretting it now, realizing with every word Dick says that grates on his brain that he is very well and firmly in one of his 'do not talk to me please do not talk to me' days.
“'S fine. I'm getting out of your hair as soon as I, uh. Get changed. Do you have any food, also?”
Dick has that look on his face he always does just as he's about to deliver a long convoluted lecture but quickly decides not to, instead points at Tim with his egregious block of cheese and disappears into his bedroom.
The hoodie Dick lends him is too big on him, and Tim feels unusually light as he descends the staircase down to where his bike is, last third of a sandwich in his mouth, suit bundled up carelessly in a backpack—also Dick's. There will be some deliveries to be made afterwards. He puts that on his mental to-do list and drives.
***
Stakeouts with Kon are always a goddamn nightmare. Tim has done enough stakeouts in his life to get them down to a T, but Kon is simply not made for them. He's made for flying through sunlit skies and punching with gusto and for loud, joyous exclamations of success, not for sitting around in a dark car in numbing silence.
At least he knows for sure that Kon would agree. He's been quiet, if you don't count the long-suffering sighs he's been letting out from time to time to let Tim know how unhappy he is about where they are and what they're doing, but his distaste for their current pastime is transparent.
“You know if you'd let me fly around and scope out the area, this could've been done ages ago,” he says, again. Tim spares him the explanation he's already given him two times in the past two hours and Kon sighs. Again.
And okay, Tim gets it. He understands his frustrations. Stakeouts are no one's favorite hobby. It's just—this is the least hands-in-the-air panic sort of mission he's had in a good while and he'd like to enjoy the relative peace while it lasts. He's doing work, making progress, and no one expects him to be doing anything else at the moment. No one is screaming or trying to end his life. It's practically a holiday in Tim's book.
And it's not like he asked Kon to come with him. He landed himself in this one.
“You're a riot to hang with,” Kon mutters. He still has his shades on even though the sun has set hours ago; it probably doesn't affect him, Kryptonian vision and all, but it keeps throwing Tim off each time he looks at him. “At least let me play some tunes.”
“We're supposed to be inconspicuous and you want to play music?”
“Y'know what's weird?” Kon starts, helpfully ignoring Tim rolling his eyes. “It's fucking weird to sit around in a car in complete silence. In pitch dark no less. That's freaky. Anyone passing by would notice. Y'know what's not weird? Music.”
Tim punches the button on the stereo and the radio blares to life with something fast and guitar heavy. Kon whoops. He's trying, and Tim can tell, to be in a good mood, and he wants to appreciate that but doesn't have the energy to be anything but a Red Robin on a stakeout. He doesn't want to be anything other than a Red Robin on a stakeout. It's a rather simple role to fill. He so desperately needs a simple role to fill. (He also desperately needs to cut down on roles he's created for himself. It's a vicious circle.)
A ballad comes on and Tim changes the station, ignoring Kon's disapproving tongue click. A cheerful voice of a radio host starts droning on about the weather and the night traffic and it is 4th of September as of five minutes ago, we're continuing the night with our top 5—
Tim changes the station again, and they get to the next one just in time to hear the ending of Killer Queen. Kon mutters something about him being a snob, before he starts humming along to the following song that Tim doesn't recognize.
He picks up his phone from the glove compartment and stares at the date on the screen. The light makes him squint but sure enough, the numbers scream 4th of September back at him. He turns it around in his head and it doesn't sit right, he could swear it was May yesterday.
It's been well over a month since his visit to Leslie and he's been chewing himself over the possibility of her calling and demanding him to come in, but so far she hasn't said a word. Not even when Tim helped Duke limp to her clinic with a broken ankle two days ago. Just gave him a stern look that Tim more or less successfully ignored.
Kon puts a quick stop to his minor freak-out as soon as his song ends and something slow begins. He turns down the volume and asks, while still staring in front at the building entrance they're keeping an eye on, “Are you always this boring nowadays?”
It strikes a nerve that Tim refuses to think about. One of those not so neatly packaged boxes put away in his mind; the idea that the doubts he indulges in at his lowest moments are true, that he's got himself messed up enough during those two years that not even his best friends can stomach him, is too much for him to deal with when he doesn't have anything to hit.
“I didn't ask you to come,” he says, because it's true, because he'd never ask this of Kon who so clearly hates it.
Kon scoffs. “Yeah, I'd know. That's why I volunteered.”
“To annoy me?”
“To get some Rob time in my schedule,” Kon groans and gives him an exasperated look. Almost desperate, like he's waiting for Tim to catch up. “Because there's like no other way to reach you these days.”
The desire to flee is a sudden, swift thing. It's not a reflex he allows often. He prefers to dig his heels in and have the last word, but—but. He would rather do anything but have this conversation.
Sometimes he forgets how little time he's actually been spending with Kon, considering how much time and space his best friend occupies in his mind on a daily basis. There is no way to say that in a nice, non-creepy way to Kon though.
He makes an attempt. “I'm just…” Busy, all the time, and when he's not strictly busy he's too stressed about how busy he will be in no time to relax and catch up. “You know.”
“Not really, to be honest,” Kon says.
Tim wishes he had his mask on, a layer between them for this conversation that has been a long time coming. Tim is just very good at putting issues aside when he wants to.
“I don't know what you're up to, which is fine, obviously, all you Bats are this way, I'd know.” He nudges Tim's shoulder with his fist, gently. Always so careful. “But I haven't heard from you and like, properly had a conversation in a long time. It's been months, dude.”
He knows Kon well enough to be aware that he's not trying to guilt trip him but… it's working, either way.
“I'm trying, ok?” He doesn't mean it to come out as briskly, but it does, and Kon does a double take.
“What? No, no. Rob, buddy, you're good. I just—you're really on edge man, like, all the time. I can tell.”
Tim is sure he can. He wishes he couldn't. Because—
“I'm just worried,” Kon says, and he doesn't sound apologetic any longer.
“Well, don't be.”
He watches Kon's face scrunch up at that. No longer apologetic, no, but frustrated. Slowly getting there at least. “I will be. But alright, if you don't wanna talk to me about that we can do it from another angle.” He turns around to actually look at Tim then, shades up on his forehead, because he's the worst. “I need you to give me something to work with.”
