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Curl

Summary:

Even without context, as always Dick is enthralling in his storytelling. “What’s happening?” Tim asks, fascinated to know what’s got Dick so animated this time.

It’s the smallest of expressions.

Dick blinks at him, like for a moment, he forgot Tim was there.

Then he’s twisting in his chair to face him, eyes bright with the promise of a new audience. “Okay, so - remember how I told you about my new manager at the studio? Well get this - he made this new rule that audience members aren’t allowed to wear hats when they come to see the kids’ recitals. It’s part of the ‘audience dress code’, a thing which one hundred percent he just made up himself - ”

Tim watches Dick attentively. He laughs at all the right points. He even lets out a small gasp when he knows it’s expected.

And it’s good. It’s a good story, and Dick is so happy to tell it.

 

***

The frustrating thing when he gets like this is that it’s never triggered by anything real.

Notes:

So I'm on a discord call with Selkie and Krow, not really paying close attention, when suddenly I tune back in to Krow saying "Sunnie, you have to do it too."

and I say. huh.

and selkie says. your next fic. you have to use the word curl in it.

and I go oh! well I can do that

and I did not ask any further questions

anyway here's Curl

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“Hey, Bruce, did you see - ” Tim trails off as soon as he steps the rest of the way into the kitchen.

Dick, hand in the air in mid-gesture, flashes him a quick, bright smile before continuing the story he was telling before Tim cut him off. “So I tell him this, totally expecting he’s going to back me up, right? I mean it’s his rule about the stupid hats. But no!”

Tim slips past him and into his chair as Dick is talking, returning Bruce’s nod of greeting with a brief smile of his own and pouring himself a glass of orange juice from the fresh carafe Alfred has left on the table.

“Instead, he tells me, oh it’s fine! Mrs. Carmichael is a great supporter of the studio! As if everyone else in the audience isn’t a great supporter of the studio!”

Even without context, as always Dick is enthralling in his storytelling. “What’s happening?” he asks, fascinated to know what’s got Dick so animated this time.

It’s the smallest of expressions.

Dick blinks at him, like for a moment, he forgot Tim was there.

Then he’s twisting in his chair to face him, eyes bright with the promise of a new audience. “Okay, so - remember how I told you about my new manager at the studio? Well get this - he made this new rule that audience members aren’t allowed to wear hats when they come to see the kids’ recitals. It’s part of the ‘audience dress code’, a thing which one hundred percent he just made up himself - ”

Tim watches Dick attentively. He laughs at all the right points. He even lets out a small gasp when he knows it’s expected.

And it’s good. It’s a good story, and Dick is so happy to tell it.

Tim never does get around to saying what he originally wanted to ask Bruce.

That’s okay. It wasn’t important anyway.

***

The frustrating thing when he gets like this is that it’s never triggered by anything real.

It’s always something so tiny - a glance, a half-hearted laugh, a comment that goes ignored.

Meaningless, in the grand scheme of things, usually meaningless in the grand scheme of that moment.

But suddenly, it’s like there’s a - a bug, in the code of Tim’s brain that gets triggered, and he’ll have that little moment of realization - that little oh.

He knows about - you know, depression spirals, and anxiety spirals, and really all the spirals. He’s read about them.

But this doesn’t feel like it should be called a spiral.

He’s thought about it, and he’s pretty sure that when people call something a spiral, it’s shorthand for a downward spiral, and that - that’s not quite right, see?

Because a downward spiral implies a change in elevation. That where you start is better than where you end up, if it ever ends at all.

It also implies the existence of an equal and opposite upward spiral, unless the metaphor is meant to imply that people with mental illnesses are just in an eternal fall they never recover from, which Tim is pretty sure would make the metaphor both inaccurate and kind of ableist.

Or at least a bit of a bummer.

Tim will acknowledge that there’s a… change, when he gets in these moods. There’s motion, sure.

But it’s on flat ground in his own head.

It’s like… pacing. Yeah. An arc, looping away from stationary and stable and into agitation and upset.

Not a spiral, but a curl.

