So, apparently getting your tonsils out isn't as common as I imagined. But getting odd popsicles and stuffed dinosaurs are maybe a universal thing if you did have your tonsils out.
So, uh, enjoy.
"It's like you want to kill me," Tim snaps, voice high and painful in his throat. "Oh, dear god - You do want to kill me."
"Tim," Bruce says as patiently as he can, which isn't very patiently at all and actually means he has ascended past the seventh level of Annoyed, "you're making a much bigger deal of this than need be."
Tim throws his hands in the air and paces about the cave. "Big deal? This is a blasphemy. I trusted you." He counts off his fingers. "Let's see here...Jason's tried to kill me, the demon's -"
"Damian," Bruce interjects tiredly.
"-tried to kill me, Dick's inadvertently tried to kill me, Cassandra's scared my soul straight from my body, and now you. You are trying to kill me. In fact, the only person in this family who seems to care about my being alive is Alfred. Alfred wouldn't do this to me. Alfred is too good."
Bruce says something unintelligible and his eyes turn upwards. Tim thinks he hears, this should be Dick's job.
"No way," Tim hisses, "there's just - Alfie wouldn't. There's no way he would do this to me."
"Don't shoot the messenger."
Tim's hands clap against his sides. "So that's it, then? The whole family is against me. The entire world is out to get me. I can't believe this. I just -"
"Tim, just accept it already."
"No."
"You're being dramatic."
"Rich, coming from you!"
Bruce lets out a sigh loud enough to be Exhibit A and lifts his reading glasses as he rubs his nose. He sits down heavily in his chair and swings its neighbor to Tim. "Sit."
"No."
"Tim."
"No. I'm not doing this. You can't do this without my consent. I refuse."
"Timothy Jackson," Bruce snaps, letting his hands drop to his lap as his face pulls into its usual scowl. "Sit."
Tim sits. Sometimes he hates how obedient he is, how little he can resist an order.
And he also hates it when Bruce uses his middle name. Parents use middle names to instill fear. The middle name is a threat.
Tim crosses his arms and makes a point to look away.
"Fine," Bruce says. "You don't have to look at me. You just have to listen to me."
Bruce can make him sit.
Bruce can not make Tim listen.
So, sure - Batman had hammered the law of superiority into Tim during his time as Robin. But Tim is not only now his own man, but also experienced in tuning Bruce out whenever he pleases. Bruce liked to think he was 100% right. Tim knows the percentage is closer to 80%.
And right now - right at this moment - Bruce is in the latter 20%, the rare occasion where he is completely, utterly, and totally wrong.
Now if only Tim could prove it.
"This is the fourth time you've had strep this year."
"In case you are unaware," Tim mutters, unable to resist lifting his shirt to show Bruce the ugly scar running along his side, "I am without a spleen."
"I am aware."
"Then you are aware of what the spleen does for the human body?"
"Yes."
Tim gets to his feet."Then we don't need this conversation."
He turns his back and starts speed walking for the steps. The farther from Bruce he got, the less power he held over him.
He hears Bruce call his name, focuses on the sound of his footsteps echoing throughout the cave.
He's going to make it. Hot damn he's going to make it. A few more steps, and -
"Oh, gosh diddly," Dick says, clamping a hand on Tim's head and spinning him back around. "Alfred told me you might need help, B, but honestly, I expected to be a bystander longer."
Tim tries ducking under his arm, but Dick instead drapes himself over Tim's shoulder with a hum.
He bites back a curse.
Dick has a habit about being in all the places Tim really, really, really needs him not to be. And he has an even worse habit about being happy about it. It's like living with a golden retriever.
"Let go of me," Tim snaps, trying and failing again to twist out of the danger zone.
"Magic words?" Dick prompts.
"Please."
"No. Let's take a seat, Timmy - and, oh, what's this tab I have pulled up on my handy-dandy laptop? Let's sit down and look at it."
"In case you are -"
"In case you are unaware," Bruce finishes for him, lifting his head, "this is an intervention."
"In case you are unaware," Dick chimes, pulling Tim back down into the adjacent chair and spinning him around to face Bruce. He drops his laptop onto Tim's lap, and Tim scowls. "You, Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, are about to learn all about the magical journey of a tonsillectomy."
Tim stares at the screen, and then cranes his head up at Dick. "Approximately how old do you think I am?"
"I spent a lot of time finding that article."
Tim shuts the laptop. Dick reaches over him and opens it. Tim shuts it again, and when Dick isn't fast enough in extracting his fingers, causes Dick to let out a yelp of protest.