“What do you mean?” Tim asks, though he thinks he understands.
“I mean that I'm trying here but you're not helping much. I don't know how to reach you—it's a two way street, right? So work with me.”
Right.
“You're upset,” he points out uselessly.
“A little bit,” Kon says, suddenly quiet. He's drumming his fingers against the passenger door. “That wasn't how I planned this to go but you're an ass, so.”
“Planned?”
Kon gives him a tortured look. Tim bites his cheek so he doesn't smile right in his face. Not the moment.
“Since when do you make plans?” he asks instead, and sees the exact second when Kon's face goes slack and the tense moment passes by them.
He groans and lowers the sunglasses back on his nose. “See? Ass.”
Tim wants to make a joke about how that's what Kon likes him for, right, but his mouth doesn't quite listen to him. He lets out a slow breath instead, feeling Kon's eyes on him the entire time he stays silent.
“Okay,” Kon says. Stops his fingers and slaps the side of the door once. “I'm well and truly sick of this, gonna be honest.”
This, meaning the whole stakeout situation, which he emphasizes by gesturing at the building entrance that's remained empty and useless the entire time they've been here. It's suspicious, sure, and Tim can't wrap his head around in what way exactly at the moment. He simplifies it for himself on purpose, ignoring the compulsive part of him demanding a more thorough investigation. Stakeout. No one's here. No one's here part two. No results to work with. Go home. Sleep. Lord.
He nods. “Yeah, okay. I need to get out of this seat and away from this noise.”
Kon lets out a scandalized gasp and Tim bursts out laughing, all that nervous energy bubbling over, because he sounds so painfully genuine. “How dare you. Bobbie Gentry is a country staple—”
“Hush.”
***
gremlin (11:24 am)
Are you coming to lunch today? Father asks
I assume you are but he wants a confirmation
gremlin (12:45 pm)
You're late. Drake
gremlin (2:36 pm)
Alfred and father are both upset that you haven't showed up I hope you're happy
gremlin (3:13 pm)
Are you alive
Reply or I'm making this an everyone problem
Tim (3:39 pm)
👍
gremlin (3:40 pm)
Ok
Dick calls him two hours later. By the sound of it, he's in a car, presumably on his way back to Blüdhaven. It's Sunday and this has been one of those weekends when he stays over at the manor, mostly to spend time with Damian, and assure everyone that he hasn't died and been replaced with a perfect clone replica who's been answering their messages. (It's mostly for Bruce's benefit. Tim has never been worried for Dick. Nope.)
“Ditching sacred Sunday lunches now, huh?” he says as soon as Tim picks up. He swears, something barely audible over the line, which yeah, he's definitely driving. He must still be in Gotham. “Is this a late rebellious phase and you're just trying to give B an ulcer or should I be worried?”
“I'm fine.”
“I didn't ask that, exactly, but thank you for clarifying. What happened?”
“Nothing. Just didn't feel like going.” True enough. He really, really didn't feel like going.
“You didn't say anything. Damian said you only responded to his texts after three in the afternoon.” Tim is about to ask if that's a punishable offense suddenly but Dick doesn't let him speak. “Did you sleep until then?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Dick hums. “You worried Alfred.”
“You're all so dramatic. It's one lunch.”
Same could've been said to him this morning, when he'd woken up tense and unable to drag himself from the bed and the mere thought of driving to the manor to sit among his loud, overbearing family made him want to throw up.
He loves them; he can't handle their questions about his life and health and whatever else they think he has going on while they're looking away. (Hint, there is nothing. The peak of his social life is the rare outings ex YJ members manage to drag him off to.) Can't handle someone politely asking about an ongoing mission, prompting him to think of the said mission, and getting him stuck on it because that is not the time to think about missions, he can't do anything about them now, but now he's thinking about it and wouldn't it be so much more productive if he was working, instead of chatting with a group of people among whom everyone wants something of him after all.
(It's not true and Tim knows it's not true. He also doesn't know. Sometimes, he knows.
Most times it sits in the shape of a bothersome reminder in the back of his head and gnaws at him at worst opportune moments. Or regular ones, like a family meal. Bon appetit—isn't it so nice to be a useless know-it-all who makes his reputation out of being reliable, then agonizes over having a lot of work to do? It's a never-ending circle, all of it.
Tim knows it's not true. He is just having a bad day. It doesn't make it any less bad.)
“Look,” he sighs. Dick has been quiet, presumably waiting for his answer but Tim has none. It never feels like he has one these days. There's only so many times you can pull up the stress excuse before it gets old and unusable. “I don't wanna talk right now.”
“Right, right,” Dick says and Tim wonders if he's imagining or if there's a dangerous edge of frustration in his voice. “You've said.”
Silence.
“Sorry,” Tim tries.
“It's alright. Just get some rest, okay?”
And god, Tim's been getting so much rest. It's just that it's not working like it's supposed to.
That's none of Dick's businesses though. They're all already busy enough without the added stress of his body malfunctioning. “'Course.”
***
What might be the weirdest change among all that transpired over the last two years is Damian's new habit of dropping by Tim's apartment at ungodly times of the day. Often he isn't even at home and only finds the intruder half an hour in because Damian is sneaky and fits in small places and feeds off Tim's suffering.
At first he couldn't phantom why, of all people, the brat would drop by at his place, especially in the beginning when their relationship was as flimsy as Jason's mood on a good day, but as this unexpected occurrence turned into something of a routine, he accepted it. With a suitable amount of complaints, but no actual protest.
It's still a shock to see a Robin knocking on his balcony window at two in the morning. He could, evidently, break in with no problem but he keeps giving Tim a scrunched up, petulant look instead until he drags himself from the couch and lets him in.
No greeting, no explanation, just a beeline to the couch. His ridiculous, spiky boots leave muddy prints all over Tim's floor.
