Work Text:
“You're going to die, Tim,” Stephanie bemoaned, rolling over to bury her face into her pillow.
“Hardly,” Tim replied, barely looking up from his laptop.
“Die,” she repeated, muffled.
“This is the fifth time we've had this conversation.” Tim tapped something out on his keyboard. “And nothing's changed since then. You caught this off me.”
“Doesn't mean you can’t re-catch it.”
Tim sighed, not deigning that with a response. Stephanie lifted her head enough to squint suspiciously at him.
“See? You're agreeing with me.”
“No, I'm not.” Tim continued to type. “Silence is not admission.”
“You sighed.”
“Steph,” Tim gave her a flat look over the top of his screen. “Do you want my company or not?”
Instantly her expression shifted, and she wriggled helplessly about, trying to free herself from her cocoon. “No! Don't leave me here alone!”
“Your mom is due home from work in an hour.”
“You know she's always late.” Stephanie scrunched her nose up, shifting to pull her blankets up higher from where they'd shifted in her flailing.
“And that's why I haven't left yet,” Tim said lightly. “I have the feeling she still doesn't like me.”
“She thinks you're a bad influence.” Stephanie shrugged, burying down further into the warmth of her bed. “Something something, 'drove me to vigilantism' or whatever.”
“Did you tell her you did that without my input?”
“Told her I hit you in the face with a brick.”
“Glad you remember the finer details.”
Stephanie snorted, before pulling a face. “Ugh, my throat did not like that.”
“Soothers are next to your bed,” Tim noted, turning back to his laptop.
“My hero.” Stephanie's arm snaked out of her den, snagging the box and disappearing once more. There was a rustling noise as she unwrapped one, before the box was unceremoniously spat out again, bouncing off the desk and dropping to the floor. Tim rolled his eyes.
“Genuinely though,” Stephanie said, shifting enough that her face was visible to Tim again. “I feel shit. How do you do this all the time?”
“I don't,” Tim replied. He went back to tapping his keyboard. “You really think that I don't take precautions?”
Stephanie made a pronounced sucking noise on the soother.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Steph,”
”Nope. Resting my voice.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
Tim let out a sharp huff, nearly a laugh. “Let me know how that goes for you,” he said.
For a few minutes, the only sound in the room was the clacking of keys under Tim's fingers.
“What are you working on?”
“I thought you were resting.”
“I am.”
“Mhm…”
The mound of blankets known as Stephanie Brown moved, and she shifted to try and sit upright against the bed. She succeeded in getting halfway, neck bent awkwardly as she watched Tim.
He was silent for another minute, before he glanced up to catch her staring.
“... Minecraft.”
“Bullshit.”
Tim turned his laptop screen around to face her, screen indeed showing the blocky landscape of minecraft.
“How the fuck is your laptop running that many mods?”
Tim grinned, spinning his laptop around again. “What, you think my civvie tech is worse than my work stuff? You think I'd do that to myself?”
“The fan isn't even trying to take off from an airport...” Stephanie said in wonderment.
“Yeah, pretty cool, huh?”
Stephanie hummed noncommittally. “Dunno, seems like a nerd thing.”
Another sharp huff. “Nothing impresses you.”
“Not true,” she countered. “Nothing you do impresses me.”
Tim glanced at the clock. “Half an hour until your mom's done.”
“It takes her another half to walk home.”
“Less, when she doesn't have an escort.”
“Are you calling me a slow walker?”
“I'm saying that without your security, she moves faster.”
“Tim, be real with me,” Stephanie said, “are you stalking my mom?”
“Wh– no?”
“Then why do you know all this, hm?”
“No further questions.”
“Oh my god you totally are.”
Tim pointedly returned to his game, sitting in silence for a bit before: “I want her to be safe. I want you to be safe.”
There was an underlying current to his words, one that Stephanie caught, but didn't chase. She knew the weight behind his words, how similar their situations had been, once.
She sighed deeply, shifting the soother from one cheek to another, readjusting to sit more comfortably, pulling the strain off her neck.
“She's going to be slower today, anyway,” Stephanie said, retreating to safer territory. “Working all day with sick people, only to come home to care for her sick kid? Ew.”
Tim's fingers danced over his keyboard, not actually pressing down on anything, just moving as he mulled over his thoughts. “She cares,” he said quietly. “A lot more than she knows how to show it.”
“... Yeah.” Stephanie drew the blankets up around her again, shifting to look out the window. “Yeah.”
Neither of them spoke for a while, aside from the occasional cough or sniffle from Stephanie.
“Blow your nose,” Tim eventually said, and Stephanie managed to slip a hand out from her nest to flip him off.
“This is the worst pain I’ve been in my entire life.”
“Right up there with childbirth, nearly dying, and—”
“Can’t a girl exaggerate?” Stephanie cut him off. “You’re the worst.”
Tim pulled his laptop shut, getting to his feet. She scrambled up at his movement. “No no nonono– I’m joking I swear I don't mean it, don’t leave meeeee!”
Tim turned back to Stephanie with a bemused look. “I was just putting my laptop away?”
“Why?”
Tim’s expression morphed into a grin, and he made his way to her bedside. “Move over, would you?”
Stephanie blinked up at him in confusion, before shifting, trying to open up the blankets to let him in. Tim crawled in next to her, pulling them back around both of them.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Tim,”
Tim grinned. “Yes?”
“I’m going to sneeze all over you.”