"Tim, you're my reasonable one," Bruce tries. "Don't make me change that to Dick."
"Hell will freeze over," Dick adds happily, and then holds the top corners of his laptop open. "Read, Timmy."
"'Have you ever had tonsilitis?'" Tim recites in the flattest, deadest voice he can muster, and then scans the rest of the paragraph from the article for kids and pushes Dick's laptop onto the floor, where it lands with a small clatter. Dick lets out a hurt whine and a, "That wasn't very nice, Timmers, that's my third laptop this year", and Bruce lets out a single, weary, "Tim."
"I am not doing this," he announces, crossing his arms.
"Why not? Everybody gets their tonsils out."
"Bruce hasn't."
Bruce leans back a little in his chair. "Why do you kn-"
"And that's probably why Bruce sounds like a gorilla when he sleeps."
"I don't snore," Bruce protests.
"Argument noted and saved for another time - but look! I got my tonsils out when I was four."
"Four," Tim repeats sourly. "Not seventeen."
Dick's hand flutters above his head in a kind of wave. "Age doesn't matter. You don't need tonsils. They're gross, anyway."
"They're a part of the immune system. The throat's first defense."
Dick rubs Tim's shoulders and cooes. "So you did do some research!"
Bruce lets out a long-suffering sigh and retrieves Dick's laptop up from the floor. His nose scrunches for a moment - Tim normally would have made fun of the great Batman, Gotham's resident stone-hearted vigilante, scrunching his nose, but he's currently too preoccupied with keeping what remains of his immune system as part of his immune system.
"'Your tonsils are two lumps of tissue that work as germ fighters for your body. The trouble is that sometimes germs like to hang out there, where they cause infections. In other words, instead of fighting infections, the tonsils become infected.' In other words: your immune system is currently doing you more harm than good."
"Think of them as underperforming Wayne Enterprises employees," Dick suggests. "Fire them without mercy."
Which is why Tim finds himself the midnight before his doom internally screaming to 'Honor to Us All' whilst watching Mulan, the only Disney movie that Damian has deemed quasi-acceptable and not made remarks scathing enough to make even Dick moan.
They're sitting in the living room, Tim curled in an armchair. He eyes Dick's Baja Blast Mountain Dew on the coffee table with both contempt and jealousy.
He's particularly bitter about the popcorn Dick has made, popcorn Damian celebrates as "the best" and "especially masterful" and "absolutely the peak of Dick's culinary career".
Tim knows that Dick can barely make cereal without spilling a little of the milk, and even if this popcorn really is his "best", that only means it's marginally less burnt and overly salted than usual. But that doesn't mean Tim doesn't want it.
It's a universal law: you want what you can't have.
And currently, Tim is barred from everything - even water. Water! What the hell was water going to do?
What were really the chances he'd suffocate on his own vomit during Doomsday?
And thinking about that is probably the reason Dick declared a Disney night. And also probably because Bruce doesn't trust Tim not to run.
It's not that he's scared or anything - he has enough run-ins with stitches and needles and syringes to be scared - but not being afraid does not necessarily mean that he isn't...squeamish.
He had done his research. Dick knew him well - and though he will never, ever, not-in-a-million years tell his brother so, it did help. Saying "you're getting your tonsils out" was more vague than everybody realized. Knowing what that meant meant more.
However, in the process of doing his research, he'd come across review upon review of pain and pain and more pain and Tim is no stranger to sore throats, but he kept reading about Tylenol and ibuprofen and painkillers and maybe doing his research hadn't actually been such a good idea.
"You good?"
He starts, shooting his legs out onto the floor before relaxing and looking up at Dick's stupid, smiling, sunny face. He must have moved from the couch without Tim noticing. Damian, still on the couch, stares daggers at them both. Tim hears the beginning of 'I'll Make a Man Out of You', and Damian's eyes slide back towards the screen.
"Just awaiting my demise," Tim mutters.
Dick ruffles his hair. Tim swats at his hands and smoothes it back down.
"The only thing I remember about getting my tonsils out was getting to eat lots of popsicles. I had ice cream for dinner - what could be better than that? And Alfred bought you the fancy low calorie stuff you like."
"Which I appreciate," Tim replies. "But I remind you that you can only remember popsicles because you were four. But I read up on tonsillectomies, and they sound worse the older the victim -"
"Patient," Dick stresses.
"- is," Tim finishes. "So excuse me for being wary."