Tim doesn't ask for an explanation, either. It's not his place. Meaning, he isn't Dick or Bruce or Alfred, and Damian would take his question wrong, as he did the one and only time he dared to question his presence. The deal that had been sealed at some unknown point became clear to him that night; his apartment might be somewhat of an escape from their overbearing, nosy family, but Tim has no right to assume a position of a worrier.
Damian hops on the couch, watching Tim grimace as he gets his dirty cape all over it, then puts his feet up on the coffee table. He seems to be looking for a reaction, maybe a fight, the sort that he'd get any other time but now, when Tim's brain is just about numb with stress, enough that he kick-started a headache for himself.
A shame. He likes his fights with Damian, too.
The other thing he can appreciate about Damian is that aside from the art of being at each other's throats all the time, they've mastered sitting together in a room and minding their own business in relative peace. Two skills pretty far apart on a spectrum, but it works. Tim thinks it might be the deep-set stubbornness they have in common.
He's counting on Damian to read the room and climbs back on the couch with his laptop balanced on his knees. Damian, bless him this one time and just this one time, grabs the PS4 controller and turns on his game of Slime Rancher. Tim only got the game because of him—the kid kept talking about playing it with Jon over at the Kent farm, and it's not that Bruce can't buy Damian his own games, it's that Damian clearly thinks of it as too childish for someone like him, and Tim having it for himself, allegedly, offers him a good enough excuse to play it—but he doesn't have to know that.
The slimes grant him only a solid ten minutes of peace. “Why aren't you asleep?”
It's entirely unfair of Damian to get to question his state of being if he isn't allowed to even know why he's here. “Headache.”
“I hear sleep is supposed to help with that,” Damian says—lectures him, the little shit, as the sounds of bouncing slimes fill the room. He leans over to peek at the laptop screen and grimaces at Tim's pretty botched level of Wilmot's Warehouse. “You aren't even working.”
That hits. Stings. To hell with a headache, Tim is going to pass away from guilt that threatens to consume him in that moment alone.
It's too late for working, he tells himself, because he knows that's what Bruce would tell him, the hypocrite, but it's too late to be awake and playing a stupid game and yet here he is.
“I'm leaving for Italy soon,” he says even though it doesn't explain much to Damian. It's the best explanation he can come up with. An excuse, kind of. Not that Damian of all people should care for his excuses. “With the Titans.”
Damian frowns at the TV screen. One of his glitchy slimes escapes out of their cage. “And?”
Tim shrugs. “I haven't been on like, an actual mission with them in a while.” Too long, but he's been busy. He's always busy. This is exactly what Kon was talking about, and he's starting to see it for himself.
“Yes, you aren't on the team,” Damian reminds him helpfully. Technically, he is, just not as much of a regular as he used to be. He's not happy about it but even he can admit he's being stretched too thin, sometimes. “So what, you're nervous about a field trip? That's low, even for you.”
There would not be enough time in the world if Tim picked a fight with Damian each time he off-handedly slighted his friends—he's actually gotten rather good at ignoring it. He doesn't even try to kick him in the shins this time.
“Not nervous just. You know.” Why did he try to explain himself to Damian again?
“Scared.”
“No.”
Damian scoffs. Tim does kick him for that, gently. “When are you leaving?”
He manages to sound nonchalant enough that Tim almost doesn't suspect he might have undoubtedly ill-advised plans for his apartment while he's gone. He even yawns as he asks—Tim can't tell if it's a fake yawn or not. It's late enough for it to be plausibly real.
“In a week,” he says. Checks the calendar on his laptop. “Week and a day.”
“You have time to stress about it then.” Unsaid message: go to sleep. Really, Tim would be touched if his head wasn't tearing him apart from the inside.
Also, “A week is nothing. It's like, a day.”
“That's not what a week is,” he says, and his last word is cut off with a yawn. Tim resists laughing at him; he doesn't fancy getting bitten by a thirteen year old at this time and place.
Damian puts his controller down and scoots closer to him. He'd never admit it out loud, but he makes an endearing sight, with his arms crossed petulantly and nose scrunched as he watches Tim take stock of his many items. Organize. Then mess up some orders. Get new items to organize. Organize. Orders. Take stock. Repeat.
At the 80 out of 200 items point, Tim mutters under his breath. “This game is a walking panic attack.”
“Why are you playing it then?” Damian asks, in a tone of voice that tells Tim how much he doesn't want to ask.
“It's calming.”
“You have issues.”
Tim stares at him.
It is not as jarring as it might sound seeing a full-clad Robin sit next to you in the middle of the night after he just finished chasing virtual cat-slimes among piles of laundry thrown over the couch, but it's still an image to take in. His swords have been leaned against the coffee table, though if Damian keeps bouncing his leg on it for much longer, they will end up on the floor.
“Pot, meet kettle,” he mutters.
“That's such a stupid proverb. Pots and kettles have very little in common.”
“What?”
***
The trip from Venice back to San Francisco should've been a relief, and it starts out as one, until Tim talks himself into a panic. A little bit. A minor one, that ends up with him standing in the airport bathroom, in front of a mirror that doesn't hide just how much of a mess he is. Hair sticking out in too many directions and eyes bloodshot, dark bags under them that he can at least hide with sunglasses—
And Bart, waltzing in to take him away. They're not quite in a hurry, but Bart is always in a hurry, and they did make post-mission hangout plans.
“Wait,” he says when Bart grabs his arm. He's changed in his emergency just-got-out-of-costume clothes while Tim was busy freaking out, his striped zip-up hoodie halfway drawn over one of his shoulders. “I think I'm gonna throw up.”
“What the fuck?” Bart asks and doesn't let go of his arm. His grip actually tightens, so Tim pulls him along as he backs into the stall.
The musty smell of a public bathroom overwhelms his senses as he heaves over the toilet. There's a warm hand pushing hair out of his face and Tim tries to shake his head to let him know that no, he hasn't thrown up and it's fine, actually, probably, but that just makes the nausea worse.
“Rob,” Bart's voice comes from his right, a mix of worry and shock. That's fair. Tim doesn't allow himself freak-outs like this often, not even in front of his friends. “What the fuck, man? You told us you weren't hurt.”