And eventually it ends, and he comes to his senses and settles down again, and there’s no need for an upward spiral back to normal, because he never left - he was always there, just at an angle.

Sometimes he wishes he was depressed.

That’s a sentence he’ll never ever say out loud to anyone in his family, many of whom have had their own battles with the word, but that’s just the thing - it’s a word.

Something he could say, outloud, to other people, and have them understand it enough to be sympathetic.

It’s a word with enough weight that Dick’s got it formally on paper. He’s even got pills to help him carry it, prescribed not long after Bruce came home. Something so sensible they make actual medicine for it.

Bruce doesn’t have any pills, but he doesn’t think anyone in the family would argue that he probably should.

It’s a word that’s been tossed around in conversations about Duke’s therapy. Not so much that he has it, just that it’s something he and the family should be aware of, just in case.

His therapist sent a flier home with him listing the common warning signs and symptoms.

It’s hanging on the fridge, pinned up with a Gotham Knights magnet and cheerfully decorated by Dick with brightly colored stickers, right next to the hand-drawn sign in Steph’s purple glitter pen that commands:

Think !

could it be SEPSIS

So simple. Just an affliction, a completely comprehensible outcome of a wound, or physical.

Sometimes a supervillain drives your parents insane, and you might end up depressed.

Sometimes your brain chemistry gets a bit fucked up, and you take a pill.

Sometimes you have walking pneumonia that you stubbornly refuse to rest for, and then Batman has to take a month off because you had to go to the actual hospital to treat your resulting sepsis.

So it goes.

These are rational experiences. Explicable. There’s a word for them.

What fucking word do you use to say hey, sorry I’m such a piece of shit - can you just drop whatever you’re doing to pay a little more attention to me than everyone and everything else, even though I’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve it?

You don’t. The answer is you don’t, because Tim isn’t an asshole, even if he might be, actually.

Some days, Tim is just a little bit less visible than the rest of them.

A phenomenon made evident by the way Alfred nearly crashes into him as he turns a corner on his way out of the kitchen after breakfast, Tim looking up from his phone just in time to avoid knocking the basket of clean laundry out of Alfred’s arms.

“Do try and be aware of your surroundings, Master Timothy,” the butler says in a tone of fond exasperation, peering over the heaping pile of linens at him.

Tim returns the look with a sheepish grin. “Sorry,” he mumbles, but Alfred is already stepping past him briskly, on to his next task, and the apology trails off.

He has to pause for a moment, alone in the hallway once the man is gone, and take a breath.

The arc of his curl makes another lazy loop outwards.

Stop. Breathe.

He knows himself.

He knows what he needs when he gets all weird and needy like this. He just needs to spend some time with people, that’s all.

He looks back down at the phone in his hand, the carefully casual text he was half-finished composing before he was interrupted.

Fuck it, he decides, tapping the call button and pressing the phone to his ear.

It rings several times before it’s picked up.

There’s some rustling, a murmuring voice away from the speaker, and then finally Kon’s voice crackles down the line. “Rob! Hey!” his best friend says cheerfully, and Tim finds himself grinning at just the sound of his voice.

It still takes his breath away sometimes, the fact that Kon is alive and Tim can just pick up the phone and call him whenever he wants.

“Hey!” he returns, and the brightness in his voice isn’t even faked. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad, not bad. You?”

“Everything’s great! So hey, I was wondering if this afternoon you wanted to - ”

A loud peal of familiar feminine laughter comes over the line in the background, followed by the equally familiar sound of Bart’s indignant complaints.

There’s more rustling movement, Kon’s voice saying something away from the speaker. The voices in the background fade away, like Kon has just relocated away from the others.

“Sorry, what were you saying?” Kon says, clear again.

“Hey, was that Bart and Cassie?” Tim asks, keeping his voice light, even though he can feel his smile fading. “I didn’t know you guys were all at the Tower this week.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m not supposed to be, it was super last minute,” he says. “Ma and Pa decided yesterday that they were overdue for a date night. Pretty sure Clark decided to take a surprise trip out of the solar system, I figured he had the right idea.”

Tim knows his cue to laugh. He meets it with perfectly natural timing.