Dick lets out a quiet laugh. Damian's eyes leap from the screen back to them. They narrow at Dick's smile, and when he catches Tim glaring at him, he smiles an evil smile and draws a hand across his throat. Tim, five years older, five years more mature, and with two years of Damian Experience, promptly sticks his tongue out.
"Bruce wanted me to ask you," Dick continues, drawing Tim's attention away, "who you wanted to take you to Leslie's."
"Alfred's not driving?"
Dick smiles. "Of course he is."
Oh. He was asking who he wanted with him.
His cheeks flame. "It - it doesn't matter. Whatever's easiest for you. Whoever's free. You know." He shrugs, and this time goes out of his way to avoid Damian's eyes.
"Okay," Dick says, and runs his hand through Tim's hair one last time. "Whatever you say, Timmers."
He should have said that he wanted Dick.
He'd been woken at the unholy hour of four in the morning (yes, he was a Bat, but four in the morning was a hellish hour of maybe morning, maybe night) by none other than Bruce. Tim put on a hoodie over his t-shirt and made no move to take off his sweatpants. When he stumbled out to the car where Bruce waited, groggy and coffee-deprived, neither Bruce nor Alfred said anything.
He woke up a little when Bruce slid into the back with him. Bruce offered a small smile, and Tim wondered if he knew that it came out more of a grimace.
Dick, at least, would have broken the stony morning silence. Tim probably would have found it annoying, but a conversation - any conversation - was better than silence.
Because it's Doomsday, for goodness' sakes. And maybe - just a little maybe - his squeamishness has developed into a miniscule nugget of fear.
He was pretty sure Bruce's hand on his back was meant to be comforting as Alfred dropped them off at the clinic, but he felt more like Bruce was walking him off the plank.
They are in a room, now, just waiting, Tim sitting on the bed and Bruce awkwardly standing against the wall. The silence is stifling. If there were any windows, Tim definitely would have considered making a run for it.
Bruce must see it on his face, because he forces another pained smile and says, like all the words are teeth being pulled from his mouth, "I'll be here the whole time."
Tim blinks at him and then hikes an eyebrow high on his forehead.
"Could you make this any less awkward?"
"Dick told me to say it," he admits sheepishly. "It...doesn't help?"
"No."
They lapse into an uncomfortable silence. Tim swings his feet over the floor and picks at the sheets.
"It's still weird," he finally says. He receives a smile that looked slightly less effortful for it.
"Sleep," Bruce suggests. "I don't know how long it will be, and I know you were up past the end of Dick's movie."
"Dick's a snitch," he mutters in response, but nevertheless still settles down on the foreign mattress. It's thin, and he can feel the springs. The pillow is flat and smells like sawdust.
He doesn't really feel like sleeping, especially when he feels so...weird, but it isn't as if there's anything else to do (maybe if he falls asleep before Leslie comes, she won't put him under. He hates anesthesia. He's watched enough scifis to know that anesthesia is one of the first steps to a brainwashing. Not that he thinks Leslie would brainwash him. But if he is reciting his name, age, and current profession to himself, it's just to be safe, a precaution, in case something goes wrong…)
He doesn't know if he falls asleep or not. But the last thing he remembers is realizing that Bruce's fingers are carding through his hair.
He comes to slowly, and for the first few moments he's completely disoriented. Was he kidnapped? Was there an explosion? When did he pass out?
But then - ow is an understatement - his throat hurts like a bitch.
He rolls onto his side with a groan, and then regrets it because it made the pain his throat flare and his stomach flip.
Oh, yeah.
Bye-bye, tonsils.
"Welcome back," someone greets, and he pries one eye open to Dick's blinding smile before closing it again.
Dick snaps his fingers under his nose with a laugh. "Come on, Timmers. You can fall asleep at home."
Home? Home does sound nice. This mattress kind of sucks. And he wants to brush his teeth. His mouth is dry and sour, like it's been stuffed with cotton.
"Feel sick," he says, words barely a breath.
"I know, baby," Dick cooes, and Tim's lips twitch in the barest of smiles, because Dick rarely used endearments in place of nicknames. If it were anyone else, it would sound forced. But Dick has a funny way of making everything right.
"My throat hurts," he whispers, because he doesn't think Dick understands that his throat is burning.
"I know, baby, I know," Dick repeats. "Why don't we try sitting up?"
He props himself up and moans a little at the feel of Dick's hand against his cheek. Dick maybe laughs. Tim doesn't know why, since this is no laughing matter. His throat hurts - hadn't he said that already? It isn't in just the usual tight, swollen kind of way he can stand. It feels tight, swollen, and like maybe he's swallowed the embers of a fire.