“I'm not I just—” he lets go of the toilet seat he's been gripping for dear life and waves his hand dismissively. He thinks he hears Bart very helpfully fake-gag next to him. “Stressed. You know? Stress.”
“I know stress. I usually don't stress myself into a frenzy and throw up though.”
Tim points at the toilet as if to say hey, didn't throw up, but Bart doesn't look amused or reassured. He looks like he's a millisecond away from dragging him off to a hospital. Which can't do. Tim knows there's nothing wrong with him, and he's one person telling him about it away from biting his own fingers off.
There's at least that Bart doesn't ask what he's stressed about or point out how they finished the mission successfully, near perfectly and there's no reason to panic—Tim knows all of that, just as he knows that worrying himself sick about going back home to people who want him around and have moved the biweekly family lunch a week later so he could attend, after he missed the previous one because of his stupidity, is ridiculous. Completely unreasonable, and yet.
Dick had called just a day into their mission to ask, “Coming to lunch this weekend? Alfred's making lasagna.”
“No, I'm with the Titans,” Tim said, sighing. Alfred's lasagna is heavenly. “Kind of in the middle of something.”
They'd just crashed at the hotel and Kon was patching up Bart's shoulder while Tim and Cassie went over their plans for tomorrow, or were, until Tim escaped to the balcony to answer Dick's call.
Technically he's no longer a part of the team, but Kon had been very insistent on bringing him around as much as possible and Cassie assured him that yes, Conner speaks for all of us, dumbass, you're welcome whenever, which in retrospect had also been a useless thing to be anxious about.
“I'm gonna miss this one,” he said, and suddenly felt intensely guilty for having ditched the one two weeks ago already. He couldn't remember exactly what he'd been so upset over—he likes the family meals, in spite of what a mess they always are. For it, even.
And that was where he'd made the crucial mistake and let Dick hear the disappointment in his voice. Not on purpose. It wasn't even a planned out manipulative ploy, he'd just let the comfort of the conversation soften him and let it slide.
Dick wasted no time. “We can always push it back a week later. I'll call Alfred.”
And that had been it, because there's no stopping Dick from a plan when he charts himself one, but the fun part is Tim didn't really even try. Because he'd like to see all of them and he's missed Alfred's cooking and he's missed sitting next to Damian while he stabs his potatoes with a fork like they've offended him personally. It hasn't even been that long he's just…
He feels his stomach lurch and leans over to actually throw up this time. He hears Bart swear beside him and feels his hand pulling his hair back up.
“God. Alright,” Bart keeps muttering, his other hand rubbing circles on Tim's shoulder. He thinks it would be soothing, if he wasn't so detached from any physical sensation that isn't the burn in his throat.
He isn't really in a state to pay attention to how much time passed but once he's done uselessly retching and tries to stand up, someone other than Bart is helping him up, one big arm wrapped around his shoulders that simultaneously removes all tension from them. He barely has to move, being moved by it.
“Do you want me to call Nightwing to pick you up?” Kon asks. He's quiet, mindful of what they must assume is a head injury, or—Tim doesn't know. He doesn't know what they think, but he hopes it's not much, hopes they can let it slide.
“Don't you dare,” Tim grits out. The last thing he needs in his life right now is inconveniencing Dick even further with his… everything. “I'll kill you.”
“Okay, jerk. Jeez.” He keeps his eyes shut against the bright fluorescent lights, but he can hear the eye roll in Kon's voice. The hand around him steers him in a direction, and he hears the doors open with a creak. Over the loud noise, Kon says, “I'll fly you home.”
He can't admit it but a quick flight home sounds heavenly just about now. The TTK wrapped around him is soothing, and not for the first time in his life he wishes he could talk Kon into lying over him, cat pile style, or putting him in a hydraulic press. It would take out some tension out of his back and neck and also his head, probably.
Still. “My bike's here.”
Kon's long sigh tells him exactly what he thinks about that weak excuse. “You're insufferable. Shut up.”
He puts a bottle of water in Tim's face and he drinks. It's cold and most of it ends up spilling on the front of Tim's shirt. He squints his eyes open and watches Kon chuck the empty bottle in the bin. It lands perfectly in the middle. Jerk.
“I'm flying you home and that's that,” Kon says, and his TTK pulls Tim forward until they're walking side to side to the main exit. Kon makes them duck behind a bus, and stretches a hand out to make space for Tim to comfortably fit himself at his side for the ride.
Tim opens his mouth to protest and Kon puts a hand over it. “Zip it. I'm taking no further questions or criticisms.”
“Movie night,” he points out anyway.
Tim doesn't want to ditch them like this. He doesn't want to go back to his empty apartment and spend a night gnawing at himself over how he could have been having a good time with his friends instead, how he's ruined their plans, until he eventually passes out. He doesn't want to turn his back on them and wake up in the morning in cold sweat wondering if he's lost them again, if he wasn't there for them in their moment of need, again. He doesn't want to leave them and he wants to go home.
Kon is tucking his hair behind his ears, painfully gently, and there isn't an ounce of resentment in his eyes when he looks down at Tim. Which—of course there isn't. It's Kon. It's reassuring nonetheless.
“We'll go out some other time,” he says, his hands lightly massaging the point of Tim's neck underneath the ears. “Movies and burgers aren't going anywhere. None of us are going anywhere. It's okay.”
For once, Tim lets himself believe it. It might be the exhaustion, or it might just be that Kon is very good at making him believe the impossible.
***
To his own surprise, Tim does actually go back to Leslie about it, though it's less for the reasons she probably hoped for and more because of heart palpitations, again. Throwing up and general discomfort he can do, but erratic heartbeat is near impossible to ignore or push aside. And it won't stop. He has patrol in four hours.
Leslie doesn't look happy. Tim is not stoked about it either but he also doesn't care. She says, “For three days now, you said,” like it's an inconvenience to her instead of Tim.
“On and off, but yes. Pretty much.” The admission feels like pulling teeth. It's stupid, god it's so stupid. Hi, sorry to take you away from people who really need your help but my heart's been doing a weird thing for a bit and I'm very, very tired. If she tells him to take deep breaths he might just scream. He's been trying to take deep breaths basically the entire day. “Just give me something to stop it. There has to be a pill for this, right.”