“So what’s up?” Kon asks expectantly. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Tim says easily. “I just wanted to let you know that I’ve got an update to the Tower’s software. I’m going to be uploading it remotely this afternoon. You probably won’t even notice anything, I just wanted you to be on the lookout for any bugs I should know about.”

“Oh!” Kon responds, tone a little bemused. “Well, you should just come by the Tower and see for yourself, then! We’re getting pizza for lunch.”

“Sorry, man,” Tim says, managing to sound sincerely apologetic. “That sounds awesome, but I’ve got some cases I really need to work on today.”

“Aw,” he sounds genuinely disappointed. And then, hesitantly, “You sure everything is okay?”

“Totally, dude.” Tim’s teeth dig into his lip. “Tell the others I said hi.”

He hangs up before Kon can say anything else, tucking his phone back in his pocket with a sense of guilty anger that he has absolutely no right to feel.

He’s just… fixated on the image of them, his best friends in the whole world, laughing and hanging out and…

Was there even a single moment where they missed him?

Where they ever even thought about the fact that he wasn’t there?

And he knows, he knows he’s being stupid and small and petty, and now Kon’s probably going to be worried because there’s no way he convincingly sold that everything was fine, and it’s - it’s so selfish.

Because he can’t get past the thought that, at their core, Tim and the lack of Tim are exactly the same thing.

***

Can you send me the footage from your hood from last night’s bust?

Sent: 11:03 am.

Marked as read: 11:12 am.

It is now almost 3pm.

Time for a follow-up.

Tim plugs the phone into his computer, pulling up the file with the simple virus he’s prepared for a situation just like this. He disguises it as a jpeg file and sends it, along with a caption:

lmao dick got stuck in the bannister again

It takes less than a minute for the read label to pop up.

It takes just over eight minutes for Tim’s phone to light up with Jason’s name.

“What the fuck?” Jason snarls the moment he picks up.

“You weren’t answering my text,” Tim says mildly. “I was worried that maybe you lost your phone. I figured I’d help you find it.”

“If my phone is still playing that fucking song when I hang up, I swear to fucking god I will find you, and I will shove it so far down your throat you’re gonna hear the fucking hamster dance every time you bend over. The fuck do you want?

“Helmet footage. Last night’s bust. I need it to finish the report, no one else was on the third floor. I’m missing seven minutes of the timeline.”

“You sent me a virus because you couldn’t wait another day to do your fucking paperwork?” Jason says, in a tone that promises bloodshed.

“Literally could have avoided this if you just told me when you could get it to me! I’m not a mind reader,” Tim snaps back. “Or even just an acknowledgment! Is the K button on your phone broken? Do you not know where the thumbs up emoji is? I know smart phones are a little different than what you were used to be before you came back to life, but surely someone’s explained how texting works.”

“Fuck off, Replacement,” Jason snarls. “I was fucking busy. The world doesn’t revolve around you, you entitled little shit.

The line goes dead, and Tim tosses the phone down on the bed, swallowing the bitter taste on his tongue. He scrubs his palms against his tired eyes in frustration.

Jason is always like this.

It shouldn’t still get on Tim’s nerves after all this time.

The phone buzzes, muffled against the bedspread.

Jason: Attachment - hood_cam

Jason: your fucking footage

Jason: make my fucking phone stop singing

He sends the uninstallation package, tacking on a passive aggressive thumbs up. This time when he tosses the phone onto the bed, he makes sure the screen is facing down.

He takes a deep breath, and gets back to work.

Forty minutes later, he sends the finished report to Bruce’s secure email.

He proceeds to stare at his inbox for another thirty seconds.

When no responding email comes, he texts Bruce.

Finished that report.

He watches the screen. Sending. Delivered. Read.

A thumbs up emoji.

Alright.

That wasn’t nearly as satisfying as he’d hoped.

Fair point to Jason.

***

Tim doesn’t hesitate before knocking on the door to Bruce’s office. By now, the late afternoon sun is slanting in through the western windows that line the other side of the hallway, and Tim knows Bruce will be able to see the shadow of his feet under the door the moment he pauses in front of it.