Something hard and cold presses against his face. At first he thinks it's an ice pack, but when he opens his eyes it is a bubblegum pink Barbie popsicle.
"Want it?" Dick asks, and then lifts the box and shakes it. "Get this - Bruce bought them."
He takes the popsicle away from Tim's face and tears the top off with his teeth before setting it in Tim's hands. It takes Tim a minute to process this before he lifts it to his mouth and sucks with an immediate wince.
Dick winces, too. "Sorry, buddy."
It might be agonizing to swallow, but the popsicle does feel good against his throat.
"Where's Bruce?" he tries after a few minutes, voice hoarse and still barely audible. He doesn't want to try for any louder.
Dick takes his own popsicle from his mouth and jerks his head towards the door. "Talking with Leslie and waiting for Alfred. I just got here an hour ago. You're cute when you sleep, even if you drool a little."
Tim makes a face. "Don't drool."
Dick wipes a bit of dried evidence off his cheek with his thumb. "Sure you don't, Timmy."
The door opens softly, and Dick turns his smile up to Bruce. Bruce lets his lips twitch at the sight Tim and his outrageously pink popsicle. He takes a seat at the end of the bed, and the mattress creaks under his weight.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," Tim says back.
"Wasn't so bad, was it?"
Tim shakes his head, and then grimaces when it makes him dizzy. "No. Hurts very bad. Thanks for Barbie."
He waves the end of his popsicle. Bruce huffs in a way that could almost be considered a laugh.
"I just saw 'popsicles' on the box, so I'm glad," he says, and then averts his eyes and mumbles, "I got you something else, too."
He pulls something from the inside of his jacket and produces a stuffed stegosaurus. Tim would laugh if it didn't hurt, so he just grins wildly and takes it. It has a little stitched smile and his grin grows wider.
So, he's seventeen - no one is too old for stuffed dinosaurs. No one.
"Are we all set?" Dick asks, finishing the last of his popsicle's syrup before taking Tim's wrapper, too.
"All set," Bruce affirms, and extends a hand to Tim. "Ready?"
Tim grabs his hand and lets him pull him off the bed. He slides off the mattress and staggers into Bruce's side, sighing against his chest. Bruce's hand massages the back of his neck.
"Okay?" he says, and Tim can feel the two syllables rumble through his chest against his forehead.
"I can carry him," Dick suggests.
"I think Tim is perfectly capable of walking to the car."
Tim nods in agreement, even though his knees feel like Jello and he really doesn't feel so much like walking as he does about sleeping. When he peers over at Dick, his brother has raised eyebrows and beckons him with both arms.
"No one ever wants me to carry them," Dick pouts. "How am I supposed to practice, in case I need to out in the field?"
"I believe in your abilities," Bruce replies robotically, but Dick isn't finished.
"Nobody lets me," he whines. "You get mad; Damian threw a pen at my eye; and even if he lets me within a ten foot radius, Jason's heavier than a ton of bricks. But Timmy's not that mean, are you?"
Tim draws away from Bruce and slumps against Dick's arms. His stomach flips as Dick gathers him up bridal style. He has a vague recollection of an argument about not being four, but at the moment, he can't bring himself to care. Dick is warm, and his heartbeat is steady white noise. The stegosaurus rests in the crook of one of his elbows.
"You're insufferable," Bruce says, though his voice is warm.
Tim feels Dick's laugh rise up from his stomach and reverberate through his ribs. "I think you mean charming."
He buries his face into the soft cotton of Dick's shirt and breathes in the faint scent of Alfred's fabric softener.
He dimly feels Dick start walking, and someone murmuring something somewhere, but he is comfortable and drifting. A hand pats his arm. A brush of cool air. A radio rambling. The thrum of the car beneath him.
He is safely on his way back to a deep sleep when Dick pokes his side. "We're home."
His head lolls against Dick's shoulder. "Be my prince."
"Damian's staring at us through the front window," Dick admits. "And I don't know how he'd feel about that."
Tim certainly doesn't know how to feel about that, since what does it matter if Damian watches Dick carry him inside? Dick is sharable. And Tim is tired and doesn't give two shits. If Damian wants to antagonize him for it, then he could have at it so long as Tim is able to sleep ASAP.
He feels Dick shift beneath him. "Come on, buddy."
"Carry me," he pleads, one last time. But Dick merely takes him by the under arms and sets him on his feet.