Leslie doesn't like that either.
“I think you should talk to a therapist.”
Tim doesn't like that so much he leaves the clinic without a word. He really hopes she doesn't mention any of this to Bruce. The trip there and back doesn't do much to calm him down in the end.
***
A day after his visit to Leslie's, Tim takes refuge in the manor. It doesn't help as much as he hoped. But it's easier to breathe. A change of space, scenery, something. Even if it's abnormally quiet today, with only Damian and his entourage of animals in it.
It's Damian's pattering footsteps alone that serve as a barely there wake-up call, like noises coming through to him from a haze. It's uncalled for; Tim came in quietly, knowing the manor would be mostly empty at this time today, and turned on the TV, muted, in hopes he would be left alone. Nada.
The show really hasn't been capturing that much of his attention, but it's a good diversion from the tightness in his chest. Until Damian, that is.
A shake of his shoulder. Tim leans away from it, curling closer to the arm of the couch. The hand follows, persistent.
“Help me wash the dishes,” Damian insists. His voice is like sharp sand in Tim's ears and for once it's not a slight against Damian himself, it's just—he can't deal right now.
Tim nods. Just—in a bit.
The protagonist falls down a flight of stairs and wakes up in the bathroom and Tim thinks same even though it doesn't make any sense. He's never died because of stairs or woken up in a bathroom. That he knows of.
“Drake.”
God, if Damian makes him speak he will start bawling. It will be extremely gross and undignifying.
Another call of his name, even more demanding than the last. Damian has a nice gradient to it. “Just. Give me a moment.”
There's a big party in the show and the protagonist is yelling at her friend, and Tim sort of feels like that too, like he's being yelled at, all the goddamn time, which doesn't make sense either because no one is yelling or saying anything.
Well, Damian is hovering behind the couch as an ever-present reminder of their dishes duty and saying his name in an increasingly annoyed tone, but that's an equivalent of a cheek kiss from him.
By the time Damian speaks up again, Tim is paying no attention to the plot of the show, too aware of the presence behind his back to properly relax and enjoy it. As if he'd been doing that beforehand. “If you don't move right now, I'm telling Alfred.”
Frankly, none of them appreciate Alfred and what he does for them enough until he takes one of his once-in-a-blue-moon vacations, and leaves them to fend for themselves. They should remember this. (The chores aren't the problem, really, it's Bruce. Bruce is close to unmanageable without Alfred around. And Damian… Damian gets all jittery. Tim would call him clingy if he didn't know better.)
For both their sakes, Tim forces himself to get up and somehow, through the magic of bodies and their inner workings despite how in-shambles his brain feels, he makes his way into the kitchen.
He's washing the dishes, Damian is drying them. It's repetitive and almost calming, if he could classify anything as 'calming' right now. Definitely repetitive, and boring. Not much to distract him from how hard he's trying to breathe, or how his heartbeat picks up again out of nowhere like it's been doing for days now.
It's not so much that it's faster, more like it's beating too close to his chest. Too close to the surface of him. Like it could break the skin. The first number of times it happened, before it became quite a thing in his life, he didn't even realize it would make his breaths shallower, harder to pull in and out. It had been such a petty inconvenience then. Bodies are strange, bodies are fucked up, and sometimes they hurt or get stuck in weird places and most of the time it's not a cause for panic, it passes and you move on and it ceases.
As it kept coming back however, it got harder to ignore the peculiarities. Once it hit him, once he tried to take a real deep breath to calm down and realized how hard it is, it was impossible to ignore ever again. He can't breathe. He can't—
“Your hands are shaking.”
He's been washing the same plate for the past… however many minutes. There's still a dried bit of food stuck on the edge of it.
“Thanks, Dami.”
“What is wrong with you?” he asks, and it sounds like a genuine question rather than a furious complaint or an attempt to get a rise out of him. Which he wouldn't succeed at even if he tried, because Tim is so exhausted he can practically feel his brain trying to keep up with its surroundings and failing spectacularly.
It's the sort of autopilot he defaults to sometimes, when he can't keep up—last time he remembers it getting bad was during his fun little escapade across Europe. He doesn't remember half of it. He off-handedly said a vague estimate of how long he'd been gone during that time and Dick gave him a look, lips pressed tight and eyes kind but worried, and doubled the number of months. (He can barely recall the evening of meeting Kon in Paris; it's a blurry, muted memory. He thought it had been a hallucination back then. It's the one thing he can never really admit to him, or to anyone. Comes too close to the truth of how bad it had gotten back then.)
The last two years feel too much like it. Like he's been running on fumes. He thinks his brain might be giving out.
“Finally,” Damian grumbles, when he shares that particular thought with him. Tim agrees.
***
Turns out Leslie has, in fact, mentioned something about that to Bruce, and Tim doesn't know how much exactly but he recognizes the 'we need to talk' expression on his face when Bruce finds him in the kitchen during a charity gala night. It's the first time he's walked out of one as far as he can remember, emergency exits for cape purposes notwithstanding. He's supposed to be good at socializing, and yet.
He must look like shit if even Bruce doesn't immediately start asking questions and turns to boil tea for them both instead, in what Tim reads as a very funny attempt at mimicking Alfred's behavior. He can't lie though, it does put him at ease.
Bruce sits them both down at the kitchen table, pulling out two chairs and sitting next to Tim in a way that leaves him close. The smell of his cologne is stronger up close, but calming. Familiar. He's been using the same one since… for as long as Tim's known him.
He figures they can cut to the chase and speed through this conversation. Bruce doesn't like emotional talks any more than Tim himself does. He can do them both a favor and then run.
“What did Leslie tell you?” he demands. What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?
Bruce shakes his head, fingers tapping a rhythm against the cup. His hair is just a little bit disheveled, not quite perfectly slicked back as it should be. He says, without making eye contact, “Just that I better check up on you. That you ran out of her clinic in distress.”
“I didn't—” Tim protests, cheeks burning, but Bruce cuts him off.
“What's going on?”