“Come in.”

Tim winces.

There’s a stressed note to Bruce’s tone, and he already regrets not waiting for Bruce to finish whatever he’s working on and come out of his office.

Still, he obeys.

Bruce glances up at him, sparing him a genuine but harried smile. “Hey, Tim, what do you need?”

This was a bad time. He should have just stuck with his original plan to wait for him to come down to dinner.

The only reason he rushed it was because he knew if he waited too long, he’d talk himself out of asking Bruce at all.

“Everything cool?” Tim asks. “It’s not an emergency, I can come back later if it’s not a good time…”

Bruce looks up again, the stressed lines in his expression softening. He huffs out a sigh, rubbing the side of his nose with his thumb. “Everything’s fine, Tim. I apologize if I was curt.”

Tim edges closer to the desk, the apology soothing his anxiety just enough to allow him to suppress the ingrained instinct to clear out and give him his space immediately. “Paperwork?” he asks sympathetically, recognizing the monthly budget reports currently papering Bruce’s desk.

Bruce hums. “Lucius needs me to get this done before the investor’s meeting tomorrow. But there’s a new exhibit on the evolution of birds at the natural history museum, and I promised Damian I would take him this evening, before the weekend crowds hit. So I’m trying to finish now, so I don’t have to pack in any more work before or after patrol.”

Tim swallows. It feels a little like trying to choke down a stone, and it settles in his stomach just as heavily. “Oh,” he croaks. “I, um. I didn’t know Damian was interested in that kind of thing.”

What a stupid response. Of course Damian’s interested in it - he goes to exhibits like this all the time with Dick. Tim’s even been dragged along, once or twice.

Bruce clearly notices too, because he frowns, looking puzzled. He starts to respond, but Tim can’t seem to shut his big mouth.

“Didn’t you guys just go to that art exhibit last week?”

The puzzlement turns to bemusement. “Yes,” he says slowly. “The O'Keeffe exhibition.”

Tim spreads his hands, defensive and hurt and with no right to be either. “That’s just… a lot of exhibits,” he says lamely.

Bruce leans forward on his desk, fingers laced together and forehead creased, now in mild concern. “Tim - ”

Tim takes a step back. “Sorry. That’s - sorry. Yeah, of course. I’ll let you get back to it.”

“Do you - ”

“I hope you guys have a fun time,” Tim says, too loud, cutting Bruce off before he can chide him. He doesn’t need to be told how whiny he’s being today.

He slips out of the office, shutting the door behind him with a solid, final thunk.

And then stands there, letting the seconds tick by without moving.

The late golden sun, just starting to dip beneath the horizon, casts long shadows.

He stays there until the sun slips out of sight, and there are no shadows left to cast.

He follows its example and vanishes from the hallway before Bruce can come out to collect Damian.

To take him to the exhibit Tim wanted to see with him.

He practically bolts back to his own room, and he can’t stop himself from slamming the bedroom door just hard enough that Alfred would chide him if he heard.

But either no one hears or no one cares, because no one comes bursting through the door to yell at him for it.

He gets down on the floor, shoving laundry and empty cups of coffee out of his way until there’s enough space for him to squirm his way under the bed.

The space is tighter than it used to be when he was younger.

But the expensive four-post bed, identical to ones in every guest room, still offers plenty of room for him to curl up on his side in the dark and cozy cave, facing outwards.

He reaches out from his safe haven to grab a crumpled Gotham University sweatshirt, bundling it up and shoving it under his head to use as a pillow, trying to pretend he can’t feel the way the fabric grows damp where it’s pressed against his face.

He should have just talked over Dick’s stupid story at breakfast. Every time he does this to himself! Every time!

He just… lets himself fade into the background, and the moment he does, everyone else’s lives carry on like he’s not there.

He knows that there’s something… weak about him.

Something that doesn’t shine as brightly as it does in other people.

Whatever that little light is in other people that makes people want to know them, want to see them, his must be too dim to see.

And that’s okay! Really, that’s fine!

It’s just something he needs to accomodate for, like his missing spleen.