He blinks his eyes blearily and glares at the Mansion and its stupidly long porch with its stupid steps and the stupid hall with the stupid stairs that would lead him down a longer, more stupid hall which would finally lead him to his room…
Dick pats his back. He takes a reluctant step forward to follow after Bruce, and only just musters the energy to smile at Alfred while the butler holds the door open.
Damian is waiting for them in the hall. His nose is scrunched.
"Back so soon?" he spits. "A pity. I was hoping to have the whole morning to myself -"
But Tim has no time for games.
Tim has time for sleep.
He brushes past him, much to Damian's obvious indignation, and stumbles out into the living room before crashing blissfully onto the couch. Normally, being draped half over the couch's arm wouldn't be comfortable. Today, it will more than suffice.
"Tim." He feels someone tug a strand of hair near the nape of his neck.
"Drake," Damian demands. "I was sitting there. Drake. Get up. Drake. Drake, you're being intolerable. Drake!"
"Fuck you," he murmurs just before he opens his eyes to Dick - again - poking his side. But holy shit his throat hurts.
"You're mean when you're sick," Dick whines, but waves a medicine cup in front of his face.
"I'm not sick," he mumbles. "I feel sick. There's a difference."
Dick rolls his eyes and puts his wrist against Tim's forehead before he can jerk away. "You're warm, baby."
"I was sleeping."
"Yes -" Dick pats his cheek - "because you're sick." He thrusts the medicine cup under Tim's nose - it smells like grape-flavoured rubber - and makes airplane sounds.
Tim snatches it from him, squeezes his eyes shut, and downs it. The consequent pain in his throat radiates all the way up through his ears, and before he knows it, tears well in his eyes unbidden. His eyes screw tighter.
Dick apologizes and it doesn't sound like pity so much as a real, true, genuine apology.
"Water?" he prompts, and Tim doesn't want any, but the aftertaste in his mouth is thick and sickly sweet. He takes the offered glass, makes himself take three sips, and then buries his head underneath one of the couch pillows.
Bruce looks sufficiently uncomfortable the next time Tim wakes. He sits back on his heels and holds out another Barbie popsicle. Tim takes pity on him and accepts it.
"What'd you do? Lose a bet?" he whispers.
"Dick said I wouldn't be able to make you take this." He holds up another medicine cup.
Tim narrows his eyes at it and then turns his gaze upon Bruce. Bruce's smile is weak.
"You owe me," he mutters.
"These white men are dangerous."
"An understatement, really," Damian remarks. "This movie is dissatisfactory. Pocahontas doesn't even exist."
Dick performs a dramatic inhale and nearly chokes. "You take that back, Dami! That was completely uncalled for. Of course, Pocahontas is real! There are books about her and everything!"
"The American education system has truly failed you."
"Um, the American education system knows a lot more about Pocahontas than you do."
"The American education system feeds children cardboard pizza and lies."
The room is dim, and all the lights have been turned off, leaving the blue of the T.V. to fall softly over the walls and across his face. Damian commandeers the armchair, and Titus has the opposite sofa. Dick lays flat on the floor, pillow clutched to his chest.
What unnerves Tim is that there is another body - much closer to him - sitting right beneath him. At first he thinks it's Bruce, but he can't imagine Bruce voluntarily joining one of Dick's movie nights, and Bruce has salt-and-pepper hair along the sides of his face and not a shock of white in the front.
Jason tilts his head back and gives Tim a madman's smile. "The princess awakens."
It takes Tim another minute to process his presence, and then a second minute to muster out an extremely dignified, "what?"
"I heard about your little adventure," Jason replies, which means that Dick can't keep his mouth shut about Tim's malfunctional immune system. "I got mine out a few months after I started staying with Bruce. He was a total dweeb about it."
Tim didn't know Jason's tongue could form the word 'dweeb' but decides that there isn't any other word to describe Bruce over the past few hours.
He feels the lump under him and pulls it out to show Jason. The stegosaur is slightly creased in the neck from where it had been folded between Tim and the couch cushions. "He bought Barbie popsicles, too."
Jason laughs and squeezes the animal's squished nose. "Bruce got me a dog - stuffed. God, what does it say about us that I have to clarify something like that?"
Tim shrugs and yawns. Winces when that hurts.
Jason flicks his forehead. "You've been sleeping this whole time. To be honest, it's a little unnerving."
Tim hums.
"I'm about to sic Dick on you," Jason says.
"Don't," Tim pleads, and when Jason gets Dick's attention, he pretends to be asleep. By the time Dick comes with the damn medicine cup, he's out.