“Nothing.” It comes out weakly, which is fitting for how pathetic of a defense it is. It's like talking to Bruce reverts him to a foolish thirteen year old all over again. Humiliating. “Just stressed.”
“About?”
God, he hates it when people ask that. What he's not stressed about would be easier to list. “You know.” He makes a vague gesture around the space in front of them with his hand. “All of it.”
Bruce nods, and Tim has a feeling he knew how this conversation would go from the start. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” he asks, incredulous. “That I'm stressed? I'm an adult.”
“You are also my son.”
That shouldn't hit him as hard as it does anymore, not at this stage. It's been years since he's been officially adopted. It's been even longer that Bruce has been calling him his son, even if a lot of it had been a cutesy nickname in the beginning. Batman doesn't do sweet nicknames, but Bruce whips them out without much thought. It's effective.
He breathes out. Bruce waits.
“It's fine. It's not that bad,” he promises, and it earns him an honest to god scoff from Bruce which, rude. “It's regular. Easy to manage. It's not affecting my performance, okay, it's fine.”
He's actually rather calm during fights, or as calm as one can be. It occupies him; it's when his mind can run its own course and he has nothing productive to distract it with that the dread spikes. It's rarely a danger to Red Robin, just a growing nuisance to Tim.
“It's been getting worse lately,” Bruce says, doesn't even have to ask, and Tim can't deny it even though he wants to. It sucks how well he can be read, even now with all the years of training behind him. He thought he'd gotten good enough at being himself to prevent it. “You aren't sleeping well.”
“Are you stalking me?” Tim mutters, though it's far from a real question. He knows he hasn't been at his best in the past few months. He doesn't know why. Leslie's theory was that it's all catching up to him now, bit by bit, that it's been stacking gradually and now it's finally settling like sediment all over his bones. Stress buildup. Tim thinks it doesn't make sense and shouldn't work that way, but no one's asking him, are they.
Bruce doesn't deign that with an answer. He sits there and waits for Tim to answer him instead. His cup clinks quietly against the tiny plate with pink flowers decorating the edges of it, already half empty. Tim has barely touched his. It's chamomile, not his favorite, but he knows what Bruce is doing. There's a right amount of honey in it.
“It's worse at night,” he admits. He doesn't want to. It feels like pulling teeth. It's a glaring weakness and not even the people he trusts the most should know of it. “I don't—when there's nothing I can occupy myself with, I spiral. And then I can't sleep because if I sleep it's wasted time I could spend doing something else—I know that's not how sleep works.”
Bruce nods but still says, “That's not how sleep works. You need it to live and it's not—”
“I know.” Tell that to his brain though. “It's just not enough time. For anything. And it keeps passing. You know how time passes?”
“What are you running to?”
Tim frowns down at his tea. “What?”
“Where do you have to be that you're in such a hurry, Tim.”
“I'm almost twenty,” he says, glaring at Bruce and trying to make him see.
“And,” Bruce asks when Tim doesn't elaborate, “What happens when you hit twenty?”
“I don't know,” he admits. Hates admitting it more than anything. “I didn't think I'd make it this far.”
He just hasn’t been counting on it. Life felt like it had ended back then, two years ago, finalized by Bruce's death after so many others he hadn't had the time to process yet, like dominoes coming to an early end. And he'd been ready for it to just. Stop.
So he put all of himself in the seemingly futile mission to bring Batman back and then it didn't end and everything went back to normal. More or less. Never quite the same—he is no longer Robin, a Titan, and his friends have changed all in their own time, shaped by their own trauma—but it seems as if everyone managed to get up and push on and Tim just can't keep up.
The look Bruce gives him is not one he can read, but he can tell he's not happy about what he's hearing. Tim wishes he could say he's getting used to that—he doesn't think he ever will. It's one thing for Bruce to be unhappy with his performance on the field and another for him to be displeased because he's having some sort of a brain crisis.
“Why didn't you tell me?” Bruce asks, again, and Tim picks up on the quiet desperation in his voice. He doesn't know what to say to that.
He shrugs, wishing he could go back to not looking at Bruce, but he's near impossible to break eye contact with once it's initiated. “It's really not a big deal.”
What was he supposed to tell him? When? Nothing happened that would prompt a conversation of this kind, and the past two years have been a shaky string of days and weeks that have all blurred together in his mind, then finally melted by the summer heat like chewy candy.
It's October, they've stepped well into autumn, but the margins of weather changes by seasons are small and inconsequential and don't help out with Tim's already bad sense of time. He doesn't remember much of what he's been doing aside from being in Gotham and going through the motions of what might constitute a normal day for someone like him, tackling issue by issue as they come and generally coming out of it fine, unscathed, nothing standing out as a cause for distress that Batman should be notified about or… anything else, really. Nothing stands out. Last week Stephanie asked what he did for his birthday this year and he honestly could not remember any bit of that day to save his life. It hadn't been a serious conversation and she didn't linger on the topic, but the realization sat uncomfortably in his gut.
Sort of like… someone scrubbed the years clean. Or left too much dust to build across the surfaces. Contrasting analogies, but they are the same.
“Tim,” Bruce says and trails off, like he doesn't quite know what to say. His fingers wrap around the cup handle, then relax. Squeeze again. Itching to do something. Too bad that Tim's brain isn't something to be melded in the right shape. That would've solved them many problems.
“It doesn't affect you in any way,” Tim insists because it doesn't, really, he's been making sure of it. He can handle his neuroses on his own. “And it barely affects me. I'm not weak.”
Bruce sounds exhausted when he speaks. “Needing help doesn't make you weak. I know you know this,” he says and gives Tim a look. It reminds him a bit of Leslie. “You backed me up when I argued with Dick that he should get therapy.”
“He needs it.”
“So do you,” Bruce adds quickly, and Tim realizes he's fallen in a trap. “Alfred would say we could all use it, and I think I'm starting to see his point.”
Tim wants to snap back with a took you long enough but he realizes that would include him, too, and bites his tongue. “Just 'cause I'm a bit nervous doesn't mean I need help.”
Bruce doesn't look convinced. If anything, it seems as if the more Tim argues against it, Bruce is more assured that he is in fact right, and it's impossible to shake Bruce off once he digs his heels in.
