Title: Didn't Have To
Verse: headcanons
Headcanon(s): As good at undercover missions Tim is, he'd rather suck at them and just be Tim. Not Mr. Sarcastic or Caroline Hill or even Timothy Wayne. He just wants to be Tim.
Charaters/Pairings: Tim
Rating: Jason
Excerpt: It takes four hours for Tim to finally roll out of bed and wiggle across his floor to his kitchen.
Tim doesn't want to move. Because today is a Bad Day and he doesn't want to be anyone else. He's Tim. Just Tim and he doesn't want Timothy Wayne or Red Robin or Dick's little brother or Replacement or Drake or even son. He just wants Tim. Wants to be Tim for more than a few minutes.
So he is.
Because today is the only day that has no connection to anyone else, today is his only day where Tim is just Tim.
It takes four hours for Tim to finally roll out of bed and wiggle across his floor to his kitchen. He avoids the bathroom full of cover-up and gel and makeup. He avoids the closet with his undercover clothes. He avoids the dress he wore yesterday - a man sucking on his neck, lifting the dress up over his knees - that's crumpled on the floor to the right of the front door. He avoids everything but Tim.
When the phone rings he ignores it. Because no one knows Tim, no one wants to talk to him. When the answering machine picks up, he chucks his spoon at the phone and knocks it off the cradle so he doesn't have to hear whoever is on the other end.
He crawls back across the floor to his chair by the bookshelf, wraps his blankets and pillows around him and settles in to read. Fantasy, horror, romance. Everything and everything fictional.
He ignores the knocking at the door and the scream, looks like someone triggered Ra's Detective's trap. Another scream sounds and it looks like Shiva's pupil's was put to good use.
But no, thinking like that isn't Tim. Tim knows nothing about heroes or villains. He knows nothing about Batman or Robin or League of Shadows or the Justice League.
Tim knows books and being alone. Tim knows contentment in silence. Tim knows himself.
Tim's okay with that.
Except when he isn't.
Tim wonders what it's like to have someone to love him. Just him. Just Tim.
Not someone who he's not.
Because it gets lonely sitting here, reading in this silent apartment. Whoever it was that was phoning, knocking earlier hasn't come back. It makes Tim kind of sad.
But Tim has always been alone so it's okay. He'll get past this. Like everything else.
He'll get past this and go back to being who he's not for a while and just hide.
It's just sometimes he wishes he didn't have to.