HELLO ALL. Hearts' birthday is coming up and this chapter needed to be posted before the chapter I'm writing for her birthday. :D Enjoy, everyone!

Dick fidgets, changing his position on the couch every two-to-five minutes, because if he doesn't, he'll start pacing. And he doesn't really have the space to pace the way he wants to without damaging something valuable, some Wayne heirloom, maybe even a precious vase. Alfred would be a combination of pissed-disappointed, and no one in the family wants to put Alfred in that undesirable situation.

But still! Was Dick as strong willed as Tim is now? (Probably, if he had to think about it. After all, he quit being Robin—and oh there is that sting again, taking Robin from Tim—and the sting really isn't fair because Tim was the one that he took it form.)

Focus! Focus.

Tim is impetuous and doesn't follow orders. He is grounded for at least three more days, not counting this traipsing around Gotham which has yet to be added to the grounded count. (Seriously though, was Dick this way? Damian certainly is, but he's ten. Jason is definitely this way—in point of fact, he still hasn't come home either—but he was put in the Pit—though, again, Jason was always that way. Maybe he hasn't grown up. But Tim? Where did Tim get this—)

It's the worry talking. Dick knows it's the worry talking, because of Scarecrow, because Tim is my little brother and I need to protect him because he doesn't protect himself.

Dick checks the grandfather clock. Tim should have gotten out of school by now.

(I should have met him there. I should have walked him.)

He breathes, his spine twisting as he shifts positions again. This could be something else. Is Dick jealous? He could be jealous of Selina. After all, Tim used to come to him with his problems (like the emptiness after the death of his parents—Dick would have taken Tim out, he would have, he thinks—), Tim used to need him way more than he needed anyone else, except maybe barring Alfred and Bruce. But. He doesn't need Dick anymore.

(Is that a sign of growth or of dependence on another person—on Selina?)

Wow, this is not where Dick's thoughts had intended to go. This isn't where Dick had intended to tread into at all. He's just waiting for Tim to get home, after disappearing last night to go out and patrol—

The doorknob rattles as a key slips into the lock, and Dick almost falls over the back of the couch to get to the door. He doesn't make it in time, not to actually open the door, but he is I the doorway when Tim pushes it inward toward him. Tim's eyes cast upward to him, and he tilts his head.

"Were your classes any harder, what with your backpack being here instead of with you?" Dick arches a brow, trying to seem like he's scolding his little brother. But there's something off—something wrong—so Dick's eyebrow doesn't go quite as high as it needs to, and his mouth doesn't manage the frown that would be the perfect shape for a good scolding.

Tim shrugs, looking around Dick, probably seeing if he could squeeze by without getting grabbed. The answer, Dick thought about it already in his waiting, is no. "Classes were classes," Tim signs finally, his eyes falling to gaze at the floor once he gave up the escape idea.

And there it is. Tim's shoulders hunch, just a little, coming up just a bit around his neck. His hands tug absently at opposite sleeves, a subtle substitute for wringing his hands together. But Tim's face is smooth. His forehead is unwrinkled, his eyebrows neutral above his eyelashes, his lips formed around a straight line. And Dick understands that Tim is already cowed by something, smoothed out into perfect Timothy Jackson, son of Jack and Janet Drake. The prodigal son.

Dick sweeps Tim up in a hug (I couldn't have scolded him anyway, he's safe after the patrol, I don't even know where I would have gotten the energy, and he went out working instead of clubbing, it's a good sign, it's a good thing, I'm sorry I thought about getting angry, I'm sorry, Tim, I'm sorry).

Tim arms are flailing during Dick's monologue, but he just buries his face against Tim. And then Tim's arms wind around him, his fingers digging into and pulling on Dick's T-shirt, his body made of tightly wound muscles, a weight in Dick's hands that's more emotion than anything.

(Tim's voice is his body language, it always has been.)

Dick crosses the threshold from the foyer to the living room, plopping himself and Tim back on the couch. But Tim's fingers are effectively claws and he doesn't let go—which hasn't happened since his parents died, which is a really bad sign.

He pries Tim away from him, sitting his brother not away from him, but at enough of a distance that Tim will be able to focus on Dick's lips to see what he's saying. Dick feels the prickle of surprise when Tim's face is still smooth, despite the rock-solidity of the rest of him. Tim's hands lay loosely on his knees, ready for a talk.

Tim's always been really good at feeling the atmosphere of a situation. He's always been an incredible asset to have out in the field because of that. "So," Dick begins, and Tim's eyes glide over to Dick's lips like he'd known they would. "How was patrol last night."

"Uneventful," Tim's hands form the words offhand, but there's tension around the knuckles, the bend in his fingers saying volumes more than his face is managing right now. "There was a mugging that I handled and some surveillance around the GCPD. There is incredible potential for corruption in one of the new officers."

Dick treads carefully, because he can see something in the curve of Tim's neck, the way his head tilts toward the floor, pulled by the weight of something Dick can't see. "Did you see Jason, last night? He hasn't come home either and Bruce is pretty sure he saw him going out on patrol as well."

Dick watches as Tim's eyes move back to his lips and proceed to dilate, as if around Jason's name, to swallow up the way it looks. (I knew it, Dick thinks to himself, I knew it.) But he rolls his lips inward, as if around words, his face cracking around the edges. Tim can't keep his face calm forever. Dick knows that fact really well.

And he watches as Tim's mask falls piece by piece, even as he shakes his head no I didn't seem him, no I didn't. He's lying. That is obvious.

Tim's face crumples, he bends over, and his spine trembles with sounds that Tim refuses to make.

Dick presses close to his little brother's side, thanking his lucky stars that he didn't scold Tim, because this was hovering under the surface, this.

And Tim's hands shake when they form the words "Why am I not worth it? Why?"

Dick doesn't know what he means-or what to say that wouldn't sound like a platitude.