Slowly, allowing Tim a moment to pull back if he so wished, Bruce takes his hands in his. There is no anger or exasperation in it. It's strange and clumsy; Bruce is not as distant as Batman would lead you to think, but he's not much of a touchy feely person either. His hands are bulky and scarred where they wrap around Tim's. He wonders, often, actually, how come people never pick up on that. A few of his fingers are crooked from bad breaks, and sure, there is no nice way to ask about a person's scars but reporters are not known for their niceties, are they.
“I don't know how to show to you,” he says, quiet and deliberate, “that I care about how you feel.”
“I know.” He does know. Through all the doubts and uncertainties, he does know that.
But Bruce shakes his head.
“Not because of how well you do your job or because of how it could affect people around us,” he continues, trying to hold eye contact, to which Tim offers him a frown. He speaks in a voice that Tim has heard from him only during rare, private moments between him and Damian that he'd unintentionally overheard in the cave after some of their messier nights out. It doesn't sound like it should fit in the cave, or the kitchen. It shouldn't fit in any space, and Tim wonders if he only thinks so because he doesn't deserve it. He's done nothing worthy of it.
“I care, and I want you to talk to me because you are my child, and I want you to live long after your twenties.” He lets out a long sigh. Hushed and barely audible in the silent kitchen, he adds, “I hate having to say this at all.”
It's not like Tim asked for it. The guilt gnaws at him instantly, even if Bruce's words do make his insides flip; it's not what he thought he needed to hear until it was said to him outright. “Sorry.”
Bruce grimaces. “That's not—don't apologize.”
“I don't know what you want me to say.”
“I just need you to understand. And—”, he cuts himself off, visibly trying to piece words together. “Do you want to live past your twenties?”
Tim… doesn't see how that makes a difference either way. With the sort of lives they lead, death is often more of a promise than it is a far possibility. Death is at the bottom of every building and every gun barrel and god knows there are enough of those all around Gotham. And sometimes it's easier to decide that it will happen, say fuck it and go, than to worry himself sick wondering if it will. How it will. And sometimes it doesn't matter much. The line is very thin.
Tim sighs, purposely overdramatic to make it sound like it's a tumultuous effort. (It is.) “I can try.”
Bruce either doesn't pick up on his mocking tone, or he opts to quietly ignore it. “That's all I can ask of you.”
***
That was a lie, it turns out, because Bruce can also ask of him to go to therapy. He can't make him, as he's an adult, but sadly he's an adult that Batman still has a fair amount of sway over.
That, and Bruce did genuinely seem upset about the whole thing, and it did make Tim feel bad. If there's one thing he hates more than people poking where it's not their place to, it's people worrying about him. The guilt is unshakable.
Either way, he's been handed a list of Bruce-approved therapists and he's been refusing to look at it for a week now. Bruce hasn't mentioned it, yet, and Tim is willing to ride this wave of ignorance to wherever it takes him. However—
🐑🐑🐑 (12:24 am)
he is right tho
i know u hate hearing it
Betrayal hurts. Tim would like to file a complaint. Start handing out applications for a new best friend, etcetera.
🐑🐑🐑 (12:24 am)
but hes right and u should probably listen
this one time
Tim (12:25 am)
I thought u were meant to be a rebel. Whered that punk attitude go
🐑🐑🐑 (12:25 am)
this ONE time
and therapy is good for u
nothing unpunk abt that
Tim (12:26 am)
What do u know
🐑🐑🐑 (12:31 am)
been talking to a therapist recently
Oh. Ok, now he feels like a jerk. Both for being so loudly anti therapy, even if only for himself, and for not noticing. What a great best friend he makes. 10/10.
Tim (12:37 am)
Thats good
🐑🐑🐑 (12:38 am)
ah so now its good
fuckin hypocrite
Tim (12:40 am)
Im glad youre getting help. Its been a rough time
🐑🐑🐑 (12:41 am)
so why do u think u dont deserve help
Tim blinks at the screen. There's nothing he can say to that that would satisfy either of them.
🐑🐑🐑 (12:45 am)
anyway.
i know ur not going to sleep anytimesoon im coming over
That bothers him too; this is Tim's prime awake time, like it or not, but Kon is an early riser and his presence at this hour raises questions.
Questions he has no time to ask, as before he has a chance to respond there's a knock on his balcony door. He doesn't go over immediately, out of pettiness, and waits for Kon to knock some more. Louder.
From outside, Kon yells, “Lemme in. I bring corn.”
“What?” Tim asks through the thick glass door. On the other side, Kon lifts a bag that, if he is to be trusted, contains Kansas grown corn. A fair trade.
Tim lets him in. It's a tad jarring to see Superboy mid-air in his pajamas instead of his usual get-go; a washed out Queen t-shirt and pink shorts that Tim wants to ask about but knows for a fact would end up with a joke about him staring at Kon's ass, so he bites his tongue on that topic. They do have, in big white letters, written out GAME across the back.
“Ma roasted some corn earlier this evening,” Kon is talking as he puts the bag down on the kitchen table. Tim follows him there, silently going back down the memory lane to recall if he ever officially told Kon where he lives, or if he's been snuffed out by his heartbeat. It only ever serves to betray him. “She worried there's too much so I promised to bring it around. Plan was tomorrow morning but y'know, this works too.”
He's rambling to stave off the silence. Tim can tell.
“What's wrong?” he asks. They've never been ones to beat around the bush. Hashing it out in the kitchen at 1 in the morning, that they can do.
Kon doesn't even look at him, just keeps unloading the corn on a platter that he—where did he get that? Tim doesn't remember owning that. God, there is a lot of corn.
“Could ask you the same thing,” he says. He's trying his best to sound nonchalant and Tim kind of wants to bite him. “We can either both talk about it or we can both shut up about it, your pick.”
Right. Right.
“I'll put on some Wendy, then.”
Kon's shoulders slump, a little bit, and he nods. Tim checks that off as a success, for now.