People aren’t going to notice him on their own. People aren’t going to think of him without being reminded to think of him.

Sometimes, he can even see it as a strength - there’s a reason why Red Robin is able to fade away into the shadows in a way no one else can.

It’s a trait that probably spared him at least some of the worst of Bruce’s anger early on.

There’s an argument to be made that it’s the entire reason he’s still here at all. He just… blended in, until Bruce got so used to him that he started to tolerate him.

There are worse things to be than naturally invisible.

But the flip side of that, obviously, is that when he wants to be seen, he needs to actually make an effort.

And maybe that’s fair and maybe it’s not, but it is.

He can’t just let himself stay invisible and then get upset when no one sees him. He shouldn’t be so fucking hurt.

The last gray vestiges of sunlight turn smudgy and dark in his room. The flash of headlights slices through the open curtains, briefly illuminating the posters on the wall across from the bed.

That will be Bruce and Damian.

Even though he knows the walls are too thick for it to be audible this far away, he imagines he can hear the familiar sound of gravel crunching under tires as they drive away, leaving him behind once again.

***

He’s disoriented for a few seconds when he wakes up.

The twilight has dissipated entirely, leaving the room completely dark except for the blinking standby light on his laptop and the dull light seeping in under the door from the hallway.

He fumbles for his pocket, pulling out his phone and squinting groggily at the bright screen.

9:34.

There’s just one text on his phone - probably what woke him up.

Big Bird: theres dinner in the fridge for you! ^_^

He leaves the text unanswered and sets the phone down on the floor, screen down, and lets the darkness surround him reassuringly once more.

Bruce and Damian will be back by now.

Tim wonders if they went out for dinner after they were finished at the exhibit. His parents used to like to do that - go to an event and then decide at the last minute to go out to dinner afterwards without telling him the change in plans.

He learned eventually not to stay up late waiting for them.

Bruce and Damian must have gone out to dinner, if Dick is texting him to say that Alfred put a plate aside.

Because if they ate dinner at home, someone would have come and knocked on his door to fetch him. Because Bruce likes them all to eat dinner as a family as often as possible.

So he would have come up, and asked Tim to come join them for dinner.

Right?

Suddenly, he doesn’t believe it.

He’s abruptly sure, down to his bones, that everyone but him is downstairs right now, eating and talking and laughing, and that deep down they’re happy that he’s not there with them.

He curls in on himself like a wounded animal, tucking his knees up against his chest and squeezing until the image in his brain isn’t the only reason it's hard to breathe.

The illusion fades slowly, like coming down off of fear toxin, reality and logic creeping back in and overgrowing the despair that had felt so solid mere minutes earlier.

It’s a sludgy, disorienting sensation, that still leaves him feeling too weighted down by imaginary grief to move.

No, they’re not all sitting down to dinner and laughing with relief that he’s not there.

But no one has come to find him, have they?

Bruce could have come up and knocked to check on him. Dick could have brought him a plate instead of just texting him.

When was the last time he invited him to come watch a movie, just the two of them? A “Robin’s Night,” the way they used to do back in the days before Damian, before Bruce disappeared, back when things were whatever counts as normal for their family?

And suddenly the uncomfortable despair is swallowed by a surge of anger.

Because why? What is it about him that makes him so forgettable?

Why can’t anyone just love him without him needing to ask?

He sniffles, embarrassingly loud. Not that it matters when there’s no one around to hear anyway.

He stares at the crack under the door, swiping at his damp cheeks angrily.

If someone shows up at his door to check on him in the next thirty seconds, he vows to himself, he’ll get Damian to hang out with him for a whole day. He’ll make an earnest, sincere effort this week to hang out with Damian like Dick and Bruce keep wanting him to.

Thirty seconds. Starting… now.

Twenty seconds.

Ten.

There’s no real reason for him to feel any worse when the last few seconds in his mental countdown trail away and the hallway outside his door remains empty and silent.

But there’s something especially crushing about the confirmation that the universe is also not paying him the slightest bit of attention.

Even when he asks it to.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, sniffing again.

He lets out a deep, shuddering sigh, and, after giving himself a last few seconds to regroup, wriggles out from under the bed.