He digs through his movie stash to find his old Wendy tapes and the even older VHS player that works only through its sheer power of will and Tim's stubbornness to keep it functional. He wouldn't call himself nostalgic, but there is a charm to it, and to watching older shows on it instead of finding them on Netflix, and most importantly, Kon likes it. He insists that it makes a constant whirring sound that he finds soothing.
Kon drops next to him on the couch as he's still setting it up. He drums his fingers against one of the cassettes, and Tim quickly takes it away.
“I still have the ones you taped for me,” Kon says, mumbling. If Tim didn't know him, he'd say he almost sounds embarrassed about it.
“Can you even play them?”
“Nah. Principle of the thing though.”
Tim gets that. Again, not nostalgic, nor especially sentimental—still has the tickets to the sci-fi movie marathon he and Steph went to for their first date. Five years ago. She'd never let it go if she knew.
He lets Kon pick an episode and watches him attempt to hide a grin as the intro guitar starts. It's an episode somewhere in the middle of the first season, a classic, as Kon would say during one of his many rants about how the first season is the best season. Personally, Tim would swear by the third season where shit really hits the fan and things start coming together, but he's never been as into the show as Kon is and doesn't quite get the fondness-ridden hype over the beginning of it all.
Still, he has the season practically memorized thanks to the amount of times Kon has made him watch it back in their Young Justice days. The lilt of actors' voices is familiar, certain shots make him think back on conversations he had with Bart while Kon complained about them talking over the show.
They don't talk tonight, aside from occasional comments Kon has to offer that Tim can see coming from a mile away because he's heard those a million times, too, but it's worth it to hear his friend's voice go all light and joyous over it.
“Ok, see that—that wasn't in the script,” he says around a mouthful of corn. Tim had a few bites and couldn't stomach more this late at night, and now bits of it are permanently stuck between his teeth. He's been too bothered by it to pay attention to the show properly. He only knows which specific line of dialogue Kon is talking about because of the aforementioned amount of times he's heard him say this. He knows that it's important, because it sets up a crucial conversation in season 4, not that you care. He doesn't. But he also does. Such are the perks of having friends. “Miss Jackson, our beautiful savior, fought to keep it in, because she actually gets the point of her character arc—remember when that was a thing? They should've let her make more decisions, she's the only reason this thing is any good, really.”
“I thought you love this show,” Tim says, though he knows the answer he's prompting, they've had this conversation a million times. “I thought it's the masterpiece of our time and has a lot of meaningful subtext—”
“Yes it is. And it does. You've gotta learn to appreciate trashy TV, Rob.”
He's less tense, both visibly and by the feel of his usually taut muscles going lax where he's pressed against Tim's side. He listens to Kon laugh at a poor joke and watches the team's sad attempt at utilizing their budget for CGI and it's almost—almost enough for him to forget why he wasn't asleep before Kon swooped in.
It doesn't matter now, because his apartment smells of roasted corn and Kon's pear shampoo, and it's the most he's seen him in a year, all the tension he wears like a cape around his shoulders falling off, if even for just a night. He stares at the side of his friend's face, the slope of his cheek as he smiles and wonders, is this how it feels? The relief and simple joy of knowing that those closest to you are doing okay, prevailing despite everything that's thrown at them on a daily basis? Is this why people around him want him to fix his shit so bad? If it could be of use for them…
They're halfway through the third episode and Tim is halfway to falling asleep when Kon nudges him. He hums in acknowledgment, eyes shut firmly. If he fully gets up now there's no way he's going back to sleep in hours.
“Consider therapy,” Kon says. It comes out a bit stiff, like he's been turning the words around his tongue for a while.
Tim hums again. “I'm considering,” he says around a big yawn.
“I'm serious,” Kon insists, even moves, jostles Tim from his comfortable position and forces him to look up at his face. He does look serious—not Tim's favorite Kon expression. He misses the gentle smile from merely a few seconds ago. “You know how much I hate siding with Bats. It makes me feel like a snitch.”
“Hm. Would it help you feel less like a snitch if I tried therapy?”
“This isn't about me,” Kon sighs. Behind the sleepy haze, Tim feels vaguely horrible for having put that exhaustion and worry back in his voice. If they could go back to Wendy the Werewolf Stalker and mindless chatter, that'd be great. “You know what this is about.”
“Pray tell, I don't think I do.” He has a few ideas but it's hard to pinpoint the exact issue. His brain is shutting down.
Kon flicks him on the temple. “I wish you'd give a shit about yourself once in a while.”
Tim remembers Cassie saying something very similar to Kon some years ago. He wasn't technically meant to overhear that particular conversation, but Kon and Cassie are both rather loud people, and were too deep in their own world to hear him passing by the kitchen where it took place.
Pot calling the kettle and all that, except their circumstances are so wildly different it's almost comical. Kon had grown up in an unhealthy environment, as much as he'd rather not hear it, and had been hurt more by people closest to him than Tim has been hurt ever, really. All Tim does is stupidly talk himself into a panic from time to time. It's incomparable. Which is a sign, probably, for him to stop trying to compare it and just swallow his pride and call someone from Bruce's list.
“Okay,” he mutters and watches Kon raise an eyebrow, like he doesn't fully believe him. Hurtful. When has Tim lied to him, ever? Maybe Bruce should have just sicced Kon on him first thing; he crumbles so easily beneath him. One pretty please and he's already halfway done with what's being asked of him. “Okay.”
He will call, he tells himself, if it will get Bruce off his back about it, if it will assure him that he doesn't have to keep an extra eye on him lest he worries himself into an illness or something, whatever it is he and Leslie are expecting. If it will get that frown off Kon's face—and it does, for now at least. Kon looks back at the TV and lets Tim lean against him again and slowly drift off.
In the morning his flat still smells of corn, and his teeth are still sticky and gross with it, a stark reminder of the promise he made last night. The sinking feeling is back in the pit of his stomach and in the back of his brain, because life is a circle and the grind never stops, it's all just rinse and repeat. Don't say things you might regret while angry, don't make overambitious promises while happy, all that.
Kon would absolutely hold it over him forever if he broke a promise though, so Tim resigns himself to a morning of stressing about which number to dial.