***

He finds Bruce in the den, sipping coffee and scrolling through reports on his tablet - his favorite way to wind down from the day before getting ready for patrol.

He looks over the tops of his reading glasses when Tim comes in, gaze sharpening immediately. He sets the tablet aside, taking off his glasses. “Tim,” he says cautiously. “Good evening.”

“Yeah.” Tim takes a deep breath. “I wanted to go to the exhibit with you,” he says, the words coming out all in a rush.

Bruce stills in surprise. He blinks. “Oh,” he says, with a quiet sigh of understanding. “Tim,” he shifts on the couch to make space, patting the cushion next to him.

Tim obeys, coming to sit down uncertainly beside him.

Bruce angles himself to face him, a furrow between his brows. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Tim shrugs jerkily with one shoulder. “You were already going with Damian,” he mumbles.

Bruce lets out a soft huff through his nose. “Is this why you seemed upset earlier?” he asks gently.

Tim shrugs again, an uncertain tic of a movement. “Had kind of a bad day,” he offers, voice a little thick, despite his best efforts.

Bruce tilts his head, lips pursing sympathetically. He brings up a hand and, tentatively, like he’s not sure if the gesture will be welcome, brushes a few stray locks of hair out of Tim’s face, tucking them behind his ear. “We’ll go tomorrow,” he says decisively.

“But you already went,” Tim protests. “And it’s the weekend, so there will be more crowds. And you’ve got better things to do than go see a - a stupid bird exhibit for the second time - ”

“Hey, I happen to be very fond of birds,” Bruce responds, actually sounding a little affronted, and it surprises a choked laugh out of Tim. Bruce’s lips quirk up, before he continues, sounding utterly sincere. “But Tim, I like going to these things because I like spending time with you, and your siblings. I’ll go to it ten times this weekend, if that’s what you want to do.”

Tim feels his face crumple, and Bruce makes a soft tutting sound, concerned and sympathetic. “What if I want to go eleven times?” he asks thickly, and Bruce huffs out a laugh of his own.

“They actually say you have to go at least twelve times to really appreciate it,” he agrees seriously.

Tim pulls his legs up, tucking them under himself and twisting his body so he can lie down on the plush leather couch.

He curls up on his side, resting his head on Bruce’s leg.

He can feel Bruce go completely still in surprise.

Then, he gives a quiet, thoughtful hm.

Tim hears soft rustling, the leg he’s currently using as a pillow remaining almost unnaturally still, like Bruce is being careful not to disturb him.

The plush throw blanket off the back of the couch is tossed gently over him. He finds the edge of the silky fabric with his fingers, lightly fidgeting with the seam.

“Comfortable?” Bruce rumbles quietly, and Tim nods, cheek rubbing against the soft material of his sweatpants.

The glow of Bruce’s tablet faintly illuminates the wrinkles in the blanket, but Tim doesn’t mind, even as he starts to slip into a doze.

***

“…needs the rest,” Bruce is murmuring, the words vibrating right near Tim’s head.

“Ah, too late,” Dick’s voice says lightly, when Tim cracks his eyes open to squint at whatever has dared disturb the comfortable haze he’s floating in.

A couple soft, carpeted footsteps, and Dick is crouching down in front of him, smiling gently. “Hey, Baby Bird, Bruce mentioned you seemed like you were having a rough day. I knocked on your door earlier, but it looked like you were taking a nap and I didn’t want to wake you up,” he says softly. “But if you’re up for it now, do you want some dinner before patrol?”

Tim blinks at him, drowsy and content, and it’s so easy in that moment for the insecurity and bitter desperation that have had their claws in him all day to just… let go.

“Not yet,” he mumbles sleepily. “In a little bit.”

Dick brushes a hand over the rumpled strands of hair on top of his head, bending down to press a kiss to Tim’s forehead. “Okay,” he says affectionately. “Glad you came out to join us.”

Tim doesn’t respond. He just curls closer to the warm, protective form of Bruce, watching over him, and lets himself slip back into a gentle, dreamless sleep.

Notes:

come join me on tumblr!

 

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